Shaded Light: The Case of the Tactless Trophy Wife: A Paul Manziuk and Jacquie Ryan Mystery (The Manziuk and Ryan Mysteries Book 1) (46 page)

Jacquie Ryan’s mother was sitting in the living room talking to Jacquie’s Aunt Vida, her cousin Precious, and her grandmother. As was their custom, they were all wearing dressing gowns and slippers and sipping tea.

As soon as Jacquie opened the front door, she was showered with a barrage of questions.

“Where have you been so late? It’s after midnight.” Her mother’s voice.

“What’s happening with your case?” Her cousin Precious was the bloodthirsty one.

“Are you all right?” Her grandmother was always concerned with her health.

“Did anything exciting happen?” Precious again. “Did you arrest anybody?”

“Do you have your gun?” her mother chimed in. “Put it somewhere safe so it doesn’t go off.”

“Mom, you tell me that every single day!”

“Well, one of us has to remember.”

“Okay,” Jacquie said with a sigh. “I’ll put it in a safe place.”

“Then come back and tell us everything,” Precious said.

“You know I can’t tell you much!”

“Come and have some orange spice tea, child,” her grandmother said. “Did you have enough to eat today?”

“I suppose you ate at some greasy joint,” her mother said. “I’ll get you a chicken sandwich.”

“I can warm up some pea soup if you’d rather.” Her grandmother was always warming up something or other.

Jacquie came back from her bedroom, where she’d kicked off her shoes and locked her gun in its drawer. “I’m not hungry. We stopped for food around eight-thirty. I’d like a glass of milk. And I need to get to sleep soon. I have to be back to work by eight in the morning.”

“Child, it’s none of my business, I know,” her grandmother said, “but don’t you think you’d prefer a job where you keep regular hours?”

Her mother took up the theme. “I just wish you’d find a good man and settle down and raise a family. I want to be alive to see my grandchildren.”

“Are any of these policemen you work with single?” Her aunt finally got a word in.

“My goodness, Vida, where did you get your brains?” her grandmother asked, hands on hips. “Not from me, I hope. You don’t want her marrying a policeman. He’d never be home!”

“Well, how she’s ever going to meet any men except policemen while she’s working these hours is beyond me!” her mother complained.

Her aunt was not going to be ignored. “Are there any nice men among the suspects in your case?”

SEVENTEEN

By eight a.m., Manziuk and Ryan were hard at work, piecing together the evidence. At 8:10, they had their first argument.

Manziuk was sitting at his desk studying the file, thinking to himself, saying nothing.

Ryan was pacing the floor. Suddenly she stopped and whirled to face him. “I am here, you know. Awake.”

“I know,” he said without looking up.

“So?”

“So?” he repeated, his mind still focused on the paper he was reading.

“So, aren’t we going to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?”

“The case,” she said. “Duh.”

He had silver-rimmed reading glasses perched on his nose, and he looked over the top of them at her.

“You look like a university professor,” she said. “An absent-minded one, at that.”

“Could you possibly stop chattering and let me study these notes?”

“Could you possibly think out loud so we can both work on the case and not just you work on it and me stand here watching you? Or is that what you’re used to? Does Sergeant Craig let you do all the thinking?”

“Sergeant Craig has learned that I like a chance to get my thoughts organized before I talk about them. Less time wasted that way.” Okay, that was true. But it was also true that Woody didn’t say much. Now and then he helped with the thinking, but rarely. Most of the time, he sat and waited while Manziuk looked for inconsistencies, threads of ideas to explore, new directions to check.

“Well, I’m not Sergeant Craig,” Ryan said.

“I’ve noticed,” he replied dryly.

She stood in front of the desk, placed her hands on it, and stared him in the eyes. “Nothing against him, but I don’t want to watch you solve the case. I want to be part of it. All of it.”

“Fine. Go get us some coffee and you can sit and think while I watch.”

She glared at him.

“You want
me
to get the coffee?” he asked.

At 8:30, Ford sent in his written report.

“Okay,” said Manziuk, who was still seated at his desk with Ryan on a chair pulled up beside him. Papers covered every inch of the desk, with two empty coffee cups sitting in the midst of them. “You want to do this together, we’ll do it together. So pay attention. I don’t like repeating things.” He put on his glasses and picked up Ford’s report. “The Forensics people say there’s very little to link anyone with Jillian Martin’s body. No foreign hairs or anything else on her. No prints that could be determined as belonging to the murderer, no skin or blood under her nails, no scratches on any of the possible suspects. The weapon is likely a piece of the cord we found in use on the grounds. However, we haven’t found the cord that was used, and there’s no obvious link to anyone.”

“What about the flowers in the circle?”

“There were a couple of tiny scratches on her hands. Also some traces of leaves. Feeling is she made the flower chain herself. By the way, the flowers were Gerbera. Some kind of daisy.”

“What about Nick Donovan’s clothes?”

“Hang on.” He read more of the report. “Nothing much here. There were a couple of hairs on Nick’s shirt as well as a trace of powder that belonged to Jillian Martin. So we do know that at some point he was in contact with her. But the fact that her face powder was on the front of his shirt implies that she was facing him. If, as we suspect, she was strangled from behind while seated on a bench, it doesn’t seem likely that her face would touch his shirt. So…” He paused as if checking to see if his mind had all the facts straight. “Now we’ll see about Crystal Winston.” He scanned the second report. “Not much more. A footprint, size ten men’s running shoe. The shoe—rather a pair of shoes—was found in the change room by the pool. Belong to Douglass Fischer. He says he left the shoes in the change room after playing tennis Saturday. Never thought to get them.”

“That’s just great!” Ryan’s voice was tinged with annoyance. “Did Ford notice if they were there Saturday night?”

“Yes, they were.”

Restlessly, Ryan stood and walked around the edge of the room. “Anything else?”

Manziuk watched her for a moment before answering. “There were no hairs or different-colored fibers on Crystal Winston; however, there might have been a few fibers that were black but of somewhat different content than the clothes she was wearing. The guess is the murderer was also wearing black.”

She stopped. “That’s what you thought. You asked them to look for black clothes.”

“A hunch.”

“Do you have hunches that good all the time?”

“Now and then.”

“So what did they find?” She resumed walking slowly back and forth.

“There were several possibles. Turtleneck shirts owned by Nick Donovan and George Brodie, a T-shirt owned by Bart Brodie, and a sleeveless sweater belonging to Anne Fischer. And there was an old jogging suit belonging to Kendall Brodie in a closet near the back door. Jacket and pants. All were made of similar synthetic fabric and all could have been the item that left the traces. The jogging suit, however, had hairs belonging to Crystal Winston and blood stains. The problem is anybody could have borrowed it. They’re going over it. Both Kendall and George Brodie have used it, and even Ellen sometimes has put on the jacket when it was cool outside and she just wanted to go out for a minute. She thought it possible Crystal or Mrs. Winston had worn it, too. And there are no fingerprints on the knife except Crystal’s. No skin or blood under her nails.

“You’d think we’d find some trace of the killer!” Ryan protested. “Fibers, hairs, prints, something! It’s almost like he or she knew we’d look for them.”

“Any one of these people could know a lot more about forensics than the average person. Especially if the murder of Jillian Martin was planned. We’re dealing with top-notch lawyers, Hildy Reimer is a very capable woman, Bart Brodie is no dummy, Shauna Jensen works in a library. The killer might have made sure to read up on forensics just to avoid making a mistake.”

“Surely not.”

“Why not? These people are highly intelligent.”

“But murder isn’t often that cold-blooded, is it?”

“No. It’s usually done in the heat of the moment. And most murderers leave clues. But every now and then you find one who doesn’t. Or the clues left lead us in circles.”

“But there’s always something.”

“Yeah? Have you been following the case of the four women murdered here since last October?”

“Certainly I’m aware of it.”

It was Manziuk’s turn to get up and pace the room. “Four women. All young. One university student, one college student, one nurse, and one hairdresser. None of them knew each other. Nothing in common except all of them had red hair: two natural, two from a bottle. All killed by being strangled from behind with some kind of black cord by someone who didn’t touch them. Suspects include a couple of boyfriends, the neighbor of one, and a few guys we’ve had our eye on for a while. Leads? None. Evidence? Nothing. No hairs, no nothing. From the look of it, this guy just walks up to a perfect stranger who has red hair, manages to put a cord around her neck without creating suspicion, and then pulls it tight until she’s dead.” He stopped pacing and stood with his arms crossed. “This guy is either a complete psycho whose randomness in killing makes him very lucky, or he’s a very smart guy. Because the bottom line is we don’t have a clue.”

“Have you tried decoys?”

“Where? When? This is a big city. The guy’s chosen four different locations. No method. The first was October seventh. The second January eleventh, the third February eighth, and the last May second. We can’t just put red-haired decoys out indefinitely. And we don’t even know where to put them. It’s like he just cruises the streets till he sees a redhead, trails her until she’s alone, and then, bam! One less redhead in the city.”

She said nothing.

He moved over to his chair and leaned on its back. “At least in this case we have some obvious suspects.”

“So what do we do with our suspects?”

“Who’s first?

“Bart Brodie.”

“Okay.” He began walking again, now and then stopping to straighten a book or adjust the blind. “Lied about being with Shauna. Says it was because she lied first. Could have told her to lie. Says he was in his apartment above the garage. Also there during Crystal’s murder. Had been drinking heavily.”

“The drinking makes it unlikely for him to have murdered Crystal.”

“Not necessarily. He could have been acting drunk to give himself an alibi. We need to see if anyone noticed just how many drinks he had and exactly what he was drinking.”

“But he has no motive.”

“No motive we’re aware of. No evidence he was being blackmailed, for instance. But what if he was? He could have arrived on the scene because Jillian had told him she would be there for the weekend.”

“How could we find that out?”

He stopped. “I want a couple of people to visit restaurants in the vicinity of the Martin apartment. Take pictures of Jillian and Bart and Nick and see if she was seen meeting either of them. Also, check with the doorman of the apartment and find out if either of them have been seen going up.”

“Okay.” Ryan was taking notes again.

“Next, Nick Donovan. He’s got a tail. Later today, we’ll check and see what he’s been up to.”

“Hildy Reimer?”

“Check to see if she really has been preparing an alias. But I think she’s going to be okay. If she had done it, she probably wouldn’t have given us the alias she was going to use.”

“Unless she has two just in case.”

“Good point. Have it checked out.”

“Peter Martin?”

“I believe I’ll pay him a little visit today. Meanwhile, we need a check on his finances. Even with a pre-nup, four divorces would be pretty expensive.”

She nodded. “Is there anyone else we should check out?”

“Either the Fischers or the Brodies could be covering up for one another. We can check into their finances and particularly see how much was paid out to Jillian Martin. She had a good scam going. Used the Fischers’ fears very nicely. George Brodie sounded less convincing. He said he didn’t pay her a dime. That he threatened her back. Could be she tried another angle, one he didn’t have a backup plan for. Surprising what some people find embarrassing. Especially once they’re successful in the eyes of society. So we’ll check into his past thoroughly. See if there’s something he would pay to keep hidden.”

“One thing that needs explaining,” Ryan said thoughtfully, “is how Jillian got the information about Douglass Fischer and his weekend.”

“The woman was his secretary. Peter could have known about it and perhaps let something out.”