Death Casts a Shadow, page 7
The only spot of color was the red of the medical examiner’s turtleneck. It peeked out from her coat like a bright red ribbon and reminded him of the cardinal in Lydia’s yard. He took a deep breath.
“Are you okay?” Pardy said.
“Yeah. Let’s do this.”
The medical examiner lowered the sheet to the dead woman’s shoulders. Despite himself, Cubiak flinched at the sight of the bruises on her face.
“You know the preliminaries. Lydia Malcaster: age, sixty-four; height, five feet and four inches; weight, one hundred thirty-five pounds. Cause of death was a combination of fracture to the upper cervical spine, C1 and C2, and rupture of the spleen resulting from a fall. Subject presents with contusions consistent with a fall, as down a flight of stairs,” she said, indicating the discoloration on the forehead. “And internal bleeding caused by the ruptured organ.”
“Death was not instantaneous?” the sheriff said.
“Sadly no. There’s some slight bruising on her chest where she landed on top of the statue, which means she was still alive after she fell. But it’s doubtful that she lived for very long. And if she’d been unconscious, which is a likely scenario, she wouldn’t have suffered.”
“Do you think it was an accident?” he asked.
“Given the circumstances, I can’t provide a definitive answer. Falls are the primary etiology of accidental deaths in people her age and older, but whether or not this particular fall was an accident, it’s not within my purview to determine.”
As she talked, Pardy tucked the sheet around the torso.
“Then there’s this.” The medical examiner pointed to Lydia’s arm. “Note the discoloration just above both elbows. The nature of the bruising indicates that someone had clutched her by both arms, hard, like this.”
Pardy turned and pretended to take hold of Cubiak. “You can see the marks where the fingers pressed into her flesh.”
“You mean that someone grabbed her and then shoved her down the stairs?”
“No, that’s not it. Whoever was holding on to Lydia was standing directly in front of her. If they’d shoved her, she would have tumbled backward, but it’s clear from the markings on her body and the way she landed that she fell face first. The more likely scenario is that the bruising occurred before she fell.”
“Is there any way to establish a time sequence?”
“The discoloration on her arms is fairly recent, but I can’t be more specific. The bruises might have been made anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours before death.”
“Or thirty seconds?”
Pardy looked down at the body. “Possibly, but not likely.”
“What if Person X took hold of Lydia in the hallway near the top of the stairwell? They argued and then she pulled free and walked toward the stairs. Just as she got there, the assailant came up behind and pushed her.”
“There are no bruises on her back.”
Cubiak leaned against the counter. “There wouldn’t be any, would there? Not from a gentle shove. Lydia looked pretty fragile. A nudge would probably have been enough to send her reeling down the stairs.”
“Perhaps,” Pardy said. “The deceased had severe osteoporosis, which can affect balance. On the other hand, there are her pants to consider, the wide legs. She could easily have tangled a foot in all that fabric. And she’d been drinking.”
“How much?”
“Her blood alcohol level was point zero seven percent, enough to cause impairment of speech and vision, so I’d say she had considerably more than she should have.”
“Humph.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Her friend John Overly was with her the previous evening. He said they had a glass of sherry and talked until midnight.”
“Either she’d been drinking before he arrived or she kept on after he left because she definitely had a lot more than one glass of sherry,” Pardy said.
Cubiak paced along the counter. “What about the rest?”
“No indication of recent sexual activity. No sign of drug use. Stomach contents reveal a dinner of shrimp and pasta.”
“And the ring?”
“I found nothing to indicate that she wore any rings other than the ones she had on when she died. And she’d worn all of them for a long time. I’d say for years, judging by the indentations in the skin.”
The medical examiner repositioned the sheet over the body.
“What is it about this one, Dave?” she asked.
He rubbed his temple. “I don’t know. I’d only met her the day before. Maybe it was the burned cookies she served. Or finding the ring on the floor. Maybe it’s just too much winter . . . whatever. I realize that the circumstances point to this as an accidental fall, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to Lydia’s death, something I’m not seeing.”
7
THE IMPOSTER
After he finished talking to Pardy, Cubiak stopped at the new west side deli for a sandwich and then headed to his office. At work, he tossed his lunch on the desk and was pulling off his parka when the red light on the phone console flashed. Still standing, he pressed the button.
“What is it, Lisa?”
“A call for you on line two.” His assistant sounded amused.
The sheriff lobbed his jacket toward the conference table, but as usual he missed, and the jacket landed on the floor. He shrugged, picked up the receiver, and tapped another button. “This is Sheriff Dave Cubiak. How can I help you?” he said. There was no response, as if the words had floated into a distant void. He paused for a moment and then tried again. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
After a moment, the quiet was broken by a muffled cough.
“Who is this?” he asked.
“You left a message for James Dura?” The voice was female, slurred, and heavily accented.
“I did.” Cubiak hooked his foot around the leg of his chair and rolled it away from his desk. “Are you Mrs. Dura?”
“That depends on whether or not you’re looking for money,” the caller drawled.
“I’m looking for information. But before we go on, I must ask again, are you Mrs. James Dura?”
“Was.” The clipped response was followed by the sound of liquid being poured into a glass. “I’ve gone back to using my own name now. In another life I had the misfortune of being married to James for fifteen years. Now, if you are a spiritualist or conjurer with exceptional powers, it appears I might have the misfortune again. I surely hope that’s not the case. I was out when you called but I heard the message when I got home. Since then I’ve been ruminating over the situation, considering whether I should return the call or not.”
As she talked, Cubiak sat and reached for a pen. “I’m glad you did, but why wouldn’t you?”
“Because I am tired of cleaning up the messes my dear Jimmy left behind. Creditors, bad debts, promissory notes to everybody and their grandmother, insurance scams, what have you. I had half a mind to ignore your call. But, sir, I was raised both a Baptist and an optimist, and I thought that maybe this time it would be different. Don’t ask me why. I just had that thought in my mind.”
She sipped her drink.
“Where is Door County anyway?”
“Wisconsin.”
“Hah. How about that! Way up north, where James went to college. ‘On Wisconsin, on Wisconsin . . .’” The caller’s rendition of the UW fight song ended in a hiccup. “’Scuse me.” More silence. Then “Are you or are you not going to tell me why you called?”
“Actually, I had hoped to speak with James Dura and would appreciate it if you would tell me how to reach your ex-husband.”
“Oh, well now, honey, that’s near to impossible. And he’s not merely my ex. He’s my once knight in shining armor, now deceased, and very dead former husband.”
This time, Cubiak hesitated. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be. James was a no-good son of a gun. I’d use a stronger word, but like I said before, I was raised Baptist and my parents did not approve of that kind of language.”
“Nonetheless, I am sorry. And if you don’t mind, I need to make sure that I haven’t made a mistake. It’s possible that I have confused your late husband with someone else by the same name. In which case, I offer my sincere apologies for disturbing you.”
She coughed. “How tall are you, Sheriff?”
He frowned. “What difference does that make?”
“I like to talk to tall men.” Ice cubes clinked in the glass. “I’ll imagine that you’re a tall man. Are you a handsome man as well, Sheriff?”
“No.”
“Oh, I’ll bet you are.”
“Mrs. Dura,” he said.
“It’s Abigail Vanhausen, but you can call me Abby.”
“Ms. Vanhausen, I need just a little more of your time.”
Cubiak recited the date and place of birth that he had for James Dura.
“Check and check.”
“Played football at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.”
“Right again. A campus hero.” She sighed. “That’s my James.”
“And there is no question that this James Dura, the one I just described, is deceased. No chance of mistaken identity, for example.”
The voice on the phone grew hard. “It is the same James Dura who sat next to me and drove me home in the rain from a holiday party ten years ago that I was foolish enough to attend with him even though we were no longer wed. The same James Dura who swerved into oncoming traffic for God knows whatever reason and collided head-on with a produce truck. The James Dura who was killed instantly and who left me paralyzed from the waist down.”
Cubiak stared at the receiver. After a moment of silence that was matched by her own deep quiet, he forced himself to speak.
“I am truly sorry. For everything,” he said.
“I believe you are,” she said. Her tone was brisk but not unkind. “Life happens, Sheriff. It happens to all of us. Now if there’s anything else?” Instantly, she assumed a businesslike and formal manner.
“Just a couple more things, if I may?” He hated to go on but knew that he had to. “What was your late husband’s occupation?”
“James majored in business and was working on his MBA when we got married. He was only into it a couple of months when his father died and he inherited the family supermarket. He managed to buy three more stores and then ran them all into the ground.” The ice cubes tinkled again. “Tell me, Sheriff, this James Dura you thought you were calling, what did he say he was?”
“As I understand it, he said he was a petroleum engineer.”
“Hah!” Abby Vanhausen guffawed. “Thank you, Sheriff. Thank you for that. You just made my day.”
“Before, you said that you were tired of people asking about James. What did you mean?”
“Well, you’re not the first is what I meant. Somebody else called inquiring about him. They said they went to school with him.”
“Was it a woman?”
“Uh-uh. A man. I don’t remember his name, but he said he was on the team with James.”
After he hung up, Cubiak searched the internet for James Dura. A newspaper story about the accident came up first. The obituary, second. Both confirmed what Abby Vanhausen had told him about Dura’s life and death as well as his own suspicions about Lydia Malcaster’s internet suitor.
The man who called himself James Dura and who emailed his way into Lydia’s life was an imposter. She had tied her dreams and sent money to someone masquerading as Zack’s former roommate and friend.
Cubiak buzzed Rowe. “You’re back,” he said.
“Just got in. Why?”
“I’m heading up to Lydia’s house and need you to come with me.”
“Sure. I still got my hat on. I’ll meet you outside.”
The sheriff snatched his lunch from the desk and picked his coat up from the floor. As the two men drove north, he ran through what he had learned from Pardy about Lydia’s death and from Abigail Vanhausen about the real James Dura.
“We’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of finding who’s pretending to be him,” Rowe said.
“Maybe,” Cubiak said. “If the imposter was part of an international scam, you’re probably right. But whoever was doing this knew an awful lot of personal details about Lydia. So much that it makes me wonder if it might not be someone local.”
Rowe slowed to maneuver around a traffic circle. “Even so, it’s not going to be easy. The internet’s a big place to hide.”
They were near Carlsville when Cubiak remembered his lunch.
“Did you eat?”
Rowe shook his head.
“Here, then. Bon appétit.” The sheriff unwrapped his sandwich and gave half to the deputy.
The driveway to Lydia Malcaster’s house was unplowed, and coming in, they carved fresh tracks in the snow. Cubiak looked for the cardinal, hoping it had not forsaken the yard, but the bird was nowhere in sight. He ducked under the yellow tape and opened the door to the silent house.
“This way,” he said, leading the deputy to Lydia’s hideaway. In the small room off the kitchen, her computer sat on the glass-topped desk.
“Whatever went on between Lydia and Dura is in here,” the sheriff said, indicating the laptop. “I need to read their correspondence. Can you open it?”
Rowe pulled up a chair and raised the lid. “I’ll have to guess at her password but if I get it, I’m in.” For several minutes, he tapped at the keyboard, and then the display screen lit up.
“Here goes,” he said.
“How’d you do that?” the sheriff asked.
“Easy. I just tried variations of her birthday for the password.”
Five minutes later, the printer whirred to life and spat out copies of Lydia’s conversations with Dura. Cubiak carried the correspondence into the kitchen and sat at the table that overlooked the garden. To an extent, every death investigation was an invasion of privacy. But reading Lydia’s most private thoughts felt close to sacrilegious.
The back-and-forth dialogue between the two started innocently. PD—Phony Dura—extended his condolences on Zack’s death and spoke fondly of the university days the two had shared. Some of the stories he related were based on actual events, others were probably pure fabrications, the kinds of things young men said to each other in the middle of the night over one too many drinks, or at the end of a losing game. PD carefully lauded Zack and then began to console Lydia on her loss, subtly reminding her again and again of how much she must miss her husband.
You are a good man and too kind to take the trouble to comfort me, she wrote.
His response: he understood how she felt because he was lonely too. Perhaps, he wrote, by telling her what he was doing—his crazy job in this exotic location that he couldn’t reveal—he could help distract her from her own pain. Would that be all right with her?
Of course, she replied.
What followed were colorful descriptions of sandstorms and sun-drenched landscapes, hints at tedious meetings, the challenges of high-level negotiations. Claptrap that painted PD as a successful professional, a man of standards and renown. A man like Zack.
After they had corresponded for a month, PD sent a virtual bouquet of roses. Lydia gushed her thanks. But you mustn’t, she protested.
How can I not, when it gives me such pleasure to try and brighten your day? he countered.
A week later, more virtual flowers showed up. This time, Lydia’s favorites, the blue dahlias.
How did you ever guess?
We are sympatico.
Soon, bouquets and poems arrived daily, and the shared sentiments became more intimate. The phony Dura caressed Lydia with promises, and she replied with such poignancy that Cubiak felt the heavy weight of her need. The scumbag PD would have felt it, too, and snickered.
“Bastard,” the sheriff said, staring out from the kitchen window.
When PD mentioned travel, Lydia gleefully jumped on board.
Where would you like to go, my dear?
Lydia sent him her wish list. Easter Island, Machu Picchu, Amazon River . . . the same places she had rattled off to Cubiak.
Make sure your passport is up-to-date. I’ll handle everything else, PD told her.
Within a week, the plans were laid and the reservations made. With each leg of the trip, the dollars added up until the sum reached the lofty ninety thousand total that Lydia had cited. Perhaps she felt guilty about the amount of money that this man—whom she had yet to meet in real life—had spent; perhaps she harbored a seed of doubt that fate would bestow such a bounty of good fortune and happiness on her at this stage in life. For whatever reason, Lydia asked to see the itinerary, and PD, confident that the hook was set, emailed her copies of the hotel reservations and the tickets that he had supposedly purchased from the various airlines and cruise lines. True, the imposter didn’t ask for a dime, but then he didn’t have to because Lydia, of her own volition and with Tracey’s encouragement, insisted on paying her way.
The conversations went on, circling and repeating themselves, PD shyly admitting that he was falling in love with her. Is this even possible? he mused.
Oh yes, I believe it is. I know it is!!! Lydia said in return.
When he had read enough, Cubiak went to check on Rowe.
“Anything?” he asked.
The deputy shook his head. “Not a trace, but I’ll keep trying.”
“See what you can verify from these,” Cubiak said, laying the travel itinerary on the desk.
He had his own suspicions, which Rowe quickly verified. The hotels that PD had booked were as fictitious as he was. The elaborate travel arrangements he claimed to have made were fabrications. There were no such flights, no such cruises.
“The fucker made up everything,” Rowe said.
“True,” Cubiak said as he stuffed the papers back into the folder. “But all that tells us is that this guy took advantage of Lydia. It doesn’t tell us who he is or if he or someone else killed her.”
