Chapter 27
VERNON
The medical examiner’s report about Frank DeYoung’s death contained no surprises. Blunt force trauma, injuries consistent with falling down the stairs.
“So what’s all this?” Vernon asked the ME, tapping the addendum.
She adjusted her reading glasses. “Medical conditions, previous procedures, medications. DeYoung was well looked after.”
“He had six doctors?”
“At his age and income bracket, that isn’t so uncommon.”
“Huh. How long did he have to live?”
“Life expectancy? No idea. I’m not an actuary, Enible. Five years, maybe.”
“So nothing here is acute?”
“Only the blunt force trauma. His blood was at point-oh-four, just a little tipsy. But interacting with tamsulosin, that’s his prostate medication, alcohol can lead to dizziness and fainting.”
“Huh.” Vernon flipped to a photograph of the dead man’s naked back, a stretch of papery skin scattered with moles and white hairs. “Now talk me through this.”
“Bruises on his lower back,” she said, pointing to smudges on the corpse’s fish-belly white skin.
“Those are bruises?” he asked, though of course he’d already read the full report. He’d learned to talk to specialists in person despite what he thought he understood—sometimes they’d drop an opinion that they knew was factual but were unwilling to commit to paper.
“Yeah.” She spread her fingers and pressed them into the desktop. “The pattern is not inconsistent with a handprint. Thumb there, the dark mark, and forefinger there.”
“Pinkie there.” He pointed.
“No, that’s unrelated discoloration.”
He grunted. “What else can you tell me about the hand?”
“I don’t even know it is a handprint, Enible. The only reason it’s there at all is the decedent’s propensity to bruise. Could be from the chair he sat on, or he fell against a towel rack the day before.”
“How long premortem did it happen?”
“I can’t tell that, either.”
“If it is a hand, what’s the gender of the pusher?”
“Sex,” she said. “There’s no way to tell. A small hand with spread fingers looks like a large hand.”
“Can you match them against the people of interest?” Vernon asked.
“No. Except if it’s a hand, it’s a right hand. So nobody without a right hand.”
“That narrows it down,” he said. “What makes someone bruise that easily?”
“A dozen things. Blood thinners, Cushing’s disease, vitamin deficiencies. And age. Mostly age.”
On his way out, Vernon tugged his shirtsleeves down to hide the bruise on his forearm from where he’d knocked into his car door.
Even the ME was a goddamn kid these days.
He reread the reports at his desk. There was nothing there except for the eyewitness who insisted it was homicide.
And that eyewitness had just inherited a massive fortune from her dead husband, so he wasn’t about to ignore her.
He grabbed lunch at Hamburger Habit before taking La Cumbre Road to Hope Ranch.
When he parked at the DeYoung mansion, he wiped his face with a paper napkin and realized that his hands still smelled of ketchup.
Not the best impression, so he dug around for the lavender hand sanitizer that his wife made him keep in the glove compartment.
No one answered the front door. He rang again and one of the gardeners pointed around the side of the house.
He called, “Gracias,” then followed a path to where he found Karina DeYoung in a one-piece bathing suit lounging by the pool, which was not what he’d expected from the grieving widow.
She was sitting on a chaise in the shade of a big umbrella, flipping through a leather-bound book.
She’d struck him as mousy on first sight, but her swimsuit revealed a tidy body.
Well, except for the sun damage that had left moles and age spots on her skin.
“Ms. DeYoung,” he said.
“Missus,” she corrected him, before raising her gaze. “Oh, Officer … um, I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Detective Enible. I have a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
She closed the book with manicured fingers. “I hate to imagine what you think, finding me at the pool. But this was our spot, listening to the surf. Frank read the LA Times here every morning. He refused to subscribe online, he liked the feel of paper in his hands.”
As he sat, he realized her book was a photo album.
So he asked her about it, and she showed him pictures of her life with Frank.
Then she said, “Everyone thinks—you think—that I married him for his money. And y’know what?
It didn’t hurt. He used to laugh when I’d say that.
It shocked everyone, and he liked that. But he’s the first man who really courted me.
You wouldn’t understand. He was a good man. That’s rare.”
“You think CJ Moore pushed him down the stairs.”
She closed the photo album with a gunshot snap. “I don’t think it, Detective, I know it. I saw her.”
“Why did she do it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. She thought they were closer than they were, which was sad and deluded. He must’ve done something to piss her off. Like try to establish healthy boundaries.”
“She lives here?” he asked.
“She did. Rent free. For years. Not anymore.” Karina cleared her throat. “Why haven’t you arrested her?”
“She says she reached for your husband to catch him when he stumbled.”
“There’s a difference between catching and pushing.”
“Nobody else reported that, ma’am.”
“I know what I saw, just like I know how you see me. As a trophy wife, and not even a good one.”
“I don’t know enough trophy wives to judge.”
She gave a quick laugh. “A cop with a sense of humor?”
“I’m a special case,” he told her. “Did you see anyone with that Amaretto bottle that broke?”
“No, though CJ usually mixed them for him.”
He asked about the other guests, then said, “What do you know about Sophie Gilman and Nicholas Perez?”
“Who? Oh, right, no, I’d never met them before. I certainly wasn’t expecting them. I suppose they were CJ’s guests. Oh!” She sat up straighter, and the sunlight painted a stripe across her shoulder. “You think they helped her.”
“No, ma’am,” he told her. “I’m not suggesting anything of the kind.”
Even as he said the words, he wondered if they had conspired with CJ Moore.
He didn’t trust anyone at Marigold Cottages.
Well, he’d trust them to babysit a child or return a wallet, just not to follow the law.
They’d played games with the murders on the property earlier in the year, and now two of them appeared at another crime scene? That raised questions.
So as Karina kept insisting that she’d seen CJ push her husband down the stairs, he wondered what might connect Nicholas and Sophie to this death. Some not-entirely-legal sense of justice or morality, probably. Protecting the charity money? That sounded like them.
“I’m not wrong, Detective,” Karina was telling him.
“Frank loved me. He loved me and I loved him, and we didn’t have much time left.
We knew that.” Her smile looked sadder than her tears had.
“He was slowing down, but he was still him. And CJ stole those final years from us. She stole our trips to Monaco and Aspen. She stole a thousand mornings sitting here, around the pool, listening to the surf.”
He gave her a moment, then said, “Do you have any family who can stay with you for the next few weeks?”
“No.”
“How about friends?”
“Well, Helene and George will stop by. They stayed with Frank for a few years so they’re completely at home here.”
“They stayed for years?” he asked.
“It’s a big house, and they’d put all their money into their new business.”
“Well, thank you, ma’am.” He stood from his chair. “And again, my condolences.”
She squinted up at him. “I saw her, Detective. How much more evidence do you need?”
Vernon was beginning to wonder that himself. Was one tipsy eyewitness—who resented the accused—enough to build a case on? No. Not even with all her money. However, was all that money enough reason to keep digging? Yes. And CJ was at the top of his list.