[canon] - an excerpt from Nevada Rose by Jerome Priesler
Though Catherine wasn't quite gaping at her computer screen when Warrick popped his head through her office door, she was close to it, the information she'd just pulled off the Internet having widened her eyes considerably.
"Cath," he said. "You're here early."
She glanced at the time readout at the bottom of her monitor. It read 10:30 a. m.
"So are you," Catherine said, thinking that neither of them was technically due in till around two in the afternoon, she being the swing-shift supervisor and Warrick being one of the CSIs assigned to her team.
Of course, if one were to be a hundred percent honest, the delineation between one shift and another got kind of noodly here at headquarters when you were working a case, which was just about always. Most often, in fact, you spent so much time gathering and analyzing crime-scene evidence that the shifts bled together so you wondered why anybody ahd bothered setting them up in the first place.
But Catherine guessed it was better to impose a theoretical structure to the day than none at all. If the homicidal maniacs of the world would only cooperate in practice by doing their dirty deeds in neat punctual shifts, and clues could be discovered according to precisely defined timetables--killers and their hunters alike runing their schedules in synchronous harmony--life would be marvelously divine.
"...Mark Baker at the golf course about an hour ago," Warrick was saying.
"What about him?" Catherine frowned. "Sorry...my mind's in about ten different places at once."
Warrick gave her a puzzled look and then repeated himself, reminding her about the meeting he'd set up with the ballplayer and his lawyer at the charity invitational and summarizing how it had gone.
Catherine listened attentively this time. "You think he'll come in for a physical on his own volition?" she asked.
Warrick wobbled his hand in the air. "I'd put the chances at about fifty-fifty," he said. "Millar won't budge when it comes to advising him against it."
"Conscientious defense attorney that he is," Catherine said without optimism. She produced a sigh. "It'll be easier for everybody if Baker does this voluntarily. We should give him a day or so to decide before applying for a subpoena."
Warrick nodded his agreement. "So," he say, pulling a chair up to her desk. "What's with you being cooped up in here while the early birds are plucking worms out of the ground?"
"You could argue I've been doing the same thing," Catherine said. "I ran a few cross-database searchers on our art conoisseur and plastic surgeon par excellence Dr. Layton Samuels...and also on his devoted wife, Eleanor."
Warrick raised an eyebrow. "Is it just my imagination that the word devoted sounded kind of loaded coming out of your mouth?" he asked.
Catherine sighed wearily. "According to federal records, the Samuelses are officially residents of New Canaan, Connecticut. That's were Layton practiced medicine until about ten years ago and where they still own a home," she said. "Connecticut's also the state where Eleanor Samuels made a court filing for legal separation from her husband around the middle of last month. The grounds were spousal neglect."
Warrick made a confused face. "Hang on," he said. "Weren't the two of them at Seven Hills when you drove out there yesterda?"
"And acting like the picture of conjugal bliss," Catherine said. "Eleanor answered the front door and showed me to her husband's office. She even mentioned how involved she was with running the family business, and Layton confirmed it. He told me she handles all his appointments and computer records."
Warrick looked at her. "They wouldn't be the first couple to carry on a professional relationship after their marriage broke up," he said. "Look at The White Stripes. They made a go of it even after their divorce."
"Did they?" Catherine smiled a little. "Have to admit," she said, "I'm not really a White Stripes fan."
"Then forget about them and think about Sonny and Cher."
"If memory serves, their postdivorce show kind of tanked," she said. "But I get what you mean."
Warrick grinned. "The Samuelses have a lovey dovey image to maintain and a lot riding on it," he said. "I don't know how many readers are gonna take Redoing Your Spouse seriously when they know the author split with his wife. And you have to figure they've got other book contracts in the works, lecture tours..."
"A mini-empire, I know,' Catherine said. "Like I said, it makes sense that they'd want to keep quiet abut their problems. It's just a little surprising they could actually manage it."
"Being personalities, you mean?"
"Yeah. And very visible ones."
"There are even bigger stars who find ways to keep their private lives private," Warrick said. "It's true Samuels was stepping out with Rose Demille--or anybody else--give him credit for keeping it under wraps. There've been no public rows between him and the missus."
"And no sightings of him out on the town with other women."
"Eleanor filing papers on the East Coast probably helped, too."
"That and the fact that a legal sep doesn't stick out like a divorce motion."
"Yeah," Warrick said. "It might have slipped past the gossip trolls who go around digging their grubby hands through court records and hospital admissions."
"Might've," she repeated. "Though once I knew that their relationship was dissolved, or is in the process of coming apart, I started to wonder where Eleanor's been staying."
"Since she can't be living t their home."
"No, she can't," Catherine said. "Not without violating the conditions of a legal separation."
Warrick rubbed the back of his neck. "Suppose she's too careful to have bought a home in her name, hih?"
"But," Catherine said.
"But?"
"But on a hunch, I logged onto Book Highway."
"That dot-com bookseller?"
"Right," she said. "They have that peek-at-the-pages feature, where you type in a search term and it lets you read a sample of what's inside a book."
"And you found something to help tell you where Eleanor lives?"
Catherine smiled. "I looked at the copyright pages of Samuel's books. There are three of them, two registered in his own name: Look Better, Love Better and Body Shaping. But the newest book, Redoing Your Spouse, was copyrighted under a corporate name...Olga Inc."
"Olga?"
"I took a course focusing on Picaso in college," Catherine said. "It's probably no coincidence that Olga Khokhlova was the name of his first wife. What's relevant is that there's a condominium owned by Olga Inc. in the Vista Tower. It was sold six months ago, when the units first went on the market."
"That's one of those four new high-rises right on Paradise Road."
Catherine nodded. "Near the Hilton, right."
"You think Eleanor's made that her residence?"
"What do you think?"
"I think Book Highway might've led us to Paradise when it comes to getting to the bottom of the Samuelses living arrangement."
Catherine grinned. "There's something else my potluck searches turned up," she said. "I don't know what it does or doesnt' mean. But it's stuck in my mind."
Warrick gave her one of those Don't keep me in suspense looks.
"Layton is Eleanor's second husband," Catherine said. "Her first was Carl Melvoy, but that marriage ended back in the nineteen-nineties. November 'ninety-four, to be exact."
Warrick was still looking at her with perked interest. "Divorce?" he said.
"Death," Catherine said. "According to his published obituary in the New York Times, Carl passed away from sudden heart failure. The obit also mentioned that he was a noted plastic surgeon with the Upper East Side Manhattan practice of Samuels and Melvoy."
"Samuels...as in our Layton Samuels?"
Catherine nodded.
Warrick scratched his head. "You know how long Melvoy was in the ground before his widow and Samuels came together under the wedding canopy as husband and wife?"
They were married in July of the following year."
Warrick did a quck finger count. "Eight months later," he said.
Catherine was quite a moment. His tone of voice told her what he was trying to suggest. "There's nothing odd or suspicious about someone marrying a late spouse's friend," she finally said.
"A consoling hand turns into a loving caress?"
"Something like that," Catherine said. "Happens between people all the time. It's probably a more natural way for a bond to evolve than searching for new relationships at singles meets."
"Why not change it all tomorrow, free our love from sorrow?"
"Open up your heart to me," Catherine said.
Warrick smiled thinly. "You know the words."
"Lindsey and her friends are heavily into Nina Tyford," she said. "They've got a whole dance number worked out."
A few seconds passed as they sat smiling at each other in silence.
Catherine managed to pry her eyes from his smile. The way she'd torn herself from his arms when they'd had that awkward moment in the storm culvert investigating a case together a while back. Moments like that could be trouble. And now, as then, she pushed it into an airtight inner compartment and shut the door on it.
Shut the door with a hard slam.
"Okay," she said. "Let's do the checklist bit. See what we know, don't know, and maybe ought to find out next. Layton and Eleanor Samuels were both at Cosmetic Surgery Center and Anti-againg Spa when I got there, acting...how did you put it?...All hunky-dory?"
"Lovey-dovey," Warrick said.
"Uh-huh."
"Were the words I think I used."
"I stand correct." Catherine gave him a look. "Anyway, there they were, the picture of togetherness. When I spoke to Layton in his office, he reinforced that impression."
"And threw cold water on suggestion he was having an affair with Nevada Rose Demille. Though you told me Samuels did admit she'd visited his office for a consultation."
"Check," Catherine said.
"Maybe a couple of times."
"That's what he said."
"But he didn't make much of it."
"Because she never had the work done."
"Cosmetic work."
"Whatever sort of work it was she was interested in. Samuels wasn't specific," Catherine said.
"Didn't Samuels also tell you he and Rose might've been invited to some of the same parties for the creme de la creme of Vegas society? Warrick asked.
"Check again."
"And then tell you they never talked."
Catherine shook her head. "Not exactly," she said. "He did concede they might have had some chitchat."
"Chitchat?"
"That's right."
"His word or yours?"
"His," Catherine said. "Is that somehow important?"
"Could be," he said. "More than the lovey-dovey-hunky-dory controversy, anyway."
Catherine waited.
"The doc could be telling the truth," Warrick said. "But if I was a cynical investigator type, it might occur to me that he wants to make sure he's got his bases covered as far as any sightings of him with Rose Demille."
"Sightings that might look compromising."
"Like romantic trysts," Warrick said.
"Assignations."
"Intimate contacts of the kind Nova Stiles, one of Rose's oldest friends in town, implied they must have had, being that thse told me they were hotsie-totsie lovers and that Samuels might even have tapped some dins out of her."
Catherine looked at him wryly. "I won't ask you about 'hotsie-totsie,'" she said.
"Thanks."
They looked at each other for another extended moment.
"Samuels and his wife are in line for a follow up visit," Catherine said.
"You want to do it yourself, or we gonna double-team them this time?"
"I think we should both talk to them."
Warrick nodded. "Like Friday and Gannon," he said.
"Or Linc Hayes and Julie Barnes," she said.
"Coffee and cream."
"Salt and pepper."
"How about just good cop, bad copy?"
Catherine chuckled aloud. "I think we ought to make it good criminalist, bad criminalist, and quit while we're still ahead."
Warrick looked at her, smiled, and put out his hand. "Deal," he said.
"Deal," she said.
As they shook, their grip lingering for the briefest of instants, it happened again with Catherine's hardened inner vault.
Slam. Door shut. What she wanted kept out stayed out.
Catherine refused to contemplate for an instant how that entry managed to keep reopening, over and over and over, in spite of all her determination to keep it locked up tight.