Love Kills Read online

  A tech from the PPD’s Forensic Services Unit, a portly middle-aged Latino, was taking photos of it. Another FSU tech, a young woman with a short wedge hairstyle, was dusting for fingerprints along the steel rail that led down the pool steps. Both techs wore blue jeans and black polo shirts with “Forensic Services” across the back in gold and an embroidered badge on the breast.

  Uniformed officers searched the shrubbery around the pool. A young male officer was dragging a long-handled net along the pool’s bottom, focused on snaring something.

  Vining saw what looked like a champagne glass on the bottom of the pool. She told the male FSU tech about the burnt material in the fireplace that needed to be photographed, removed, and examined.

  An eight-foot waterfall of fake boulders was on one end of the pool. It was not running. Near it, Vining saw the victim’s lower body. She had on just one bone-colored high-heeled sandal.

  A coroner investigator was kneeling on the ground beside her. His back was to Vining, but she recognized Hank by his small stature and white hair. He had to be nearly sixty, and had been with the county coroner’s office forever.

  Two uniformed officers, one male, one female, were standing near the pool talking. Vining knew them by sight, but didn’t know their names. They seemed to be gossiping and it annoyed her. The dead woman deserved respect, even if it turned out that she’d gotten drunk alone and had toppled into the pool in her mansion. Vining had to quell her own prejudices about the wealthy woman’s demise. She was not alone among the PPD in having a chip on her shoulder about Pasadena’s affluent denizens. The city had poor and middle-class residents, but it was also home to many rich people. Most were supportive of the police but some had attitudes about cops that would rival any gangbanger’s.

  Kissick stood at the far end of the pool, taking notes on his spiral pad as he interviewed a young Latina. She was statuesque, slender yet shapely in painted-on jeans. High-heeled over-the-knee boots made her nearly as tall as six-foot Kissick. Her cropped denim jacket with fringe along the arms looked like the expensive Juicy Couture model that Emily coveted and that Vining had forbidden the overindulgent Kaitlyn from buying for her stepdaughter.

  Vining guessed that the young woman was the dead woman’s assistant, who’d found the body. The way she was standing, or rather posing—her stance wide, raking her fingers through a mane of auburn-highlighted dark hair that tumbled nearly to her waist, coquettishly flicking her head—telegraphed to Vining that she approached life using sex appeal and flirtation. Vining read nervous agitation in her coltish body language, understandable since she was talking to a detective about her dead boss, but she also picked up something sad and desperate.

  Kissick reached to pat the woman’s jacket pocket and then started to dig his fingers inside. Vining couldn’t hear what he’d said but guessed that he’d used the worn technique that citizens usually fell for—asking if he could search her and going ahead before she had time to respond. It worked most of the time. Citizens weren’t well-versed in their civil rights, and were often intimidated by cops.

  Not this gal. She pushed away Kissick’s hand, took a backward step, and said, “You can’t do that. Give me my phone back.”

  Kissick held her iPhone. “Have a seat over there.”

  “That’s an illegal search, you…” She turned in disgust and headed toward a patio table and chairs. As she passed Vining, she gave her an up-and-down look. She sashayed to the corner, pulled out a chair, and flopped onto it. Crossing her long legs, she raked her voluptuous hair over one shoulder, grabbed a handful, and began looking for split ends.

  Vining couldn’t help but notice her elaborately manicured long nails. They were polished in a dark grape color with glittery gold and silver vertical stripes.

  Kissick smiled warmly as he approached Vining, who was still carrying the Traditional Home magazine. “That’s Cheyenne Leon, who found the victim. Self-described personal assistant/actress/model/writer. One of those multi-hyphenated people.”

  “She’s a charmer.” Vining glanced at Cheyenne, who had turned her attention from her split ends to look somberly at her former employer. “Beneath the attitude, she’s scared.”

  “She’s only worked for Catherine Engleford for about two months.”

  “Worked for who?” Vining gaped at Kissick.

  “Catherine Engleford. The dead woman.”

  Her mouth still hanging open, Vining searched Kissick’s face, and then frowned at the corpse by the pool. She rushed to look at the body.

  Hank, the coroner’s investigator, greeted her and she muttered something in response through the fingers she’d pressed against her mouth.

  Kissick came up beside her. “Nan, what’s going on?”

  She looked at him. Rubbing her forehead, she walked away from everyone else there.

  He knew she didn’t mean to exclude him and he followed.

  She blew out air and for some reason focused on the woman’s one bare foot. “That’s Tink Engleford. She’s my mother’s best friend.”

  FIVE

  She was a divorced mom with her own small business, struggling along, when she married into the Englefords, who own half of Pasadena.” Vining now had a hard time looking at the body. “I knew she lived off San Rafael, but I didn’t know where.”

  She felt calm yet hazy. She’d felt this way before upon receiving terrible news. It would take about ten minutes for the reality to hit her.

  Kissick raised his arm as if to put it around her shoulders.

  Before he was able to follow through, she snapped, “I’m okay.”

  He put his hand in his pants pocket.

  The two uniformed officers nearby found the huddle between Vining and Kissick interesting and shot looks their way. The detectives took pains to keep their romance a secret at the PPD. While there were a few marriages between officers at the department, couples didn’t work together, and absolutely weren’t detectives on the same cases.

  At a look from Kissick, the officers broke up and started walking toward the house.

  Kissick called out to the female officer, a beefy brunette with eyebrows that had been overly plucked into thin arches. “Campbell. I need you to run a background check on Cheyenne Leon sitting over there. Cheyenne, give her your driver’s license.”

  Cheyenne sighed as she stood. “It’s in my purse in the house.”

  Officer Campbell tried to take Cheyenne’s arm but she jerked away and strode unassisted toward the house with Campbell trailing her.

  “Make sure she doesn’t touch anything,” Kissick shouted after them. He shouldn’t have had to remind Campbell. “Including her purse.”

  Vining was looking toward Tink and shaking her head. She didn’t realize that she had tightly rolled the magazine and was clutching it to her chest between both hands.

  Kissick asked, “Sure you’re okay?”

  “Just thinking about how I’m going to tell my mom.” Her voice cracked. She turned to face the fence and brush away a tear.

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “I should tell her. In person.”

  “I know you can, sweetheart,” he said in a near whisper. “But—”

  “Jim, please.” If they’d been alone, she’d have melted against him, happily supported by his strong arms. But they were not alone.

  “I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine. I can do this job. If people think I can’t, then I’m going to have to do something else.” She paused as she considered that prospect. “And I have no clue what that might be.” She’d stumbled into law enforcement. Now it was the only thing she wanted to do.

  “Sarge will take me off this case,” she said. “It’s too close to home.”

  “We’ll let Sergeant Early make that decision. She’s pulled everyone to work the Crown City nightclub shooting, which is where we’ll be after we button this up, which might be quickly. Let’s do what we need to do.”

  Well-trained at compartmentalizing her emotions, she took a coup
le of deep breaths.

  Kissick took out his spiral pad and clicked open a pen. “How did your mother know the deceased?” His tone was all business, and she was grateful.

  “Since high school. They were Ramona Girls.”

  “Ramona Girls?” Kissick took notes.

  “Ramona Convent School in Alhambra. It’s an all-girls Catholic school. My mother had three great friends from those days: Vicki, Mary Alice, and Tink. They still stay in touch. Meet for lunch or dinner a couple of times a year. When Tink was married to her first husband and her son was in school, she started a catering business out of her kitchen. It grew and she opened a storefront place in Pasadena. She got divorced. I understand it was bitter. She supported herself and her son. She catered a wedding at the Annandale clubhouse. Stan Engleford was a guest. He was one of Pasadena’s most eligible bachelors. Divorced with grown kids and grandkids. They got married about five years ago. It must be just about a year since he dropped dead on the seventh green at Annandale. Heart attack. He was golfing with his friend John La Barbera. Tink was having drinks with John’s wife, Lynn Caffrey Gabriel, on the terrace of their house above the green. Tink saw Stan collapse.

  “Just two years before, Lynn and John hosted a reception on that same terrace after the funeral of Tink’s son. The reception for Stan was held at the Valley Hunt Club. His adult kids insisted or something.” She frowned, wondering why these minor details were coming back to her.

  “Tink’s son died two years before her husband?”

  “Yep. Derek was her only child. He was twenty-three. Was on his motorcycle turning left from Glenarm onto the Pasadena Freeway. A drunk driver blew through the red light at the end of the freeway and broadsided him. Propelled fifty feet onto Arroyo Parkway. Killed instantly.”

  Kissick stared at her for a second, and then said, “I remember that accident. I didn’t know you knew that family.”

  “We weren’t together then.” Vining looked at Hank as he worked on the body. “Tink had a terrible battle with Stan’s adult children over the estate. It was ugly. His kids did fine, believe me, but they didn’t want Tink to get anything. The kids claimed she was a gold digger, but it was a true love story. She came away with most of it.

  “I have to hand it to my mother. She helped Tink get through both of those times. Especially after Stan’s death when Tink was alone. Derek hadn’t had kids. Tink was an only child. Her father is long dead, and her mother has Alzheimer’s. My mom would come over here and make sure Tink got out of bed and brushed her hair and put on makeup.”

  Vining let out a sad laugh. “Even while my mother was being a true friend, she’d snipe about how much better she’d look if she had Tink’s money to spend on dermatologists, plastic surgeons, and Pilates. Sometimes, the two of them acted like they’d never left high school. My mother…”

  Her voice trailed off after she’d uttered those two simple and profound words. She gave a small shake of her head, as if there was much more than words could express. “The queen of spats and grudges. She’d talk about how Tink would, in her words, ‘Lord her wealth over Vicki, Mary Alice, and me.’ Granted, my mother tends to take things personally. She’d talk about Tink ordering expensive bottles of wine at dinner when the friends’ tradition was to split the tab. Tink would say, ‘I’ll pay for the wine. I can’t drink that cheap stuff. It gives me a headache.’

  “Tink wasn’t my favorite of my mom’s friends. She could be shallow. Too concerned with money and labels. If she bought a new watch, it came with a pedigree, which she would describe to you. I remember a snide comment Tink made when I graduated from the police academy. It was something like, ‘Now you’ll never get a man, Nan.’ My mother hadn’t been on board with my career choice either, but boy did she land on Tink.”

  “I knew you got that toughness from someplace.”

  “For all Patsy’s flakiness, she’s tougher than she seems. Still, Tink was a good friend to my mother. She got her a nice used car for next to nothing through the Engleford family’s Mercedes dealership. Tink was generous with her friends. She treated the girls to spa days at Ojai and to a retreat at Berryhill in Malibu Canyon.” Vining stared off.

  “Where’d you go, partner?” Kissick asked.

  “Just thinking about my mother and her friends. I guess that’s the nature of girlfriends. Complicated.”

  Kissick made notes. “Is Berryhill that place run by that self-help maven?”

  “Yep. My mom said that Tink had bought into the whole Berryhill shtick. My mom saw it as another way for Tink to throw away money, but I think Tink was looking for ways to deal with her grief.”

  “How was Tink’s mental state lately?”

  Vining shrugged. “I don’t know. My mother and the other Ramona Girls might have insight into that. Tink knew a lot of people, but I don’t know who else she was close to. My mom and Tink, both being single, had drawn closer recently, but my mother complained that Tink barely had time for her. Tink traveled in different circles.”

  Vining took a deep breath and then abruptly walked to where Hank was working on the body. Vining looked at Tink. She’d seen enough corpses to know that Tink had been dead awhile. She was bloated and rigid. She’d been floating facedown in the water, and her face and the front of her body were discolored.

  She recalled the words of the now-retired lieutenant who was her first mentor: Think of them as just dolls. That had never worked for her. She could never separate herself from the knowledge that the victims are human, perhaps even most profoundly in their last scenes on earth. What was more human than suicide and murder? It was her job to tease the last threads of their stories from their broken bodies, to bring the bad guys to justice, and to give the victims’ loved ones a modicum of comfort from knowing the facts. Not “closure.” She knew from personal experience that closure was feel-good, talk-show drivel mouthed by people who didn’t want to face the reality that one’s life could be permanently damaged by a single event. That one never gets over it, but learns to live the rest of one’s life with it, like a shadowy elephant in the room. Still, there was some comfort in being able to put a final period on a tragic story.

  Hank had unbuttoned Tink’s jacket, revealing a blush-pink, lace-trimmed camisole with her bra beneath it. With sublime gentleness, he pulled the camisole from her skirt waistband. “I couldn’t cut open these beautiful clothes.”

  Vining imagined Tink floating in the pool all night in her expensive knit suit beneath the pounding rain. Her earlier feelings of oneness, of being present in the world, had evaporated and were replaced with more familiar emotions: sadness and anger about a vibrant life cut short and a complex soul departed from this world.

  Hank had taken a thermometer with a spiked end from his equipment bag. Instead of swinging his arm and stabbing it into her liver, like Vining had often seen done, he applied just enough pressure until it pierced her skin and went beneath the surface.

  Still, Vining did something she hadn’t done for years at these times. She flinched.

  After a bit, Hank rolled back onto his heels. “I’d say she’s been dead about twenty to twenty-four hours.”

  “It’s ten in the morning now.” Kissick looked at his watch. “So she died yesterday between ten in the morning and two in the afternoon. Any signs of foul play, Hank?”

  “I don’t see any defensive wounds. No bruising on her chest or neck as if she’d been held down. She might have become dizzy, maybe from drinking, or maybe she had a stroke or a heart attack, and fell in. Suicide seems unlikely. Pills are more typical for a woman like her. Found in bed in a pretty nightgown. Suicide note. Suicide by drowning like this without anything to weigh her down…That’s rough. The autopsy and the toxicology tests will tell us the most in this case.”

  Vining looked at Tink’s pearl earrings surrounded by small diamonds. She noticed something else. “Why is her eye makeup so smeared?”

  “Wouldn’t being in the water make it bleed?” Kissick asked.

  “No
t like that. Those are raccoon eyes, as if she was rubbing them. She could have been crying.”

  A uniformed officer who had been searching the grounds came over. He had brush-cut hair and his name tag said J. Garcia. He handed Kissick one of two small manila evidence envelopes he was holding. “We found her BlackBerry, Detective. It was in those bushes.”

  “Why was it in the bushes?” Vining asked.

  “Maybe she got pissed off and threw it.” With his gloved hand, Kissick took out the phone and pressed the power button. “Battery’s probably dead.” He dropped it back inside the envelope and handed it to Garcia. “See if you can find a charger and plug it in.”

  “Detective, we also found this in the pool catch basket.” Garcia held out the second small evidence bag. “It’s a fake fingernail.”

  Kissick opened the envelope and peered at the acrylic nail polished in a French manicure style with a white tip and pinky beige base.

  He handed the bag to Vining, who said, “Ragged edge, like it was torn off. Not unusual. Sometimes they get caught on stuff, but why was it in the pool?”

  Hank picked up Tink’s right hand, which was encased in a plastic bag. “I noticed one of her acrylic nails was missing.”

  Vining looked at a large square-cut diamond ring on that finger. Tink had had a new ring made using the stone from her engagement ring.

  Hank tugged on Tink’s other nails. “Here’s another one that’s nearly torn off. Maybe she grappled for the side of the pool.”

  “Her eye makeup is smeared and her fingernails are torn.” Vining planted a hand on one hip. “Maybe she struggled to get out of the pool and was too incapacitated to make it, or she could have been fighting for her life with someone who was holding her down. We can’t rule out murder.”