“You think it might be poisoning? Like, with some kind of acidic compound? Bleach, maybe?” I paused to consider.
Charlie shook his head. “I don’t think it’s poison.” He tilted his head toward a row of litmus strips on a nearby podium.
“Is that your test kit?” I asked, remembering how he’d talked about buying it for the station even though it was almost athousand dollars of the county’s tiny budget. He’d deliberated for far longer than I would’ve, but I appreciated how seriously he took his job.
“Yeah, it came in handy after all.” Charlie motioned to the tests as he spoke. “I had one of the officers run Brett’s glass for different toxins, and everything came back clear.”
“How reliable are the tests?”
“Pretty good. Ninety-five percent accuracy for common toxins.”
“And uncommon?”
“Hit or miss,” he answered. “Just in case, we’re also sending the glass to forensics.”
“And the coroner will take blood samples,” I said, standing back and crossing my arms, trying to figure out what else could’ve killed Brett so quickly.
My eyes traveled down the body to the dead man’s arms, and I crouched low to study his hands, the very ones that appeared to have strangled him as he gasped for air. I peeked beneath the palms and at the fingers, the hairy knuckles and the tiny indentations on the skin. All seemed fine except for… I stopped, noticing the nail beds: a bluish purple. I pointed to them. “This discoloration is likely from cyanosis.”
I’d taken one class on animal forensics, and by the end of the semester, I’d known that I couldn’t stomach examining cases of animal cruelty even if it was a good and necessary job to prosecute perpetrators. Still, that class had taught me the signs of a lack of oxygen: discoloration of the nail beds, the gums, the tongue. Add that to what I’d seen with my own two eyes as Brett struggled on the dance floor, and I was confident as to how he’d died. Technically, Brett had suffocated from a lack of air to his lungs. That still didn’t explainhowhe’d been deprived of oxygen. Whatever the cause, the blood in the mouth andthe burst vessels on the neck meant it wasn’t a simple case of choking.
“The discoloration could also have something to do with circulation or a heart problem,” I added. “You’ll need to wait for the coroner’s report to know for sure?—”
“I know exactly what happened.” A voice cut in from the wings.
FOUR
Presley burst in, her carefully crafted appearance now a mess: hair wild, lipstick smeared into a bruise across her mouth. An officer hurried after her.
“Sorry,” the deputy said. “She insisted she speak with you.”
“That’s okay.” Charlie angled himself between Brett’s body and his girlfriend. “You have information for us?”
Presley came forward, trying to peer around the sheriff before catching a glimpse of Brett’s body and bursting into tears, which she dried with the corner of her knuckle. Perhaps unfairly, I was struck by how well grief suited her. Even with the tousled hair and tarnished makeup, she was not an “ugly crier.” Her flushed cheeks and gleaming eyes made her almost sparkle.
“Brett and I traveled to Sardinia to meet my extended family a few weeks ago. He was…” Presley sniffled twice. “He was planning to propose, so he was doing a sort of ‘meet the family’ tour. He thought it would be good for his upcoming show, but while we were there… it didn’t go well.”
I couldn’t help but notice her language:He was planning, he was doing, he thought, his show.Brett seemed to be the only one calling the shots in their supposed relationship.
“How would it affect the show?” I asked.
“We brought the camera crew, thinking that viewers would like to see us traveling. We ate cannoli and granita. We walked along the Cala Brandinchi. The first day was perfect until…” She took a steadying breath. “After the second day we couldn’t use much of the footage, mainly because of mybisnonna—my great-grandmother.” Presley swallowed. “She took us to her spiritual adviser, a fortune teller, who gave us a terrible reading and then took mybisnonnaaside to say God knows what.”
Like Mina had said, if Presley believed in psychics and curses, her great-grandmother’s warning could have poisoned their relationship before they could get engaged.
“After that mybisnonnadespised Brett, said he was astronzo—an asshole—and he would break my heart. She went on and on about seeing him with another woman even though that would’ve been literally impossible. At first, I assumed she hated him because he isn’t Catholic, but then after we spoke for a while, all in Italian and all off-camera, of course, I realized it was because she’d seenSmall Town, Big Romance. She’d watched him closely all season long and said she knew that he was no good. She was angry that he’d brought cameras to her island home, and she thought that he was corrupting me.”
Presley herself had become a household name from the very same show and, from what I could tell, was very Americanized. As Momma would say, this sounded like the pot calling the kettle black if ever there was one.
Presley glanced down now, not meeting our eyes for a moment, but when she spoke again, I realized she was thinking the same thing. “Apparently, she watched the show and knew we were together, but no one had told her about the tape that was released a few months after it ended. Mybisnonnadoesn’t go online.”
I knew that she was referring to the infamous sex tape, which was not actually a tape but rather a streamed five-minute clipof her – completely nude and in the starring role. I’d always assumed Presley had been the one to release it, since it had apparently secured her ongoing stardom.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Lombardi, for your loss,” Charlie said, clearing his throat. “But I do need to understand one thing: What impact would your great-grandmother have had on the events of this evening?”
She glanced between the two of us as if the answer was already sitting right in front of us. “She cursed Brett, of course.” Presley pulled a tissue from her cleavage and let out a soft cry.
“She cursed him?” I repeated.
