The Death of an Ambitious Woman

Copyright © 2010 by Barbara Ross.

Five Star Publishing, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning, digitizing, taping, Web distribution, information networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The publisher bears no responsibility for the quality of information provided through author or third-party Web sites and does not have any control over, nor assume any responsibility for, information contained in these sites. Providing these sites should not be construed as an endorsement or approval by the publisher of these organizations or of the positions they may take on various issues.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Ross, Barbara, 1953−

The death of an ambitious woman : a Chief Ruth Murphy mystery / Barbara Ross. —1st ed.

   p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-59414-898-9 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 1-59414-898-8 (hardcover)

eISBN-13: 978-1-43-282569-0

eISBN-10: 1-4328-2569-0

1. Women police chiefs—Fiction. 2. Businesswomen—Crimes against—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3618.O845245D43 2010

813’.6—dc22

2010013306

First Edition. First Printing: August 2010.

Published by Five Star in conjunction with the Author.

Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 14 13 12 11 10

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

C
HAPTER
O
NE

C
HAPTER
T
WO

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

C
HAPTER
S
IX

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

C
HAPTER
N
INE

C
HAPTER
T
EN

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-O
NE

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
WO

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
HREE

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
OUR

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“Sprouts.” Tracey Kendall’s voice crackled over her cell phone. “He likes lots of sprouts on whole wheat.”

“Yeah, I know.” Hannah Whiteside glanced at the granite countertop where Carson Kendall, her four-year-old charge, munched on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “It’s your mom,” she mouthed.

Carson brightened, reaching for the phone.

Hannah held up her index finger, gesturing
wait.
Returning to the phone, she said, “He’s eating now.”

“Good. Just checking in. I’m driving to the gym. I’m buried at the office all afternoon, but won’t be late tonight. Can you start dinner?”

“Sure.” Hannah’s job description as the au pair included light cooking. “Here’s Carson.” Hannah handed Carson the phone and turned to make her own lunch, barely listening to the exchange that followed, confident the boy wouldn’t tattle about the peanut butter sandwich.

“Mom!”

Hannah whirled, took one look at Carson’s white face, and grabbed the phone. “Tracey?”

“SHIT!” The word exploded into the room.

Carson stared.

A split second of silence. Instinctively, Hannah pressed the receiver tightly to her ear in time to spare Carson the piercing, full-bodied scream that followed, a scream made even more horrible by the reverberation of the cell phone. Hannah’s mind raced, comprehending, yet rejecting what she was hearing. She stood, nailed to the spot, unable to call out. The scream melted into a cacophonous, metallic roar.

The phone went dead. Hannah felt Carson’s wide eyes trained on her. Keeping her hand steady, she hung up. “Carson,” she said, “why don’t you go up to your room and pick a book for us to read before your nap? I need to run out to the studio and talk to your daddy.”

Ruth Anderson Murphy, New Derby Acting Chief of Police, pushed her way out of the warm sunshine, through the big brass-and-glass front door into the chilly, dark hallway of police headquarters. Her step was purposeful, her mood upbeat. It was April’s first warm day, a bright masterpiece in the midst of a cold, drizzly Massachusetts spring. Even better, across the street at City Hall, the rumor mill was churning out good news for a change.Word was the long-awaited consultant’s report had finally landed on the mayor’s desk. After a nationwide search, eighty applicants, six finalists, and months of screening and interviews, the search firm had recommended her appointment as permanent chief. The recommendation was a major hurdle, no,
the
major hurdle to be cleared in the selection process.

As Ruth passed the front desk, Lieutenant Lawry, Officer-in-Charge of the day shift, raised his eyebrows in the way that meant, “I need to talk to you.” Ruth collected her mail from the vacant secretary’s desk outside her office and moved back toward Lawry. Side-by-side, Ruth and Lawry were the same height, making her a tallish woman and him a shortish man. Both stood erect, Ruth’s carriage reflecting her natural athleticism, Lawry’s his iron self-discipline. As she sorted through the pile of envelopes, Ruth listened to Lawry’s painfully patient voice as he finished taking a citizen complaint.

“So, in essence,” Lawry confirmed, “as I understand it, your complaint is failure on the part of your neighbors to observe the city’s pooper-scooper ordinance?”

“No, that’s not what I said at all.” The grand proportions of the public reception area made the tiny, gray-haired woman on the other side of the desk appear even smaller. Her wavery voice echoed around the otherwise empty room. “If you had been listening, you would have understood that the essence of my complaint is that these people deliberately cause their dog to defecate on my front lawn every day. They live four houses down from me, but the dog never goes on the intervening lawns.

He always goes, he
only
goes, on my pachysandra. Same time, same lawn, every day. Don’t you find that a little strange?”

Ruth knew that at almost sixty-two, Lieutenant Lawry took enormous pride in a personal regimen you could set your watch by. She suspected his sympathies were with the dog. But he said, “This happens at the same time every day?”

“Eight
A
.
M
., exactly.”

“Tell you what, in the next couple of days, as soon as I have a car I can spare, I’ll send someone over to observe this performance, and we’ll take it from there. That okay?”

“Thank you,” the little woman replied formally. “You cannot imagine how much this has been disturbing me. I look forward to chatting with your officer as soon as he has confirmed my description of events.” And with that, she left, pausing only for a short wrestling match with the heavy front door.

Ruth waited while Lawry methodically finished filling out the complaint. Though she adored Lawry and he was the person she had most relied on during her six months as acting chief, she knew better than to interrupt this little ritual. After completing the required paperwork, Lawry made a note to himself about the patrol car, then picked up a personal ledger and put a mark in a column headed TMFT—Too Much Free Time. In Lawry’s oft-stated opinion, many of New Derby’s eighty thousand citizens had TMFT. He kept a running tally of their complaints, which he supplied to Ruth along with his other, more traditional reports.

Finally, he turned to her. “There’s been a fatal car wreck on Willow Road.”

“When?”

“It was reported at 12:32. One car. Late-model, luxury SUV. Hit that stone wall on the curve at the bottom of the big hill. One victim. Thirty-nine-year-old female.”

“Speeding?”

“Must have been from the damage, but no skid marks.”

“Witnesses?”

“No
eye
-witnesses.”

“Who’s out there?”

“Cable. McGrath and Moscone were in the area on their way to lunch. I just sent Kilburn and Winkle.”

Ruth nodded. “Victim local?”

“Briarhill Road. Name’s Kendall. She was Tracey. The husband is Stephen. There’s a four-year-old son, name of Carson. Mrs. Kendall was on the cell phone with the nanny when it happened. The family reported the accident, but they didn’t know where she was. Apparently she was taking a shortcut. Not much traffic on that road. A passerby called it in.”

“Grisly.”

“Must’ve been.”

Ruth stared down at the day’s mail still in her hands, her light mood punctured. Suburban police departments, even very large ones like New Derby’s, spent about half their time dealing with automobiles—moving violations, drunk drivers, stolen cars. Fatalities, however, were rare and affected everyone. Ruth was not immune to the essential sadness of it either, the death of a relatively young woman, mother to a small boy. It was disturbing when life ended so tragically. Ruth turned the matter over in her mind. “Beautiful day, newish car, mature driver, no skid marks. A little odd,” she remarked.

“Ah, but odd is our specialty.” The twinkle returned to Lawry’s blue eyes. For emphasis, he waved Mrs. Thurmond Bentley’s dog poop complaint.

Ruth headed for her office.

“By the way, congratulations on the search firm’s report,” Lawry called.

Good old Lawry. He was always near the top of the grapevine.

Detective Carl Moscone turned from the salesman’s car and trotted back to the spot where his partner, John McGrath, stood. The salesman hadn’t been able to tell Moscone much. He’d arrived well after the accident occurred. Now, the poor guy’s day was completely blown. He said it didn’t matter; he just wanted to go home and hug his wife and kids. Moscone didn’t have a wife or kids, but he understood.

Up on the road, Officer Cable stood ready to direct traffic around the vehicles parked along the sharp bend in the road—Cable’s cruiser, the detectives’ unmarked car, a fire truck and ambulance, both useless, and the salesman’s mud-brown sedan just now pulling away. The accident’s single victim was still in her mangled SUV.

“Must have been going at least sixty,” McGrath commented.

“At least,” Moscone agreed.

“That’s what I said.”

McGrath seemed annoyed. In fact, McGrath had seemed annoyed for the entire week they’d worked together. Moscone wondered about the three guys with seniority who’d turned down this transfer to the day shift. They were all family men, locked into schedules they’d honed over the years and dependent on the extra pay they picked up for daytime court appearances and detail work. Moscone had thought their loss his gain. Moving to day shift was a critical rung on the career ladder. And now was a good time to make a move, if the rumors were true. A new chief meant new opportunities. But after a week of sharing the cantankerous McGrath’s car and caseload, Moscone was beginning to rethink things.

The two men stood in an uncomfortable silence. Moscone fished his handkerchief out of his pocket and pressed it to his nose. Despite the light spring breeze, the smell of motor oil and friction hung in the air.

“You call the medical examiner’s office?” McGrath asked for the third time.

“As soon as we arrived.”

McGrath glanced at his watch. “This is taking for-frigging ever.” He jiggled his wrist with impatience. “We’re supposed to be at lunch.”

Moscone watched McGrath stomp across the grassy verge to the place where the expensive, green SUV had hit the scenic New England stone wall. The front end of the car had lifted off the ground on impact. The wheels hung in the air, splayed at odd angles. The victim was still in her seat belt, the car’s air bags deployed. Neither had saved her.

McGrath reached up through the broken window and felt her neck. Then he turned and stomped back to where the freckle-faced young ambulance attendant stood by his rig. “You gonna move her?” McGrath demanded, bringing his face so close the attendant winced.

“I can’t, sir, um, Detective. Regulations prohibit me from moving, um, corpses, sir.”

“You a doctor?”

“No, sir, I am a trained—”

“Well, I’m not a doctor either,” McGrath growled, “but I say I feel a pulse. Now get her out of here, or if this accident ever becomes a lawsuit, and it will,” McGrath looked pointedly at the expensive car and its driver, “I’ll testify that when I came on the scene, she was alive, and you refused to treat her.”

Moscone’s stomach tightened. The ambulance attendant had a panicked look in his eyes. He seemed to be weighing the threat of a mauling by McGrath now against the certainty of a mauling by his superiors later. Moscone shook his head. What was McGrath thinking, jeopardizing their reputations because he couldn’t handle the wait for the M.E. and staties? It was common knowledge the acting chief hated just this kind of corner cutting.

Without waiting to see what the young attendant would decide, Moscone sprinted toward the wreck. Standing on his toes, six inches from the door, he could look straight into the driver’s window. The victim’s face was turned away from him, exposing a slender neck. One arm had come to rest flung over her head.

The driver’s perfume, a delicate fragrance of woodland flowers, wafted through the smells of body fluids, flesh, and death. Moscone turned his face away, took a deep breath, and held it. Careful not to move closer to the car or look down into the driver’s seat, he put his hand through the shattered window and felt her neck. Her flesh was cooling. The absence of movement in her carotid artery confirmed what Moscone already knew. The woman who had lived in this body wasn’t there anymore.

Moscone stepped back from the car and rolled down off his toes. Taking a moment to compose himself, he inspected his pants and shoes for damage, satisfied he’d avoided the blood that dripped steadily from below the driver’s door. Mission accomplished, he jogged back to the ambulance. “She’s gone,” he announced with finality. The young ambulance driver looked relieved.

McGrath stared at both of them. “Yeah, she’s gone for sure,” he said to the attendant. “Just having a little fun with you.”

A patrol car pulled up behind the ambulance. “Lawry wants you two to notify the family,” Sergeant Winkle called to McGrath.

“Oh, joy,” McGrath responded.

Ruth sat at her desk, working through a pile of reports, budgets, plans, and projections—the detritus of the job she’d “acted in” for six months. Unlike many of her colleagues, she found paperwork enormously satisfying. When she’d been captain of New Derby’s detective squad, and before that when she’d worked on the street, paperwork had offered a world of rules, order, and completion that counter-balanced the human events it sprang from, which were all too often chaotic, inexplicable, and irresolvable.

At a little after six, Ruth put the last report in her out-box, checked the item off her To Do list and packed up her briefcase. She was eager to get home.

When she pulled into the driveway, her husband Marty and the kids were already outside. Marty gestured toward their station wagon, a broad smile on his face. Ruth grinned back and called out, “Let me change!” She took the stairs to their third-floor bedroom two at a time.

Ruth and Marty had bought their first car in their third year of marriage, when they were living in Jamaica Plain and Marty was finishing up at Suffolk Law. Ruth was working a punishing beat on the Boston police force, sticking out like the token she was, frequently hazed and never accepted.

The car, a used clunker bought from Marty’s Uncle Emmett, was a wonder. They were amazed they owned it, amazed the City of Boston’s Credit Union looked past the student loans, the single income, and the lack of credit history. All through that first winter, Marty and Ruth shoveled the car in and out of parking spaces and cursed its intermittent heat.

Then came the first warm day. They arrived home at the same moment, a coincidence. Without saying a word, they climbed into the old car and headed west, windows open, looking for country roads. Marty and Ruth unwound with each mile, more relaxed than they’d been in months.

Since then, on the first warm spring evening every year, they took a car ride. First alone, then with James strapped in the car seat in the back, and finally with Sarah in the car seat and James riding beside her. Over time, a regular circuit evolved and they found a restaurant everybody liked that served late dinners. Certain traditions were always upheld. They never talked about it beforehand, never said, “Tonight may be the night.” They just got in the car and drove away. Somehow, in nineteen years, city meetings, trials, Little League, or homework had never conflicted.