by Carol Durand
“We’re still conducting an investigation, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the case at this time,” he said formally.
“Of course, I understand,” Missy said softly, overwhelmed. “I don’t have to go now, do I? I’d really love to have a shower and put on proper clothing before I leave the house, if that’s okay.”
“That’s perfectly fine,” the detective stood to go. “Take your time getting ready, and give me a call when you leave. I’ll meet you at the morgue. The identification process should be fairly quick,” he reassured her. It was the nicest he’d ever been since she met him, and she wondered if they were finally close to solving the case and realizing that she’d had no part in Cora Nesbitt’s death.
Chapter 14
Missy moved through her morning routine in a daze, shaken to the core by the news of yet another death, even if it was the death of a stranger. She showered, took Toffee for a short walk, and called Detective Johnson to let him know that she was headed for the morgue. When she pulled into the hospital parking lot, a wave of revulsion shook her at the thought of gazing upon a corpse. She took several deep breaths, walked into the main entrance of the hospital, and took the elevator to the basement, as Johnson had instructed her to do when she called. By the time she stepped out of the elevator, the detective was already there, waiting for her with a very serious look on his face. With Johnson stood the Coroner’s assistant, wearing rubber gloves and holding a small, white jar. The detective greeted her in a subdued manner, and, taking the small jar from the Coroner’s assistant, opened it, dipped a finger in and rubbed a strongly minty-smelling substance under his nose, coating his upper lip.
“You’ll want to do the same,” he said, holding the jar out to Missy.
“Why?” she recoiled a bit at the heavy, medicinal smell.
The Coroner’s assistant stepped forward and explained gently, “It’s for the smell. The body has not yet been embalmed, so there are certain odors present that most people find more than a little unpleasant.”
Missy cringed, wanting very much to turn and flee from this depressing place and uncomfortable situation, but instead, dipped her fingers in just like Johnson had done, and spread the oily jelly under her nose. The assistant closed the jar and turned to lead the way into a postmortem examination room. “Aren’t you going to use any?” she asked.
“After seeing several hundred, one gets accustomed to it,” the assistant answered quietly, opening the door to the room where a human form rested beneath an industrial green sheet. Missy stayed behind the woman from the Coroner’s office, not wanting to get any closer to the body.
“Ms. Gladstone, would you step over here please?” Detective Gladstone spoke, gesturing for her to come and stand beside him. Despite her extreme reluctance, Missy did as he asked, positioning herself near the head of the examination table.
The Coroner’s assistance stood at the other side of the table and looked at Missy. “Ready?” she asked, holding the corner of the sheet in her gloved hand. Missy shook her head, but Johnson said, ‘Yes’ in a manner that caused the woman to fold the sheet back, exposing the face of the dead man. Missy gasped, her hand going to her mouth as she recognized the stranger who had been hanging around her shop. Overcome, she ran from the room and leaned weakly against the wall of the corridor, dry heaving and crying. When Detective Johnson came out to check on her, she held her hand out, unable to speak, horrified.
“Do you recognize that man?” he asked quietly.
Missy nodded, swallowing convulsively.
“Was this the man who came into your store and called Cora Nesbitt?” he persisted.
She nodded again, recovering a bit, but still not quite herself. “Yes, it was,” she whispered.
“Okay,” he nodded. “Thank you Ms. Gladstone. Take as much time as you need – whenever you feel up to it, you’re free to go.”
“Thank you,” Missy replied weakly, moving slowly toward the elevator, holding on to the wall for support, desperately wanting to get as far away from this place as possible.
Chapter 15
Detective Chas Beckett stared hard at the report that had been faxed to him by his contact in California. According to the report, there was no such person as Echo Willis, but the name had been used as an alias by a woman reportedly trying to start a new life after a dangerous run-in with some very unsavory individuals. The woman had been a Jr. Executive with a well-known company in Silicon Valley, and had been dating a man, Albert Jenkins, who, unbeknownst to her, was associated with local drug distributors. Albie played the part of high roller a little too well, and she had gotten serious enough about the man to have moved in with him, the two of them enjoying the domestic bliss of a 7000 square foot home on the beach with an indoor/outdoor pool, until the day that she discovered that the love of her life had a very wicked temper, and was not afraid to work out his frustrations with his fists.
Her story was that she had tried to run, but Jenkins had kept her captive until some professional thugs came in to put him in his place because of massive debts owed to their boss. They roughed up the boyfriend badly enough that she seized her opportunity to escape, leaving the beaten man alive, but penniless, homeless and without a clue as to the whereabouts of his former love. The thing that didn’t add up for Chas was the total change in the woman’s persona. It was more than odd for a former business executive to suddenly adopt the lifestyle of a ‘life-on-the-fringe’ free-spirited bohemian who decided to move to Louisiana on a whim. Although, if she were trying to erase her former identity in order to not be found, she had gone about it in brilliant fashion, moving to a small obscure town and adopting a personality that was the furthest that one could get from what she had been. The woman’s real name, before she took the moniker ‘Echo Willis,’ was Constance Evans. Beckett had every intention of keeping an eye on her and finding out what she was really doing in Dellville, Louisiana.
“I had a date last night,” Echo confessed, delighted, when Missy came over for a rice cream ‘milkshake,’ a few days after her disturbing visit to the morgue. She hadn’t told anyone but Chas about it, and he felt that it was probably best that way.
“Really? That’s great! With whom?” Missy asked, digging into her Vanilla Bean Rice Milkshake.
“Ian Barker,” she announced proudly, as her friend cringed inwardly.
“Ah. That’s…nice. What did you two do?” She didn’t actually want to know, finding it difficult to believe that anyone could last for more than two minutes in the company of the obnoxious trust-fund boy, but was trying to sound interested for Echo’s sake.
“We went out to dinner at this cute little place called the Crawshack Redemption, do you know it?” she asked.
Missy swallowed a huge amount of ice cream, driving ice picks of pain through her brain. “I’ve heard of it,” she said vaguely, wanting to change the subject. “What did you do after dinner?”
“He took me to the house that he inherited from his aunt, and talked about all the ways he’s going to improve both the house and the land. He has such big plans and is so excited about the possibilities.”
“Echo, you do realize that the reason he inherited that house is because his aunt was murdered, right?” Missy was appalled at the thought that dear Mrs. Nesbitt hadn’t even cooled in her grave yet and Ian was already mentally moving into her home. The man had no soul.
“Yeah, it’s so sad, he showed me the exact spot where she died.”
“Really? Didn’t you think that was a little odd for a first date?”
“I try not to judge people, Missy. It was obviously on his mind, and he doesn’t seem to have anyone to talk with about it,” Echo shrugged it off.
Suddenly Missy no longer wanted her rice milkshake. “Yeah, I could see how that would happen,” she said softly, wanting to end the conversation. “Thanks for the shake, I’ve got to run. You should stop by the shop tomorrow, it’s Mango Madness Vegan Muffin day.”
“Sounds good,” Echo gr
inned. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Chapter 16
“Chas, I don’t care what anyone thinks, I need to talk to you, sooner rather than later,” Missy told the handsome detective on the phone after her conversation with Echo.
“Not a problem, pretty lady, I have some things that I want to share with you too,” Beckett replied.
“Can you just come over?” she was a bit embarrassed at the need in her voice.
“I think it’s probably best if we meet somewhere else. There’s a little tavern off of route 27 about 6 miles out of town..”
“Off a dirt road, tucked in behind an abandoned carriage house? Yeah, I know it. When should I head over there?” Missy interrupted, eager to see him.
“Ten minutes?”
“Perfect, I’ll see you then.” Despite the fact that Missy was meeting Chas in order to share what might just turn out to be important information regarding Cora Nesbitt’s murder, she was still looking forward to being in the comfort of his presence, and changed into a fresh outfit and brushed her hair until it shone in long golden waves about her shoulders.
Two good ol’ boys were bellied up to the bar at the Pit Stop tavern, where a hard-bitten woman with dyed blue-black hair and a stare that could frost a flirtatious man’s soul was tending bar, and country music whined dully in the background. Chas told Missy to grab a table in the corner, where they’d be out of sight and out of mind, giving them privacy from anyone who might’ve noticed their existence. He returned to the table with a Coke for himself and a sweet tea for Missy.
“Hitting the hard stuff tonight?” she teased, when she saw him with a soda.
“Guilty pleasure,” he grinned boyishly. “So what’s got you all aflutter this evening?” Beckett asked, gazing into her eyes in a manner that warmed her from head to toe.
“I had a rather disturbing conversation with Echo this evening that I think might be important.”
“Disturbing? Disturbing how?” he became all business.
“Well, she said that she had a date with Ian Barker, Cora Nesbitt’s nephew. After he took her to dinner, he gave her a tour of Cora’s house that he stands to inherit, and here’s the weird thing…she said that he pointed out to her the exact place that Cora died.”
Chas sat back, frowning. “Go on,” he said, listening intently.
“He couldn’t have known that information, Chas. He didn’t find his aunt’s body, her housekeeper did, and Detective Johnson told me that no one, outside of the police who investigated the scene, was being made privy to those kinds of details because it might hamper the investigation. I hate to say this, but the only way that Ian Barker could’ve known the precise spot where his aunt had died…”
“…Is if he was the one who killed her,” Beckett finished the thought. “That’s the missing link in the evidence,” he said, light dawning.
“Missing link?” Missy was confused.
“Although I wasn’t allowed to personally conduct any of the investigation on the case, due to my connection with you, Detective Johnson brought me in to help sort through the evidence and try to make some sense of what was going on. He knew that I wouldn’t be biased in my assessment, even if it ultimately implicated you, and he needed an extra set of eyes. After meeting your friend, Echo, something about her just didn’t seem to be adding up, so I had a law enforcement buddy of mine in California do some digging, and found out that the name Echo Willis was an alias, and that she had fled the state to escape a very abusive ex-boyfriend, who had ties to drug dealers and other assorted thugs.”
Missy’s eyes widened. “Echo came to Louisiana to hide?”
“Apparently,” Chas nodded. “And unfortunately, she didn’t cover her tracks well enough. Jenkins found her and has been stalking her for weeks.”
“What? He’s here? Oh my goodness, is Echo in danger?” Missy worried.
“Not any longer. The body you identified in the morgue was Albert Jenkins.”
It took a moment for Missy to register the full impact of Chas’s words, and when they sunk in, she felt faint and a bit nauseated. Dropping her head into her hands, she tried to puzzle out all of the implications. “So, the homeless guy that I gave a cupcake to was really a bad guy who followed Echo out here from California?” Beckett nodded. “So, then…did he actually kill Mrs. Nesbitt?”
“All of the evidence had been pointing in that direction. The fingerprints that he left on your phone, were a match to those left at Cora Nesbitt’s home. He was nowhere to be found after the murder, but you and Ben both saw him lurking about in the general vicinity of the ice cream shop on more than one occasion. There was a foul-smelling substance on his clothing when he died, and when we tested it, the lab came back with a very unusual result.”
“What was it?” Missy asked, breathless.
“Snake feces. Apparently Mr. Jenkins was the man who wrangled all of the snakes that were dumped into your shop. It turns out that one of his money-laundering businesses for the drug trade out in California had been a pet shop specializing in reptiles. He’d had experience in handling even the most venomous of snakes, and had apparently used them on more than one occasion to snuff out competitors in his particular line of work, but walked free because it couldn’t be proven.”
Missy shuddered at the thought of death by snake. “So, when you say that Ian Barker provided the missing link in the evidence, what did you mean?”
“Well, despite the fact that Albert Jenkins was a verified bad guy, who had definitely been in the wrong place at the wrong time, there were a few things that didn’t quite add up. The first and most obvious is motive. What reason could he possibly have to kill Mrs. Nesbitt? It made no sense, particularly if he was trying to maintain a low profile while he stalked his ex-girlfriend. Secondly, there was physical evidence that just didn’t fit.”
“Like what?”
“Like the finger that was in your peach basket. It belonged to Albert Jenkins. If he were the one making threats, why would he cut off his own finger to do it? We did scrapings of the material under the nail on the severed finger and found DNA samples that didn’t match his, almost as if there had been a struggle and he had scratched his adversary. At the crime scene, there was a heavy pewter candle-stick that the killer had used to strike Mrs. Nesbitt in the back of the head before pushing her down the stairs to make it look like an accident. There were fingerprints on the candlestick that didn’t match Albert’s, yours, or the housekeeper’s. We ran them through the national database and came up empty. Then there’s the matter of Albert turning up dead. I had staked out Sweet Love and saw a man pull up in a van after hours, go into the shop and come out shortly thereafter with a very large bundle. A body-sized bundle. I followed the van as closely as I could without being detected, but lost it in traffic once I got into a more populated area. I would bet that Albert had gone to the ice cream shop to lie in wait for Echo, and Ian followed him there to kill him. We’re still waiting for the autopsy to come back, so we’ll know more soon. My guess is that when we test the DNA that was under Albert Jenkins’ nails, and compare the fingerprints on the candlestick with those of Ian Barker, we’ll have our murderer.”
“But why would Ian kill his own aunt? I mean, I may think he’s a terrible human being, but she was his only living relative and she was always kind to him. And why, after that, would he kill Albert Jenkins, a stranger in town?” Missy was perplexed.
“You said yourself that Ian was a spoiled, entitled man, living off of his inheritance. I’m going to do some checking into his finances, but I would bet that he’s close to running out of money. Cora Nesbitt’s home, land and assets are considerable, and as her only living relative, Ian gets everything when she dies. It’s horrible to think about, but Ian may have planned to do this for quite some time, and seized the opportunity when a drifter came to town that he could frame for the murder.”
“How do you explain the severed finger?” Missy grimaced.
“Putting two and two together,
I’d say that Ian probably saw Jenkins in the house before he went out to the orchard to pick peaches, and killed his aunt after Albert left. He most likely then went out to where Jenkins was working and offered him a considerable amount of money to buy his silence. Jenkins accepted the deal, and Ian somehow had the notion that he was then in control of the drifter. He didn’t know that Albert had an agenda.”
“Why would Ian have cut off Albert’s finger though?”
“That may have been entirely personal. Jenkins had come all the way from California because of Echo, and Ian has clearly been interested in her from the first time he met her. I think Ian found out the real reason that the drifter had come to town and probably wanted to let Albert know that he was in control and would take drastic measures to keep him in his place. Men have done stranger things to protect the woman they love,” Chas gazed at Missy warmly, making her blush. “Using the finger to scare you was just a bonus that Ian hadn’t counted on, but enjoyed after you rejected him pretty soundly a couple of times. In his twisted mind, he probably saw it as a harmless prank.”
“Do you think the snakes were a prank as well?”
“Doubtful. I think Jenkins probably did that one on his own because he saw your growing relationship with Echo as a threat, and he may have been exacting revenge because you recognized him loitering and chased him down the street.”
“Do you think Ian is a danger to Echo?” Missy worried.
“Probably not. I think Echo just makes very poor choices when it comes to the men in her life,” Chas shook his head. “Well, sweet Missy, as much as I’d love to stay and chat with the most beautiful woman in Lausanne Parish, I need to get to the office and call Johnson in to brief him on all of this so that we can bring Ian Barker in for questioning.”
