Chapter 2 #3
“People do strange things when they’re in love, when they think they’re finally safe and happy. Would Debbie have texted him, taunting him with I’m finally free of you. I’ve got a man who’s decent and who treats me wonderfully?”
“Oh God.” Eden closed her eyes. “Yeah, Debbie absolutely would do that. A part of her can be, … let me just say, a little vindictive. And, if she felt she was doing really well and someone like him who had done her so wrong was still out there, Debbie might very well have let him know.”
“You mentioned a phone, but no phone was with her. At least we couldn’t find one.”
Eden stared at him, pulled out her phone, and quickly called Debbie’s number to see if anybody would answer. Together, they listened as it rang and finally went to voice mail.
He wrote down the number and asked, “Do you know what kind of phone it is?”
“An iPhone but I don’t know the model. It’s fairly new, as we just got it for her.”
He nodded. “We’ll look into it.” As he stepped through the door, he turned back to her, then handed her his card and added, “If you think of anything else, give me a call.”
“Sure, but I don’t know what you’re expecting.”
“You’re the one who seems to know her the best.”
“Debbie had a few other friends, but, yes, I would probably be the closest one to her.”
“I will need to get their names,” he stated with conviction.
Eden brought up her contact list and showed him the contact info on Debbie’s other girlfriends. “Shirley hasn’t known her all that long, but Mary and Dolores have known her for years.”
He nodded. “I’ll contact them.”
“So,” Eden began, as he wrote down the information, “you’ll tell them about her death then? I also need to get to work.” She checked her phone and noted how late it was. “I need to go like now.”
He nodded. “I will tell them about Debbie’s passing. I suspect these three friends will call you immediately after I speak to them.”
“I’ll send them a text once I get to work.” She quickly walked back to the kitchen, grabbed her purse, and headed out the door, locking it, turning to find him still standing there.
He studied her for a moment. “I can let you know when the body is ready to be released.”
And, with that parting statement, he turned and walked away.
*
Detective Eric Kent waited until Eden pulled away, then he drove off behind her. He would need to go to her office and talk to her boss and a few of her coworkers anyway. Suspicious deaths required a certain amount of investigation.
And since there hadn’t been any particular evidence of foul play, he wasn’t sure if this was a waste of time or not, but Eden had certainly brought up some interesting points about her best friend’s personality changes and about Debbie’s impulse to constantly go overboard in a relationship.
He drove to her office and waited until Eden got inside. Then he checked the time.
It was almost 8:00 a.m. He sent her a text, asking what time her boss would be in.
She responded within minutes. Not until nine usually.
It was a long time to wait idly, so he turned around and headed back to his office. As he walked in, his partner, Cody, looked up and greeted him with a smile.
“How’d you make out?” Cody asked.
Eric shook his head. “It’s a weird one, but, until we get the autopsy, we don’t really have anything to go on.”
“Nothing means that it could literally be nothing, right?”
“It could be a natural death, but, according to her best friend—or her ex-best friend,” he clarified, the emphasis making Cody’s eyebrows rise, “our victim went through a complete personality change during this weekend retreat and fell head over heels in love with the leader of the retreat, who just so happens to be the guy who asked us to do the welfare check.”
“Are we sure it was love?”
“No, it sounds more like obsession to me—to the point that Debbie quit her job and terminated her lease via text over the weekend, and blew up at Eden, saying all kinds of mean things to what appears to be her best friend of many years.”
“Oh, that’s something,” Cody noted. “Any leads?”
“Yeah, but we need to find Debbie’s phone. Then we might see if she had sent a text or had any contact with her most recent ex-boyfriend, who apparently was violent, the kind of person to take away her phone and to leave her without it, just so she couldn’t contact anybody.”
“Is that information credible?”
“That still needs vetting. According to Eden, he could be a person of interest if we have foul play in Debbie’s death, just because he appears to lack character and has been violent before.
Debbie’s friends pitched in to get her away from him and helped with her first month’s rent because she had no place to go.
Debbie had been staying with them while they found a place and got her settled.
Then she moved into her new place, got her act together for the past couple months, and everything seemed to be fine. ”
Cody frowned. “Until this retreat?”
“Yeah, apparently—though it’s not the first time Debbie has done something like this.
The girlfriend—Eden Landon—was upset that Debbie was doing it again, and so Eden was trying to get her best friend to slow things down.
That’s when the victim blew up and got ugly enough that her best friend left and came home early from the retreat without her. ”
“So Eden could be a suspect.”
“Yeah, if foul play is involved, Eden would be the logical prime suspect. However, I don’t have a clue what her motive would be.”
Cody shrugged and shook his head. “It could just be the fight. People do all kinds of things in a moment of passion. Besides, it could be anything from, Hey, we’re done picking up the pieces behind you to If you go with him, we’re done with you.
Then again, jealousy could be a motive. Maybe Eden liked the guru guy herself, which may have come into play in the argument. ”
“Could be.”
“While we are tossing ideas around, Debbie could have realized that Eden was not happy for her.”
“You just want them all for yourself,” Eric mimicked.
Cody asked him, “What do you make of all this?”
“Although Eden and their other friends had helped Debbie in the past and had acknowledged that Debbie had a history of whirlwind romances, she had never used that kind of language with Eden nor accused her of interfering in Debbie’s life and in Debbie’s decisions.
As far as Eden’s concerned, it isn’t a natural death, and she doesn’t know what the hell went on because Debbie just wasn’t herself, like she had been hypnotized or possessed or whatever.
The whole jealousy angle is something to check out, but I don’t really have anything to substantiate it, other than it came up in the argument, according to Eden,” Eric explained.
“So, what’s the next step?”
“I need to talk with Eden’s boss—who is also Debbie’s boss—and get an idea of the character of both women. Then I need to talk to Richard, the meditation guru.”
“That’s the guy who called in the wellness check?”
“Yeah, and hopefully he is still at the retreat center.”
“It’s worth mentioning that, if he had anything to do with this, calling in a wellness check and not being in the area would be a great way to have an alibi and to keep himself out of this.”
“Why would he do that though?” Eric countered, loving sparring with Cody regarding various theories on a daily basis.
“Maybe this Debbie chick just flung herself all over him and was making all kinds of plans that he didn’t know how to get out of, and he just wanted to shut down the whole thing.
Like, … remember Kathy?” Cody whistled and gave Eric a wolfish grin.
“I have had my own share of psycho girlfriends but—”
“I would rather not think about my psycho ex and would prefer to focus on the victim here instead. I can understand the urge to kill, but killing seems extreme in this case.”
“Maybe.” Cody rolled his eyes. “But we also don’t know what kind of guy this Richard is.
If he has a name in this industry, he probably has a lot of women throwing themselves at his feet.
Maybe it wasn’t as mutual as it appeared, and he just really needed to get out of it.
For all we know, he has a wife somewhere, and she was already making waves, having found out about it after your prime suspect came home. ”
Eric nodded. “I hadn’t considered that.”
“What about the body?”
“No visible marks on her. Thirty-two, visibly healthy, yet with pill bottles near her body. So, to think she would have been involved in any drugs is hard to believe. She sure didn’t look to be a regular user.”
“It might be hard to believe, but we also know that it happens.”
Eric nodded. “I know this is a strange one, but, until we get the autopsy results, we don’t know if we even have a case or not.”
“And we could also end up with no results,” Cody reminded him. “Cause of death unknown.” Cody gazed at his partner with a sigh.
Eric knew what his partner was thinking.
Cody was goofy, intuitive, and extremely observant.
And Eric had the feeling himself that this case would be a mystery to unravel.
“Yeah, well, … we’ll do the investigation and, if it goes somewhere, great.
If it doesn’t, you and I both know it ends there, which would really suck if something criminal went on here. ”
“Absolutely,” Cody muttered and shook his head. “But we also have to remember that we have God-only-knows-how-many other cases to work on, plus more that just came in last night.”
“Like what?” Eric asked.
“Got a couple actually. One looks to be a gang shooting, and we have another rape and murder. It could be connected to that other case we still have open.”
“About six months ago,” Eric added ruefully. “And we never found him. And then likely connected to another one we haven’t been able to solve, also with a similar MO.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” Cody pointed out, his tone dark. “Apparently we’re not doing great on this front.”