Deadly Production (Mapleton Mystery Book 4) (19 page)

His heart thumping faster than usual, Gordon photographed the purse, first the way they’d found it, then took pictures of the insides before removing items, one at a time, and photographing them as well. On top was a floral-print pouch which contained nothing unusual. Lipstick, a mirrored compact, a small hairbrush. A sealed tiny container of mouthwash, probably from a hotel. A small tube of hand lotion. Elastic bands and a plastic clip—hair accessories. A travel-sized packet of tissues. Three pens. One from the Bed and Breakfast, another from a major hotel chain, and one with the Vista Ventures logo on it.

Nothing looked unusual, but he bagged everything, just in case. Could someone have tampered with the hand lotion, added a drug or poison that would have been absorbed through her skin?

Digging deeper, he found a red-and-white striped scarf. A pair of black leather gloves. A brass keychain with
MS
in bright red, holding a variety of keys. A separate key to her room at the Bed and Breakfast. Sunglasses in a black leather case. A small white envelope containing a handful of receipts.

He stopped to examine the receipts more closely. Airport restaurants, cab rides, and a handwritten sheet labeled “Tips” with notations of amounts, dates, and locations. Travel records, he assumed. He’d bet her expense reports were meticulous and covered every penny.

No receipts from Mapleton, though. She hadn’t checked out of her room, so no charges from the Bed and Breakfast. He recalled their breakfast at Daily Bread the day they’d met, and looked again. Nope. Had Angie comped the meal? He’d have to ask her. Or had the studio run a tab?

And, thinking about it, there wasn’t much need for money while they were shooting. At Aspen Lake, transportation was provided, meals were catered. Likewise during the aborted street shots. If Marianna had eaten breakfast at her B and B, she wouldn’t have had a need to spend any money. He set that envelope aside to have printed. If someone had taken recent receipts, they might have left prints. But why not take the whole envelope?

Enough speculation. Get it all catalogued first
.

Gordon continued going through everything, photographing, bagging, and labeling, still wondering whether anything he was seeing could possibly have something to do with Marianna Spellman’s death. He found two business card cases. One held Marianna’s cards, the second, cards from others. He went through those. Most of them appeared to be industry contacts. No recognizable order. New? People she’d just met, accepted cards from? To be filed, or entered into her address book later? He noticed his card was among them, along with one from Daily Bread, which supported his hypothesis.

Her wallet held her driver’s license, the usual credit cards, as well as valued customer cards from a handful of grocery and a myriad specialty shops. No pictures, but most everyone used their phones for that. A library card, which surprised him, but then why should it? Books would give her movie ideas, wouldn’t they? Or maybe she liked to read.

He was speculating again, and shifted his attention to the remaining items in the purse. Digging in an inner pocket, he felt something small, round, and hard. As he slipped it out, it rattled. A round, screw-top container. Plastic, translucent red. A little over an inch in diameter. His heart slammed against his ribs. Gordon set it on the table beside the purse. He grabbed his camera.

Slowly, carefully, Gordon unscrewed the cap of the container. Pills. He remembered they’d found a multi-day pill organizer in her room. Was this container hers, or had somebody planted it? Were the pills part of her daily dose, or something she kept with her for privacy?

He took pictures of the contents of the container. Five pills. A pink oval, a small round white tablet, a large purple capsule, and a smaller yellow one.

Solomon had said the compartmentalized container in her room was a jumbo-sized one. If she was going to be away from her room for most of the day, it made sense she’d take that day’s meds, or supplements, or whatever they were, with her rather than schlep the whole thing.

He’d have to check to see if these were the same kinds of pills she had in her room, but not until he finished going through the rest of her purse. He checked the other interior pockets and compartments and found a half-empty roll of breath mints in one, along with six crumpled candy bar wrappers.

Secret chocoholic, Marianna?

He bagged those as well, although they appeared to be standard.

The last inner compartment was the right size for a cell phone. It was empty, which made sense, since her phone had been in her coat in her office. And where was her tablet? Surely a raccoon hadn’t taken that. Come to think of it, nothing proved the raccoon had been the one to drag Marianna’s purse to the vacant lot. A more plausible explanation was whoever took it might have hidden it under the garbage, and the raccoon discovered it there.

Gordon rummaged around one more time to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Tucked into the bottom of a zippered section, he felt something cylindrical stuck in the lining. He tipped the purse, shook it, and an orange prescription pill vial tumbled onto the table, rattling softly as it rolled.
Bingo!
Gordon snagged it before it fell to the floor.

The label was faded and scraped, almost nonexistent. He put on his readers. What he could make out of the name was
not
Marianna Spellman. Someone else’s prescription? Hers, but under a false identity? Or was she using it as a second container for all her vitamins and supplements? One for lunch time, one for dinner. He opened the vial. Unlike the other container, this one contained all the same kind of pills. White ovals, with a dent which Gordon assumed meant they could be split in half easily.

He made sure he got good photos, then transferred all the pictures to his computer. Zeroing in on the pill vial, he zoomed in, trying to make out the name. Staring at the blurred image, he had a brief, stomach-clenching flashback to his Central Serous Retinopathy, but he shook it off and concentrated on the letters.

What looked like a capital
K
, then a gap, then
r.
Another gap, then an
l
. The last name was missing all but a few letters. He deciphered an
r
, an
sc
, and it seemed to end in
l
.

Maybe the lab techs with their fancy equipment—and a whole lot more expertise than Gordon claimed—could decipher the label. The date it had been refilled was in April, but whether it was this year or five years ago was another question. The prescription number was indecipherable, although it might have included a 6 or a 5. Or was it an S? Did prescriptions use letters?

He called Solomon. “Any news?”

“Only that Marianna Spellman seemed to be an extraordinarily healthy woman who had no business dying. I’m about ready to head for the station. Nothing I can do to speed things along. Everything’s going to the lab.”

“Hang on a sec.” Gordon told Ed about the prescription. “Do you think Asel would know what the pills are if I sent him a picture?”

“You can check yourself. If it’s a prescription drug, there will be a code imprinted in the pill. Make sure you look at both sides.” He gave Gordon the website to check.

A break? “Got it. Call you right back.”

Gordon found the website Solomon had given him, plugged in the numbers on the pills, and read the results. He checked the list of drugs Yolanda’s doctor had given them. It gave the unpronounceable ten-dollar generic names. He revisited the website results to see if they included those along with the brand names. Yes! There it was. With an internal fist-pump, he reached for the phone, then stopped and picked up the round pill case, scrutinizing the contents to see whether he’d missed any of the prescription drug hidden amongst the vitamins.

Excitement rising, he called Solomon. “The pills in the vial are Celexa, an anti-depressant. Forty-milligram tablets. The drug itself is citalopram hydrobromide.” He spelled it out. “Ask Asel if they can screen for that. Oh, and I found a pocket-size container of pills in Marianna’s purse. None of them had any markings.”

“Then they weren’t prescriptions. What did they look like?”

Gordon described them.

“Yep, those sound like the ones I found. Fits the supposition she kept the ones she’d take for the rest of that day with her if she wasn’t going to be in her room,” Solomon said. “I should have examined the whole container more closely, but at the time, I was thinking of analysis, and that falls into geek territory, so I turned it over to them.”

“Which goes against an overdose—assuming the tox screen proves it—being suicide. If you’re planning to kill yourself, why go to the trouble of packing your daily vitamins in your purse?”

“Unless she’d done that beforehand and forgot about them,” Solomon said. “As I recall, all the compartments in her case had the same assortments of pills, but I didn’t stop and count them. Or take them out to search for intruders. Too bad she didn’t have the super-deluxe model with different slots for morning, noon, and night instead of just the day of the week.”

“Not sure it would have mattered. Let’s get things moving on the tox screen, and checking the contents of the containers. Meanwhile, I’ve got a prescription vial label that needs to be enhanced to find out who it’s for, and what’s supposed to be in it, which might give us the best lead we’ve had so far. And we need to see if the same drug was found in Yolanda Orozco’s system.”

“I’ll let Asel know, and work out connecting with the private lab.”

Gordon thanked him and disconnected. Focused on the computer monitor again, he zoomed in on the image of the prescription vial for the name of the drug. It was possible the pills in the vial didn’t match the prescription, that Marianna was simply using it as a convenient container. He didn’t buy it, since none of her colleagues and acquaintances thought she took any medications at all. Didn’t mean she couldn’t have kept them secret, though, and it was one more piece of evidence that had to be dealt with. However, his gut said if she was taking secret meds, she’d have put them in a container like the red one she kept her vitamins in.

He made a note to follow up with the private lab testing the blood work from Yolanda if Asel or Solomon couldn’t get a speedy answer.

Gordon packed all the evidence, making sure to keep the pills and prescription vial in their own envelopes. Most of the rest was purse detritus, and he figured he could get away with putting it into one large envelope. The techs would be free to single out anything, should it turn out they needed it.

He’d finished sealing the box when the strains of “C is for Cookie” played from his cell phone. Smiling involuntarily, he answered. “Hey, Angie. What’s up?”

“I can’t talk now, but can you sneak away for a couple of minutes? Like right now?” When the call ended immediately, he stared at the box. Should he spend the couple of minutes it would take to assign an officer to drive it to the lab? Angie’s voice had been hushed, as if she didn’t want anyone to know she was making a call, but Gordon hadn’t discerned any stress. She hadn’t said he needed to drop everything and run. Sneaking away sounded more like something private, not police-related.

He grabbed the evidence box, rushed to the duty officer’s desk. Titch straightened, but didn’t leap to attention. Could he be mellowing? Gordon set the box on his desk. “I need this to get to the county geeks ASAP. Do we have enough manpower to spare an officer?”