A Clean Kill (26 page)

"I was understanding. I'm very sorry he lost his wife, but he didn't have to see it. He didn't have to hang around all day. I took the hit for everything. I was the one interviewed by the police practically all day yesterday, and they're not finished. They're focused on
me.
I need help, Miss Anderson. He has a lawyer. Maybe I need a lawyer—"

Jo Ellen cut her off. "You told me all that yesterday. Believe me, I'm sympathetic. But if you leave the Wilson household before this thing is settled, I'm just not sure what I can do for you. You'll have to relocate, anyway, and I do have someone looking for a chef in the Bahamas. . . ."

Remy was appalled by this response. She was fearful that the police had a different kind of relocation in mind. And even if they didn't, the last thing she wanted was to be someone's chef in the Bahamas! She yearned for the glamour of a restaurant. She was quite fed up with Jo Ellen's coaching and considered saying, "I quit for you, too," but she didn't have a chance.

"What did you do to provoke him?" she demanded.

"Nothing. I went out for a walk. That's all," Remy said defensively. Jo Ellen always thought the worst of everybody.

"You left the children, and you know better than that."

"No, no. I didn't leave them. It was six-thirty in the morning. No one was up." Remy was reduced to defending herself to everyone. It was horrible.

"Well, where did you go, then? Haven't you learned anything I taught you? You're supposed to stay put. What happened last night? What did he do?" The questions came fast.

"He talked on the phone with some lawyer. I don't know, somebody Mr. Perkins got for him. He told Mr. Perkins he had to get rid of Lynn."

"Yes, yes. I know all that. I'm completely fed up with you girls. In a hundred years, we've never had to face anything remotely like this. I'm distraught. You two are not making me look good. Where did you go?" She was back on that again.

"I didn't go anywhere in particular. I was upset. I had to get some fresh air and consider my options." Remy didn't want to tell her where she'd been. It was none of Jo Ellen's business.

"What options are you talking about?" Jo Ellen's voice became angry. It was plain she was just furious about everything.

"I don't know," Remy mumbled.

"That's exactly right—you
don't know.
I feel bitterly betrayed by you, Remy. I did everything you asked. I placed you with the exact person you wanted to meet. You could have gone another route and applied for a restaurant job, but you didn't want to do that. You wanted intimate access to the great Wayne Wilson himself. I gave you that. It turned out that you were very well liked there, but you messed up. You just couldn't be content. You had to push the envelope and go where you shouldn't go. You know that's against my express rules."

Remy gathered that she was talking about her and Wayne. "What did she say to you?" she asked meekly.

"If you're talking about Mrs. Wilson"—Jo Ellen blew air out of her mouth to express her frustration—"I'm just disgusted with you. I trusted you in a good home. But once you start alienating affections, you're done. I've told you that a thousand times. Don't mess with the husbands. Didn't I tell you that?"

"I didn't alienate his affections," Remy insisted.

"It was
her
perception, and
she
paid your salary."

Actually, Wayne paid her salary, but Remy wasn't about to correct her. "I'm sorry," she said meekly. "It wasn't a big deal, and I didn't mean to complicate things."

"Well, it was a big deal to her, and you complicated things. Now you have to stay where you are and behave yourself until I say that you can leave. I could make things very rough for you if you don't," she threatened. And then she said she had important things to do and hung up.

Where were the police? Where was refuge? What were her options? She had no idea. With the horrified feeling that she was trapped in a madhouse, Remy stood looking at the dead receiver. She was a soldier stuck in a war not of her own making, pinned in place, and watched from all sides. She didn't even know how to start planning. Finally she replaced the headset and did what she always did on occasions of deep stalemate— whatever was asked of her. She started tidying up the children's clothes. This time was no different from any other time in her life. No matter what her state of rebellion she always had trouble taking that first step. After a few minutes she turned on the "TV. On, the news she was shocked to see police outside of the Perkins house. Emergency vehicles. Reporters with video equipment. She stared in disbelief. It had happened again.

Thirty-six

I
t took all morning for the preliminary work on the Perkins house to be completed. The process of uncovering Alison Perkins's body took over an hour longer. At this point Mike was long gone and Minnow had left the building only to return later. April, however, felt that she owed it to Alison to stay with her body until it was tagged, bagged, and taken away. It seemed that every month that task took longer and longer as crime-scene techniques became more sophisticated. By the time the assistant from the medical examiner's office got to the Perkins house, one corner of the bedroom had a sizable pile of waste from packaged test materials. The room was gritty with powders, and the odor of ammonia lingered in the room.

When Sergeant Minnow entered the room for the first time, he'd wrinkled his nose. "What's that smell, poison?"

"Smells like household cleaner to me," said Igor, the more experienced half of the CSI team.

Minnow frowned at April as if to say,
What are you still doing here?

She smiled benignly at him as she gathered her thoughts. She had the same sense now that she'd experienced yesterday, that someone was sending a message. The first body -had been washed in the shower, the second possibly with household cleanser. What was that about? She shook her head sadly. She needed to see Alison's body, and it was taking forever. Igor and Tam, a new face in the unit, peeled back Alison's bedspread centimeter by centimeter, carefully checking for foreign materials of any kind, stray fibers, hair, a broken nail— anything at all that might have been left behind by someone leaving the scene. They picked off tiny items with tweezers. Dog hairs, people hairs, threads, and feathers—something that looked like a scab, but Igor identified as "probably a booger."

April glanced at her watch for the hundredth time. The minutes ticked away, postponing her long to-do list. She had that hair sample from the powder room in her purse. She had her own plans for it. She'd already raided all the hairbrushes in the house. It was too short and coarse for the little girls' hair. Too short for Lynn's as well. She'd made some notes to herself. Hair from the cleaning lady from yesterday? How long did it take for water drops in a sink to dry out? Could it still have been wet from the day before? Probably not. Maybe the killer's hair. What color?

Whoever it was had definitely been in Alison's closet, had been in the bathroom, had been in the sitting room. Lynn was sure the magazines had not been there earlier in the morning. Igor had tested them for prints, and all of them had been wiped clean. Maybe the exit path had been through the little sitting room, and the killer had stopped there to wash up. Another note to herself. Alison's rings were missing. What else?

Finally Igor and Tam lifted the rolled bedspread off the end of the bed and bagged it. By then there was no longer any doubt about the nature of Alison's death. Her body was clothed in a long white nightgown, carefully tucked around her ankles. Her hands were folded across her chest. The witnesses to the unveiling made a tableau around the bed— Sergeant Minnow, April, the assistant from the medical examiner's office, and Igor and Tam.

"Oh, Jesus," Minnow exclaimed.

The smell of ammonia was strong on the body, and it was clear that whatever mess Alison had made in dying had been washed away with household cleanser. Her body had been swabbed with it. The cameras started again, taking pictures of the dead woman from all angles.

"Some sick puppy, the person who did this," Minnow muttered.

No one else said anything. The assistant ME did a cursory examination of the victim's head, chest, arms, hands, and shoulders. There didn't appear to be any tissue under her fingernails, bruises on her neck, arms, shoulders, head. Just that horrible anguished face and the wide-open eyes. Her hands were paper-bagged anyway.

Minnow turned away. He was done there. "You got anything?" he asked April as they walked down the hall to the stairs.

She told him about her conversation with Lynn. "Was that guy who followed Remy one of your people?"

He laughed. "Uh-uh. Ours was a female. She didn't pick it up," he said with a moment of pride. "Yeah, we knew Remy came over here." Then he sobered quickly and ticked the events off on his fingers. "Let's get this straight. The two nannies meet for coffee at six forty-five. Yesterday's killer tells today's killer she's getting canned, so she offs her boss, too? What is this, the revenge of the nannies?"

April shook her head. "I'm seeing a small window of opportunity when someone close to the two victims knew they would be alone and vulnerable. Maddy Wilson was in her steam room relaxing after her workout. Her husband and her nanny were off together in his restaurant. We've got some witnesses to that. We talked to the chef last night. Wilson was taking inventory. Remy was with him. This morning, Alison had taken a tranquilizer, or possibly two, as was her habit when she'd abused too much. Yesterday was a stressful day for her, and she'd done too much cocaine, I'm guessing. She was popping Vicodin to come down and had gone back to bed for a nap. Again, Lynn was out taking the girls to play school. So in that window, I'm seeing someone else."

"Then you don't think it was either of the nannies?" Minnow said. They started down the stairs to the living-room floor.

"Remy was not truthful in her interviews, but I believe that was because she was having an affair with her boss," April said.

"In my book that's a motive."

April shook her head. "It's a reason to feel guilty."

"Sounds like a motive to me, but okay, have it your own way," he said as if he would never let that happen. "Just for the sake of conversation let's eliminate the nannies. Who then . . . the trainer?" He scratched his head as if he didn't like that idea.

"Well, no. I spoke to Dr. Gloss. He said Maddy Wilson's body was exposed to the hot shower for less than twenty minutes. That would eliminate him."

"No way!" he exclaimed.

"Working backward. Derek was in the deli at nine-oh-five and in his gym at nine fifteen. If Remy found the body and turned off the shower at nine forty-five, the attack would have happened after he left." It wasn't rocket science.

"You spoke to the ME?" Minnow said, sounding surprised.

"Yeah," April said modestly, because it was a coup to reach him. She stopped inside the front door of the house, not wanting to finish the conversation on the sidewalk surrounded by reporters.

Minnow screwed up his face. "So what's your hypothesis?" he asked.

"I don't know. But I was wondering, is there a surveillance camera here?'"

"No." He looked as if he wanted to know what she was planning, but was afraid to ask, so she helped him out.

"I'm going to talk to Remy again," she said. "She needs to come clean on everything she knows."

He nodded and didn't query where this interview was going to take place. Apparently he wasn't in the loop about what had happened yesterday. Then he said, "We'll be getting more people on this now. How about you give me your cell phone number so I can reach you if something comes up."

"Oh, yeah, of course," she said. It hadn't occurred to her that nobody had given it to him. She gave him the number. They opened the door, and the barrage of reporters' questions began.

Thirty-seven

A
t noon, Eloise closed the door of her office,sat down at her desk, and rewound the taped interview of Alison Perkins. Then she took out a pad of paper and started listening to the first cassette. After a few minutes, it was clear to her that April Woo really knew her stuff. She had led Alison through a detailed history of her friendship with the woman everyone had called Maddy. Alison and Maddy had met in a gym long before they had children. They'd planned their pregnancies together, used the same obstetrician and hospital. They'd had babies at the same time, almost to the month, attended natural-childbirth class together, and traveled to health spas out West. They'd shopped together, and used the same employment agency to get their baby nurses and nannies. It was at the point in the narrative when Alison began talking about the nannies that her voice became more agitated.

"These girls. They come from nowheresville, never lived in a good house. For a few weeks they're nice as can be—cheerful, helpful. The kids are happy. It seems like everything's finally going to be peachy. Then they start ganging up." Sound of nervous laughter.