Deadly Production (Mapleton Mystery Book 4) (7 page)

“Not as much of a puzzle, though,” Asel said.

“Any ideas as to cause of death?” Gordon asked.

Asel held a penlight to Marianna’s lifeless eyes. “No petechiae.”

“So, not strangulation.”

“Not likely.” Asel continued his examination, manipulating her limbs. “Very early stages of rigor. Give me a hand rolling her.”

Her clothing was intact, no blood pool under the body. “I think I can safely rule out gunshots or knife wounds,” Asel said. “Won’t know much else until I get her to the morgue.”

“Can you check her pockets?” Gordon asked. “Maybe there’s a note. Or a cell phone.”

Asel patted the body with his pudgy hands. “Nothing.”

“Would you say this is where she died?” Gordon said.

“Probably.” Asel tugged the woman’s shirt up. Gordon could see the darkening on her back, where the blood had settled. Asel ran his hands along the back of her head. “No signs of blunt force trauma.”

“A witness said she wasn’t here at six-fifteen this morning. We found her at seven-fifty-two. Does that work as a window for TOD?”

Asel read the thermometer he’d used for a liver temperature. He pursed his lips in and out a few times, then stared at Gordon as if lecturing a schoolchild. “Given there were no open windows, no heat, no air conditioning, her temperature is commensurate with a time of death between five and eight this morning. So, yes, that fits your time frame.”

“Nice to know I won’t have to ask everyone for alibis for the last three days. But with this group, it’s going to be enough of a challenge to pin down their whereabouts for two hours.”

Asel put his thermometer away and snapped his case shut. “I’d say I’ve seen enough here. Can I have the body?”

Although Solomon had already documented the scene with the body, Gordon was reluctant to comply. “Techs should be here any minute. Mind waiting so they can evaluate the scene with the body? The media will be all over this one, and I don’t want any undotted “i”s or uncrossed “t”s.”

Asel grumbled, but he agreed.

“I can fetch you a cinnamon roll from Daily Bread. And coffee.”

“I won’t object.” Asel finished packing his gear.

Gordon stepped outside. Gaubatz was sitting on the bottom step of the RV, sipping coffee. When Gordon told him what he wanted, Gaubatz didn’t complain about playing gopher. He probably knew Asel’s reputation. When Asel came out of the RV carrying his case, Gaubatz jumped up and jogged across the parking lot.

“I'll be in my van.” Asel lumbered to his vehicle, put his case in the back, then hoisted himself into the driver's seat.

Gordon breathed in the clean air, glad to be out of the confines of the RV. Once the CSR guys arrived, they might get some answers. Meanwhile, Solomon was doing something proactive, not standing around.

At last, the crime scene van pulled up. Now, things could start moving.

All the jobs were compartmentalized—paramedics were called, then the Coroner’s Office, and their investigator “owned” the body, and heaven help anyone who touched it before he got there. Crime scene techs collected evidence and did all their magic in the lab. Then, the cops took all the information from the coroner and the techs and tried to put the pieces together and solve the crime. Wouldn’t be so bad if there wasn’t so much waiting.

Gordon called Solomon. “You ready to start playing detective?”

“Be there in five.”

Just as Gordon disconnected, one of the techs, a thirty-something, broad-shouldered redhead, one Gordon hadn’t met before, jumped out of the van, and held out his hand. “Alexander Lewis. Call me Xander. What do you have for us?”

“Woman found dead on the floor. No obvious cause of death. Nothing looks disturbed, and given the nature of the beast, my guess is there will be prints from everyone who’s used this RV in the last decade.”

“Most of which will be useless,” Xander said. “Let’s take a peek.”

Solomon jogged across the Village, but refrained from bolting up the stairs to the RV, stopping to check in with Gordon.

“Anything coming out of the interviews?” Gordon asked.

“Primarily eliminations,” Solomon said.

“Which is a good thing. Dealing with a handful of witnesses and suspects is a lot better than dozens.”

Step one was to photograph everything. Xander snapped away. Gordon didn’t bother telling him Solomon had done the same. Again, compartmentalization. The techs would have the official, stand-up-in-court photographs. Solomon would have his to work the case from his point of view.

Once Xander was satisfied with his establishing shots, he turned to Gordon. “Anything you need with respect to the body?”

Gordon knew the tech would have covered every inch of the body from every angle. “Nope. Let’s get her to the morgue.”

Outside, Gaubatz had arrived with a Daily Bread bag for Asel, who opened it, stuck his face inside and inhaled. “I need to get over here more often.”

“Social visits only, I hope,” Gordon said. “Body’s all yours.”

Asel put the bag into his van. “I’ll let you know of my findings.”

Gordon wasn’t fond of autopsies, not that he’d had to stand in on many, but he added, “If you’re going to cut, let me know. Either I or Solomon want to be there. And given this is a high-profile case, at least for Mapleton, any expediting would be appreciated.”

“I’ll see what I can do about moving her up the line, putting a rush on labs. Shall we get her into the van?”

Another not-fun part of his job, but Gordon, Solomon, and Asel got Marianna onto the gurney and into a body bag, then loaded her into the van. “I’ll be in touch,” Asel said.

Gordon watched the coroner’s van drive away before heading back into the RV with Solomon right behind him.

“Damn,” Gordon said. “Her family. Someone has to do the death notification before they see it on the news. You and the techs work on deciding what needs to be processed in here. I’ll go talk to Dawson and make those arrangements.”

“On the bright side, you won’t be the one to do the face-to-face with her family, and they might provide a clue or a motive.”

Gaubatz knocked on the door. “Chief? The movie people are getting restless, especially the director. They’re threatening to leave. What should I tell them?”

“Tell them to be patient a little longer. That I’ll check in with them soon. Keep the time frame vague. Then come back and keep this RV secure.”

“Understood, Chief.”

Why did Gordon feel as if the cats he was herding were morphing into angry lions?

Gordon went to his SUV and retrieved the evidence bag with the glass Dawson had handled. He brought it into the RV where Xander and his partner were setting out markers and taking more pictures.

“Nothing screams crime scene at me,” the partner, a slender African American man, said. “The kind of place where we’d either collect everything or next to nothing.”

Gordon handed him the bag. “This is from the director, Lionel Dawson. He’s not on my list—well, that’s not true. Right now,
everyone
is on my list. I saw the opportunity to take his prints and went for it, in case he shows up in one of the databases.”

“Spoken like a true crime scene guy,” Xander said. “If we had any idea how she died, we might be able to zero in on where to focus. We could print this entire unit, but, as you said, any prints in here are probably from people who can explain them.”

The other tech was sliding clothing along the racks, studying each piece, shaking his head, then moving on. Outfits were hooked together, and tagged with names.

Gordon stepped over. “You think maybe she hid something in the clothes?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea what belongs here and what doesn’t. You want us to bag everything?”

Gordon exchanged a glance with Solomon. “I think we’ll keep this place off-limits. Once we have a glimmer of a lead, if we need something we can come back and get it.”

“I can do a quick check,” Solomon said. “Go through pockets, do some shaking, see if anything falls out.”

The tech left the clothes to Solomon, then went to a wastebasket under the sewing table. “Bag it,” Gordon said. “I’ll find out when it was last emptied.”

“What about outside?” Solomon asked. “The killer—still assuming the death was foul play—had to get here from somewhere.”

“According to the studio security guards, nobody who didn’t belong was back here. But they also admitted they weren’t covering points of entrance and exit other than the two main ones. Someone might have snuck in via a back door from one of the stores. Everyone’s dressed in regular clothes, whether they’re Seesaw people or lookie-lous, so they wouldn’t be conspicuous. Plus, with a busload arriving at the same time, it wouldn’t be hard to blend in since the guards didn’t cross reference the people who got
on
the bus at the hotel with the people who got off here.”

Solomon winged his eyebrows. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking about the quality of the production’s security force?”

“Not going to go there.” Gordon dragged a hand through his hair. “I wish we could stop adding people to our list. I trust you to coordinate with the techs, Ed. I’m going to get the death notification process started.”

Rubbing the back of his neck against the beginnings of what was destined to become a monstrous headache, Gordon trotted down the stairs and paused to speak to Gaubatz. “You have the list of everyone in Seesaw Village from this morning?” Gordon glanced at his watch. It was still this morning. Definitely going to be a long day.

“I gave them to Titch when I went for coffee,” he said. “Titch said he’d get them to Solomon.”

Gordon thanked him and went in search of Lionel Dawson. He paused inside the doorway, pleased to see Titch and two other officers conducting interviews in three of the booths. Gordon found the director sitting at a table in the corner of the dining room, his cell phone in one hand, a pen which he was using to scribble notes in the other. Words like “cancellation,” “rescheduling,” and “moving” peppered the conversation, along with “budget.”

Gordon approached, let the man know he was waiting. Dawson stopped writing. “Call you back,” he said into the phone, then gazed at Gordon like a dog waiting for a biscuit.

“I don’t have anything yet,” Gordon said. Dawson’s expression shifted from hopeful to disgruntled. Gordon ignored it and went on. “We need to notify Marianna Spellman’s next of kin before the media beats us to it. Do you know who that would be, and where they are?” He’d get a local law enforcement agency to handle that task—his least favorite in all of police work.

“Everyone has paperwork with emergency contact information. That’s another thing Marianna would have in her records. Check her RV. Security has keys to all the units. They can let you in.”

“Will do. Did Yolanda or Ian show up?” Gordon asked.

“Not here,” Dawson said. “If you’ve got nothing to tell me about when we can get back to work, there are major decisions the higher-ups have to make.”

Gordon noticed three security guards having coffee and pastry at a rear table. Should he recruit them to help, or call the county? County, he decided. A few deputies, officers who Gordon knew were trained in police work, not in checking names off lists, would be better choices and make sure the Village was secure.

He called Laurie, told her to make the arrangements. “Three per shift should be plenty. Until we know we can release the scene.”

“On it,” Laurie said. “And Detective Colfax called. Said to let him know as soon as you had a confirmed homicide.”

Before he headed to Marianna’s RV, Gordon checked in with Vicky McDermott at Finnegan’s. The crowd was significantly diminished. He assumed that meant people had been released, not that they’d staged a mass escape. The setup was similar to what he’d seen at Daily Bread.

Vicky excused herself when she saw him, and crossed the room. “We’re almost done here, Chief. Nobody knew anything other than there’s going to be a movie shot. Most of them weren’t happy to find out Cassidy Clarke and Lily Beckett weren’t going to show up, but apparently, they were hoping either they’d make an appearance after all, or they’d see other stars. Those three—” she tilted her chin toward three tables. A man sat at one, a woman at each of the two others. “They had connections to extras, and had managed to wander the Village for a few minutes.”

“Didn’t the security guards stop them?”

McDermott shrugged. “Apparently not.”

Gordon cursed under his breath. He definitely needed deputies to help. “Go on.”

“The blonde said she’d been invited by her friend, who’s an extra. The friend told her she’d try to get her into the picture. All three said they didn’t see anything suspicious, but I figured we should put them through round two. They may have seen something and didn’t realize it was important.”

“Did they approach, or go into any of the trailers?”

“Just the blonde. Her friend took her into one of the lounge trailers for coffee. But there wasn’t anyone important enough—” McDermott made finger quotes around the words— “so she went to the street side where she could watch the filming.”

The blonde was unfamiliar to Gordon. “Her name?”

Vicky leafed through the sheets of paper she carried. “Reagan Kinzer. She’s from Centennial. Came in last night with aspirations of being discovered.”

“Did she know Marianna Spellman?” Gordon asked.

“Negative. Nobody we’ve interviewed claims to have a clue who she is.”

“Okay. As long as you have contact information for everyone, they can go. But find out if Reagan Kinzer is planning to go home to Centennial. You might politely encourage her to stick around, at least until we know whether we’ll need more information from her.” He glanced at the time. After eleven. “Mick Finnegan will want his place back for the lunch crowd.”

“I’m sure business will be booming,” she said. “You want these sheets, or should I drop them off at the station?”

“Drop them off. I’m going to check Marianna’s RV, then start cross-referencing everything.”

He stopped at Daily Bread to get keys from a security guard. Angie was winding her way through the dining room, pouring coffee refills. Her smile in his direction when she noticed him relieved some of the tension at his neck. But she didn’t approach. Since their relationship had progressed, she knew he’d tell her what he could when he could. And right now, there was nothing. He tipped his head in her direction, then made a quick pit stop before taking the keys and striding across the lot to Marianna’s RV. Given how much of his normal routine kept him behind a desk, he was glad for the exercise, even if the reason for it was less than desirable.

He headed toward the blue-and-white RV at the end of the second row of vehicles. Nothing huge, but at least two or three times bigger than his office at the station. On the way, he scanned the grounds for anything that might be evidence, but the breeze had scattered stray candy wrappers, coffee cups, and plastic grocery bags across the area to the point that there would be no way to prove where they’d come from even if one held a clue. And what the hell constituted a clue at this point, anyway?

As he approached Marianna’s RV, he fumbled through the ring of keys seeking the one labeled 23, the one the guard said was hers. He’d singled it out when he noticed the jimmied door. What the—?

You wanted a clue, Hepler. I’d say you found one
.