Grave Matters

by Max Allan Collins

  If Vega had intended this hardball to jar the woman, the effect was nil.

  “Of course,” Rene Fairmont said. “We do have our little Gossip Club, if nothing else.”

  “How long had Vivian Elliot been under your care?”

  “Well, since she got to Sunny Day…. I’m the second shift nurse in that wing, so all those patients are mine—from the time they come in until…until they leave us.”

  Catherine said, “Seems like a lot of patients have been ‘leaving’ lately. Had you noticed anything unusual about that?”

  Shrugging, Rene said, “I’ve worked in continuing care off and on for nearly fifteen years. You have these little runs of bad luck. It happens. But, by the same token, I must admit it’s a little unusual for the streak to go on this long.”

  “You noticed the ‘streak’ when?”

  “Oh…two or three months ago.”

  “Who did you tell?”

  “Tell? I didn’t ‘tell’ anyone. We all knew it. It was a topic of conversation amongst the staff, at least the nurses and orderlies. Of course we talked about it, but, like I said, sometimes these things just happen.”

  Vega said, “None of you thought it was worth calling the authorities over?”

  Her radiant smile seemed wrong as an immediate response to such a question. “Why? It’s an old folks’ home…people come there to die…. Oh, I’m sure that sounds callous, but when you work in continuing care, you get used to the idea that more of your patients are going to die than live. In that way, I suppose it’s much like working in a cancer ward…. I would imagine if the average people knew how you detectives talk about cases and victims, you’d seem callous.”

  Warrick said, “That’s true. But didn’t you have a responsibility to say something about this string of deaths?”

  “I’m a nurse, Mr. Brown. That would seem the place, the responsibility, the purview of the doctors. And your coroner’s people came out, in every instance, of course…. Really, how much more of this is there? I don’t want to be late. I have living patients who’re depending on me.”

  Catherine ignored that, saying, “You said you’ve worked in continuing care for most of the last fifteen years.”

  She sighed; settled. “That’s right—until I got married three years ago.”

  “We understand your husband passed away, not long ago. We’re very sorry.”

  Rene Fairmont glanced toward the fireplace and gestured to a silver urn on the mantel. “We were very close, Derek and I; it comforts me that he’s still…looking over my shoulder.”

  “I lost my husband not long ago,” Catherine said.

  Warrick flicked Catherine the barest sideways glance. Eddie had been Catherine’s ex-husband, of course, and his schemer’s lifestyle had got him killed. But Catherine was trying to make a connection behind the hard smooth surface of another widow—was the woman protecting herself behind a coffee-table veneer? Or did that veneer conceal flaws, or even…emptiness?

  “Well, then, Ms. Willows—you know what my life is like. You know that it’s been hard. Derek was a funny, bright, vital man. He was everything to me.”

  “You quit your job when you married?”

  “His idea, really. I was working for a dermatologist, Dr. LeBlanc—that’s actually where I met Derek. He came in to have a biopsy on a mole. We started talking and, you know, just hit it off.”

  Catherine asked, “You weren’t working in continuing care at the time?”

  “No, I’d only been in Vegas a short while. I bounced around a lot when I was younger. Late seventies, early eighties are kind of a blur, frankly.” Her laugh was attractive if brittle. “We’re about the same age, Ms. Willows. You might understand.”

  “I might.”

  “Anyway, Vegas is the first place I’ve really put down any serious roots.”

  Maybe so, Catherine thought, but the roots in your front yard are dying….

  The woman was saying, “I tried to find nursing-home work when I came to town, but Dr. LeBlanc was the first nibble I got and I needed a job, so I went to work for him. A lot easier than continuing care, frankly.”

  Vega asked, “Can you tell us a little more about your late husband?”

  She glanced at her watch; when she looked up, her smile was glowing but apologetic. “I’m really sorry, it’s getting late and I do have to go…. If you’re looking into Vivian’s death, why are we spending time on Derek?”

  The detective shrugged elaborately. “Forgive me. He was well-known around town. I was just curious.”

  She fidgeted, but said, “Well, I can understand that. He was a wonderful man; I miss him every day. He was a generous, shirt-off-his-back kind of guy…. Anything else?”

  Warrick smiled, his body language casual, hands folded and loosely draped between his long legs. “He was at UWN for almost two decades, I understand. Everybody loved him.”

  “Yes, he was legendary in the drama department. Taught acting, directed the two plays every year—drama in the fall, musical in the spring. And, as always, he’ll be in Hamlet this fall.”

  “Pardon?” Vega said.

  Warrick said, “He plays Yorick.” He held his hand out as if cupping an imaginary skull. “As in, ‘Alas, poor Yorick’?”

  Catherine said, “His skull plays the part. It was in all the papers.”

  The actor’s widow smiled bravely and said, “He wanted to stay active in the theater,” a quiver in her voice.

  But no tears in her eyes, Catherine noted.

  The widow went on “As I say, he was a generous man. Though he was cremated, he’d arranged to donate certain organs to the University Medical Center…in addition to his skull to the UWN drama department.”

  Though she knew the answer, Catherine asked, “Sorry to ask, but…how did Derek die?”

  Rene glanced at her watch again and rose. “He had a heart attack…. I’m sorry, I really have to get to work.”

  The others rose as well and followed her to the door. As she held it open for them, Warrick asked, “Why no autopsy?”

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s just unusual when a relatively young, healthy man passes.”

  “Derek was young-ish, but he was a chainsmoker and, frankly, a drinker. He led a very full life.”

  “Where did he end it?”

  An edge of irritation tightened the lovely mouth as she stood holding the door very wide for them to leave.

  But Rene Fairmont did take the time to answer Warrick’s question: “We were vacationing in Mexico when Derek died. His body was brought back here, where his skull was removed per his wishes.”

  Warrick asked, “You said he was an organ donor…?”

  “Yes—the hospital in Mexico harvested them and handled their transfer to the University Medical Center. Otherwise, my husband’s remains were cremated here at home, which had also been his wish.”

  “Thanks,” Warrick said, and they stepped outside, the Fairmont woman, too.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” their reluctant hostess said, as she pulled the door shut and checked the lock.

  Then she slipped quickly past them and trotted off to her car. She had backed out of the driveway and disappeared up the street before Vega, Catherine, and Warrick had even gotten to the Taurus.

  As they watched her go around a corner and out of sight, Warrick said, “Alas, poor Derek.”

  Catherine smirked humorlessly. “Something smells in the state of Denmark.”

  Vega said, “What does Denmark have to do with it?”

  “Nothing,” Catherine said. “But that’s one cold woman, and I think she may be a better actor than her late husband.”

  “What reason,” Warrick said, “do we have to suspect her?”

  “She’s just on the radar,” Catherine said. “But she’s really, really bleeping….”

  Vega said, “I have a legitimate suspect to talk to…Vivian Elliot’s neighbor, Mabel Hinton. Wanna come?”

  Mabel Hinton was not home, but she wasn�
��t difficult to find. The petite, plump white-haired woman in a white kitty-cat top and pink pastel pants was at Vivian Elliot’s home, watering plants.

  They sat at Vivian’s kitchen table and talked to the woman. She had brown eyes that would have been lovely had they not been magnified and distorted by the thick lenses of tri-focals. She had insisted on their sharing the coffee she’d made for herself, as she tended her duties for Vivian around the house.

  “Until an attorney or someone official tells me to stop,” the woman said, her voice rather high-pitched, almost child-like, “I’m going to keep helping Vivian. I promised her I would.”

  Catherine took in what had to be the unlikeliest murder suspect she’d ever encountered. This was a sweet old lady—and if it wasn’t, the gal had acting skills that neither Derek nor Rene Fairmont could match.

  “We need to clear something up, Mrs. Hinton,” Vega said, doggedly staying at his note-taking despite her fussing over getting him coffee, creamer, and sugar.

  “Anything I can do to help Vivian’s cause. Anything!”

  “You told me yesterday that you hadn’t visited Vivian the morning she passed away.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is there any possibility you might be mistaken?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  Catherine said, “When did you last see Vivian?”

  “The day before she passed,” Mabel said, unhesitatingly.

  “Are you sure? Why, I can think it’s Tuesday when it’s really—”

  “Young lady! I am not prone to senility. I was a schoolteacher and I have an orderly mind and an orderly way about me. I did not go to visit Vivian.”

  Vega said, “Someone signed your name who did visit her.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “This signature of mine. That’s supposed to be mine.”

  “Actually, I haven’t picked it up yet,” Vega said, embarrassed. “It’s with the guard at Sunny Day—”

  “Well I suggest I give you a sample. And you can compare the two signatures and see if you, or your expert people, really think I signed my name…. Maybe that guard got confused. Which one is it? Fred?…He’s such a ditz.”

  Catherine smiled and sipped her coffee. She had never seen the competent Vega look so flummoxed.

  Warrick said, “What were you doing yesterday morning?”

  She smiled sweetly at him. “Do you mean, do I have an alibi?”

  “Uh…” Warrick shook his head, laughed. “Yeah, Mrs. Hinton. Do you have an alibi?”

  “What time would that have been?”

  Vega told her.

  “Well, I know right where I was: home.”

  “You live alone?”

  “Yes, but I wasn’t alone. I was getting my reflexology.”

  Catherine said, “Excuse me?”

  “I take reflexology once a week. It’s not just for your feet, you know—it’s the science of nerve endings that keeps a person’s whole body healthy. Why, if Vivian had listened to me…she could be stubborn, you know…she might well be with us today. My reflexologist would have gladly gone to Sunny Day and given her the treatments! They’re only ten dollars.”

  Warrick, frowning as he tried to grasp this, said, “Is that a kind of…foot massage?”

  “Young man, it’s a scientific application of pressure. My reflexologist uses a machine and a rubber-tipped hammer pounds my little tootsies ever so efficiently. And look at me! I don’t look a day over sixty-eight.”

  “Indeed you don’t,” Warrick said, eyes wide.

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” the little woman said, getting up and removing their empty coffee cups. “I will write down my reflexologist’s name and address and phone number…I have the e-mail address, too, if you need that…and I will give you an exemplar of my signature. And then you will go off and be detectives, and I will finish my duties here for Vivian.”

  Minutes later, outside the Elliot home, Vega stood looking shell-shocked. “She’s not our killer,” he said.

  “You think?” Warrick said.

  “I hope she isn’t,” Catherine said.

  Warrick half-grinned. “Why’s that?”

  “Because she would probably outsmart us.”

  They rode back to HQ and split up. Vega headed out to Sunny Day to talk to Whiting again and finally pick up that check-in page, with a signature that might not be Mabel Hinton’s after all. Warrick returned to background checking Rene Fairmont, and Catherine made the reflexologist call (a woman in Henderson) and confirmed Mabel Hinton’s story. Then she started poring over the files of patients in the last eight months who had checked into Sunny Day and never checked out.

  All the bodies were gone, all the evidence, too—the only thing that the twenty-two people who had died in the last eight months at Sunny Day had in common was that fourteen of them had no families.

  Of the other eight, two had been cremated when no one from the families claimed the bodies. Of the six remaining, four had been given autopsies ruling death by natural causes. The last two, whose families had claimed them, had not been autopsied, shredding Catherine’s last hope of finding evidence of a serial killer and/or conspiracy of estate fraud; both had died slow agonizing deaths, one from terminal cancer, the other from dementia. Fourteen estates remained that she could look into. She wondered how many had left their property to D.S. Ward Worldwide.

  That would take some digging.

  Sitting at her desk, her head in her hands, exhaustion nagging at her, Catherine considered whether or not there might be an easier way to catch Vivian Elliot’s killer. If Whiting didn’t do it—and no one had seen him anywhere around Vivian’s room before she coded—Vivian had been killed by someone else in that building…and the list of suspects was long.

  Truly, anyone could have done it—they had no evidence to speak of and yet they still had a killer to find. There was nothing to do but keep poking around until she knocked something loose. For the next three hours, she never left her office, just plodded forward, record after record, lead after dead-end lead.

  Finally, Vega walked in, sat on the edge of her desk. “Whiting’s in the clear.”

  “How so?”

  “The good doc was in a room with a patient and another Sunny Day administrator when Vivian coded. Rock-solid alibi.”

  “As is Mabel Hinton’s—I spoke to her reflexologist, who confirmed Mabel was indeed getting her feet pummeled when Vivian was visited by somebody pretending to be her.”

  “On that subject, I picked up that check-in sheet. It’s with the handwriting analyst now, along with the exemplar Mabel provided.”

  “What’s your layman’s opinion?”

  “Actually, the signatures do look similar. Either the reflexologist is lying to back up Mabel, or somebody took the time to actually do a forgery.”

  “Interesting. So maybe Mabel isn’t in the clear….”

  “Well, Whiting definitely is.”

  Catherine’s eyebrows went up. “Maybe so, but he didn’t mention Vivian was going to sue him—did he have an explanation for that little omission?”

  Vega smiled humorlessly and said, “He just didn’t see how that particular tidbit was relevant.”

  Catherine could hardly believe it. “That’s his excuse?”

  “Doctor Whiting said that as far as he was concerned, he and Mrs. Elliot had worked out their differences, and no longer had any problems.”

  “Vivian just hadn’t got round to telling her attorney as much.”

  Vega shrugged. “All I know is, Whiting was under the impression the Elliot woman was no longer contemplating that lawsuit.”

  “And do you really buy that, Sam?”

  “Does it matter, with the alibi the doc’s got? And we have no real evidence against him….”

  “Or anybody else,” Catherine muttered, “for that matter.”

  “How about you, Catherine? Found anything?”

  She sighed. “Well�
��I’ve started working on the other people who died at Sunny Day. Fourteen had no family and, of those, four died intestate. That leaves ten…and here’s where it gets interesting, perhaps even sinister….”

  “Go on.”

  She leaned forward. “Every single one of those that I’ve studied so far…they all left part or all of their estate to some charity.”

  “D.S. Ward Worldwide?”

  “Not that easy, Sam—fact, none of them are D.S. Ward Worldwide. And there’s not a single repetition of a charity either.”

  “Somebody’s being careful, you think?”

  Catherine shrugged. “All I know is, no two charities repeat…and none of the charities check out.”

  “Check out in what way?”

  She threw her hands up. “Any way—they’re not registered anywhere, they’re not on the Internet, no one at the Better Business Bureau has heard of one of ’em. In short, I can find nothing indicating that any of these charities actually exist.”

  Vega pulled up a chair. “Cath—that money had to go somewhere….”

  “Well, we know a check went to a drop box in Des Moines; my CSI contact, Woodward, is looking into that. Personally I’ve started tracking down and talking to the lawyers who handled the estates. The addresses of these possibly-fake charities aren’t the same. And the only clue I’ve got is a lawyer named Gary Masters—he did six of the wills.”

  “Interesting,” Vega said.

  “Him I haven’t talked to—been getting his machine.”

  Warrick leaned into the office. “Hey. How are you two coming along?”

  They filled him in, individually, then Catherine asked, “Anything on the Fairmont woman?”

  In a chair next to Vega now, Warrick shook his head. “Her employee application, and the letters of reference, from her file at Sunny Day?…A child’s garden of dead-ends.”

  “Falsified, you mean?”

  “Can’t say that, Cath—the seven nursing homes, over a fifteen-year period, where Rene Fairmont claimed to have worked…all existed.”

  “Existed—as in, no longer exist?”

  “Right. They’re defunct. All lucky seven.”

  Catherine’s eyes tightened. “Pretty convenient. And the letters of reference?”