Holidays Are Murder Read online

She gave a short laugh, more like a hiccup. “Not a chance. He’s a fitness addict. Never touches alcohol or red meat.”

  “Did he have an illness or take medication that might have made him dizzy and caused him to fall?”

  She shook her head. “Vince just had a physical. His doctor told him he has the body of a twenty-year-old.”

  And now Vince Lovelace would be forever young. “Did your husband swim every day?”

  “Like clockwork.” The edge returned to her voice. “He always swims laps in the pool every evening before dinner. If he’d shown the same diligence toward his family….”

  Trouble in paradise, but discord didn’t necessarily generate foul play. “Did your husband have enemies?”

  Her eyes widened with surprise. “You don’t think… This was an accident, wasn’t it?”

  “We have to consider all possibilities. Do you know of anyone who would want to harm your husband?”

  Her full lips twisted in a wry expression. “You don’t reach the pinnacle of success that Vince did without stepping on a lot of people on the way up. Plenty of people hated his guts.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  Her answer was instantaneous. “Dan Rankin, his ex-partner.”

  “Bad blood?”

  Samantha nodded. “Vince bought him out, right before Your Vacation Channel went big. Dan’s blamed Vince for cheating him out of a fortune ever since.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Probably tons of people at work. You should ask his secretary. He spent more time with her than he did with me.”

  “Was your husband having an affair?” Hell has no fury like a woman scorned, and if Vince had been struck down in a jealous rage, he wouldn’t be the first spouse murdered in a fit of passion.

  “With Elaine?” Her lips lifted in an almost smile. “Elaine’s old enough to be his mother and ugly as homemade sin. But she’s the world’s best administrative assistant.”

  In spite of the heat blasting from the gas logs, Samantha’s shivering was accelerating.

  “You’d better get out of those wet clothes,” I said. “Is there anyone you can call to be with you?”

  She stood on shaky legs. “My mother. And I’ll have to contact the Standifords and ask them to send the girls home.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Samantha.”

  She nodded numbly and headed for the stairs.

  As she disappeared around the landing, Adler came in through the front door.

  “Neighbors to the north aren’t home,” he said.

  “The Standifords. They’re in Colorado.”

  “The people across the street saw nothing, heard nothing.”

  “You’re saving the best for last, right?”

  He nodded. “Neighbors to the south, the Marlowes, heard the Lovelaces screaming at each other about an hour and a half before the 911 call. Said the exchange lasted for over fifteen minutes.”

  “Could they hear what the argument was about?”

  Adler shook his head. “But they did say it wasn’t unusual. Happened all the time over the past few months.”

  “People who live in glass houses should keep their windows closed. The Marlowes have any idea what the Lovelaces fought over?”

  “Nope. Said the fights were always private. In public, they were a model couple.”

  I thought for a moment. “Samantha said Vince was in his study before his swim. It’s on the south side of the house.” I crossed to the doorway and peered into a den furnished with the same sparse modernism as the rest of the house. “If there was a fight, it must have been strictly verbal. No sign of anything broken or disrupted.”

  “Someone could have cleaned up afterward,” Adler said.

  “I’ll suggest Samantha go home with her mother. We’ll secure the house and cordon the grounds and beach. If Doc’s autopsy rules out accidental drowning, we’ll get a warrant for a search.”

  “Don’t know if it’s relevant,” Adler said, “but the Marlowes also heard a few boats close to the beach late this afternoon.”

  “Could they identify them?”

  “They didn’t see them, but Mr. Marlowe said, from the sound of it, at least one was high-powered, like a ski or cigarette boat.”

  “Nothing suspicious there. It’s a holiday. Lots of people on the water.”

  “If I was planning a crime, I’d want a boat with powerful engines that was in and out fast.” He gazed past me to the body by the pool. “You think it’s a homicide?”

  I shook my head. “We had three last month. Odds are it’ll be years before Pelican Bay sees another murder.”

  I didn’t tell him my skin was itching. With my allergy to homicide, if Doc’s autopsy turned up evidence of foul play, by this time tomorrow, I’d have a full-blown case of hives.

  It was almost midnight when I returned to my condo. Bill’s car was parked out front and lights shone from my downstairs windows. Bill was the only person with a key to my place, and, tired as I was, I was glad he was there. Wired from the adrenaline rush of the investigation, I wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours.

  He met me at the front door. “Tough night?”

  I managed a smile. “Probably no worse than if I’d spent the entire evening in the bosom of my family.”

  “That bad, eh?”

  I kicked off my shoes and turned toward the kitchen to make coffee. Bill grasped my shoulders, corrected my course and steered me toward the living room and into my favorite chair.

  “I have to say,” Bill said, his expression serious, “that I liked your family.”

  “You like everybody. With the exception of some particularly nasty criminals, of course.”

  “Your mother’s not what I expected.”

  “She isn’t?” I was amazed. As often as I’d talked about her, I figured he’d have had a pretty clear picture of the old girl.

  “She’s controlling, as you’ve said. But underneath, I don’t think she’s very secure.”

  “The Queen Mother? Insecure? Have you been drinking?”

  “Not since before dinner,” he said. “Bet you haven’t eaten.”

  “Nope.” My stomach growled in response. “But I’m out of luck. There’s not even a Diet Coke in my fridge.”

  “Guess again. Estelle stopped me as I was going for my car earlier. Said to come back to the house after I dropped you off and go around to the kitchen door. When I returned, she’d packed a hamper with an entire meal for the two of us. Won’t take but a minute to heat it in the microwave.”

  A lump formed in my throat. Estelle, bless her, worried about me. My mother, on the other hand, only fretted over the fact that I’d spoiled her perfect dinner party.

  An hour later, sated with a good meal and two glasses of excellent wine, I returned to my chair in the living room.

  “Tell me about Your Vacation Channel.” I knew that Bill, who loved to travel, would have the low-down on Vincent Lovelace’s cable network.

  Bill sat in the chair opposite me. “It’s a shopping channel that sells anything and everything related to vacations. Hotel reservations, package tours, time shares, leisure wear, sports equipment.”

  “People actually buy that stuff off TV?” As much as I hated to shop, I couldn’t imagine plunking down serious money on anything hawked on television.

  “The marketing’s remarkable. Your Vacation Channel doesn’t just sell a ski vacation package, for example. They air documentaries that give the history of skiing, along with virtual tours of the rooms and amenities at the resorts and trips into the surrounding countryside. They show the chefs preparing the foods in the restaurants. And they present programs that teach the basics of skiing and explain how to dress for the slopes.”

  “Once you’ve watched all that, why bother going?”

  He grinned. “As much as you hate to travel, you’d never understand. What you need is a Book Channel.”

  “What I need is some answers.” Throughout dinner, the inexplicable circumstances of Vinc
ent Lovelace’s drowning had niggled at the back of my mind. I laid out the details of what I’d discovered in hopes Bill would see something I’d missed. “My instincts say he was murdered,” I concluded, “but I don’t have evidence to back them up.”

  Bill leaned forward in his chair and rolled his empty wineglass between his palms. “Could have been simply an accidental drowning. Lovelace slips on the deck, hits his head on the chair and rolls unconscious into the pool.”

  “Then how do you explain his broken nails and the abrasions on the tips of his fingers?”

  “Maybe he didn’t lose total consciousness right away. Tried to claw his way out of the pool first.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe someone anchored a boat off the beach, surprised Lovelace when he came out for his habitual swim, hit him with the chair and rolled him into the pool. His attacker then rakes the beach behind him to hide his tracks, returns to his boat, and sails away.”

  Bill thought for a moment. “As long as we’re speculating, what if Mrs. Lovelace hit him with the chair, then raked the beach to make it look as if someone else had covered his tracks?”

  “Motive?”

  “One of the big three.”

  “Jealousy, greed or revenge.”

  He nodded.

  “I need probable cause before I can get a search warrant.”

  “What about those fingertips?” he asked. “Defensive wounds?”

  “A judge could argue they’re merely signs of a drowning man’s desperate struggle to get out of the water.” Dinner and wine had made me drowsy, too tired to think. “I’d better get some sleep. Lovelace’s autopsy is scheduled for 8:00 a.m. You want to crash on my sofa?”

  “Now there’s a romantic thought.”

  “Since when are you interested in romance?”

  “You’d be surprised.” He stood and leaned over to kiss me. With a lingering caress, he cupped my cheek in his big hand. “I’ll let myself out.”

  “Bill?”

  He stopped and looked at me with what appeared hopeful anticipation, but the light was low and I couldn’t really tell.

  “I’m sorry about tonight, your missing dinner and all.”

  His fleeting look of disappointment was quickly covered by a smile. “I had an excellent dinner, a little late granted, but with the one person I wanted to spend Thanksgiving.”

  He locked the door behind him as he left and I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, wondering why I felt so euphoric with a possible murder investigation facing me in the morning.

  CHAPTER 5

  Adler met me at the medical examiner’s office, but he wasn’t his usual cocky self. He’d endured the first three autopsies of his career during our last multiple-murder investigation, but the indignities of the procedure hadn’t sat well with him. This morning, even before we entered the room, he looked green around the gills. The one consolation was that the building’s air-conditioning had been repaired since the last time we were there.

  Doc, humming a Bette Midler tune and looking professional but cheery in her scrubs, glanced up from the body on the stainless-steel table when we entered and pointed toward a cabinet door. “Bucket’s in there, Adler.”

  “Thanks.” Adler, who had an unfortunate propensity toward tossing his cookies during the procedure, removed a stainless-steel pail from the cabinet before joining me on the opposite side of the table from Doc.

  “Just be glad,” she said, “that our drowning victim isn’t a floater. I had a body once that had been in the Gulf for three weeks. What the fish hadn’t eaten was bloated beyond—”

  “Lovelace?” I asked, taking pity on Adler, who was swallowing hard.

  “Pity,” Doc said. “Fine specimen of a man. Appears to have been in the peak of health. Let’s see what we can find.”

  With clinical precision, she described his external injuries for the tape recorder. Then, with one quick snip, she removed the miniscule Speedo. Adler made it through the Y-incision, for once, without losing his stomach contents.

  “You’re getting better at this,” I said to him.

  He shook his head. “I’ve learned not to eat beforehand, but I’m fighting dry heaves.”

  The autopsy progressed and Doc’s examination of Lovelace’s brain ruled out a killing blow. “Enough damage here to stun him, but he was alive when he went into the pool. Water in the lungs confirms that.”

  With the internal organs examined, weighed and cataloged, the autopsy was over, but Doc’s findings had provided nothing to conclude the drowning was anything other than accidental. The broken nails and abraded fingertips were most likely caused by the stunned man’s futile efforts to climb from the pool.

  Adler and I headed for the door.

  “Whoa!” Doc called. “Look at this. It wasn’t here earlier.”

  We turned back to the autopsy table where Doc had rolled the body facedown. She pointed to a round bruise, slightly smaller than a baseball, between the shoulder blades.

  “How did we miss this?” I asked.

  “Bruises don’t always show up right away,” she explained. “I’ve had morticians call to report bruises that didn’t appear until the body was being embalmed.”

  “Is it a result of the autopsy?” Adler asked.

  Doc shook her head. “The injury could have occurred just prior to death and only now showed up.”

  My mind whirled, making connections. The entire lap pool had a five-foot depth. I recalled the long-handled telescoping pole of the skimmer net, its diameter consistent with the bruise in the middle of Lovelace’s back.

  “When Lovelace went into the pool,” I said, “somebody made damned sure he stayed under. They held him down with the handle of the skimmer net.”

  Adler’s gaze met mine across the table. “I’ll get a search warrant for Lovelace’s house and business.”

  “I’ll meet you at the house. I have some questions for Mrs. Lovelace first.”

  But before that, I’d make a quick stop at the drug store for Benadryl. With a confirmed homicide, a bad case of hives wasn’t far behind.

  Isabelle Weston, Samantha’s mother, lived on the Belle Terre waterfront street three houses down from my childhood home, a four-minute drive from the pharmacy. Unlike Mother’s tile-and-stucco Misner Mediterranean, the Weston home was a rambling arts-and-craft structure of huge stones, exotic woods and wide windows, designed by a contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright. In my youth, I’d visited the house many times with my mother, usually in connection with some charity event Isabelle and Mother had cochaired. In the past, Isabelle had always welcomed me. Under today’s circumstances, I doubted she’d be pleased to see me.

  A young African-American maid in a sky-blue polyester uniform opened the door and, impressed by my detective’s shield, immediately ushered me through the house to the rear deck that cantilevered over the water. Across St. Joseph Sound, the high-rises of Pelican Beach shimmered in the late-morning sun, while live oaks and massive camphor trees shaded the deck.

  Isabelle, dressed in designer workout clothes, was riding a stationary bicycle as frantically as if being chased by a vicious dog. Unlike my mother, who had never worked up a sweat in her life, Isabelle thrived on physical activity and was an avid golfer and sailor. Apparently her age, about ten years younger than Mother, hadn’t slowed her down. A petite woman with short, gray curls, she’d make a perfect model for AARP recruiting posters. When she caught sight of me, her brilliant hazel eyes widened with surprise.

  “Margaret Skerritt! I haven’t seen you in years. How are you, dear?” She ceased her frenzied pedaling, slid from the bicycle seat and grabbed a towel from the deck railing. She motioned me toward a teak chair. “Twanya, bring us iced tea, please.”

  Twanya nodded and returned to the house.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Weston,” I said, “but this isn’t a social call. I have to speak with Samantha.”

  Isabelle shook her head. “Not possible.”

  “She isn’t here?”

  Isabelle, her face p
ink with exertion, plopped into a deck chair beside me and dabbed her neck and forehead with the towel. “She’s still in bed. She was so upset last night, I had to call Dr. Fellows to sedate her. I’m letting her sleep, since the girls won’t return from Colorado until this afternoon.” Her lower lip trembled and she shook her head. “It’s terrible, losing a husband and father, especially so unexpectedly. I don’t know how my babies are going to cope. What a horrible accident.”

  I always hated this part. “It wasn’t an accident.”

  “I’ll help them all I can, of course—” She stopped midsentence as my words registered. “What do you mean, it wasn’t an accident?”

  “I’ve just come from the autopsy. Someone made certain that Vincent drowned.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I never joke about murder.”

  Her little mouth gaped, like a fish out of water. When she caught her breath, she said, “Who would have wanted to kill Vince?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out. And why I have to talk to Samantha.”

  She bristled as all her maternal instincts sprang into play. “Surely you don’t think Samantha had anything to do with his death?”

  “Samantha was closer to him than anyone. What she knows is key to my investigation.”

  Isabelle’s fists knotted around the towel until her knuckles whitened, and her jaw set in a hard line. “That boy. As if he didn’t cause enough grief when he was alive.”

  “What kind of grief?” I pumped as much sympathy as I could into my tone in an effort to keep her talking.

  Isabelle shook her head. “He was a total workaholic. Never spent the time with Samantha or the girls that he should have. He was always chasing the almighty dollar.” Isabelle’s anger at her son-in-law deepened the pink in her cheeks. “Samantha pleaded with him, for the girls’ sake if not for hers, to go to counseling so he could learn to slow down. He refused. Said he had to get his business on a firm footing before he could slack off. Otherwise, he was convinced he’d lose everything.”

  “In the end, he did.”

  The old woman’s eyes brimmed with tears. “At least he cared enough about his family to see that they are taken care of. We can thank Hunt for that.”