Death Casts a Shadow, page 3
“This is my little hideaway,” she said as they entered. The view of the yard implied that they were at the other end of the house from Zack’s office. The white rug and walls and the pastel watercolors were all in keeping with Lydia’s style. She led him to a laptop that sat open on a slim, glass-topped desk.
“See this,” she said, indicating the image of white roses on the screen. “James has sent me virtual bouquets every day for the past four weeks and always my favorites. Blue dahlias, white roses, iris . . . everything I like. It’s very sweet but so extravagant. I’ve told him he doesn’t have to, but he says it gives him too much pleasure, especially since it’s winter here and I must be missing my garden.”
“How does James”—Cubiak stopped himself from saying this James—“know which are your favorite flowers?”
Lydia fluttered a bejeweled hand at him. “Intuition? Magic? I have no idea, really. Maybe I said something. But the flowers are the least of it.”
She picked up a pale-green folder from the corner of the desk. “Do you want more proof of what I’ve told you? It’s all here. When James’s contract is finished, we’re going on a trip. The Indian Ocean to see the blue whales. Katmandu for the temple monkeys. A canoe expedition through the Amazon basin. Machu Picchu. A cruise to Easter Island. James made all the arrangements. He not only took care of the reservations, he also bought all the tickets. Everything first class. No skimping, he said, not at this stage of our lives. It’ll be the trip I’ve always dreamed of. Take a look and see for yourself.”
She thrust the folder at Cubiak. “I made copies of the itinerary and the receipts. They’re all here.”
He skimmed the top sheet that detailed the complex logistics. Then he flipped through pages of scanned material, adding up the fees. Around the world in $90,000.
“That’s quite an outlay of money,” he said as he handed the file back to Lydia.
She blushed. “Too much. And that’s not including meals! I know that James meant well, but it didn’t seem fair for him to pay for everything. We went back and forth about that for several days, but I insisted on contributing my share.”
“You gave him forty-five thousand dollars?”
Lydia stiffened. “I paid my way.”
“Did you talk to anyone else before you did this?”
“No, not really. I hadn’t discussed the trip with anyone, except Tracey, I guess. She was in here dusting when I was printing out the receipts, so I showed them to her. I was just so thrilled I thought I’d explode. She was flabbergasted. She’d never heard of half the places we’d be going to, so I told her what I knew about the history of Machu Picchu and Easter Island. We even looked them up on the internet so she could see what I was talking about. She said she’d never imagined anyone would spend that much on a vacation and that James must be really rich. I said that he was generous and that I was feeling a little guilty about him spending all that money. I told her I was thinking of paying my share and asked her if she thought he’d be insulted.”
“And what did she say?”
“I don’t think Tracey could fathom that amount of money, but she said she thought it was always a good idea for a woman to pay her share in a new relationship, at least at first because then she wouldn’t be obligated. ‘What if you end up not liking him?’ she said.”
“So you sent the money?”
“Yes.”
As she spoke, the computer dinged.
Lydia glanced at her wristwatch. “Right on time. That should be a message from James.”
She turned toward the monitor and squealed. Then she clapped and clasped her hands to her chest as if in prayer.
“Look, Sheriff. Look at this.” She stepped aside so he could see the screen. “Perhaps this will convince you that everything is on the up-and-up.”
“Good news, my lovely,” the message read. “After much negotiating I have secured time off and am finalizing plans to visit you in Door County. Can’t wait, my dearest.”
A bouquet of blue dahlias appeared beneath the message.
“You see,” Lydia said, smiling at the sheriff. “Everything I’ve said is true. I’ll throw a party and invite everyone. You’ll all meet him then.”
In the foyer, Lydia kept up the happy chatter as Cubiak slipped his coat on.
“Thank you for coming, Sheriff. Regina just lectured and never gave me the opportunity to explain anything. But you listened and I appreciate that. You can tell my aunt that she has nothing to worry about.”
The sheriff laid his card on the hall table. “In case anything comes up.” He turned to leave and then stopped. “When you came to the door earlier, you said you thought I was Bobby. Who is that?”
She waved a hand. “Bobby Fells, he takes care of the snow for me. I send him a check every month, but once in a while if he’s short, he’ll ask for an advance.”
“And he’s married to your housekeeper?”
“Tracey? Oh, no, Tracey is his sister. She’s been working for me for two years. I hired Bobby in the fall to deal with the leaves and after that to do the winter plowing and shoveling.”
Lydia hesitated. “You will come to the party, won’t you? You and Cate?”
“Of course.”
Walking away, the sheriff glanced at the beat-up gray compact by the garage and then looked up, hoping for a glimpse of the cardinal. But the bird had flown away, taking with it the single splash of color from the front yard.
When he reached the jeep, Lydia was still in the doorway. As he pulled away, she waved triumphantly, but he didn’t wave back. In the rearview mirror, the sheriff watched her step back into her fantasy world. Despite what she had said about James Dura, despite the message that had popped up on the computer, he couldn’t help but wonder if Regina wasn’t right: something was amiss.
Cubiak drove until he was out of sight of the house. Then he stopped and called the UW–Madison Alumni office. He figured it would still be closed for the holidays, so he left a message asking for someone to get back to him as soon as possible with the most recent contact information available for former student James Dura.
3
FATAL FALL
At ten on Wednesday morning, Cubiak’s phone rang as he sat in the dentist’s waiting room, paging through an outdated copy of National Geographic. He was scheduled for his annual checkup and was tempted to let the call go to voice mail when Mike Rowe’s name popped up on caller ID. Rowe wouldn’t call unless it was important.
“Sorry to disturb you, Chief. I know you took the morning off but—”
“What’s up?”
“A call came in a few minutes ago from Lydia Malcaster’s housekeeper—”
“Tracey Fells.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
The sheriff tossed the magazine to the table and pushed out of the chair. He sensed that whatever was coming would not be good.
“Tracey found Mrs. Malcaster lying at the bottom of the stairs.” Rowe hesitated. “I’m afraid she’s dead. I found your card on the hall table and—”
“I was there yesterday, talking to her. Hold on a second.” Cubiak walked outside. “What time did Tracey call?”
“About ten minutes ago. She discovered the body when she came to work and called nine-one-one. The dispatcher knew I was in the area and passed it on to me.”
“Any sign of foul play?”
“Not that I can see, but I just got here. It looks like she took a bad fall. Probably just an accident.”
As soon as he finished with Rowe, Cubiak called Cate with the news about Lydia.
“I’ll stop and talk to Regina later, but maybe you should be the one to tell her what happened,” he said.
“I’ll go there now. She’ll be devastated. The poor thing, she was so concerned about Lydia. You don’t think . . .”
The sheriff heard the worry in his spouse’s voice. “At this juncture, I don’t think anything. All I know is that Lydia fell.”
The sheriff didn’t want to alarm Cate but the domino effect surrounding Lydia’s death was troubling. Three days ago, he had never heard of Lydia Malcaster. Two days ago, her aunt, Regina Malcaster, came to his house and told his wife that she thought her niece was in trouble. Yesterday he met Lydia face to face. Today, Lydia was dead. Most likely she died as the result of an accidental fall, as Rowe suggested. Falls were not an uncommon occurrence among people her age. But that was a huge category that included an elderly population with mobility issues and serious medical conditions. The Lydia Malcaster whom Cubiak had talked with was a vigorous and agile woman. He had a hard time imagining her taking a clumsy, fatal tumble, but still, if she was distracted, perhaps daydreaming about James Dura’s pending visit . . .
Driving up the peninsula, Cubiak realized that he’d forgotten to ask Rowe where the body was found. The sheriff had seen two flights of stairs at the house, both with thick carpet runners. One led up to the second floor and the other down to the lower level. Had Lydia fallen down one of those or were there more stairs in the house?
The deputy met him at the door. His dusty brown hair had grown out for the winter and he sported a thick, reddish beard. “Tracey Fells is in the kitchen, waiting for you.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Well, she’s young and pretty freaked out. I didn’t get much out of her. She’s drinking a cup of tea now, hopefully that will calm her down.”
“The gray car outside is hers?”
Rowe nodded.
“You called Pardy?”
“Right after I talked to you. She was at a meeting, so I’d give her another forty minutes or so to get here.”
“And the victim?”
“There, at the bottom of the stairs.” The deputy glanced across the entranceway to the staircase that went to the lower level. “It looks like she’s been dead for a few hours at least.”
“It snowed again last night. Did you notice anything—footprints or tire tracks when you got here?”
Rowe shook his head. “The driveway had already been plowed and the walk was shoveled clean.”
“Any signs of forced entry?”
“The front lock doesn’t look jimmied, but I haven’t had a chance to check any further yet. Tracey said the door was open when she arrived. Do you think it could have been burglary?”
Considering the four Remington bronzes in Zack’s study and the jewelry Lydia had mentioned, burglarly was a definite possibility. Cubiak thought of his premonition about James Dura, but based on what little he knew, Dura was thousands of miles away. Just yesterday Lydia seemed so happy and lively, laughing about the burned cookies she had made. Now she was dead. What had happened to lead to this?
“It could have been anything. I’ll take a look at the body and be back up in a minute. You wait with Tracey and then go check the grounds.”
Cubiak crossed the foyer to the stairwell. To avoid contaminating the carpeting near the top step, he leaned into the wall and looked down toward the lower hall. A vine of blue flowers spiraled through the center of the carpet runner. Lydia lay directly in front of it, as if she had followed the floral path in flying to her death. Her body, clad in a white sweater and trousers, sprawled face down on the terra cotta tiles. Her head was twisted to the side, her face hidden in the shadows. One arm was tucked under her torso. The other stretched out in front of her as if she had been reaching for something. Viewed from above, her petite, slender frame appeared almost childlike. Like a crumpled snow angel, the sheriff thought.
He said something like a prayer. Then he stooped and examined the carpet, hoping the thick wool piling would reveal a clue as to how or why Lydia fell. Perhaps she had tripped on something or caught her foot in a loose thread of the rug. But he found nothing.
Descending, he pressed his shoulder to the wall and stepped along the bare wood next to the runner. The day before, when Lydia had led him to the lower level, she had fairly bounced down the stairs. She hadn’t even used the handrail.
As Cubiak neared the last few steps, his perspective shifted, and he realized that Lydia wasn’t lying flat on the floor. Her shoulders were hunched as if she had fallen awkwardly on her arm.
The sheriff pulled on a pair of latex gloves and checked for a pulse. Then he circled the body and snapped photos from a dozen different angles.
When he finished, he knelt and gently brushed the hair off her face. Her sightless eyes stared straight ahead, their color erased by death. Her pink lipstick had been worn off and her mouth gaped as if she were trying to speak. Against the whiteness of her skin, the smear of blush on her cheek seemed garish.
Cubiak turned away. He knew cops who took a macabre interest in investigating fatalities, but he had always found it hard to look upon death. For him, there was always that moment, that slice of a second, when he expected the deceased to make a sound, or when he wondered what he could do to help coax them back from the other side. Hard as it was to deal with the death of a stranger, it was even more difficult when the victim was someone he knew.
“What happened? Why were you going downstairs?” He asked the questions not of the dead woman but of himself because he knew that it was his job to find out.
Cubiak surveyed the hallway. The body lay not more than a few yards from Zack’s study. “Why were you be going there? Or were you?” He leaned over and followed the trajectory of her outstretched arm. She wasn’t pointing toward her late husband’s office but in the opposite direction. “What were you reaching for?”
Despite overhead lights that illuminated the corridor’s pale-gray walls, the dark tile floor and the deep-red baseboards lay in shadow. Using the light on his phone, the sheriff searched the area but came up with nothing. He was about to give up when he spotted a shiny object near the wall. Running his fingers along the baseboard, he felt a cold draft and then something small and hard. It was a ring. The sheriff picked it up with a tweezers and held it to the light. The ring was an unmarked, narrow gold band, small enough for a woman.
Cubiak dropped it in a small plastic bag and put it in his pocket. The ring could have been lying on the floor for weeks or months. Even years. Or only since yesterday. If Lydia was holding the ring when she fell and her hand had opened on impact, it could have rolled across the tiles. She might have been reaching for it, making a last desperate attempt to retrieve it, when she died. But why?
Upstairs, Cubiak found Rowe in the kitchen. The deputy was heating a kettle at the stove. Behind him, Tracey Fells perched on a stool at the granite island, her back to the door. The young woman was thin and tall. Her lank black hair hung over the shoulders of her thin leather jacket. During his visit with Lydia, Cubiak had heard the young housekeeper rattling around the house, but this was his first look at her.
He cleared his throat.
Tracey yipped and popped off the stool, knocking her phone to the floor.
“Shit,” she said as she stooped and snatched the device. Straightening up, she shoved it into the back pocket of impossibly skinny jeans and turned a pale, scrawny face toward the sheriff.
He introduced himself and extended a hand. Her palm was damp and soft. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick.
“Please,” he said, indicating the stool that she had vacated.
She glanced at it uncertainly and then slowly resettled herself.
He nodded toward the deputy.
“Sir,” Rowe said. He set a mug of tea in front of Tracey and then left.
Cubiak pulled a stool to the opposite side of the island and sat facing the young housekeeper.
“How long have you been working for Lydia Malcaster?” he asked.
Tracey clasped her hands together and sat up straight. “A couple of years.” She spoke quickly, her eyes blinking with each word.
“Did you like her?”
“I guess. She was all right. I didn’t dislike her.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Tracey’s eyes flashed, and the bright overhead light caught flecks of gold and brown in the gray iris.
“No, I mean, what was your job?”
“Oh, that. I did whatever. Ran errands on Monday, cleaned on Tuesday, and did laundry on Wednesday, plus tidying up and doing whatever else she wanted done.”
“You were here three days a week?”
“Yeah. Half days.” She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and then clasped her hands again.
“Do you normally get here this early?”
“Only on Wednesdays. On the other two days, I go to Regina Malcaster’s house first and then come here after lunch.”
“Who else do you work for?”
“Right now, besides Regina—the other Mrs. Malcaster—I work for a couple of other women in the area.”
“That sounds like enough hours to add up to a full-time job.”
Tracey snickered. “Oh yeah. I’m working full time all right, busting my butt five days a week. They pay cash, which is good. But only twelve dollars an hour, which isn’t good. And no benefits, either. Unless you count the hand-me-downs.” She lifted her chin and chimed in a high-pitched voice: “‘Here, dear, this sweater would fit you nicely. And these boots look your size. Why don’t you try them on? They’re Italian leather, so you’ll need to keep them oiled.’”
The housekeeper picked at her nails and stared past Cubiak. “It’s great. Perfect.”
The sheriff waited. When her hands were still again, he went on. “Can you tell me what happened today?”
Tracey cleared her throat and swallowed. “I got here at nine, parked out front like I always do, and walked to the house. I had my key out but the door was already open, so I walked in and took my boots off in the hall. Then I came in here to talk to Mrs. Malcaster.”
“She’s usually in the kitchen when you arrive?”
Tracey nodded. “She sits over there”—she pointed to a small table along a rear window—“drinking coffee and making a chore list for me. This morning she wasn’t there, which seemed strange, and she hadn’t made coffee either”—Tracey turned and looked at the rear counter—“which was very odd because she was a big coffee drinker. For a minute I didn’t know what do to. I looked around to see if she’d left me a note, but I didn’t find anything. I went back to the front hall and called down to the lower level. When there was no answer, I went upstairs to her bedroom. I thought maybe she overslept or was sick or something. But she wasn’t there, either.”
