The Trophy Exchange (A Lucinda Pierce Mystery) Read online

  THE TROPHY EXCHANGE

  A Lucinda Pierce Mystery

  by

  Diane Fanning

  Copyright © 2008 Diane Fanning

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Fanning, Diane

  The trophy exchange

  1. Women detectives – United States – Fiction

  2. Detective and mystery stories

  1. Title

  813.6 (F)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6635-6 (cased)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  To my mother, Jessie Ann Butcher, who gave me a love of reading

  and to my elementary school librarian, Eleanor Riffle, who cultivated that love into a lifelong passion

  One

  Eight-year-old Charley Spencer bounded up the broad white steps of the porch of her curlicue-embellished Victorian home. She pushed open the heavy front door then turned back to the street and waved goodbye to her best friend Becca and her mother as they drove away from the curb.

  She pushed the door closed and hollered, “Mo-oo-om, Ru-uu-bee.” The smell of fresh baked cookies made her smile. She dropped her knapsack by the foot of the elegant, curved wooden stairway that led to the second floor.

  The tantalizing smell drew her into the kitchen with the single-minded intensity of a dog to sizzling bacon. On the counter beside the oven, a baking sheet sat half-full of sagging but still rounded globs of cookie dough. On the island, a dozen chocolate chip cookies covered the cooling rack. She snatched one and sank her teeth in – just the way she liked them, crunchy on the edges, gooey in the middle and sweet enough to break a heart.

  She gobbled the cookie up in record speed then grabbed another one. The second one she would savor, taking tiny bites letting the chocolate soften and ooze across her tongue and allowing each little crunch of walnut to release a separate burst of flavor.

  She munched on the cookie as she went back into the hallway. She spewed cookie crumbs into the air as she shouted out again, “Mo-oo-om, Ru-uu-bee.” She wiped her lips with the back of her hand as she climbed the stairway to the second floor. She called out for her mother and sister again as she entered Ruby’s bedroom. No one there. She looked in her own bedroom. Nope, not there. Then she headed to the master bedroom suite. It used to be two bedrooms but that was one of the things her parents had changed in the large, old house, taking out a wall and adding a walk-in closet and a huge master bath.

  She saw no one in the bedroom. Poked her head into the bathroom and no one was there either. She walked into the closet and went to the back corner where a cubbyhole jutted off with more storage. Unease creased her brow and turned the cookie crumbs in her mouth into irritating pebbles. Then, she heard footsteps downstairs and grinned as she rushed down to the first floor. On the bottom landing, she jerked to a sudden stop. The front door was hanging wide open.

  She sucked in a deep breath. I closed that door when I came in. I know I did, she thought. She expelled air in her lungs and headed over to the door to see if Mom and Ruby were on the front porch looking for her to come home. She saw nothing but the steps, the intricate white railings and a very still green porch swing.

  She stepped back into the house, pushed the door shut with both hands, then turned around and pushed against it with her back for good measure. That’s when she noticed the door under the stairs was wide open, too. The door to the basement. Charley hated the basement. She didn’t like going into the finished area where concrete covered the floor of the laundry room and a washer, dryer and laundry tub stood ready for duty. Even worse was the unfinished part of the cellar with its dirt floor and spiderwebs. Just thinking about that part of the basement suffused her senses with primordial dread.

  That was why she was uncomfortable in the brightly lit laundry room. Whenever she was there she was consumed by a painful awareness that the dark, musty underworld of the house lay just beyond the door. She imagined a realm ruled by legions of rats. She’d never actually seen one but her fantasy contained creatures with shiny demon eyes, fang-like teeth, thick, long, whip-like tails and claws capable of shredding flesh from bones in seconds flat.

  She stood at the top of the open wood plank stairs and trembled. “Mom? Ruby?” Her voice quavered. She heard a small whimper and forced a foot down one step. “Mom? Ruby?” The words formed a lump in her throat as they escaped from her mouth. She took another step. “Mom? Ruby? Mom?”

  She smelled the musty odor that reminded her of dark dreams and forbidden places. In the bottom corner of the stairway, she saw a brown six-legged predator dangling from the ceiling on a silken thread. It swung in small arcs in the draft caused by the open door. She shivered in revulsion. Goosebumps raced up and down her arms and legs.

  She heard a sloppy wet sound that made her want to turn, run up the stairs, slam the door, hide under her bed. She breathed in deeply and exhaled hard. The calming breath jogged a familiar memory. The sloppy noise seemed the same as the sound Ruby made when she sucked her thumb. But Ruby hadn’t sucked her thumb since before last summer. “Mom? Ruby?”

  She took another step and bent over. She peered through the banister to the basement below. She saw Ruby sitting on the floor, a thumb in her mouth. The fingers of her other hand were tangled in her hair twisting with quiet desperation. “Ruby!” Charley shouted.

  Ruby scooted back on her rump snuggling closer to the lump on the floor. The lump was their mother. Charley screamed. Ruby cringed and sucked on her thumb at a more furious pace.

  Their mother was stretched out flat on the cold, hard slab. A concrete block rested flat on her face. Her arms were sprawled at angles from her sides as if she was caught in the act of making angels in the snow. Ruby pushed back farther into the triangle formed between her mother’s arm and her torso.

  The rats fled from Charley’s mind. The real horror exceeded the capacity of her imagination and was right before her eyes. She raced down the remaining stairs. “Mom? Mom? Mom? Ruby? Ruby? What happened, Ruby?”

  Ruby’s eyes widened, her black pupils swallowing her dark brown irises. She whimpered while she sucked her thumb. Charley knelt by her mother’s side. She touched her arm. It was still warm. But her chest did not move – no rise, no fall. She laid her ear below her mother’s breast listening for the sound of her heart beat. How many times had she said, “I hear your heartbeat, Mama?” How many times did her mother say, “It beats for you, Charley”. But now, it did not beat at all.

  With both hands, Charley pushed on the concrete block, shoving it off her mother’s face and on to the floor. Where her mother’s face should have been, Charley saw a gory mass of shredded flesh and shattered bone. Charley’s hand flew to her mouth and she scrambled to her feet. At the laundry sink, she rose up on her toes, leaned over and heaved up the birthday cake and ice cream she had eaten just a short time before. She grabbed the old frayed washcloth that hung over the faucet. She turned on the water, wet the cloth and wiped her face with shaking hands.

  She looked back at Ruby who had not yet turned and glimpsed the ravaged visage that used to host the warmth of their mother’s smile. She stepped in front of the three-year-old and stuck her hand out to her sister. “Ruby, come on.”

  Ruby snuggled up closer to her mother and shook her head. Charley sucked in a straggly breath and kneeled in front of Ruby with outstretched arms. “C’mon, Ruby.” Still Ruby would not co
me to her.

  Charley slid her hands under Ruby’s arms and pulled her up. Her legs staggered under the weight of her three-year-old sister. She pressed Ruby’s face to her chest to keep her from seeing their mother’s face when she turned around and headed for the stairs.

  Ruby wriggled to get free. When she failed, her thumb flew out of her mouth and she wailed. Her high-pitched squeal pierced Charley’s ears but she still held Ruby tight.

  “Ssssh. Sshhh, Ruby,” Charley whispered as she patted Ruby’s back. She wanted to set her sister down and let her walk up the steps under her own power, but she feared if she did, Ruby would race back to her mother and see the carnage that was etched forever in Charley’s own mind. She held tight to her squirming burden and climbed, one shaky step at a time up to the top of the stairs.

  She set Ruby down in the hallway. She shut the door. She turned the skeleton key in the lock. She slid the key into her pocket. Ruby hung on the doorknob with both hands. She rocked back and forth trying to force the door open. Whimpering. Sobbing. Shrieking.

  Charley picked up the phone and pressed 9-1-1.

  “9-1-1. Where is your emergency?”

  “I’m at home,” Charley whispered.

  “You have to speak up. Where is your emergency?”

  “I’m at home.”

  “Where’s your home?”

  “457 Cross Street.”

  “What is your emergency?”

  “My mom.”

  “What’s wrong with your mother?”

  “Someone hurt her.”

  “Can she come to the phone?”

  “No. No,” Charley sobbed. “She can’t come anywhere.”

  “Is the person who hurt your mother still in the house?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you alone with your mother?”

  “Yes. No. I mean, my little sister Ruby is here. Somebody needs to help my mom. Please help.”

  “The police and an ambulance are on their way. What’s your name?”

  “Charley.”

  “How old are you, Charley?”

  “Eight.”

  “Do you know any of your neighbors?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there one that is safe? That your mom says is safe?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you take your little sister and go there, now?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You need to get out of the house right now and go straight to your neighbor’s house. Okay?”

  Charley dropped the phone on the floor and grabbed one of Ruby’s hands off the doorknob to the basement and pulled. Ruby clung tight with the other hand. Charley jerked it loose and dragged her kicking, screaming sister to the front door. She could still hear the sound of the dispatcher’s tinny voice coming out of the discarded telephone but could not understand a word she said.

  Out on the porch, Ruby went limp. She hung like a dead weight from Charley’s hand. Charley hoisted Ruby up on her small hip and hurried down the front steps with her sister in tow. She wanted to do as she was told and escape to a neighbor’s house, but she was afraid to leave the yard – afraid to open the gate and step out on to the sidewalk. She coaxed her sister to the side of the porch. Around its base, three-foot-high lattice work covered a storage area for the lawn mower and garden tools.

  Ruby’s thumb was back in her mouth but even with that obstruction, she was able to rub her dripping nose on her older sister’s shoulder. Charley hid her repulsion, stifled her scold and moved to the door in the lattice. She sat Ruby down on the ground. On her knees, she reached inside the under-porch and pushed on the lawn mower frame driving the machine deeper into the speckled darkness. She picked up Ruby again. She stooped over and pushed down on the back of Ruby’s head to clear the opening. She pulled the door shut behind them.

  Charley sat down in the dirt with Ruby in her arms. She rocked back and forth as much to comfort herself as to quiet her sister. She put her lips up to Ruby’s ear and whispered a song, “Hush, little Ruby, don’t you cry. Charley’s gonna buy you an apple pie.”

  While they huddled under the porch, Charley listened for the sounds of sirens. She imagined them several times before their clarion call was clear. Across the neighborhood, faces inside houses peered from windows, those outside turned their ears to the sky. All counted their blessings – except for two little girls in the dark.

  Two

  As the crime scene truck rumbled its bulk around the corner and on to Cross Street, officers scrambled to move the vehicles in front of the house to make room for the over-large van at the curb. An unmarked pulled up to the other side of the street and Homicide Investigator Lieutenant Lucinda Pierce sat in her car pressing down on her growing anxiety. The muted susurrations of blood rushing through her jugular vein roared in her head like a stadium cheer. When she swallowed, the gulp sounded like a sonic boom. She didn’t like looking at herself since the shotgun blast had ripped across her face, but she flipped down the visor anyway. She knew if she could face that sight, she could face anything.

  She sighed, slapped the visor back into place and opened the car door. She checked to make sure her cream-colored silk T-shirt was tucked firmly in the waistband of her black pantsuit. Her look was tailored to the point of severity, adorned only by a simple gold wristwatch and two small gold studs on her ear lobes. She stretched long legs out onto the road and headed straight for the house flashing her gold badge at the officers in her path. It had been two years since her injury. Her determined approach to rehabilitation was a department legend and the people she worked with had grown accustomed to her face. Their shocked reactions were no longer a source of Lucinda’s dread.

  Under investigation and off the streets for three months for a shooting incident, this excursion was her first visit to a crime scene since Internal Affairs lifted her probation and allowed her to return to full-time status. She was too self-conscious about her recent professional turmoil to look any of the other cops in the eye.

  A couple of the men shouted words of encouragement: “Way to go, Loot” and “Glad to see ya back on the streets”.

  She just looked straight ahead and did not respond. At 5’11" before she slid into her black pumps, looking at the air above the heads of most of the officers was a natural place for her to focus her eye.

  She knew she could not screw this one up. She was cleared of wrongdoing in her Excessive Violence hearing but it would all mean nothing if she blew it her first time out of the chute. The apprehension she’d felt at her first homicide case years ago was nothing compared to the anxiety she felt now.

  Ted met her at the gate and hurried up the sidewalk after her. Even with the long legs of his 6’4" frame, he labored to keep pace with her rapid strides, briefing her as she moved toward the basement door. Their footsteps echoed down the rough-cut wooden stairs as they made their way into the cellar. She acknowledged nothing he said but Ted’s presence at the scene allowed Lucinda to relax a bit. She trusted him more than anyone else on the force. She’d known him for years. The two had dated in high school but when they went off to their separate universities, they drifted apart. They both married after graduation. Lucinda’s childless marriage lasted a short two years. The wedding of Ted and his college sweetheart demonstrated more staying power and produced two kids. She felt a brief twinge of regret for what might have been.

  Although Lucinda’s non-responsiveness would have rattled many other officers, it didn’t faze Ted. In addition to their ancient history together, he’d worked with Lieutenant Pierce at crime scenes before and he knew she heard, understood and absorbed every word he said. She stopped two feet from the body. Ted jerked to a stop to keep from running into her back.

  “Killed by that concrete block?” she asked.

  “Seems so,” Ted replied.

  “Is this what the scene looked like when you arrived?”

  “Except for the leads attached by the paramedics, yes.”

  Lucinda looked at the shirt
hanging open around the dangling leads. “Completely clothed?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t move the block?”

  “No.”

  “Where’s the girl, who called 9-1-1 ,” Lucinda asked.

  “We don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “She’s not in the house – neither of the girls are. The 9-1-1 officer told them to go to a neighbor’s house. Uniforms are going door-to-door looking for them now.”

  “Oh, jeez,” Lucinda said, shaking her head. “Where’s the blood?”

  “There’s not much – just a small puddle around her head.”

  “That’s not enough. That’s just oozing blood – draining blood. Where’s the blood from the blunt trauma? Look. See how close she is to the washer and dryer. That white porcelain should be covered with spatter. Nothing’s there. Where’s the coroner?”

  “He’s on his way. He was called just moments after the call went into your office.”

  “She either wasn’t killed here or she wasn’t killed with that block.”

  “We didn’t find signs of a struggle anywhere else in the house.”

  “Interesting. How long does it take the damn coroner to get here? Call them again.”

  Ted reached for the key on his radio and stopped at the sound of a familiar voice booming down from the top of the stairs. “Don’t get your knickers in a wad, Lieutenant. I’m here.”

  “Dr. Sam. About time.”

  “I’m two years from retirement, Lieutenant. Don’t move as fast as I used to. Besides, none of my patients are ever in a hurry.”

  Watching his descent, Lucinda laughed. White hair plastered to his head as if he’d just stepped out of the shower. White whiskers poked out of his chin – he hadn’t taken the time to shave before responding to the scene. “Okay, Doc. One look at you and I can’t complain – you sure didn’t stop for a beauty treatment on your way here.”