Fenway opened the door of the coroner’s office and Sarah Summerhill’s face popped up from behind her monitor.
“Oh, I didn’t expect you back for another couple of hours.” Sarah tilted her head. “Wasn’t Mark serving a warrant?”
“Yeah. Dez and Mark are there. No sense in all of us taking up space.” Fenway hadn’t waited for Mark’s arrival, instead taking a FlashRide from the Duchy house down to the Puerto Avila beach parking lot to pick up her Accord.
On the way to the beach, she’d peppered the driver with questions about how the company tracks riders and trips—until he turned up the radio and made it clear he didn’t want any more conversation. Fenway put her elbows on the counter, about three feet from Sarah’s workstation. “Can you do some research for me?”
“Sure.”
“Check with the rideshare companies. See if anyone got picked up or dropped off at the storage place—or anywhere in, say, a two- or three-block radius—on Monday night or early Tuesday.”
“Sure.” Sarah clicked the mouse, then looked at Fenway. “Taxis too?”
“Yes. They take cash, so that might be a way our killer hid their trip.”
Fenway walked into her office and dropped her purse on the desk, then turned and took a few steps toward Sarah’s workstation. “Also, I discovered that Tyra Cahill, the ex-wife of our murder victim, identified a body from a drug overdose death in November.”
Sarah blinked. “Coincidence?”
“Maybe not. Our murder victim stored that same drug at his storage facility.”
Sarah nodded. “And that’s too much of a coincidence.”
Fenway hesitated. “Murder weapon found at our victim’s girlfriend’s house. The girlfriend doesn’t have an alibi, and they were fighting a few hours before the murder. But even so, Tyra identifying the body of someone who died from the same drug her ex stored? Yeah, too much of a coincidence for me.”
“What does Dez think?”
“Dez rightly pointed out that we have no evidence implicating anyone but the girlfriend.”
Sarah chuckled. “But you’re not buying it.”
“Maybe I’m a natural skeptic,” Fenway said. “Tyra Cahill identified the body of Scott Behrens. Why did she identify his body?”
“Uh—I have access to the files. I can look.”
“Please.” Fenway approached the desk and started pacing in front of it.
“You have access to these records on your laptop, too.”
“Humor me?” Fenway looked at Sarah. “She’d have to be a relative, right?”
“Most of the time, yes.” Sarah started clicking the mouse, then typed on her keyboard. “Okay, Scott Behrens—twenty-one years old.”
Fenway squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember the backgrounder she’d been sent. “Tyra is—um, let’s see, thirty-seven. That would have made her…”
“Sixteen at Scott’s birth.”
Fenway nodded. “And Scott Behrens—”
“Adopted,” Sarah said, not taking her eyes off the monitor. “By Rebecca and James Behrens. Oh—they both died in an auto accident fifteen years ago.”
“When Scott was eight?”
“Looks like it. Hold on.”
That would explain the teeth, the foster system. Scott Behrens had fallen through the cracks. “So Tyra Cahill is Scott Behrens’ birth mother? Or an older sister? Or maybe a long-lost cousin or something.”
Sarah shrugged. “I don’t have access to the adoption files—or, if I do, I need to figure out where to find them.”
“But Scott Behrens stayed local.”
“He did.”
“If Tyra Cahill identified his body, she must have known about him.”
“I can only assume.”
Fenway tapped her chin. “How long do you think Tyra and Scott were in contact?”
“Long enough for her to be contacted when the authorities found his body. He must have changed his emergency contact information somewhere.”
“Maybe it’s time I called on Tyra’s bestie.” Fenway wondered if Hope Dunkelman would be any more helpful than Tyra.
Walking to her car, Fenway pulled her phone out and called Melissa de la Garza.
“Afternoon, Coroner.”
“Did you get the hammer yet?”
“It’s on the way here. We’ll do the blood test—I’ll put a rush on it. We can get the type fast.”
“I’m actually more concerned about the fingerprints.”
“Oh—you didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?”
“I assume Kav would have told you. Looks like the handle was wiped clean.”
“It looks like the—” Fenway scratched her head. “Why would Miranda Duchy wipe the handle but not clean the blood off the hammer?”
“I don’t know. Some people have a fear of blood.”
“No, that doesn’t make any sense.” Miranda had said she was being framed. If she’d been the murderer, she’d have cleaned the entire hammer, not just wiped the handle of fingerprints.
Of course, maybe Miranda had wiped the handle of the hammer just to make it look like she’d been framed. It would be a pretty brilliant maneuver. Perhaps Miranda was someone many people underestimated.
“Text me as soon as you know any more, okay?” Fenway arrived at her Accord and unlocked it.
“Sure, Fenway. See you later.”
As Fenway turned off Tres Arboles Road, she navigated a dip stretching between two five-foot-tall brick columns, standing like mini-tower sentries at the entrance to Estancia’s Prospero Park neighborhood. A sign at the edge of the park proudly proclaimed:
Welcome to Prospero Park
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself…
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on
Prospero Park was beautiful, if surrounded by elitism and arrogance, and it buffered the mini-mansions on the west side from the working-class duplexes and apartment complexes on the east. Fenway navigated her Accord through the labyrinthine streets bordering the park, every so often sneaking an envious look at the much-shorter bike trail that went straight through the center of the park.
She finally came to the end of the zigzagging road, turning left on a quiet oak-lined street named Rodrigo Avenue, bordering the southern edge of Prospero Park.
Three houses from the corner on the right sat the ranch-style craftsman house. Behind the beautiful, gnarled coastal live oak next to the street lay a tidy front yard with a drought-resistant garden of pea gravel, manzanitas, and snapdragons. Fenway pulled her Accord next to the curb, next to the coastal live oak, and walked the winding path toward the front door. The front door opened as she approached.
“Coroner?” George Pope asked.
“Hello, Mr. Pope,” Fenway said. “Is Ms. Dunkelman home as well?”
“Oh—I’m afraid not. She took Tyra out to buy flashlights, batteries, gallons of water.”
“To prepare for the storm?” A fleeting thought: how old were the batteries in Fenway’s flashlight?
“Yes,” Pope replied. “I think they’re heading to the mall, too. A little retail therapy, as she says. Take her mind off everything that’s happened.”
“I see.” Fenway rubbed her chin. “Well, perhaps you can help me out.”
“Oh, I don’t know. If you were looking for Hope—”
“Were you on your way out?”
“Yes. Running an errand.”
Fenway paused. “You have five minutes?”
Pope blinked, as if weighing the importance of the errand against helping the coroner with a homicide investigation. He looked up and down the street. Fenway followed his eyes, but nothing; a man washed his car two houses down.
Pope shrugged. “I suppose so. Why don’t you come on in?”
Plants filled the foyer: fiddle-leaf figs, century plants, and ferns. Pope walked into the living room and motioned to a fabric-covered sofa in a dark blue next to a side table. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? I’ve got a nice tea blend I found at the farmer’s market.”
“Nothing, thanks.” Fenway looked at the sofa but remained standing. “This shouldn’t take too long, I hope.”
“All right,” Pope said, hands on his hips. “What did you want to know?”
“Tyra had a relative I didn’t know about. A baby boy adopted when Tyra was sixteen.”
Pope’s eyes widened, but then he averted his eyes.
Aha.
“George.” Fenway crouched, trying to get into Pope’s line of sight. “You and Hope knew Tyra back then. Did she have a baby?”
Pope swallowed hard, then looked up at the ceiling. His chin trembled, and he cleared his throat. “Yeah. She, uh—she had a rough time of it.”
“I imagine. Being a pregnant teen isn’t easy.” Fenway remembered a couple of her classmates from her own high school years—one whose father kicked her out. “You were all friends back then, but did you know her when she was pregnant? Had you started dating Hope at the time?”
“Oh—well, yes. That’s not what I meant, though. I meant what happened before this past Thanksgiving. Only a year after getting back in touch with him after two decades, then losing him like that.” He screwed up his mouth. “You know she wanted to start the process of adopting him?”
“You can adopt someone when they’re in their twenties?”
“Sure. At any age.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“No, not many people do. After his adoptive parents died, he went into the foster system, then aged out. A year later, Scott reached out to the agency to see if he could find his birth mom. And that’s when Tyra got the call.”
“That must have been a surprise.”
“Yeah, when Tyra put him up for adoption, she thought she’d never see him again. She was ecstatic to find him.” Then Pope’s jaw tightened. “Right after Halloween, Tyra wanted to invite Scott to join them for Thanksgiving, but Seth wouldn’t hear of it. He actually got pissed off. Then a couple weeks later—the Monday or Tuesday of Thanksgiving week—Scott was found in an abandoned house. He’d been dead a couple of days.” He coughed, circled his shoulders. “No one should die like that. Devastating. Tyra was beside herself—she had to identify the body. And right after that, she served Seth with divorce papers.”
“Sounds like you were pretty close to it.”
“Yeah, well, my wife has been best friends with her for over twenty years. I hear all the good stuff, all the bad stuff, all the venting about Seth…” Pope trailed off.
“Anything specific that Tyra said about Seth?”
“Now, look,” Pope said, “Tyra had nothing to do with his death.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Hope and Tyra were together the entire time you’ve asked our whereabouts.”
Fenway paused. Yes—that was the problem. Hope stayed with her the whole time. Did Tyra blame Seth for Scott’s death? Would Hope have gone along with a plan to—
The realization hit Fenway like a smack to the side of the head. Seth Cahill’s murder hadn’t been premeditated. Instead, a spur-of-the-moment crime of passion. Had Tyra been holding a hammer, maybe Hope helping her replace a picture on the wall, or putting up a new shelf, when Seth showed up? Was Seth angry about his argument with Miranda and started taking it out on Tyra, and had she had enough of it?
And had Tyra looked at Seth and blamed him and his morpheranyl storage business for the death of her son? After Seth had told her that Scott couldn’t spend Thanksgiving with them? After Seth wanted her to ignore Scott when he had no one else? Did Tyra feel guilty for giving her son up for adoption, thinking she was giving him a better life, only to discover he’d been orphaned at eight years old to a life in the foster system?
Had Tyra snapped?
And after an enraged swing of the hammer, had Hope helped Tyra drag his body out to the Corvette, driven it to the office, wrapped his body in the Persian rug in Seth’s office, and left it in a vacant storage space?
That would explain a lot.
That would explain why Tyra was adamant about not giving Fenway the first space she saw onscreen—because she knew Unit 176 held Seth’s dead body.
That would explain how Tyra could have an alibi—yet still commit the crime.
And Tyra had gone over to Miranda’s house later, angry about the boxes that were still in the house. Had she sneaked around the side of the house and hidden the hammer in Miranda’s shed?
That made sense. It made more sense than Miranda acting on her own. And it made more sense than Miranda leaving a bloody hammer in a nearly empty shed on the side of the house.
Now if she could only prove it.
“You said Tyra first met Scott after he aged out of the system. Was he trying to establish a relationship with her? Maybe he asked for money?”
Pope opened his mouth, then closed it.
Uh oh. Fenway had gone too far.
“Coroner, what does this have to do with the murder investigation?”
“We’re trying to cover all avenues.”
“Is Tyra a suspect?”
“We want to eliminate her. These defense attorneys, they’ll ask us if we knew the victim and the ex-wife were at odds, and we need to be able to say we followed up on all those leads—even if we don’t think she’s guilty.”
“But she has an alibi.”
Fenway took a breath. How did she want to play this?
But Pope saw through her. “Oh—you don’t believe my wife? You don’t believe we spent the entire night with Tyra?”
The wheels spun in Fenway’s head. “A defense attorney would ask why we believed Hope. She and Tyra have been friends for twenty years, like you said. And the lawyer would have a good point—why wouldn’t your wife lie for her best friend?”
“Don’t you have any other suspects?” Pope fumed. “What about that girlfriend of his? She had an affair with him for months, maybe years. As soon as he divorces Tyra, he changes his insurance policy and leaves Miranda everything?” His nostrils flared as his voice rose. “Have you searched her properties? His storage facility? The drugs stored there?”
“How do you know about Seth changing beneficiaries?”
Pope rolled his eyes. “He told Tyra. Tyra told Hope. I told you, they’ve been best friends for decades.” He crossed his arms. “If you don’t think Miranda Duchy is a suspect, has it occurred to you that one or two of Seth’s drug dealer friends might have gotten a little greedy?”
Fenway pounced. “Drug dealer friends? What drug dealer friends?”
Pope hesitated. “Everyone has a pretty good idea what Seth was up to.”
“Who told you this?” Fenway narrowed her eyes. “Is it something else Tyra told Hope? Did Tyra know about Seth using the facility to store morpheranyl? When did she find out?”
Pope scowled. “I don’t believe this. Seth gets involved with drug dealers, known killers, and you’re laser focused on my wife’s best friend.” He walked to the door and opened it. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”
Fenway nodded and stood. “I apologize, Mr. Pope. Thanks for your time.”
Pope turned his head away from her as Fenway walked out the door.
She looked up at the sky. Clear blue. The literal calm before the storm.
Fenway had her mobile phone in her hand as she got to her Accord. She tapped Sarah’s number.
“Hey, Fenway.”
“Are you all prepared for Alonso?”
“The tropical storm? Yeah. Fresh batteries in my flashlights. Got an electric lantern, pantry items. You?”
“I’ve been helping McVie pack. I haven’t thought about it.”
“I bet McVie’s all ready. He’s probably got a camping stove and portable propane tanks.”
“Assuming he hasn’t packed them yet.” Fenway cleared her throat. “I called because I need Hope Dunkelman’s phone number. Her mobile.”
“Oh. Yeah. Hang on.”
Sarah put Fenway on hold, and Fenway started the engine. A moment later, Sarah came back on and told Fenway the number.
“Can you text that to me?”
“Sure. And one more thing—Miranda Duchy’s financials came in. Looks like she’s not as well-off as she appears. A lot of credit card debt, a second mortgage on her cabin.”
“And yet her boyfriend is driving a Corvette.” Fenway thought of the life insurance policy. Two million dollars would go a long way to ease the financial pain. “Can you email me the details?”
“Sure, right after I send you Hope Dunkelman’s number.”
“Thanks, Sarah.”
Fenway ended the call, then pulled away from the curb and her phone dinged. She opened her messages and tapped on the phone number. It rang twice.
“This is Hope Dunkelman.”
“Ms. Dunkelman, hello. This is Coroner Fenway Stevenson. Do you have a moment for a few follow-up questions?”
“Sure. When are you thinking?”
“Now, if you’re not too busy.”
“Oh—well, now isn’t the best time for me to come to the sheriff’s office.”
“You don’t have to come down,” Fenway said, her mind racing. “I can come to you.”
A short laugh. “I’m shopping right now.”
“That’s fine. Where are you?”
“I’m at Las Cruces Mall.”
“Fantastic—I’m only about five minutes away. Have you eaten yet? I could buy you lunch.”
A pause. Snippets of conversations in the background. Definitely the mall. “I’m sorry. This isn’t a good time. I can come by the sheriff’s office at, say, four o’clock?”
Fenway tapped her fingers on the steering wheel as she took the on-ramp to Ocean Highway. What had Pope said? Retail therapy—with Tyra. Maybe Fenway could insist on seeing her now, but if the two of them were still together, would she be able to get what she needed out of Hope with Tyra right there?
Well—maybe. She wouldn’t be able to ask pointed questions about their supposed time together on Monday night. Not with both of them there. But she could ask about their past—and about Scott Behrens.
Or maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea. Asking about Scott—Tyra’s dead son—in front of both of them in a public place? Might be too much for Tyra emotionally. That could trigger a protective response from Hope—and if Hope agreed to give a fake alibi for Tyra, she’d protect her from uncomfortable questions.
“Four o’clock is fine. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”
Fenway ended the call, then smacked her hand on the dashboard. George Pope would almost certainly warn his wife about the kind of questions that Fenway wanted to ask. If Hope Dunkelman showed up at four o’clock, it would be a minor miracle.
Fenway got off at the next exit. She hadn’t eaten lunch yet and her stomach rumbled. She pulled into an All Access Burger parking lot, then turned into the drive-through behind several other cars.
Ugh. All Access Burger. Had it come to this?
But while a mediocre fast-food restaurant wouldn’t get any top marks from her taste buds, it would afford her some time to process the next step of what she could do.
The cars ahead of her pulled forward, and she drove her Accord next to the speaker. The All Access menu looked mouthwatering. Whatever the salary of their food photographer, it wasn’t enough.
“Ortega Dream Burger, zucchini fries, and a medium Coke.”
She hated herself as the words were coming out of her mouth. But the photo made the burger look delectable. The zucchini fries picture: crispy, golden breading.
She knew the execution would be nothing like the promise. The Ortega chile would be too soft, oily, sliding off the bun along with the rest of the condiments, making it likely she’d get mayo all over her blazer. More like an Ortega Nightmare.
And the zucchini would be either overripe and limp or unripe and flavorless.
Fenway pulled forward, with a single car ahead of her before the window. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel.
She took a step back in her head. The connection between Scott Behrens and Seth Cahill’s murder had been strong in her mind. But weren’t there other possibilities?
Mathis Jericho was a player in the morpheranyl scene—like Calvin Banning. Jericho had a tenuous alibi at best. In fact, no alibi. He’d said he tried to save the shipment meeting on the beach when Seth Cahill hadn’t shown up. But maybe the reason he hadn’t shown up was because he had smashed the claw end of the hammer into Seth’s skull.
And Jericho knew that his extra money was about to dry up. Did Jericho blame Seth for that? Did he blame Miranda Duchy? If he blamed them both, maybe he killed Seth and hid the bloody hammer in Duchy’s unlocked shed. Best of both worlds—could Mathis Jericho hatch a clever plan like that?
Fenway rubbed her chin. Perhaps she should have taken Jericho into custody when she’d had the chance? Maybe she should have gotten the container of the white substance—morpheranyl, presumably—into evidence. That would have given her the option to take Jericho into custody.
She shook her head. No—she knew the warrant was flimsy, and any competent lawyer could get everything Mathis said excluded—and that meant everything they’d found since. Dez had been right that not taking the powder was a gray area, but she’d done the right thing.
And Mathis Jericho was still a suspect. How valuable was Mathis Jericho to Anton Venn and his cartel? Fenway knew Jericho was a simple pawn in the morpheranyl chess game. And would getting Jericho off the street make any difference? Without Cahill Warehouse Storage, Jericho wouldn’t be a player much longer. Not without proving his value to the higher-ups.
Fenway’s best bet was to get Jericho to turn on Banning or Butler or anyone higher up in the organization.
Stephan Butler had probably moved his boat by now. As much information as Butler had given them, he could still use his boat to bring morpheranyl into Estancia. In fact, he held as much responsibility as anyone for the spate of deaths around Thanksgiving.
Though if Stephan Butler wouldn’t import the drugs, someone else would take his place.
Fenway shook her head. Those kinds of thoughts led to complacency, and she couldn’t afford to get complacent.
Butler, Banning, Jericho. They all knew that the police had discovered the boats coming in with the drug shipments. Fenway assumed they’d concluded the police were aware of Cahill Warehouse Storage. So they probably wouldn’t be making any more appearances at the facility. They’d go somewhere else: up the coast, down the coast, over the mountain pass east of Calexico.
A honk behind her. Fenway snapped to the present, drove up to the window, and exchanged a debit card charge for a messy burger and zucchini fries. She drove the car around the corner of the building and parked in the shade on the far side of the lot, windows rolled down.
Just as she suspected. The squishy burger had too much juice from the chile, oil, and globs of mayo. The zucchini fries looked almost as good as the picture. She bit into one: crunchy, bland, unripe. After swallowing a few bites of each until her stomach stopped growling with hunger, Fenway got out of the car and threw away the half-eaten burger and zucchini fries in the fast-food bag.
“I should have gone back to Dos Milagros,” Fenway grumbled as she turned on the engine.
Where to now? Maybe back to the office. Spend some time researching suspects. Maybe Scott Behrens, too; his adoption files might be available now that he was deceased. She might have access to his birth certificate and other information. Yes, she could give that job to Sarah—who would no doubt be faster and more thorough.
Fenway jumped in her seat. What was she thinking? McVie might have been available for lunch. She frowned. She was miffed that McVie put other things before their relationship, but here she was, totally absorbed in a case. The two of them only had a few more days together before he left for Colorado, and instead of calling him and going to a shrimp ceviche stand on the beach, she sat in the baking-hot parking lot of an All Access Burger eating a craptastic lunch by herself.
At least she hadn’t eaten enough to ruin her appetite. And McVie owed her a nice dinner tonight—they could go late, after Mark’s retirement party at Winfrey’s.
Besides, if they went to Maxime’s, Fenway could ask the waitstaff about the argument between Seth and Miranda.
Her phone rang. An 805 number she didn’t recognize.
“This is Coroner Fenway Stevenson.”
A pause.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Coroner.” A tentative woman’s voice, worried, almost breathless.
“Who is this, please?”
“It’s Isabella Chan.”
She’d hardly talked to Chan the day before; no wonder she didn’t recognize her voice on the phone. “Oh, hello, Ms. Chan. How can I help?”
“I—I don’t know if you can. I had to contact someone.”
Fenway’s heart leapt into her mouth—did the drug organization think Mathis and Isabella knew too much? Were they trying to kill them? “Are you in danger?”
“Oh—no. No. I—look, Mathis has been a little distracted lately. Hasn’t been doing all the landscaping work he should have.”
“It’s not uncommon for people who are grieving. Even if Mathis didn’t seem that close to Seth.” Fenway frowned; surely Isabella wanted to talk about more than this.
“He didn’t show up for work today, either. Taking another day off after a late night, I’m sure.”
“Miss Chan, what does this have to do—”
“Sorry, I’m getting there. There’s a little walkway between Buildings B and C, and we have a few junipers that have gotten overgrown. One of them is over six feet tall.”
“Junipers?”
“It’s becoming a hazard. So I took pictures of the junipers.”
“Why would you take pictures of them?”
“I wanted to send them to Mathis. Tell him we’re all sad about Seth, but he still has to do his landscaping work.”
Great, just what Fenway needed: to get in the middle of a petty employee squabble.
“And that’s when I saw it,” Chan finished.
Fenway paused. “Saw what?”
“Blood. A bunch of blood splattered on the wall. You can’t see it from the walkway, but if you get closer…”
“Stay in the office, Isabella. We’ll be there shortly.”