Murder Most Fancy, page 25
• toxicology
• DNA
• trace
• chemical
‘What the frig?’ Esmerelda lamented. ‘Usually they tell us stuff. Now they’re telling us to get stuff?’
I grimaced unintentionally. She was right. This was not how a CI worked.
James pointed to the card without touching it. ‘Is this related to the snake, soda, brakes stuff?’
I had given it some thought. The luggage trolly incident happened mere hours after Max’s body was discovered and most likely before Dame Elizabeth had charged me with finding his identity. And although I could have been caught in the crossfire, the actions did all seem to be specifically directed at Esmerelda.
‘No.’
‘You sure?’
‘Dude.’
‘Right, sorry. It’s about the homeless John Doe you found then?’
So, James Smith’s eyes and ears were limited. He knew only that the body was an unknown person, a colloquial John Doe.
‘Doe’s name is Max,’ Esmerelda reprimanded.
His brow wrinkled. ‘You IDed him?’
‘Yes. No. It’s complicated.’
‘Okay,’ he said, his eyes moving sharply from me to Esmerelda. ‘Why?’
‘Did you know that like old unknown dudes get locked in a deep freeze forever and ever?’ Esmerelda said, wrinkling her nose.
‘Don’t go there,’ I said to him. ‘It’s quicksand.’
‘I see it,’ he said. And to Esmerelda: ‘You wanted to ID him so you could bury him?’
‘Like, totally no, not my jam. But, like, stuff grows on you.’
‘Someone else wants to bury him?’ he guessed. ‘And they’re … paying you to ID him so they can bury him?’
‘Old Lizzy’s not paying me!’ Esmerelda cried, indignant.
‘I’m paying you,’ I reminded her.
‘Yeah, but you pay me anyway. And that’s kinda our deal now. We find shit.’
‘It is not our deal,’ I corrected her, vigorously shaking my head. ‘Dame Elizabeth is swinging huge influence to get you out of that contract in exchange for your services.’
‘And what are you getting in exchange for your services, Heiress?’ James enquired with a penetrating stare. He pointed to the card. ‘It’s addressed to you.’ I desperately wanted to wriggle around in my chair and adjust myself.
‘Nothing,’ I managed.
He turned his blue eyes on Esmerelda. ‘It must be something.’
‘Dude, no. Nothing. What could you pay her? Look around.’
God bless Esmerelda. She was a champion liar when she put her heart into it.
James’s eyes probed my face and hands, his mouth opened a fraction. ‘From the goodness of your heart?’
‘Yes.’
While this had been completely untrue in the beginning, Max had, as Esmerelda said, grown on us. I was shocked to find, upon reflection, that I couldn’t let go of Max now even if I wanted to.
Damn.
James leaned back, either satisfied I was telling the truth or prepared to let the lie go. ‘So, your man, your woman, Dame Elizabeth, wants you two to ID him so she can bury him?’
We both nodded silently.
He opened his palms. ‘And that’s it?’
‘Oh, and like his name isn’t his name. He’s not real, but he’s real. And I think we might wanna catch his killer,’ Esmerelda said. She turned to me. ‘Right?’
James’s head shifted slightly to the left, his eyebrows raised as he side-eyed me. ‘You want to ID a homeless John Doe who was living under a pseudonym and find the person who killed him?’
Elbows on table, I rolled my eyes and planted my head in my hands. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing.’
‘Feck me, Heiress,’ James said. I raised my head to see a broad grin blooming across his face. ‘I’m in,’ he beamed. ‘Totally in.’
‘We do not need your help,’ I said. ‘You are not in.’
‘Like, we might need him, we just don’t want him,’ Esmerelda corrected me.
She was probably right. We could use all the help we could get, but I would be accepting no help from James Smith.
Someone I did want help from was Jem Bailly. I needed to contact her to get the autopsy results, and the results from toxicology, DNA, trace and chemical (whatever they were).
‘James,’ I said as politely as possible. ‘Would you mind very much just popping up to the house and asking Patricia for a cup of milk.’
‘Milk?’
‘Yes. Milk, sugar, anything. I just need a moment to confer with my … my Esmerelda.’
‘Sure, look it.’
I had no idea what that meant.
‘Sure, listen.’
Still no idea.
‘I’ll, uh, I’ll fetch something. Give you ladies a moment to “confer”.’
As the door closed behind him, Esmerelda pulled out her phone and began dialling. We connected with Bailly’s office phone within ten seconds but received her terse tidy voicemail. We dialled the FMCCC. We were told, ‘Dr Bailly’s on leave’. Bailly didn’t seem the type to take impromptu leave.
I made sure the pool house door was locked and the bedroom door and windows and even the bathroom and closet doors were closed.
‘Do you have her mobile number?’ I asked. ‘Home?’
‘Dude.’
Of course.
‘Dial please.’
Esmerelda pulled up a number, dialled it, and put Bailly on speaker between us.
‘Hello,’ Bailly said after two rings.
‘Bailly, this is Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber. Indigo.’
This got me a mocking eyeroll from Esmerelda.
‘Hello, Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber. How did you get my mobile phone number?’ she asked bluntly.
‘A friend gave it to me,’ I said ambiguously. Esmerelda grinned proudly. ‘I need to ask you a question about my Great-Uncle Max. And I have some more information, from a distant relative. It might be helpful. Can I meet you in your office later?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No, you cannot meet me in my office. I cannot meet with you again.’
Feck! We had been found out. She knew we were frauds. She was cutting us off. Turning us in. A wave of panic and embarrassment washed over me. My old friend fuzz crept up my throat.
‘Dude, don’t even,’ Esmerelda warned me in a loud whisper.
I inhaled and exhaled deeply, getting the faint under control. Time to face the music. I didn’t think I would enjoy the experience.
‘Dr Bailly, I am so sorry if my actions have in any way caused you problems. I apologise unreservedly.’
‘Your actions have not caused me problems. My actions have caused me problems. Tests are expensive. UP Rose Bay 0909 Winters was not a priority. I ordered all the tests. I was not supposed to.’
Maybe it was all the fruit, or the fact that I had risen at 7 am and consumed less than a bottle of wine with lunch, but my mind moved more rapidly than usual.
‘You cannot meet with me because you cannot meet with me.’
Crickets.
Emphasis was not a good communication strategy with Bailly.
‘You were fired?’ I hedged. ‘For ordering too many tests?’
‘Suspended without pay,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘By the deputy state coroner, Mr Kevin Pasty. He’s not a forensic pathologist. He’s not even a doctor. He’s a lawyer.’
An expression of disgust crossed Esmerelda’s face and her body tensed.
‘Mr Pasty limited the scope of the autopsy. He will not assess all the results. His preliminary report will find UP Rose Bay 0909 Winters was an unknown homeless man. You should have gone with Dr Eric Blackstone.’
‘Which tests did you order, Bailly?’
More silence.
‘Can I guess? More autopsy tests.’ I was winging it now. ‘Toxicology. DNA. Trace. Chemical.’ I had no idea what any of it meant.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I ordered all of those tests.’
‘You did the right thing. My Great-Uncle Max was much loved. I will keep looking for more information to help you definitively identify him. Then we can claim him officially. We are trying to track his …’ I stopped.
Bailly didn’t know we had the batch number for Max’s dental implants. It might not be helpful to tell her we had this inside information until we had something more definitive. Something more legal. Like the name and address of his next of kin, his daughters.
I finished my sentence, ‘… his more current acquaintances.’
‘That would be helpful, yes,’ Bailly said. I could hear the roll of the ocean in the background. She was near the beach. She was probably at home or walking or at the bakery.
‘And the test results? Max’s test result? It would really help me if you could share any new information.’
There was another extended pause. ‘Have you found any additional, historical information about your great-uncle?’ she prodded.
‘Yes?’
I scrutinised Esmerelda. She shrugged, ever helpful.
‘Great-Uncle Max lived with a distant relative in his youth,’ I lied rapidly. ‘This relative was unkind, physically abusive. Max was not cared for properly, medically.’
‘Yes,’ Bailly agreed. ‘That does fit with some of my findings. Is that all the information you have?’
I held my hands out for help. Esmerelda began mimicking digging in the ground, mopping the floor, banging nails with an imaginary hammer.
Criminal charades.
‘Work?’ I guessed.
She wiped fake sweat from her brow.
‘He did physical work.’
Esmerelda doubled her digging efforts, adding in what looked like a wrenching action and picking up heavy things.
‘Laborious work?’ I elaborated.
‘That is also consistent with my findings, Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber.’
I mimicked wiping sweat from my brow.
‘Now can you tell me about the test results?’
‘No.’
I mimicked trying to strangle myself. Not helpful.
‘Can you tell me why you cannot tell me?’ I tried, taking my hands from my throat.
‘Yes.’
Okay. Progress.
‘Why is it,’ I said, choosing my words carefully, ‘that you cannot tell me about Great-Uncle Max’s test results?’
‘I was put on leave before the results came in from the various departments. Toxicology department. The DNA lab. The trace lab. The chemical analysis department. I don’t have access to the results.’
‘So, the results are back, you just don’t have access to them?’ I clarified.
‘Correct.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said sympathetically. ‘That must be very frustrating for you.’
It was frustrating the hell out of me.
‘Correct. It’s very frustrating. Scientists often have tunnel vision. They perform tests only in their area, in isolation. They don’t look at the results of the other scientists’ tests. Scientists don’t always put two and two together. Unless you tell them to compare their results along with other test results from other areas, or directly ask them a question, “Is result A from test A related to result B from test B?” they might not tell you. They might not notice. They might not find things. All of UP Rose Bay 0909 Winters’s results must be put together in one place.’
‘Is putting the test results together something you do, Bailly?’
‘Yes.’
Now we were getting somewhere.
‘But you’re not there, so the test results won’t get put together?’
‘Correct.’
I pushed my luck. ‘Could you perhaps contact a colleague and get the results from them?’
‘No.’
‘No, you cannot contact them? Or no they would not give you the results? Or no they would not have the results?’
‘All three. Each scientist will only have access to their own results. Only three people in the facility will have access to all the results. Me, the state coroner and the deputy state coroner, Mr Pasty.’
How important was it to get those test results, really? I didn’t have to do what the card from the envelope with the golfing Santa stamp told me to do. There could be other ways. We had the batch number from the dental implants. That might yet be helpful.
‘I see,’ I said in resignation. I expected the conversation to end there, but it did not.
‘I do not think Mr Pasty is correct. I do not think UP Rose Bay 0909 Winters was homeless or his death accidental. I do not think Mr Pasty will try to put A and B together.’
I think we had established that.
Several long moments passed. Again. This time, it was so long I wondered if she was gone. ‘Hello?’
‘Mr Pasty has two Chinese Cresteds. One is called Boris, the other Horace,’ she said before spelling out the names. ‘All lowercase. Born May 8th. A Wednesday. I was born on Friday the 13th. In October.’
I was baffled. ‘Chinese what?’
‘Cresteds. Dogs. Chinese Crested dogs. Mr Pasty doesn’t follow security protocols. He uses the same passcodes for everything. He should change his passcodes weekly. He doesn’t.’
Wait.
Was Bailly giving me her boss’s passcode?
Esmerelda opened an app on her phone and started taking notes. ‘Like, ask her,’ she said, nudging me, ‘if there’s like a pass card to go with the passcode.’
‘Mr Pasty is particularly fond of young ladies with fair hair, brown eyes and full-sized mammary glands. His favourites have small skeletal structures. He attempts to find these types of women when he drinks at a bar called Anna’s Inn. He often drinks too much. Mr Pasty’s wife is a brunette with a larger skeletal structure. She does not drink at the bar with him.’
‘Totally a yes on the pass card,’ Esmerelda put in.
‘His office is on the third floor of the FM triple C. Second door on the right. He never locks it with the key. Due to budget cuts, there are only security guards from 8 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday. At all other times, security is done via cameras. The cameras are monitored offsite.’
Was she suggesting we somehow acquire the deputy state coroner’s pass card, guess his doggy-themed passcode and break into the FMCCC?
‘Mr Pasty’s passcode and pass card will open the facility’s doors and turn off the alarms, but not the cameras. They will also give you access to his desktop computer and its contents. This computer will have all the results and my autopsy findings.’
That was a yes.
This was crazy and I was about to tell her so. Instead, I found myself asking where the bodies were stored. My mind kept circling back to that small thing that had prickled at me that day in the lilies. I had thought it was the familiar scent of the California Poppy Oil, but that might not have been it. It might have been something else about Max, something familiar … I couldn’t ask Bailly about it because if I was wrong, it would out me as a big fat fibber. I needed to see Max myself, in person.
‘You don’t wish to see the bodies. This is common,’ she responded, completely misunderstanding me. ‘You needn’t worry. They’re well contained in refrigerated drawers on the ground floor. Just walk straight past them.’
How convenient.
CHAPTER 20
DRIVEN
A brusque knock at the front door of the pool house ended the somewhat cryptic and certainly criminally conspiratorial conversation with Bailly. It was Loraine with the NDAs. I was surprised to see Loraine tugging at her usually perfect hair—it was flyaway and lopsided. And then I saw it: walking behind her, speaking in professional yet honeyed tones, was James. If James could make Loraine and her hurricane-proof hair lose control, what hope did the rest of us have?
Esmerelda and I signed the NDAs and Loraine, carefully avoiding James, departed. That left us with James.
I wondered if I was being unfair, wanting James out of my life. He was right, we were family, of a sort. I tried to assess whether I was imagining the mutual attraction. Just because many, many women were attracted to him didn’t mean he was attracted to all those women in return. He would have been exceptionally busy otherwise. And quite sore, I imagine.
There was also no way I could break into the FMCCC to hack the deputy state coroner’s computer. Even if he was a cheating cheapskate. It was simply too dangerous. Which brought me back to James. I had a reasonable suspicion that James was an expert at successfully gaining access to places not meant to be breached. Maybe he knew something about disabling cameras too … no, it was definitely too dangerous. Or was it?
Before I could even contemplate breaking into a highly secure government facility, and thus possibly getting caught, I would need to seriously assess how much political sway I could muster in a crisis.
The prime minister still detested Grandmother, but the state premier Jason Tripp had been a superfan of Mother’s for years. I doubted her public dating of fireman Jed had altered that. Jason was a true politician, resilient when it came to rejection, and patient, like a big cat.
Then there was Dame Elizabeth. Everyone loved her.
No, it was still too risky. Too dangerous. There had to be another way.
I came to sitting at the kitchen island with a glass of wine in my hand, Esmerelda and James standing by the fridge, sharing a bag of Lolly Gobble Bliss Bombs, staring at me.
‘Is she often like this?’ James was asking.
‘Yeah, it’s like her thinking thing,’ Esmerelda said, dipping her hand back into the yellow foil bag.
‘She’s fascinating,’ he said earnestly.
‘Oh yeah, dude, she’s totally the Heiress on Fire.’
He nodded and ate a few pieces of nutty caramel popcorn from his hand.
‘How long have I been in here for?’ I wanted to know.
They exchanged glances. ‘Oh, like not long at all.’
I looked down at the island. The bottle of wine was half empty and there was a puddle of condensation around its base.
‘Do I often do this?’
‘Eh,’ Esmerelda said, wrinkling her nose and waving her hand in mid-air.
‘I don’t process verbally, do I?’ I asked.
Esmerelda gave me a dumbfounded expression. ‘Huh?’
