What the Fly Saw

by Frankie Y. Bailey

30

  Monday, January 27, 2020

  7:45 A.M.

  “The question,” McCabe said to her father as she closed her ORB, “Is how she did it. I spent half the night reading everything I could find about the Fox sisters and other self-proclaimed mediums from the nineteenth century on. But if Luanne Woodward pulled off a trick with the bell when her hands were being held on each side, I don’t know how she did it.”

  Angus reached for the dog’s leash. “You could take Bigfoot here for a walk before you go. He might have some useful thoughts on the subject.”

  McCabe rubbed the dog behind his left ear, one of his favorite spots. “His name is not Bigfoot. And even if I didn’t need to get to work, you should get the exercise.” McCabe reached for her jacket. “How do you think she did it?”

  “You should have asked your brother that question yesterday when he was here for lunch.”

  “I was trying not to think or talk about work on the one day I had off. But you’re right. He might have had some ideas. There must have been some type of control device.”

  “Or an accomplice.”

  “Olive Cooper admitted they had been planning something, but her hands were being held, too. Ted Thornton on one side, and Jonathan Burdett on the other.” McCabe leaned over and kissed her father on his bald spot. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Call your brother and run it by him. With all the gadgets he comes up with, he ought to be able to figure this one out.” Angus’s blue gaze under his white brows was all innocence when he added, “Unless, of course, the woman did manage to conjure up a malevolent spirit from the other side.”

  “Who must have been moving quickly to do all he, she, or it did within those few seconds.”

  “Sit down,” Angus told the dog. “We aren’t ready to go yet.” He looked up at McCabe from his place on the sofa. “How come you’re worrying about this when you’ve got a murder to investigate?”

  “Because I need something else to think about other than how little progress we’re making on the murder investigation.” She waved her hand. “On my way. See you later.”

  * * *

  At her desk in the station house, McCabe leaned sideways to pick up her mug. She and Baxter were watching and listening to her brother, Adam. He was talking to them from his office at UAlbany in the School of Biotechnology and Robotics. For the past seventeen minutes—picking up various devices from his work table to illustrate—he had been explaining the science of how one could make a bell rise from a table, ring, and then crash down.

  McCabe sent a glance in Baxter’s direction. He was leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head. He was probably thinking Adam looked more like a swashbuckler than a scientist. Clad in a black fisherman’s sweater, Adam was wearing the black eye patch with the tiny Jolly Roger that Mai had given him. That patch, and the others in his collection, was a substitute for the prosthesis he refused to have for his missing eye.

  Even though she had invited Baxter to sit in, she was feeling protective of her brother. And that, McCabe thought, was ridiculous. Adam was more than capable of putting anyone who stepped out of line in his place.

  Baxter cleared his throat. “Uhh, so Professor … Adam … what you’re saying is that—?”

  Adam smiled. “Sorry for the minilecture. What I’m saying is that I agree with what my sister suggested at the start of this discussion. Even with her hands being held, your medium could have not only levitated the bell but created the other special effects. As I’ve just explained, causing an object to rise typically involves the use of magnetic forces. There is also some promising research using sound waves. And there are a few other possibilities. For example, your medium might have used a verbal command.”

  “A verbal command?” Baxter unhooked his hands from behind his head. “She did ask Kevin to ring the bell if he was there.”

  “Yes,” McCabe said. “But she didn’t say anything that would be an instruction to the bell to rise.”

  “Not necessary,” Adam said. “Any preestablished phrase would have worked.”

  “Or you said the bell could have been on a timer,” Baxter said.

  “A timer that could have been built into the bell itself.”

  McCabe said, “Thanks, Adam. This has been really helpful. We should let you get ready for your class.”

  He smiled. “This was an unusual diversion.”

  “Good meeting you,” Baxter said.

  “You, too. See you later, sis.”

  McCabe glanced at Baxter. “And thank you for behaving well.”

  Baxter grinned. “Would I embarrass you, partner? To tell the truth, I sort of enjoyed that minilecture your brother gave us. He always remembered to explain when he used a four-syllable word.”

  “He enjoys teaching almost as much as doing research. So, what we’ve learned is that it would have been possible for Luanne to pull off a hoax with the bell. And if she could do the bell, she could figure out how to rig the door.”

  “Okay,” Baxter said. “But where does knowing this get us?”

  “I was thinking about that when I was driving in. I asked Luanne point-blank if she had pulled a hoax. She looked me in the eye and lied. If she would lie about one thing…”

  “That’s what I still don’t get. She and Olive admitted to you that they had set up something they planned to use if Luanne couldn’t contact Kevin. If they were conspiring, why would Luanne have pulled a hoax on her own?”

  “Maybe she was trying to convince Olive, too.”

  “Okay, so she might be trying to pull off some kind of con involving her wealthy benefactor. But where does that get us with our murder investigation?”

  “No idea. But what I keep coming back to is Luanne’s interest in Kevin. She came to his funeral.”

  “A lot of people would have been interested enough to come to a murdered undertaker’s funeral if they could have gotten in. That’s why the press was hanging around outside.”

  “I know that, but Luanne—”

  “Olive invited her to the funeral. And maybe Luanne saw Kevin’s unfortunate demise as her lucky break. But even if she were planning a con, wait for it…” Baxter did a drum roll on his desk with his fingertips. “Luanne has eight people who were snowed in with her at a house party in Boston who can provide her with an airtight alibi on the night Kevin was murdered.”

  “She has an alibi. But what if she also has an accomplice?”

  “Who killed Kevin while Luanne was in Boston? Okay, where is this accomplice you just conjured up?”

  McCabe held up her hands. “I don’t know where he or she is. And if he or she does exist, I don’t know what motive this accomplice and Luanne would have for killing Kevin—unless it was to pave the way for a con involving Olive. But since we have no other leads at the moment, would you please humor me?”

  “Okay. Since we’ve spent most of the morning going through all of our bits and pieces of evidence and still have zilch. What do you want to do?”

  “I want to pay Luanne another visit. An unannounced visit.”

  31

  Snowflakes fluttered in the air as Baxter pulled to a stop in front of the house Luanne Woodward was renting. “Her car’s in the driveway,” he said. “Good sign.”

  On the front steps, McCabe paused with her hand extended toward the doorbell. “Do you hear that?”

  “Smoke detector?”

  McCabe rang the bell and then began banging on the door. She turned the doorknob, hoping it might be unlocked.

  Baxter said, “I’ll go around back and see if I can get in that way.”

  McCabe pounded on the door again. Then she walked around the side of the house, opposite the way Baxter had gone. There was a window she might be able to break.

  She went back to the front door, reaching it just as Baxter opened it from the inside. “The back door was open,” he said. “Luanne’s lying halfway out the door in her nightgown, unconscious. The smoke alarm is from a roast she had in the oven.”
/>   He had his ORB in his hand, “Dispatch, we’ve got…”

  McCabe ran into the kitchen. The smell of burnt meat filled the room. Baxter had left the back door open to clear the smoke. The kitchen was as cold as outside. McCabe dropped to her knees beside Luanne Woodward, feeling for her pulse.

  “On their way,” Baxter said.

  “We need a blanket to cover her,” McCabe said. “We shouldn’t move her.”

  “I’ll grab one out of her bedroom.”

  McCabe looked down at the woman, who was clad in a white cotton nightgown with pink lace at the wrists and throat. “Hang on, Luanne. Help’s on the way.”

  Baxter came back with a blue thermal blanket. He passed it down to McCabe. “She threw up on the floor beside her bed.”

  “She must have been really sick not to clean it up.”

  “Not to mention not turning off the stove before her pot roast burned.”

  “We’d better touch base with Lieutenant Dole and let him know what’s going on,” McCabe said.

  “I’ll tag him while I’m moving our vehicle out of the paramedics’ way,” Baxter said.

  McCabe glanced out the open back door as the wind picked up, whirling the snowflakes. The temperature had fallen into the twenties last night. How long had Luanne been lying there?

  McCabe tried to construct the timeline in her mind. The stove was an old-fashioned burner/oven model in keeping with the retro ’50s décor, the kind McCabe’s grandmother used to have. If Luanne had been planning to have the roast for Sunday dinner, she would have put it in at around midday. When it was almost done, she might have turned the oven down low to keep it warm until she was ready to eat.

  Baxter came back. “The lieutenant said to check in after we get her to the hospital.”

  “Did you notice the oven setting?” McCabe asked.

  Baxter gave her exactly the look she expected. “The what?”

  “When you came into the kitchen,” McCabe said. “The smoke alarm was on—”

  “And I used the broom handle to turn it off.” He pointed. “And that mitt thing to grab the pan out of the oven and put it on top of the stove.”

  “And now the oven’s turned off. Did you turn it off when you took the roast out of the oven?”

  Baxter frowned. “Yeah, I guess I did. The red light was on.”

  “Did you notice the temperature setting when you turned it off? It’s on the knob.”

  “Oh … that oven setting. No.” Baxter paused. “I was thinking about letting you in, and getting help for Luanne.”

  “No problem,” McCabe said, seeing his chagrin. “I was just wondering if maybe Luanne had felt ill after she put the roast in and turned it down really low while she lay down to rest. If that was what happened, the roast might have been baking for quite a while—if it were a large roast—before it burned enough to set the smoke alarm off.”

  “Maybe that was why she came into the kitchen,” Baxter said. “To turn off the oven.”

  “That’s possible,” McCabe said. “In fact, that would explain why she was in here in her nightgown. She woke up, vomited beside her bed. Then maybe she thought of the roast in the oven and came in to turn it off. And, maybe, she was also going to get what she needed to clean up the vomit.”

  “Question is why she opened the back door and started out of it.”

  McCabe looked down at Luanne. She felt for her pulse again.

  She said to Baxter, “This house is spotless. Luanne is probably the kind of woman my mother used to call ‘house proud.’ If a woman like that felt like she was about to throw up, she’d head for the back door and do it outside rather than on her clean floor.”

  Baxter pointed. “The sink’s right over there.”

  McCabe wrinkled her nose. “Food and dishes are washed in the kitchen sink, Michael.”

  “Yeah, but you can always wash—”

  The sound of sirens alerted them.

  The paramedics rushed in and went through their standard process of evaluation and preparing the patient for transport.

  McCabe knew the female member of the team from the days when they’d both been rookies. “Vicky, she threw up in the bedroom. Do you need to see that?”

  Vicky Nathan glanced up from her work, her gaze meeting McCabe’s. She told her partner, her own counterpart to Baxter, “I’m just going to get a specimen. Back in a moment, then we’ll be ready to move.”

  In the bedroom, Nathan slipped on another pair of gloves and took a small specimen container from her kit. She knelt down and scooped up the watery vomit that seemed to have a trace of blood. “So what did you want to talk about?” she asked McCabe.

  “What do you think’s wrong with her?”

  “You know I’m not supposed to speculate about that. But—off the record—it looks like it could be another case of cholera.” She stood up and dropped the specimen container into her bag. “What’s up with this one?”

  “The murdered undertaker case Baxter and I are working on. We stopped by for another interview with your patient.”

  “Is she a suspect?”

  “We aren’t sure what she is at this point.”

  Nathan nodded. “We’d better get rolling.”

  “Do you think she’ll make it?”

  “Right now, she’s holding her own. But you know how that goes.”

  “If she should regain consciousness and say anything on the way—”

  “Record it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Nathan and her partner carried Luanne Woodward out, and a few minutes later the sound of a siren signaled their departure.

  McCabe and Baxter had followed them to the door. McCabe stepped out on the walk, glancing up and down the street. No one had come outside. Maybe Woodward had not lived there long enough for her neighbors to feel that kind of concern. And it was a Monday. Most of them were probably at work or elsewhere.

  She glanced again at the house across the street. Had a curtain fluttered back into place at one of the upstairs windows?

  “Let’s have a quick look around before we head to the hospital,” she told Baxter.

  “What are we looking for?” he asked as he followed her back inside.

  “We don’t have a search warrant,” McCabe said. “And we need to keep that in mind. But we do have a medical emergency, and we can look for anything that might help in the diagnosis of her illness.”

  “It would be neglect of duty not to,” Baxter said.

  “You check her medicine cabinet for any prescription medication. I’m going to have a look in the kitchen. Let’s make this fast.”

  “Meet you at the front door in five minutes.”

  “Gloves,” McCabe said, handing him a pair from her field bag.

  “Thanks.”

  In the kitchen, McCabe closed the back door. Then she moved to the center of the room. She had been accurate in what she had said to Baxter. Luanne’s kitchen was spotless: Labeled spice bottles in a rank. Gleaming small appliances in primary colors displayed in an open cabinet.

  McCabe slipped on her own gloves and opened the refrigerator. Cooked collard greens in a glass container. She took the container out and set it on the counter and reached for what looked like a foil-covered pie.

  Chocolate pecan. Almost half of it gone.

  She set it on the counter beside the greens and started opening cabinets.

  Nothing else until she got to the trash can in the corner. A gleaming metal can with a foot-operated lid.

  The cardboard box was there on top. McCabe pulled it out. Bingo, as her partner was fond of saying. The box Luanne’s pie had come in. Plain, white cardboard, but no bakery name or any other identification. Could be from a farmer’s market, but they usually used labels or stamps. If your family or guests loved the dessert, they wanted you to be able to tell them where you bought it.

  “What’s in the box?” Baxter asked from the doorway.

  “I think the pie on the counter came in it. Find any medication? />
  “Vitamins, aspirin, cod liver oil … and this.” He held up a small plastic bag. “Seems our medium likes to get mellow.”

  “In keeping with her décor. From what I’ve read, marijuana was already becoming popular in the 1950s. But I can’t quite imagine Luanne sitting in a jazz club. Of course, it might be medicinal.”

  “No label. But it looks like good, quality stuff.”

  “You can tell by looking?” McCabe asked, as she slid the foiled-covered pie into one of the brown paper bags that she had found neatly folded in a drawer.

  “I spent two and a half years working Vice, remember? I know my drugs.”

  “Then I’ll take your word for the quality. Let’s bring it along, in case her doctor wants a look.”

  “Would I be far off, partner, if I guessed you aren’t in the habit of getting mellow?”

  “No tolerance. A beer or two or an occasional glass of wine is about my limit.”

  “And, of course, you do prefer to keep a clear head.”

  “Never know when you’re going to need one, do you?”

  32

  “I thought that since it was a medical emergency and we don’t know what made her ill…” McCabe listened while her boss talked. “Yes, sir…”

  McCabe gestured for Baxter to turn at the next light. “Station house,” she mouthed. “Yes, sir, on our way.”

  “What did the lou say?” Baxter asked.

  “He wants us to drop the pie and the other items off at FIU before we go to the hospital.”

  “Didn’t want us to leave the grass locked up in the car, huh?”

  “He didn’t think being left in the car would do the pie any good, either. And, as he said, the sooner Delgardo’s techs get busy, the sooner we’ll know what we have.”

  Baxter shot a glance at the page she had pulled up on her ORB. “What are you looking at?”

  “Poisons and symptoms. The lou asked if I thought Luanne had been poisoned.”

  “Or your pal, the paramedic, could be right. It could be cholera.”

  “Yeah, but remember, that was off the record.”

  Midafternoon traffic was heavy, but moving. Baxter pulled into the station house parking lot less than ten minutes later.