Fatal Care (17 page)

“I think we’ve met before, Lieutenant,” the man said easily, not bothering to offer his hand.

“Yeah,” Jake said sourly, disliking everything about the lawyer. “You took a cold-blooded murderer and got him off on involuntary manslaughter.”

“He was tried by a jury of his peers.”

“Well, you go tell that to the parents of the girl he killed.”

Mervin Tuch shrugged, unmoved. “The case has already been tried, Lieutenant.”

“Wonderful,” Jake muttered, and turned toward the strikingly attractive brunette. “Mrs. Rabb, I—”

Tuch moved in between the detective and Lucy Rabb. “There are some matters which my client is concerned about.”

Jake groaned to himself, thinking that the longest distance between two points was called a lawyer.

“To begin with,” Tuch continued, “the guard you just manhandled is employed by Mrs. Rabb to protect her. Mrs. Rabb feels, and I agree, that the amount of physical force you used on that man was excessive and unjustified.”

“You talking police brutality?” Jake asked evenly.

“It looked that way from here.”

“Ah-huh.” Jake took out his shield and held it up. “Here’s my number. Write it down so you can give it to them when you file your complaint.”

Tuch started to reach inside his coat for a pen.

“Of course,” Jake went on, “you’ll have to come downtown to fill out a bunch of forms and you’ll be interviewed by the investigating officer. Then there’s the hearing itself, at which you’ll have to testify. We’re talking a lot of hours here for both you and Mrs. Rabb.”

Tuch withdrew his hand from his coat, leaving his pen where it was.

“And while you’re thinking about what you want to do, Dr. Blalock and I can take a look around.”

“That’s the second matter Mrs. Rabb wanted me to discuss with you,” Tuch said. “She feels her privacy is being invaded unnecessarily. She has asked me to see to it that your search warrant is a limited one.”

Jake’s jaw tightened noticeably. “When I talked with Mrs. Rabb yesterday, she said a search warrant wouldn’t be necessary.”

Jake glanced over at Lucy Rabb, who quickly looked away and began studying her fingernails. Jake growled to himself because he’d made a stupid mistake by not obtaining the search warrant. He had taken Lucy Rabb’s word, and that was really stupid.

Tuch read the detective’s face. “You do have a warrant, don’t you?”

“No,” Jake had to admit.

“Then I would advise you to obtain one. Otherwise there’ll be no search.”

“All right.” Jake sighed and reached for his cell phone. “It shouldn’t take more than four or five hours.”

Tuch suppressed a grin. “Come back when you’ve got the warrant.”

“Oh, I will,” Jake said, and began punching numbers into his cell phone. “Just give me a second to call a black-and-white unit to seal this ship. We don’t want anything or anybody to leave this vessel while we’re waiting for the warrant.”

Tuch raised an eyebrow. “Surely you don’t expect me to sit here for hours.”

“You were aboard this ship the night Edmond Rabb was killed. Right?”

“I was a guest at the—” Tuch stopped in midsentence and stared at Jake. “You used the term ‘was killed.’ That implies his death was not accidental.”

“You were at the party, weren’t you?”

“That’s correct.”

“Then we’ll have to question you about that night,” Jake said. “You can walk us around the ship and show us exactly where you were and what you were doing when Mr. Rabb dropped overboard.”

Tuch and Lucy Rabb looked at each other intently, as if they were exchanging a silent message. A seagull squawked overhead and then flew away.

“Well?” Jake demanded.

“Could we agree to a limited search?” Tuch asked.

“No, we couldn’t,” Joanna told him and stepped forward. “I’ll look wherever I want or I won’t look at all.”

Tuch narrowed his eyes. “And just who are you?”

“I’m Dr. Joanna Blalock,” she said, “and I represent the Coroner’s Office. For your information, we don’t do limited searches.”

Tuch studied her briefly, recalling that he’d seen her being interviewed on television once. She was even prettier in person. “A limited search is better than no search at all.”

“Let me tell you how this is going to work,” Joanna said, talking to both the lawyer and Lucy Rabb. “Either I search now or I come back in a few hours with a dozen medical examiners from the Coroner’s Office. We’ll go over this ship from bow to stern with a fine-tooth comb, and it’ll take days for us to do it. And while we’re doing that, Lieutenant Sinclair and his men will search every one of Mr. Rabb’s homes and business offices. Every personal and business effect he has will be put under a microscope.”

“You need a stack of court orders for that,” Tuch challenged.

“That’ll be no problem,” Joanna shot back. “Judges are very accommodating when we tell them we’re dealing with suspected murder.”

“Murder!” Lucy Rabb almost came off her seat on the deck. Her eyes darted back and forth between Tuch and Joanna. “Are you saying my husband was murdered?”

Joanna looked down at Lucy Rabb, wondering if she was acting or really shocked.

Tuch asked, “Are you suggesting you have evidence to indicate murder?”

“You can hear about it at the inquest,” Joanna said, bluffing.

Jake smiled to himself. Tuch was being outfoxed and outclassed and didn’t know it. He let the lawyer squirm a little longer and then said, “If I were you, Counselor, I’d allow Dr. Blalock to do her search. Judges don’t like to hear that somebody is trying to impede a murder investigation.”

“What kind of bullshit is this?” Lucy Rabb barked out. “You can’t just rummage through my dead husband’s things.”

“Sure we can,” Jake said, thinking that class always showed. Or lack of it. Lucy Rabb was gorgeous with a body that wouldn’t quit. She was okay as long as she kept her mouth shut.

“Mervin,” Lucy Rabb said angrily, “will you tell these ass—?”

Tuch quickly brought a finger up to his lips, silencing her. He turned to Jake. “I’d like to confer with my client for a moment.”

“All right,” Jake said, watching Lucy Rabb get to her feet and walk over to the far railing with Tuch. She was tall with shapely legs and an ass so tight it looked as if it were molded on. But her boobs seemed too big and stood out too straight. Silicone, Jake thought.

Joanna moved in close to Jake, keeping her voice very low. “What do you think?”

“I think she’s perfect, except maybe for the boobs,” Jake said absently.

“She’s got cellulite,” Joanna spat out softly.

Jake studied the backs of Lucy’s thighs. They were noticeably dimpled. He smiled to himself, thinking it was curious what a woman noticed. “Not so perfect, after all.”

“Will you get your mind back on business?” Joanna chided him gently.

“It is on business,” Jake said in a whisper. “I was thinking that old man Rabb had a hundred million dollars so he could easily buy something real exquisite. And something real exquisite had him iced.”

“She wasn’t exactly torn up over his death, was she?”

“Christ!” Jake said louder than he’d intended. Tuch looked over and Jake lowered his voice. “The poor bastard has been gone for only a couple of weeks and she calls him ‘my dead husband.’ She doesn’t even have enough sense to act sad.”

“Maybe,” Joanna said. “But there’s a really good chance she’s going to walk and take a ton of money with her. And, of course, her handsome lawyer will be right by her side.”

Jake studied the couple by the railing and then turned back to Joanna. “You think they’re a couple, huh?”

“I’d bet on it.”

Tuch and Lucy Rabb came back to the lounging area. Jake noticed that their arms were almost touching.

“Mrs. Rabb has decided to allow you to search the ship without a warrant,” Tuch said. “If her husband was murdered, she wants the person responsible caught and punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

Yeah, right, Jake thought. If old man Rabb were to suddenly return from the dead, Lucy Rabb would have a shit hemorrhage. “We’ll start in the stateroom.”

Joanna and Jake went through an open door and down carpeted stairs that led into a spacious stateroom. All the furniture was neatly stacked against the walls. A team of Mexican cleaners were vacuuming the floor while listening to Latino music on their radio.

“
Qué
?” the eldest of the cleaners asked.

Jake motioned with a hand, indicating he didn’t need the Mexican. The old man went back to vacuuming.

Joanna asked, “Why do you think they were so anxious to delay our search?”

“Either they wanted to discard something or maybe rearrange things.”

“Like what?”

Jake shrugged. “Who knows?”

They walked across the big stateroom, heading for the master bedroom.

“And what is Lucy Rabb doing with a high-priced criminal defense lawyer?” Joanna asked.

“Tuch is a regular lawyer who handled all of Edmond Rabb’s legal affairs,” Jake told her. “But if a high-profile murder case comes along, he jumps right in. Then he brings in a team of top-notch defense lawyers to actually handle the case.”

“He still must be pretty good to put a team like that together.”

“I guess so,” Jake conceded. “He’s got a damn good reputation for getting people off.”

“Like the murderer who got off with involuntary manslaughter?”

“Yeah,” Jake growled.

“Tell me about the case.”

“The asshole son of a rich investment banker decided to slip his date a heavy dose of ecstasy,” Jake said hoarsely. “While he’s pulling her panties off, she starts having trouble breathing. So he takes her to the front of an emergency room, dumps her out, and splits. By the time they find her, she’s choking to death on her own vomit.”

“Oh, Lord!”

“It should have been murder two,” Jake went on. “But the snotty little bastard got manslaughter. He served three years and walked.”

“But he gave her the ecstasy and she was still breathing when he dumped her,” Joanna argued. “If he had taken her into the ER, he could have saved her life.”

“Tell that to Mr. Armani upstairs,” Jake said disgustedly.

They entered the master bedroom. The king-size bed was unmade, its sheets and comforter wrinkled up. The pillows showed that two heads had rested there during the night.

“Cute,” Joanna said, seeing two bathrobes draped over a chair. “Chances are those two have been a pair for a while.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jake agreed. “They were banging each other when the old man was alive.” He motioned with his head to the chair. “Brand-new lovers don’t take the time to neatly fold their bathrobes.”

Joanna stared at the crumpled-up sheets that looked as if they’d been kicked back. “I guess it’s possible some other couple used the bed.”

“Like who?”

Joanna shrugged. “Just thinking out loud.”

Jake walked over to the chair and examined the white terry-cloth bathrobes. One was embroidered with the initials ER on the front pocket. The other had the initials LR. He took hair samples from the backs of each. LR had brunette strands. ER had black strands. “Edmund Rabb had gray hair, didn’t he?”

“Almost white,” Joanna replied.

“We’ll see what these show.” Jake placed the strands in separate plastic envelopes, then picked up the bathrobes and carefully sniffed their collars.

Joanna watched Jake, now recalling that he had a remarkable sense of smell. He could detect and identify odors that most people barely noticed.

“Tuch was wearing a heavily scented aftershave lotion,” Jake said. “Did you notice it?”

Joanna nodded. “It smelled like Polo.”

“So does the back of Edmond Rabb’s robe.”

Sleeping with your lover so soon after your husband’s death was really stupid, Joanna thought. And stupid people usually made careless mistakes. Slowly Joanna moved around the bedroom and methodically inspected every heavy object that could be hand-held. A pair of brass lamps, a phone with answering machine attached, a small metal replica of Michelangelo’s
David
. All were spotless. “No blood,” she observed.

“Whoever conked him on the head deep-sixed the weapon,” Jake said. “It’s sitting on the bottom of the ocean now.”

“I know.” Joanna stepped back and gazed around the room once more. “And whoever conked him wouldn’t carry a bloody weapon through a stateroom full of guests just to get back to the bedroom. But still . . .” Her voice trailed off as she walked over to an open porthole and carefully examined the metal sill. “No blood,” she reported again.

Jake’s gaze went from the open porthole back to the king-size bed. He envisioned Lucy Rabb and Tuch screwing their brains out. Then, over cigarettes, they decided the best way to whack the old man. Greed, Jake thought. It had no end. It was a goddamn bottomless pit.

Spotting the telephone, he walked over and checked the machine for messages. There were none. Then he looked for the phone number. “Let’s see who Lucy Rabb called the most after her husband got whacked.”

“I’ll bet on Mervin Tuch,” Joanna said.

“Oh, yeah,” Jake agreed. “And since he was her lawyer, I’ll bet all those calls were strictly professional and privileged.”

“Of course.”

They went into a large bathroom. Everything was done in dark wood, including the toilet seat. The counter next to the basin was covered with feminine things. Atop it were hand lotion, cosmetics, perfumes, and a small basket of Crabtree & Evelyn soaps. The medicine cabinet looked like it belonged to an old man. There were vitamin preparations for seniors, dental adhesives for false teeth, testosterone patches, and a bottle of Viagra.

Jake took out the bottle of Viagra and examined it. “The label says the tablets are one hundred milligrams each. Is that a big dose?”

“The highest you can buy,” Joanna said.

“Well, at least the old guy was trying.”

Jake closed the medicine cabinet. “A big nothing. Let’s go look at the deck.”

They walked out and across the stateroom where the cleaning men were still busy vacuuming and scrubbing. Jake slowed, watching them, and then went over to the oldest of the crew. “Do you speak English?”

“Oh, yes,” the thin gray-haired man said.