Dirty Little Secrets (Romantic Mystery) Book 1 in the J.J. Graves Series (3 page)

Jack squatted down next to me and his every breath sent cold puffs of white into the air. He put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Jaye. I know you were friends.”

“It’s been a long time. George didn’t let her have any close friends.” Guilt ate at my insides despite the fact that it had been out of my control. I remembered a skinny, pale-haired girl built like a dancer with laughter in her eyes. A girl who’d grown into a quiet young woman stuck like so many others in a town that offered little. A woman who George Murphy had taken one look at and decided to claim for his own. She hadn’t had any better offers.

“I’m sorry for you too, Jack. I know you were close once.”

“Yeah, well, that was in high school. Like you said, it’s been a long time.”

“He didn’t bother to condomize for the rape, so we’ll be able to nail his ass with DNA. Let’s get her back to the lab, and I’ll get started. It’s the weekend, so you know everything’s going to be slower. I’ll have to send the DNA to Richmond as soon as you get a sample from George. It’ll probably be the end of next week before the results come back.”

“We’re already on it,” Jack said. “Let’s get her loaded up, and I’ll follow you back.”

I looked into Fiona Murphy’s open, empty eyes, and brushed the matted hair back from her face. I couldn’t give her dignity. But I could bring her justice.

The drive through town was slow due to the fact that everyone recognized my vehicle, and word had obviously spread about Fiona’s death. Cars slowed almost to a stop and gawkers on the sidewalk mad
e the sign of the cross as I le
d the procession back to the funeral home.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I murmured. I wasn’t expecting Fiona to sit up in the back and answer me, so I took the time to swear as I saw a pear-shaped, elderly woman in a peacock blue wool coat and yellow snow boots. Mrs. Meador was flagging me down with the precision of a traffic cop, and I’d be damned if I stopped to give her the time of day. Fiona would thaw before I was able to make an escape. So I gave a polite beep of my horn and a little wave as the Suburban came close enough to touch the sleeve of her flailing arms. She pursed her lips in disapproval, narrowed her eyes, and I knew I was going to get a tongue lashing from the old bat the next time I saw her. Very few people thwarted Mrs. Meador and survived to tell the tale. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Jack shaking with laughter as he turned his sirens on to move traffic along a little faster.

It took almost half an hour to make it back to my lab, which wasn’t good considering it usually took about twelve minutes to drive from one side of Bloody Mary to the other. The funeral home parking lot was blessedly empty, and I pulled the Suburban under the attached carport nearest to my lab.

Don’t let my cloak-and-dagger-like references to my place of business confuse you. The “lab” is little more than a refurbished basement at the funeral parlor, but it’s top of the line and as nice as any you’d find in a bigger city. My parents had been meticulous about every aspect of their business. It was their personal life they hadn’t had very good control of.

Graves Funeral Home was on the corner of Catherine of Aragon
and Anne Boleyn, close enough so people wouldn’t have to go out of their way to find it, but far enough away that I was afforded a little privacy. There was a strip mall across the street that housed an attorney, a Laundromat, and a veterinarian who moonlighted as a bookie out of his back room when he wasn’t castrating steers or selling discounted drugs to anyone who didn’t have good medical insurance.

I waved to Denny Kasowski, the vet, as he watched us unload Fiona from the back of my Suburban with slack-jawed fascination.

“Geez, Jaye, don’t encourage him. I’ve been trying to bust his ass for the last eight months. He’s got his fingers in so many illegal pies that the cage is going to eventually close on him for a long time.”

I started to whistle as I followed Jack into the side door of the funeral home. I didn’t figure it was a good time to mention that I’d bought a case of penicillin and a year’s supply of birth control pills out of the back of Denny’s trunk.

We rolled Fiona down the ramp into the basement lab area, and he helped me get her moved onto a sterile metal table that had a deep indention around the entire perimeter to catch any stray body fluids. I flipped the ventilator on, stripped off the mountain of cold weather clothes I was wearing, and snapped a pair of latex gloves on my hands. Jack, bless his heart, was kind enough to offer to stay with me, but it usually took him less than ten minutes to get sick from the smell. The man could look at crime scenes and blood all day, but being closed in a room with a dead body and embalming fluid was just too much.

“Jack, you’re looking a little green,” I said, my grin evil. “Let me get her set up and get the samples, and I’ll meet you upstairs for breakfast. Jasper Bridges slaughtered a pig a couple of days ago and brought me some fresh sausage to help pay for his mama’s interment.”
Jack went pale, then green. He turned and ran up the stairs gagging. I laughed a little to myself. It was a cruel thing to do, but damned if it wasn’t funny every time.

I turned the stereo on so it blared classic rock and took a deep breath. When I turned to face Fiona I gave her an apology before I got to work. She was only the second homicide I’d worked on since I’d taken the job as coroner. Like I said before, hardly anyone ever dies in Bloody Mary.

And the last murder I’d dealt with hadn’t exactly been something that had the potential to cause an avalanche of trouble if handled the wrong way. Bobby Gentry had been my first murder. His brother Billy had gotten back early from a hunting trip and caught him climbing out of his bedroom window butt-ass naked. Billy’s wife, Loretta, had only been wearing Bobby’s cowboy hat at the time, so I could understand how Billy had jumped to the right conclusion. Billy had left a hole in his brother’s chest big enough that cause of death wasn’t too difficult to determine. And there hadn’t exactly been a lot of internal organs left to remove during the autopsy. It had been an open and shut case considering there’d been a witness and Billy had been more than happy to confess to the deed.

It wasn’t like this time. I already felt the pressure to do right by Fiona, and I’d barely even gotten started. I’d been at the top of my class at Columbia Medical School and worked for two years as an ER doctor at Augusta General, so I could at least tell the difference between an anus and an aneurism, but I was only a coroner because I wasn’t board certified to be a pathologist. I’d had to take a Board Examination to get my mortician’s license, but I’d had the advantage of growing up in a funeral home on top of my medical background, so it hadn’t been difficult.

A coroner wasn’t unusual in small towns. Usually the town doctor took on the position, but Doc Randall hadn’t wanted the job (smart man), so I’d been the next best thing. Considering Doc Randall had already seen the early side of eighty, I was thinking I might eventually get to take over his job and do what I was trained for. But considering all the women in my family had died before the age of fifty, I wasn’t holding out too much hope.

Jack would take a little while to turn back to his normal color, so I set to work on preparing Fiona’s body. I gathered a blood and semen sample to send to Richmond, and then switched on my black light to look for fibers. I bagged what I found, cleaned her body with strong smelling disinfectant, then took out my recorder to officially document my findings.

I flipped the stereo off so there would be no questions if the tapes needed to be heard at a trial. “Fiona Murphy. Caucasian female. Age thirty. Victim has shoulder length blonde hair and blue eyes. Small, crescent shaped birthmark on right thigh, and small tattoo of what seems to be a dragon on left buttock.”

I couldn’t imagine what Fiona had been thinking when she’d picked a dragon for her symbol. Actually, I couldn’t believe she’d gotten a tattoo at all. I looked her over once more before I started listing the other marks that marred her skin. Her body had enough damage to fill up every official document I had.

“Swollen tissue around neck due to strangulation. Multiple hemorrhages in neck muscles and broken blood vessels between the head and shoulders are also indicative of strangulation. Multiple contusions on both right and left arms and abrasions on wrists indicate she was restrained.”

I looked closer at her wrists, turning them over slowly in my hands, and then I moved down the table to look at her ankles. There were old burn marks. Fiona had been tied up before. Interesting.

“Evidence shows signs of old ligature abrasions around both wrists. Deep bite marks found on both left and right breast, probably more than a week old by discoloration around area. Bruising around ribs one, five, six and seven. Contusions and slight abrasions on hip bones. Secondary set of bite marks found on both thighs. There are abrasions on both knees, and again, old ligature marks on ankles.”

I took measurements of the bite marks on her breasts and thighs. And then I did it again.

The marks belonged to two different people. What the hell had George made her participate in? Her feet and face seemed to be the
only
part of Fiona’s body that didn’t have a mark of some kind. Not even her murderer had tortured her as much as her own husband.

I stopped my train of thought. Jack’s impression of the murder scene already had me declaring George’s innocence. I flipped Fiona over and went through the same routine as quickly as possible. I almost felt guilty for working on her. Fiona needed some peace in death.

What made it worse was she’d been killed just as she’d found the courage to escape a life of misery. I shook my head and covered her body in one of the white sheets I kept folded on the shelf. I rolled her into the refrigeration unit, washed up at the sink by the stairs and headed up the stairs to meet Jack. I closed the reinforced steel door that protected the dead while I was away and locked it behind me.

Jack sat at the small table in the kitchenette that had been added on to the downstairs of the funeral parlor when my parents had first married. I looked at the clock, surprised that I’d been at it almost an hour.

“You are a sadistic bitch,” he said.

“Yeah, isn’t it great?” The green tinge had left his cheeks, but he was still pale. “Here are your samples,” I said as I handed him a small paper bag. I tossed the file of notes I’d taken on her body in front of him, and he gave me a curious look before he picked up the file and began to read. Looking at the torture Fiona’s body had been through had affected me more than I’d expected.

His mouth tightened as he saw the extensiveness of the damage to Fiona’s body. And then he stiffened. “Two sets of bite marks? You’re sure?”

“I measured them twice. But who the hell knows who the second set belongs to.”

“I’ll get someone to take an imprint of George’s mouth so we can compare. I have no idea who else is going to come up in this investigation, but things could get sticky.”

“I really hope you’re wrong, Jack. I want it to be George.”

“There’s all kinds of justice, Jaye. If George is responsible then he’ll pay.”

I nodded and wrapped myself back up in my coat and gloves. “Let’s grab some breakfast. I’ve been up for hours and I’m starving.”

“Are you still having problems sleeping? You should have bought illegal sleeping pills from Denny instead of those birth control pills. It’s not like you have to worry about getting pregnant wearing outfits like that.”

I narrowed my eyes, but my lips twitched before I could help it. It was hard to argue with the truth.

“You’re a bastard.”

“But you love me,” he said, pulling my hat down low so it covered half my face. “Let’s go. I want to stop by the Murphy’s and see what my boys have found before we get breakfast. I’ll drive the sample into Richmond myself so it gets there before they close for the day.”

Jack looked towards the basement stairs and back at me. I saw the conflict and indecision on his face on whether or not he could eat breakfast with me and keep it down. I had a tendency to talk shop at the dinner table.

“You own me for that stunt you pulled earlier. If I wasn’t such a gentleman I’d make you buy breakfast.”

It was a good thing Jack was a gentleman because I only had about four dollars and seventy-three cents in my wallet.

###

Fiona’s car was being towed away as we passed by the scene of the murder. An officer stood in the middle of the road, flagging us down as we made our way towards the Murphy’s.

“What’s up, Riley?” Jack asked.

“I just thought I should give you this, Sheriff,” he said, handing Jack a small key. “I found it in a second search of the car. It had fallen between the seats, so I had a little trouble getting it out.”

“It’s a safe deposit box key,” Jack said, holding it out to me to get a look at. “I’ve got one just like it for First National here in town. Good work, Riley.” Jack put the car in gear and headed to the end of the street.

The crowd had dispersed to go back to their homes or jobs, and there were only two police cars parked in front of the Murphy house when we got there. A pair of scuffed boots stuck out from underneath George’s truck, so Jack and I headed in that direction to see if anything of consequence had been found.