by Debra Webb
Sandra Butler was Jess’s age and had once comanaged a Chevrolet dealership with her husband. But when Michelle was born, she had decided to become a full-time stay-at-home mom.
“I love talking about Michelle.” She smiled, her hands twisting together. “People think it’s too hard so they try to avoid bringing up the fact that I ever had a daughter.” She shook her head. “I need to talk about her but they don’t understand.”
“I know what you mean,” Jess offered. “They think they’re helping you but they’re really just helping themselves. It makes most people uncomfortable to talk about that kind of loss.”
“I believe you’re right.” She smoothed her hands over her skirt, adjusting a nonexistent wrinkle. “You know, I tried so hard to get the police to investigate Corrine and her daughter, but they just wouldn’t listen. I guess that’s why I’m surprised you’re here now.”
This was the second time this week Jess had been accused of being a little late. In reality, she had been too late in the Simmons case to save Jerome Frazier and the same was true with this one. There was no evidence that Michelle Butler’s death was anything other than a tragic accident. Just as there had been none in Darcy Chandler’s until her husband up and confessed for a crime they couldn’t even prove had occurred.
“As we’ve been investigating Ms. Chandler’s case,” Jess disclosed carefully, “it, of course, came to our attention that this same dance studio had already suffered a tragic loss. I noted in your statement that you felt there should have been further investigation of the event that took your daughter’s life.”
“As I told your colleague”—she nodded to Lori—“Katrina is an absolute bully. She made all the girls miserable then and I’m sure she still does. I know she does. I still have lunch with some of the other mothers occasionally. When they can bear to be around me.”
“When you say she’s a bully,” Jess asked, needing clarification, “do you mean physically aggressive or verbally abusive?”
“Both. I’ve seen her push the other girls during rehearsals. And the things she says.” She shuddered. “Katrina would taunt Michelle with the most hurtful comments. She told her she was ugly and couldn’t dance. The worst was how she threatened that when Michelle was out of the way she would be the star.”
“Did no one attempt to stop this behavior?” Bullying was, like the federal deficit, out of control. No one seemed to be paying attention much less doing enough to stop it.
“Katrina was careful. We mothers rarely caught her being bad.” She shook her head. “And you know what they tell us, try to let the children work it out themselves. I can’t tell you how many teachers I’ve had say those words to me and to friends who’ve had children with bully problems. It’s so frustrating.”
“But there were complaints,” Jess suggested.
“Yes. Several of us spoke to both Darcy and Alex. They promised to take care of it but no one ever did. Alex excused the girl every time. He was the one who insisted she should be on the competition team when the kid can’t dance. She has no coordination skills and her posture is atrocious.” She drew in a deep breath and let it go slowly. “It kills me to think that she took my Michelle’s place.”
Without doubt Katrina Dresher had hurt Michelle Butler in life, but there simply was no proof that she or her mother caused her death… or anyone else’s. There were lots and lots of ill feelings. Lots of suspicions. Lots of unanswered questions. But no clear-cut motives and no tangible evidence.
“I knew those two were capable of most anything,” Butler continued. “I warned Darcy that she would be sorry she’d let them into our group. But I’m not so sure she believed me until a few weeks ago.”
Jess snapped to full attention. “What happened that might have made her change her mind?”
“I finally realized it was time to go through Michelle’s clothes and toys. It’s selfish to hang on to all that when others could benefit from them. Some things hadn’t been touched. Like her backpack from school that day. My sister-in-law had collected all of Michelle’s belongings from the hospital and school and stored them away in Michelle’s room. I worked up the courage to open the backpack.” Her eyes filled with emotion. “Touching the things she touched the last day of her life was like touching her. It took my breath away.”
Jess moistened her lips and held on to her emotions. Next to her on the sofa she could feel the tension that stiffened Lori, too.
“I found this paper all folded up in one of those squares and triangles like kids will do when they send silly notes to each other. There were hearts drawn all around on the page. Each heart had a K in it. That’s what Katrina did. Whenever she sent a note or drew a picture for anyone she would draw those damned hearts and put a K in each one.” Her lips started to tremble and the tears won the battle she had been waging.
Jess waited until she had composed herself. “What was in the note, Ms. Butler?”
“One line.” She dragged in a harsh breath. “Dead ballerinas don’t get to dance.”
A telling chill crept through Jess’s bones. “Ms. Butler, did you show this note to Ms. Chandler?”
Butler nodded. “She asked to keep it so she could go to her husband and the authorities with it. I kept waiting to hear back from her but she never called. Then I heard… that she was dead. Everyone was saying it was an accident just like Michelle’s. But I didn’t believe it. I had almost talked myself into calling the police when I saw the news about Alex confessing.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe he would do that.” She wrung her hands together more tightly. “I can’t believe I couldn’t find the courage to make the call. But after being told over and over that I was making something out of nothing, I guess I was afraid that people would start to believe the rumors that I was losing it. I think Corrine or her daughter or both killed my Michelle. If that makes me crazy, then I guess I’m crazy.”
Sandra Butler showed them Michelle’s room and a few photographs of the girls on the dance team. When she at last saw them to the door, Jess managed to maintain her cool until she was in Lori’s Mustang and driving away.
“We have to find that note,” Jess said in a rush, her heart pounding. There was something to this mother’s story. Something evil and festering.
“Where to now?” Lori asked, sounding as breathless as Jess felt.
Jess scrambled through the contents of her bag for her phone. “The Chandler residence.”
“But the memorial service is in less than an hour.”
“I can probably still reach Dorothy Chandler at her own home to get permission.”
“You’re the boss.”
Jess made a call to Dorothy Chandler. She needed to get inside Darcy’s home. Now. This couldn’t wait for better timing.
This couldn’t wait for anything.
• • •
Cotton Avenue, 2:50 p.m.
It hadn’t been necessary for Dorothy Chandler to rush over and unlock the mansion that had belonged to her granddaughter.
The caterers, florist, and musicians were there preparing for the celebration of Darcy’s life after the memorial service. The whole downstairs was set up for an elegant gala. Beautifully framed photos of Darcy from childhood until her death were placed around each room. Trophies and awards held positions of honor. A three-piece orchestra was already playing a lovely melody in the entry hall.
Jess and Lori had threaded their way through the goings-on to get to the second-floor landing.
“Her shoes were there.” Jess showed Lori the place. “Like this.” She removed her own beige pumps and placed them just so. “Exactly like that.”
“Considering where the body was found and this”—Lori gestured to the shoes—“it would be safe to assume she went over the railing here.”
Jess agreed. “And the bruise Schrader discovered is the only part of what happened that gives any credence to the Russian’s confession.”
“But the rest of the autopsy report showed no signs of a struggle. So s
he didn’t fight him. She just let him grab her and throw her over. She wasn’t drugged, so why would she just let him do that?”
“Even then there would likely have been bruises on her arms.” Jess studied the second-floor landing and hall that flowed in either direction, wide open. There was no way he could have sneaked up on her. No place to hide. “Obviously Corrine Dresher didn’t pick her up and throw her over the railing.”
She peered over the railing at the curving staircase and the cold, hard marble floor where the musicians had set up.
“Dresher’s daughter wouldn’t have been able to accomplish that feat either.”
“Not likely.” Jess thought about how she’d taken her shoes off to climb all those sets of stairs last evening. “But Darcy took her shoes off for a reason. Why?”
Jess turned to where her shoes sat and surveyed the area. Floor, walls, and ceiling. There was nothing but the big elaborate chandelier that hung overhead.
“There’s bookcases.” Lori pointed out. “But they line the wall on the other side of the landing.” She gauged the distance. “About eight feet from the railing.”
The bookshelves were built-in and spanned the length of the upstairs hall, interrupted occasionally by a door or a window. A brass rail was mounted along the top for the library-style ladder that glided on that path. But the bookshelves and the ladder were permanent attachments.
Two chairs flanked a table that sat before a massive window at the end of the hall. “Even if she’d dragged one of those chairs down here and jumped of her own free will—hitting her leg on the handrail—who dragged the chair back to the table?”
“But there’s no known motive for suicide,” Lori reminded her.
“None.” Annette Denton had said that Darcy Chandler loved her life. But what if something had threatened it? Something like Corrine Dresher showing up with Darcy’s husband’s love child?
Would she be so weak as to refuse to fight for what was hers? But then her grandmother had said that Darcy changed about two weeks before her death. About the time Sandra Butler gave her the note.
Jess wandered down to the big window. She moved around behind one of the lovely upholstered antique chairs and started to push it some fifteen feet to reach the railing where Darcy had fallen. The chair wasn’t very heavy. Picking it up wouldn’t have been a problem.
When she positioned the chair next to the shoes, Jess stepped back to see what having it there accomplished.
“Puts you closer to the top of the handrail,” Lori pointed out.
“Uh-huh.” Jess tapped her chin. But what else? Her gaze moved upward. The chair sat under the chandelier. She moved to where the chair stood, all the while studying the brilliant chandelier. She squinted. The light was really bright. Blindingly bright.
“I need a flashlight.”
“I have one in my car,” Lori offered. She started to go but then hesitated. “Don’t move until I get back.”
The only moving Jess did was to go over to the wall next to the top of the stairs and turn off the chandelier. She blinked to encourage her eyes to adjust to the natural lighting. The house faced east but even at this time of the afternoon daylight still poured in through the numerous and expansive windows.
“Why were you up here, Darcy? What made you go over that railing?”
Perfect balance, that was another thing Annette said about Darcy. Perfect balance and everything to live for.
Lori bounded up the stairs, flashlight in hand. “I was thinking”—she took a sec to catch her breath—“why was Darcy up here at that particular time? I mean, this is her house. Sure. But Dresher had just arrived with lunch. Darcy was on the phone with her husband. Was she looking for something?”
Jess shook her head but caught herself. “The only person we know for sure who was in the house looking for something at that time was Katrina. That’s when she found the body. She came in the house looking for the other two girls’ boas. They’d left them up here when they were playing earlier. I checked. There are two black boas in the den. Second door on the left.” Jess nodded toward the rear of the house. At that end of this upstairs hall there was a second, narrower staircase that led down to the kitchen.
The house was enormous.
Lori offered the flashlight. “What’re we looking for?”
“I don’t know, but you can’t see anything when the chandelier is on; the dozens and dozens of little bulbs are blinding. That’s why I need the flashlight. I want to inspect it a little more closely since it’s the only thing in this spot. Maybe Darcy was changing a bulb.”
Seemed a ridiculous idea since Jess had learned that a team of housekeepers came in once a week. Why wouldn’t she hire out that kind of menial chore?
“Okay.” Lori peered up at the light fixture. “What do you want me to do?”
Jess climbed up onto the seat of the chair.
“Be careful. You are way too close to that railing for comfort.” Lori moved nearer, putting her body between the chair and the railing.
Jess hesitated a moment. “You know her death could have been the result of something as simple as changing a lightbulb except there was no chair or ladder involved.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” Lori agreed.
Placing a hand on Lori’s shoulder for balance, Jess directed the flashlight’s beam onto the chandelier and searched one ornate arm after the other. Downstairs, the chatter of the caterers and the clatter of preparations reminded Jess that very soon the house would be full of friends and family come to share their memories of the woman who had lived and died here.
Wait. Jess moved the light’s beam back over an arm on the lower tier. There was something fuzzy stuck there. As high as she stretched, she could not reach it. Her fingertips were maybe ten or twelve inches from the lowest tip of the elegant light fixture.
When she was back on solid ground, she turned to Lori. “I need a ladder.”
Lori scratched her head. “Don’t have one of those in my car.”
After putting the chair back where it belonged and reclaiming her shoes, she and Lori went on an expedition. Somewhere on this massive estate there had to be a ladder. Their search ended in the detached garage. Several ladders to choose from, all aluminum and fairly lightweight except the largest one, which was an extension ladder. They didn’t need one of those anyway.
“The six-footer will work best,” Jess decided.
Lori helped her carry it inside and up the stairs, past the musicians who eyed them skeptically. Jess simply smiled and kept going.
With the ladder in place, Jess climbed up high enough to reach the chandelier. Lori held the ladder steady just in case.
Two, no three fuzzy little white things. Jess plucked one, then the others, and climbed back down to where Lori waited.
“What is it?”
Jess stared at the tufts of fuzz in her palm. Anticipation sent her pulse into a faster rhythm. She lifted her gaze to Lori’s. “Turkey feathers. They’re used to make feather boas.”
“They’re white,” Lori said, her words scarcely a whisper, as realization obviously dawned on her as well.
Jess nodded. “Only one little girl was wearing the white boa this week.”
20
Mayor’s office, 4:00 p.m.
Mayor Joseph Pratt was one of the few members of Birmingham’s upper crust who wouldn’t be at the Darcy Chandler memorial celebration. Worked to Dan’s advantage. He needed a moment of the man’s time. Although the subject was Darcy Chandler, which made the timing rather ironic.
Since the mayor was a busy man and never wanted anyone to forget it, Dan didn’t mind waiting for a bit. He paged through a magazine that touted the wonders of the Magic City. Birmingham had come a very long way in the last fifty years, but there was a good distance to go yet and Dan wanted to be a part of that journey.
Joseph Pratt was basically a good man, but his and Dan’s visions for the city and the way law enforcement should be conducted didn’t always mesh. Some days
it was an uphill battle. Others, like today, reminded him of why he had worked so hard to reach the position he held.
Jess had called him not ten minutes ago. Her instincts about the shoes had been right all along. There was far more to the Darcy Chandler case than her husband tossing her over the railing.
Dan did not want to know how she had learned that both Darcy and Alexander had given Corrine Dresher large sums of money over the past eighteen months—since her arrival in Birmingham. There also appeared to be some evidence that these monetary gifts had been ongoing for years. Somehow Jess had possession of this no doubt illegally obtained information. Be that as it may, that knowledge, along with Sandra Butler’s statement about the note to her daughter, not to mention the feathers found in the chandelier that were likely the same ones found in the victim’s hand, compelled Dan to reopen the case.
The mayor wasn’t going to like it. But he would get right with it because Dan was not backing off. Pratt had no problem with a speedy closure when there was no evidence of foul play. But that had changed now.
Jess might be a long way from nailing the perpetrator, but she had rock-solid reasonable cause for further investigation. Chief Black was on board and en route to help Jess with the operation they all hoped would close the file on this one once and for all.
“Chief, the mayor will see you now.”
Dan stood. He fastened the middle button of his jacket and produced a smile for Pratt’s secretary. “Thank you.”
The mayor was scouring letters and signing next to the little yellow tabs that called out for his attention. “Have a seat, Dan. I’ll be right with you. I just have to finish this so Martha can leave on time today.”
Dan took the seat he always claimed when he visited the mayor: the lavish leather wingback chair that gave him a view out the window just past the mayor’s shoulder.
Pratt signed twice more, then closed the folder. He looked up, his gaze settling heavily on Dan. “Do we have a problem?”
