Swan Song (Julie O'Hara Mystery Series) (2 page)

Besides, I might need the scooter later.

The truth was that riding the scooter always lifted her spirits, especially when the weather was beautiful. She almost always used it around town.

In no time, she leaned left and pulled into a bricked parking area in front of a large vintage house angled toward the lake. It was two stories, yellow with white trim, and a wide, columned veranda. Two gold plates stood out against the dark green double-door. The left one read “Garrett Investigations”
,
the right one “Merlin”
.

She unhooked the briefcase, went in and turned left, opening the door to Joe Garrett’s office. It was a huge space, anchored by Joe’s broad oak desk in front of the far wall, facing the door. As usual, it was covered with piles of files. Janet Hawkins, his assistant, sat at a normal-sized, much neater desk which hosted violets. She was on the right, near the door, facing the lakefront windows. No doubt she had seen Julie pull in on the scooter.

“Julie! Haven’t seen you for awhile,” she said brightly.

Julie was a fan of classic black and white films, and Janet Hawkins always reminded her of the character actress, Joan
Blondell. Janet was on the sunny side of fifty, a short, busty blonde with “a great smile and plenty of sass”, to quote an old line Julie remembered.

Julie’s own assistant, Luz Romero, and Janet Hawkins were best buds. Julie and Luz occupied the only other office, which was on the right side of the stately, two-story house. The two offices were separated by a tiled foyer surrounding a central staircase.

Joe, a private investigator, owned the house. Because Julie often consulted with attorneys and law enforcement, their interests occasionally overlapped and they’d go back and forth between the offices. And not just back and forth, but up and down. On many a morning they descended the stairs from Joe’s apartment together, an occurrence which hadn’t gone unnoticed by Luz and Janet.

Of course, that was before their pivotal moment at
Kres Chophouse last month when Joe had ruined everything by presenting Julie with a marriage proposal and a ring. And not just any ring…a Garrett family
heirloom
, no less.

“Been busy,” said Julie. “I’m looking for Joe. Has he come down yet?”

“Oh, yeah. I’d say he’s been ‘
down
’ for the past month,” said Janet, looking at Julie over the top of her glasses. “Sorry. None of my business. He’s upstairs; should be down any minute.

“You could go up and talk to him, Julie,” she added, bright-eyed and hopeful.

That was the last thing Julie wanted to do. This wasn’t personal. She wanted to see Joe here, in his office. Should she leave? She turned and nearly bumped into him.

“Morning,” he said

At forty-two, Joe was a few years older than Julie. She liked that. She liked that he was tall, too. At five-foot-nine, there weren’t too many men with whom she could wear heels. He wore jeans and a navy tee shirt today that stretched across his shoulders. Green aviator sunglasses accented the planes of his face. Perhaps to spite her, he’d cut his sun-streaked hair and reverted to his old, military-style crew-cut.

“Morning, Boss,” said Janet, quickly. “I’m glad you’re here, I’ll be right back.” She skirted Joe and Julie, and backed out the door. “Luz has doughnuts.”

They were alone.

Uncomfortable, Julie looked away, out the double windows. To her New England eye, the still January scene looked like a
Kinkade painting, Southern-style. A lovely home sprawled to the right with a curving, red brick walk, complete with a lantern. But the lake sparkled through oak and cypress instead of evergreens, and the trees were festooned with Spanish moss instead of snow.

The air outside was near motionless, but not in Joe’s office. Janet had left the ceiling fan on “High”
.
A yellow sheet of paper caught Julie’s attention as it lifted in the breeze and glided to the floor, settling in a corner.

Joe stooped to pick it up and hit the wall switch for the fan before sitting down behind his desk. “So, Merlin… how’s things?”

Joe had always used “Merlin” and “Julie” interchangeably. She’d noticed that he used “Julie” in their more intimate moments.

She was “Merlin” now.

She sat down opposite him in one of the smooth, wooden swivel chairs that matched the huge oak desk he’d inherited from his father, along with the house.

Julie was there to talk about Dianna Wieland. Luz had mentioned that Joe had been hired by the
Wielands to investigate their daughter’s death.

“Joe, I’ve been thinking about Dianna Wieland. I was the first one on the scene that morning, remember?”

Joe leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.

“Of course I remember. Why?”

“Dianna’s death has been haunting me lately. The police seem to think it’s a suicide. I don’t buy it. What do
you
think?”

Joe reached up and removed his sunglasses. He held the frame by the right lens, and unconsciously put the very tip of the left arm in his mouth, his eyes looking down and to the left.

As usual, Julie automatically interpreted his body language.

He’s evaluating…weighing his answer.

Joe laid the glasses on the desk.

“She was pregnant, Merlin. And I don’t think she wanted to be.”

“She was pregnant? I don’t remember reading that!”

“No. The
Wielands were adamant about keeping it private. The police agreed because of the Medical Examiner’s report, which said that the pregnancy ‘had nothing to do with the manner or cause of her death’. The ME said it was so early it was unlikely she was aware of it.”

“Then what makes you think that’s why she did it?”

“Process of elimination. If Dianna had another problem in her life, I haven’t found it. For a young single, she was sitting pretty, Merlin. She owned a townhouse in Bay Hill outright, and she was making over a hundred grand a year. She had a nice cushion in the bank and no debt, except for the lease on her Lexus.

“I found out that she was dating a cowboy up in Ocala. They’d been seeing each other, off and on, for almost a year, since the Silver Spurs Rodeo in Kissimmee. I went up there to see him. He’s a nice guy and a good-looking dude, but he wouldn’t fit in Dianna’s circle. Plus, she mostly went up
there
, instead of him coming here. From her angle, it might have been nothing more than discrete, out-of-town sex. I don’t think he knew she was pregnant, and I didn’t enlighten him. I think
she
knew, though.”

He shook his head.

“Nah, that situation didn’t shape up like a happy event.”

That might have been true, but Dianna didn’t sound to Julie like a woman who would be thrown by an unexpected pregnancy. Rather, she sounded like someone who would have handled it, especially if she knew about it early.

“Do you mind if I ask why the Wielands hired you? The police haven’t closed the case yet. Are they dissatisfied with the police investigation?”

“Not really. Dianna was their only child. They hired me purely out of a desire to do something
more.
Anyhow, I couldn’t say no.” He continued, “The police are doing their job, Merlin. There just isn’t any other evidence. The knife and the prints pretty much tell the story.”

The two of them were silent for a few moments. Then they spoke at once.

“If you want to see the file…”

“Could I look at the file?”

They laughed.

“You first,” said Joe, leaning forward.

“I saw her that morning, Joe, and I can’t put it out of my head
.
If Dianna Wieland
did
kill herself, I want to know why. Particularly, why
here
at the lake? But, personally, I don’t buy it. It’s too pat. What if someone lured her here and killed her? There’s got to be more to this.”

“I was going to say that if you wanted to see the file, maybe work on the case, I’d call and ask them,” said Joe.

“Well, please do,” said Julie, rising, heading for the door. “If you get them this morning and they agree, why don’t you bring the file over? We can discuss it in the conference room. That is…if you’ve got time?”

“No problem. I’m sure they’ll be grateful for your help. I’ve got an errand to run, but I’ll be back in an hour or so. I’ll see you in a while.”

“I’ll see you in a while…”

The words settled on Julie like a ray of sunshine.

* * * * *  

Chapter 3

“G
o get the doughnuts, I’ll cover the phone for you,” said Janet Hawkins, wide-eyed and smiling, excitement written all over her bubbly features. A petite and curvy woman, she wore a sunny yellow linen suit that complimented her tan and her short golden blonde coif.

“I’m not leaving until I finish this letter,” said Julie’s assistant, Luz Romero, who was sitting at her desk typing. Luz, a tall, buxom Latina with glossy black hair tied in a figure eight at the nape of her neck, was clearly not as excited as Janet over the reunion of their bosses.

“For crying out loud, Luz. They’re going to think I lied!”

“You
did
,” said Luz, looking askance at her friend.

“Oh, c’mon.
You would have done the same thing. What was I supposed to do? They couldn’t exactly talk in front of me.”

“Julie is there on
business
, Jan. She’s talking to Joe about one of his cases.”

“So what?
That doesn’t mean they can’t talk about anything
else
. At least they’re
talking,
Luz. Aren’t you glad?”

“Of course I am
, what do you think?”

“Then,
puh-leeze,
go get the doughnuts!”

“Okay, okay,” said Luz, hitting “print” on the computer. She stood, pulling out a large black leather purse from under the desk.

“Hurry up,” said Janet.

“All right!
I’ll hurry!”

•

Ten minutes later, Julie walked into her office and found
Janet sitting at Luz’s desk, flipping through a Spanish version of Vogue.

“So where’s the doughnuts?” she said, heading for the coffee pot.

“Um, ah…Luz went out to get them.”

“Hmm. Good,” she said, not at all surprised.

Julie’s office space was the same size as Joe’s, but it was laid out differently and had a completely different feel. “Big Joe” Garrett, Joe’s father, had been a residential contractor. Joe had simply moved into his office, which consisted of one huge room, with a smaller room in the back. A laid-back native, Joe liked to be right there when someone came through the door.

Julie’s suite was a more conventional three-room deal, which suited her just fine. Luz’s desk faced a small reception area with a modern loveseat and chair placed around a polished teak coffee table. A free-form crystal bowl of butterscotch candies shared space with current newspapers and the latest issue of
Orlando
magazine. There was an indispensable conference room in back, and Julie’s private office faced the lake on the right-front corner of the house.

Julie took her coffee and went back to her office, thinking fondly of Luz and Janet... Where Janet was Joe’s wise-cracking right-arm, Luz was Julie’s mother-protector. A warm-hearted woman about the same age as Janet, Luz was the consummate assistant, organizing Julie’s multifaceted career and charming her clients. The two disparate friends, one chirpy and small and the other calm and tall, were peas-in-a-pod, though, in one regard. They were hopeless romantics about their employers…and lousy at hiding it.

Julie grinned and shook her head at the thought.

With a renewed zeal for her work, she rummaged through the briefcase and pulled out a fat, brown file. It was filled with still photographs taken from videos of three employee interviews, in which Julie had recently participated. In addition to the photos, the file contained her voluminous notes.

The three men were candidates for an executive position. The nonprofit in question had been tarnished in a scandal a few years prior, and they were much more selective because of it. Julie had been hired by the Board of Directors to do character studies and she was given the latitude to ask each applicant a certain number of questions.

Julie’s expertise went far beyond the more obvious “tells” like touching the nose, the infamous “Pinocchio Effect”, that often signaled a lie. No one expected these qualified men to consciously lie. This was all about their
sub
conscious motivations.

For each candidate, Julie had chosen a neutral, “baseline” photo to compare to the stills taken during their responses. She had pored over the photos searching for things the unskilled person did not see: tiny wrinkles on the forehead, flattened areas or bulges around the eyes or cheeks, a medial depression on the chin boss, or a slight pinch on the inner brow. The human face had over a hundred muscles and there were distinctive combinations and changes that were additive. These micro expressions were windows to the men’s souls.