“Secure the scene and call in the Crime Scene Unit,” I told Rudy.
Beaton raised his eyebrows. “CSU? This is an accident, right?”
“We’ve yet to determine that. Ask the paramedics to clear their equipment and wait in the bus.” I turned to Adler. “Check with the neighbors. Find out if they saw or heard anything. I’ll interview the wife.”
Before I approached Samantha Lovelace, I studied the scene. The narrow lap pool ran parallel to the house along the western edge of the forty-foot terrace. At the south end of the pool, a wrought-iron deck chair lay on its side. Water puddled around it. A few feet away, a pole protruded at an angle from a clump of sea oats that edged the terrace. Closer inspection revealed a long-handled skimmer net. Several feet north of the overturned chair, Lovelace’s body lay in another large puddle of water, apparently where his wife had dragged him from the pool.
I stared at the beach beyond the terrace. Something was wrong with the picture and I took a moment to figure it out. A wide swath of sand, leading from the terrace between the dunes to the water’s edge, had been carefully raked, like the terrain in a Japanese garden. Nothing disturbed the perfection of the white sugar-sand, no footprints, not even bird tracks, although, in the light of the rising moon, a night heron skittered through the breakers farther up the beach. Several different-size feet had made deep impressions in the sand on either side of the raked area where people had walked the shoreline before the intervening sand had been smoothed. To the west stretched the seemingly unending expanse of the Gulf of Mexico, reflecting a swath of silver moonlight. The scene was peaceful and serene.
Except for the dead body on the pool deck beside me.
“What have we got?”
I jumped at the sudden voice at my elbow. Doris Cline, wearing her usual running shoes, had sneaked up on me. For someone who’d been called out on a holiday, she looked unusually perky, more like a gung-ho, high school, physical education teacher with her bouncy gray curls, wide smile and bright eyes, than a medical examiner.
“You’ll have a dead detective if you keep scaring me like that. Sorry to ruin your Thanksgiving.”
Doc nodded toward the body on the pool deck. “Mine’s not half as ruined as his. What happened?”
I walked her through the scenario I’d garnered from the evidence. “Here, at this first puddle, Lovelace’s head somehow came in contact with that overturned wrought-iron chair. There’s blood on the metal arm. Then he went into the water. His wife claims she found him in the pool, dragged him out and tried CPR.”
Doc knelt on the flagstone decking, poked a finger into the first puddle of water and lifted it to her mouth. I shuddered at the gesture, but figured clear water was the least gross of the fluids Doc had to deal with.
She lifted her eyebrows. “Salt. Was he swimming in the Gulf first?”
“Not unless he raked the beach behind him when he came out, and there’s no rake in sight.”
Doc approached the body and scrutinized the victim. “Bleeding on the temple indicates he was alive when this injury was sustained. Those long scrapes on his chest, however, were post mortem. Probably occurred when he was dragged from the pool.” She lifted the victim’s right hand that sported a diamond the size of a walnut set in a gold band.
“The fact that he’s still wearing that rock rules out robbery,” I said.
Doc checked his left hand with its plain gold wedding band. “His nails on both hands are broken and the tips of his fingers are scraped.”
“Signs of a struggle?”
She nodded. “As if he tried to claw his way out of the pool.”
“Could he have been groggy from the blow to his head, so stunned that he couldn’t pull himself out of the water?”
“I’ll know more after the autopsy.”
“Had he been in the water long?”
She shook her head.
The CSU team arrived. While Doc continued her examination of the body, I asked the techs to take samples of the two puddles and also water from the pool, as well as the blood from the chair arm. After requesting that they bag the skimmer net, I headed toward Samantha.
Although the day had been warm, the night breeze off the chilly Gulf waters was cold, and in her chair on the raised deck, Samantha was shivering. How much from physical discomfort and how much from emotional distress, I couldn’t tell.
“Why don’t we go inside where it’s warmer,” I suggested.
She looked up with a shell-shocked expression and recognition flitted across her deep blue eyes. “I know you.”
“Maggie Skerritt.” I took her arm, tugged her from the patio chair and led her into the living room.
“Margaret? Priscilla’s daughter? What are you doing here?”
“I’m a detective with the Pelican Bay Police Department.”
With the wooden expression of a sleepwalker, she sank into a chrome-and-leather chair beside a fireplace with a mirrored surround and tugged the blanket closer. She picked up a remote control from a side table, pointed it at the fireplace and punched a button. Flames flared from a gas log. Shaking her head, as if clearing mental fog, she asked, “Why are the police here?”
“Standard procedure whenever there’s a death.”
Samantha was ten years younger than I was. She’d always been a beauty and either good genes or a great plastic surgeon had preserved that youthful attractiveness into her late thirties. But with her makeup ruined by pool water and tears, her face appeared ravaged. My job was to sort out how much of that effect had been produced by genuine grief.
I glanced at a massive portrait of two tow-headed little girls holding a Jack Russell terrier puppy that hung above the fireplace. Their resemblance to Samantha as a child was unmistakable.
“You have children?” I asked.
“Two daughters. Emily’s sixteen. Dana’s almost fifteen.” Her face crumpled and fresh tears streaked her cheeks. “How am I going to tell them their father’s gone?”
“Where are they?”
She glanced at a stylized clock of crystal and brass on the mantel. “Landing in Colorado. We had dinner at noon. Then they left with our neighbors, the Standifords, for a week of skiing in Aspen.”
“I know this is hard, Samantha, but I need you to tell me what happened right up to the point you pulled your husband from the pool.”
She inhaled a deep, shuddering breath and wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “After dinner, we loaded the girls’ luggage and ski equipment into the Standifords’ SUV. After they left for the airport, I put away leftovers and cleaned up the kitchen.”
“And your husband?”
“He was working in his study.” She nodded toward a room at the south end of the house. “He’s always working. We were lucky he took time to eat with us today.” Her voice was hard with annoyance before she broke into fresh sobs. “That was the last meal we’ll ever have as a family.”
“And after that?” I prodded. I felt sympathy for her, but the quicker I completed my questions, the sooner I could leave her to her grief.
She wiped her nose with a corner of the blanket, a rough utilitarian item provided by the paramedics. “Vince was still working. I felt a migraine coming on, so I took my medication and went upstairs to take a nap.”
“How long did you sleep?”
Her eyes, filled with agony, gazed up at me. “It was my fault, wasn’t it?”
“Why do you say that?”
“If I hadn’t been asleep, I might have found him in time to save him.”
“Had your husband been drinking?”
She gave a short laugh, more like a hiccup. “Not a chance. He’s a fitness addict. Never touches alcohol or red meat.”
“Did he have an illness or take medication that might have made him dizzy and caused him to fall?”
She shook her head. “Vince just had a physical. His doctor told him he has the body of a twenty-year-old.”
And now Vince Lovelace would be forever young. “Did your husband swim every day?”
“Like clockwork.” The edge returned to her voice. “He always swims laps in the pool every evening before dinner. If he’d shown the same diligence toward his family….”
Trouble in paradise, but discord didn’t necessarily generate foul play. “Did your husband have enemies?”
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