The Scent of Murder--A Mystery Read online

  Another question that wasn’t. Jazz wished she hadn’t tossed her coffee. “She was supine,” she said so he could make note of it. “On her back.”

  “I know what supine means.”

  “Of course you do.” She cleared her throat. “Her head was thrown back and at a funny angle. That’s how I was able to see the ligature marks on her neck. Her skin was paler than it should have been. I thought—” Shrugging made her look helpless, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I don’t know what I thought. Even for a dead person, her skin color looked unnatural. Too white. Too chalky. Until I saw that it was makeup.”

  Nick paused, his pen poised over his notebook.

  “The paleness. She looked pale because of makeup,” Jazz said because she knew he was waiting for clarification. “Lots and lots of white makeup. It was on her face and on her arms and legs, too. Between that and her black clothing—”

  “Black clothing. White makeup. Sounds freaky.”

  “Sounds like the goth kids back in high school. Her nails are painted black. Her eyes are ringed with black shadow and liner and she’s got on enough mascara to paint a house. Her nose and her left eyebrow and her chin are pierced.” Jazz realized that somehow she’d gone from speaking about the victim in the past tense to the present. It should have been the other way around.

  “She’s got tattoos on both arms,” she added, though Nick would see as much for himself in a bit. “A skeleton, a rose, a vampire or some such. She’s wearing a black skirt. Tight and short. And high black boots with tall heels, one of them is cracked off and lying twelve inches or so from the body. Black cami, no coat. Silver rings. Maybe seven or eight of them. All the typical stuff, skulls and fake rubies and spiders. And a necklace, a silver cross. It’s big and cheap.”

  “Think that was what was used to strangle her?”

  She shook her head. “If it was pulled hard enough to cause the bruising on her neck, the chain would have broken for sure. Besides, the marks on her neck are wider than the chain. Oh, and there’s a backpack in the room. It might be hers. It isn’t dusty, so it hasn’t been there long. And it’s black.”

  He tapped the notebook with the tip of his pen. “You’re good with details.”

  “It’s part of the training. You know that.”

  “I do know that. What I don’t know—”

  “Jazz! Jazz! Over here.” Somewhere beyond the flashing lights, she heard her name called and looked into the sea of staring faces in time to see Greg Johnson jump up and down and wave his arms. “I couldn’t get close. I had to park down the street. They won’t let me through.”

  “Dog’s owner?” Sometime while she was watching Greg, Nick had stepped up beside her. When she shivered, she told herself it had nothing to do with him. It was late. She was cold. She’d had a shock. “I guess I’d better go over there and get him or we’ll stand here all night with the dog.”

  Greg Johnson was a retired high school math teacher. He was short, compact, and still limber enough to easily slip under the yellow crime scene tape when Nick lifted it to allow him into the restricted area.

  “Good boy, Luther.” Greg praised the dog and Jazz didn’t take it personally. It was important to reinforce Luther’s training. Greg scratched Luther’s ears and, when she offered it, he took the leash out of her hands.

  “You okay?” he asked when he was done with the dog, and before she could answer, he pulled her into a brief, fierce hug.

  “I’m good,” she assured him and reminded herself. “Luther did great.”

  “We’ll need your contact information.” Nick poked his notebook between Greg and Jazz, and Greg wrote down what was needed. “You can take your dog home.”

  “We’ll talk.” Greg put a reassuring hand on Jazz’s shoulder, then, with Luther trotting beside him, he disappeared into the crowd.

  “Who knew you were going to be here tonight?”

  Jazz had been watching Greg and Luther and she flinched at the sound of Nick’s voice. “Who knew—”

  “Did anyone know you’d be here tonight with the dog?”

  “You mean did somebody put a body here purposely so we could find it?” Maybe not the dumbest question she’d ever heard, but mighty close. There was no use pointing that out to Nick. He was just doing his job.

  She told herself not to forget it, and not to let the past cloud her attitude or her answers.

  “I told Sarah I was training a dog tonight.”

  His sigh was barely perceptible. “Of course.”

  “It’s called sharing. It’s one of the things you do with best friends.” She hadn’t meant to snap, but it had been a long evening.

  Maybe Nick knew it, too, because he backed off. “Did you tell Sarah where you were bringing the dog?”

  “What, so she could stop by and drop off a body?” Sarcasm was lost on him, so there was no use even trying. Jazz gave in with as much grace as possible. It was never easy for her. “No. I told Sarah I was doing training in the neighborhood tonight. That’s all. And I wouldn’t have even bothered except she and some guy named Rob who she’s dating were going to a Cavs game with some other guy they want me to meet. They said I should join them for a drink after the game.” She bit her lip. Sharing with a friend was one thing. Sharing with Nick was another altogether.

  Since she couldn’t give herself a good, swift kick, she said, “I didn’t tell her where we were training.”

  “Did you tell her you’d meet them later for a drink?”

  “No.” Jazz had always been self-conscious about her five-feet-two, and Nick towered over her. She never let that stop her from lifting her chin and looking him in the eye, and now was no exception. “I figured I’d finish with the training and go home and grab a beer. I’m not interested in meeting Sarah’s friend.”

  “How about that Greg guy?”

  “I already know Greg. We’re in training group together.”

  “Did you ever meet him for a drink?”

  She didn’t even bother to censor the curse that fell from her lips. “He has grandchildren, Nick. And a wife he adores. And believe me, I’m not interested. And it’s none of your business, anyway.”

  “Just trying to get a clear picture of the situation.”

  “The situation is you’ve got a body to deal with.” Back in the day, she knew Nick would have quirked an eyebrow and said something about dealing with her body, and though she hoped he had better sense now than he had then, she couldn’t be sure. She had to get them both back on track. “No, I didn’t tell Sarah where I’d be training tonight.”

  “Did you mention it to anyone else?”

  “She didn’t know the location, but I told my mom I was taking a dog out.”

  It must have been a trick of the light, but she could have sworn Nick looked a little uncomfortable. He’d never give it away with a facial expression. She knew better than that. She could read his discomfort in the way he suddenly held his hands. A little loose, a little below his waist. Like he was getting ready to juggle what he was sure was going to be a wave of emotion.

  An ambulance pulled up, its lights adding to the carnival atmosphere, and he waited until it stopped, two paramedics got out, and he waved them into the building. “I’m sorry,” he said once they were inside. “About your dad.”

  She knew it was bound to come to this. That explained the tightness that stretched her back muscles, the sensation of a fist slamming into her stomach. “You saw it—”

  “On TV, online, in the newspaper. When a fire captain is killed fighting a fire, it’s pretty big news. I’m sorry. Your mom must be—”

  “She’s devastated, but she’s dealing.”

  “And you?”

  Jazz had already reached down to pat Luther’s head when she remembered the dog was gone. Force of habit. People stumbled over their words. They blundered when it came to their feelings. Dogs always knew what to do. She could always count on a dog.

  People, not so much.

  She stuffed her hand
s in her pockets. “Speaking of my mom, I’d like to get my training bait out of the building.”

  Some other time, some other place, some other cop, she would have laughed when his top lip curled. “Should I even ask?”

  “It’s just a tooth. I put it up on the third floor this afternoon.”

  “And this afternoon there was no body on the first floor?”

  “I can’t say. This afternoon I didn’t go into the room where Luther found the body. But the guys working on the building were still here. Maybe six or seven of them. They would have seen something if there was something to see.”

  “Maybe.”

  She turned toward the building. “Can I—”

  “Where’s Manny?”

  In the image that flitted through her mind when she thought of Manny, he was always smiling in a goofy, golden-retriever way.

  “Lymphoma,” she said. “He died the same week my dad did. Can I go inside and get my bait?”

  “Sure.” He stepped up beside her. “But I’m coming with you.”

  As much as she wanted to, she knew there was no use arguing with him. He would come anyway, and she would waste what little energy she had left.

  Side by side, they entered the building.

  The cops who’d arrived first had called for an evidence team, and the three officers who’d responded—two women and a man—had brought portable lights and a generator with them. The apartment at the end of the hallway radiated unearthly light.

  Like there was an angel in there.

  Jazz was not the fanciful type. She shook away the thought and flicked on her flashlight, heading for the stairs. “Be careful,” she warned Nick. “Some of the risers are a little rickety.”

  Together, they navigated around broken ceramic tile, bits and pieces of fallen plaster, and the carcasses of three rats and got up to the third floor.

  “I put the tooth behind a loose wallboard,” she told Nick, and she retrieved the container it was in, put a lid on it, and tucked it in her pocket, then shined her light on Nick where he stood in the doorway.

  “I should have come to the funeral,” he said.

  “I didn’t have a funeral for Manny.”

  “I mean your dad’s funeral. I should have come to your dad’s funeral.”

  “It probably wasn’t a good idea.”

  “Then I did the right thing.”

  She wasn’t sure she’d go that far.

  The room had once been a living room, but it wasn’t big, and Nick, with all his height and the way he stood, hands on hips, filled the doorframe. It was appropriate, somehow, for the two of them to finally talk here in a place that was falling apart.

  She wasn’t big on metaphor, but this one was pretty hard to miss.

  Jazz shifted from foot to foot. “I’m sure you have a lot of work to do.”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t move from the doorway. “I need to talk to the officers downstairs and do a sketch of the crime scene and write a report.”

  “Looks like you won’t get dinner.”

  “Probably not. You going home to have that beer?”

  “Yeah, I think I will.”

  “If you want someone to drive you home—”

  She hoped to God he wouldn’t volunteer, that he’d have the sense to send one of the uniformed officers, but she wasn’t going to take that chance. “I’ll walk.”

  When she stepped forward, he stepped back. A minute later, they got back to what was left of the lobby just as Officer Franklin—a big guy with broad shoulders and a deep voice—came out of the back apartment carrying a small black purse with silver skeleton heads embroidered on it.

  “I found this in the backpack,” he said. “There’s identification inside.”

  Nick reached into his pocket for a pair of latex gloves, slipped them on, and accepted the purse from the officer. He opened it and pulled out a driver’s license, reading as he did, “Victim’s name is—”

  “Florentine Allen.”

  Nick was never surprised. It wasn’t in his personality and it sure wasn’t in his job description. When he looked from the license to Jazz, he snapped his jaw shut, and she had to force down the spurt of satisfaction at one-upping him that nearly made her smile.

  “You didn’t tell me—”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “So what you’re saying is—”

  “That her name is Florie Allen. Yeah. I knew her.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  If there was a poster child for art teachers, Sarah Carrington would fit the bill. Curly blond hair (this week with a hot pink streak) that was always in her eyes. Ankle-brushing skirts bought from a Web site that supported women textile workers in underdeveloped countries. Bangle bracelets. Earrings that swept her shoulders. She was middle-sized, closing in on middle-aged, the divorced mother of two kids who, thanks to her example, were the only gluten-free vegans at their elementary school.

  Sarah was the total package—incredibly talented, devoted to her students, loyal to a fault.

  What she wasn’t—ever—was early to school on a Monday morning.

  Automatically, Jazz checked the time on the computer on her desk outside Sister Eileen Flannery’s office.

  “It’s seven fifteen.”

  Sarah dropped her tote bag on one of the chairs in front of Jazz’s desk, flopped into the other, and popped off the lid of her Starbucks cup.

  “You should have let me know what was going on Saturday. You should have called me.”

  “You were at the basketball game on Saturday.”

  “Come on, Jazz, this is more important than basketball.”

  “I didn’t want to bother you.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have minded. Rob turned out to be a loser. And it doesn’t matter, anyway, because you’re trying to change the subject. If not Saturday, you could have called yesterday.”

  “Yesterday I was…” There were some things Jazz couldn’t explain, even to her best friend. One of them was how she’d spent most of that Sunday either picturing how she’d found Florie or dissecting (and second-guessing) every word she and Nick had exchanged.

  “My mother stopped by.” It was the way she’d spent the time in between the picturing and the dissecting and the second-guessing, and she knew Sarah would understand.

  “Of course she did. I would have stopped by, too. If you had bothered to let me know what was going on. You must have been terrified.”

  “I was…” Because she didn’t know what she was, she let the words fade and float to the high ceilings in the building that was once a Russian Orthodox seminary and now housed St. Catherine’s Preparatory Academy. How could she explain that all she’d felt when she found Florie—all she felt now—was a deep sense of sadness? If there was anything the last year had proved to her, it was that the universe had a way of stretching her thin, of testing her and then laughing at her when she fell short of the mark. Nick. Her dad. Manny.

  And now Florie’s murder.

  There was only one way to deal, and it wasn’t with the tears and angst of her father’s side of the family. It was her mother’s Polish side that won out, and thanks to the genes she shared with those tough Eastern European ancestors who’d faced war and famine, prejudice and hardship, there was only one thing she could possibly say.

  “I’m fine,” she told Sarah.

  “Well I’m not. It was Florie Allen.”

  “Yes.” As she did every day, Jazz had brought her lunch to school. She tucked the bag containing a salad and an apple into the bottom drawer of her desk even though she knew she wouldn’t have the heart to eat it. “I found her.”

  “I know.” Sarah couldn’t sit still. She slapped her knees, got up, sat back down. “It was in the paper, Jazz. It was on the news.”

  The news was something Jazz had avoided all weekend. “Did they mention St. Catherine’s?”

  Sarah shook her head. “Not that I heard. But that’s not surprising. Florie grad
uated … was it two or three years ago?”

  Jazz had been wondering the same thing, but in between her mother arriving in a flurry of hugs, and her mother fussing, and her mother taking over Jazz’s kitchen so she could make a pot of chicken soup, she hadn’t exactly had much of a chance to think about it. She logged onto her computer and accessed school records restricted to everyone but the principal—Sister Eileen—and Jazz, her administrative assistant.

  She keyed in Florentine Allen’s name.

  “Two years,” she told Sarah, reading the information from the screen. “Well, it will be two years in June. It gets to the point where one year fades into another and it’s hard to remember.” She scanned the rest of Florie’s record. “She was a good student.”

  “And talented.” Maybe it was because she’d come to school early so she could corner Jazz and pump her for information that Sarah hadn’t bothered with lipstick that morning. Her lips were as pale as her skin, and when her bottom lip trembled, her chin did, too. “I always liked Florie.”

  “The way I remember it…” Jazz tapped a pencil against the desktop. “Florie was a popular student. Wasn’t she yearbook photography editor?”

  “She had a good eye for design.”

  “And she got a college scholarship, right?”

  Sarah’s golden brows dropped over her eyes. “The North Coast School of Photography and Design. Pretty prestigious place. She was a scholarship girl here, too, right?”

  Sarah knew better than to ask, and Jazz knew better than to answer. In the fifteen years since it had opened, St. Catherine’s, just down the block from Jazz’s Tremont home, had earned a reputation as one of the city’s most prestigious college preparatory schools. The school encompassed grades seven through twelve, and a good many of its students came from families who could afford the sky-high tuition that paid for the latest technology, the best teachers, and an academic reputation that was second to none.

  But some of them, girls who passed the entrance exam but showed financial need, were given a full ride. Sister Eileen, who had been the guiding force behind the school since day one, believed there was nothing to be gained from creating an in-school class system and had established a strict rule—no one knew who paid tuition and who didn’t.