Lisa Jackson - Born To Die

Together they’d gone through the unit, gathering evidence that might have been overlooked before anyone realized that the victim had been poisoned, most likely, in Alvarez’s opinion, murdered, though she didn’t quite understand how the homicide had taken place.

True, there were traces of poison in the woman’s system, but she’d died from the result of wounds from her fall. Had she been delirious and taken a fateful misstep, or had the killer been nearby and, rather than wait for the poison levels in her body to become deadly, given her a little push?

Slatkin unlocked the white van with its shadow of grime where someone had scrawled “WASH ME.”

“I’ll need this ASAP,” Alvarez said as Slatkin arranged the evidence bags to his liking in the back of the van.

Slatkin slammed the back door closed. “Big surprise.”

Tang, her breath fogging in the frigid air as she climbed into the passenger side of the van, assured Alvarez, “We’ll be on it.”

Alvarez made her way to her Jeep just as a blue older model Plymouth rolled into a covered spot and a woman, somewhere in her upper seventies, climbed out. She was bundled in an oversized coat. The second her booted feet hit the cement under her covered parking area, a wildly enthusiastic dachshund in a ridiculous red sweater that matched his owner’s scarf and hat hopped from the car to twirl on his leash. Barking madly, wrapping the leash around his owner’s legs, the dog took one look at Alvarez and stopped dead in its tracks. Dark eyes assessed the newcomer with undisguised suspicion. “That’s a good boy, Kaiser,” the woman cooed as she opened the trunk and hoisted a sack of groceries from within.

Kaiser growled at Alvarez, and his owner, looking over the tops of her glasses, chuckled. “Don’t mind him,” she said. “He’s all bark and no bite.” Slamming the trunk closed, she whistled softly. “Come along, Kaiser.”

“Excuse me, do you live here?”

“Yes. One-C.” She nodded toward her unit, right next door to Jocelyn Wallis’s apartment.

“You’re neighbors with Jocelyn Wallis.”

Her lips drew into a sad frown, and her eyebrows slammed together above the dark rims of her lenses. “Yes. Poor thing. I heard about what happened to her, on the news. I was out of town, you know, visiting Frannie. God, she’s an awful cook. She’s my sister and I love her, but do you think she ever cracks a cookbook or looks up a recipe online? No. Just roasts a turkey the same old way she always does and cooks it until it’s dry as the Sahara, but not her stuffing. Lord, how do you cook a dry turkey and still end up with wet, slimy dressing?” Then, as if she realized she’d been rambling, she said, “It’s too bad about Jocelyn, really. She was a nice enough girl, well, woman, just a little. .” As if she thought better of what she had intended to say, she lifted her shoulders, tugged on the leash, and half dragged Kaiser toward her front door.

“Excuse me, ma’am.” Alvarez pulled out her badge and introduced herself. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to you about Ms. Wallis.” The truth was that few of her neighbors had been interviewed as her death had been deemed an accident.

“Surely,” the woman said after studying Alvarez’s badge. “I’m Lois Emmerson. . But, please come inside, where it’s warm.” Shifting her groceries to her other arm, she walked to the front door of the unit abutting Jocelyn Wallis’s and let Alvarez into an apartment that was neat and tidy.

After setting the sack on a counter that separated the kitchen from the living area, she unsnapped Kaiser’s leash, hung it up, and took off her coat, gloves, scarf, and hat. Beneath the outer layer was a red sweater with white dots… just like the dog’s.

“You knit,” Alvarez observed.

“Voraciously! Never met a skein of mohair that I didn’t love!” The dog’s nose was at the crack of the pantry door, so she gave him half a doggy biscuit and said, “I’ll put on some tea.”

Alvarez tried to decline, but it was of no use. Lois Emmerson declared they both needed to be “warmed up,” and it became increasingly evident that the older woman, as she heated water in the microwave, was lonely. Single. No children. Just Kaiser for company and the poor excuse of a cook, Frannie, as family. It appeared as if she wanted to talk, so Alvarez took off her coat and tossed it on an empty bar stool.

“You were saying that there was something about Jocelyn Wallis that bothered you.”

“No, I don’t think so.” The microwave dinged, and Lois was on it like a flea on a dog, quickly sliding the glass measuring pitcher out of the microwave. Deftly, as if she’d done it a million times, she began pouring steaming water from the pitcher into twin porcelain cups that bore the stains of countless uses. She plopped a used tea bag into her cup, then asked, “Orange pekoe or English breakfast?”

“Pekoe,” Alvarez said, just to keep the conversation flowing. She was standing in the dining area, the kitchen counter separating them, and watched as Lois found some loose tea and dropped a spoonful into the second cup.

Once the tea was steeping, Lois slid that cup across the Formica.

Alvarez reminded, “You said, ‘She was a nice enough girl, or woman, really, just a little. .,’ and then you didn’t finish. What were you going to say?”

“Oh. Well.” As if she were suddenly lost in thought, Lois dunked her tea bag several times, then let it steep. “Jocelyn was complicated, not that I knew her all that well.” She pinched the last drops of tea out of the tiny wet bag, then tossed it into the trash. Immediately Kaiser stuck his long nose into the open container. “Out of there, mister! You know better!”

Tail between his legs, the doxie scurried out of the kitchen. A step behind him, Lois walked into the dining area and waved Alvarez into one of the antique chairs.

“What do you mean, ‘complicated’?”

“Maybe that’s the wrong word.” Blowing across her cup, Lois settled onto a well-worn cushion in one of the chairs. She rested her elbows on the table. “Jocelyn was young and. . not really wild, more like enthusiastic and so anxious to fall in love. She’d already been married, y’know. Not once, but twice, and what was she? Thirty-four?” Disapproval etched the lines near the corners of Lois’s mouth.

“Thirty-five,” Alvarez said. “It’s not uncommon these days to be married several times by that age.”

“Oh, I know. I know, and I’m not judging her.” Shaking her head emphatically, she added, “But it seemed to me that she was looking for a man. Really looking hard. Had dated online, I think, and then there was the father of one of her students, and she just was getting a little desperate.” She tasted her tea. “Again, in my opinion.”

“A lot of men visit her?”

Lois was sipping, but she lifted her free hand and waggled it, as if she didn’t really know the answer. Maybe yes. Maybe no.

“There were some that I saw around here. But I’m not a snoop, so I wouldn’t really know. There was the rancher who was a father to one of her students. I think I mentioned him. Trask or Trevor or. . Tall. Good-looking.”

“Trace O’Halleran.”

“That’s the one. But that relationship was a while ago.” She pursed her lips as she remembered. “I think she was very disappointed about that one. Her biological clock was really ticking.”

“Had she been dating anyone recently?”

“No one I could name. But there were a couple, I think. One man, tall and looked kind of like a bodybuilder, carried himself that way, you know, erect, stiff-shouldered. Drove a dark truck, I think. I only remember because Kaiser, the little stinker, lifted his leg on the truck’s front tire. A Michelin. I remember.”