“Dead. She wished Luna was dead. Geneva scolded her but not strongly.”
Vera unfastened her seat belt, so angry now that her fingers fumbled. “We can’t tell Luna about this. How awful would that make her feel.”
“We won’t have to.” Bent sat up. “Geneva will find the perfect opportunity and will revel in revealing Jackie’s true feelings for her daughter-in-law.”
He was right. Damn it. “We might not be able to stop that, but we have to find a way to prove she’s wrong about what happened.”
“Depending on how the autopsy turns out, that might not be easy, Vee. You know what Collins said.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Vera hadn’t forgotten the preliminary findings. The memory of that damned hardware store receipt haunted her as well. He was right. It wouldn’t be easy, but Vera knew there had to be another answer to how that trauma came about. There simply had to be.
“Collins is waiting.” Bent climbed out and came around to her door before she could do the same.
“This will of Thomas Wilton’s,” she said as they walked toward the rear entrance, “gives Erwin the biggest motive. Not to mention that what I learned from Nola Childers’s mother shows a possible tendency to take advantage of situations. Maybe even to manipulate those situations.”
Bent entered the code Collins had no doubt given him and opened the rear entrance to the basement level. Vera refused to allow the woman to distract her. They had a triple homicide case to worry about ... not to mention this ridiculous business with Geneva Fanning.
“Erwin’s history is undeniably suspicious, considering what’s happened,” Bent agreed.
Vera had brought him up to speed on her and Erwin’s conversation after the woman left the mansion in a huff because Bent refused to allow her to stay there. “I’ve already requested a copy of Nola Childers’s autopsy, but I think we need Wilton’s first wife’s as well. We may be missing something big here.”
“Like maybe Erwin has been eliminating all the obstacles in her path to Wilton.”
“Something like that,” Vera agreed. Except why eliminate the golden goose at the same time? If having Thomas Wilton all to herself was the goal, why kill him too? Unless he figured out her endgame and she had no choice. There was more, Vera understood. “We also need to see any will Wilton had before this one—assuming it changed after his first wife died, which is very likely. Or any changes he almost certainly made after he married Alicia. I’d be interested in seeing what those changes were.”
Bent pulled out his cell. “I’ll have Myra give the attorney a call and look into the possibility.”
“Thanks.”
Myra Jordan was Bent’s assistant. She took care of his office and him like a military general organizing her battalions. Another someone whose good side Vera intended to stay on.
As they reached the door with its taped-on handmade sign proclaiming the space beyond as the morgue, Vera considered the lineup of suspects in the Wilton case. There was Alicia at the top because of the knife, but Erwin was right up there with her, possibly an accomplice. Seth Parson could have been an accomplice as well. For that matter there was Helen Carter, Renata Hernandez, and Jose Martinez. Ten million dollars was a hell of a lot of motive. Helen Carter intrigued Vera the most. She clearly knew Wilton better than anyone else. Knew everything about him and his home. She was a widow. No children. Maybe she wanted a better retirement plan. Definitely a close third behind Erwin and Alicia. A zing of new anticipation fired through Vera. The suspects and motives were coming into better focus now. It wouldn’t be long until she and Bent had nailed this one down.
Then it was only a matter of finding the necessary evidence to prove the case in a court of law.
When Bent ended the call to his assistant, he opened the door and waited for Vera to enter before him.
Jenny Collins waited in the center of the room. She was dressed in full ME garb, sans the protective face mask, as if she were about to perform an autopsy right here in this makeshift morgue. “Thanks forcoming. I’ve left a formal report on my desk for you, but I’m sure you want to see my findings for yourselves while you’re here.”
Meaning, Vera mused, the woman wanted to put on a little show. Fine. A closer look at the vics was always a good idea, especially considering the bodies had been removed from the scene by the time Vera was there.
“I appreciate this, Dr. Collins.” Bent removed his hat and settled it on the table next to the file with his name on it.
Vera surveyed the good-size room. Collins had made herself a very professional setup in her little bartered space. A stainless steel exam table had been turned into a desk with a lamp and neat stacks of files and papers. A shiny new four-drawer file cabinet stood next to it. Two more stainless steel exam tables sat side by side on the other side of the floor space. But the coups de grâce were the shiny new refrigerated morgue drawers that housed the corpses she prepared for shipment to Nashville.
Bent passed Vera a pair of gloves. He’d already tugged on a pair himself. They joined the ME at the wall of nine drawers.
“Seth Parson.” Collins opened the first of the drawers in the middle row. She unzipped the body bag and revealed the corpse within. “He appears to have been in reasonably good health. The lab work isn’t back yet, but I can tell you that his blood alcohol level was somewhat high. The issue with that is decomp can cause the production of ethanol, which affects the BAC level, so we can’t get a truly accurate count. Other test results for drugs will be a few days, as you know. The most accurate story will come with the autopsy report.”
She paused, looked from Bent to Vera as if waiting for questions, then, when none were posed, turned her attention to the man in the bag. “You’re aware of the stab wounds and defensive injuries. But I also found a tattoo on his hip.”
Vera peered at the entwined set of hearts the ME pointed out. The initials, AT, were part of the tattoo. “Alicia Thurman.” She looked to Bent. “Thurman, that’s Wilton’s wife’s maiden name.”
Bent raised his eyebrows. “This would seem to confirm Erwin’s statement that Alicia knew the guy.”
“I took the liberty of calling Vanderbilt,” Collins said, drawing their attention. “Alicia has a tattoo in this same location. But the one that matched this one has been overlaid with a larger single red heart. The nurse who checked for me sent images—which you’ll find with my report. Careful examination of those images shows a tattoo just like this one beneath the heart. The initials SP are there as well. It’s faint, but you can make out the pattern.”
“More than acquaintances then.” Vera had to hand it to Collins. “Good catch.”
