Robert Walker - Final Edge

"That was her attitude? Matter-of-fact?" asked Lucas.

"She was under a lot of stress…depressed, you know," said Giorgio. "It is common under the circumstances of a death in the family. It is something I see every day."

Carlotta, who obviously did not work the wakes, wore a multicolored neck scarf, a halter top, and jeans. Hearing Giorgio's words, she leaped to her feet and came around from behind her desk like a charging bull, getting into Giorgio's face, shaking her head and waving a stem index finger. "She wasn't all that broke up, Giorgio! Don't confuse a stone-cold heart with honest depression!"

"You are too harsh, Carlotta!"

"She took you, Giorgio! We lost on that service, thanks to your thinking with your little head!" She said to Lucas, "That tramp was stone cold and cheap and flirting with my man the whole time. You…you men!"

Giorgio piped in. "Flirting? Come on! Yeah, all right, she was cool perhaps, and cheap, sure. I give you that, but she said the trip to get here on a moment's notice had emptied her bank account, and that she had only come in to bury her mother. I told her all about our memory-preservation and plot-maintenance programs, you know, how we send out anniversary cards with Mom or Dad's picture each year on the date of death, and how we keep up the grounds, place flowers on the grave every other week, but-"

"— but she wanted no frills, just the pine-box special," finished Carlotta. "She went all out for dear ol' Mom," Carlotta facetiously added. "She walked in here wanting to pay nothing, and short of that, as little as possible. And when I told her how easy it would be to take the maintenance plan out of her credit card each month, she said she didn't do credit cards. I had to pry a home address out of her."

"Did you see what kind of vehicle she arrived in?"

" 'Fraid not," replied Giorgio.

"And at the funeral service?"

"Arrived in a cab."

"Alone or with a man?"

"Alone, always alone, she was."

Carlotta let out a low growl like an angry cat. "All I know, she kept coming onto you, Giorgio, to get the price down, and you dummy, you let her. She got a sweet deal on a plot out at Berwyn too, I can tell you."

"Is this her?" asked Meredyth, flashing the open yearbook before the pair.

"Ahhh…hmmm…" hedged the man. "She was older, sexier. No kid like this," he emphasized, as if to say he didn't chase kids.

His wife disagreed. "It's her in the picture, Giorgio, only not wearing that skintight dress she came in here with."

"Yeah, if Carlotta says it's her, it's her. She's got a thing for faces."

Carlotta laughed. "And you, you got a thing for asses."

"Hey, so I got a thing for bodies-ain't it my business? Look around you, Carlotta. Come on, I'm jokin' here. Don't you get it?" Giorgio's arms went up and out, the ruffled cuffs flitting like two downy birds as he spoke. In an aside to Lucas, he winked. "Get it, my business? Bods?"

Carlotta gave her man a cold glare, her arms folded.

Lucas thanked them for their time and escorted Meredyth, clutching the yearbook to herself, out and onto Lowe Street. A ship came into view at the end of the street as if cruising the neighborhood, and it gave a blast of its fog horn, startling Meredyth. "Houston Ship Canal," Lucas explained as she watched the giant dark side of the ship disappear behind warehouses lining the canal. "Doubt you've ever had occasion to visit this side of town."

"What next?" she asked. "Raid Momma Croombs's house?"

"May be impossible to get a warrant. I spoke to Jorganson. He thinks we've got flimsy cause, a string of coincidences, he calls it, but he's going to wake up Judge Diehl. She's our best hope for a warrant."

"Meanwhile?"

"I'd like to see the police report on Katherine Croombs's death. How 'bout you?"

"Well…we have the date of death and her address. Getting hold of the report should be a simple matter."

They drove back for the precinct house and made inquiries, soon getting hold of a computer-generated copy of the police report on the death of one Katherine Croombs, occurring July 17th in the 29th Precinct. The body was autopsied in Leonard Chang's crime lab by Dr. Lynn Nielsen.

The police report, on the surface, appeared a routine mop-up after an unintentional death by overdose of sleeping pills and drink. Lucas commented on how cut and dried the report read, and in fact he thought aloud, "Perhaps too cut and dried."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning when cops don't want to spend all night in the station filling out a report, they resort to generalities like the ones we're seeing here. A cliche-ridden report is like a good paint job-covers a multitude of sins in quick time."

"What're you saying, Lucas?"

"In all my time with the COMIT program, going through all those thousands of Cold Case files, I know when a pair of cops have made up their collective minds to go along with surface appearances, and once an assumption of suicide or accidental overdose is made, it's hard to buck."

"You think this might be the case here?"

"If Lauralie is as dangerous as we've been led to think, yes. I may be out on a limb here, but the reports're too pat, the woman dying of an overdose without any question being raised, especially since-look here at the autopsy report."

She followed his finger to the line on the report he wanted her to read.

"She didn't swallow a lot of pills."

"Although her bottle was found empty on her night- stand," Lucas pointed out. "Cops at the scene made the assumption she swallowed the bottle of pills along with the alchohol."

"She died in bed in a peaceful pose," Meredyth said, pointing to one of the crime-scene photos he'd brought up on screen.

"That's screwy too. Death brought on by alcoholic poisoning doesn't fit with the neat, orderly position on the bed, folded arms, body perpendicular to the edge this way. Nahhh, no way."

"She laid down on her back, folded her arms, readying herself for death," Meredyth said, shrugging, playing devil's advocate.

"When people drink too much-and she had over three fifths of straight bourbon with gin chasers-they don't wake up all ready fixed and folded in bed. Someone posed her body after death. Now it may've been the neighbor who called it in…the one with the key…come in to check on her, but given testimony of the lady, it could've been her daughter, purportedly living with her and in Chicago at the same time."

Meredyth stared again at the digital computer images showing the deceased posed in death, as Lucas theorized- arms folded across her chest, ankles overlying one another. "Could still be an overdose, Lucas, and Lauralie, finding her mother in an unflattering position, poses her. Doesn't mean she killed her mother."

He nodded. "Could be…could be. Report does say she discovered the body and called it in." He paced the Cold Room floor now. "Could also be she did a lot more than pose Mommie Dearest."

"Could be she had to lift her off the floor, the sofa, the bathroom toilet," replied Meredyth, sitting cross-legged on the edge of his desk.

"That's where you find most falling-down drunks, and the investigators look the other way when a loved one moves the body out of a sense of…propriety."

"So you're not buying any of it."

"Lauralie is an effective actress, capable of lulling anyone into any belief she dangles before them. I believe she staged the body and the murder, just as she staged the death of the Mother Superior at age twelve."

"She does have a theatrical flare.

"Had Tebo's temperature rising, Father Will, and I'd bet a month's pay on Giorgio."

"How then did she do her mother in? Simply by providing her with the booze? Going out to a movie and returning?"

"There were unexplained marks on her wrists and ankles, Mere."