Scanning around them as they went, Jenna followed Kane up the staircase and onto a landing leading to a hallway and four doors: no doubt, three bedrooms and a separate bathroom. She didn’t need to instruct the professionals around her to clear the floor. Carter and Jo took one side of the hallway, and she followed Kane along the other side, clearing each room. Only one of the bedrooms was occupied. The open closet door revealed clothes on hangers and shoes or boots beneath. Nightwear had been laid out across the bed. Everything looked perfectly normal.
“That leaves the bathroom.” Kane frowned and reached in his pocket for a pair of examination gloves. “Just in case.” He removed his leather gloves and exchanged them.
Jenna stood to one side as Kane went to the bathroom door and knocked loudly.
Nothing.
As he slid the door open, Jenna held her breath. She’d seen victims of homicides in bathrooms and the memory of them lingered, but for now, he blocked her view. When Kane holstered his weapon and she heard his intake of breath, she went to his side. A naked woman hung over the edge of the tub, her head suspended in the water. Her eyes stared into nothingness and a strangely bloodless gash marred her forehead just above the eyebrows. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.” Kane waved the others away. “I figure someone has tried to make this look like an accident.” He indicated to the water all over the floor. “What do you say, Jenna?”
Edging her way around the side of the room to keep out of the water across the floor, Jenna moved closer to the tub. The hands of the woman floated on top of the water and her nails were broken. “She has defensive wounds. Yeah, I figure someone pushed her into the tub, banged her head on the side of it, and pushed her under the water.”
“This is the second homicide from the same group of women.” Carter chewed on his toothpick and stared into the bathroom, shaking his head slightly. “I guess I’d better go and check the front door for any sign of forced entry.”
Jenna stepped back into the hallway. “I’ll call Wolfe.”
Fifteen
Standing beside the tub in Sierra’s bathroom, Wolfe balled his hands on his hips and turned to look at Emily. “Well, I figured I’d seen everything in my lifetime, but this one beats it all.” He raised both eyebrows at her. “What do you think happened here?”
“From the water splashed all over the floor, the broken nails, and the slight bruising between the shoulder blades, I’d say homicide for sure. Although there are no footprints or wet marks leading away from the scene. Whoever did this must have held her down and gotten wet. How did they leave the house without leaving a water trail?” Emily met his gaze. “Carter mentioned on the way in that he couldn’t find any evidence of forced entry. The front door was open when they arrived. I figure she knew her killer. Maybe there’s some evidence she was entertaining someone prior to her death?” She bent to take a sample of the bathwater, sealed the bottle, and placed it in an evidence bag.
Wolfe leaned over and grasped the chain attached to the plug in the bathtub and yanked it out. As the water drained away, he lifted the body to peer at the underside. “The lividity is fixed.” He pressed a purple patch on the body. “There’s no blanching. I would say she has been in this position for at least twelve to fourteen hours.” He indicated to the drain. “There are fingernails in there. Collect them and anything else trapped in there.”
“Okay. I see rigor is set and that would put the time of death to around nine last night.” Emily manipulated an ankle on the victim. “We need to get her out of here.” She glanced over her shoulder at their assistant, Colt Webber. “We’re ready to bag and tag.” She turned back to Wolfe. “I’ll get swabs of the faucet and edge of the tub.” Emily pulled test kits from their forensics bag. “I doubt we’ll find much evidence. If she thrashed around as it appears, she would have washed most of it into the water.”
Scanning the room, Wolfe raised his eyebrows toward Jenna, standing in the doorway. “There are no towels near the bathtub. In fact, I can’t see any in this room at all. I figure whoever murdered this young woman used the towels to dry themselves before leaving the bathroom. We need to find those towels. They could be carrying crucial trace evidence.”
“I’m on it.” Kane looked over Jenna’s shoulder. “I’ll take Carter and we’ll drive up and down the driveway and road outside and see if anything has been dumped, but it’s going to be difficult seeing anything in this downpour.”
“The killer might have just taken them away.” Jenna squeezed into the room and edged around the wall until she came to a closet at the back of the bathroom. Inside, she found sets of matching towels. She pulled one out and, after checking the label, tossed it into an evidence bag. “Unfortunately, these towels are available everywhere. I’m not sure how sophisticated your equipment is or if it’s possible to match batch numbers, but even we have this brand of towels at our place.”
After Wolfe assisted Webber in retrieving the body from the tub and securing it inside a body bag, he straightened to look at Jenna. “There are still a few things we need to determine. Did the defense wounds happen prior to her death, as in before she got into the bathtub? Was she dead before she got into the bathtub and this entire scene is staged to make it look like an accident?” He scanned the room. “I’m done here. We’ll bring the gurney in and take her back to the morgue. I’ll schedule an autopsy for ten tomorrow and maybe we’ll get the answers that we require. I’ll conduct a full tox screen as well. You mentioned that she had been at Aunt Betty’s Café previously, having coffee and pie. I’ll examine the stomach contents as well. It will also give us very close approximation of the time of death.”
“There is one thing I need to bring to your attention.” Emily touched Jenna’s arm. “The way she was left, exposed for all to see. It’s very degrading and I wonder if she was posed in that position for that very reason.”
“I agree.” Jo leaned against the bathroom doorframe with her arms crossed. “This is something a rejected lover might do. He might have discovered that she was seeing someone else, and he wanted to strip her of her dignity. It was his last chance to control her.”
“I’ll check the bedroom for any signs of a boyfriend.” Emily smiled at Jo. “If he had a sleepover, there will be evidence. One thing I’ve noticed: he wasn’t a keeper. No male toothbrush or toiletries beside the sink.”
Wolfe nodded. “I’ll leave the detective side of things to your team, Jenna.” He nodded to Webber to remove the gurney and it rattled along the hallway. “I’ll be right there to carry it downstairs.” He looked back at Jenna. “If you figure this was a spurned lover, maybe y’all need to look at her phone and social media. Some people like to plaster their personal life all over.”
“Yeah, it’s in the kitchen. I’ll grab it.” Jenna nodded and turned to leave the bathroom. “We’ll search the house before we leave and then we’re heading over to do the same with Jan Pierce’s home. My problem with this theory is that no one has mentioned Sierra having a boyfriend.”
Sixteen
Kane stood in the middle of Sierra’s family room and scanned the area. “The first thing I notice is there aren’t any photographs of a couple anywhere in this room. I didn’t notice any in the bedroom either. No clothes left behind.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “She wanted security, so maybe she called someone for an estimate. Maybe he ran into her in town. It would be a neat excuse to speak to her again. Maybe get invited over to discuss an estimate?”
“Hmm, maybe.” Jenna moved into a small home office and pulled open drawers. “There are a few invoices here.” She spread them across the desk and took photographs. “I’m thinking it’s too much of a coincidence to have two murders so close together. I figure the same person committed them—but who? I need to find a link between the women apart from going to the self-defense classes. The problem is, right now, I can’t find any other links between them whatsoever. They don’t work together, so there must be something else connecting them as none of you are stalkers or murderers.”
Kane shook his head. “I’m sure glad you haven’t considered me, Raven, Rio, or Carter as potential suspects. There would be no one to solve the case.”
“Oh, ha ha.” Jenna rolled her eyes. “What I’m saying is that there must be a connection but we’re not seeing it. It’s probably right in front of our eyes.”
“We found absolutely nothing.” Carter moved into the room with Jo close behind. “I’ve been around the house checking all the windows and doors. Nobody broke into this house. She must have opened the door and let them in or else they had their own key.”
“Like I was saying to Dave”—Jenna looked from him to Jo—“it’s someone they knew.”
