“Yes, ma’am, that’s for damn sure,” he says. “And yes, I’d like to read anything you got. I don’t know what to expect, what to do about any of this,” he repeats himself. “I’m out here if you have any questions. I’ll be right here inside the car.”
He shuts his door. My chest is tight. I am touched by his pain, yet I can’t feel sorrow for his slain sister. If anything, the portrait he paints of her makes me like her even less. She wasn’t even decent to her own flesh and blood. Berger says nothing as we climb the front steps and I sense her never-ending scrutiny. She is interested in my every reaction. She can tell that I still resent Diane Bray and what she tried to do to my life. I make no effort to hide it. Why bother at this point?
Berger is looking up at the porch light, which is faintly illuminated by the headlights of Eric Bray’s car. It is a simple glass fixture, small and globe-shaped, supposed to be held into the fixture by screws. Police found the glass globe in the grass near a boxwood where Chandonne apparently tossed it. Then it was simply a matter of unscrewing the bulb, which “would have been hot,” I tell Berger. “So my guess is he covered it with something to protect his fingers. Maybe he used his coat.”
“No fingerprints on it,” she says. “Not Chandonne’s prints, according to Marino.” This is news to me. “But that doesn’t surprise me, assuming he covered the bulb so he didn’t burn his fingers,” she adds.
“What about the globe?”
“No prints. Not his.” Berger inserts the key in the lock. “But he might have his hands covered when he unscrewed that, too. Just wonder how he reached the light. It’s pretty high up.” She opens the door and the alarm system begins beeping.
“Think he climbed up on something?” She goes to the key pad inside and enters the code.
“Maybe he climbed up on the railing,” I suggest, suddenly the expert on Jean-Baptiste Chandonne’s behavior and not liking the role.
“What about at your house?”
“He could have done that,” I reply. “Climbed up on the railing and steadied himself against the wall or the porch roof.”
“No prints on your light fixture or the bulb, in case you don’t know,” she tells me. “Not his, at any rate.”
Clocks tick-lock in the living room, and I remember how surprised I was when I walked into Diane Bray’s house for the first time, after she was dead, and discovered her collection of perfectly synchronized clocks and her grand but cold English antiques.
“Money.” Berger stands in the living room and looks around at the scroll-end sofa, the revolving bookcase, the ebonized sideboard. “Oh yes, indeed. Money, money, money. Cops don’t live like this.”
“Drugs,” I comment.
“No fucking kidding.” Berger’s eyes move everywhere. “User and dealer. Only she got others to be her mules. Including Anderson. Including your former morgue supervisor who was stealing prescription drugs that you assumed were being disposed of down the morgue sink. Chuck what’s-his-name.” She touches gold damask draperies and looks up at the valances. “Cobwebs,” she observes. “Dust that didn’t just appear during these last few days. There are other stories about her.”
“There must be,” I reply. “Selling prescription drugs on the street can’t account for all this and a new Jaguar.”
“Brings me back to a question I keep asking everyone who will stand still long enough for me to talk to them.” Berger moves on toward the kitchen. “Why did Diane Bray move to Richmond?”
I have no answer.
“Not for the job, no matter what she said. Not for that. No way.” Berger opens the refrigerator door. There is very little inside: Grape-Nuts cereal, tangerines, mustard, Miracle Whip. The two percent milk passed its expiration date yesterday. “Rather interesting,” Berger says. “I don’t think this lady was ever home.” She opens a cupboard and scans cans of Campbell’s soup and a box of saltine crackers. There are three jars of gourmet olives. “Martinis? I wonder. She drink a lot?”
“Not the night she died,” I remind her.