Alllison Janda - Marian Moyer 03 - Scandal, Temptation & a Taste of Flan

by Allison Janda

“I’m not forcing,” Mika said, stepping towards James. “I’m asking. Brother, what has gotten you so worked up?”

  It felt like all of the air had left the room. James wasn’t answering. Stepping around Mika, I moved in to give him a hug. He wrapped his arms tightly around my waist and laid his head in the nook of my shoulder, where he took several deep labored breaths.

  “I can do that,” Betsy said, lifting her arms in preparation to pry James from my shoulder. Mika held out an arm to stop her and I watched as her gaze followed it all the way up to his broad, lanky shoulders and sharp, heart-stopping cheekbones. He eyed her and gave her a hint of his crooked smile. She nearly fainted.

  “I’m sorry,” I suddenly blurted out to James, understanding. “I guess I didn’t realize how much Carmen meant to you.”

  He lifted his head, his gaze meeting mine. “Thank you. She really did.”

  I sighed, gloom weighing on me heavily. “I understand that you think Addison is guilty. But I don’t agree with you.”

  “He doesn’t either,” Betsy muttered.

  I jumped, having forgotten she was there. I looked from her to Mika, and then to James, confused. “You don’t?” I asked him.

  James sighed, obviously frustrated with his intern. I smirked. Being annoyed to death by a woman was nothing he didn’t deserve. Maybe not right now but, in general, it was undoubtedly an agreeable way for him to go. Ask any woman he’d ever dated. “I did,” he said, his gaze low and embarrassed. “But then, I came here and started poking around. Guys, there’s something you need to see.”

  I turned to look at Mika, who nodded. James began walking towards the bedroom and Betsy slowly followed after him, a lovesick puppy. I felt fear gripping my throat as I realized I was about to see the scene of Carmen’s murder. I’d photographed a variety of murder scenes before. Seen blood spattered on every surface a home, office or even hotel room. Lovers’ quarrels. Gang violence. Greed. Selfishness. Selflessness. These were all reasons that people killed their loved ones. Nonetheless, there’s something about the murder scene of someone you knew — be it well or just in passing, that carries a weight all its own.

  Mika took my hand and pulled me along after Betsy and James. Something inside of me was holding back, yet there was an unknown force that was propelling me to keep moving forward. As we rounded the corner into what was once Carmen’s bedroom and the grisly scene of her murder, I was shocked, but not the least bit surprised, by what immediately came into my line of vision.

  Bloody footprints were all over the carpet — three different sets of bloody footprints to be exact. Two sets were high heels, while one set was clearly a pair of wedges, all with incredibly different imprints. “There were three women in here,” I breathed. I couldn’t believe that the police and the prosecution had overlooked something so incredibly obvious. Or perhaps they hadn’t overlooked it; they were just keeping it quiet until trial. What was more, one set of heeled footprints was significantly lighter than the others, trailing off towards the entrance way and then disappearing altogether. “Those are Addison’s,” I pointed, referring to the lighter heel pattern. I thought hard, trying to remember her shoes from the day of Carmen’s death. I couldn’t. Still, I’d known Addison since we were in diapers. The girl didn’t own anything shoe-wise that wasn’t attached to a heel. Even her winter boots had a high heel and a pointy toe joint. Carmen had been wearing heels on the day of her death as well. I remembered her clacking in to meet James, Mika and I, the loud sound of her shoes bouncing off of the walls.

  “Right,” James said. Then pointing to the bloody wedge prints, “but what are these?”

  “Wedges,” Betsy and I answered in unison.

  “What are wedges?” Mika asked, his accent thickening around the last word, which was unfamiliar to him.

  “You know,” I said, trying to demonstrate with my hands.

  “For crying out loud,” Betsy said, whipping out her smartphone and searching the term. When she was satisfied with the search results, she showed the screen to both men and their eyes lit up with recognition.

  “I’ve seen women wear those,” James muttered. “Looks uncomfortable.”

  “Addison wears a size eight,” I mumbled, walking around the bloodstained carpet. I knew this because she’d tried to get me to wear her shoes several times — but they were always just a bit too small. Thank goodness.

  The rest of the room was pure, brilliant white, including the comforter on the bed, which was still unmade. The knife that Addison had been holding in the videos was gone, but the room tray that it had been found upon was still shoved in a corner near the bathroom. Thankfully, the entire meal had been eaten, leaving no moldy smells or residue in the room. I compared the lighter footprints at the crime scene to the other two sets, which were much more dense. “That puts Carmen at about a nine and these wedges have to be at least a size 12, maybe even a 13.”

  “Bigger girl?” Mika suggested.

  I shook my head. “Not necessarily. Some larger women have small feet and some smaller women have large feet. It’s all in the genetics.”

  “So, more or less, we’re still just as clueless as we were when we first began searching,” James said glumly.

  I shook my head again. “We know that there was a third party involved. We know, based on the thicker blood patterns of one set of heels and the wedges, that whoever wore the wedges is likely our killer. Addison probably really did just stumble into the scene like she said, went into shock, and walked back out. However, due to the fact that she wasn’t involved in the original struggle, she was less stained by blood than the others. In fact, the majority of blood on her person likely came from when she was holding Carmen.” I pointed out several smears on the carpet. “I’d obviously need an opportunity to analyze further, but my guess is that these are Addison, too. Sitting, standing. Struggling to keep Carmen alive.” I noticed James squeeze his eyes shut. He was beginning to sweat. “Maybe you should go sit down,” I suggested, motioning to the living room.

  He shook his head. “No. I need to know what happened to her.”

  “You probably don’t need all the details,” Mika assured him. “Not yet.”

  “Damn it, I’m fine,” James whispered, clenching his fists. “Keep going. Please.”

  I swallowed. “Well,” I continued, pointing once again to the smears. “Again, I really can’t make conclusions until I’ve analyzed…”

  “Shut up, Moyer,” James growled. “You’re damn talented and I don’t believe that someone who has been at this as long as you have needs to analyze anything. What’s experience telling you?”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened them, I let them wander over the various smears across the carpet, the splatters on the nearby wall. Photography was my area of expertise but I’d spent enough time around crime scenes to know what secrets lie in the blood patterns. “Hatred,” I whispered finally. “Jealousy. Rage. Carmen was murdered by someone that she knew intimately. A woman, it appears.” I paused, looking at the shoe prints again. “There was a struggle. The perp didn’t just open her throat, she got a few smaller jabs in, too.”

  James looked surprised. “How did you know that? That information isn’t known by anyone outside the department.”

  I shrugged. “It’s in the blood spatters.”

  “You’re a freak,” Betsy mumbled. She had a small smile of admiration playing on her lips, though, so I took it as a compliment.

  “What I don’t understand is how the police are completely overlooking the third set of footprints,” I muttered. “Especially when it’s obvious that Carmen and Addison were both wearing heels that day but it’s the wedges that look like they were involved in a struggle.”

  James shrugged. “Maybe Addison changed shoes?”

  I leveled him with a look. “Have you seen the size of her purse? She may as well just carry a wallet.”

  “And she didn’t carry them in with her,” James added. “We saw the video footage of
them coming off the elevator.”

  The four of us pondered this conundrum as we continued to stare at the large pool of dried blood that had gathered in the carpet. Suddenly, something occurred to me. “The wedge pattern ends here,” I whispered, confused.

  “What?” Betsy asked.

  I pointed. “The wedge pattern. It begins and ends right here. Our perp removed their shoes before they left the room. There’s got to be DNA. Prints. Something!” I looked at James, my eyes wild. “Please, tell me the cops have evidence of a third party.”

  James shrugged. “I only know slightly more than you do. It’s not like they’re keeping me in the loop. I was sleeping with Carmen, not married to her. Plus, I’m friends with all of you.”

  Mika wandered over to the bedside table. He paused momentarily, but then squatted down to become eye level with a picture frame. After studying it for a few seconds, he pointed and then turned to James. “Isn’t this Veronica?”

  James shoved his hands deep into his pockets and began worrying on his lower lip. Walking over to join Mika, he eyed the photo closely. “Looks like it. In that photo, they don’t look quite as alike as the one Carmen showed us the other day, do they?”

  Surprised, I turned and began walking towards them. “Does Carmen carry photographs of friends and family everywhere she goes?”

  “Perhaps,” James said simply, with a shrug of his shoulders. “In Carmen’s line of business, it isn’t easy to trust people. Who wants you for your fame and who wants you for you, you know? Maybe she just wanted to feel close to people she trusted, who always seemed far away.”

  Mika reached out and touched James’s shoulder. I contemplated his statement for a moment. “You knew her before she was famous,” I said finally, realization dawning on me. “That’s why she trusted you.”

  James shrugged. “We were on-again, off-again for years. Met as kids in Chicago, as you’ve heard, back before her dad was high-level mob. Back then, everyone just thought he was a highly successful business man.”

  “First love,” I said softly.

  He met my gaze. “Something like that.” My heart ached for him. I’d had no idea. I guess, how well do you ever really know someone? The truth is, we only know what a person wants us to see. “But to be honest,” he continued, “after she broke off that engagement, I’d seen a change in her. It wasn’t the same between us since she’d almost been married. Old habits, though. We cared about one another.”

  I turned to Mika. “Did you know all of this?”

  He shrugged. “Not all of it.”

  “Who else was Carmen close with?” Betsy asked James.

  He shrugged. “I guess we have to look around.”

  I kept straining my ears for the ding of the elevator, to let us know if someone new entered the suite, but it never came. All in all, Betsy, Mika, James and I had come up with about 12 different photo frames scattered throughout Carmen’s hotel room. Some were friends, others family, and then there were about three people we’d been unable to identify. Something was nagging me and I found myself walking back towards the sitting area, where a photo of Carmen and an unknown man about ten years older than her, was propped up against a lamp. Frowning, I picked the photo up and studied it.

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to disturb a crime scene?” Betsy asked smugly, coming up beside me. “Now, if the police come back, you’re in almost as deeply as Addison is.”

  “Oh, shut it,” I snapped.

  “She’s right, babe,” Mika said, joining us around the table lamp. “We really shouldn’t be putting our prints on everything. They may sweep for more, you just never know.”

  I shrugged. “I was here the day Carmen was murdered, remember? My prints are easily enough explained away if they appear in a few spots.” They both eyed me skeptically but I ignored them, flipping the frame over to view the backside. It was a simple frame. The picture of Carmen and the unidentified man was held in place with cheap cardboard and a few metal prongs. I scoffed. “You’d think a woman who made more money than God would invest in something more expensive.” I turned the photo frame over in my hands a few times, eventually laying it back on the table. After a moment of hesitation, I began to separate the photo from its frame.

  “What are you doing?” James cried, joining the three of us. He didn’t seem the least bit amused by my sudden curiosity.

  “I wonder,” I muttered aloud as I peeled away the cardboard. Sure enough, on the back of the photo was a handwritten caption.

  Dr. Roger Bell and I. Children’s Hospital Benefit. June 2013.

  “Bingo,” I breathed, reading the caption again before flipping it over to view the picture.

  “Bingo?” Betsy asked. “What Bingo? Where did you find a Bingo?”

  I hurried across the room to another photo frame that had an individual we’d been unable to identify in it. Pictured were Carmen and a young girl whose head was covered in a brightly colored scarf. The girl was pale and thin, but her smile was worth millions. Carmen was squeezing the girl tightly with one hand, sporting a huge cone of ice cream in the other, from which two spoons poked out. They appeared to be at some kind of zoo or possibly a wildlife park, grinning madly in front of several giraffes, which were eyeing the ice cream with envy. Ripping open the frame, I wrenched the photo free and eagerly read Carmen’s scrawled writing on the back of the picture.

  Sarah McBeth. Children’s Wish Foundation Day at Ashland Zoo and Aquarium! October 2013.

  I’m not sure what propelled me back to the photograph of Carmen and Veronica. Still, without a second thought, I found myself walking back into the scene of the crime, past the grisly pool of dried blood. Past the large unmade bed.

  “Where is she going now?” I heard James ask.

  “Beats me but I’m following her,” Betsy murmured. “Girl has more luck finding bodies than students who visit Doctor William Bass’s body farm.”

  When I reached the photo, I froze. I had a feeling that whatever was about to happen was going to change the course of this entire investigation. Swallowing hard, I reached for the frame, flipped it over, and began to pry it open before I could second-guess myself. When Carmen’s handwriting was fully visible, I gasped.

  “What?” Mika asked. “Baby, what is it?”

  Tugging the photo gently from the frame, so as not to rip it, I handed it to Mika. James and Betsy moved closer to him, straining to read Carmen’s words.

  Veronica and I. Caribbean Islands. March 2014.

  “Wait,” Betsy slowly murmured, confused. “I thought Veronica disappeared late last year. 2013.”

  I turned to eye James suspiciously, but he just shrugged. “What the hell are you looking at me for?”

  “Carmen asked you to find her friend, who clearly wasn’t as missing as was suggested. Being that you two are buddy-buddy, I figured you might have suspected she was just pulling your chain.”

  “Were,” James corrected. “We WERE buddy-buddy and no, Marian, I had no idea that I was looking into a fake disappearance.”

  “She could still be missing,” Mika shared. I rolled my eyes and thrust the photo towards him. He took it and watched the women closely, as though they might suddenly come alive and bear the full truth at any moment. When nothing happened, he sighed and handed the photo back to me. “I’m just saying it’s not impossible to say that she’s really missing. Maybe Carmen got the date wrong.”

  “Exactly,” James nodded in agreement. “For all we know, Carmen just hadn’t given us all of the facts.”

  “It seemed pretty clear she thought her friend was missing the other morning,” I huffed. “I was there, in case the two of you don’t recall. There were a lot of fake tears.”

  “Maybe they were fake because she’s still alive,” Betsy said conspiratorially.

  “Okay, look.” I placed a hand on my hip and raised the picture to eye level with my other. Something fishy was going on here. I didn’t buy the “wrong date” theory. And I’d be damned if I didn’t
get to the bottom of things before someone got the better of me this time around. “First thing first, we need to figure out if Veronica is alive, dead, missing, or if Carmen’s people know her whereabouts. Obviously, she didn’t go missing according to the timeline Carmen suggested. If Veronica is alive, we obviously need to speak with her. If she’s dead, we need to figure out when it happened and how. I feel like Carmen sent us on a wild goose chase and that, if we can figure out why, we can find her killer.”

  “That’s not going to be easy,” James sighed, shaking his head.

  “We won’t know unless we try,” Mika asserted. “And we have to hustle. I’m afraid if Addison spends much more time in lockdown, she’s going to lose all that traction she’s gained with her anger management. I don’t want to deal with her when she’s angry.”

  I grinned. “You’ve only had to deal with her for a few months. And she’s been tame, I might add.”

  “Which is still terrifying,” he said as he took my hand.

  I chuckled and turned back to James and Betsy. “You never did tell us how you got up here.”

  “Fire escape,” said James. “Someone apparently forgot to lock the windows.”

  I gasped so quickly that I began to choke on my breath. As I coughed, Betsy began slapping my back hard, lifting one of my arms up over my head. “Breathe, Marian,” she kept repeating.

  When I could finally inhale without coughing, I pulled away. “What did you say?” I asked James weakly.

  He pointed his thumb towards the bedroom window, which overlooked a rickety old fire escape. “I said some idiot forgot to lock the windows. We tried getting in through the lobby first, but I couldn’t get the woman down there to hand over a key. I had to turn the one Carmen gave me in the other day when I left the hotel. Why? How did you get in?”

  “The woman in the lobby handed over a key,” Mika said with a devilish grin. Betsy smiled back at Mika adoringly while James rolled his eyes.

  “Sometimes, man, sometimes I wish I had an accent,” he sighed. “That just seems to get you everything.”