Laurel walked Anya and me to our car. More accurately, Gracie walked all three of us to the parking lot. “It was nice to see you, Anya. How exciting! You’re going to be a big sister!”
“I know. I can’t wait. I hope Mom has a boy.”
“Really?” I asked. “Why is that?”
“Because I like being the only girl in our family. And boys get to do cool stuff like catch frogs.”
Oh-kay, I thought. Whatever! As long as she was happy, I was, too.
thirty-eight
Saturday morning, Day 5—after the shooting
I woke up at six and ran to the john where I spent the first five minutes of my day tossing my cookies. After nibbling on a handful of crackers and sipping a glass of ginger ale, I felt human again. Anya grumbled when I tried to wake her. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to sleep in. With her sleepy permission, I left my daughter in the house with Gracie and ran over to Kaldi’s to get a latte and breakfast. I thought I owed myself a treat.
After all, I’d had a rough week. As usual, there was a long line at Kaldi’s, because the brew is superb. Kaldi’s is a local chain that roasts their own beans and bakes great pastries. While waiting my turn in line with other customers, we inched our way toward the newspaper rack.
Detweiler’s arrest was front-page news. With trembling hands, I picked up the paper—my rule being if I read what’s visible, well, that’s to be expected because that’s how they hook you, but if I pick it up, I should pay for it—and wrestled the big sheets open so I could see the “jump” to the inside. My mug shot stared out at me. I’d been wrongly accused two years ago, and I intended to try and get my photo out of the system. But that hadn’t been Numero Uno on my “to do” list.
Now everyone in the world could see a picture of me with a booking number under my chin.
I groaned.
The woman behind me said, “Say, aren’t you … ?”
“No! I’m not!” I said sharply. “Mind your own business.”
I never, ever speak to people that way. Chalk it up to a queasy tummy, no caffeine, anger, and a sense of general disgust. What had I done to deserve this? Nothing!
After paying for my latte, the newspaper, a huge iced cookie, a blueberry muffin, and a scone, I scuttled to the one empty table in the back and near the restroom. There I read more of Milton Kloss’s accusations, including such memorable phrases as, “Mrs. Lowenstein apparently doesn’t care whether she’s broken up a happy marriage or not. She always gets her man. Even if she has to shoot him!”
Of course, he was equally hard on Detweiler. “He swore an oath to protect and defend. But breaking his word comes easily. After all, he was cheating on my daughter. Breaking his marriage vows. So it wasn’t much of a leap for him to toss his conscience aside and shoot my poor baby when she tried to keep their marriage together!”
I stuffed every crumb of food in my mouth, trying to push away my feelings of embarrassment, guilt, and anger. When I finished, I walked to the front counter for more food. On my way, I saw a copy of The Muddy Waters Review, the newspaper owned by the family of my old boyfriend Ben Novak. I read through it while ordering an omelet, a side of bacon, and a potato latke. I would have hoped that Ben might ignore my plight and take the high road, but no-ooo. Although Detweiler and I hadn’t made the front page, Ben had drop-kicked both of us to the curb in an editorial with the nasty headline, “Killer Cop Deserves Life in Jail.”
Instead of waiting for my order, I bolted. I ran to the bathroom as fast as my scuffed up Keds would take me. Then for the second time in less than an hour, I heaved my guts out.
“Poor baby,” I said to my bump as I rinsed out my mouth. “You’ve had a real rollercoaster ride, haven’t you?
My eyes water when I vomit, so I stood there blinking and trying to get my digestive system under control. As I did, I looked into the mirror. I saw a woman who had definitely had ENOUGH!
“I’m going to make all of you pay for this. Milton Kloss, watch your back. Ben Novak, you’re going to eat crow. A whole flock of them. You two bullies have picked on the wrong woman. My name is Kiki Lowenstein. I repeat it as a prayer. Lowenstein, Lowenstein, Lowenstein. And you both better start praying, because it’s payback time.”
thirty-nine
Once I was back home, I looked in on Anya. She’d gone back to sleep, surrounded by two cats and one big dog.
I grabbed a huge sheet of blank newsprint, the type most people use for packing. I use it for planning craft projects because I’m too cheap to pay for expensive flip charts. After brewing myself a cup of ginger tea, I drew a mind map, essentially a spider web with a big circle in the center. In that center, I wrote: Who killed Brenda Detweiler?
On the spokes going out from the center hub, I wrote words and phrases as fast as I could. My goal was to capture as many ideas as possible. Once I filled an entire page. I started over on a fresh sheet of paper.
I did this three times. The first time, you dredge up the obvious. The second time, you’re getting to the heart of the matter. The third time you complete this exercise, you’re hitting pay dirt.
By my reckoning, there were a variety of motives for killing Brenda:
Drug deals gone bad.
Problems at her job. (Since she was a nurse, her drug use made her inattentive at best and wildly unpredictable at worse. I had reason to know this.)
Marital issues.
Money problems. (Maybe she owed money for the drugs and was behind.)
Other.
I could confidently mark off “marital issues.” Even if Detweiler was angry with her, why didn’t he follow her to her parents’ house—where she’d obviously spent the night, despite her mother’s claim not to have seen her—and kill her that evening right after the shootout? Why wait until the next morning when he would have had time to cool down? And why kill her anyway? She was definitely headed for jail. She’d be off the streets and out of our hair for sure.
If Detweiler did shoot Brenda, why leave her body in a place where it could be found so easily? Hadn’t he told me repeatedly that a missing body was a huge problem for law enforcement? His family owned hogs. So did most of their neighbors. A hog could devour a human body in no time. Why not dump the corpse in the hog pen? Or toss it into the manure tanks where no one ventured because the methane inside was deadly? Failing that, why not weigh her body down and dump her in the Mississippi?
Why would he wait twelve hours, shoot her at a vacant house near his parents’ home, wrap her corpse in a blanket, and leave behind bullet casings from his service pistol?
This crime was simply too stupid to be real. Especially if the person committing it was a cop with a lot of homicide experience. Like Detweiler.
Someone had set him up.
Who?
Why?
My phone rang. I looked at the number. The accounting firm would have to wait. My fiancé couldn’t.
Who? I circled the word.
It had to be someone whom Brenda knew. Someone who Brenda ran to for help.
Since Detweiler wouldn’t offer her sympathy, she probably called on family or friends.
What about Brenda’s mother, Carla? She’d been suspiciously quiet since the shooting. Why? Was she content to let her husband make a fuss, or was there another reason? I’d seen how wild Brenda was. Had she run home to Mommy? Was it possible that they quarreled, and Carla Kloss grabbed a gun to defend herself ? I could imagine that scenario very easily.
Brenda Detweiler had attacked me twice in public and once in private while I was a patient in a hospital where she worked. So I knew she could be violent. What if she had attacked her mother? Was that why Carla Kloss couldn’t join her husband in bad-mouthing Detweiler?
If she didn’t go home, where else could Brenda have gone for help? Where had she spent the night?
I kept a map of the St. Louis met
ro area in the glove compartment of my car. Letting Gracie out for a piddle, I grabbed the folded map and brought it inside. From a closet, I retrieved a cork bulletin board. Opening my laptop computer, I went to my Outlook contacts file. I planned to stick a pin in every Detweiler or Kloss residence within twenty-five miles of Brenda’s final resting place. Unfortunately, although that looks pretty cool in the movies, it doesn’t work well in real life. I couldn’t make out exactly where my pins should go, and when I did figure out the locations, my pins kept falling out.
On to Plan B. I printed out all the Kloss and Detweiler addresses I found in the online White Pages. Next, I went to Mapquest. One by one, I charted the distances from each address to the farmhouse where Brenda’s body had been found.
The closest was Patricia Detweiler Kressig’s house.
forty
Anya wandered into the kitchen and poured herself a bowl of cereal. When I asked about her agenda, she shrugged. “I have homework. I was thinking about just chillin’ on the sofa.”
Something was definitely wrong. Usually Saturdays were spent with Nicci at one of the local malls or the movie theatres. In fact, I couldn’t remember a weekend when the two girls didn’t get together.
“Anya? Do you want to talk? Is anything on your mind?”
“Nope.”
“You sure?”
“Can’t I want to hang out at my own house without being hassled by you?” Her voice was a perfect imitation of Sheila’s when my mother-in-law was in a snit. I thought about sending Anya to her room, but decided I didn’t want to pick a fight with her immediately before I went to work.
“The Detweilers invited us over for dinner tonight. I was thinking we could stop by and see your grandmother at the hospital. I think she’s coming home tomorrow.”
My daughter grunted.
“Okay. I’ll be home at five. We’ll leave as soon as I get here.”
Another grunt. I took that as a sign of progress.
“You sure you’re okay here alone?”
She glared at me. “Leighton is just across the yard. Gracie weighs more than most men. My mother packs a pistol and shoots people in the head. And my stepfather-to-be is in jail for murder. Who’s going to mess with me?”
“Right. Keep your cell phone close by anyway.”
The store was quiet when I arrived. Saturday mornings often were. Traffic would pick up as the day went on, so I started my circuit of the premises, straightening and replenishing our merchandise. While arranging a stack of Tim Holtz inks, a brainstorm hit me. The link went like this: Holtz … Hadcho. As in Detective Stan Hadcho. Why hadn’t I contacted Detweiler’s old partner and asked him for help? I fished my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed his number.
“I wondered when you’d get around to calling me. How’s Chad?”
I filled him in, as best I could. I told him about the Mapquest work I’d done.
“Not good. Not good at all. Patricia is the family wild child. But I can’t imagine her shooting Brenda unless Brenda attacked her. If that’s what happened, why not come forward and say the shooting was in self-defense?”
“Because it wasn’t. It was execution style,” I reminded him. That also reminded me why it was unlikely that any family member had killed Brenda. Unless, of course, the killer had consciously chosen to make the murder look like it had been an execution.
“Whatever. Patricia still could have done it. She knew Brenda was making her brother miserable. Chad told me that the two of them had gotten into a knock-down-drag-out fight at Brenda’s apartment. I guess Patricia lost all respect for Brenda and told her their friendship was done. Fini. Over. But if that’s what happened, why would Patricia frame her own brother?”
Good question.
“Someone had to have planted those bullets,” I said.
“Not bullets. Spent casings. The planter didn’t necessarily need access to Chad’s gun, but he or she did need access to spent casings.”
I understood what he was saying. “So it could be someone who was with him when he was at a shooting range.”
Hadcho’s next words came out as a growl. “Maybe Brenda’s killer is another cop.”
forty-one
I hadn’t thought of that, and now I wished that Hadcho hadn’t brought it up either. But he did, and he kept on talking. “So it could be someone from the force who practiced on the same shooting range as Chad. Even though we only have to requalify every year, Chad prides himself on being a good shot, so he practices more often than the rest of us. Or the person who killed Brenda might have been someone in the department who she met through Chad. Could even be someone in the drug apprehension program. She might have even run into someone from the department who was working undercover. Or a confidential informant, a CI. Maybe this person was worried that Brenda would reveal his identity. She’d clearly gone off her nut.”
I started to get sick at my stomach. While he rambled on, I ran to the backroom and grabbed a cold can of Coke, hoping it would keep me from spewing all over the store. What a mess that would be.
Hadcho ignored the pop! of my soda can in his ear. “They’re sure the gun used on Brenda was his 9 mm Beretta 92F semiautomatic? Like he’s using now?”
“What are you asking me? I don’t speak Starbucks, I barely speak Wendy’s, and I certainly don’t speak guns.”
“Each of our weapons stays in use about ten years. What if they matched the casings to Chad’s gun, but the gun’s an old one? I think he recently retired his first gun. Changed it out just last week as a matter of fact.”
“Oh my gosh. Wouldn’t someone have a record of that?”
“Sure, but what if the record hasn’t been updated yet? Or what if the folks in Illinois didn’t read it correctly? Each department has different procedures, record keeping, and so on. Let’s suppose for a minute that the crime scene people from Illinois handed the casings to their lab. Then they called or emailed the St. Louis Police Department and asked for any records they would have of ballistics tests on officers’ guns. The clerk sends them a recent test, but one done before Chad’s updated his gun, so they match the crime scene casings to his old gun. Not the one he’s currently using.”
“I’ll share all this with Schnabel tonight.”
“Schnabel. Word in the department is that you somehow got him to represent Chad. That so? Wow. If Chad wasn’t going to marry you before, he certainly is now. He’s going to owe you his life!”
forty-two
“Laurel deserves all the credit. I guess Schnabel owed her a favor.”
“That makes sense.”
Did it? What did Hadcho know that I didn’t? The door minder rang and I needed to take care of business, so we ended our call with me feeling more unsettled and worried than before.
A stone-faced Rebekkah walked right past me and toward the stockroom. “Over here,” I said as I waved to her, but she didn’t turn to face me. “How’s your mom?” I called to her retreating back.
“Not so hot. She’s taken to reading all the spines of books in our house. Moves from one bookshelf to the other. It’s like she’s lost. Dad smelled this awful stink in their closet. Mom had shoved two half-eaten hamburgers into pairs of shoes.” Rebekkah hugged herself. “How do you cope with that? Watch her every second?”
“Let’s go up front. I’m the only person in the store. What does hospice say?”
“This is normal. The cancer is interfering with her cognitive abilities.” Rebekkah leaned onto the worktable. As usual, she wore a T-shirt with an odd saying and a pair of cargo pants. Both were in dull colors, like camouflage.
She circled her finger on the tabletop. “Tell me I’m not a bad person. I asked them how long it would be. I didn’t mean to say I wanted her to … you know … die quickly. I was only wondering, but Dad stared at me as if I were a stranger.”
I stretched to put an arm a
round her shoulders. “You’re not a bad person. You are curious. There’s that book What to Expect When You’re Expecting, but no similar guide for how to handle it when a loved one is dying. It’s all uncharted territory. But people die as often as people are born. I don’t blame you for wanting to know. You were right to ask. You don’t want to plan a trip or overlook her last moments because you misunderstood the time frame.”
In answer, she buried her head in my shoulder, like a child might. As the sobs came, I rocked her as best I could. Even though the motion was awkward, I knew how instinctively soothing it is. “It’s all right, it’s all right. Of course you have questions. Of course you are worried and scared. I’m here for you. All of us here at the store love your mother. We’ll do anything we can.”
She raised a wet, red face. Her hair smelled like strawberries. Her eyes squinted as her lashes were threaded with tears. “Do you have to keep asking about Nathan?”
“Your mom wanted me to. Why?”
“You don’t know what it’s like. I could never compare to him. Because he was dead, he never did anything wrong, and every time I let them down, I just knew they were wishing … wishing … ”
“Wishing what?”
“That he was still alive and that I was gone.”
“Rebekkah! You don’t really mean that!”
She turned on me, eyes snapping. “Yes, I do! Nathan was a straight A student. Everybody loved him. He was never moody. Always Mr. Sunshine. I had colic, but he was born with a smile on his face. He never gave Mom or Dad a moment’s worry. The teachers all loved him. Everybody loved Nathan. Everyone! I would come home with a note from the teacher, and I could just see Mom shaking her head. The only notes he brought home were to praise him! To talk about how brilliant he was! How can I compete with a dead guy, huh? How? And now you’re going to dig up his memory. Going to remind everyone that Nathan was the best kid in the world. Never mind that he’s been gone all these years. That I stood by Mom and Dad after he died. That every year I help them light the yahrzeit candle and pray for him. I can never, ever, ever measure up to him. And suddenly, he’s back. Not in the flesh. Nope. He’s like your Jesus all resurrected and saintly. Did you know he smoked dope? Well, he did. Mom and Dad never knew that.”
Picture Perfect Corpse Page 13
