Family Business

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The Secrets of Sisters

Lu stood on the stoop waiting for Merry Miller to answer the door.

She had no need to be there, no real right to be there, and yet, Lu had questions and she wanted those questions answered.  No doubt Josh wouldn’t be thrilled about her snooping, but if Josh could deal with Nico’s inability to put his underwear in a laundry basket, instead throwing it all over the floor (and the man had the gall to criticize her bathroom habits from twenty years ago), then he could surely deal with his devoted and caring sister-in-law following up on a lead and helping him out on a case that meant a whole hell of a lot to both of their careers.

Merry Miller worked from home and Lu should have called ahead to both make sure that Miss Miller was there and to let her know that she was coming, but Lu didn’t have her number and didn’t have the patience at the moment to track it down in such a way that Josh wouldn’t know about it.

Merry Miller opened the door, looking more than a little surprised to see Lu.  Miss Miller was dressed much like she had been the first time Lu met her: she wore a brightly printed dress and matching lipstick.  Her blonde hair was down today, though, falling in natural waves around her shoulders.  Lu wondered why this super cute, bubbly woman was wasting her time with married men when she could have her pick of the singles.  But then Lu remembered that it had been only one married man and this woman’s relationship status was none of her damn business.

“Hi, Miss Miller,” Lu said, smiling brightly, hoping that the black polo shirt with the coroner’s office logo on the breast wasn’t too alarming.  “I don’t know if you remember me from the other day.  I’m Lu Jones.  I’m a death investigator.  I was here with Detective Carpenter.”

“Oh, yes!  Of course,” Miss Miller said and she gave a little laugh that sounded a bit relieved.  “I saw the shirt and thought something else awful had happened.”

Lu smiled tightly.  “Yeah, I get that a lot.  Do you mind if I come in?  I have a couple of questions I’d like to ask you.”

“About Starla?”  Lu nodded and Miss Miller stepped aside.  “Of course.  Come in, come in.”

She led Lu back into her living room, back to her sofa, and offered her a drink.  This time Lu did accept a glass of iced tea.  She thought maybe this would make them both more relaxed.  It was different without Josh here, leading things.  Now it was Lu’s turn to ask all of the right questions.  The sudden concern that she might ask the wrong thing or say the wrong thing crawled up Lu’s spine and perched on her shoulder like a gargoyle.  If she screwed this up for Josh…

Miss Miller came into the living room carrying two glasses of iced tea and she handed one to Lu before sitting down on the loveseat.

“Have you found anything out about who might have killed Starla?” Miss Miller asked, hopeful.

“The investigation is ongoing,” Lu said, watching Miss Miller’s face fall.  She quickly added, “But Detective Carpenter has been working diligently on the case, interviewing people.  It’s really only a matter of time.”

Miss Miller nodded and Lu inwardly cringed.  The last thing she needed to be doing was giving this woman any kind of false hope.  What the hell possessed her to do this again?  Lu took a big gulp of her tea before proceeding.

###

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Upstairs, Downstairs

Detective Josh Carpenter sat across the table from Calvin and Audrey Connolly and the three of them tried to look inconspicuous.  The only time that Josh could interview the couple together was during their lunch breaks.  Audrey Connolly, of course, worked at the coroner’s office.  Calvin Connolly was a high school math teacher and since the beginning of a new school year was looming, he was busy prepping.  Josh had considered interviewing them separately, but decided to interview them as a couple first.  He wanted to gauge how they interacted during questioning knowing what he knew.  So, the meeting at the McDonald’s during the lunch rush on Monday was the best way to go.  Well, not the best, but the option Josh decided was best out of the limited, not-so-great options.  Thankfully, most of the folks in Munsterville that bothered to get out of their cars to come inside the fast food joint were just grabbing their lunch to-go.

“I did have a date with Starla,” Calvin Connolly said and practically flinched at the sound of the woman’s name coming out of his mouth.  Next to him, Audrey Connolly sat stone-faced, a good gap of physical distance between them in the booth.  “’For the night she was…was murdered.”  He added quickly, emphatically, “But I cancelled it.  Days before.  I cancelled it.”

“Why did you cancel it?” Josh asked, making a note in his notebook.  He’d already known that Calvin Connolly was the cancelled date thanks to Merry Miller’s code key.  It was the why that currently eluded him.  Starla James made no note of that.

“Because…” Mr. Connolly sighed heavily, “because Audrey found out about it.”

“And how long had you been seeing Miss James?” Josh asked, watching the husband squirm and the wife imitate a statue.

“Only a few months,” he said.  “We’d only had sex a couple of times.  Honest.”

“I see,” Josh said, making a note of the duration of the affair, but not of the number of times Mr. Connolly claimed to have had sex with the victim.  That was clearly meant for his wife to hear.  “And when did Mrs. Connolly find out about the affair?”

Now, Audrey Connolly did move, a slight flinch at her name and the word “affair” in the same sentence.

“Last week.  Monday or Tuesday, I think.  Days before I was supposed to see Starla.  She found a text from her on my phone and confronted me.  I cancelled my date with Starla right then.,” Mr. Connolly said, sounding sullen and remorseful.  Josh wondered if it was because he’d hurt his wife by having an affair or because she found out.  “That’s why we were out of town this past weekend.  We were trying to work on our marriage.”

Mrs. Connolly made a little noise as if to suggest that the weekend hadn’t been all that successful.

“And when did you leave for this weekend retreat of yours?” Josh asked.

“Friday evening,” Mr. Connolly said hurriedly.  He looked at his wife for confirmation of that.  “Right?  Right after you got off of work.  You had to work late so we left late.  Right?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Connolly said, sounding reluctant to speak at all.  “We left Friday after I got off of work.  It was around seven-thirty.”

“And you work at the coroner’s office, correct?” Josh asked.

“I work for the coroner’s administration,” Audrey Connolly corrected.  “Yes.  I work upstairs.  I’m their public relations consultant.”

“I see,” Josh said and he made a show of flipping through his notebook as though he were looking for a piece of information that wasn’t already cued up in his head.  “So, you would have been at work when Starla James was discovered and brought in for examination and autopsy.”

Audrey Connolly shifted her weight in the booth a little.

“Yes.  Like I said.  I work upstairs.”

“Why were you working overtime that day?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Mrs. Connolly snapped.

Josh stared at her hard.  She managed to stare back with equal intensity for a few seconds before she shifted in her seat again, nervous.  That might work on her husband, but Josh was immune to it.  Except from his own husband.

“Mrs. Connolly, I’m investigating a homicide,” Josh said, business-like and professional with just a touch of no-nonsense.  “I would appreciate your cooperation in answering my questions.  Why were you working overtime that day?”

Mrs. Connolly glanced at her husband.  “I had to stay late due to a late-breaking development that needed to be addressed.”

Josh nodded at her.  “From my understanding, it was due to the results of Miss James’s autopsy.”

Mr. Connolly looked at his wife with wide eyes.  She never took her eyes from Josh, her look hardening.

###

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The Mistress’s Men

Lu really wanted to spend her entire shift tagging along with Josh, watching him be a detective, getting elbowed in the ribs for not keeping her word about not asking any questions or saying anything sarcastic, but unfortunately, she did have work to do.

A whole pile of it was waiting on her desk.

“You work weekends now?” Melanie asked as she strolled into the office.

The death investigator’s office was situated down the hall from the autopsy room.  It had two desks, two phones, several filing cabinets, a couple of chairs, a police scanner, a coffee pot, and a television.  The official break room was on the second floor, but most everyone just hung out in the death investigator’s office because it was closer.

Melanie poured herself a cup of coffee.

“Jerome is off and someone had to cover,” Lu said, sitting down at her desk, looking at the stack of files in the center of it not unlike she might look at pile of dog shit on her lawn.  And Lu didn’t own a dog.  She gestured at them, careful not to touch them.  “Is this my pain?”

“Yep,” Melanie said, reading her look.  “Those are the files that upstairs,” Melanie looked up, “wants reviewed.  Dr. Pascal was ranting about it last night.  I thought his head was going to pop off.”

“He’s got about as much skin in this audit as I do.”

“Neither one of you have anything to worry about,” Melanie said, giving Lu a pat on the shoulder.  “You two are the best at your jobs.  Upstairs is crazy to think otherwise.”

Melanie sat down at the other desk, turning on the TV, but keeping the volume low.

Lu wanted to believe that Melanie was right, but just the fact that she was working for Jerome on a weekend because the city was too cheap to hire as many death investigators as they needed didn’t boost her confidence any.  Lu knew all too well that being good at your job didn’t meant that you weren’t expendable.

With a heavy sigh, Lu pulled the first file from the top of the pile and opened it up, looking for a mistake she knew that she hadn’t made.

###

Simon Sidney lived in a large house on the lakefront, only a few miles down the road from End Of, on Lake Shore Drive.  The house was practically a wall of windows on the side that faced the lake, which was no doubt picturesque most of the time, if you didn’t think about how many cars were probably at the bottom of Lake Munster.

Josh sat on the white couch in the white living room wondering why so many people with money insisted on white living rooms.

Simon Sidney was a handsome man in his sixties, his hair long gone silver, his age starting to show in his golfer’s physique.  His wife, Carlotta, was easily twenty years younger than he was and held up to a much different standard.  Her hair was bleached an unnatural blonde and it was clear by the lack of movement in her forehead that she’d had a round or twelve of Botox.  Her lips looked overly filled and her clothes were a size too small.

They sat on the couch opposite Josh, a low glass coffee table between the detective and the couple.  Simon Sidney sat on the couch, looking relaxed in his dress shirt and slacks.  Carlotta Sidney was perched next to her husband, right on the edge of the sofa.  Josh didn’t think she could relax in the dress she was wearing.

“Mr. Sidney,” Josh began, sparing a glance at his wife, “I need to know about your relationship with Starla James.”

“She was my mistress,” Simon Sidney said so bluntly that if the words had been an anvil, a cartoon coyote would have been flattened instantly in a comical way.

“One of your mistresses,” his wife patiently corrected and a second anvil dropped on that poor coyote’s head.

Josh nodded and quickly jotted down the unnecessary information into his notebook to hide his wide-eyed shock from the couple.

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