by Ellen Crosby
Mathis cleared his throat. “Hey, Detective, it’s not shakin’ too good for this guy. Name of Paul Noble. His home, his art studio, apparently. I believe you know Ms. Montgomery here. She’s the, uh, RP.”
Bobby’s eyes shifted to me. “Lucie,” he said. “I know I’m not going to like the answer to this, but how come you’re the reporting party here?”
I told him about my relationship with Paul, and he nodded, none too pleased, as he ran a hand across his military buzz cut. He hadn’t let his hair grow after his latest National Guard tour in Afghanistan. Kit Eastman, his fiancée and my best friend, told me he’d kept it stubble short so it was harder to tell his hair had gone prematurely gray—almost white.
Now he walked over to Paul and looked down at the items on the carpet underneath him. I caught the double take when he recognized the wine bottle.
“So you had a meeting with this guy today, and when you turned up, he was swinging from that rafter?” Bobby asked.
I caught Mathis’s eye. “No meeting. I just came by.”
“To shoot the breeze?”
I answered that question, too, and Bobby looked as thrilled as Mathis had been. One of the uniformed officers appeared in the doorway, the woman.
“House is locked up and the car is in the garage, Detective. The place is deserted.”
“Get a warrant,” Bobby said. “Where’s Jacko?”
A short, dark-haired officer I hadn’t seen before stood in the doorway. Mid- to late thirties, maybe. A few years older than I was. “Here. Who’s the wind chime?”
Bobby’s and Mathis’s faces cracked into small smiles, but my stomach turned over once again. As much time as I’d spent around Bobby, I couldn’t get used to the gallows cop humor that came with his job, but then I didn’t spend my days walking into scenes like this or dealing with the depraved and inhuman things people did to one another.
“Paul Noble. In the wine business,” Bobby said. “How long you reckon he’s been here?”
Jacko walked over to Paul. “Ten, maybe twelve hours. Of course the fact that it’s so cold you could freeze your nu …” He stopped and glanced at me. “I mean, it’s pretty freaking cold in here. My apologies, miss. No disrespect intended. Detective Jackman, CSI. You are—?”
“Lucie Montgomery. RP.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled but he kept a straight face. “Family member or friend of the deceased?”
“We had a business relationship.”
“I see.” He looked relieved not to have offended a grieving relative.
“You were saying, Tom?” Bobby asked him. “About the time of death?”
Jackman set a black case on the floor and pulled on gloves as one of the male officers moved around the room taking photographs. “Well, the room temp’s screwing things up, but the guy’s stiff as a board so lividity’s set, tongue is black, and there are beginning signs of purging.”
“What is purging?” I asked.
“The fluid leaking from his nose and mouth,” he said. “I’d say time of death was anywhere from midnight to two A.M. last night. Maybe earlier, but not longer than eighteen hours.”
Bobby did the math on his fingers. “So maybe as early as yesterday evening around six or eight, but more likely midnight to two.”
“That’s the best I can do. We’ll know for sure after Dolan weighs in.” I’d heard Bobby talk about Dolan. He was the new medical examiner. Jackman added, “Could be a case of coming and going.”
Bobby nodded. “I was wondering.”
“Pardon?” I asked.
“Autoerotic asphyxiation.” Jackman pointed to the vicinity of Paul’s waist. “Sometimes the rope slips as they ejaculate and they can’t do anything to stop it. His, uh, trousers show stains in the right place, though they’re not down around his knees. Maybe a fantasy or something.”
He let that sink in and watched my face turn scarlet as I lowered my eyes and worked out what he had just said.
“A sexual … accident?”
“Yup. Some people are into kinky. You know anything about this guy’s sex life?”
I blushed again. “No. I don’t even know if he had one. He was very private. So you think he did this to himself? How can you be sure he wasn’t strangled?”
“Like I said, the medical examiner will determine cause and time of death,” Jackman said. “But in a hanging you always look at the jawline. If the rope follows it, then it’s self-inflicted. Strangulation would produce a different mark on the neck. The rope would be pulled straight back. Look at his body, the way it’s weighed down by gravity.”
I looked, following the rope line on Paul’s neck as Jackman traced it in the air with a finger. Then he pointed to a large canvas sitting on the floor propped against a beam. “If this painting was an indication of what was going on inside this guy’s head … pretty creepy stuff. Self-mutilation. Cannibalism. Wonder what he did for fun if this was his hobby?”
The canvas—an oil painting—was filled with writhing, tormented nudes in so much misery and agony that I needed to look away. Jackman was right. Paul Noble’s art was the work of a tortured soul.
“Get pictures of those paintings, will you, Smitty?” Bobby said to the photographer.
Jackman turned back to Paul and squatted by the wine bottle and glass.
“The bottle’s from Ms. Montgomery’s vineyard. She says that she didn’t give it to him.” I didn’t know if Mathis was genuinely trying to be helpful or just speed the process of putting more nails in my coffin.
Jackman gave me a sharp look. “And the wineglass?”
“No idea,” I said. “Vineyards give them out all the time as souvenirs. We silk-screen logos to commemorate a special event or the release of a new wine, but I don’t recognize that one.”
“That design reminds me of a painting I saw somewhere,” Jackman said. “You know the one?”
“E.T.,” Mathis said. “That little guy. The alien.”
Jackman gave him a withering look. “E.T. is a movie.”
“I’ve seen paintings of E.T.” Mathis sounded defensive. “Looks just like him, if you ask me. What do you think, Detective?”
Bobby scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, I suppose it could be.”
I stared at the glass and a memory clicked into place.
“The Scream,” I said. “It looks like Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream.”
“At least somebody here’s got culture,” Jackman said. “That’s the one I meant.”
“Yeah, you probably saw it on the back of your cereal box, Jacko,” Mathis said.
“Okay, guys, let’s get busy,” Bobby said. “Lucie, why don’t we talk outside and let them get on with it?”
He held the barn door for me. The heat was even more oppressive, or maybe I was starting to get dehydrated. Bobby grabbed my arm.
“You okay? You look like you’re gonna pass out. Have a seat. I know it was rough seeing him like that.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, but I let him help me sit down on the step. “Are you just going to leave him there?”
He sat next to me. “It’s a crime scene, Lucie. He’s gone. We can’t cut him down until we process everything around him. It might destroy evidence if we do.”
“Right.”
He didn’t flinch at the reproach in my voice.
“I’m sorry. That’s just the way it is. It’s an inhuman business sometimes. I don’t make the rules and you know that.”
“It’s such a ghastly way to die. It must have been slow and painful.”
“If it’s any consolation,” he said, “the victim loses consciousness in about twelve to fifteen seconds, so it’s pretty fast. Of course, you get some jerking around when the body spasms, so it seems like it’s going on longer than it is. Then it’s over for good.”
“I don’t understand why he did it.”
Bobby gave me a long, hard look. “Suicides are pretty tough to fake,” he said, “but not impossible. And they usually leave
a note. This guy didn’t, as far as we know. Biggie said you came over here today because you were mad as hell at the vic.”
“Not mad enough to kill him.”
He shrugged. “I understand. I don’t need to read you your rights, Lucie, and you’re not under arrest. But I need you to account for your whereabouts between now and midnight last night.”
“Oh, come on. You’re kidding, right? Even if I wanted to, I’m hardly strong enough to kill Paul Noble, then hang him from that beam. He probably weighed at least two hundred pounds when he was alive. I weigh a little more than half that. It’s just not possible.”
“Lucie,” Bobby said, “I’m not kidding. I’ve seen plenty of people do things that they swear aren’t possible, believe me. Where’ve you been since midnight last night and can anybody verify it?”
“Home alone,” I said, “and no, nobody can verify it.”
Chapter 3
Bobby didn’t give me a lot of grief about my whereabouts and nobody being able to vouch for me, probably in part because he knew about my nonexistent social life, but mostly because we both knew I didn’t kill Paul. After that he said I was free to go, though he might have more questions for me down the road.
“How much longer will you be here?” I asked.
He looked at his watch. “It’s two now. Probably another three to five hours. As long as it takes to process the crime scene.”
He got up from the step and held out a hand to me. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car. I’ve got one more thing to say to you.”
I let him pull me to my feet. “What is it?”
He handed me my cane. “When you get home, pour yourself a good stiff drink, and before you go to bed watch something on television that’ll make you laugh. Works for me.”
He put an arm around my shoulder and gave it a friendly squeeze. It was so out of character, that little unexpected tenderness, that I couldn’t find the words to answer him. All this time I’d figured Bobby was so tough he deflected the horrors of his job the way bullets bounced off Superman’s chest. Now I found out he needed to numb himself with Scotch and reruns of Seinfeld or Everybody Loves Raymond to chase away nightmares.
“You okay?” he asked after a moment. “Yeah, fine.” My voice sounded almost normal. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll probably have that drink later on, but right now my grandfather’s arriving on the afternoon flight from Paris. I’m just barely going to make it to Dulles in time.”
“You’ll get there,” he said. “No speeding, hotshot. I’m not fixing any ticket, okay?”
“I never speed.”
“Sure you don’t. How come I didn’t know Luc was coming for a visit? Last time he was here he promised on his next trip he’d bring a couple of Cuban cigars and we’d smoke ’em together. Kit should have told me he was going to be in town. Didn’t the two of you spend five hours a couple of nights ago yakking on the phone about what shade of white her dress should be?”
I started to laugh, glad to change the subject to something silly, and he grinned. My wedding gift to the two of them was hosting their ceremony and reception at the vineyard. Kit and I had been planning nonstop for the past few months.
“There’s a big difference between bone and blush, even if it’s lost on you, buddy,” I said, and his smile broadened. “And it was only three hours. I didn’t know Pépé was coming until the day before yesterday. You know how he is.”
“I hope he’s going to be at your July fourteenth shindig. Be nice to see him again and have man talk instead of listening to you and my fiancée discuss whether your nail polish needs to match your shoes,” he said.
“Oh, go ahead and elope. See if I care.” I opened the door of my red-and-white-striped Mini Cooper convertible and gave him a mock-glare of annoyance. “He’s coming to the party on Saturday, but then he’s leaving first thing Sunday morning. Flying on to San Francisco to give a talk to some business group on a retreat outside Sonoma.”
“California, huh? No wonder you can’t keep up with him flying all over the place. At least I’ll catch him on Saturday night.” He shut the car door.
“Me, too. And thanks, Bobby.”
“For what?”
The moment of good-natured teasing vanished as swiftly as a wispy cloud in the sharp blue sky above. The haunted look that aged him so much more than his thirty-three years flashed across his face.
“You know what,” I said.
“Don’t mention it. You better get going.”
He squared his shoulders and headed back to the barn. I drove away in the white-hot sunshine of a beautiful afternoon while he returned to the cold, dark studio with its tormented paintings. Later today he would cut Paul Noble’s body from the noose where it hovered over the room like the angel of death.
My grandfather, Luc Delaunay, had called at sunset the Tuesday of my phone conversation with Paul. I’d been out on the back veranda sitting in the glider and finishing a bottle of white as I watched the fireball sun slip behind the low-slung Blue Ridge Mountains to the west. That evening the sky had been the creamy orange and robin’s egg blue of a faded watercolor, and the ragged silhouette of the tree line at the edge of my land looked like dark lace against the light sky.
When the telephone rang inside the house I reached for my cane, but the machine kicked in before I could make it across the foyer. I knew it was Pépé the moment he cleared his throat like a rumbly bullfrog, as though preparing to deliver a speech to a filled auditorium.
“Eh, bien, ma chère Lucie, c’est moi. Désolé que tu ne sois pas là.”
I threw myself in my mother’s favorite Queen Anne chair next to the demilune phone table, picked up the receiver, and cut off the answering machine. My grandfather’s voice, which would almost certainly be filtered through the acrid smoke of a Gauloise and a snifter of Armagnac, sounded subdued as it echoed through the two-story foyer of the old house.
“I’m here, Pépé,” I said in French. “I was outside watching the sunset.”
Across the hall in the parlor, the mantel clock chimed eight. Two in the morning in Paris. It would be at least another hour before Pépé, a notorious night owl, would be ready to go to bed.
“Is everything all right?” I asked. “How was your trip to Vietnam?”
“Formidable. A couple of vieux potes decided to rent a junk and sail the Halong Bay in the north. Did you know the name means ‘where the dragon descends to the sea’?” As usual, he didn’t wait for my reply. “It was spectacular, ma chère, the sea the color of emeralds and hundreds of stone grottoes rising from the water like cathedral spires or the scales on a dragon’s back. Someday we’ll go back together. You must see it.”
I smiled. Pépé kept in touch with a far-flung network known as “the old chums” who were friends from his years in the French diplomatic service and, before that, in the Resistance during World War II. No ten-countries-in-ten-days senior citizen package tour for him. My eighty-four-year-old grandfather chased dragons in exotic lagoons.
“I’d like that,” I said, “but I’m glad you’re back in Paris, even if it’s only for a little while. When are you going to Morocco? Sometime in the fall, isn’t it?”
Like the song went, you couldn’t keep him down on the farm after he’d seen “Paree.” In fact, it was hard enough keeping him in “Paree.” Ever since he lost my grandmother almost forty years ago, he’d been a restless soul bereft without the love of his life. The wanderlust and the trips were how he coped with loneliness.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “Morocco in September. A camel safari along the southern border, plus the usual cities … Fez, Rabat, Tangiers. But first I am coming to les États-Unis. I’m sorry to surprise you at the last minute, ma belle, but it just came up.”
I straightened up in my chair. “You’re coming here?”
I’d long ago stopped being astonished by my grandfather’s spur-of-the-moment trips, especially when he announced he was about to show up on my doorstep, but something in his voice said th
is time was different.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re already at the airport, aren’t you? On the plane?”
He chuckled and I heard him sip his drink.
“Not quite, but I am packing my valise. I arrive in Washington on Thursday afternoon. No need to put me up. I know how busy you are. I’ll stay in a hotel,” he said. “Though I would like you to come with me to a dinner party Friday night. Juliette and Charles Thiessman are having a few friends in to celebrate le quatorze juillet. Bastille Day. You know the Thiessmans, bien sûr?”
Old family friends, they were Pépé’s generation. I’d always found them hard to warm up to and the feeling seemed to be mutual. A dinner party at their home would be a very dull evening.
“Of course I do,” I said. “Though Charles has become quite a recluse in the past few years so I haven’t seen him for ages. Juliette pops into the shops in Middleburg every now and then. And you’re staying here, by the way, not in some hotel. We have this discussion every time you spring it on me that you’re arriving in the next few hours.”
“If you’re sure—”
“Pépé, you know I am. How long are you staying? Awhile, I hope?”
He sighed. “Not this time, chérie. I’m flying to San Francisco on Sunday to give a talk in a place called Monte Rio. It’s in Sonoma County, near the Russian River.”
I barely heard his description of the place. Another hit-and-run visit. Next time I’d tie him to a chair.
“Only three days? That’s all?”
“It looks that way.”
“Will you at least come to our Bastille Day party at the vineyard on Saturday night?”
“Of course. And I promise, the next visit I’ll stay longer.”
“You always say that.”
“You do know that airplanes also fly from Washington to Paris, n’est-ce pas? You remember flying? It’s very convenient, very quick,” he said. “Do you want to call Charles and tell him we’ll both be there on Friday?”
