The Glow of Death

by Jane K. Cleland

  I stepped outside my back door. My hair ruffled by the soft breeze, I shut my eyes, the aroma from the pale pink rambling roses that twirled up the porch column easing my tension, nature’s aromatherapy. I opened my eyes and gazed out over the goldenrod, purple loosestrife, orange hawkweed, and Queen Anne’s lace that dotted the open field, into the hardwood forest.

  New Hampshire was beautiful in all seasons, from the fiery colors of autumn to the pristine whites of winter to the red buds and unfurled green leaves of spring, but it was summer I liked the most. The buttercups and violets and honeysuckle that line the winding country roads. The feathery grasses and wild roses along the sandy dunes. The wildflowers that spread like rainbows across the meadows. The easy breezes. I was a sucker for a breeze.

  I inhaled deeply. “All right then,” I said aloud.

  * * *

  Halfway to the Rocky Point police station, I slipped in my earpiece and called Wes.

  “Tell me,” he said, skipping preliminaries, par for his course.

  “Have you heard anything about the victim?” I asked, using a trick I’d learned from him years earlier: If you don’t want to answer a question, ask one.

  “Yeah. It’s Ava Towson, all right. She and her husband just got back from the U.K. He stayed in London, working. She went on a walking tour in Wales.”

  From Ava’s blog postings, I already knew about her trip, but hearing it from Wes made it real.

  “Wales,” I said.

  “Doesn’t that sound lame? Who goes on a walking tour? Jeesh!”

  “Lots of people. You need to get out and about more, Wes. I think a walking tour sounds wonderful. Relaxing. Why didn’t Edwin go?”

  “Maybe they were fighting.”

  “Why would you think that?” I asked.

  “Because his secretary says he’s a workaholic like you read about, and my police source tells me there have been two reports of domestic violence over the last year. Evidently, Edwin is a slapper.”

  “How awful!”

  “How stupid. First time, shame on you. Second time, shame on me, right? She should have walked.”

  “Maybe she had nowhere to walk to.”

  “She had a sister.”

  “There might have been reasons she couldn’t go to her sister’s. We shouldn’t judge.”

  “I don’t buy that,” Wes said. “Everyone has somewhere to go—even if it’s a homeless shelter or a church or the police station.”

  “I hear what you’re saying, but when someone’s been beaten down, sometimes they lack the inner strength to leave.”

  “And look what it got her. Dead.”

  “Do they know what killed her?” I asked to change the subject. I knew Wes was right, but I knew I was right, too.

  “Yeah—a cast-iron frying pan, one of a set hanging over the center island. I figure Edwin got mad and whacked her upside the head.”

  “You’re saying it was a crime of passion.”

  “All I’m saying is cherchez l’homme, baby. Cherchez l’homme. So what ya got for me?”

  “Something bizarre.” I told him about my meeting with the woman calling herself Ava and my conversation with the man calling himself Edwin.

  “How can you tell that it was a different man you spoke to? Maybe he just disguised his voice.”

  “Pitch, timbre, pace, and accent—all were different. Plus, the man I spoke to on the phone was younger.”

  “You’re right,” Wes said. “It’s bizarre.”

  “I can think of three things to check out, but nothing the police aren’t already looking into.”

  “Shoot,” Wes said.

  “One, does Rocky Point Chemists, the shop that faxed over the contract, have any security cameras? They must, right? I know they have a fax machine they let customers use. Two, the man who isn’t Edwin called me—who owns that phone number? And three, I called the mystery woman on her cell phone. Who owns that number?”

  “Want to bet that those phones are disposables?”

  “No bet. Still, we need to know. Hold on a sec.” I pulled into the breakdown lane, set my flashers, and read off the two phone numbers and the fax number.

  “Thanks, Joz! Anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Catch ya later,” he said, and just like that, he was gone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Rocky Point Police Department sketch artist was young, fresh out of college, and earnest. His name was Bryan. He was medium-sized with short sandy hair and a pale, thin mustache that he probably thought made him look older.

  We started on the computer with some fancy software program, but I couldn’t translate my memory into a realistic portrait using computer renderings of noses and chins, so he extracted a pad of drawing paper from under a stack of files, took an artist’s pencil from a drawer, and told me to shut my eyes.

  “What does she look like?” he asked.

  What a good question, I thought. “Elegant. When I first saw her, that’s the word that came to mind. Normal height.”

  “Was her face round like a ball?”

  “No. More like an oval.”

  “Tell me about her eyes. Were they round or slanted like almonds?”

  “I couldn’t see them, not really. She was wearing Chanel glasses.”

  He asked me to take a look at Chanel’s eyeglass designs from the company’s Web site, and I recognized them easily.

  “What color were her eyes?”

  “Blue. At the time, I thought of them as cornflower blue. They were beautiful. Vivid.”

  “Good,” he said. “How about her eyebrows?”

  I shut my eyes again and tried to get the picture into focus. Nothing came to me. “Sorry. I don’t remember.”

  “That’s okay. What do you remember?”

  “Her hair. It was highlighted, blond on blond. Shoulder length. She wore it parted on the right, then swept across to the other side, covering her cheek. Now that I think of it, I bet that’s why I can’t recall her eyebrows—between her hairstyle and the glasses, they were hidden.”

  Bryan nodded, used a dark gray kneaded eraser on something, smudged something else with his pinkie, then asked, “What did her hair look like on the right side? Did she tuck it behind her ear?”

  “No. It hung straight down, framing her face.”

  “Was her chin pointy?”

  “No. Normal.”

  “Any dimples?”

  I thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. I don’t remember.”

  “Could you see her ears?”

  “Just an occasional flash. I noticed her earrings. Diamond drops. Teardrop shaped.”

  “What were her lips shaped like?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Did she have high cheekbones? Like a model?”

  “I’m sorry. I have no idea.”

  He went on for half an hour, asking questions I couldn’t answer, then told me to open my eyes.

  I stared at Bryan’s drawing, then raised my eyes to his. “I wish I could have done a better job. This doesn’t really look like her.”

  “Take a close look at each feature and tell me what to change.”

  I did as he instructed, then shook my head helplessly. I knew it wasn’t right, but I couldn’t tell him what was wrong.

  “The hair and glasses are dead-on,” I said.

  He nodded. “When you see a beard and hat, that’s all you remember. You registered the hair and glasses, so that’s what you recall.”

  “I wish I could help more.”

  “Don’t feel bad. Eyewitness testimony is dicey at best.”

  It was nice of him to say, but I felt terrible. I’d spent half an hour with her, but I hadn’t really noticed her at all.

  * * *

  I came home to an empty house.

  Ty had left me a voice mail saying he was sorry to hear about the murder and asking me to text him that I was okay. His work wasn’t going well, he said, and he didn’t know when he’d be back. The f
irst time he ran the exercise, two of five boats slipped through the barricades. He insisted on restaging it with unexpected variations until the team got it 100 percent right, twice running.

  I called Zoë, and she invited me over for leftover lasagna and a Rouge Martini, our new favorite.

  “You okay?” Zoë asked as I walked up her porch steps.

  “No. I feel awful about that woman, Ava Towson. I feel ashamed, too. I’m so stupid. I don’t think there’s a worse feeling than realizing you’ve been had, that you were a mark.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Zoë was the best listener I knew, and I trusted her absolutely. I told her what had happened and how I felt and what I feared. Talking about a problem always made me feel as if I were doing something about it, an illusion, I knew, but comforting nonetheless.

  “Thanks for letting me talk,” I said when I was done. “I wish I knew what was going on.”

  “You will,” she said confidently, without hesitation.

  I raised my glass. “Here’s to you, the best friend anyone ever had, ever.” We clinked glasses.

  “Ditto to you,” she said.

  We clinked again.

  “And to silver light in the dark of night,” I said, quoting my dad’s favorite toast.

  We clinked a third time and ate and talked some more, and by seven, when I was ready to go home, I felt better, not good, but better. Ellis was right—if a con man or woman wants to take you, you get taken.

  “We’re going to leave for the beach around eight,” she said, “if you change your mind.”

  “Thanks. Maybe. I doubt it, though.”

  I brought a portion of Zoë’s lasagna home with me for Ty, made a salad, and got garlic bread ready for the oven, then curled up with Three for the Chair, my current Rex Stout mystery, and a cup of black currant tea.

  Just after nine, as I was rinsing the teapot and listening to the distant cracks of fireworks, Ty stepped into the kitchen. Ty was tall with broad shoulders and narrow hips. Since he’d been spending so much time outside with his training job, his face had darkened to nut brown. His features were craggy. His hair was cut short. His eyes were dark brown, and when he looked at me, they emanated love. I adored him.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said, smiling, his radiant one, the one no one but me ever saw.

  “Why are your eyes sore?”

  “I’m tired, annoyed, hungry, and grimy. But then I see you, the love of my life, the most beautiful woman on earth, and I feel just fine.”

  I touched his cheek, streaked with dirt. “I love you, Ty.”

  He enveloped me in a full-on hug and held me close, and I felt myself relax for the first time since Ellis had asked me to join him at the scene of a murder.

  Ellis texted me just before eleven to ask me to come into the station first thing in the morning. He added a single word at the end: URGENT. I stared at my phone, seeking out the meaning behind the words and coming up empty. I replied that I would be there and went to bed.

  I didn’t sleep, although I must have dozed, at least, because I awoke with a gasp, wispy threads of a wrenching nightmare fading away like fog in the sun. I sat up and forced myself to breathe calmly. I felt shocked, as if I’d touched a live wire, and confused. I looked at the clock beside the bed—5:37. Shards of light crisscrossed the wooden floor, the sun streaming in through gaps in the blinds. Sunrise comes early in New Hampshire. I heard a voice from far away. Ty.

  I slipped into my pink chenille bathrobe and fuzzy slippers and padded downstairs.

  “I’ll leave within half an hour,” Ty said from the kitchen.

  I stood in the hall, out of sight, so I wouldn’t distract him. When his call ended, I stepped into the room. “Bad news?”

  He looked beat, the kind of weary you get after a hard day of physical labor followed by not enough sleep.

  Ty fussed with the coffee machine for a moment before replying. “I need to go to D.C.” He reached across the counter and touched my cheek. “I can’t tell you why.”

  The aroma of the dark French blend we preferred drifted across the room.

  “Security issue?” I asked, my heart sinking at the thought of the kind of emergency that would drag him out of bed and catapult him from his post in northern New England to Washington, D.C., on a moment’s notice.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone,” he said, doing a good job of avoiding answering my question.

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “No.” He flicked his finger against my cheek. “I’m the white knight.”

  I smiled. “I’ve known that all along.”

  He leaned in to kiss me, and I kissed him back.

  “There’s been a breach,” I said, meeting his eyes, my arms circling his waist. “A leak traced back to one of your guys.”

  “Stop prying.”

  “They know there’s a leak,” I continued, thinking aloud, “but not who’s responsible. It’s not in your department. Because they don’t know who’s the snake, they can’t trust anyone in that line of command.” I spread my arms wide. “They need a person of unimpeachable integrity, someone knowledgeable about the agency who is also a top investigator … and they picked you.”

  Ty kissed me again, a short one. “I’ve got to get packed. I’m catching a plane out of Boston.” He turned back at the door. “You’re not such a bad detective yourself.”

  I tapped my temple with my index finger. “It’s all logic. Logic and experience.”

  “I’ll call you from the airport.”

  Twenty minutes later, he walked out the door.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Rocky Point police station looked more like an oceanfront cottage than a government office. The wood shingles had weathered to a soft dove gray. The trim was crisp white. The heavy wooden door was painted forest green. I was glad to get inside. It wasn’t even eight in the morning, and the temperature was already over eighty, and the air was dank. Cathy, the longtime civilian admin, stood in the open office area, her eyes on the ceiling.

  I followed her gaze. “You’re counting dots on the acoustic tile.”

  Cathy was in her forties, big-boned, full-figured, and well proportioned, a doubtful blonde with an easy smile. She glanced over her shoulder, and when she saw it was me, she grinned.

  “Hi, Josie!” She turned back to the ceiling. “I’m worried we have a leak in the air-conditioning system. Or a pipe is cracked. Or something. I’ve called the maintenance guys. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I swear I can hear a drip. There’s nothing I can do until they get here. It’s always something, right? Chief Hunter said you’d be coming in. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  While I waited, I walked to the community bulletin board and read the notices. The annual sand castle competition was slated for the first Saturday in August. Academy Brass, my favorite group, was playing a program called “Star-Spangled Music” on an upcoming Sunday in the gazebo on the village green. The town was offering free sailing lessons to teens.

  “Josie,” Ellis said from his office door. “Thanks for coming in.”

  He nodded toward an armchair at his round guest table and waited until I sat before taking a chair across from me. He reached for a manila folder on his desk.

  “Bryan tells me you had some trouble with the sketch,” he said.

  “That’s an understatement.”

  He opened the folder and placed Bryan’s drawing on the table in front of me.

  “What’s wrong with it?” he asked.

  I drew it toward me and studied it. The woman’s face was pretty, the eyes alive. The glasses were exactly right, and so was the hair. Yet the drawing looked nothing like the imposter, or only a bit like her.

  “I don’t know.” I kept my eyes on the drawing. “I’m sorry.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for.” He replaced the drawing in the folder, then extracted another sheet of paper from the folder and squared it up. “Take a look.”

&nb
sp; Three color photographs of a pretty woman with delicate features were printed side by side on an 8½'' × 11'' sheet of paper, oriented the long way, landscape. The first one showed her full face. The next two showed each profile. Her hair was the way I described it, blond-on-blond highlighting and swept to the side. The Chanel glasses were the same, too.

  “What am I looking at?” I asked.

  “Bryan used photo-editing software on a photo we got from a security camera. Is this the fake Ava?”

  A ding of recognition flustered me. “This is Jean,” I said. My throat closed, and I coughed, choked, really. Ellis thought Ava might have been killed by her sister. I raised my eyes to his face. As always, his expression revealed nothing about what he was thinking. I looked back at the photographs. “The fake Ava’s face was thinner.”

  “Good,” he said, writing in his notebook. “What else?”

  “Jean is too short. Maybe five-two.”

  “How tall was the imposter?”

  “Five-four. Maybe five-five. A few inches taller than me.”

  He wrote in his notebook.

  “It’s easier than you think to create an illusion of size. Elevator shoes so subtly canted, you don’t even notice the rise. Form-fitting, padded undergarments.” He touched the paper. “What else is different?”

  “The nose. The imposter’s nose had a little upturn at the end.”

  He jotted something in his notebook. “How about the cheeks?”

  I stared at the photos for a moment before answering. “Something’s different, but I don’t know what.” I looked up. “It’s silly, but she seems to be wearing more blush than the fake Ava, so I can’t tell if the contours of her cheeks are actually different or not. Another example of not trusting your own eyes.”

  “Good stuff.” Ellis selected another sheet of paper from the folder and slipped it in front of me. “Do you recognize this woman?”