Evidence of Murder (29 page)

“What happened then?” Frank prompted.

“He snatched the comic off the counter and started to leave. I pulled it out of his hands.”

Theresa said, “A piece ripped off. He had it in his fist.”

“Did it? I didn’t notice. He stalked out of the house. I put on my rubber boots and followed him, not difficult in the snow.

I was screaming at him. I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t notice—but then it wasn’t anything new. He kept walking away, ignoring me.” Her chin sank to her hand again. Frank scribbled a note, obviously not concerned with Miranda rights. Technically, since Ellen Wheeler had not been placed under arrest, they did not apply. But Theresa knew anyway that she would not recant her confession. Unlike Evan, Jacob’s mother had not tried to destroy the evidence of her guilt. She had brought it home and kept it safe.

“He always ignored me, as if I only existed on this planet to serve him. I gave him
life
. And then I gave him the best life I could provide. Why the hell did I deserve so much contempt?” She didn’t look to them for an answer. Theresa guessed she had given up expecting one.

“So you circled around the back of the tree to get in front of him.”

“Yes.”

“And picked something up?”

Ellen took a while to answer that one, a sob brewing underneath the skin of her face. “A piece of wood. A branch, I suppose, but it was fairly big. I don’t know why. I didn’t even know it was in my hand until I hit him with it.”

The sob began to leak out, in tiny but steady teardrops.

“What happened then?” Theresa prompted.

“He stood there and glared. I saw blood start to ooze from under his hair, but he didn’t seem hurt. Furious enough to kill me, though he didn’t raise a hand. I was so angry”—she looked to Theresa for understanding, one mother to another—“and at the same time I was
horrified
. I’d never struck him before in his life, never. I couldn’t believe it.”

Theresa had been there, so angry with her child that she had felt sickened at herself for such rage. But never, thank God, to the point of violence.

“I walked past him. He didn’t say a word. I threw the branch away somewhere, I don’t remember where, I just didn’t want to touch it anymore. I turned and looked back, but he didn’t follow me, didn’t want to come home. He had sat down next to the tree.”

Now she turned her face up to Frank. “That’s what happened, isn’t it? My baby sat down by that tree and just died. I came back here and drank coffee and let him freeze to death.”

His mouth worked once or twice before he found a gentle way to ask, “You didn’t go back to check on him?”

She wiped the moisture from her face with a quick, cat’s-paw-like gesture. “I wasn’t going to go chasing after him this time. He was going to have to face the fact that he needed me, or he could…freeze to death. The one time I decided to be firm with him and stick to it, and he died. He died.”

She let her head fall back against the armchair, spent. The story had ended. Theresa didn’t know whether she should feel sympathy or revulsion, or what would be wrong with both.

“Ellen Wheeler,” Frank began. “I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Jacob Wheeler…”

“It’s about time.” Rachael slammed her textbook shut and had her coat on before her mother even thought about taking hers off. “They’re leaving at seven and you know how cranky Dora gets if she has to wait for me.”

“Huh?”

“Skiing tonight! Can I borrow twenty bucks too? In fact, can I just have it, since I kind of lost track of what I owe you so far? Forget the skis, I’ll just rent some. Come in, into the garage, go go go!”

Theresa did not mention that she had just solved another teenager’s murder, or how precious life could prove to be, or that Rachael should be glad she still breathed instead of fretting about a social engagement. Theresa merely slid her body back into the driver’s seat, which had managed to cool to frosty in the approximately ten seconds since she had left it, and pulled out onto the road. “Skiing?”

Rachael tossed an impossibly large sack over the seat back—no doubt containing her boots, gloves, scarf, phone, makeup, and probably her iPod, so that she could add the peril of deafness to an already hazardous sport. “You never pay attention, Mom. Remember the birthday party last weekend? Dora and Jenna said I should come on this ski trip with them? Gun it, you can make this light.”

Theresa hit the brakes on purpose. Since Rachael had gotten her license, it had become important to demonstrate safe driving skills. “When will you be home?”

“Probably eleven.”

“More like ten.”

“No, eleven.”

“How about nine thirty?” The light changed, and they moved forward.

“Why ten?”

“What part of ‘school night’ don’t you understand?”

“Okay. But it’s your cousin who’s going to pick us up, so if I’m home late you’ll have to take it up with her.” Rachael had mastered the art of the preemptive strike.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You know, if I had my own car, this wouldn’t even be an issue.”

Theresa, however, had mastered the art of selective hearing. “Uh-huh. Are you dressed warm enough?”

“Warmly. It’s an adjective, l-y.”

“Do you want a ride or not?”

“I’m perfectly warm.”

She eyed her daughter’s pants. “They don’t look like snow pants.”

Rachael bubbled up at the interest. “Exactly! They’re new. They’ve got this cottonlike fabric but it’s practically waterproof, like good nylon.”

“Nylon isn’t waterproof. It’s the weave and the treatment—”

“But it’s thin and flat, so you don’t have to look like a toddler in a snowsuit. They’re great. You can tell I have a butt in them.” She put her hands underneath her as if making sure.

“Actually, I was okay with not being able to tell.”

“Well, of course. You’re a mom. You’d have me in a burka if you could.” For all her fondness for the new pants, however, she seemed to be wrestling with them, wrenching both arms behind her back until one hand emerged with a small white tag. “Man! That thing was driving me crazy.”

“That’s not true about the burka. I just don’t get this skiing-at-night thing. It’s bad enough you have to hurtle down a snow-covered hill, but you have to do it in the pitch dark as well? What keeps you from running into trees? Or each other?”

“Um, maybe the huge floodlights they have along the slopes? They’re lit up like a Walmart. And I have a light stick.”

They pulled onto her cousin’s street. “But do the trees have light sticks?”

“There they are! I told you Dora would be ticked if I got here late.”

She dropped the clothing tag into the ashtray and dragged her large bag forward from the backseat. The car had not yet come to a complete stop before the passenger door opened. “See you, Mom.”

Theresa snatched her daughter’s arm and held it, arresting Rachael in midflight. “Be careful.”

Rachael tried to pull her arm away. Perhaps annoyance and overexcitement made her say, in the callous way children can have, “There won’t be any bank robbers on the ski slopes, Mom.”

“I mean it. That’s a large area, it’s dark, and it’s very cold out.”

“Okay.” Rachael took the time to look into her mother’s eyes and repeat the word before making her escape.

Theresa watched Rachael join her relatives, then waved to her cousin, now shepherding the girls into a minivan. She hadn’t been worried about bank robbers, only broken bones and bad sprains and frostbite.

Not to mention that the last girl she had seen in a snowy woods had been very, very dead.

Arriving home for the second time that evening, she grabbed the junk from her car and dropped it on her kitchen table, fed the dog, changed into the heaviest set of pajamas she had, and poured a shot of vodka into a glass of flavored diet water. Then she sat down to open bills, grateful that none was overdue. Still, how to afford college in another year…

She threw the bills on the table. The square, shiny piece of fabric Rachael had ripped from her pants scooted away and Theresa caught it before it sailed off toward the floor. Years as a fiber analyst made her read it: MADE IN CHINA. NYLON/TENCEL.

Tencel.

Evan snowboarded. Evan liked to have the latest innovation, the coolest stuff, and, Theresa would bet, pants that showed he had a butt.

Drew, of course, could also own a pair of Tencel pants, but so far he had seemed to live in knit jersey and have no interest in sports. Jogging pants were not likely to be made of Tencel, and police officers wore wool uniforms at this time of the year.

She thought of calling Frank to tell him she needed to get into Evan’s pants, but doubted he would see the humor. Or the probable cause. She’d need more than a fabric tag for that. She needed the last item on her list. Means.

“I’m surprised you come in this early,” Theresa said, bouncing from one foot to the other. The raw wind had cut through her coat in just the ten steps from her car to the front door.

“Just me,” Vangie said, pulling a set of keys out of a slouchy gold lamé bag. “Georgie doesn’t roll in until ten or so. But the phones get going right about eight.”

Theresa followed her through the opened door, so grateful for the warmth inside that she spoke without thinking, “I wouldn’t think your clientele got up that early. Um, I mean—”

Vangie only laughed as she divested herself of bag, coat, scarf, and gloves. “Partiers aren’t morning people. Party planners, on the other hand, are definite A types. Georgie said you might be looking for me.”

“I need to ask more about Jillian, any tiny detail you can tell me.”

The young woman swept long curls out of her face and switched on a coffeemaker. She had obviously set it up the prior evening because it immediately began to perk. “There are two kinds of girls who work here, the kind who know exactly what they’re doing and the kind who have watched too many movies.”

“They think they can work a few jobs and then marry Richard Gere or Ed Harris?”

“Exactly. Jillian was in the second group.”

“And did she meet a—”

Vangie watched the dark liquid drip into the pot. “She thought she did, once. He was an older guy, plenty of money, successful. Just like Daddy.”

“What happened?”

“She was wrong.”

Dr. Christine Johnson found her waiting by the loading dock. Theresa greeted the younger woman with, “This is it.”

“This is what?”

“The moment of truth. I need a cause of death on Jillian Perry and I need it right now.”

The doctor shifted a tote bag to her other shoulder as they fell into hurried steps on the way to the elevator. “Tell me about it. Stone has been pestering me for two days for a conclusion. I said I’d settle for ‘unknown means,’ but he hates to do that unless it’s a decomp.”

“Yeah, I know.” The moving metal box creaked and moaned and took an inordinate amount of time to reach the second floor. “Why don’t you take the stairs?”

“My thighs don’t want to.”

Theresa eyed the woman’s slim waist. “You wait until you turn thirty, missy. Your whole metabolism suddenly turns against you. You’ll be taking the stairs in skyscrapers to work off one more calorie.”

“You’re just a bundle of cheer this morning, aren’t you?”

“There’s more. Evan got custody of Cara. He is officially her next of kin. That baby’s days, maybe minutes, are now numbered unless we can prove murder.”

“Okay, shut up. I mean it. Not another word until I get a cup of coffee.”

Theresa complied, even waiting until after settling her body onto the ammo locker in the miniature office, a steaming cup held up to her sinuses. “Even the phytoplankton refuse to help me. I collected soil samples from parking lots at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and at the building on Old River Road where Evan had his business meeting the day Jillian disappeared, but it didn’t do me any good. I got Emily at the Natural History Museum to come in early today and take a look at it all, but the types of diatoms in each sample don’t vary enough to be significant.”

“Mmm,” Christine said into her coffee cup.

“I guess it depends on water depth, light, whether there are rocks or sand at the water’s edge…the ones from Old River Road show some differences, probably from the industrial influences along the river. So now Evan will probably sue me for cleaning tires without a license and it didn’t even do me any good. Which leads me to you, missy. Can you go over your findings again? Maybe something will ring a bell.”

“My findings were all negative. No pulmonary emboli to indicate an overdose of narcotics. According to the tox report, she had nothing more than a mild sleeping pill in her system, nothing that would depress her breathing until she died or make her sleep through a trip to the freezing woods. Plus, there was no amylase in the vitreous humor, no elevated levels of catecholamines, to indicate death by freezing. But there again, there might not be.” She ran her hands through her hair, which only encouraged the waves to become unruly. “I found some cerebral edema but that could mean a lot of things.”

“So her heart just stopped?” Theresa asked.

“Yes…well, no.” Christine picked up a manila folder already placed front and center on her desk, and flipped through a few pages. “Hearts don’t stop for no reason. There’s no sign of infarction. She might have stopped breathing first.”

“As if she were smothered?”

“No imprint of her teeth on the back of her upper lip, no petechiae. It’s pretty hard to smother an adult unless she’s already unconscious, and there’s no reason she would have been unconscious, no knockout drugs, no blow to the head, no seizure.”

Theresa had grown used to dead victims telling her who they were, what they had done, and how they died. But Jillian could not. Perhaps it was time to look at the situation from the other end. “Evan is an engineer with a degree in chemistry. He had time to plan and clean up. He has tools and equipment in the factory outbuildings. Maybe he came up with that holy grail, an undetectable poison?”