A Star is Dead

by Elaine Viets

  I opened my DI case, put on my latex gloves and photographed the death scene. Lydia had already given me her mother’s demographic data – age, birth date, marital status, even her Social Security number. The paramedics had pronounced Vera dead at 11:17 that morning.

  I noted my arrival time, and that the decedent was in the second-floor bedroom, face up in a double bed adjacent to the east wall. The furnace was rumbling, and the ambient temperature was sixty-one degrees. I got the same temperature on the bed. Vera kept her room cold. I photographed the thermostat in the hall. It had the same temperature.

  I examined the body from head to toe. I checked her mouth for ‘burns’ or irritated areas, in case she’d swallowed a corrosive substance such as Drano.

  Vera’s arms and the backs of both hands were bruised from what appeared to be needle sticks. Her left hand had a livid purple contusion three inches long and two inches wide. Her right arm had a yellowing five-inch by three-inch contusion, and a small – one-inch by two-inch – bruise on the back of her right hand. She even had a two-inch needle-stick bruise on a big vein in her right ankle. The local phlebotomists must have used pitchforks on the poor woman. I wondered if Vera’s veins were collapsing from the chemo and the constant blood tests.

  Jace helped me roll her over. I lifted her gown and saw the large purple mark on her left side. That was livor mortis. Judging by the marks, Vera must have died in the fetal position. Jace and I left her face up on the bed.

  I returned to my form. It wanted to know the ‘location of medicine containers at the scene.’

  An empty bottle that once held thirty Percocet tablets was on the nightstand by the bed. The label said these were five milligrams, and the decedent should take ‘1 or 2 tablets every 6 hours as needed for pain.’ Next to the Percocet bottle was an empty bottle for zolpidem. The label said it had contained thirty ‘5 milligram tablets for insomnia.’ Both medications were prescribed by Doc Bartlett. I logged them on my medications form.

  Next to the nightstand lamp with swags of tasseled maroon silk was a nearly empty bottle of sherry – Fernando de Castilla Palo Cortado Antique. The good stuff, selling for sixty bucks a bottle. I wondered if Vera had kept the sherry upstairs, or if she had to go past those grinning gargoyles to get her last drink.

  The pill bottles and the sherry were bagged. They’d go to the ME.

  A glass half-full of a clear liquid that looked and smelled like water was also on the table. I poured the liquid into a Tupperware container and bagged the glass.

  Between the bed and the table I caught a flash of powder blue, swathed in the bed’s maroon velvet draperies.

  ‘Jace, look at this,’ I said, as I pulled out a vintage Kotex box, the blue one with the white rose on the side, with my gloved hands.

  ‘Why would an old woman need Kotex?’ Jace asked.

  We pulled back the lid on the cardboard box. Inside, under yellowing white cotton pads, was a note on thick cream stationery engraved with Vera’s name. The handwriting looked like a spider had crawled across the page. It said:

  My Darling Daughter,

  I cannot go on any longer. I know you want me to start another round of chemo, but I can’t go through with it. The cancer has spread to my bones and the pain is unceasing. Not even the joy of holding my first grandson is enough to overcome it.

  I am so tired. I want to be with your father, my beloved Thomas. I hope God will forgive me for trying to escape this unbearable pain. You have been a kind and caring daughter, everything a mother could want in a child. I pray that you will forgive me for taking the easy way out.

  Your loving mother, Vera

  ‘Poor woman sure didn’t take the easy way out,’ I said.

  ‘But she is definitely a suicide,’ Jace said. ‘Her daughter’s not going to like that.’

  ‘That decision is up to the ME,’ I said. ‘Evarts Evans has been known to rule that obvious suicides were accidental deaths, out of consideration for the families.’

  ‘And I bet he’s especially considerate to the one percenters,’ Jace said.

  ‘You’re catching on to the ways of the Forest,’ I said. ‘I’ll bag her note and record that we found it.’

  ‘Think the daughter hid it here?’ Jace asked.

  ‘I bet we’ll find her prints on it. This note may be why she was so upset when we suggested her mother was a suicide.’

  ‘Stupid hiding place,’ Jace said. ‘Did she think we’d be too embarrassed to look into a Kotex box?’

  I couldn’t answer that question. Personally, I thought Vera deserved the benefit of the doubt. Who knows? Maybe in the throes of her long, drawn-out death, she really did wish she hadn’t committed suicide.

  I answered the rest of the questions on the form. No substances in the room were ‘out of place.’ Those could be gasoline, pesticides, chemicals, cleaning agents and more. I once found a jug of antifreeze on a kitchen sink. The woman said she’d just bought it at the supermarket and forgot to take it to the garage. Turned out she’d poured a hefty shot of antifreeze into her husband’s beer. Her late husband.

  Jace and I didn’t find much after that except for two gray wigs in Vera’s habitual severe style. In her medicine chest was Pepto-Bismol, aspirin, corn plasters, Cortisone cream, and cancer-related medications. I logged them all and bagged everything, even the corn plasters.

  Jace and I searched the drawers, tables, cabinets and waste baskets for prescription bottles, tablets, or parts of capsules. We found nothing. Vera had not been stockpiling medications or getting the same drug from more than one doctor, both signs of someone contemplating suicide.

  At last the paperwork was finished and the body removal service arrived. Lydia wept in the hallway as her mother was carried out. I wondered if she was relieved that she was finally free.

  It was three in the afternoon, and I’d dealt with death all day. Vera’s death was sad, but she was a woman in unendurable pain. Butch was determined to find justice for the old soldier who died in the vacant lot. Becky’s death bothered me the most. The homeless woman had been starting her life over when she was murdered.

  Who killed her? And why? Where did she get those two hundred-dollar bills? What did she know about the murder of Jessica Gray? Why did Becky tell me: It’s not the red – it’s the blue?

  NINETEEN

  I slept until almost ten o’clock the next morning. I didn’t have to work today, so I lingered over my toast and coffee. The local paper nearly ruined my morning. The Chouteau Forest Gazette’s front-page headline blared CUBAN HAIR STYLIST CHARGED WITH MURDER OF SUPERSTAR JESSICA GRAY.

  Mario was an American citizen and a respected businessman, but you’d never guess it from the story. The paper made him sound like a Castro-planted assassin. Bail was denied. The Forest was up in arms that Jessica Gray, an international star, had been killed in their town by a Cuban. A gay one, too.

  Naturally, Greiman took all the credit for the arrest. He was grinning on the front page, posed in front of the cop shop. Across from him was a glamorous photo of Jessica, smiling her approval. Mercifully, there was no photo of Mario or his salon.

  I couldn’t read any more. My broken cell phone was on the kitchen table, staring at me like a dead eye. I had a hard time prying open the back to take the battery out, but I finally did it, took out the battery, then put it back in, and tried to start it. Nothing. So much for Katie’s tip. To make myself useful, I packed up the remains of Clare’s Bavarian cream cake. I’d stop by to check on Clare and see if she still wanted me to take it to a lab for analysis. The layer cake, capped with white mounds of whipped cream and oozing cherry sauce, looked too luscious to waste. But I wasn’t about to eat it. Not after what happened to Clare.

  It was a chilly gray morning, with a weak sun trying to push through leaden clouds. I shivered in my heavy coat. My car door creaked in the cold and the car started reluctantly.

  Clare lived in a white stone Edwardian mansion on an estate about two miles from the Du Pres spread
where I lived. Her formal rooms were virtually unchanged since her grandmother’s day. Clare and her husband had held soirees and musical evenings in her salon, and dinners for twelve in the dining room. Since his death, Clare rarely gave parties, except for her family.

  Now Clare spent most of her time in the sunroom at the back of the house, an informal light-filled room comfortably furnished with overstuffed couches and needlepoint pillows, and lined with bookcases and clouds of white orchid plants.

  Clare was sitting propped up on a fat navy-blue couch, wrapped in a red plaid blanket, watching TV. Her color was good and her snowy white hair was in its customary chignon. A Spode tea service was on a table next to the couch.

  ‘Welcome, dear,’ she said. ‘Join me for a cup of tea. Cook made her famous lemon cookies.’

  It was a command, and I obeyed. She used a silver bell to ring Cook for an extra cup and it was quickly delivered. The tea was a smoky lapsang souchong, and the tart, fresh-baked cookies were a good compliment.

  Clare turned off the television with the remote, and poured me a cup. Then she said, ‘I assume you’re here to find out how I’m doing. I’m much better, dear.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that. You’re looking better.’

  ‘I am. The rash is nearly gone.’

  I didn’t remember seeing a rash. I said, ‘Do you still want me to have your cake tested at the Forest lab?’

  ‘Absolutely! I still get mad thinking about what happened. Those ingrates!’ Her face darkened and a frown appeared on that papery white brow. She stopped for a sip of tea, then restarted her tirade.

  ‘They knew. The whole family knows. I’ve been allergic to peanuts since I was a child. I was five when I nearly died at a birthday party because Aunt Cora scraped the peanut topping off a cupcake and gave it to me. She thought it wouldn’t make any difference. I was lucky her husband was a doctor.

  ‘I’m so sensitive I can have a bad reaction to peanut residue that an ordinary person cannot see, smell, or even taste. That’s why I do not fly that nice airline that features peanut snacks. I know they won’t serve peanuts to passengers if someone has allergies, but even a tiny crumb could kill me!’

  She sat back on the couch, then said, ‘As soon as I can get around on my own steam, I’m making an appointment to see my lawyer.’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s a bit hasty?’ I asked.

  ‘HASTY! Trying to kill one’s mother is hasty!’ Clare gripped her fragile teacup so hard I was afraid it would shatter in her hand. I tried desperately to find a way to calm her. My mother used to be good at this.

  ‘Clare, disinheriting your children could destroy your family,’ I said.

  ‘What family? What kind of children want to kill their mother? I’ve raised monsters, I tell you. A pair of monsters.’

  I tried to remember the teenaged Trey and Jemima in school. Both had thick blond hair and enviably clear skin when the rest of us were spotted with zits. They had an inbred sense of entitlement and they collected all the honors the school could hand out. But neither one was mean. A little spoiled maybe, but not monsters. Not unless they’d changed dramatically since school.

  ‘And why haven’t they called me?’ I heard the hurt in Clare’s wail.

  ‘Because they’re busy with their lives,’ I said. ‘Jemima has a job and children, and Trey’s in Singapore. The time difference alone would make calls difficult, especially if he’s in meetings. I’m sure they’re both working on a plan to help you.’

  ‘Humph!’ Clare said. ‘More like a plan to help themselves to what’s left of my money. I tell you, Angela, whenever I think about that trip to the hospital, I’m just furious. What a sneaky, humiliating way to kill me!’

  Her eyes blazed with fury and I feared she’d call her lawyer right then. ‘I don’t understand why you’re being so stubborn, Angela. My cake was poisoned, and that’s that.’

  Clare’s insistence that her children were killers was something out of a fever dream – the paranoia of an old woman. I needed proof before I condemned Trey and Jemima, and the tests on the cake would be proof. I played my final card.

  ‘Clare, promise me, in memory of your friendship with my mother, that you won’t disinherit your children until I know more.’

  There was a long, heavy silence. I listened to the old clock tick and sipped my tea. I crunched a cookie. Clare sipped her tea, lost in thought, then said, ‘All right, my dear. Since you asked, I’ll hold off until the end of this week. After that, I make no promises. I’m not getting any younger, you know. Have that cake analyzed and send me the bill.’

  Relief washed over me. I stood up and said, ‘Thank you, Clare. I’m off to the lab now.’

  Clare let me squeeze her hand and said, ‘I’m only delaying out of regard for your mother, Angela. For the life of me, I cannot understand why you’re insisting on investigating this matter.’

  I thanked her for the tea and cookies and left. As I walked to my car, I couldn’t figure why I was so insistent, either. I just knew I had to do it. I’d lost both the husband I adored and my mother, but I had to save some part of my small world.

  I dropped the cake off at the lab and ordered a full poisons test, including toxins, drugs, heavy metals, carcinogenic substances like asbestos, lead, and unknown substances. And peanuts. Especially peanuts. And because Clare was paying for this, I made it a rush order. The lab made me put down a hundred-dollar deposit and promised to have the results in three days.

  TWENTY

  About eleven o’clock, I stopped off at SOS to see my friend Katie. The assistant ME was in her office, drinking the bitter brew that passed for coffee there and eating a glazed doughnut. Detective Butch Chetkin was sitting on the edge of her desk, chomping another.

  Katie’s plain face lit with a smile when she saw me. ‘Krispy Kremes,’ she said, nodding at a grease-stained white box on her desk. ‘Butch brought me a dozen. We’re celebrating the take-down. Have one.’

  I did. It was still warm, a tasty little sugar blast. I sat gingerly in the wire contraption that passed for her guest chair.

  ‘What take-down?’ I asked.

  ‘Evelyn DuMont,’ Butch said. ‘We got her this morning. And all the neighbors were outside, too.’ Butch smiled. It was not a nice smile. ‘Led her out in handcuffs.’

  I could see that mean old woman with her shellacked gray hair and thin slit of a mouth, being marched to the car.

  ‘You got her for killing that poor homeless soldier. Good. I hope she dies of shame.’

  ‘She better,’ Katie said, her eyes flaring with rage. ‘I did the post. If I get my hands on that bitch, I’ll strangle her. That poor bastard died of rat poison! Rat poison. Vomiting and shitting blood. Alone in a field!’

  The panhandler’s awful death scene flashed in my mind, and I tried to block it.

  ‘Harry Galloway was a hero,’ Katie said, ‘a decorated veteran with a purple heart and a bronze star. That shrapnel wound caused him pain every day of his life. And that dumb fuck Evelyn put him down like vermin.’ She was shaking she was so angry.

  ‘How do you know it was rat poison?’ I asked. I knew it was too early for a tox report.

  ‘The lab found the pellets in the sauce on that damned sausage sandwich. Looks like d-Con. My guess is Galloway ate it four days ago.’

  ‘That’s when the sandwich was delivered, according to the housekeeper, Brenda Crandle,’ Butch said.

  Poor Brenda, I thought. She’ll blame herself for that man’s death, even though it wasn’t her fault.

  ‘How did you get Evelyn?’ I asked, reaching for another doughnut.

  ‘I talked with Brenda again,’ Butch said. ‘She told me that after her employer made that sandwich, she wiped the foil with a paper towel, which the housekeeper thought was odd. Brenda also said no poisons of any kind were kept in the kitchen. Those were stored in the garden shed, and Miss Crandle never went in there. Brenda said her employer bought rat poison at the Forest Garden Shop a month ago because a b
ag of dog food that was improperly stored in the garage had attracted rats.

  ‘So I served a warrant,’ Butch said, and polished off another doughnut.

  ‘Only Brenda’s and the victim’s prints were found on the foil sandwich wrapper, but I found the leftover sauce in the freezer and the d-Con on a shelf in the garden shed. And guess what? There was a big fat set of prints on the rat poison box – in red sauce. Evelyn’s! And no one else’s prints on the poison box but hers.’

  ‘You got her!’ I said. ‘Did Evelyn confess?’

  ‘Nope. She clammed up and demanded a lawyer.’ While Butch demolished another celebratory doughnut, I questioned Katie. ‘Did Harry Galloway die as soon as he ate the poisoned sandwich?’

  ‘Looks like he died three days later,’ Katie said. ‘Best guess is he was dead about twenty-four hours when he was found.’

  ‘Why the delay, if he ate poison four days ago?’ I asked.

  ‘Rat poison has a delayed reaction. The decedent probably didn’t have any symptoms for two or three days after he ate the sandwich. He’d also eaten roast beef and other food – potato chips, tangerines and cookies. I’ve sent the contents of his stomach to be analyzed, but I’m betting they’re OK and only the sausage sandwich was poisoned.’

  ‘If Evelyn’s smart, she’ll plead out,’ I said. ‘A Forest jury will have people she’s had fined and slapped with summonses, thanks to her stupid Beautification Committee.’

  ‘They’ll put her away for a long, long time,’ Katie said.

  Butch left to go back to work, and Katie and I settled for a talk over the rest of the doughnuts.

  ‘I heard you brought Clare Rappaport into the ER the other night,’ she said.

  ‘The hospital gossip mill is amazing,’ I said.

  ‘Hey, you rarely come in with anyone who can walk out of the hospital again. That’s news.’

  I told her about Clare. She took a sip of her coffee and winced, probably at the taste.

  ‘Angela, I know Clare is a family friend,’ she said, ‘but don’t get involved with this fight to disinherit her kids. It’s the law of the third dog. You don’t come between a mother and her children.’