When the Prior sisters had been driven away, and the cats looked back toward the grove, the forensics team had removed two squares of sod and were lifting out a third, placing it on a plastic sheet, using tools as small as teaspoons. The two men stopped only long enough to pull on protective blue jumpsuits, to tie on white masks over their noses and mouths, and pull on rubber gloves.
Another half hour and the smell of decomposed flesh hit the air like a giant huff of fetid breath. Another hour more of tedious work, and the men had something new to photograph.
Within the carefully excavated grave, an arm and shoulder had been uncovered, protruding from the freshly dug earth, the body misshapen by decomposition. The smell was so strong that even Joe gagged. Dulcie turned away, retching. How could the police stand this?
It took several hours more for the officers to remove the remaining sod, to photograph and measure the body, to bag bits of evidence, and to dust for prints. The coroner had arrived, and later a forensic anthropologist who had been called down from San Francisco; the cats picked up this much from officers talking in the yard, and from the police radio. The sky began to darken, the roof tiles to cool. A little wind scudded up the hills, chill with approaching night. The two uniformed officers who walked the grove searching for additional unmarked graves soon were using high-powered flashlights, and the forensics men fetched portable spots from their cars.
Below the cats, the drive and gardens lit up suddenly, as the house lights came on, aprons of yellow brilliance casting their wash across the lawns and flowers.
Despite the untoward events which gripped the Prior estate, the household routine seemed unbroken. The cats could smell supper cooking, the scent of something meaty and spicy rising from the kitchen, as if perhaps the cook found it soothing to go on with her schedule in the face of confusion and perhaps disaster.
Joe licked his whiskers.“When did we eat last?”
“I don’t remember. Seems like weeks ago. Supper smells so good, I’m tempted to go down and beg.”
“Hey, we have to have some principles. I don’t take handouts from anyone but George Jolly.”
The mention of Jolly left them weak, feeling empty to the point of panic.
It was well after dark when the forensics team finished, and when, in the house, Harper’s men were done bagging evidence, labeling and packing it and carrying it out to a squad car. Not until the police and the assorted experts had all gone, locking up the main house, leaving four officers on duty, sending the help back to their own quarters, did the cats come down from the roof and head home.
Just this one time, they wished they could have snagged a ride in a police car. They were beat. Drained. Trotting down the hills they were too tired even to hunt. They did find, before they left the Prior estate, enough water on the paving bricks of the stable yard to slake their thirst. When they slipped into the brick courtyard, the Mexican caretaker spoke to them in Spanish. But they stayed away from him, they could smell cyanide clinging around him, pervasive as a woman’s perfume.
And even if he hadn’t smelled of poison, they didn’t need a friendly stranger just now. All they wanted was home and their own housemates, their own cozy houses and something warm and comforting in their supper bowls. The arrest of Adelina and Renet, the beginning of official police work on the tangle of events, had left them worn-out. Their comfortable homes, at that moment, had never seemed so sweet.
35 [????????: pic_35.jpg]
“No,” Harper said, “there was not enough flesh on the body to take fingerprints. But we have positive identification-there’s no doubt the body hidden beneath the turf was Jane Hubble’s.” Mae Rose was very still, but she was calm; her primary emotion seemed to be her deep rage at Jane’s death. Harper had wondered if he was being too graphic for these elderly ladies, but evidently not for Mae Rose. Her clear blue eyes were fixed on him not only with anger at Jane’s murder but with a bright, intelligent attention. “It was not only the finger,” she said, “but Jane’s dentalwork that identified her?”
“Yes, and also an X-ray of an old multiple fracture of her left ankle.”
“I remember that. She told me she broke her ankle when she was in college, on a ski trip. That old break pained her a lot in bad weather. And so the X-rays matched?”
“They did,” Harper said. He supposed he was an incongruous figure, uniformed and armed, sitting at the delicate garden table in the beflowered patio of Casa Capri. At their small tea table, besides himself and Mae Rose, sat young Dillon Thurwell and Susan Dorriss. Susan had graduated from her wheelchair to a metal walker-it stood beside her chair-and the brown poodle lay beside it, napping. The entire Pet-a-Pet group was in attendance, the occasion a celebration hosted by the new management. At the next table were seated Clyde, Wilma, Bonnie Dorriss, and old Eula Weems.
“If the finger came from Jane’s grave,” Mae Rose said, “then the other grave, the open grave of Dolores Fernandez, that was just a red herring?”
“It was,” Harper said. “After the dog dug into Jane’s grave and took the little finger bone, Adelina had Dolores Fernandez’s grave dug up to make it look like the finger came from there; and they put new sod on Jane’s grave. Adelina must have had some wild idea-some silly hope, that we’d take the incident at face value, wouldn’t bother to run the finger through the lab.”
“But it didn’t work,” Mae Rose said with satisfaction. The little, doll-like woman amused Harper. Despite her fragile appearance, she’d been bull-stubborn in her insistence that Jane and the others had met foul play.
“When the dog dug up Jane’s grave, that was when Adelina started putting out poison.” Mae Rose shook her head. “Adelina had a regular shell game going, switching patients around.”
“That’s exactly what she had. It started when a Dorothy Martin died, fifteen years ago. We’ve identified Dorothy, too, from X-rays of her dental work. Adelina buried her secretly in the old cemetery, and told the other residents that Mrs. Martin had been moved over to Nursing, and she continued to collect the two thousand dollars a month for Dorothy’s care. Though I guess the fee, now, is more like three thousand.”
“Three thousand and up,” Susan Dorriss said.
“Adelina did the same with the next two patients,” Harper said. “It’s possible both of those were natural deaths, forensics is still examining the remains. Neither death was reported, and the trust officers went right on paying.
“All three patients had bank-appointed trust officers looking after their incomes, paying their bills, people who had never even seen their clients. Bank trust officers aren’t expected to visit their charges; they haven’t the time, and they aren’t paid to do that.
“And none of those three woman had any close relatives who might pop in for a visit. If a trust officer phoned to schedule a visit for some business reason, Renet did a standin, made herself up like the deceased.”
“So Adelina buried her charges,” Mae Rose said, “and went on collecting their monthly fees. No wonder she drives a new Bentley.”
Harper nodded.“Adelina was able to keep most of her scam from her Spanish-speaking nurses, and she nearly doubled the salaries of the three supervisors. She’s always hired nurses who wouldn’t be apt to talk, who don’t have much English and who’ve had a problem with the law. Women she can control through threats and blackmail.” He sipped his tea, wishing he had a cup of coffee, and studied Mae Rose’s overburdened wheelchair-all her worldly possessions. “That doll in your blue bag, Mrs. Rose, is that the doll that Jane had, where you found the note?”