Grave Errors

by Carol J. Perry

  Pete, still glowering, faced Dakota. “You removed something from the death scene?”

  Dakota shook his head. “Of course not. I got it from the Dumpster out back. I know when it was too. It was in the morning of the day Emily’s Mom called when she couldn’t reach Emily.”

  “Are you in the habit of taking things out of the trash?” Pete asked, sounding incredulous. I knew how Pete felt about that sort of thing. He sounded the same way when I told him that the cute shabby chic footstool I have in my kitchen was a treasure I grabbed one trash day from right in front of a neighbor’s house on Winter Street.

  “Sure. That’s mostly how I furnished my apartment.”

  “It’s true,” I said. “Shannon told us that too.”

  Pete sat on the couch again. “Tell me about the bubble bath powder.”

  “I almost missed it,” Dakota said with a smile. “It was in a paper bag with a broken glass. A wineglass. I could tell by the stem on it. Ooops. I probably should have saved that too, huh?” The smile disappeared. “I didn’t know anything had happened to Emily.”

  “Do you still have the powder? You haven’t used it have you?”

  “No. There was only a tiny bit left but it was in a nice bottle so I put it in my bathroom. Looks good on the shelf.”

  “I’ll have to ask you to turn that bottle over to me, Berman.”

  “Is it evidence or something? I don’t think it’s any good for fingerprints. I washed it off real good.” He wrinkled his nose again. “It came out of a Dumpster you know.”

  Pete stood. “Let’s go down to your place and get it right now. Do you always look inside paper bags in Dumpsters?” I could tell that Pete was starting to lose patience.

  “Of course not. It could have been garbage. No. I was curious because I saw Mrs. Shores throw it in there.”

  Pete sat down again. “Mrs. Shores?”

  “Sure. You knew Mrs. Shores followed Emily home from her house that night, didn’t you? Dorothy knew it. Mrs. Shores was worried because Emily had been drinking.”

  “Yes, we knew that.”

  “She’d been drinking all right. I was surprised about that. She was staggering when she got out of her car. Mrs. Shores was practically holding her up when they walked across the parking lot.” Dakota scratched his head. “Really surprised me.”

  “Where were you to see all this?’ Pete asked.

  “Oh, I was on the balcony next door.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the wall dividing the apartments. “That was before the new tenants moved in. Hot night. My place is so stuffy. I was sitting out there, enjoying the breeze and the moonlight and all when I saw them both drive up.”

  “Mrs. Shores walked to the building with Emily?”

  “Yeah. Brought her up in the elevator too. I heard them laughing in the hall. I guessed they’d both been drinking by the sound of it.”

  “Didn’t you tell all this to the police?”

  “No. They only talked to me about finding Emily’s body. And when was the last time I’d talked to her and if I knew what time she’d come home that night. I told them I saw her car come in around eleven. That was true. I guess they thought I saw it from my windows, which I could have. I didn’t tell them I was in a vacant apartment. I’m not supposed to do that, you know.”

  “Did you ever tell Mrs. Shores you saw her with Emily that night?”

  “Heck no. She owns the darn building. I didn’t want her to know I was in that apartment. That I painted on the balcony sometimes.” He looked down at his hands. “She found out about that though when she saw the picture with my easel on the balcony. She was pissed.”

  When the sound of Patsy Cline singing about walking after midnight came from next door we all stopped talking and looked at each other. “I see what you mean about the thin walls,” Pete said. “Good choice of music at least.”

  Dakota wrinkled his nose, but was wise enough not to comment.

  “Dakota,” I said. “Were you inside the apartment next door when you heard Emily and Mrs. Shores getting off the elevator?”

  “Sure. I ducked inside so they wouldn’t see me on the balcony.”

  “So you could have heard what was going on in this apartment if you’d wanted to listen, couldn’t you?”

  Dakota’s face colored slightly and Pete picked up my line of questioning. “Did you want to listen, Berman?”

  I knew darn well he’d listened. People who peek in other people’s windows aren’t above listening through other people’s walls.

  Dakota gave the same answer he’d given when Pete had asked earlier if he’d peeked into Emily’s window. “Maybe,” he said.

  CHAPTER 42

  “None of that,” Pete said. “Did you or didn’t you?”

  “Oh dear,” Dorothy said. “If you heard anything that might help us figure out what happened that night you have to tell us. Even if it doesn’t seem important.”

  “You won’t tell Mrs. Shores? I don’t want to lose my jobs.”

  “We won’t tell Mrs. Shores a single word,” Pete promised. “What did you hear?”

  Dakota wiped one hand across his forehead and took a couple of deep breaths. “I could tell they were in the bedroom because I know the layout of every apartment in here. Emily didn’t say much. It was mostly Mrs. Shores doing the talking. She sounded really nice. Like a mother talking to a kid, you know?”

  “Can you tell us what she said?” Pete urged. “Try to remember her words as well as you can.”

  Dakota bowed his head for a moment. “She said something like ‘Come on honey.’” His voice slipped into a high falsetto. “‘Have some more of this nice wine. It’ll relax you. Then I’ll help you get undressed and draw a nice hot bath for you.’ Then Emily said something like ‘That’s nice,’ or ‘thank you.’ Polite words, you know? Emily was always very polite.”

  I saw Dorothy nod agreement. “Yes,” she whispered. “That’s Emily.”

  Dakota continued. “I heard the water running so that drowned out some words. Then they were both in the bathroom and Mrs. Shores must have been helping Emily into the tub because I heard a splashing sound. Emily said something but it was like the words were blurry. Like she was drunk or maybe stoned.”

  Pete spoke softly. “What did she say?”

  “I think she said ‘no soap.’”

  “My grandfather used to say that,” I remembered. “It means something like ‘no way.’ Or ‘no dice.’”

  “Did you see Mrs. Shores leave?” Pete asked. “Or hear the elevator go down?”

  “Sure. I couldn’t go back to my place until she was gone. I heard her say, ‘Good night dear. Sleep well.’ Then I heard some doors closing in there. The elevator went down and everything was quiet. I waited awhile, then I ducked out onto the balcony again so I could see if her car was gone. It was, so I went home.”

  The blue eyes were wide and clear and innocent.

  Pete accompanied Dakota down to his apartment and came back with a brown plastic Walmart bag which I assumed contained the bubble bath bottle.

  “Guess we’ll have to go back to the station, Lee. Too late to do anything with this at the police lab tonight, but I’d like them to get started on it first thing in the morning.”

  “What are you going to do about Dakota?”

  “Nothing I can do. You two don’t want to press charges about the phone—not that I blame you—and he hasn’t actually broken any other laws. He answered the questions the police asked about Emily. Remember it wasn’t a criminal investigation then. Officially, it isn’t one now. I warned him not to leave town and not to talk about what was discussed here. Anyway he’s scared enough about his two jobs to keep quiet.”

  “Shall we see what’s on this now?” Dorothy asked, picking up Emily’s phone.

  “Let’s do it,” Pete said.

  Dorothy spoke the four-digit pass code aloud and handed the instrument back to Pete.

  The first thing we learned from it was the fact that James Dow
gin had texted Emily several times on the night she died. Texted her repeatedly, desperately. All the messages said the same thing: “Emily. Don’t go. I’m on my way. Wait for me.”

  “By then she must have already gone to the party at the Shoreses’,” I said.

  “The party that was supposed to be for her,” Dorothy added, “and if she actually drank too much while she was there that might explain how she accidently dropped her phone between the seats in the VW. So she never knew what James tried to tell her.”

  Other than the messages from James, Dakota Berman had been right about the other information preserved on the phone. It was pretty ordinary stuff about work and clothes and food, along with pictures—including a cute one of a white cat peeking out from among the plants on her balcony.

  After Pete and I had eaten the last two pieces of pound cake, we excused ourselves and said good night to Dorothy, with a warning to be sure to lock her doors, including the French doors leading to the balcony. With Pete once more in the driver’s seat, we headed back to the police station.

  “It seems that the Shoreses keep turning up, doesn’t it Pete?” I said. “I mean not just because they own the apartment building, but Emily, Dakota and James all worked for them. Too many coincidences?”

  “Right,” Pete agreed. “I’ll be very interested in the reports we’ll get from the evidence we collected at the laundry.” He gave a wave of one hand. “But of course they own that place too, so there’s no reason that Happy and Trudy couldn’t have left fingerprints all over everything.”

  “Well, at least we know Happy Shores couldn’t have been there Monday night,” I said.

  “We do? How come?”

  “Television,” I said. “Didn’t you see it? He was at the Patriots game with a bunch of front office bigwigs.”

  “Missed it,” Pete said. “Good observation.”

  “Thanks. When will you get the results from the things you collected from the laundry tonight?” I asked.

  “Probably tomorrow on the prints and the trace evidence. DNA takes a while. I’m hoping for a fast turnaround on the work boots from Emily’s closet too. We still haven’t come up with any records of the land the army leased in the wild woods. If we can identify the spot where the chemicals are buried, there’ll be some real action on all this.” He tapped the Walmart bag beside him on the seat. “What do you bet the bubble bath powder matches up with the detergent in the five-gallon buckets?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised at all.” I thought about it. “But what would that mean? Soap is soap, isn’t it? And nobody would use anything dangerous that was going to be next to babies’ bottoms, would they?”

  “No soap,” Emily had said.

  “Doesn’t seem likely, does it?” We pulled into a space in front of the police department. “So many things about this case don’t make sense. Chief wants me to talk to Emily’s doctor again, to find out why he prescribed such a heavy duty sedative to a young woman who barely weighed a hundred pounds. The amount of barbiturates in her system was way more than she’d have needed for a good night’s sleep.” He picked up the bag, and hit the door lock. “Be right back.”

  Alone again, I closed my eyes and let my mind wander. I agreed with Pete that while not a lot of this made sense, some of it was beginning to. For instance, Emily wouldn’t have willingly stepped into a tub full of bubble bath, drunk or not, knowing what it would do to her face. I know I sure wouldn’t have, even if my very nice motherly boss had drawn the bath for me and even if I was the most polite person on earth.

  Another question. What were they celebrating at the Shoreses’ home that night? And why didn’t the other two guests even mention it? Another BIG question. If James Dowgin died at the Wypee-Dypee laundry, why was his body dumped in the Howard Street Cemetery? Was it supposed to be some kind of a warning? Who was the warning for?

  I didn’t want to think about the answer to that.

  CHAPTER 43

  It had been a long, exhausting day. It was late when we left the police station and headed home—both of us tired and still hungry. Pete parked in his usual spot next to the garage and I found myself scanning the side fence, looking for Frankie as we walked to the back door. No white cat. No lights on in Aunt Ibby’s part of the house either. O’Ryan waited for us inside the hall and we all climbed the stairs as quietly as we could.

  I heated up a can of tomato soup and Pete made grilled cheese sandwiches which we ate in the near silence that sometimes happens when your concentration is totally on food. O’Ryan was asleep on his windowsill and Pete and I fell into bed without any further discussion of the day’s happenings and without even looking at the late news on TV.

  Pete left early the next morning, anxious to get the results of the various tests that were in the works so O’Ryan and I were alone in the kitchen when I found out where the missing number six laundry cart had gone. There it was on the Good Morning Salem show. It was muddy and torn and some of the wheels were gone but the numeral on the end was plainly visible. Seems some kids had found it in the woods. They’d managed to drag it over to the nearest playground and were taking turns filling it with their pals and riding downhill in it. No one objected until one of them fell out and broke his collarbone. Then it made the news. According to the reporter no one knew where the cart had come from, but I figured it wouldn’t be long before they found out.

  I called Pete. He’d seen it too. “We’ve already picked it up. CSI has it, although those kids must have destroyed any evidence that could have been on it. Oh, well. Chief’s sending a detective over to talk to the Shoreses’ this morning,” he said, “and we found traces of milkweed on those boots. I’ve got a botanist from the college going over to the wild woods to check that out. Woke up a judge to get permission to go in there. That might narrow down the location of Charlie Putnam’s toxic waste dump. Making some progress, babe.”

  I was impressed, as I always am by the department’s efficiency. “How much of all this does my class need to know?” I wondered. “They’re involved with some of it for sure and I don’t know how much information I should share with them—to keep them safe from—from whatever—whoever. . . .”

  “I understand. I’ve briefed the twins on what we have so far. We have reason to believe the Shoreses—or someone connected to them—may be involved in James Dowgin’s death. Possibly in Emily Alden’s death too. But hell, we still don’t know exactly what either one died from. They were both in water, but neither one drowned. Emily could have died because of the combination of barbiturates and alcohol. And Dowgin? He had a nasty bump on his head—enough to knock him out, but not enough to kill him. We need more.”

  I understood the frustration in his voice. Cops need hard facts. Real truths. They can’t accuse people of crimes because of visions in mirrors or messages from cats. “I’m sure you’ll figure it all out,” I said. “I’m going downstairs to catch Aunt Ibby up on everything, then I’ll go to school and just play it by ear? Sound okay?”

  “Okay. Be careful Lee. I love you.”

  “I will. Love you too,” I said.

  I was out of morning kitty kibble, so O’Ryan followed me down the front stairs to Aunt Ibby’s then posed pitifully in front of her pantry door.

  “Poor, starving cat,” she said, filling his red bowl with fish, milk bottle, cheese and steak shaped–cat food morsels. “And I thought when I went to bed last night that you and Pete must have been starving too. Did you eventually get some dinner?”

  “Eventually.” I gave her a fast rundown of all that had happened since I’d seen her last. I caught her up too on what Pete had told me about the kids and the laundry cart and the milkweed in the wild woods.

  “I’ll bet I know right where that is,” she said. “Years ago the garden club planted a nice patch of milkweed in there to try to attract monarch butterflies. For years they’d come there on their annual migration, then after a while it seemed as though there weren’t so many of them.”

  “Did it w
ork?”

  “Oh, yes. They came back.” She frowned. “But I suppose they’ll leave again once the mall is built. If it’s built.”

  “The butterflies along with the bees and the fireflies,” I said. “Progress. Maybe you should call Pete and tell him where to look. Everything is so overgrown in the woods it might take even a botanist a while to find a patch of milkweed.”

  “I will,” she said. “Look at the time. You go along to school. You don’t want to be late. Bring an umbrella. Wanda says that tropical storm is heading our way and it’s getting stronger.”

  I took her advice, driving carefully through rain that seemed to come in intermittent bands, varying from pounding to pitter-pat. It was during a brief stretch of the latter that I arrived at the Tabby and ran between the drops to the diner door. Dorothy and Hilda had arrived just ahead of me and were stashing umbrellas under the seats. The others were already seated—Therese comfortably dry because she lived upstairs in the school dorm, Shannon, hair damp and red rain boots shiny wet. The twins were in their preferred spot at the counter, both holding newspapers, but clearly keeping watchful eyes on us. I added my umbrella to the others, hung my jacket on a peg and sat down. Dorothy slid in beside me, Hilda on the opposite end of the booth, and we ordered our breakfasts.

  “Dorothy,” I asked as my coffee and corn muffin arrived, “Do you happen to have any photos of your sister? I’ve wondered what she looked like.”

  “I have an old high school picture in my wallet. Emily hated having her picture taken. She’d always stick out her tongue or hide her face. She was so pretty, but never believed she was.” Dorothy reached for her purse, opening a worn leather wallet. “Here she is.” She passed the wallet to me.

  The young girl was lovely. A shy smile, wide-set eyes, and a strong resemblance to her half sister. The image bore little resemblance to the person I’d seen in my girl-in-a-bathtub vision, but looked very much like the girl-listening-through-a-wall.

  “Sorry I don’t have anything recent,” Dorothy said. “This is the only good one I’ve ever had.”