Caroline’s bedroom reminded Billy of the second-story boudoir of a New Orleans lady friend he had occasion to visit on trips to that city. This room had the same shadowed, sweet atmosphere with billowy silk draperies and a crystal chandelier over the king-sized bed. The antique lamps on the nightstands must have cost more than he made in three months.
A three-by-five-foot painting by acclaimed artist Tom Donahue hung on the wall across from the bed, a portrait of Caroline seated next to her father, her head resting on his shoulder. She wore a demure dress with long sleeves, her golden hair brushed straight and tucked behind her ears. Saunders Lee looked older than Billy had expected. Most of his hair was gone, his high forehead and rimless glasses giving him a professorial appearance. His hands lying clasped in his lap touched his daughter’s hands, creating a connection between them. All the emotion in the portrait came from Caroline, but there was no mistaking how Saunders Lee felt about his daughter. Caroline was his heart.
Billy wondered how an overnight guest sleeping in Caroline’s bed would feel about a portrait of her father staring at him. Perhaps intimidated. Caroline may have hung it there as a test.
“I thought rich Southern women were all about ritual, tradition, and really good monogramming,” Frankie said. “Our victim appears to be more complex than that.”
“Use her name, please,” he said. “It’s Caroline.”
“We agreed first names make the case too personal.”
“This is personal.”
“Got it,” she said. “I have something to show you.”
She led him to the spa-like bathroom—the walls covered in marble tiles, a claw-foot soaking tub, heated towel bars, and a seamless glass shower big enough for a couple to use together.
“I was going through her closets,” she said, opening a door. “Here we have Oscar de la Renta, St. John, and Armani. Lovely business attire for a woman in her forties but not a young woman like our victim . . . I mean Caroline. Everything still has Neiman Marcus tags attached. Not one suit has been worn.”
She opened the door next to it, a much larger walk-in closet. “These are the clothes she wore, all classics from the sixties and seventies—Pierre Cardin sheath dresses, Gucci Italian leather jackets and slacks, Yves Saint Laurent suits, dresses and blouses by Pucci, Chanel jackets. Mixed in are these great current pieces—ripped jeans, custom leather jackets by LA designers, that sort of thing. And this.” She pulled out a drawer. “French lingerie, very expensive.”
“How do you know these designers?” he asked.
She gave him a look. “I just do. The first closet reads like a Memphis matron. The second says rebel with style.”
They left the closet. She directed him to the bathroom counter. “Here we have the pharmacy.” She opened a cabinet hidden behind mirrors, four shelves lined with prescription bottles.
“Some are duplicate scripts from three different doctors going back five years. I’ve recorded everything by drug type. The earliest scripts were Lithium, an antipsychotic, and Klonopin for panic attacks. The most recent are Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft. Those are SSRIs for anti-anxiety. A doctor, a psychiatrist, wrote the last group. Seems he was searching for the right cocktail.”
“What’s your take after your walk-through?” he asked.
“There’s a thousand in cash in a lettuce safe and more stuck in drawers about the house. It’s around two thousand total. There’s no real food in the house, and she has a neatness obsession. Between her job and her nutbar family, I’d say she was a highly stressed basket case with epic behavioral disorders. The pills and her doctor-shopping certainly indicate script abuse at some point.”
He thought about Caroline’s position as a trust and estate attorney responsible for the transfer of millions of dollars from one generation to another. The implications were troubling. Still, this was his Caroline they were talking about.
He thought back over the years, remembering when he was seventeen and Caroline had called to say her parents were out of the house for a day trip. She’d wanted him to come over. He made up an excuse to his uncle and borrowed the car.
That day they had Airlee to themselves. They ate beef and cheddar cheese sandwiches in the front parlor, drank her daddy’s good bourbon, and slow danced. Odette surprised them by coming in early to start supper. They snuck out to the barn where they made love in the loft surrounded by sweet-smelling hay and the sound of horses shifting and blowing in their stalls. They fell asleep. He had awakened to Caroline dozing in the crook of his arm.
He looked up to see Frankie staring at him in the bathroom mirror.
“I see what’s happening,” she said. “You’re reliving your own experiences, getting hung up on the human side of this case. We should hand this off to Kloss or Johnston.”
“We’ll do a better job,” he said.
“Not if you can’t let go of the Caroline you knew.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said and walked into the bedroom. She had no idea.
“Detective Malone,” a voice called from down the hall.
“That’s Snackbar,” Frankie said, coming out of the bathroom.
“Who?”
“The big cop on the porch. I call him Snackbar.” She went to the entry and came back.
“He says there’s a woman outside. She wants to speak with you.”
Snackbar was in the driveway, a young woman standing next to him with her hands jammed in the pockets of a lime green trench that she’d pulled on over a pink ankle-length nightgown. Her cloud of frizzy dark hair moved around her face in the breeze. As soon as she saw him, she started across the yard. Snackbar reached for her arm. She shrugged him off and kept coming, flip-flops slapping against her bare feet. Billy gave the cop a nod. He couldn’t place the woman but had a feeling he should know her.
She bounded up the steps. “Where’s Caroline?” she asked, eyes dark and startling.
She was taller than he expected. “Your name?”
“Zelda Taylor. I got this weird text telling me to come to work immediately. I stopped here first. I had this feeling.” Her hand darted out to take his. “Was it a home invasion? Did those shits hurt Caroline?”
This was the cousin Rosalyn had mentioned. He wondered what kind of person drives to work after an emergency call dressed in flip-flops and a nightgown. And why come here first? Her explanation didn’t cut it. “Let’s step inside,” he said.
“Tell me now.”
This was the hard part, telling someone that a person close to them has been murdered. Rosalyn Lee had been strangely stoic. A lot could happen with this one. She could start swinging, run away, or pass out.
“I’m sorry to tell you that your cousin was murdered last night,” he said.
Her lids fluttered, but she stayed on her feet.
“Where? Here?”
“At Shelby Farms.”
“No way.”
He kept a steady gaze on her.
A breeze rippled the hem of her gown. “Caroline?” she said. Her color drained.
He figured this time she’d go down, so he took her upper arm and guided her through the door. She made it to the sofa before her legs gave out. He pulled a chair close to the sofa to sit almost knee to knee with her. He wasn’t going to push. He’d let her work through the news first.
She brushed hair from her face. “Murdered? How?”
“Shot.”
“Shot? Goddamned guns.” She wiped tears and sniffed. “I need a tissue.”
Frankie, who’d been standing in the doorway, left and came back with tissues and a cup of water. She set them on the table and backed away to perch on the arm of a chair across the room.
Zelda drank the water, her attention staying on Frankie. “Who are you?”
“Detective Malone. We’re partners.”
“Oh.” Zelda set the cup down. She pressed her palm to her forehead. “Wait a minute. What was Caroline doing at Shelby Farms at night?”
“Maybe you can help us figure that out,” he said, taking out his memo book. “You up to it?”
She held the cup out to Frankie. “May I have another?”
With Frankie gone, Zelda leaned in. “I don’t like your partner hovering over us.”
He shifted in his chair, wondering why Frankie made her uncomfortable, but it didn’t matter. He needed her confidence. “Detective Malone will be in and out. Let’s talk about your cousin. You got the text from your office and came here first. You said you had a feeling.”
She dabbed her eyes. “Her life’s been pretty rocky since she called off that wedding. Raj flipped out. Big ego you know.”
Frankie came back with the water. He inclined his head toward the door. She took the hint and went outside.
“You were saying about the breakup?”
“He sent flowers, begged. Called and called. Then he started showing up at her house in the middle of the night. She wouldn’t let him in. He was yelling at her in the parking lot at the office last week. Some attorneys went out there and made him leave.”
“Any physical abuse you know of?” he asked, writing.
“No. Raj is temperamental, but then Caroline’s no patsy. You know Southern belles—they’re dangerous when they’re being agreeable. She’s been meeting with an attorney named Highsmith, who’s opening a litigation department at the firm. He advised her to file a protective order against Raj.”
“Did she?”
“Last I heard she couldn’t decide. She didn’t want to damage Raj’s reputation.”
Caroline had been right about his reputation. A deputy would slap Sharma with a warrant compelling him to appear in court. He would protest his innocence. Caroline’s attorney would produce records of phone calls, messages he’d left, snapshots of him parked in front of her house. He would be publicly humiliated, ordered not to call, harass, or visit Caroline’s workplace or be within a hundred feet of her. If he did he’d be arrested and held in contempt of court.
Highsmith was the attorney Rosalyn had said was out of town. Billy would request Caroline’s file on the doctor’s harassment be sent over.
Zelda frowned. “You think Raj did this?”
“We’re not drawing conclusions.”
“Sure, I understand why you won’t say. People can’t keep their mouths shut.” She ran both her palms down her nightgown. More tears. “My mother died a year ago. An accident. Now Caroline. She called last night to say she was leaving town for a couple of days. I can still hear her voice in my head.”
He stopped writing. “Did she say where she was going or if someone was going with her?”
“All she said was she had a lot to do to get ready. I asked what that meant, and she answered in that teasing way she used when we were kids, ‘Yooou’ll see.’ Maybe you remember her doing that.”
She twisted a strand of hair, watching him. “Uncle Saunders used to take us to the diner on Saturdays. I remember you from there. You probably don’t remember me.”
He flashed back to Caroline coming through the door with a dark-haired girl behind her.
“You do remember. I see it in your face,” she said.
“You would order a Dr Pepper with a squeeze of lime, lots of ice.”
She smiled.
“Did Caroline say whether she was meeting someone?” he asked.
“Are you going to do that cop thing where you keep repeating questions?”
She was more perceptive than she appeared. “You’ve had a shock. Sometimes it takes a couple of passes for details to come back.”
She hunched forward, resting her forearms on her thighs. “Okay.”
“When did Caroline have her locks changed?”
“About two weeks ago. Raj had a key. He let himself in trying to find out if she’d been seeing another man. Stolen woman syndrome, you know? The woman walks away and the man goes nuts thinking it’s because she’s sleeping with someone else.”
“Was she?”
“I hope so. I hope Caroline was madly in love.” She sniffed.
“Were the two of you close? Did you share confidences?”
“Sure, we’re cousins. We talked.”
“Did she ever talk about reconciling with Dr. Sharma?” he asked.
“No, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t think about it. Raj is a persuasive bastard. People trust him to cut into their brains.” She plucked a tissue. “What makes you think he shot her?”
She’d put it so casually he almost responded. He flipped through pages. “Let’s go back. Did she say anything to you that might indicate how long she’d be gone?”
“No.”
“Where were you last evening?”
“I went to bed early. Alone.”
No alibi. He considered bringing up the argument she’d had with Caroline at the office but decided to wait. Frankie walked in.
Zelda sat back. “Detective Malone. I saw you on YouTube last year taking down that thug at the library. You’re the big guns on the team.”
Frankie gave her an enigmatic smile that he knew meant she wasn’t amused. “Sorry to interrupt. An officer wants to speak with you, Detective Able. Outside.”
He wasn’t sure whether the interruption was real or if Frankie was making an excuse to get him out of the room so she could grill Zelda.
On the porch, a young patrol officer with puffy eyelids and a sparse mustache came forward. “I thought you should know about the neighbor next door. She was sorry to hear about Miss Lee, but she said she was also tired of being kept awake at night by Miss Lee being in the backyard.”
Billy wasn’t sure he’d heard that right. “Miss Lee was trespassing?”
“No sir, in her own yard. Miss Lee took to gardening at night, digging, fertilizing, and watering the roses. The neighbor said roses get black spot if you water them at night. She thought it was creepy so she mentioned it.”
“Thanks, Officer. Send your notes to me.”
Billy was almost to the front door when his mobile broke into the ringtone “Hail to the Chief.” It was Deputy Chief Middlebrook calling from the crime scene.