The Warehouse Coroner, page 17
“But domestic partners are most commonly the perpetrators of violence against the victim. We’re doing our job.”
“I don’t have a motive, though,” Duchy said.
Dez inclined her head. “You sure about that?”
Duchy opened her mouth, then blinked a few times. “Oh—well, yes, last week, Seth changed the beneficiary on his life insurance policy.”
A moment of silence.
“From?” Dez asked.
“From Tyra to me,” Duchy whispered.
“That’s right. According to our research, the policy is for two million dollars.”
Duchy lowered her gaze to the floor.
A few moments passed in silence, then Dez’s phone buzzed in her hand.
Dez glanced at the screen, tapped for a moment, then lowered the phone. Fenway turned her head toward Dez, and Dez gave a small nod. Another piece of evidence? Whatever it was, Dez didn’t want to discuss it in front of Miranda Duchy.
Fenway pointed at the rug under her feet. “A rug very similar to this was in Mr. Cahill’s office at the storage facility. It looks expensive.”
“Uh—yeah. I had that Persian rug in here, but the room overpowered it. I needed a much bigger rug.” Duchy gave Fenway a forced smile. “Besides, the imagery on the old rug failed to align with my goals.”
“The—imagery?” Fenway looked down and noticed for the first time. The design wasn’t lifelike, but crimson and wine-colored flowers—or were they upturned leaves?—covered the rug under her feet.
“Persian rugs have intriguing symbolism. The flower at the center of the old rug was a peony. It represents power.”
“And you didn’t want to manifest power?”
A shy smile on Duchy’s lips. “I thought I did. But I really wanted prosperity.”
“So these leaves symbolize prosperity?”
“Not leaves, Coroner, tulips. And yes, tulips represent prosperity.” She paused. “I wonder—is it possible to get that rug returned to me? Tyra may own the company now, but that rug is my property, even if you found it in Seth’s office.”
Fenway frowned.
The killer would know that Seth’s body had been wrapped in the Persian rug. Was this a masterful piece of misdirection, or did Duchy honestly not know?
“I’m not sure how you would go about that,” Fenway said, “but right now, I’m concerned with piecing together what happened the night of Mr. Cahill’s—” She paused and inwardly swore at herself. “On Monday night.”
Duchy paused. “I’m not sure what else I can tell you.”
Fenway nodded and motioned to Dez with her head. “We’ll be right back, Ms. Duchy.”
Dez followed Fenway out of the living room, through the dining room, and into the front hallway.
Fenway craned her neck; Duchy was out of sight, and if they kept their voices low, out of earshot.
“You got a message on your phone?”
“From Mark. Judge Solano signed a search warrant for Miranda’s house and vehicles.”
Fenway nodded. Duchy had been fairly open with them; if she knew about the warrant, she’d likely call her lawyer and say nothing else. “So what do you think, Dez? Think Miranda did it?”
Dez knotted her brow. “She doesn’t have an alibi. She has an emotional motive for arguing with him—if she didn’t think he’d get over his ex. Plus two million other reasons.”
“And she’s in possession of the murder weapon.” Fenway rubbed her forehead. “Still, she invited us into the shed where the hammer sat in plain sight. That doesn’t strike you as odd?”
“I learned a long time ago not to use a criminal’s stupidity as an excuse for their innocence.” Dez paced in a small circle. “I texted Mark to look into her finances.”
“So if it’s not Miranda leading us right to the murder weapon, what’s bothering you?”
Dez scratched her temple. “Whoever killed Seth Cahill would have had to drag his body, wrap it in the rug, and move the body into the storage unit.” Dez hooked her thumb over her shoulder toward the living room. “Would Miranda Duchy even be able to move Cahill?”
“Not a big guy,” Fenway said. “A hundred fifty pounds, tops.”
“And adrenaline can account for a lot.”
“We’ll need to see the footage of the doorbell for Monday night, too.”
“Covered by the warrant. Sarah worked fast.”
Fenway nodded. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to get as effective of an assistant as Rachel, but she’d been wrong: the hypercompetent Sarah ran circles around all the other assistants.
“Do we have enough to arrest Ms. Duchy now?”
Dez nodded. “The evidence is circumstantial, but it’d be enough to get an indictment. Means, motive, opportunity—all there.”
“But besides the hammer, no physical evidence. And if Duchy can show that the shed didn’t have a lock…”
“We’d get our arrest, but no conviction. The D.A. might not want to go to trial. I’d feel better with something more concrete—her financials could give us a stronger motive.”
“What are we hoping to find with the warrant?”
“We put down that we’re looking for evidence of the crime. Any bloodstained clothing, towels, clean-up, any stains or drips in Duchy’s SUV.”
“That’s a little vague.”
Dez shrugged. “That kind of head wound means a lot of blood. Something’s bound to turn up.”
“The warrant covers the vehicle too?”
“Yes.”
Fenway blinked. “Judge Solano?”
Dez smiled. “That’s right.”
Fenway pressed her lips together. Solano gave the police a lot of leeway when asking for warrants—but she’d been overturned on appeal six times in the last year.
“We’re also looking for any signs of struggle in the house,” Dez said.
“But it’s likely that the murder occurred at the storage facility.”
“Likely, but not yet conclusively,” Dez said. “If we find something here, then that makes a conviction easier.”
Fenway stared down at the floor.
“You don’t think it’s Miranda,” Dez said evenly.
“I do not.”
“Why not?”
“Because she asked for the rug back.”
A crease between Dez’s eyes. “Part of her plan. She asked for the rug to make it seem like she didn’t know that the body had been wrapped up in it.”
Fenway pursed her lips. “I don’t think Miranda Duchy is that good of an actor. Trying to throw us off her trail by pretending not to know about the rug wouldn’t have occurred to her, either.”
Dez gave a stiff nod. “But no one else has the murder weapon on their property.”
Fenway paused. “Plenty of people have motive, and they all knew about Seth and Miranda. Easy enough to hide the hammer in an unlocked shed.”
“Doorbell camera. Easy enough to confirm.”
“Plus,” Fenway continued, “Seth was involved in the morpheranyl trade. Calvin Banning might have wanted to keep his storage unit available and gotten angry when told no.”
“Or Mathis Jericho might have killed him to take over and get a bigger cut of the profits.”
Fenway paused. “What if Tyra found out about the drugs?”
Dez cocked her head.
“If Tyra found out that the storage business only stayed afloat because of Seth’s illegal activities, how do you think she’d react?”
“She’d be pissed off.”
“Right. She negotiates a good deal to buy the business, has to pay him alimony, then finds out the business will fail if it goes legit?”
“Do you think she knew Seth had replaced her with Miranda as the beneficiary of the life insurance policy?”
Fenway thought for a moment. “Maybe not. It’s possible she thought she’d still get that two million dollars.”
“One problem with Tyra as a suspect: she has an alibi.”
Fenway folded her arms. “Her best friend from high school? That alibi’s not necessarily airtight. I figure that Hope Dunkelman could have helped drag Seth’s body into the storage unit. If Tyra found out about Seth’s storage of the drugs, she might have known that Seth turned off the security cameras, too.”
Dez peered over Fenway’s shoulder into the living room; Duchy hadn’t moved from the sofa. “Motive and opportunity—yeah, other people have those. But we can’t ignore the hammer—covered in blood—found on this very property.”
Fenway nodded.
“I agree that this isn’t perfect, Fenway, but we’ve got to follow the evidence. And right now, all the evidence is pointing to Miranda Duchy.”
“This feel right to you?” Fenway asked.
Outside, a car approached and slowed. Sergeant Mark Trevino serving the search warrant.
“We’ll know more after the lab work and the finances come back.” Dez clicked her tongue. “Let’s see if we can match the blood to Seth’s, if there are any fingerprints on the hammer, and if we can find any receipts connecting Miranda to the purchase of a similar hammer.”
Fenway’s phone buzzed. She pulled it out. “Speaking of lab work…”
“Michi?” Dez asked.
“Yep.” Fenway tapped the screen and held the phone to her ear. “Good afternoon, Dr. Yasuda.”
“Good afternoon, Coroner. Do you have a moment?”
“Just about to serve a search warrant.”
“I’ll make it quick. I remembered where I recognized the name Tyra Cahill.”
“Oh—at this time of day? I expected a call at three in the morning.”
“Very funny.” Dr. Yasuda cleared her throat. “I’m sending you a copy of the paperwork. You remember we talked about the deaths from morpheranyl right before Thanksgiving?”
“Right—yes. We were talking about Scott Behrens. I have a contact who knew him.”
“I also thought of Scott Behrens.”
Fenway furrowed her brow. “Why is that?”
“The person who identified his body? Tyra Cahill.”
Chapter Fourteen
Fenway opened the door of the coroner’s office and Sarah Summerhill’s face popped up from behind her monitor.
“Oh, I didn’t expect you back for another couple of hours.” Sarah tilted her head. “Wasn’t Mark serving a warrant?”
“Yeah. Dez and Mark are there. No sense in all of us taking up space.” Fenway hadn’t waited for Mark’s arrival, instead taking a FlashRide from the Duchy house down to the Puerto Avila beach parking lot to pick up her Accord.
On the way to the beach, she’d peppered the driver with questions about how the company tracks riders and trips—until he turned up the radio and made it clear he didn’t want any more conversation. Fenway put her elbows on the counter, about three feet from Sarah’s workstation. “Can you do some research for me?”
“Sure.”
“Check with the rideshare companies. See if anyone got picked up or dropped off at the storage place—or anywhere in, say, a two- or three-block radius—on Monday night or early Tuesday.”
“Sure.” Sarah clicked the mouse, then looked at Fenway. “Taxis too?”
“Yes. They take cash, so that might be a way our killer hid their trip.”
Fenway walked into her office and dropped her purse on the desk, then turned and took a few steps toward Sarah’s workstation. “Also, I discovered that Tyra Cahill, the ex-wife of our murder victim, identified a body from a drug overdose death in November.”
Sarah blinked. “Coincidence?”
“Maybe not. Our murder victim stored that same drug at his storage facility.”
Sarah nodded. “And that’s too much of a coincidence.”
Fenway hesitated. “Murder weapon found at our victim’s girlfriend’s house. The girlfriend doesn’t have an alibi, and they were fighting a few hours before the murder. But even so, Tyra identifying the body of someone who died from the same drug her ex stored? Yeah, too much of a coincidence for me.”
“What does Dez think?”
“Dez rightly pointed out that we have no evidence implicating anyone but the girlfriend.”
Sarah chuckled. “But you’re not buying it.”
“Maybe I’m a natural skeptic,” Fenway said. “Tyra Cahill identified the body of Scott Behrens. Why did she identify his body?”
“Uh—I have access to the files. I can look.”
“Please.” Fenway approached the desk and started pacing in front of it.
“You have access to these records on your laptop, too.”
“Humor me?” Fenway looked at Sarah. “She’d have to be a relative, right?”
“Most of the time, yes.” Sarah started clicking the mouse, then typed on her keyboard. “Okay, Scott Behrens—twenty-one years old.”
Fenway squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember the backgrounder she’d been sent. “Tyra is—um, let’s see, thirty-seven. That would have made her…”
“Sixteen at Scott’s birth.”
Fenway nodded. “And Scott Behrens—”
“Adopted,” Sarah said, not taking her eyes off the monitor. “By Rebecca and James Behrens. Oh—they both died in an auto accident fifteen years ago.”
“When Scott was eight?”
“Looks like it. Hold on.”
That would explain the teeth, the foster system. Scott Behrens had fallen through the cracks. “So Tyra Cahill is Scott Behrens’ birth mother? Or an older sister? Or maybe a long-lost cousin or something.”
Sarah shrugged. “I don’t have access to the adoption files—or, if I do, I need to figure out where to find them.”
“But Scott Behrens stayed local.”
“He did.”
“If Tyra Cahill identified his body, she must have known about him.”
“I can only assume.”
Fenway tapped her chin. “How long do you think Tyra and Scott were in contact?”
“Long enough for her to be contacted when the authorities found his body. He must have changed his emergency contact information somewhere.”
“Maybe it’s time I called on Tyra’s bestie.” Fenway wondered if Hope Dunkelman would be any more helpful than Tyra.
Walking to her car, Fenway pulled her phone out and called Melissa de la Garza.
“Afternoon, Coroner.”
“Did you get the hammer yet?”
“It’s on the way here. We’ll do the blood test—I’ll put a rush on it. We can get the type fast.”
“I’m actually more concerned about the fingerprints.”
“Oh—you didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?”
“I assume Kav would have told you. Looks like the handle was wiped clean.”
“It looks like the—” Fenway scratched her head. “Why would Miranda Duchy wipe the handle but not clean the blood off the hammer?”
“I don’t know. Some people have a fear of blood.”
“No, that doesn’t make any sense.” Miranda had said she was being framed. If she’d been the murderer, she’d have cleaned the entire hammer, not just wiped the handle of fingerprints.
Of course, maybe Miranda had wiped the handle of the hammer just to make it look like she’d been framed. It would be a pretty brilliant maneuver. Perhaps Miranda was someone many people underestimated.
“Text me as soon as you know any more, okay?” Fenway arrived at her Accord and unlocked it.
“Sure, Fenway. See you later.”
As Fenway turned off Tres Arboles Road, she navigated a dip stretching between two five-foot-tall brick columns, standing like mini-tower sentries at the entrance to Estancia’s Prospero Park neighborhood. A sign at the edge of the park proudly proclaimed:
Welcome to Prospero Park
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself…
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on
Prospero Park was beautiful, if surrounded by elitism and arrogance, and it buffered the mini-mansions on the west side from the working-class duplexes and apartment complexes on the east. Fenway navigated her Accord through the labyrinthine streets bordering the park, every so often sneaking an envious look at the much-shorter bike trail that went straight through the center of the park.
She finally came to the end of the zigzagging road, turning left on a quiet oak-lined street named Rodrigo Avenue, bordering the southern edge of Prospero Park.
Three houses from the corner on the right sat the ranch-style craftsman house. Behind the beautiful, gnarled coastal live oak next to the street lay a tidy front yard with a drought-resistant garden of pea gravel, manzanitas, and snapdragons. Fenway pulled her Accord next to the curb, next to the coastal live oak, and walked the winding path toward the front door. The front door opened as she approached.
“Coroner?” George Pope asked.
“Hello, Mr. Pope,” Fenway said. “Is Ms. Dunkelman home as well?”
“Oh—I’m afraid not. She took Tyra out to buy flashlights, batteries, gallons of water.”
“To prepare for the storm?” A fleeting thought: how old were the batteries in Fenway’s flashlight?
“Yes,” Pope replied. “I think they’re heading to the mall, too. A little retail therapy, as she says. Take her mind off everything that’s happened.”
“I see.” Fenway rubbed her chin. “Well, perhaps you can help me out.”
“Oh, I don’t know. If you were looking for Hope—”
“Were you on your way out?”
“Yes. Running an errand.”
Fenway paused. “You have five minutes?”
Pope blinked, as if weighing the importance of the errand against helping the coroner with a homicide investigation. He looked up and down the street. Fenway followed his eyes, but nothing; a man washed his car two houses down.
Pope shrugged. “I suppose so. Why don’t you come on in?”
Plants filled the foyer: fiddle-leaf figs, century plants, and ferns. Pope walked into the living room and motioned to a fabric-covered sofa in a dark blue next to a side table. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? I’ve got a nice tea blend I found at the farmer’s market.”
