Killer Look

TWENTY-EIGHT

“Alex,” Lily said, “I didn’t know you were coming. You didn’t miss much-we’re just getting started.”

Mike was out of his chair and into my face. “What’s the part of ‘stay home’ that you don’t understand?”

“I honestly have to thank you,” Lily said. “It’s because of you that my father’s body was autopsied this morning.”

“It’s really these guys-” I started to say.

“Could you please give us five minutes in here, Lily?” Mike said. “I need a little time with Alex.”

“Sure.” Lily squeezed my hand as she walked past me and left the three of us alone.

There was nothing to mark the office as her own. It was an empty room with an empty desk and equally empty shelves. It looked like it was her first day on the job.

“If you don’t care about protecting your own reputation,” Mike said, “the least you can do is show a little respect for mine. Who do you think you are? Miss Marple? Stumbling over poisonous mushrooms in the vicarage? Just nosing around in other peoples’ business like you’re going to solve a crime?”

“Whoa, Detective Chapman. Would there have been any autopsy if not for me? You could have been so embarrassed if Wolf Savage had been cremated by his relatives and then you got DNA results matching him to his daughter.”

“Give her some props, Chapman,” Mercer said.

“I tried calling but you didn’t answer me,” I said.

“What have you got?”

I took the small pouch holding two envelopes out of my pocket. “Buttons.”

“Swell. Now what?”

I turned my back to Mike and talked to Mercer. “Remember when we were in the Silver Needle Hotel the other night, and I found a glittery little piece of metal in the carpet?”

“Yeah.”

“A button. Or at least a piece of a button.”

“Could have been there for ages,” Mike said.

“But it wasn’t,” I said. “So I took it to a button store today to see if I could match it to anything.”

“And I take it you did,” Mercer said.

“Here’s what I got,” I said, placing the two different pieces on the desk. “The broken piece is from a Wolf Savage garment. That’s for certain.”

“It was in Wolf Savage’s row of suites,” Mike said, behind my back but clued into the conversation. “I’d expect it to be from his line.”

“Do you have the list of the clothes that were on the hand truck when his body was found?” I asked.

“Sure, there’s an inventory. And I’ve also got a photograph.”

“Look through them both and see whether there’s any item of clothing that’s got an animal pattern on it.”

“I’ve got the photo right here,” Mike said, opening the app on his phone. “Like cats and dogs? Is that what I’m looking for?”

“Like jungle. Wild animals.”

“Not that I can see. Everything on the rack is in light colors. No sign of a safari.”

“I didn’t think so. The clothes I saw when we were there were all pastel. A spring palette.”

“What does that tell you?” Mike asked.

“That the button you vouchered was broken in a struggle,” I said. “And that it didn’t fall off something from the hand truck. Someone must have been wearing it.

I pulled up the photo of the gold-tone object I had spotted in the carpet. I put it on the desktop beside one of the buttons I had just purchased.

Mercer leaned in. “Good possibility, Alex. The devil’s in the details,” he said. “It’s a woman’s blouse you’re looking for, right?”

“WolfWear from the nineties.”

“That puts a woman at the death scene,” he said. “Or a cross-dresser.”

“Or someone trying to frame a woman,” I said.

“What if there was a struggle when someone-or more than one person-tried to put the bag over Wolf’s head?” Mercer asked. “Could be he grabbed a sleeve or an arm.”

Mike picked up the new button and twisted it with his fingers.

“Be gentle-that little devil cost me thirty bucks,” I said. “And just in case you think it isn’t relevant, the morning after Wolf Savage was killed, some guy walked into the same shop and bought another one of these.”

Mike looked at me and winked. “Now you’re talking. Mind if I take this pouch along for safekeeping?”

“All yours, Detective,” I said. “Okay, will you please tell me why Lily Savitsky is here this morning, and what the autopsy proved?”

“The postmortem was just what Dr. Parker expected with a helium inhalation death. Nothing remarkable to observe,” Mike said. “But just as importantly, there was absolutely no sign of disease. That alone justifies the procedure.”

“The lungs?”

“Clean as a whistle. The blotches that presented as aspiration pneumonia when Savage was at the Mayo Clinic were completely resolved. Probably a short course of antibiotics.”

“So as far as the man’s medical prognosis,” I said, “Wolf Savage had no terminal illness? Lily was right about that?”

“She was right. Maybe he was sick and tired of the relatives around him, pawing at him all the time,” Mercer said, “but he certainly was not sick.”

“The toxicology will also be a useful piece of this, won’t it?” I asked.

“Of course it will,” Mike said. “But you know that can take four to six weeks.”

Television shows had such inaccurate portrayals of postmortem tox results, making the reports available to the medical examiner at lightning speed. But the real-life examinations were painstaking and complicated. It was expected that Savage’s blood would have traces of oxycodone in it, based on the pill bottle that was found at the scene, and the news of his prior addiction that Tiz Bolt had provided to me. But the lab would also look to see whether the concentration of the drug was in the toxic or lethal range, and, as usual, check to determine whether any other substances were mixed with it. For toxicologists, there is always a new drug of choice.

“What brought Lily to her father’s office today?” I asked. “I thought she hadn’t been able to penetrate the glass ceilings and doors.”

“Looks like the family members regrouped after meeting with the lawyer yesterday,” Mike said.

“Why? What did the will say?”

“We were just getting into that with her,” Mercer said.

“Did her father include her in his estate?”

“He did,” Mike said. “She doesn’t get as much as Reed, but she’s very relieved.”

“I’m happy for her. Maybe it’ll help her find a way to participate in the business,” I said. “I guess that’s why she’s here today.”

“The reason Lily’s here today, Coop, is because each one of these Savages is trying to keep an eye on the others.”

“Why?”

“Wolf Savage certainly knew he had a daughter named Tanya Root, even if no one else in the family did.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he went the distance and disinherited her.”

“Damn. He had to name her in order to do that,” I said.

“Well, he did,” Mike said. “Is that what it takes?”

I was trying to remember my law-school course in trusts and estates. Just the omission of a child in a will isn’t enough to cut her out of the estate.

“To hold up in court, the child must be specifically named in the document. The man had to state that it was his intention to disinherit her,” I said. “Otherwise, she could have come along and make a claim for a portion of the estate after her father’s death, arguing that it was just an accidental oversight.”

“That figures,” Mike said. “Well, Tanya Root is most specifically disinherited in this document. And none of these relatives even knew she existed.”

“Are you bringing Lily back in to continue your conversation with her?” I asked.

“Just as soon as you hit the road.”

“Oh, I’ll go,” I said, with one hand on the doorknob, “the moment you assure me you’re up to snuff on your Surrogate’s Court trivia.”

“Look, Coop,” Mike said. “Don’t play games with me.”

“Is the name Wolf Savage anywhere in the will?” I asked.

“Lily doesn’t have a copy yet. I figure I can get one when it’s filed with the Surrogate’s Court,” Mike said.

“When David Jones died earlier this year-leaving a one-hundred-million-dollar estate-the media went crazy trying to get their hands on the document, with no success,” I said. “As I’m sure they’ll do in this case-maybe before you get there.”

“Why did the media care? Who was Jones?”

“We all knew him better as David Bowie, but he never changed his birth name-Jones-legally. Little legal factoids like that you might need to know.”

“You mean this will could be drafted in the name Velvel Savitsky?” Mike asked.

“If he was as sentimental about his family and his upbringing as Hal suggests, he probably never made the legal change,” I said. “We all laughed at the morgue when Hal introduced himself as Hershel Savitsky, but the fact is they might never have gone to court to have the actual change made.”

Mike grimaced. He didn’t want to get smacked down again by Keith Scully for having me around, but he knew nothing about the legal issues surrounding the estate.

“Just call if you need me,” I said.

“Get your hand off the doorknob, Coop,” Mike said. “You know I need you.”

I swiveled and rested my back against the door. “Were there any other specific disinheritances?” I asked.

“Lily said no, but we’re not done with her.”

“I’m thinking of Wanda, the housekeeper who found the body. Maybe that child that Wanda babysat for wasn’t Wolf’s kid,” I said. “But things could get complicated if he had this history of fathering children with casual lovers.”

“They’ve already gotten complicated,” Mike said. “You might as well take a seat.”

“How so?”

Mike looked to Mercer and got a confirmatory nod before speaking to me. “Lily claims that her father has a more recent will than this one.”

“What?” I was shocked. “How long ago did Wolf create this will? It’s only been a couple of years since Lily and her father have been getting along, so it must be fairly current.”

“Lily told us that her father had mentioned that he had retained a new lawyer just two months ago, for the purpose of changing some of his bequests.”

“Doesn’t she know the lawyer’s name?” I asked. “There’s no suggestion that anyone has come forward to the family, even with all this publicity.”

“Could be it’s just wishful thinking on her part,” Mercer said.

“You think the only reason she’s in this office this morning is because Uncle Hal and her brother Reed want to keep her from mouthing off about some other will that’s floating around?” I said. “You think they’re just trying to keep her from fishing in dark waters?”

“Everybody’s on tenterhooks,” Mike said. “They can’t possibly know whether Wolf got far enough with a superseding will to make it stand up in court-and whether they do better or worse in the new version. I think they want to keep Lily under their control.”

I was trying to remember everything she told us the first day I met with her.

“They’re sure using the right buzzwords,” Mercer said. “Anything drafted more recently than this, her brother told her, could be tied up in Surrogate’s Court for years.”

“For what reason?” I asked.

“She said Hal was throwing around words like fraud,” Mike said. “That if Wolf changed his will again so shortly after working out all the mechanics of this one because of pressure from a particular individual, they might be able to prove-what’s the expression?”

“Undue influence,” I said. “They’d argue undue influence.”

“That’s it.”

“But who? Who does she claim-or do they claim-was the person exerting the bad influence?”

Neither Mike nor Mercer answered.

“Wolf would have to have been vulnerable in some way for a person to be successfully charged with undue influence. There are thousands of court cases with examples of that,” I said. “Now we know after the autopsy that Wolf Savage wasn’t even ill. What would have made him so vulnerable-even if he had some business problems-that would convince him to change his will?”

“How’s this for vulnerable?” Mike said. “Lily hasn’t mentioned it to the rest of the family, but she thinks her father was being blackmailed.”