A few days later, Burke called and informed me that Bianca Wembley’s older brother, Oscar Wembley, had called to report that the woman who was initially thought to be Daphne was indeed his sister, Bianca. He was flying in early the next morning to identify and claim her. Now that she had undergone an autopsy, he planned on having her cremated, then taking her ashes back with him to San Francisco. Burke gave me his cell phone number, and after exchanging a couple of missed calls, we finally connected. Oscar seemed hesitant to meet at first, but when I explained my serious doubts about his sister’s suicide and my suspicions that the autopsy might’ve been misdirected, he was eager to help figure out what really happened to his baby sister. Once he took care of business at the medical examiner’s office, he and I would sit down for a chat. I knew virtually nothing about Bianca Wembley, so I was encouraged that her brother might be able to provide some answers to the many questions I had.
Oscar Wembley was a large man with curly brown hair, bright blue eyes, and a slight coloration to his skin. His grip was strong, and he had a voice to match. He carried a large envelope in one hand, which I assumed were papers from the ME’s office.
“Sorry to meet you under these circumstances,” I said as he got settled into his seat. “I know this must be tough for you and your family.”
“There’s not much family,” he said. “It was only Bianca and me left. We had a couple of cousins, but we saw them sparingly growing up.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“Oswego, New York, a small town upstate on Lake Ontario. We were adopted by two teachers who couldn’t have children on their own. Bianca and I weren’t biological siblings. I was ten years older.”
“Are your parents still alive?”
“Unfortunately, they’re both gone. They were older when they adopted us. My father had a heart attack while running along the lake one morning. My mother was hit by a drunk driver a few years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
“They were good people,” Oscar said. “They took me in when it wasn’t popular to adopt biracial kids.” He smiled. “Bianca and I would get a kick out of telling people we were brother and sister. She was barely five feet and pale as the moon. I was always tall and clearly had at least one Black parent. It was always fun to see people struggle to hide their surprise.”
“I can only imagine the looks the two of you must’ve gotten.”
“Especially in a small, sterile town like Oswego.” Oscar smiled at the memory.
“Was your sister suffering from depression or anything like that?”
“Not that I know of,” Oscar said. “Bianca and I weren’t so close the last five years. I had moved out to San Fran and started a family. She had moved out here after school. We talked occasionally, but it’s tough when you’re so far apart, and then we lost Mom, so we didn’t have that connection back home.”
“Did she have lots of friends?”
“Not sure about that either. She never talked about boyfriends or anything to do with her social life. I know she liked to travel a lot, but I never saw many pictures. I assumed she was going with friends or a partner.”
“When was the last time you spoke to her?”
“My oldest daughter’s birthday, May seventeenth. She and Bianca FaceTimed each other. Bianca bought her a Gucci backpack. Bianca always bought the girls expensive gifts. But I could never figure out how she could do that from the small online arts-and-crafts business she ran.”
“Lots of people took up arts and crafts during the pandemic,” I said. “If she was good at what she did, then she could’ve done really well.”
“I guess,” Oscar said. “But buying a fourteen-year-old girl a two-thousand-dollar backpack is excessive. But Bianca insisted. She said they were her only nieces, and she didn’t have her own kids, so she had the right to spoil them. The girls really loved Bianca.”
“What was the name of her business?”
“The Crafty Magic,” Oscar said.
“When you last talked to her, how did she sound?”
“Perfect. Like her usual self. Funny. Upbeat. She was planning a trip to South Africa this Christmas.”
“No signs at all that she might be sad about something or worried?”
“Nothing. She was happy.”
“I’m going to shoot straight with you, Oscar,” I said. “I don’t think your sister committed suicide. I think someone killed her and tried to stage it as a suicide.”
“The medical examiner is saying it’s a suicide.”
“I know. But the medical examiner has bodies coming through the doors every day, and it’s hard for them to keep up. They’re humans like anyone else. If you have a long list of cases on your desk and you have an unidentified, unclaimed body and the police report describes what looks like a suicide, that could influence how quickly you make the same determination.”
“What makes you think someone killed her?”
“I have been working on another case that had nothing to do with her. But just by chance, I heard about your sister on the evening news. Something struck me as odd. I was more curious than I was suspicious. But as I looked more into my case, I started seeing some similarities with your sister’s. I couldn’t find out much about your sister, but from what I was able to gather, something just didn’t sit right with me. I was able to get my hands on a copy of the autopsy report, and I had an outside pathologist take a look at it, because I definitely don’t understand all of the medical lingo. He’s pretty certain your sister didn’t hang herself.”
“What does he think happened?” Oscar said.
“He thinks she was restrained at her wrists, duct-taped, and strangled. When she was dead, they hung her on that statue to make it look like a suicide.”
Oscar blinked to fight back tears. “I just can’t imagine who would do that to her,” he said. “And I’m surprised she didn’t fight back. Bianca was small, but she was feisty as hell. She wouldn’t let anyone just walk over her. She spent almost every summer fishing and hunting with our grandfather. She was pretty, but she was a real tomboy. They would go camping in the woods for several days at a time. Just the two of them. Catching fish and shooting small game, then bringing their kill back to the campsite to clean and cook it on the fire. If Bianca could’ve fought, she would’ve.”
That made me think that they had immobilized her somehow. I wondered if she had a sedative on board like Kantor and Thompson had. I made a mental note to look into it.
“Was she still in touch with your grandfather?” I said.
“No, he died about fifteen years ago. Broke her heart. Like I said, our dad was a teacher, so he was more into the academic stuff. But my grandfather was one of those outdoorsy guys. I remember the smile on her face one summer when they had come back from camping. She was thrilled that he taught her how to shoot a rifle and tie a proper knot to secure the animal on the hood of the old Jeep my grandfather drove. She spent an entire week that summer walking around the house tying knots, so she’d be ready that weekend when they went back out.”
“Your sister’s life feels like a mystery,” I said.
“Meaning?”
“Well, she just seemed so reserved, keeping to herself.”
“Well, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. Bianca wasn’t some introverted loner who was incapable of socializing. She could be very social, but she did like her privacy. Oswego was not exactly the most exciting place to live. Most of the townspeople didn’t get us. And to be honest, we really didn’t care. We got us, and that was what mattered. But when she went to college, that’s when I think she came into her own. She enjoyed the freedom, the bigness of it all. Her world opened up at Colgate.”
“Speaking of college, that’s the one thing I was able to find,” I said. “She co-authored a paper in a political science journal about our political party system. It was a really convincing argument. Not typically my type of reading, but I enjoyed it.”
Oscar smiled. “Bianca was deceptively smart. People would see this pretty little girl and think she might be a cheerleader or something, but Bianca had a huge brain. She knew something about everything and wasn’t afraid to let you know it.” Oscar laughed to himself. “She took after our father in that regard. You got him wound up, and he could debate a dead tree.”
“So, what are you going to do next?” I said.
“Have her cremated and bring her back with me,” Oscar said. “Bianca was never into funerals and things like that. She always thought they were sadder than they needed to be. She always thought there should be a celebration of life. Problem is, I don’t know how to reach her friends to celebrate.”
“Have you been to her apartment yet?”
“I’m going there now,” he said.
“Would you mind if I joined you? Maybe there will be something there that will give us a clue as to why someone would do this.”
“Let’s do it,” Oscar said.
After stuffing his enormous frame into the passenger seat of my Porsche, we raced up to an address in Lakeview that Oscar had written on a piece of paper. The quiet residential street looked like it was more suited to young families of means or retired couples who had downsized from larger homes and opted for something smaller to remain in the city. Bianca lived in a slim, three-floor limestone house with a small front yard surrounded by a tall privacy fence. Two cameras on both corners of the house pointed in our direction. Oscar produced a key that let us in the gate, then in the front door of the house.
We stepped into the foyer and stopped to make a visual inspection. Everything was immaculate, almost as if it were a staged home and no one actually lived there. The furnishings were sparse but well-appointed, and the rooms felt cold in the way overly designed homes could be when functionality became secondary to aesthetic.
“I never knew Bianca was doing this well,” Oscar said, his head slowly swiveling to take it all in. “This is a pretty spiffy place.”
“Makes me feel like I’m in the wrong business,” I said. “Who knew Popsicle sticks, yarn, and glitter could add up to all of this?”
“Where should we start?” he asked.
“The bedroom,” I said. “If there’s any room that can tell you most about a homeowner’s character, it’s usually the privacy of their bedroom.” I had flashbacks of seeing Kantor tied up to his bedposts. “The bedroom is where people can be who they are without judgment.”
We walked through the first-floor rooms, a formal dining room, a large living room, and a marble-tiled kitchen in the back. We scaled the carpeted steps to the second floor, where we found the primary bedroom sitting alone, at the opposite end of the hall from two large guest bedrooms. Stepping into the room was the first time I felt like a woman really lived here. There weren’t any pinks or pastels or framed boards preaching Live, Laugh, Love. But the attention to detail in the curtains, the comforter, and even the pillowcases was clearly the discriminating choice of a woman.
“What a TV,” Oscar said.
The bed faced a massive TV screen hanging on the opposite wall.
“Sunday Night Football would look really good on a screen that big,” I said.
I slowly walked around the room, looking for anything that might give me a clue as to who Bianca was and what her interests had been. I didn’t see any electronic devices—no tablet, phone, or computer. How could a thirty-six-year-old woman exist and not be connected? Even more confusing, how could she run an online business without a computer?
I walked into her closet, which was the size of a small bedroom. Just like the rest of the house, everything was in perfect order. One entire wall had been lined with shelves to house her extensive shoe collection. Based on what I had learned from Carolina, these looked to be the designer brands sold at the luxury stores on Oak Street. I noticed a shelf that had various types of plastic moldings, which must’ve been the orthotics Dr. Ellison said she had probably used to even out her leg-length difference. I left the closet and entered the bathroom with its floor-to-ceiling marble and double-steam shower. I opened the cabinets of the vanity and found standard female accessories neatly organized. Her toothbrush and other items rested neatly in silver cups on the polished countertop. I opened the drawers and found combs and brushes, as well as a recent birth control prescription.
I walked back into the room and looked at her nightstand. In front of a stack of political biographies sat a framed photograph of three beautiful girls with their hands around each other as they stood on a bright beach, with the water at their backs.
“Your daughters?” I asked Oscar.
He walked over, picked up the photo, and smiled. “Charlotte, Cayden, and Camden,” he said. “We were down in Cancún over winter break a couple of years ago. Bianca was supposed to go with us on that trip, but she had some last-minute work situation.”
“By the looks of the gene pool, you’re gonna have a lot of problems on your hands very soon.”
“Soon? Boys are already texting Charlotte nonstop and sending her messages all night on Snapchat. And she’s only fourteen.”
“I guess in the scheme of things, that’s not the worst problem to have,” I said. “Kids are into a lot of bad things these days. A little flirtation and pursuit are manageable. The alternatives, not so much.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” Oscar said, resting the photograph back on the nightstand. “We’ve heard the nightmares from other parents.”
We walked into the guest bedrooms on the same floor, but finding nothing out of order or interesting, we went back downstairs, where we found an office at the back of the house. I turned on the light and stepped into the dark-paneled room. Two of the walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and the third wall was a gigantic fireplace with a large oil-on-canvas painting of a mermaid framed above the mantelpiece. Against the fourth wall, which was just windows, sat an oval black walnut desk. An orange orchid plant sat on one end and a slender crystal lamp on the other. What really caught my eye, however, was that there wasn’t a computer. There was a stack of papers neatly arranged in a letter tray, a recent issue of Vanity Fair, and a copy of Michelle Obama’s autobiography Becoming resting on top of Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices. A Montblanc pen rested on top of a blotter, and the desktop was so clean, I got the feeling it was never used.
I walked behind the desk and pulled the chair back. I opened the top drawer. It was mostly empty, except for a calendar and old copies of a few fashion magazines. The other drawers contained basic office supplies and a folder of receipts that I opened and flipped through. Nothing stood out. She had gone to London a couple of months ago and stayed at Brown’s Hotel. She was only there for three nights. I put the folder back in the drawer, then looked down at the floor. That’s when I found what I had been looking for: an HP computer charging cord, which meant at some point, there had been a computer on the desk, before someone decided to take it. The reason why everything seemed too perfect and there were so few of her personal effects was because the place had been cleaned. All traces of what she was doing and who she might’ve been connected to had been carefully removed.
We went down and inspected the basement. She had installed a small gym with a stationary bike, a treadmill, yoga mats, an adjustable bench, and a rack of dumbbells. I looked for some type of DVR machine for the cameras but didn’t find anything.
When we got back upstairs, Oscar said, “So what do you think?”
“Did the medical examiner give you any of her personal effects?” I said.
“They told me she didn’t have any. Just the clothes she was wearing.”
“While I was walking through the rooms, I kept asking myself, ‘Where’s the computer? Where’s her cell phone? Where’s anything that indicates a pretty, active woman in her thirties actually lived here?’”
“Are you saying you don’t believe she lived here?”
“Just the opposite. I believe she lived here, but I think someone did such a meticulous job of covering their tracks, they left the house in a condition that seems unrealistic, too sterile. Who really lives this cleanly and this perfectly?”
“I saw two cameras outside when we came in,” Oscar said.
“They won’t do any good. If they were recording video to a DVR, the machine is probably in the bottom of Lake Michigan right now. If it was recording to the cloud like a lot of these new surveillance systems do, then that’s a lost cause too. They were probably controlled remotely via her phone, which we don’t have, and it would be almost impossible to access her account without any of her security information.”
“So, what do we do next?”
“Do you have anything of hers at your house in California?”
Oscar shook his head. “I really doubt it. Maybe some pictures when we were kids, but that’s about it.”
“Do you have any pictures of her on your phone?”
“I should,” Oscar said. He opened his phone and scrolled through the gallery. “Here she is in London. The girls had never seen a real palace before, so they asked her to take a photo of one when she last went over to the city for a meeting. This was her standing in front of Kensington Palace.”
He handed me the phone. Bianca stood in front of an enormous wrought-iron black gate with large gold-leaf ornamental inlays. The roofline of the palace could be seen towering behind her. Bianca had long dark hair and bright hazel eyes. A small diamond nose ring added a sparkle to her face. She had a petite frame but was built well. Getting attention, both desired and undesired, must have come easy for her.
“I think she sent us another one while she was there,” Oscar said.
He swiped across the screen to the next photo. Bianca was wearing a different outfit, this time a knee-length skirt and a matching jacket covering a light blue blouse. Unlike in the previous photo, she wore just a touch of makeup and soft pink lipstick. She was no longer wearing her diamond nose ring. She looked happy and vigorous. She was standing in front of a cube-shaped avant-garde building that had full-length columns of what appeared to be crystalline structure that formed the entire wall. I handed the phone back to Oscar. He took one more forlorn look at his sister before sliding the phone back into his front pocket.
“She’s beautiful,” I said. “I’m very sorry this happened to her. Can you text this photo to me?”
“No problem,” he said. “But I just don’t understand any of this. Why would someone do this to Bianca? What could she have done to deserve this?”
“I don’t know the reason,” I said. “And even if I’m able to find one, it still might not make any sense.”
“I still haven’t told the girls yet,” he said. “Every time I try, I can’t find the right words.”
“It won’t be easy,” I said. “But after doing this for so many years, I’ve learned that kids are a lot more resilient than we adults give them credit for.”
“I’m going to spend some time alone here, if you don’t mind,” he said, walking me to the door. “I just want to be in her space.”
“I completely understand,” I said, opening the door. “And do me a favor. I know you might not have much from her, but if you could dig around a little when you get back home, I’d appreciate it. Sometimes what we think is insignificant can be surprisingly relevant and helpful.”
I walked down the stairs and to my car, thinking how vicious and unpredictable life could be.