Love Is Murder Read Free Page B

“Please go downstairs. Give us a moment.” She closed the door over concerned protests.
    “Trevor,” Lucy said firmly, but with great deliberation and calm. “Trevor. Please.” She waited until he looked at her before she continued. “You need to put your wife down.”
    Trevor stared at her. “Who are you?”
    “Lucy Kincaid. We met last night, remember? At dinner, with my brother Patrick. You talked to him about how you grew up in Laguna Niguel. We’re from San Diego originally. Do you remember?”
    Trevor nodded. “Can you help Vanessa?”
    “Trevor, Vanessa is dead. You need to put her down.”
    He blinked rapidly, then he looked at his wife as if he hadn’t realized he was still holding her in his arms. He stared at his dead wife for several moments. Grace tried to talk, but Lucy silenced her.
    “Oh, dear Lord,” Trevor said laying Vanessa’s body back on the bed. He stood and looked at her lifeless body, finally understanding there was no bringing her back.
    “Grace, please take Trevor downstairs,” Lucy said.
    “You need to come, too,” Grace said.
    “I will. I want to cover the body.” That wasn’t the complete truth.
    “We can wait.”
    “Trevor should go now.” She looked at Grace pointedly, and she didn’t know if the hostess understood, but she did walk Trevor out of the room.
    “Let’s get a cup of tea, all right?” Grace said as she led Trevor out to the hall. She shot Lucy a scowl, but didn’t insist she join them.
    Kyle DeWitt was still hanging out in the hall. Lucy said to him, “Please go to the barn and get my brother.”
    “Can he do anything?”
    “He was a cop for nearly ten years, he’ll know what we need to do since I don’t think the police or an ambulance will be able to reach us tonight.” Lucy also knew they had limited options—they had to get the body someplace cold to slow decomposition. Otherwise, as the gases and bacteria broke down, there would be a horrid stench, especially in the warm lodge. If the authorities couldn’t reach them by morning, they would have no choice but to move the body.
    After Kyle left, Lucy closed the door and locked it before going back to Vanessa’s body. Six years ago she couldn’t have imagined viewing a dead body much less touching one, but between the sheriff’s department and the morgue, Lucy had lost any squeamishness she might have had.
    She hesitated before touching anything else in the room. She saw a pair of leather gloves on the dresser, which she remembered Vanessa had been wearing that morning. Lucy put them on, then inspected Vanessa’s body. Touching her skin, she realized that rigor wasn’t well developed. Lucy would guess from the facial muscles and thin, cloudy film over her eyes that Vanessa had been dead at least an hour, but because rigor was still limited to the outer extremities, she didn’t believe she’d been dead longer than three hours. If she had more training, she might be able to pinpoint time of death more closely. The sooner a body was discovered, the more accurate the time of death could be determined, but coroners had more tools at their disposal, as well as more experience.
    Lucy glanced at her watch. 5:24 P.M . Vanessa had died roughly between 2:30 and 4:30 in the afternoon. Lucy was confident that she’d been dead longer than an hour, but three hours was a guess, so she pushed her window to 1:30 P.M . Patrick had been an e-crimes cop and never liked forensics, but he also had a lot of training and might have more insight.
    Lucy studied her surroundings, imagining the likely scenario that had led to Vanessa’s death. Shower. Bathrobe. Pills. Lucy had a degree in criminal psychology, but had studied a variety of mental illnesses, including depression. Identifying a suicide was difficult, but there were reliable indicators. Lucy hadn’t seen any of the standard signs of depression in Vanessa Russell-Marsh, though many clinically depressed people didn’t show outward signs, especially