Murder In the Past Tense (A Giorgio Salvatori Mystery Book 2) (18 page)

“Of course. I’ve almost gotten rid of it several times because there’s nothing of value in there. But, I don’t know, I tend to hold onto things,” she said with a chuckle. “My husband says if I hadn’t married him, I’d be a hoarder.”

She finished with a loud chortle, as if this was a common joke between the couple. Giorgio was about to put the lid back one, when something tucked in the corner of it caught his eye.

“Wait a minute,” he said, quickly slipping the lid beneath the bottom of the box and holding them together.

He reached in to pull out a small, heart-shaped silver earring.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he swore softly.

“What is it?” Rocky asked, moving in to look over his shoulder.

“I do believe we just found Lisa Farmer’s matching earring.”

“No shit?” Rocky exclaimed. “Oh, sorry,” he said to Mrs. Johnson.

“That’s quite all right,” she said. “Is that the case you’re investigating?”

Giorgio turned a wary expression to Rocky.

“Yes,” Giorgio said to her.

As Giorgio dropped the earring back into the box and put the lid back, Mrs. Johnson suddenly cried out, “Uh, oh!”

She’d glanced around Giorgio’s shoulder and noticed Grosvenor, who was knee deep into a hole. Her eyes opened wide and Giorgio responded.

“Grosvenor!” he yelled, as if surprised by his actions.

He ran over and grabbed the dog by the collar, pulling him back. Grosvenor was covered in dirt.

“I’m so sorry,” Giorgio said to the woman.

Grosvenor twisted away from Giorgio’s grasp and went right back to his work.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Johnson, he doesn’t usually do this,” Giorgio said.

But Mrs. Johnson dismissed the whole incident as Grosvenor continued to dig.

“Oh, not to worry,” she said. “What’s one more hole?”

“Rocky, take this,” Giorgio said, handing off the box to his brother.

Giorgio stepped forward and grabbed the dog’s collar. He pulled Grosvenor back and pushed him away. Then he stepped forward and squatted down.

“Let me clean this up a bit,” he said, peering into the hole.

He reached in and pushed the dirt around, as if he was filling in the hole. Mrs. Johnson moved over to his shoulder.

“Oh, don’t worry, Detective. My husband will take care of that…oh, but wait,” the little woman exclaimed.

Giorgio glanced up at her. She was pointing into the hole near the window.

“What could that be?” she asked.

He glanced down. Buried deep within the hole next to the basement wall was something white. Something that shouldn’t be there. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

Giorgio reached in and pulled away more dirt. When the jawbone of a human skull emerged, he glanced up at Rocky.

Mrs. Johnson’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my…”

Giorgio sat back on his heels. “I’m afraid the question isn’t what, Mrs. Johnson,” he said. “But who?”

CHAPTER TWENTY- FIVE

It took several hours to organize a recovery team. Most of the resources had to be brought in from other cities, including a forensics team and a cadaver dog. Since it got dark by six o’clock, Giorgio scheduled the recovery for 9:00 a.m. the next day and then stationed a pair of uniformed officers to guard the burial site. Meanwhile, the Johnsons and their guests were asked to leave the premises.

Back at the station, Giorgio compared the earring from the tin box to the earring that came out of the well with Lisa Farmer’s remains. They were a match. He logged the box into the evidence locker at the police station for safekeeping.

The earring meant that Lisa Farmer had either been to the home the night of the prom, or that someone in the Martinelli family was involved in her murder and had kept it.

But first things first. Giorgio had to focus on the bodies buried at the Pinney House.

It was late by the time he got home that night. He had to explain to Angie why Grosvenor not only didn’t make it to the groomer’s, but looked worse for the wear.

“What was in the envelope?” she asked, sliding a dinner plate with a cheese enchilada and rice into the microwave oven for him.

“Oh, I forgot,” he said, turning around and heading for the den.

He found a large manila envelope in the middle of the desk. It was addressed to ‘Detective Joe Salvatori’ with no return address. He was immediately suspicious.

Giorgio grabbed a tissue from a Kleenex box on the corner of the desk and used it to pick up the envelope. He pulled out a letter opener from the desk drawer and slit the envelope open. It was empty.

“Who delivered this?” he said, taking it back into the kitchen.

Angie turned around and glanced at the envelope in his hand.

“Um…I don’t know… Some young man in a uniform.”

She went back to working at the counter.

“What did he look like?” Giorgio asked, trying to appear as casual as he could.

She talked as she pulled his dinner from the microwave.

“I don’t know, Joe. He had long blond hair in a ponytail. Just a kid with tattoos.”

Giorgio’s insides had begun to churn.

“Do you know what company he was from?” he asked, trying to conceal his concern.

She turned to him momentarily. “Joe, I didn’t pay attention. Why all the questions?”

“But was it FedEx, or UPS?”

“Why is it important?” she said, putting his plate on the table.

His head was spinning. It appeared that the same person who might have killed Carson Montgomery had delivered the envelope to his house.

“Um…it’s empty,” he said. “Somebody screwed up. I just need to track it down. Do you remember what it said on the side of the truck?”

She was already busy back at the counter putting the leftovers away.

“He wasn’t in a truck. I saw a Jeep at the curb.”

÷

Giorgio spent a restless evening at home, replaying details in his mind about the Montgomery case in Seattle and what he knew about the young man who had killed him. His mind kept jumping back and forth between the various threads of the investigation and the intrusion on his family’s safety. In the end, he slept very little. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

The next day he rolled out of bed feeling strained and grumpy, and yet anxious to get going. Instincts told him something big would break today.

The weather outside matched Giorgio’s mood perfectly – cloudy and dreary.

Giorgio took the envelope with him to the police department to log it into evidence and have it checked for fingerprints. Then he went to see the captain.

It felt as if the Lisa Farmer case had morphed into something out of his control. Two new murders. At least one body buried on the Pinney House property. Someone had fondled his daughter in public. And now a strange delivery to his home by the man who might have committed one of the murders.

He needed to get control of the situation before it spun completely
out of control
.

“I need eyes on my house,” he said, after explaining the situation. “Something’s going on, and I can’t be everywhere at once.”

The captain thought a moment and then nodded. “I’ll put an unmarked car outside. You take care of the Pinney House.”

÷

A team of officers converged on Lima Street, rerouting traffic with their police cruisers at Grandview and at Sierra Madre Boulevard. Then they cordoned off the Pinney House property with yellow crime scene tape from neighbors and passersby.

Extra help came in the form of a ground-penetrating radar unit, the lead forensics technician from the Pasadena PD and his assistant, the county medical examiner and two cadaver dogs. Grosvenor was home, his job done.

Giorgio led the recovery process, bringing the forensics technicians to the back of the house.

“That’s where we found the skull,” he said, pointing to the hole under the basement window.

Forensic Tech, Gerald Fong, was in his late thirties and dressed in a white jumpsuit. Giorgio had worked with him on the Mallery Olsen case. Although he didn’t display much personality, Giorgio found him incredibly thorough.

“Okay,” Fong said. “We may need to remove this bush,” he said, pointing to a nearby rhododendron bush. “But let me see what we’ve got first. Let’s get your photographer over here to take pictures before I get started.”

Giorgio called Mulhaney over, who took several photos. Fong brought a metal tool box from his car and knelt down. He pulled out a thick brush and a small trowel.

“This will take some time,” he said. “The dirt is soft, but it will be a problem if the body extends underneath the steps to the kitchen or has been tangled up in the roots of this bush.”

“Okay, let’s see how it goes,” Giorgio said. “I’m going to get the dogs started.”

Giorgio walked over to the detached garage where Todd Atwater, a stout man with broad shoulders and a trimmed beard, stood next to a black Labrador retriever.

“How ya’ doin’, Todd?” Giorgio said, as he shook the handler’s hand. “Thanks for coming. What do you think?”

“This is a pretty small area, so I’ll take Molly here,” he said, indicating the Lab, “and do an initial sweep of the yard. But there are a lot of things that can affect how well she’ll perform,” he said, cautiously.

Giorgio nodded. “I know. The type of soil, air temperature, humidity, etcetera.”

“Right,” the handler said. “But also rodent holes can do what they call ‘vent’ the scent. So it’s best to use the dogs first to find the general area and then bring in the GPR to pin it down,” he said, nodding to the strange apparatus sitting in the driveway.

“Okay,” Giorgio said. “Sounds good,” Giorgio said. “Who’s this little guy?”

Giorgio leaned over and stroked the head of a young Golden Retriever, who began to wiggle in joyful appreciation of the attention.

“This is Bones,” the handler said. “He’s only a couple of years old, but we’re training him as an archaeological cadaver dog.”

Giorgio arched his eyebrows in question, and the handler smiled.

“Dogs find human remains based on scent. But, once decomposition has stopped and only bones are left, there's less scent for the dog to detect.”

Giorgio’s eyes opened in recognition. “I get it. And we found bones. Okay, great. I’ll let you get to work.”

“We’ll do it in quadrants,” he said. “She’ll lie down if she finds anything.”

Giorgio watched while the handler and his assistant used string and tent spikes to mark off four large areas of the yard. Rocky came over and stood by him.

“Why don’t you oversee this,” Giorgio said, “and I’ll hang out with Fong, while he unearths the bones?”

Rocky nodded and Giorgio went back to where the technician was using a small trowel to gently remove dirt from around the skull. Mulhaney was hanging over his shoulder, taking photos.

Giorgio stayed with the forensics man, watching as he began to unearth the shoulder bones and torso of the skeleton. Mulhaney kept the camera clicking away as individual bones were removed. A second technician stood by with boxes and tissue paper to accept them.

As Giorgio watched, a cool breeze rose up. He glanced at the sky, hoping it wouldn’t rain.

After a while, he began to pace impatiently back and forth. As the clock inched towards noon, Fong finally called to him.

“Detective, we’ll have to remove the bush,” he announced. “Most of the body extends under it.”

Giorgio nodded and waved to a waiting officer.

“Get some shovels,” he said.

The officer left and soon, two officers were carefully digging around the roots of the big bush. The neighbors had accumulated along the street in front of the big Victorian, and officers were kept busy keeping the lookey-loos away.

“Can you tell yet if it’s a man or a woman?” Giorgio asked, hovering over the technician.

“Might be a female,” the man replied. “Just from the size and shape of the jaw. But it’s the pelvis that will tell us for sure. We can’t know more until we get it all the way out of the ground.”

“Okay,” Giorgio said, stepping back and crossing his arms.

“Giorgio!” Rocky called.

He turned.

“The dogs have found something.”

Bones had lain down in front of Atwater in the corner of the yard, near the garage, exactly where Giorgio had seen the image of the girl in the rhinestone glasses. His heart rate picked up. The dog’s face was alight with enthusiasm at his find. Giorgio walked over.

“Someone’s buried here,” the handler said, nodding to the dog.

“Someone? Or something?” Giorgio asked. Even though he knew there were multiple bodies buried on the property, he had to sound surprised.

The handler turned a grim expression in Giorgio’s direction. “They’re both cadaver dogs, Joe. They find human remains.”

“Okay,” Giorgio said with a sigh. He turned to the officers who had just finished pulling out the rhododendron bush. “Guys!” he called. “Over here.”

The two officers shook out the bush, tossed it to the side and moved over to begin to break ground next to the tree.

“Take it slow,” he ordered. “And dig shallow until we know what we’ve got.”

Giorgio moved over next to Rocky, who was standing next to the M.E. The coroner was a tall, thin man in his forties. He watched from under the tent, a look of solemn resignation on his face.

“Looks like you might be busy, Doc,” Giorgio said to him.

“It’s happened before,” he said fatalistically.

Giorgio had always been fascinated by people who chose to study the dead. He had a hard enough time trying to identify dead people and find their killers. The thought of slicing them open and picking them apart gave him the heebie-jeebies.

“How did you know we’d find something here?” Rocky asked, catching his attention.

Giorgio turned back to the activity in front of him. “I had a feeling,” he replied.

Rocky glanced at his brother skeptically. Giorgio saw the look and shrugged nonchalantly.

“Hey, I
had
a feeling,” he insisted. He glanced at Atwater, who had moved to another section of the yard with Molly. “And something tells me we’re not done yet.”

÷

They brought in pizza for a late lunch; most everyone took a break and grabbed a slice. Giorgio called home to let Angie know he wouldn’t be there for dinner. He also asked if any more deliveries had been made. The answer was no.

While he and Rocky grabbed some lunch, Giorgio told Rocky about the empty envelope.

“Whoa!” Rocky exclaimed. “And you think it’s the kid who killed Montgomery?”

“I’d bet on it. The captain has put a car outside the house.”

“What does Angie think of that?”

Giorgio grimaced and glanced around. “I haven’t told her. The less she knows the better.”

“Jeez, Joe. If you’re right, someone you think is a killer has been to your house and looked Angie right in the eye.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Giorgio snapped. “But after what happened to Marie, I don’t want to freak her out. I’ve got eyes on the house and we’ll increase the patrols in the neighborhood. It's probably just someone trying to scare me off this case.”

Rocky shrugged. “Okay. You’re the boss.”

Giorgio inwardly cringed. It had only been a few days before that he’d told Angie that
she
was the boss. Although it had been a playful exchange, now he’d forcefully taken that away from her.

But he couldn’t tell her about the envelope. When he’d almost lost his life in the gun battle in New York, something had changed between them. Angie’s demeanor had become guarded every time he left for work. She’d stopped asking about his cases, and she would turn away whenever he removed his gun and holster in her presence. He loved his job, but he loved his wife, too. Somehow, he had to find a way to balance the inherent danger in his job with his family life.