Head To Head

by Linda Ladd

  Sylvie Border sat upright in a chair sunk into bottom mud. She was completely nude, and her skin gleamed pale white, almost silvery, under the water. I couldn’t see her face, but her long hair billowed up and down in underwater currents. The killer had not only submerged the victim in a chair, he’d also sunk a deck table, dishes, and silverware, entire place settings for three people, as if Sylvie were awaiting dinner guests on the bottom of the lake.

  When a smallmouth bass slipped through long strands of waving hair and nibbled the victim’s right cheek, I straightened and dragged my palms down my face. I said, “He’s a freak, all right. What’d you think he was trying to say, leaving her at a table like that?”

  Bud took out a stick of Juicy Fruit, bent it in half, and stuck it in his mouth. “He’s a friggin’ nutcase, that’s what he’s tryin’ to say. Think about it, Claire. He had to’ve been down there in the water with her for a long time to get all that done. He’s got goddamn salad forks and bread plates floatin’ around down there.”

  I searched the bottom again. Whoever had done this knew proper dining etiquette, all right. The killer had to have spent lots of time down in the silent, murky currents with the dead woman, placing silverware and goblets just so. “He’s got her taped to the chair.” I squinted and tried to see where he’d bound her.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Bud pointed into the water. “Wrists, calves, neck, and ankles. Silver duct tape, and a lot of it.”

  I sucked air a moment and peered across to the Cedar Bend marina, trying to shake off macabre thoughts of the killer diving over and over to pose the corpse. “What do you have on the lady who discovered the body?”

  “Some neurosurgeon’s wife from the Big Apple, Jewish, plenty rich enough to come down to the sticks and stretch out on Black’s thousand-dollar-an-hour couch.”

  “He charges a thousand dollars an hour?”

  “That’s what I heard.” Bud popped a second piece of Juicy Fruit into his mouth, his one addiction other than silk Armani suits. “I’m telling you what, Black’s got some kinda racket out here. O’Hara says the lady’s name is Madeline Jane Cohen.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Next bungalow over. Waitin’ for us to come interview her.”

  “Okay, we’ll talk to her as soon as we finish up here.” I examined the victim again, more objectively this time. I’d seen violent crimes before, even a couple of times when the vic was posed by the killer, but never anything quite this bizarre.

  “Ms. Cohen’s pretty shook up. Swam right over the victim. Then when she realized it was her nice little neighbor down there taped in that chair, she panicked, swallowed a bunch of water, and barely made it back to shore.”

  “The perp went to a helluva lot of trouble posing her like this. I guess you know what that means?”

  “Couldn’t’ve been too worried about bein’ discovered,” Bud said, offering me a stick of gum.

  “Exactly. You oughta be a detective.” I took the proffered gum and absently tore off the wrapper. “Think she was dead when she went in?”

  Bud made a shrug, redonned his shades, and adjusted the aviator lenses. “Who knows what gets a maniac off? The ME can tell us cause of death soon enough.” He pulled back a starched cuff and checked his watch. “They oughta be here any minute. I called Buckeye right off the bat.”

  “How many times you think he went down to get all that done?”

  “Dunno. Plenty. Hey, maybe he’s a window dresser at Pottery Barn or Crate & Barrel.”

  That Bud. He’s a laugh riot.

  “Have you checked out the bungalow?” I scanned the lake for pleasure boats. Nobody was getting anywhere near this crime scene, not on my watch.

  “Nope. Got here right before you did. O’Hara pointed out the body. Accordin’ to her, nothin’s been touched, inside or out.”

  “The front door was open?”

  “Yeah, Suze Eggers said the front door and the French door to the deck were both open when she got here.”

  “Okay. Let’s see what we can find inside before forensics show. She’ll have to stay put until the ME can supervise. I want retrieval videotaped.”

  “Buckeye’s bringin’ in his whole team. Said Charlie called from Jeff City and ordered them all out here since it’s one of Black’s privileged few.”

  I was more worried about rubbernecking tourists with Nikons. “What about next of kin? Does Sylvie Border have a husband?”

  “Single, as far as I know.”

  “So she was registered out here alone?”

  “Yeah, accordin’ to Miki Tudor and the gal at the reservations desk. Been relaxin’ out here for almost two weeks, with daily therapy sessions with the resident guru. Been spendin’ a lot of time with him, from what I hear.”

  “Very interesting. Okay, let’s get this over with.”

  3

  Inside, the bungalow was spotless, perfection as usual from Black’s top-notch maid service. The neatness didn’t fit. Not that I frequented pricey hotels, or anything. My gut told me that wealthy socialites and cinema stars didn’t spend time straightening up after themselves. Sylvie was probably the typical spoiled, pampered diva, and spoiled, pampered divas didn’t hang up their clothes. I’d have to check on when the maids had done the bungalow last and what they thought of Sylvie. Where were the scattered newspapers and magazines and wet towels and flip-flops and half-empty cups of coffee? Like at my house.

  “She didn’t put up much of a struggle in here.” Bud wadded up a gum wrapper and stuffed it in his pants pocket.

  I said, “Could be the perp never came into the house. Maybe he sneaked up on her outside on the deck. Maybe she was sunning or napping on the chaise or soaking in the hot tub.” I looked out the window. “The woods come right down to the bungalow, with bushes thick enough to hide somebody who doesn’t want to be seen. It would’ve been easy to hide out there. She wouldn’t have seen him.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Bud said, “if he avoided about ninety security cameras and twice that many employees scurryin’ around this place.”

  “Have a uniform walk the property after we finish in here. And crime scene needs to sweep the woods. Tell them to grid the woods behind the bungalow.”

  “Rained some over the weekend. Maybe the ground’s soft enough to get a footprint.” Bud held his blue silk tie with one hand while he carefully straightened the knot. He did that, maybe, say, one hundred times a day, a nervous habit that had grown since he’d stopped smoking. Bud said, “Might get lucky and get a shoe size. If he’s a stalker watchin’ her, he might’ve left a cigarette butt or gum wrapper behind.”

  “This guy’s not that careless. He gets off on the act itself, treats it like a photo shoot, down to every detail. My guess is he thought this out in advance, fantasized it over and over. Control, effect, power, that’s what he’s into. Look how much time he took setting this up. He wants us to wonder why he offed her this way. That’s his message to us, and all we’ve got to do is figure out the why. One thing for sure, this isn’t any crime of passion. This guy has ice water in his veins.”

  I looked outside and saw the dive team readying underwater cameras. “It’d be easy enough to bring a boat in here. Cut the motor out a ways and glide in to the dock or bank. Or a canoe could’ve come in anywhere along here. If he’d waited until after dark, nobody would’ve been out on the water.”

  “Uh-uh. Security’s too tight out here. You did notice the surveillance cameras at the top of the driveway?”

  I nodded. “Tag the film for review, but I doubt if he’d be that stupid.”

  “Already done. Told the manager we’d be up to the main lodge sometime this mornin’ to screen the tapes.”

  I shook my head. “This place is too damn neat. It looks like something out of House Beautiful. Or your house.”

  “So I’m neat. Is that a crime? Come look at the master bedroom. Looks like the maids bypassed it for some reason.”

  “They wouldn’t do that unless they were ordered t
o.”

  “The guest room’s spotless and so are the bathrooms. Both bedrooms have private decks with hot tubs, but the big hot tub’s out on the back deck. Beds’re made. Kitchen’s clean, all the dishes put away. Except for her bedroom, Miss Border was a tidy lady.”

  “Or the killer wiped the place clean after he was done with her.” A growing foreboding twisted up some knots in my belly. “My bet is he’s not going to make any mistakes, make it as hard for us as he can. He’s playing games, first with his victims, now with us.”

  “Victims? You think he’s serial?”

  “Yeah. He’s got her staged like he’s spent lots of time fantasizing, and my gut tells me he’s had enough practice to do it right.”

  Bud said, “Like a little girl posin’ Barbie dolls. That’s what she looks like, a damn Malibu Barbie.”

  “Okay, let’s see what we can turn up before Buckeye gets here. Maybe the guy got careless, but I doubt it.”

  “I’ll take the desk.” Bud headed across the oak floor to a slender-legged secretary pushed up against the far wall.

  “Make sure you don’t disturb anything. I want the crime scene photos to be exact. If he is playing with us, he might leave clues on purpose.” I was lead in the case because of my experience in homicide, but Bud had four years vice under his belt with the Atlanta PD. Undercover had given him good instincts. Too bad he made Colin Powell look unkempt.

  I searched the living room for anything even remotely out of place. An oversized sofa dominated the room. Pale yellow sectional. Pricey leather. High quality like everything else at Black’s resort. Exact same shade as the walls, it curved in a nine-foot arc around a brown fieldstone fireplace. Five navy blue chenille pillows were propped in perfect alignment against the plush back. A glass-topped cocktail table was positioned inside the C of the sofa, held aloft by a fantastic chunk of driftwood. A shallow, black stone bowl was the only object atop the glass. I knelt and looked under the glass. There were no visible fingerprints on the glass surface. Probably wiped clean by the killer. Buckeye would find them if they were there.

  Inside the bowl was a complicated television remote control and a set of keys. I got out my ballpoint pen and snagged the key ring. Three keys—all gold—one emblazoned with the cedar tree emblem of the resort, obviously the bungalow’s key. A Mercedes car key. The third looked like a tiny luggage key. A round gold medallion dangled from the key ring, stamped with the NBC peacock logo. I wondered how the NBC head honchos in New York would take the demise of their star. I carefully replaced the keys. Maybe publicity drove the perpetrator. Maybe he was sitting in some dark hole, glued to a television set, salivating for his fifteen minutes of fame.

  A huge entertainment center held a 50-inch, flat-screen TV and state-of-the-art stereo equipment I could almost kill for. I had few pleasures outside work anymore, but music was something I enjoyed. Soft music at night when I lay awake and remembered the bad things. The entertainment center, constructed from gleaming grained oak, was built between two giant, undraped side windows. It was wiped down, too, with not a speck of dust anywhere. Even the artificial silk ivy flowing from a brass pot was clean and glossy. I slid open the top drawer and sorted through an extensive selection of CDs and DVDs. Variety of films, including a dozen or more porno flicks. The second drawer was deeper and held nothing. I pressed the button on the DVD player. The drawer slid out, empty.

  The adjoining kitchen revealed more polished oak and shiny beige marble. Fully stocked wet bar with cushioned stools near a window seat overlooking the deep woods. I stared through the leafy branches and heavy underbrush, wondering if the killer had stood out there in the darkness, fascinated by the famous TV star, making his plans, fantasizing about the sick things he’d do. Or had Sylvie known the person who sent her to the bottom of the lake? A friend, a jealous lover, an unknown enemy?

  An answering machine was on the counter under a beige wall phone. Unplugged. Side-by-side refrigerator with ice and water and orange juice on the door. Inside, I counted six liter bottles of Perrier and five packaged bags of salad greens. Diet Italian dressing and half a bottle of California white zinfandel were stowed on the door shelf.

  Sylvie either needed to do some grocery shopping or she was the typical Hollywood anorexic who could barely summon up strength for the obligatory, energetic love scenes that sent couples slamming themselves up against walls and rolling off the bed onto the floor. Methodically, I opened and shut cabinets, then searched under the sink for a wastebasket. Found it empty with a clean white plastic liner.

  “George Clooney could’ve performed ER surgery in this kitchen,” I said to Bud. “Either she hasn’t been here much or she’s not human. Or your mother does her cleaning.”

  Across the room Bud made a mock hurt look. “Hey, my mother made me what I am today. Cleanliness is next to godliness. Of course, you wouldn’t know about either of those.”

  “Didn’t you tell me your mom used to iron your underwear?”

  “So? You got a problem with that?”

  I had to grin as Bud meticulously went through every article on the desk. “She’s been here, all right. Lookee here what I found, Claire: two weeks of mail, all stacked up, nice and neat. The last two days are still unopened. And”—he held up a single sheet of expensive beige vellum between two gloved fingers—“here’s a cozy little note from the good Doctor Black, giving her grief for skippin’ out on their appointment. Dated two days ago.”

  “Lovers’ spat, you think?” Interested in that particular relationship, I joined him at the desk and picked up a couple of letters written on pale blue stationery. Both were addressed in the same nearly illegible handwriting, and I did a double take at the return address.

  “Well, now, guess who these are from? Gil Serna.”

  “The bad boy actor Gil Serna?”

  “They must’ve had a thing going on.” Frowning, I considered the implications. “That’s all we need, a big celebrity like him giving tearful, grieving interviews to Diane Sawyer.”

  The second blue envelope was unsealed, and I extracted a single sheet, careful to hold it by the edges. I skimmed the handwritten message. “Looks like our bad boy’s got a little of the green-eyed monster. Take a guess whose ass he’s threatening to come down here and kick?”

  “Doctor Black, I presume?”

  “You got it. And Gil baby’s accusing her right here in black and white of having an affair with her shrink, not to mention cheating on Gil and ignoring his phone calls. Which might explain why her answering machine’s unplugged. Gil Serna seems a bit out of control. Wonder where he spent the last few days?”

  “How ’bout I find out?” Bud whipped out his cell phone as if it were a magic wand. Sometimes I believed it was. He could obtain just about any kind of information by punching a few numbers. Which made him very handy to have around.

  “Make sure Black’s assistant is telling the truth. I want verification as to exactly when Black left the premises, how he left, and where he ended up. And I want a crack at him before he has time to compare notes with his assistant, or anyone else who can brief him on what we know. If they were lovers, it’ll be interesting to see how he reacts to the details of how Sylvie died.”

  “I’m on it, man. Sounds like Buckeye’s here.” Bud stood up when the front door opened and bantering voices filtered into the living room.

  Buckeye Boyd was the county medical examiner, and I nodded at the motley crew of criminalists that filed into the room. Excellent technicians they were indeed, but they looked more like they’d crawled en masse out of an Ozzy Osbourne concert. Lucky for us in the Canton County Sheriff’s Department, the real estate around the lake was worth millions in taxes, which funded us as well as any big city police department. We were going to need all the forensics help we could get on this case.

  “So, Bud, you headed for a wedding, or what?” Buckeye said right off. He wasted no time entering his quip war with Bud. “Man, I gotta remember from now on to wear my tuxedo when I w
ork homicides. Keep forgetting; don’t know what the hell’s wrong with me.”

  “You’re just naturally uncouth, Bucko, my soiled little friend. You can’t help it.” Bud was good-natured about Buckeye’s abuse over his meticulous attire. He’d heard it enough. “Hell, you ain’t changed that shirt in six years. Why don’t you do us all a favor and let the little woman throw that thing away before it walks off on its own legs?”

  Buckeye affected hurt. “Hey, this here’s my lucky fishing shirt. My bass boat’s gassed up and ready to roar soon as I get this one bagged and tagged and downtown. This is my day off, if you remember. I’m just here ’cause Charlie called down from Jeff City and requested my personal touch before you guys screw things up.”

  Bud retorted, “Screw up, us? Get real, man. We’re so good, the victims request us.”

  I said, “She’s outside in the water, Buckeye. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  “Got a floater, huh?” Buckeye looked at me. He had snow-white hair, bushy enough to give him a benign, Captain Kangaroo look, but his facial hair was black—eyebrows, mustache, and short, jaw-hugging beard. He’d lived on the lake all his life, and his claim to glory was his Bass Tournament trophies. He boasted to any who’d listen that his autopsy skills came from years of filleting fish.

  “Not exactly. One more thing. It’s Sylvie Border, the soap opera queen.”

  “No shit? She’s that gal that plays Amelia, right? The sexy one with hair like Jean Harlow’s?”

  “You know who Sylvie Border is?” I was surprised Buckeye was up on daytime television.

  “Sure. She’s my wife’s favorite. Brigitte’s been watching A Place in Time for goin’ on twenty years. Entertainment Tonight did a segment not long ago about Sylvie gettin’ Tinkerbell tattooed on her breast. Television crew went with her to the tattoo parlor and everything. She’s got a little bitty yellow daisy on her butt, too, but she wouldn’t let ’em show that one.”

  Curiouser and curiouser, I thought. “Is that the name of Sylvie’s show? A Place in Time?”