Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen bricks of off-white powder. Most probably morpheranyl. Ten of the bricks had been stacked on Mathis Jericho’s lap. The other eight were around his feet. Both doors were wide open as Fenway and Deputy Salvador examined the car and the corpse.
“There might be more in the trunk,” Deputy Salvador said.
“There’s trunk space in the front of the Corvette, too.” Fenway closed her eyes. “Check there.” Mathis Jericho hadn’t been killed by Calvin Banning or Stephan Butler. They would have taken their morpheranyl with them; they wouldn’t have left it to throw law enforcement off the scent. This was too valuable—maybe hundreds of millions in street value, and likely worth over a million to both Banning and Butler as cogs in the larger drug machine.
Maybe Fenway hadn’t identified all the players in the drug game. Someone could be between Banning and Anton Venn who controlled everything on the distribution side. Maybe that person got sick of the back and forth with Seth Cahill. Maybe Mathis Jericho had gotten too greedy, trying to take Seth’s business for himself. Jericho had possibly killed Cahill and had pissed off the wrong drug dealer.
Fenway opened her eyes again.
But then why store the Corvette at the second residence of Seth Cahill’s girlfriend?
Fenway supposed whoever had killed Mathis knew Miranda Duchy was the lead suspect in the Seth Cahill murder. Throwing more evidence there, to put law enforcement on the wrong track.
But no, that didn’t make sense. If Mathis’s murder had been a drug-related killing, it would have made a statement. Everyone who looked at Mathis’s dead body would get the message. But this? With Mathis sitting dead in Seth’s Corvette—and with the car essentially hidden in the carport at Miranda Duchy’s cabin?
No. This was something personal.
Salvador knelt at the side of the car, then stood, a round key in her gloved hand. “I found this in the footwell.”
Fenway nodded. “Looks like a key to a storage unit at Cahill Warehouse. We should bag that up and check if that’s the missing key to Unit 176.” She leaned forward, swatting the flies away from Mathis’s face. Ligature marks, lower on the neck than a hanging would indicate.
“Strangled,” Fenway said.
Deputy Salvador nodded. “I saw the marks.”
Fenway carefully attempted to move Mathis’s limbs. No—they didn’t want to move. “Full rigor,” Fenway said. Eight to twenty-four hours.
Salvador stepped over to the driver’s side door behind Fenway.
Fenway pointed at a white discoloration on the dead man’s face. “Blanching. That narrows it down—he’s been dead eight to twelve hours. Killed sometime this morning.”
“Didn’t we expect him to make another drop of the drugs this morning? Or late last night?” Celeste peered over Fenway’s shoulder. “Mathis was Seth Cahill’s right-hand man. Tried to make a stab at climbing up the drug business ladder and stepped on the wrong set of toes?”
Fenway shook her head. “Maybe that’s what the killer wants us to think. But in all the murders tied to drug gangs and cartels that you’ve studied, is this what you’d expect?”
Salvador drew herself to her full height and shook her head. “No. Usually more public than this. Or at least, where cartel people can see it.”
“Right. Because if the cartel or the drug dealers had done it, it would have been a warning.”
“And they wouldn’t have left the drugs behind.” Salvador squinted as she stared at the dead face of Mathis Jericho. “But this is too on point, isn’t it? I mean, Miranda Duchy said she’d been framed. Now we find Seth’s second-in-command garroted in Seth’s car—at Miranda’s second house?”
Fenway pressed her lips together. “Surely we’ve had eyes on Miranda Duchy since she emerged as a suspect.”
“She only emerged today,” Deputy Salvador said. “You didn’t talk to Duchy until what, eight or nine o’clock this morning? By then, Mathis could have been dead three or four hours.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense.” Fenway scratched her chin. “The best way to throw people off the scent isn’t to plant the murder weapon in your own yard and hide the missing car in your own carport. Especially if you can’t provide an alibi for the first murder.”
Salvador nodded. “I agree with you. But—”
“But?”
“Let’s say Duchy killed Seth Cahill, but screwed up. She left the murder weapon in her shed; she never established a decent alibi. I mean, the claw of a framing hammer? That’s not premeditated. Let’s say Seth did something to piss her off. He’s still in love with Tyra, he met somebody new, or she wanted the insurance money. She lashed out, killed him with the hammer, dragged his body into Unit 176. Suddenly, we were all over her, and she’d left some truly boneheaded clues for us to find. Maybe Mathis contacted her, asked her where he could continue storing the drugs or said he saw her beating Seth over the head and maybe asks for blackmail. What better cover than to kill him and continue to make it look like she was being set up?”
Fenway bobbed her head from side to side. “I suppose it’s possible.”
Salvador took a step back. “I don’t think we have a choice, Fenway. I think we have to bring Miranda Duchy in.”
“ADA Pondicherry doesn’t think we have enough to convict.”
“But that was before we found Mathis Jericho’s body and the Corvette on her property. Besides, we can hold her for forty-eight hours before we decide whether to arrest her.” Salvador shook her head. “It’s not up to me,” she said, “but the bloody hammer found in her shed, the missing Corvette at her second residence, and the victim’s right-hand man dead in the missing vehicle? Maybe the evidence is circumstantial, but I can’t see any reason Donnelly would allow her to continue walking free.”
“Maybe she’s got an alibi for the death of Jericho. You’re a couple of steps too far ahead.”
“Maybe,” Deputy Salvador conceded. “But the standard for charges isn’t reasonable doubt. It’s a reasonable basis for believing the defendant is responsible for the crime. And in my opinion, we’ve met that standard.”
Fenway couldn’t argue with that.
“In the meantime, we can look for more evidence.” Celeste slowly walked around the car, looking at the fenders, the hood. Maybe searching for telltale scratches in the paint or dings. She reached the passenger door and cocked her head.
“What is it, Celeste?”
Deputy Salvador pointed. “Two indentations in the leather. Like two little blunt objects had pushed into it.”
Fenway looked at the passenger seat, then all around the passenger area. She pointed below the glove compartment. “Scratches,” she said. “And they look fresh.”
Salvador nodded.
“I think the killer put something in this seat when they drove it from the storage facility here.”
Salvador furrowed her brow. “Was that Mathis? Or someone else?”
Fenway shook her head. “Maybe CSI can shed some light on this when they get here.”
Once Melissa de la Garza and the CSI team arrived, Fenway would have left Deputy Salvador at the cabin to go pick up Miranda Duchy, but they’d come in one car. By this time, Piper had sent Fenway a text: she’d parked Fenway’s car back in the parking garage and given the key to Sarah, who likely put it on Fenway’s desk.
Fenway had gotten Dez on the phone, and consulted with ADA Pondicherry, who reluctantly agreed that Miranda had to be brought in, though he didn’t want to officially place her under arrest until they had more concrete evidence—or if Duchy insisted on leaving.
Dez and a sheriff’s deputy had taken a confused and somewhat belligerent Miranda Duchy into custody, and she’d given Fenway an update: Duchy had gone into an interview room, where Dez had read her her rights. Duchy had promptly declined to speak with law enforcement without a lawyer. Apparently, Duchy’s lawyer, who specialized in intellectual property, had contacted one of his friends in criminal defense. That sounded not only expensive but intimidatingly competent.
Fenway sighed as she ended the call and walked to Deputy Salvador, standing between the carport and the cabin with her arms folded.
“Good work today, Celeste,” Fenway said.
A small smile. “Thanks.”
“Have you started searching the cabin yet?”
“Sheriff said to wait for a warrant. She’s heading out here, said she’d be handling it personally.”
“I guess this is getting high profile.”
Deputy Salvador nodded.
“What is it?”
Salvador opened her mouth, closed it, then took a quick breath. “I applied for detective in your office because I want to grow my career. And because when I’ve worked with you, you seem like a boss who’ll have my back. I talked to Dez and Mark.”
“Oh.” Fenway’s face grew hot. “I appreciate that.”
“But things have changed in the sheriff’s office since Donnelly took over. All the deputies, we used to be tight. But we don’t have each other’s backs anymore.” Salvador glanced around, seeing no one paying attention, and took a step closer. “I think Donnelly’s coming out here to take credit for this,” she said in a low voice. “Eighteen bricks of Nyllie, a dead man found in a murder victim’s car—you watch. She’ll spin this into a win for the sheriff’s office, and she won’t even mention you.” She paused. “Or me.”
Fenway nodded. “You want an exit strategy from the sheriff’s office.”
“And you’re one of my exit strategies, yeah.”
Fenway’s phone rang in her hand again. She looked at the screen: 7:17 PM—
Oh no. McVie. She was supposed to be at Winfrey’s forty-five minutes ago. “Sorry, Celeste, I have to take this—”
Celeste nodded and turned away as Fenway hit Answer.
“Hi, Fenway.” Craig’s voice, smooth, soft.
“I’m sorry,” Fenway said. “I’m late.”
“Not many people at Winfrey’s. Mark hasn’t even shown up yet.”
“Not surprising. He’s an introvert.”
“That could explain why he’s not here—but why aren’t you?”
Fenway hesitated. “There’s been another murder. I’m at the crime scene.”
More silence.
“So I’ll have to cancel. Not only for the retirement party, but for dinner too. I’ll have to take a—” She almost said rain check, but there would be no rain checks. McVie was leaving too soon.
“I get it,” McVie said, a little late. “It comes with the job.”
“It’s not like I’m trying to convince killers to murder people before you leave.”
“And I’m not trying to get my demanding client insist that I follow his wife around every second of every day.” He exhaled loudly. “I wish we had more time.”
“I wish you didn’t have to leave,” Fenway said.
McVie stopped.
“I mean,” Fenway said, “I know you have to. Your daughter comes first. I just wish—I want you here.”
“I didn’t have any control over where Amy got her job. And you saw how hard I tried to convince Megan to live with me her senior year.”
“Yeah.” Did she know how hard he tried? He’d said he did, and Fenway knew herself how unshakable teenagers could be. She knew Megan’s boyfriend dumped her and her friends had kicked her out of their social group.
“I wish you could come with me.”
Fenway stopped. This felt like a trap, and McVie didn’t play games like this. She frowned. What was he doing?
Then she took a deep breath. She hadn’t been in therapy for a few months—not since Dr. Tassajera—but she’d learned enough to at least intellectually understand that maybe it wasn’t about her.
“I wish we could be together,” Fenway said carefully. “I wish I could have my career, and you could have a daughter who could get through this shitty time in her life, and that you and I didn’t need to be apart to get everything we wanted.”
Would voicing those thoughts make her feel better?
No, it didn’t. Instead, one thought reared its head: why did they need to be apart to get everything they wanted? This was Fenway’s first relationship that had lasted more than six months. And he was fourteen years older. And why couldn’t McVie and Megan get by with video calls online? Why did he have to pick everything up and move four states away—abandoning his business, abandoning his support system, abandoning her?
“It’s too late to cancel our reservation, isn’t it?” Fenway said.
“Don’t worry about it. As sheriff, I got called away at the last minute, too. All the time.” He paused. “Want me to come to your place and wait for you?”
Yes. She wanted that very much. “You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
“I hate to have you wait for me when you’ve got so much going on. Maybe I can see you tomorrow?”
“Client’s wife isn’t headed to the beach tomorrow,” McVie said. “Maybe we can get that breakfast at Jack and Jill’s.”
“We’ll see how the murder investigation progresses,” Fenway said.
“Right, right, of course.” He paused. “I miss being sheriff.”
“Me too.” Oh—that had come out so fast that Fenway hadn’t had time to assess the impact of those words.
“I mean, it’d be dicey, what with you and I dating. But at least we’d work together again.”
Fenway closed her eyes and remembered the flutter in her chest when she worked with McVie on a case. Trying to keep the heat level between them on a low simmer. And failing from time to time.
“It wouldn’t be a bad thing if you were home when I got there,” Fenway said softly.
“Duly noted,” McVie said. “I’ll make some more storage runs. See you tonight.”
Fenway tapped End on the call—then Sergeant Mark Trevino appeared at her side.
“Mark!”
He smiled. “This sure beats some stupid retirement party, doesn’t it?”
“Why aren’t you at Winfrey’s?” Fenway’s hand went to her mouth.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Mark said. “I’d rather be here processing a murder scene than forcing myself to smile at a crowded bar while Randy tries to get my co-workers to tell embarrassing stories about me.”
“People are there. I just got off the phone with Craig.”
Mark theatrically looked around. “Looks like most of the people I work with are here.”
“Well, Craig did say it was lightly attended.”
“Randy’s keeping the party going,” Mark said. “He told me he’s about to make a speech and buy a round of shots.”
“He won’t be mad at you?”
“Randy’s glad I’m retiring.” He looked at Fenway out of the corner of his eye. “Although I’m happy to come in on a contract basis and train my replacement.” He cocked his head, his eyes questioning.
Fenway leaned closer to Mark and lowered her voice. “I’m offering it to Celeste.”
A smile came over Mark’s face. “That’s great. She’s smart. And a quick thinker. When does she start?”
Fenway furrowed her brow. “Bureaucratic hiccups, I think.”
“Yeah, we have a lot of those.” Mark’s face grew serious. “Sheriff Donnelly has hired a lot of people. Maybe she’ll be able to help you navigate the red tape.”
“She won’t be ticked off that I’m taking one of her best deputies?”
Mark shrugged. “Not if she’s a decent manager.”
“Is she?”
Mark shrugged, then straightened up. “So we’ve logged the bags of morpheranyl into evidence. Melissa checked them for fingerprints.”
“Wiped clean?”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” Mark said. “And yes, most of them were, but we’ve got about five or six usable prints off a couple of the bags.”
“Maybe the killer messed up,” Fenway said.
“It’s possible,” Mark said. “I’ve seen this kind of thing before, though. The person we’re looking for uses gloves, maybe doesn’t wipe the bag off first. So maybe we’ll get the prints of the person who packed the baggie—”
“Or maybe the person who loaded it into his car in the first place.” Which would likely be Mathis Jericho. But still worth a shot. “Thanks, Mark.”
He started to turn away, then snapped his fingers and spun around. “Almost forgot to say what I came over here to tell you. I accessed Scott Behrens’s birth certificates and some of his medical records.”
“Anything of note?”
“Only that Tyra Cahill left the father’s name blank on the birth certificate.”
Fenway nodded. “That tracks with what Tyra’s BFF told me. Some college kid who got her drunk and gave her a fake name. Apparently, the guy never talked to her after that one night. Never realized he had a kid out there.”
Mark nodded.
Fenway sighed. “I looked for an alternate motive, but I can’t find one. I thought maybe Mathis wanted to take over Seth’s business, and so he killed him. But now that he’s dead—”
“Mathis might still have killed Seth Cahill.” Mark’s brow furrowed. “But then who killed Mathis? I read the report—the death doesn’t have any of the hallmarks of a cartel killing.”
Fenway tapped her forehead, and a thought sprang to mind. “Not the cartel. Maybe someone else who wanted to take over the business.”
“Like who?”
“Like Tyra Cahill.”
“Tyra?” Mark blinked. “Take over the illegal business that resulted in the death of her son?”
“Wouldn’t the ultimate revenge be to kill the business from the inside out?” Fenway asked. “Or maybe Tyra thought she could make an extra two hundred grand a year that used to go to Seth. Money tends to soothe a lot of emotional wounds.”
“But…” Mark scratched his chin. “I suppose that would explain some things.”
“And who better to pin the murders on than the ‘homewrecker’ who stole your husband?”
Mark tapped his foot. “That part makes sense. But Tyra killing the one person who can make the dives to the bottom of the boats to get the morpheranyl?”
“Divers can be hired,” Fenway said.
“True.”
“And the fact that our victim had recently made the girlfriend the new beneficiary of the life insurance—”
“Icing on the cake,” Mark said. “Oh, I guess, that’s the one thing I’m missing about my retirement party. The cake.”
Fenway laughed, then knotted her eyebrows together.
“What is it?”
“Mathis’s death really threw my suspect pool for a loop.”
“At least Mathis is no longer a suspect,” Mark said.
“I still feel like I’m missing something.”
“Evidence,” Mark replied.
Fenway nodded. “Yeah. Tyra being the killer is a good story, makes a lot of sense, but with nothing to back up that story...”
Mark scratched his chin. “Didn’t you say that Tyra knew about Seth’s illegal activity?”
“Hope Dunkelman said that, yeah. So did her husband. But Tyra has an alibi, remember?”
Another bolt of inspiration hit Fenway. “We can get around Tyra’s alibi by naming Hope Dunkelman as an unindicted co-conspirator. I think she may have lied about Tyra’s whereabouts.”
“So get Dunkelman to walk back the alibi,” Mark said. “You’d be surprised who’ll crack when their freedom is on the line.” Mark rubbed his chin. “Maybe you can figure out how to disprove the alibi. Threaten Hope with prosecution unless she turns.”
Fenway put her hand on her hips. “One thing I can do is subpoena their phone records. Maybe Tyra and Hope were smart enough to leave their phones at Tyra’s house while they went out and committed murder, but maybe they weren’t. And if their phones were on, I can figure that out.” She paused. “Only problem—only one person dragged the body. At least that’s what the evidence suggests.”
A smile touched the corner of Mark’s mouth. “Maybe Hope drove to Cahill Storage and waited for Tyra, thinking they’d hash something out. Tyra killed Seth, wrapped his body up, dragged it into Unit 176, and then walked out to Hope’s car, disheveled, maybe some blood on her. Hope cleaned her up and calmed her down before they go back to the Pope-Dunkelman residence.”
“That is a good story, Mark. Maybe you should start writing the plays Randy stars in.”
“We’d be a hell of a team.” Mark put up an index finger in front of his chest. “But if you find that the phones never left Tyra’s house, there’s no way Hope will change her story.”
“Maybe we can find Hope’s vehicle on camera,” Fenway said. “Running a red light or driving past an ATM.”
“There’s still a lot of police work to do.”
Fenway grinned at Mark. “You’ll miss this, won’t you?”
“Of course,” Mark said. “I’ll be thinking of you and Dez—and maybe Celeste—every day when I wake up at ten o’clock and have a mimosa.”
Fenway grinned, then raised her phone and tapped the screen. “Maybe I can get someone to get a judge to sign the phone paperwork tonight.”
One of the deputies drove Fenway back from the Hutash Bridge, and she entered her office, grabbed the key from her desk where Sarah had left it, and finally walked in the door of her apartment at 9:27 p.m.
The door swung all the way open. The apartment was warm despite the air conditioning.
“No boxes,” Fenway said dumbly.
McVie looked up from the kitchen counter. “Oh, good,” he said.
Fenway felt a rush of affection toward McVie. “You’ve been busy.”
“Made it in only four trips. Done in a couple of hours. Landlord did the walkthrough, and I’m getting all my security deposit back.” He came around the counter and started to wrap his arms around Fenway.
“Hold on, hold on,” Fenway said, ducking under his arms. “I’ve got murder scene all over me. Let me take a quick shower and put some sweats on.”
“Well, hurry up about it.”
Fenway dropped her purse on the kitchen table. “Thanks, Craig.”
“For what?”
“Coming over tonight. I’m glad you’re here.”
McVie grinned.
She turned and began to walk down the hall—then the scent hit her nostrils: baked apples and sweet onions. “Did you cook?”
“Ha,” McVie said. “We couldn’t cancel the reservation, so I got our food to go. And it’s keeping warm in the oven.”
“Pheasant Normandy?”
“For you,” McVie said. “I got a ribeye.”
“What a surprise.”
“I would have gotten the scallops, like you recommended last time, but I worried they’d dry out in the oven.” He grabbed a dishtowel from the counter. “Hurry up and take your shower. When I hear the water go off, I’ll start plating.”
“You’ll start ‘plating,’” Fenway said, a smile crossing her lips. “Look at you, fancy.”
“And we can figure out when you can take some vacation. I’d like you to come visit. And I’ll fly back here, too.”
“Really?”
“We should shoot for once a month,” McVie said. “Maybe we won’t have a lot of vacation time, but with long weekends here and there, we can make it work.”
Fenway grinned. “Don’t say stuff like that when I still have guck all over me.”
“I could join you,” McVie suggested.
“Then our food will definitely dry out.”
“Maybe it would be worth it.”
Fenway turned with a smile and went in the bathroom to turn the shower on.