Mortar and Murder (9 page)

“It’s OK. She doesn’t look bad.” At least the corpse hadn’t looked bad yesterday, when we fished her from the water. Now that the medical examiner had had a go that might have changed. But I thought he would be sensitive to what was a potential relative or acquaintance and make sure the body was presentable. I wasn’t too sanguine about going into the morgue myself. I’d seen corpses before—more than my fair share—but I’d never been to the morgue, and I would have been happy to keep it that way.

I coaxed Irina out of the car and into the building. Wayne was waiting for us in the lobby and took us downstairs to the cold storage. He did give me the option of staying behind, but Irina looked like she was ready to bolt, and when I hesitated, wondering if maybe I could get away with waiting upstairs, she sent me such a desperate look that I couldn’t in good conscience abandon her. So we all headed down to the basement in the elevator.

The first thing that struck me was the odor. That sickly sweet smell of death, not quite masked by the air fresheners and air-filtration system. For a few days last summer I hadn’t been able to get it out of my nose.

“Avery?” Wayne shook my shoulder, gently. “The visiting room is this way.”

I opened my eyes. The visiting room. Like we were stopping by to see an old friend in a nursing home or hospital. Or prison.

The visiting room was small, with just enough space for a gurney and a handful of people. A woman was already there: a tall and sturdy lady in her late fifties, with graying blond hair cut short. She was dressed in a white lab coat over green scrubs and was holding a clipboard. When Wayne ushered us in, she nodded a greeting. “Morning, Chief Rasmussen.”

“Morning, Dr. Lawrence,” Wayne returned. “This is Avery Baker and Irina . . . um. . .”

“Rozhdestvensky,” Irina said faintly.

Dr. Lawrence bobbed her head at us both. “You’re the one who found her,” she said to me, tapping her clipboard. “I remember your name.”

I nodded. “My boyfriend and I came across her in the ocean yesterday morning and brought her back to shore. Wayne took over from there.”

Dr. Lawrence, who must be the medical examiner, turned to Irina. “And you’re here to see if she’s someone you know.”

Irina hesitated. Her sideways glance at the covered gurney was agonized.

I had avoided looking at it myself so far. Not that there was much to see, really. A steel table with wheels, and a white sheet covering what could have been anything, but which was probably our girl from yesterday.

“Don’t worry,” Dr. Lawrence said reassuringly. “We’ve taken good care of her.”

By way of proof, she folded the sheet gently back from the corpse’s head. I averted my eyes automatically and had to force myself to look back.

Dr. Lawrence was right; from what I could see of the body—and that was just the head down to the very top of the shoulders—the medical examiner had been careful to be as respectful as possible. The blond hair was dry and combed, fanning out around the young woman’s head. It still looked natural to me, not colored. I was certain Dr. Lawrence had sliced the body open and taken samples of all the innards, those incisions now decently hidden by the sheet, but if her examination had included opening the cranium and looking at the brain, I couldn’t see any sign of it. Although I’ll readily admit I didn’t look closely. As far as the face went, it looked just like it had yesterday when Derek had lifted the young woman out of the ocean. Pale and wan, with sunken eyes and colorless lips.

“Her eyes are blue,” Dr. Lawrence said softly, “and the hair color is her own. She was small, just five feet one inch tall and roughly one hundred and five pounds, and as far as I could determine, she was healthy. She had a broken leg sometime in childhood, but it healed completely, and in a way that wouldn’t have given her any trouble. There are old fillings in some of her teeth”—she handed Wayne a dental chart—“but no untreated cavities, which leads me to believe she took care of her health.”

He nodded.

“Other than a few bruises here and there, on her upper arms and one on her hip, there are no fresh injuries on her body other than some abrasions on the soles of her feet. From walking around barefoot recently, I gather. I removed a few small pebbles and pieces of vegetation.” She took a small ziplock baggie off the clipboard and gave it to Wayne, who held it up to the light to peer at it.

“Looks like just regular sand and rock and maybe a pine needle?”

“Something very like that.” Dr. Lawrence nodded. “Just what you’d expect if she’d been walking barefoot anywhere along the coast. I place time of death at some point between midnight and six A.M. yesterday morning. By the time you found her”—she nodded in my direction—“it was hours too late to do anything for her. She died from exposure, by the way. From being in the cold water. There was no water in her lungs.”

I nodded. “I’ll tell my boyfriend. He said all those things, too, and I’m sure he’ll be happy to know he was right.”

“Your boyfriend must know a lot about medicine,” Dr. Lawrence remarked.

“Four years of medical school, four years of residency, and a year or so of practice before he decided he’d rather be a handyman.” I shrugged.

“Ah.” The doctor smiled. “I take it we’re talking about young Mr. Ellis?”

“You know Derek?”

“Not well. I know his father. Doctors of pathology are doctors, too, you know.”

“Right,” I said. She and Dr. Ellis were colleagues. Of course. They probably had meetings or luncheons or Christmas parties they attended together.

While all this had been going on, Irina had been quiet, and now we all turned to her. She was standing next to me, her hands folded in front of her and her face impassive.

“Miss Rozhdestvensky?” Dr. Lawrence said gently from the other side of the gurney. “Do you know her?”

Irina’s lips thinned before they parted. “No.” She shook her head for emphasis.

“You’re sure?”

Irina looked up, from Wayne to me to the doctor. “I have never seen her before. If I did know who she was, I would tell you. She’s someone’s daughter, or sister, or wife. Not my sister, not my parents’ daughter, but someone’s. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

“That’s all right,” Wayne said. “It was worth a try. I don’t suppose you have any idea how she ended up with your name and address in her pocket, either, then?”

Irina shook her head, her lips tightly pressed together now. “I have never seen her before. She didn’t contact me. No one else has contacted me, either.”

Wayne nodded. “I understand. If anyone does or you think of anything that might help, please let me know.” He handed her his card.

Irina took it and put it in the pocket of her suit. She looked from Wayne to Dr. Lawrence. “May I go now?”

“Of course. And thanks for coming in.”

Irina hesitated. “You’re welcome” didn’t quite suit the occasion, and “my pleasure” was even worse. Eventually, she settled for, “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help.”

“Even negative information is information,” Dr. Lawrence said with a nod. “Thank you for coming.”

Irina headed for the door, and I excused myself to follow her, leaving Wayne and Dr. Lawrence together in the visiting room. We rode the elevator back upstairs in silence; it wasn’t until we were outside, and could breathe fresh air again, that Irina opened her mouth. “Thank you for coming with me, Avery.”

“My pleasure,” I said. “I mean . . . I was happy to do it. It isn’t easy being all alone in a new place, is it? Have you made any friends while you’ve been here?”

I hadn’t done too badly in that department myself, in the months I’d been here, but I’d probably gotten lucky. If I hadn’t met Kate, I wouldn’t have met Derek, and if I hadn’t met Derek, I wouldn’t have met Dr. Ben and Cora and Beatrice, and then there were Shannon and Josh . . . If it hadn’t been for Derek, I wouldn’t have met Irina, for that matter. She, on the other hand, always seemed to be alone.

Irina made a face I took to mean,
no, not really
. “I have been busy. Real estate is a competitive business. But I have a partner I work with. We spend most days together. Her name is Ruth. She is waiting for me at the office so we can drive to South Portland to a house there that the owners want to sell.”

“You use Ruth’s car?” Irina didn’t have one; that’s why she took the bus to Portland every morning.

She nodded. “I meet her at the office every day. She lives in Kennebunk.”

The other direction from Portland than Waterfield, then. I guess it made sense that she didn’t want to drive all the way up the coast to pick up Irina.

“I’m sorry you had to come here first today. And for nothing, too. Although I guess it’s good that the girl wasn’t anyone you knew.”

Irina nodded. “I almost wish she was. Somewhere, someone is looking for her.”

If someone were, they were keeping quiet about it. By now, there ought to have been all-points bulletins all over down east Maine, TV and radio spots, front-page newspaper stories, or at least a missing-person report filed with a police department somewhere nearby. But even the Internet was quiet. I’d stopped by the down east Maine listserv last night to see if anyone was talking about anything related, and it had been quiet as the grave. Pun intended.

“I’m glad she’s not your sister, anyway. Did you try to call Svetlana?”

I would have, just to make sure. Even if I knew it wasn’t my sister—a sister I don’t have; I’m an only child—I think I would have called anyway, just to hear her voice.

A shadow passed over Irina’s face. It could just have been from one of the clouds in the sky. “I tried. She didn’t answer.”

If Svetlana wasn’t the girl in the morgue, then surely that didn’t matter. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to talk to her. But at least that’s not her, in there.” I nodded to the building.

Irina shook her head and muttered something in Russian. I assumed it to be the equivalent of “Thank God!”

“How far is the real estate office from here? Do you want a ride?”

She shook her head, the tight bun at the nape of her neck bobbing. “I’d like to walk. Smell the fresh air.” Get the smell of death out of her nose.

“You won’t be cold?” She was just wearing the business suit with the blouse underneath, and high-heeled pumps.

Irina shook her head. “Ukraine is cool, too. And the jacket is wool. Nice and warm.”

I nodded. “Well, walk carefully, then. And good luck on your appointment.”

Irina returned the good wishes as far as Derek’s and my renovations went and set off down the sidewalk in the direction of her office, her high heels clicking a rhythm against the pavement. I watched her round the nearest corner, and then I headed back inside the building.

Dr. Lawrence had walked Wayne upstairs, and I found them both standing in the lobby, still discussing the deceased.

“. . . for toxicology,” Dr. Lawrence was saying as I walked up. “Tomorrow, maybe longer. I’ll ask the lab to put a rush on it.”

Wayne nodded. “I’d appreciate that. What about food?”

“It’s all in there.” Dr. Lawrence nodded to the sheaf of papers Wayne was holding in his hand. “Dinner approximately nine hours before she died, a little chicken and rice with water to drink. Not much of either; maybe she was dieting.”

“She didn’t look like she needed to diet,” Wayne remarked.

I shook my head; the young woman hadn’t struck me as being overweight, either.

“Her clothes were slightly too big,” Dr. Lawrence said. “I’d say she had perhaps lost five or ten pounds since she bought them. The tags were cut out, by the way.”

“The tags in the clothes?”

Dr. Lawrence nodded.

“Interesting,” Wayne said.

I cut in. “She was wearing Gloria Jeans. They’re a Russian brand. You can get them in New York, though.”

Wayne’s eyebrows gyrated, and he turned back to Dr. Lawrence. “What about the shirt? Is that American made or foreign?”

“Isn’t American made the same as foreign these days?” Dr. Lawrence didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll go get her clothes and you can have a look. Both of you.” Her eyes glanced off mine for a second.

“Textile designer,” I said. “Fabric is kind of my thing.”

“That explains it. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

She headed down the hallway to the elevator, her rubber shoes squeaking against the polished tile floor.

“You didn’t tell me that,” Wayne said, reproach in his voice.

“What? About the jeans? I didn’t think about it. That was before you told me about the scrap of paper in the pocket. And it’s not like they couldn’t have been bought here, you know. Like I said, they’re available in New York.”

“But more readily available in Russia? Or the Ukraine?”

“Oh, sure. They’re Russia’s equivalent of Levi’s. As a matter of fact, I think Levi Strauss invested in Gloria a year or two ago.”

“So she’s probably Russian. I mean, that plus the note she was carrying with Russian letters.”

“Could be. An exchange student, maybe. Someone spending a semester at Barnham. Or even someone getting her whole education at Barnham. There are a couple of foreign students there. I had one of them in my Fabric through the Ages class last month.”

“Anyone Russian?” Wayne wanted to know.

I shook my head. “Did you go down there yesterday?”

Wayne shook his head. “We found the scrap of paper in her pocket and focused on that. I was hoping that Irina could help us identify her. Now that it turns out she can’t, I’ll try other routes.”

I nodded. “Do corpses still have fingerprints after they’ve been submerged in salt water?”

“Once she dried out, we were able to get them. Brandon was working on trying to identify her yesterday. I don’t think he’s had any luck. He would have called.”

Brandon Thomas is Wayne’s youngest and most gung ho deputy, a twenty-three-year-old Waterfield native who would really prefer focusing on crime scene investigation and evidence gathering, but who goes on patrol with a good attitude when he has to. In a small police department like Waterfield’s, everyone goes on patrol, even the chief.