Ladies Lunch Club Murders

by David Bishop

  The sergeant paused to look around the table. “If we’re through getting acquainted and done with establishing the ground rules, let’s get into what you want to do right off. This morning is shot. What would you like to focus on this afternoon?”

  “First off,” Jack began, “please join my team for lunch—on the governor, of course, expenses are part of our agreement with him.” Jack paused while the light chuckles ran their course. “I’d like to spend the afternoon going to the heart of the differences between your department’s position and the governor’s, the Mary Alice Phelps scene. Is that agreeable?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “Before we adjourn Sheriff Jackson I’d like to ask you a question, actually ask everyone here.” Jack looked around and saw no objection. “Over the recent days it’s become increasingly known that each of your three homicides happened on a national day of observation: Fruitcake Toss Day, Bubble Gum Day, and Steak and Knobber Day. What’s your take on the significance of these days with respect to what you’re still calling the three homicides?”

  The sheriff spoke right up. “I think it’s all a crock of Cracker Jacks.” He pointed at Ann. “What’s the term you used?”

  “Dog bollocks, Sheriff.”

  Max stopped making notes. “What?”

  “Nora leaned toward Max. “Now you know how I feel when you come across with some of your Irish crapola.”

  Max made a pleading gesture toward Ann.

  “Technically, bollocks means testicles, but in common usage dog’s bollocks is sort of like saying the cat’s pajamas or the bee’s knees only, usually, in a more negative context. Or hogwash, if you prefer a term from the old west.”

  The sheriff waved his hands to shut down the deteriorating nature of the discussion. “The point is, every day is a national day for celebrating this or that. The ones under discussion have no connection whatsoever to the actual murders.”

  Sergeant Wilmer took his eyes off the sheriff and looked at Jack. “I was of that same opinion, until the latest murder out at the waterfowl pond. There’s a point where a repeating pattern of anything, no matter how looney it looks on the surface, becomes hard to simply cast aside.”

  “True enough, Sergeant,” the sheriff said implying some measure of retreat, “but there was nothing at the scene the other night at the pond that definitely confirmed a connection to Steak and Knobber Day.”

  “I concur, Sheriff,” Sergeant Wilmer admitted. “Some reasonable inference, but nothing as clear as the fruitcake in the fridge at the first homicide, and the bubble gum in the bowl at the second.”

  Max aimed his bushy eyebrows toward Wilmer’s end of the table, “Sergeant, did your medical examiner find any trace of semen in the mouth of, or on the person of, the woman found dead in her SUV? If so, that could be construed as something left at the scene which connects to Steak and Knobber Day.”

  “I see your point, Mr. Logan. That first night, out at the scene, I asked Bones, oh, Dr. Carol Whister, to check into it first chance. She texted me early the next day. “No trace.”

  Nora cleared her throat. “Am I correct in that none of the other three scenes included any conclusive evidence of sexual interaction between the victims and the perp?”

  Sergeant Wilmer turned toward her. “That’s correct Ms. Burke. Your point being?”

  “The absence of the perp’s semen at the pond scene doesn’t prove or disprove anything, in that there’s been no evidence of a sex activity at any of the scenes.”

  Sergeant Wilmer pursed his lips and nodded. He looked around the table, his eyebrows raised. “Are we done here?”

  Everyone stood. Jack reached across the table extending his hand to Sheriff Jackson who shook it and smiled. “Mr. McCall, you can rely on our cooperation. If we’ve got four homicides, we need to know it.”

  “Agreed, Sheriff. And, if the Phelps death was an accident, the governor needs to know, and I’ll tell him in no uncertain terms. You don’t need interference from the governor’s office if there’s no basis for it.”

  “That it?”

  Jack looked directly at the sheriff. “Let’s go find some answers.”

  8

  A black and white, squad-car cat moving through the nearby shrubbery, stopped, crouched low, curled its tail around its legs, and eyed the four strangers gathered on the porch of the home of Mary Alice Phelps.

  Max held back the bright crime-scene banner. Jack eased the key into the front lock and pushed the door open. The cat shot out of the bushes, dashed across the sidewalk and disappeared around the garage. Lieutenant Ann Reynolds entered the house, followed by the three detectives from McCall Investigations.

  Two cockroaches scurried across the floor and disappeared under the baseboard. Roaches were among the critters that mysteriously moved into the voids left by retreating humanity.

  A stiff bristled mat was on the tile insert just inside the front door. Each of the detectives wiped their feet before stepping onto the plush, white, wall-to-wall carpeting.

  A heavy, hot stillness filled the dwelling where Phelps took her last electrified gasp. Her home was nicely decorated, orderly, and clean—and oppressive with a foreboding sense of empty.

  Ann stepped close to Jack. “Do you like all this white, shades of white?”

  “Hmmm.”

  “A little hospital like for my taste. I prefer a bit more color.”

  If there’s a heaven for houseplants, Mary Alice’s indoor palms were on their way to their better botanical place.

  Sweat raced down the seam of Jack’s spine to collide with the elastic band on his boxer shorts.

  Their steps were quiet as they fanned out over the soft whiteness. Jack and Ann moved toward the kitchen. Nora and Max went through the dining room slider into the open-air lanai where Mary Alice’s life ended in the wet heat of her spa. From nearby, the whir of a vacuum cleaner in a nearby home reached inside the Phelps’ lanai. A moment later, came the sound from a landscaper starting up a blower to violently discharge trimmings. Then things settled back to the natural music of death—silence.

  Jack glanced through the open door to the lanai, the radio, pulled from the spa, remained on the paver decking. The dried trail of dirty water drained out of the radio reached behind it like a fossilized tail from a kite. The motors of the pool and spa, shocked into silence by the jolt of power from the submerged radio, no longer kept the surface of the water clear of dust and pollen.

  Jack wrinkled his nose in response to the heavy, silent sickliness crowding the home where death had grabbed Mary Alice Phelps’ last breath.

  Max’s whistle reached inside the house.

  Jack looked at Ann. They quickstepped into the humidity of the lanai. Max and Nora stood to the left, at the end of what Floridians called a summer kitchen—a tiled counter build for a barbeque, a small refrigerator, and a sink. There, atop the counter, sat a blue plastic pool-safe bowl filled with chocolate-covered nuts. The soft chocolate coating partially sagged off the nuts, like flesh melting off the walking dead in some horror film.

  Mary Alice Phelps died on February twenty-fifth, America’s national Chocolate Covered Nut Day.

  “Was that bowl there when you were here the last time?”

  “No.” The small hoop earrings Ann wore swung when she moved her head. “I don’t know. It … it could’ve been. The first day I arrived, I came by for a quick looksee. I saw nothing that contradicted CC’s original conclusion of accidental death. My visit was shortened by the phone call from the governor’s office telling me to cease until you arrived. At that point in time, we, well certainly I, had no knowledge of the days of celebration angle. So, yeah, I guess, the bowl of nuts could’ve been here. If it was, I had no reason to pay it any real attention. … I should’ve been more attentive.”

  “There was no reason for you to be.” Max took out his cellphone and opened the camera feature. “Absent a catalyst to see it otherwise, the bowl just appeared a trapping of life—one of the sundry things
that populate every home. Had the proper photos of this scene been taken when Sergeant Wilmer first got here, those would confirm the bowl of nuts was or wasn’t here.”

  “It’s more complicated than that.” Nora rested her hands on her blouson waistline. “If Phelps was murdered by the same perp, the bowl of nuts had to have been here from the start. It would be insane for him to return later. ‘Oops, I came to murder but forgot my bowl of chocolate covered nuts. I’ll bring them back tomorrow.’ … No way. He would’ve brought them and left them at that time just as he did at the other scenes. If the nuts weren’t put here at the time of the murder, it strongly suggests Phelps was murdered by a different killer.”

  Jack moved close to Nora and spoke in measured words. “If a second perp killed Phelps, adding the nuts later would be a great way to direct the investigation away from himself and leave us to conclude she was murdered by the same killer.”

  Max rapped his knuckles on the side of the barbeque. “Once CC locked this place up as a crime scene, how would this so-called second killer get back in?”

  “Ah, yes, therein lies the rub.” Ann looked at the others. “When CC was here the first time, he saw this death as an accident. He didn’t designate it as a crime scene until the morning before I got here and then only under the governor’s order. When I came here that first time, the body was gone, the radio was out of the water, and the official viewpoint was accidental death. Now, here’s the uh-oh—I found the screen door on the lanai that went out to the backyard unlocked. It should have been locked whether or not it was a crime scene.”

  Jack curled his lips into and out of his mouth before speaking. “Her lanai is glassed in. The windows are side sliders with screens. They’re open halfway now, probably all the time. Without them open the windows would fog up from the hot moisture rising from the spa.”

  Max took pictures showing the bowl on the counter and the counter’s proximity to the water where, according to the few photos, Mary Alice’s right toe rested against the tile-trimmed side of the spa.

  Jack took his sport coat off and draped it over his shoulder, hooked onto one finger. “We need to talk with Sergeant Wilmer. Maybe he’ll remember seeing the bowl of nuts. If she had them by the spa to snack on, then someone moved them. Maybe when the radio was fished out of the spa. If Mary Alice had been snacking on them while she was in her hot tub, the M.E. will likely find the residue of the soft chocolate under her nails or in the prints of her fingers or maybe in her mouth. We’ll need to check with CC to find out if he saw them and, if he did, were they somewhere else and he moved the bowl to the counter?”

  Lieutenant Ann Reynolds took out her cell. “Let me call the sergeant.”

  While Ann was waiting for CC to come on the line, Jack walked around the spa to the door that led out of the lanai into the backyard. The aluminum door matched the framing on the windows. It had an inside thumb-turn deadbolt, but was unlocked. He locked it and checked to be sure the lock held. It did. To open it locked would necessitate damage to the mechanism. There was none.

  Ann’s voice stopped the others from moving around. “CC, looks like we got ourselves four murders, not three.” Ann widened her stance drawing her skirt taut. She told him about finding the nuts on the counter of Phelps’ summer kitchen. “Whatever all this damned recognition shit means, this makes four murders that line up with the trappings for those days.”

  “So, the governor was right.”

  “Eh, his hunch was anyway. Got a question, Sarge. Do you recall seeing a bowl of chocolate covered nuts? Maybe near the radio, when you first got here or on the counter of the outdoor summer kitchen?”

  CC’s voice again came out through the speaker on Ann’s phone. “I took a couple photographs of her and the radio in the spa. Then I fished it out and put it on the deck to drain dry. I called in the meat wagon, stationed a uniform here to wait and left.”

  “What about the bowl of chocolate covered nuts?”

  “There was none near the spa. I confess to not looking the place over all that thoroughly. I sized it up as a clear accidental death. It was late. We had two working murders. I guess I whiffed it.”

  “Okay. You said the bowl with the nuts wasn’t near the spa. What about on the counter of the summer kitchen?”

  “I already said, I failed to look around so I can’t say. In retrospect, I could’ve been more careful, probably should’ve been—hell, crap, definitely should’ve been. I saw it as an accident, wrote it up, took a couple confirming pictures, to err on the safe side I called for the M.E. to come get the body, and got back in the saddle on the two murders we were already working. I’ve had a call from the M.E.’s office asking about the disposition of the body.”

  “What’ve you told them?”

  “That we see it as accidental, but the governor has it in limbo. That they should hold the body for now and I’ll get back to them.”

  “Thanks, CC. As I understand it, no family has come forward to claim her body.”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  Jack stood close to Ann and leaned toward her cell which was still on speaker. “CC, Jack here. Give the M.E. a call. If the woman was eating them, the doc should find traces of the oily residue from the chocolate coating on her fingers or in her stomach.”

  “You got it. If there’s nothing else—”

  “One more thing. When you were here, was the door from the lanai out to the backyard locked or unlocked?”

  “It was unlocked when I got there. I locked it before I left.”

  When CC said this, Ann shook her head no.

  “Okay, CC. That’s all I got.” Jack looked at Ann who again shook her head.

  “Okay. Let me round up my crime scene team and get them heading your way. It’s a bit late in the order of things, that’s for damn sure, but maybe they’ll find something. I take responsibility for their not having come out there sooner. … I s’pose late is better than never. I guess we owe the governor a thanks for forcing us to button this place up. You need me to do anything else?”

  “No, CC, that’ll do … yeah. You said you left a uniform here to wait for the M.E.”

  “You want me to check with him? See if while he was waiting he might have seen your bowl of chocolate nuts?”

  “Two great minds. Yeah. Get back to me if the uniform remembers anything about that.”

  “Will do.”

  Jack leaned toward Ann’s cell. “Sarge, forgive me if this doesn’t need to be said, but have your team be on the alert for any grocery store receipts, the itemized kind that might show Phelps bought a bag of chocolate covered nuts, along with files on her investments, a will, family files, that kinda stuff. I’ve done a quick walk through this house and haven’t seen anything that might house those kinds of documents.”

  “You got it.”

  “Thanks.” Jack stepped back.

  Ann brought the phone closer to her face. “Before we ring off, just wondering, has anything come up on that end?”

  “Our computer nerds found nothing on our first victim’s credit cards to indicate she bought the fruitcake left in her fridge. When I spoke to them this morning, they were planning to search the drawers in her home, the pockets in her clothes, her purses, and whatnot for receipts. She could’ve paid cash and carried the thing home. If anything’s there to be found, we should have it by the time you get back here.”

  “ETA for the crime scene team?”

  “Just walked out, heading for their van. As soon as we get off the phone, I’ll call the leader and go over the things Jack mentioned.”

  “I don’t envy you having to tell Chief Jackson the governor was right about Phelps being a homicide.”

  “Thanks, Ann, but no sweat. Our sheriff was more miffed at the governor proclaiming a murder from his office recliner, than the actuality that Mary Alice Phelps could’ve been murdered. He’ll be cool.”

  After the call ended, Jack turned to Ann. “Toward the end of that call you twice shook your head no. What
were you saying no to?”

  “The last time it was to indicate I had nothing else for CC.”

  “And the first time?”

  “Regrettably, I was disagreeing with CC. He said when he came out on the initial call he found the door from the lanai to the backyard unlocked, saying he locked it before he left.”

  “Which part were you disagreeing with?”

  “I have no knowledge of whether or not it was locked when CC first arrived at the scene. I wasn’t here. My ‘no’ was with respect to his saying he locked it when he left. When I first came by, I found that rear door unlocked and I locked it. While we were waiting for CC to answer my call, I watched you walk over and check the screen door. It looked like you found it unlocked and locked it just a few minutes ago.”

  Jack nodded that was correct and turned back to Ann. “CC said he found the rear screen unlocked and locked it. Then you found it unlocked and locked it. Now, I just found it unlocked and locked it. The lock isn’t faulty. Someone is coming into this house and leaving through that lanai door out to the rear yard.”

  While Jack had been talking, Max walked back to the screen and again checked the deadbolt. “It’s still locked. Like you said, it’s not faulty.”

  Nora walked toward the door. “The only people with access would be from our department.”

  “No.” Max moved closer to the others. “I recall my elderly mother had keys to the homes of several of her neighbors, and they had keys to her home. I imagine a lot of that goes on around here. If it’s all innocent, we should be able to find who has keys to the front door.”

  “No. No. That’s not enough.” Ann moved closer and lowered her voice. “Why did the killer leave through the rear screen leaving it unlocked rather than back out the front door? It’s possible the killer had the code to come in through the garage, but I’m assuming he wouldn’t have made the noise of raising and lowering the garage door. The garage has no regular door out to the yard. A killer as smart as our developing profile would have left the back screen door locked and exited through the front door, locking it behind him.”