LITMIR.BIZ

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I looked around earlier.”

      “Maybe one of the other cops did it?”

      “Maybe. And let me guess who. See what the hell I deal with?” His thick thumbs are busy on his phone as he sends a text. “That would be stupid, careless as shit. Probably Vogel. I’m asking him. Let’s see what he says.”

      “Who?”

      “The trooper. You know Typhoid Mary? He’s not thinking straight, probably got the whoop just like you said, should go home and stay home.”

      “Why was the state police here anyway?” I ask.

      “Nothing better to do. Plus it turns out he’s a buddy of Hyde’s, who probably cued him in about the mother. Whenever Hollywood’s involved you know how people get. Everybody wants to hop on the celebrity train. Well it’s a good thing I tried the basement door. Someone breaks in here because we left a door unlocked and talk about hell to pay?” He checks his phone. “Okay here we go. Vogel’s answered. And he says the door was locked for sure. He dead bolted it from inside. He says it should be dead bolted. It’s not.” Marino types a reply.

      “Let’s get out of here.” I carry my scene case past the staircase, into a short hyphen of a dark paneled hallway, heading out the same way I came in. “As soon as we check on Lucy we’ll be back. We’ll look around carefully. Then we’ll take care of the rest of it at my office. We’ll do whatever we need to do.”

      “You’ve heard nothing from her?”

      “No.”

      “I could send …” he starts to say but doesn’t finish.

      There’s no point. Marino knows better than anybody that you don’t send police to make a wellness check on Lucy. If she’s home and okay she’s not going to open her gate, and if the police get in without her assistance they’ll set off an explosion of alarms. She also has a lot of guns.

      “I’m sure she’s fine,” Marino says and now we’re in the kitchen.

      It’s been remodeled in the past twenty years or so, the original woodwork replaced by a knotty pine that is lighter than the wide-board floor. I make mental notes of the white appliances, minimalist with hanging stainless steel lamps, and the Shaker-style oak table set with a single plate, a wineglass and silverware facing a window that overlooks the side of the house.

      I walk closer to the table set for one, and I get the feeling again as I dig into a pocket for clean gloves and pull them on. I pick up the plate, dinner size with a colorful pattern that depicts King Arthur on a white horse draped in bloodred, surrounded by Knights of the Round Table riding after him, a castle in the background. I turn the plate over and stamped on the back is Wedgwood Bone China, Made in England. I scan the kitchen and spot an empty plate hanger to one side of the door that leads outside.

      “This is peculiar.” I return the plate to the table. “This is Wedgwood, in other words a collector’s plate.” I walk over to the empty plate hanger. “It appears this is where it was hanging.” I open cupboards and survey shelves of simple white stoneware, practical, durable, dishwasher and microwave safe, no sign of Wedgwood or anything similar. “Why would you remove a decorative plate off the wall and set the table with it?”

      Marino shrugs. “I don’t know.”

      He moves to the sink where a cabinet is open underneath. Nearby on the black and white subway tile is a stainless steel trash can. He steps on the foot pedal and pops open the lid, peers inside and gets an astonished angry look on his face.

      “What the hell?” he says under his breath.

      “Now what?” I ask.

      “That moron Hyde. He must have taken the trash when he left. The entire bag of trash without even going through it. What the hell is wrong with him? You don’t dump entire bags of garbage on the labs, and last I checked he wasn’t a detective. See what I mean about what I put up with?”

      Marino gets on his phone as I open the door that leads outside, the same door I came in at 8:33 this morning. I know the exact time. I always make a point of knowing.

      “What the hell did you do?” Marino is saying nastily, his earpiece winking blue as he holds up his phone so I can see Officer Hyde’s name in the display. “What do you mean you didn’t and you don’t know?” Marino is loud and accusatory. “You telling me it’s not with you or at the labs? That someone else made off with the kitchen trash and you got no idea? You realize what might be in that damn trash?

      “Try this on for starters, asshole. It looks like she set the table for herself, meaning she was in here probably not all that long before she died and then something happened because she didn’t get around to eating.” Marino’s face is deep red. “Plus the Doc’s found an indication that someone may have tried to clean up blood in the foyer, maybe staging something. Meaning you need to get your ass back here and secure this place like a damn crime scene. I don’t give a flying fuck what the neighbors think of our tying this place up in a big yellow bow. Do it!”

      “Ask him what was in the trash as best he knows,” I say as he continues to chew out Hyde over the phone.

      “He doesn’t know.” Marino looks at me as he ends the call. “He says he didn’t touch the trash yet. He didn’t take it and has no idea what was in it. That’s what he says.”

      “Well it appears someone took it.”

      “He says he’ll find out. Either Vogel or Lapin must have it. Goddamn it!”

      Vogel is the state trooper. Lapin must be the gray-haired Cambridge cop I’ve seen writing tickets around here, the one who went to a seminar and is now a bloodstain expert by his way of thinking.

      “Maybe check with Lapin?” I ask. “Make sure he did something with the trash? Because this is disturbing.”

      “I can’t imagine he would take it.” But Marino calls him next.

      He asks him about the kitchen trash. He meets my eyes and shakes his head as he slips a pair of sunglasses out of a pocket of his cargo pants. Vintage wire-rim military aviator Ray-Bans I got him for his birthday last month. He puts them on, blacking out his eyes. He ends the call.

      “Nope,” he says to me as he walks to the door that leads outside. “He says he’s not aware of anybody doing anything with the trash yet, and he didn’t touch it. Didn’t see it even. And he sure as hell didn’t take it with him. Well somebody did because it wasn’t like this when I first got here.”

      We walk out into the sultry summer morning, the wind light and hot as it stirs the old trees in the side yard.

      “Maybe the housekeeper took out the trash before she left.” I suggest the only other possibility that comes to mind. “Did anybody actually see her leave and notice if she had anything in her hands?”

      “That’s a good question,” he says as we go down three wooden steps that end on the old brick driveway.

      To one side of them flush against the house are two supercans and Marino opens the heavy dark green plastic lids.

      “Empty,” he says.

      “Garbage collection is weekly, probably Wednesdays here in mid-Cambridge, and today’s Friday,” I reply. “So Chanel Gilbert hasn’t put anything in the cans in several days? That’s a bit odd. Did you notice anything that might suggest she’d been out of town and just got back?”

      “Not so far.” Marino wipes his hands on his shorts. “Might make sense though. She comes home and notices a light or two out and decides to change the bulbs.”

      “Or that’s not what happened at all. If we consider other evidence we’re finding the story begins to change.” I remind him of what I discovered when I sprayed a reagent in the foyer. “Let’s make sure Lucy’s okay and we’ll get back here and finish up. If Hyde and others are going to secure the perimeter you might want to suggest

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