Ripped Apart (A Ripple Effect Cozy Mystery, Book 5) Page 13

  I don’t know why I felt so strongly that Barnaby was a victim of homicide rather than a suicide, but the fact he was naked had something to do with it. An elderly man in his eighties, who looked as if his pale white skin needed to be ironed, was not your typical exhibitionist, especially when about to hang himself in the middle of his living room. Also, the chances of two unexpected deaths on the same small street in one month didn’t sit well with me. I wasn’t one to believe in coincidences.

  I knew I’d never get back to sleep, so I curled up on the couch with my Kindle and engrossed myself in Double Threat in Ripley Grove. It was a page-turner kind of mystery by a new author named Shirley Worley, and it kept me absorbed until Rip got up several hours later.

  As I placed a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal in front of him, I casually remarked, “I’ve been trying to remember exactly what I witnessed yesterday and am coming up with very little so far. I do kind of recall the medical examiner sticking a thermometer into Barnaby’s abdomen. In fact, that might have been what caused me to pass out.”

  “No. Chuck checked the temperature of Barnaby’s liver quite a while after you regained consciousness. That’s how they determine the approximate time of death.”

  “Oh, really?” Once again Rip was explaining things to me I already knew, but I let him think he was teaching me something new. I was hoping to use my feigned ignorance of the process to my advantage. “How does the liver temperature relate to the time of a person’s death?”

  “Well, it’s not actually the temperature of the liver, per se. The liver can give you the most accurate core temperature of a body, however. It’s more accurate, and in my opinion, less…well, icky, than taking a rectal temperature, which is an alternative method.”

  “That is icky. I recall the vet having to take Dolly’s temperature that way a few years ago. Dolly wasn’t too excited about it either, if I remember right.”

  “Who would be? Yikes!” Rip gave me a look of feigned horror, stroked Dolly in a belated show of sympathy and continued with his explanation. “Assuming the deceased’s body temperature was about 98.6 before he died, they can figure how long he’d been dead by how cool the body temp is at the time it’s checked. Chuck Beatty once told me the body temperature drops something like 1.5 degrees Celsius per hour, until it reaches ambient temperature.”

  “Ambient temperature? What’s that?”

  “It’s equal to the temperature of the environment around the body. Rigor mortis is also an effective measuring stick, although not as accurate, because it generally doesn’t begin to occur for roughly two hours after death and can last from twenty to thirty hours.” Rip had a fairly extensive knowledge of things like this from his lifelong career in law enforcement, yet he had rarely brought his work home with him.

  “So, am I correct in assuming rigor mortis had not begun to set in yet when Chuck was at the crime scene yesterday?” I was fishing for an answer to act as a confirmation of my earlier supposition that Barnaby had been murdered just moments before I’d arrived, and the killer had departed through the back door soon after I’d entered through the same door. My husband would not be pleased to know I’d inadvertently placed myself in such a perilous position. I wasn’t in the mood for a lecture about how I was getting as bad as our friend, Lexie Starr, when it came to reckless behavior, so I wanted to keep the information to myself. Lexie had a bad habit of nearly getting herself killed every time she dabbled in a murder case, and I’d experienced some close calls myself. In fact, we’d almost been killed together in a swimming pool in Wyoming a little over a year prior along with her daughter, Wendy.

  “What makes you think rigor mortis hadn’t set in yet when Chuck examined the body?” Rip looked puzzled as he responded to my question with one of his own.

  “Well, it’s just that it didn’t look as if Mr. Barnaby had been dead long. That’s all. Not that I had time—or the desire—to scrutinize his naked corpse before calling 9-1-1 and unlocking the front door for the EMT’s to enter the house. It’s just that I recall him looking as if he had taken his final breath only moments earlier.”

  “When Jim called me this morning, he said Barlow had been dead for nearly ten hours. Chuck estimated Barlow was killed between two and three yesterday morning.”

  “Really?” I was surprised by Rip’s remark, but it explained why the brash young detective has asked about my whereabouts during the same time frame. “Barlow’s body looked pretty fresh, considering how long he’d been dead. Is that method of measuring time-of-death a pretty accurate science?”

  “Yes. Within an hour, I’d guess.”

  “Oh.” I tried not to look as if the news I’d just heard had blown my earlier notion plumb out of the water. The idea the killer was in the house when I arrived now seemed implausible.

  Or was it? I asked myself. Could the perpetrator have returned to the scene of the crime hours after murdering his victim? That’s not an uncommon practice among killers, I’ve heard. Either way, someone was in the house with me at the same time I was in the living room checking on Barlow’s condition.

  Fifteen

  I recognized Jessie Garza when I rounded the back corner of the Reynolds’s house. He and an extremely tall man I didn’t recognize were standing side-by-side on the back patio, which consisted of recently cured concrete and a wood-and-rope railing around its perimeter. A portable concrete mixer stood nearby. The two men stood rigidly with their hands on their hips as they stared at the long pier extending out into Little Bay. The small bay, referred to as the “ski basin,” was just off the much larger Aransas Bay.

  The guys appeared to have been having a tense, if not contentious, discussion when I called out a greeting. Although I hadn’t been able to make out their words, their voices had been loud and had a harsh tenor to them. They spun around at the sound of my voice and their angry expressions quickly changed into ones of polite indifference at the sight of me approaching them.

  Without speaking, I held out a bag with Jessie’s name written on the plastic in permanent marker.

  “Oatmeal raisin?” Jessie asked, studying the contents of the bag. His friendliness seemed forced when he added, “My absolute favorite.”

  “Good to know. I also brought a bag of snickerdoodles for Tony. Bruno declined the sugar-free cookies I made for him before because they had a tendency to get his colon rolling, if you know what I mean. I brought him a bag of beef jerky we picked up at a roadside market in Burnet instead.” I then turned toward the other man and apologized. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know there’d be another worker here or I’d have brought another bag of cookies or jerky. Perhaps, Jessie will share his with you.”

  Jessie looked at me as if I’d just asked him to donate one of his kidneys to the guy. “Share? Did you say share?”

  “Well, um…I guess I could go bake another batch of―”

  “I’m just yanking your chain, ma’am. Of course, I’ll share my cookies with Walker.” Jessie opened the bag and let Walker reach in and select his own cookie. The second man studied the contents of the bag for several long moments before choosing a cookie, as if skeptical of my motives. I almost felt obligated to assure him I hadn’t added any glass shards to the batter.

  If nothing else, I now knew the second man was Walker Reynolds, owner of the property we stood on. I hadn’t recognized him because his appearance had changed so much in the nine months or thereabouts since I’d last seen him at the block party in December. His hair was now much longer and somewhat unkempt, and like my wavy mop of hair, contained more gray than brown. His eyes appeared rheumy and a bit sunken in their sockets, and his entire frame had lost much of its cushion. Walker looked as if he’d lost at least twenty pounds since the holidays. A naturally slender man, he hadn’t had an extra twenty to lose. And although it was late summer, his skin was pale, not deeply tanned as it’d been the previous December. Rather than standing straight, with proper posture, like Jessie, Walker’s shoulders were hunched over as if the weight of the world
rested on them. The forty-something-year-old guy now appeared to be decades older than he actually was.

  Stress, no doubt, I thought. I hate to think what I’d look like if Rip had gone missing nearly a month ago. But could a guy, no matter what degree of grief he’d been suffering, change so drastically in less than a month? Maybe he’s been under a great deal of pressure for some time, well before the hurricane struck in late August.

  Had I butted in as the two men were discussing the disappearance of Walker’s wife? Or perhaps the status of his home rebuilding project? Walker hadn’t seemed happy about something when I’d first walked onto his property and found him arguing with Jessie behind his house.

  Perhaps he was letting his impatience over the time the rebuilding was taking get to him because of his concern for his wife. Supply and demand were adversely affecting every reconstruction job in the area, and I was sure this one was no exception. Jessie had obviously hand-mixed a great deal of concrete to pour the back patio himself because of a shortage of flatwork contractors and/or open and operating concrete plants. That situation would only get worse as more rebuilding began to take place. The vast majority of rebuilding projects hadn’t even commenced, due to lack of funds and slow responses from insurance companies. Fortunately, many of the houses on Key Allegro were second homes, and the rebuilding of them was not as urgent.

  I felt for the man as I studied the signs of strain on his face: black circles under his eyes, crinkles around his mouth that seemed to be created by a permanent frown, and an overall pastiness to his complexion. Anyone would be rattled if their spouse had suddenly vanished, and they had no idea if he or she was dead or alive. Knowing a number of his friends and neighbors might secretly question his involvement in his wife’s disappearance would trouble him, as well. After all, the spouse was always the number-one suspect in the event of a mysterious homicide or disappearance.

  I glanced down the wooden walkway the men were standing by, which extended out into the bay. The last time Walker had claimed to see Reilly was when she’d chased their little Maltipoo down toward this very pier during the storm. Just looking at it now would’ve traumatized me had it been the last view I’d had of my beloved spouse, as was supposedly the case with Walker. He, however, seemed unmoved by the view.

  “You’re Walker Reynolds?” I asked rhetorically. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. I am Rapella Ripple, Regina Moore’s mother.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Jessie said. “I assumed you two were already acquainted or I’d have introduced you.”

  “We met at the holiday block party at my daughter’s house last winter, but I doubt Walker remembers me from that, just like I didn’t recognize him. We barely crossed paths that night, with so many people there and so much activity going on.”

  “Yeah, and I guess I did have a little too much to drink that evening,” Walker said. His face actually flushed as he spoke. “I do remember your husband, though. He and I talked about the gang problem beginning to show its ugly head in parts of Aransas County.”

  “Sadly that’s true of many counties in the country. I didn’t mean to infer you were intoxicated that night. I think most everybody was,” I explained. “It’s just that I spent more time speaking with Reilly than you at the party. Speaking of which, I am so sorry to hear about your lovely wife. I sure hope she shows up safe and sound soon.”

  “Yeah, me too,” he agreed. His somber expression remained unchanged. “But I’m beginning to think that’s highly unlikely. I don’t know how she could still be alive. If she was, she’d have come back home, or at least contacted someone by this time. The only possible explanation is that after she was blown off the pier while trying to retrieve our dog, she drowned and was washed out to sea.”

  “Wouldn’t her body have resurfaced and washed ashore somewhere by now?” I asked gently. I didn’t want to further upset him. I noticed as we conversed, Jessie remained silent, his eyes shifting back and forth between Walker and me as if he were watching a tennis match.

  “You’d have thought so,” he replied. “But maybe it got wedged up under something, maybe even debris from the storm. There’s an unbelievable amount of debris in the bays and canals right now. My friend tried to get his boat out of the water to be repaired, and as he was motoring up the canal, he hit a Trane.”

  “How in the world did he hit a train in the water?” I asked, flabbergasted at the man’s remark.

  “Not a locomotive train. It’s T-r-a-n-e. A Trane air conditioning unit that blew off the roof of one of the Key Allegro condos. It gouged a hole in his hull and then the condenser coils broke loose and got tangled up in his stainless steel prop. It really jacked up his Blue Wave boat.”

  “I can only imagine. How badly traumatized was Scrappy when he came back home? Is he doing okay now?”

  “Seems to be fine. He’s staying with Reilly’s sister down in the valley.”

  “Mission, Texas, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Yes. How did you know?” I’d like to say Walker’s expression was one of surprise, but it was actually more a look of distrust. With his general contractor glaring at me intensely, clearly on tenterhooks as he awaited my response, I knew I couldn’t tell Walker it was Jessie with whom I’d discussed Walker’s personal life. I decided a white lie was in order.

  “My daughter told me. Naturally, she and Milo are very upset about Reilly’s disappearance, as they’ve always been very fond of you both.”

  “Oh.” Walker still appeared dubious, while Jessie looked relieved. Maybe Walker and his wife had never been as close to the Moores as I’d thought. Pardon me if this sounds a bit biased, but Regina was as friendly as a gal could be, whereas Milo could rub someone the wrong way on occasion. He’d rubbed both Rip and me the wrong way several times, but we’d let it slide so as not to upset our daughter. She considered Milo her soul mate, and who were we to argue the point?

  When, at eighteen years old, I’d told my pappy I’d met the love of my life and was going to marry him, he had snickered and replied, “No, you aren’t. Keep looking. No way I’m going let my little girl marry that good-for-nothing punk.” When I’d then told him I was pregnant with that good-for-nothing punk’s baby, he could not have gotten us legally hitched fast enough. It was what they used to refer to as a “shotgun wedding”. To no one’s surprise, when Pappy died, he loved Rip as if he’d given birth to him himself. His first granddaughter, Regina, was the apple of his eye from the day she entered the world.

  After a prolonged silence I’d spent mentally reminiscing about my father, I told Walker, “Rip and I are here to help Milo and Regina out as much as we can. Rockport is our hometown, you see, but my husband and I became full-time RVers after he retired from his position as Aransas County Sheriff. We just happened to be visiting at the time of last year’s holiday party.”

  “That’s nice.”

  When the silence grew more uncomfortable this time, I decided I’d learned all I was going to learn from Mr. Reynolds. At that point in time, anyway. I bade farewell to the two men and asked, “Mind if I give this bag of cookies to Tony?”

  “I can give Tony his bag when he gets here,” Jessie offered politely. “He’s due here in about half an hour, most likely. At least someone’s showing up to work today. Bruno sent me a text saying he won’t be around for a few days.”

  Would it seem odd if I asked why? I wondered. Yes, it definitely would. But I asked anyway. Being considered odd had never stopped me before, and it didn’t on that day either.

  “He requested some ‘personal time’,” was Jessie’s ambiguous response to my nosy query. He’d also used air quotes, making it clear he was irked about the subcontractor’s request and dubious about why Bruno needed to take time off work. Even though it was his house that was being rebuilt, Walker appeared less angry about Bruno’s absence than Jessie.

  I knew asking Walker’s general contractor to elaborate would seem more than merely odd. It’d seem as if I was probing. I didn’t want to sc
are away one of my main sources of information. “Sorry your sheetrock guy isn’t showing up today, guys, but I do feel bad for Bruno, being diabetic and all. Don’t work too hard. See you later.”

  “Okie-dokie,” was Jessie’s reply.

  “Not if I see you first,” was Walker’s. I knew it was a common response to the phrase “I’ll see you later”, but I wasn’t entirely certain he’d been teasing. His tone had been unreadable, and a person’s tone of voice was something I’m usually pretty adept at reading. Nevertheless, I gave an amicable wave as I walked away. I was glad to have finally met Reilly’s husband, but disappointed I hadn’t been able to dredge any beneficial information out of him or Mr. Garza.

  I’d have to speak with Milo, and Regina, too, I supposed, to see if I could determine why Walker Reynolds’s physical appearance had changed so much in such a short amount of time. If he’d been having an affair with the woman named JJ, had the anxiety of sneaking around behind his new wife’s back caused his hair to change color and his weight to decline? Could he have been suffering from some kind of medical issue, or instead, experiencing money problems? Could a cash shortage, rather than concrete or contractor shortage, be why Jessie had hand-mixed and single-handedly poured and finished the approximate fifteen-by-twenty-foot back patio? Under any circumstances, that was an extremely large project for one man to tackle alone, and one that had been undertaken purely on a whim. It had been Jessie's idea and Walker had agreed to his suggestion, according to Bruno.

  And, speaking of Bruno, what was up with him? What kind of personal matters could he be dealing with today that weren’t present yesterday when he and Tony had shown up at the crime scene within minutes of the three detectives who were the first to arrive following my 9-1-1 call? What had suddenly occurred since then that was so pressing Bruno was unable to come to work? I sincerely hoped the personal time he deemed necessary had nothing to do with the conversation I’d had with him about his former fiancé getting hitched to the guy who stole her from him. There was next to nothing positive that might result from a jealous, jilted lover trying to even a score.