Miranda Duchy sat on the cream-colored sofa in her living room. In front of the sofa, an oval glass coffee table sat on a large Persian rug—with a somewhat similar design to the rug in which Seth Cahill’s body had been wrapped.
Fenway stood on the opposite side of the coffee table from Duchy. Dez, several feet away, leaned on the archway between the living room and the dining room, her phone out. Fenway suspected she was texting someone at the sheriff’s office. In Dez’s left hand, an off-white opaque evidence bag encased the hammer.
“I don’t know how that hammer got there,” Duchy said. “It’s not mine.”
Fenway held up her hand. “Let’s start on Monday evening, Ms. Duchy. Five or six o’clock.”
“Okay.” Duchy’s voice shook. “I got back from the spa at about five-thirty. Seth was home, and he and I went out to dinner.”
“Where?”
Duchy took a deep breath, steadying her voice. “Maxime’s, that French place over on Fourth Street.”
Ah—Fenway’s father’s favorite restaurant. Delicious, though a distant second to Dos Milagros for her. “About what time did you get there?”
“Seth made reservations for six fifteen.”
“How was your—how was Seth?”
“Fine.”
Fenway arched an eyebrow. “I mean, how was he acting?”
Miranda screwed up her mouth. “I guess he wasn’t fine. I mean, he was chatty and laughing, but I could tell he was nervous.”
“About what?”
“Probably about seeing Tyra later. He told me he had to pick up his boxes. But I could tell he didn’t want to do it.”
“Do you know why he didn’t want to pick up his boxes?”
Duchy hesitated. “No.”
“Ms. Duchy, we’ll be talking to the staff at Maxime’s. What will they say?”
Duchy closed her eyes, then opened them. “We had a mild argument. Hardly raising our voices.”
“What was the fight about?”
“I told you—going to Tyra’s.”
“No,” Fenway said. “Give me specifics.”
“Oh. Uh… Well, he said he wished he didn’t have to go. I told him that if he didn’t want to go, he shouldn’t. Then he said Tyra would be mad, and I told him I couldn’t stand walking on eggshells when he talked about her.”
“How did Seth take that?”
“Not well.” Miranda bit her lip. “I mean, the divorce was final. He didn’t owe her anything else, did he?”
“Alimony?” Fenway asked. She knew the answer, but did Miranda?
“No—in fact, she paid him. He sold his half of the storage business for far less than it was worth. They both agreed. Tyra got the business and kept the house.”
“How did he respond when you told him you didn’t want to walk on eggshells around him?”
Duchy paused. “He told me he needed to finish things. That’s when I told him their divorce was final.”
Oh. Finish things. Maybe Seth meant getting the boxes from Tyra, or maybe he was referring to the last shipment with Calvin Banning and Stephan Butler. Or maybe Miranda knew about Seth’s side hustle.
“Then what?”
Duchy shifted her weight in her seat.
“Then what, Ms. Duchy?”
“I left.”
“You left? By yourself?”
“That’s correct.”
“You had arrived at the restaurant together, but you left him there?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you drive home?”
Duchy shook her head. “We’d come in his Corvette. It’s a cliché, middle-life crisis, blah blah blah, but—”
“How did you get home, Ms. Duchy?”
“I took a FlashRide.”
Fenway nodded. She could check the rideshare company’s records—and the doorbell camera to confirm. “When did Seth get home?”
Duchy leaned back and put a hand over her eyes.
“He didn’t?”
“No.”
The last time Miranda Duchy saw Seth Cahill was in the restaurant after an argument—one so bad that Duchy had left.
“If you got up in the middle of your meal to leave, Ms. Duchy, I wouldn’t call that a mild argument.”
Duchy’s hand still covered her eyes. “No, I guess not.”
Fenway cleared her throat. “What time did you get home?”
“I didn’t look.”
Not a problem; FlashRide’s records would show the time. “Was it dark outside?”
Duchy shook her head. “Not yet.”
Sunset had been about eight thirty on Monday night.
“Did you stay at home?”
Duchy paused.
“You can show us the video footage from your doorbell if you don’t remember.”
“I took the SUV out and went for a drive.”
“A drive.” Too late, Fenway heard the skepticism in her voice.
“I didn’t know what time Seth would be home, and I didn’t want to see him. I wanted to turn up my music and be alone.”
“Where did you go?”
“I drove down to Vista del Rincón. I thought maybe I’d watch the sun set over the water. But halfway through my drive, I realized I’d get there too late. The sun was already setting.”
“So, what did you do when you got to Vista del Rincón?”
“Nothing—I mean, I didn’t go there. I kept driving. Turned off Ocean Highway near Tierra del Verano, drove some of the frontage roads back to Estancia. Thought about going up to my cabin, but I didn’t want to drive on those roads in the dark. I ended up pulling into Le Platine.”
“The five-star hotel over where Estancia Canyon meets Dover Drive?”
“I wanted a drink.”
Thirty-dollar martinis at the hotel bar there—her father had once bragged about it. “Okay—so do you remember your bartender?”
“Well, no. The bar had closed early for a business event. Some CEO networking thing. They wouldn’t let me in.”
“Did you argue with anyone?” Fenway pressed her lips together. “Did you see anyone? Talk to anybody? Maybe get a valet?”
“Look, I told this to the detective yesterday. I simply turned around and got back in my car.”
“Sometimes going over your tracks again can jar a memory loose,” Fenway said. “Run any red lights? Did you have to stop for gas anywhere?”
Duchy brought her other hand up to her face. “No.”
Fenway paused for a moment. She had no good way to segue into a discussion of the murder weapon, so she dove in headfirst. “So, about the hammer.”
Duchy sat upright again and placed her hands in her lap. “I told you, I don’t know anything. I’ve never seen the hammer before.”
“Did Seth own a hammer like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you put the hammer there?”
“No!”
“Who else had access to your shed?”
“My ex-husband. But Dave took the padlock when he emptied it out.”
“When?”
“A little over a year ago.”
“You never bothered to lock it up again?”
Duchy crossed her arms. “That shed wasn’t my responsibility. I didn’t keep my stuff in there. I didn’t think about the shed after Dave left.”
“That’s awfully convenient,” Dez said from across the room, still staring at her phone and tapping on the screen.
Fenway cocked her head. “So you think you’re being set up?”
“Well, I didn’t put the hammer in the shed.” Miranda dropped her hands back to her lap. “I might have had an argument with Seth, but we were happy together. We were planning a wedding.”
Fenway stole a glance at Duchy’s left ring finger. A big, sparkling diamond, the classic round cut. Maybe two carats. The two women locked eyes for a moment. The ring looked expensive. Unless it was fake, Seth had paid at least twenty thousand for it. Probably much more. The drug storage business was lucrative.
“We’d already set a date—soon, in August. People say it’s fast, but we’ve been seeing each other for over a year.”
“So you didn’t see Seth after you left Maxime’s?”
Duchy shook her head.
“And you didn’t see his Corvette after that, either?”
Another shake of the head.
“You know where we can find his Corvette?”
“No.”
“Any idea what he was doing at the office last night?”
“Only that maybe he didn’t want to see me either. Going to the storage place would give him something to do.”
Fenway glanced at Dez as if to say Did I miss anything?
Duchy stood suddenly. “You think I killed him.”
“I never said that. We’re gathering evidence, Ms. Duchy.” But the hammer matched the murder weapon—and had blood on it. Pretty good evidence.
Duchy took a step toward Fenway. “It sure sounds like you’re accusing me. I can see it in your eyes, Coroner.” She pointed at Fenway aggressively with her index and middle fingers together. “Maybe you’re too high and mighty to have an affair with a married man—”
Fenway tensed.
“—but that doesn’t mean I killed him. I loved him.” She took another step forward—
—and Dez shot to Fenway’s side, hands facing Miranda. “I’ll need you to take a step back, Ms. Duchy.”
Duchy bristled and drew herself to her full height. But then her eyes lost their fire, and she dropped back down on her heels, took a step backward, then plopped onto the sofa. “I—I apologize.”
Dez nodded. “Now, listen, Ms. Duchy, you may be telling the truth—”
“I am—”
Dez raised her voice. “You need to let me finish.”
Duchy dropped her shoulders. “Sorry.”
“But domestic partners are most commonly the perpetrators of violence against the victim. We’re doing our job.”
“I don’t have a motive, though,” Duchy said.
Dez inclined her head. “You sure about that?”
Duchy opened her mouth, then blinked a few times. “Oh—well, yes, last week, Seth changed the beneficiary on his life insurance policy.”
A moment of silence.
“From?” Dez asked.
“From Tyra to me,” Duchy whispered.
“That’s right. According to our research, the policy is for two million dollars.”
Duchy lowered her gaze to the floor.
A few moments passed in silence, then Dez’s phone buzzed in her hand.
Dez glanced at the screen, tapped for a moment, then lowered the phone. Fenway turned her head toward Dez, and Dez gave a small nod. Another piece of evidence? Whatever it was, Dez didn’t want to discuss it in front of Miranda Duchy.
Fenway pointed at the rug under her feet. “A rug very similar to this was in Mr. Cahill’s office at the storage facility. It looks expensive.”
“Uh—yeah. I had that Persian rug in here, but the room overpowered it. I needed a much bigger rug.” Duchy gave Fenway a forced smile. “Besides, the imagery on the old rug failed to align with my goals.”
“The—imagery?” Fenway looked down and noticed for the first time. The design wasn’t lifelike, but crimson and wine-colored flowers—or were they upturned leaves?—covered the rug under her feet.
“Persian rugs have intriguing symbolism. The flower at the center of the old rug was a peony. It represents power.”
“And you didn’t want to manifest power?”
A shy smile on Duchy’s lips. “I thought I did. But I really wanted prosperity.”
“So these leaves symbolize prosperity?”
“Not leaves, Coroner, tulips. And yes, tulips represent prosperity.” She paused. “I wonder—is it possible to get that rug returned to me? Tyra may own the company now, but that rug is my property, even if you found it in Seth’s office.”
Fenway frowned.
The killer would know that Seth’s body had been wrapped in the Persian rug. Was this a masterful piece of misdirection, or did Duchy honestly not know?
“I’m not sure how you would go about that,” Fenway said, “but right now, I’m concerned with piecing together what happened the night of Mr. Cahill’s—” She paused and inwardly swore at herself. “On Monday night.”
Duchy paused. “I’m not sure what else I can tell you.”
Fenway nodded and motioned to Dez with her head. “We’ll be right back, Ms. Duchy.”
Dez followed Fenway out of the living room, through the dining room, and into the front hallway.
Fenway craned her neck; Duchy was out of sight, and if they kept their voices low, out of earshot.
“You got a message on your phone?”
“From Mark. Judge Solano signed a search warrant for Miranda’s house and vehicles.”
Fenway nodded. Duchy had been fairly open with them; if she knew about the warrant, she’d likely call her lawyer and say nothing else. “So what do you think, Dez? Think Miranda did it?”
Dez knotted her brow. “She doesn’t have an alibi. She has an emotional motive for arguing with him—if she didn’t think he’d get over his ex. Plus two million other reasons.”
“And she’s in possession of the murder weapon.” Fenway rubbed her forehead. “Still, she invited us into the shed where the hammer sat in plain sight. That doesn’t strike you as odd?”
“I learned a long time ago not to use a criminal’s stupidity as an excuse for their innocence.” Dez paced in a small circle. “I texted Mark to look into her finances.”
“So if it’s not Miranda leading us right to the murder weapon, what’s bothering you?”
Dez scratched her temple. “Whoever killed Seth Cahill would have had to drag his body, wrap it in the rug, and move the body into the storage unit.” Dez hooked her thumb over her shoulder toward the living room. “Would Miranda Duchy even be able to move Cahill?”
“Not a big guy,” Fenway said. “A hundred fifty pounds, tops.”
“And adrenaline can account for a lot.”
“We’ll need to see the footage of the doorbell for Monday night, too.”
“Covered by the warrant. Sarah worked fast.”
Fenway nodded. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to get as effective of an assistant as Rachel, but she’d been wrong: the hypercompetent Sarah ran circles around all the other assistants.
“Do we have enough to arrest Ms. Duchy now?”
Dez nodded. “The evidence is circumstantial, but it’d be enough to get an indictment. Means, motive, opportunity—all there.”
“But besides the hammer, no physical evidence. And if Duchy can show that the shed didn’t have a lock…”
“We’d get our arrest, but no conviction. The D.A. might not want to go to trial. I’d feel better with something more concrete—her financials could give us a stronger motive.”
“What are we hoping to find with the warrant?”
“We put down that we’re looking for evidence of the crime. Any bloodstained clothing, towels, clean-up, any stains or drips in Duchy’s SUV.”
“That’s a little vague.”
Dez shrugged. “That kind of head wound means a lot of blood. Something’s bound to turn up.”
“The warrant covers the vehicle too?”
“Yes.”
Fenway blinked. “Judge Solano?”
Dez smiled. “That’s right.”
Fenway pressed her lips together. Solano gave the police a lot of leeway when asking for warrants—but she’d been overturned on appeal six times in the last year.
“We’re also looking for any signs of struggle in the house,” Dez said.
“But it’s likely that the murder occurred at the storage facility.”
“Likely, but not yet conclusively,” Dez said. “If we find something here, then that makes a conviction easier.”
Fenway stared down at the floor.
“You don’t think it’s Miranda,” Dez said evenly.
“I do not.”
“Why not?”
“Because she asked for the rug back.”
A crease between Dez’s eyes. “Part of her plan. She asked for the rug to make it seem like she didn’t know that the body had been wrapped up in it.”
Fenway pursed her lips. “I don’t think Miranda Duchy is that good of an actor. Trying to throw us off her trail by pretending not to know about the rug wouldn’t have occurred to her, either.”
Dez gave a stiff nod. “But no one else has the murder weapon on their property.”
Fenway paused. “Plenty of people have motive, and they all knew about Seth and Miranda. Easy enough to hide the hammer in an unlocked shed.”
“Doorbell camera. Easy enough to confirm.”
“Plus,” Fenway continued, “Seth was involved in the morpheranyl trade. Calvin Banning might have wanted to keep his storage unit available and gotten angry when told no.”
“Or Mathis Jericho might have killed him to take over and get a bigger cut of the profits.”
Fenway paused. “What if Tyra found out about the drugs?”
Dez cocked her head.
“If Tyra found out that the storage business only stayed afloat because of Seth’s illegal activities, how do you think she’d react?”
“She’d be pissed off.”
“Right. She negotiates a good deal to buy the business, has to pay him alimony, then finds out the business will fail if it goes legit?”
“Do you think she knew Seth had replaced her with Miranda as the beneficiary of the life insurance policy?”
Fenway thought for a moment. “Maybe not. It’s possible she thought she’d still get that two million dollars.”
“One problem with Tyra as a suspect: she has an alibi.”
Fenway folded her arms. “Her best friend from high school? That alibi’s not necessarily airtight. I figure that Hope Dunkelman could have helped drag Seth’s body into the storage unit. If Tyra found out about Seth’s storage of the drugs, she might have known that Seth turned off the security cameras, too.”
Dez peered over Fenway’s shoulder into the living room; Duchy hadn’t moved from the sofa. “Motive and opportunity—yeah, other people have those. But we can’t ignore the hammer—covered in blood—found on this very property.”
Fenway nodded.
“I agree that this isn’t perfect, Fenway, but we’ve got to follow the evidence. And right now, all the evidence is pointing to Miranda Duchy.”
“This feel right to you?” Fenway asked.
Outside, a car approached and slowed. Sergeant Mark Trevino serving the search warrant.
“We’ll know more after the lab work and the finances come back.” Dez clicked her tongue. “Let’s see if we can match the blood to Seth’s, if there are any fingerprints on the hammer, and if we can find any receipts connecting Miranda to the purchase of a similar hammer.”
Fenway’s phone buzzed. She pulled it out. “Speaking of lab work…”
“Michi?” Dez asked.
“Yep.” Fenway tapped the screen and held the phone to her ear. “Good afternoon, Dr. Yasuda.”
“Good afternoon, Coroner. Do you have a moment?”
“Just about to serve a search warrant.”
“I’ll make it quick. I remembered where I recognized the name Tyra Cahill.”
“Oh—at this time of day? I expected a call at three in the morning.”
“Very funny.” Dr. Yasuda cleared her throat. “I’m sending you a copy of the paperwork. You remember we talked about the deaths from morpheranyl right before Thanksgiving?”
“Right—yes. We were talking about Scott Behrens. I have a contact who knew him.”
“I also thought of Scott Behrens.”
Fenway furrowed her brow. “Why is that?”
“The person who identified his body? Tyra Cahill.”