Head To Head

Book 1: Claire Morgan Thriller Series

by Linda Ladd

Genres: Police Procedurals; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

Former L.A. homicide detective Claire Morgan finds her new life in a peaceful rural town shattered by a brutal celebrity murder at an ultra-exclusive "wellness" resort that leads her into the arms and into the bed of the prime suspect, wealthy Dr. Nicholas Black. Original.

Release date: March 1, 2006

Publisher: Pinnacle

Print pages: 384

Sample

LIFE WITH FATHER

Nobody knew what really went on in the embalmer’s house. It appeared normal enough where it sat on a dirt road on the outskirts of town. Surrounded by dense woods of white oak, maple, and hickory trees, the house was constructed in 1902, but now the white clapboards had been repainted countless times through decades of families. A converted coach house stood at the back of the property, where a wide creek rippled over smooth, tan rocks. Both structures had been neglected and had weathered to gray, and the white curlicues along the ceiling of the porches and the once ornate banisters were peeling paint, giving a forlorn, abandoned look to the place. The dining room in the main house had a curved turret window seat that overlooked the wraparound porch, and above the dining room, on the second story of the turret, was a large master bedroom.

The property had belonged to the same family ever since the houses’s construction; in each generation the oldest son was always the owner of the house and an apprentice in the lucrative embalming trade. Inside, the rooms remained timeless, spacious, and dark with faded floral wallpaper and massive mahogany furniture, which intimidated children in the dark of night. The attic was unfinished and dusty, with old trunks and books and the smell of mothballed clothing.

No one ever visited the house unless they wished to have a corpse prepared for a funeral and burial at one of the town mortuaries. The embalmer worked in the chilly basement of the house. A special door had been constructed under the side porch, where a ramp led into the laboratory workroom. The bodies would arrive in ambulances or black hearses, and the workers lowered their voices as they rolled them down the brick sidewalk to the cellar door.

The embalmer was a big man, rawboned and strong, able to lift by himself corpses of any weight onto the cold steel tables in the cellar. He had black hair cropped close to his scalp and a full beard, which he sometimes forgot to trim. He lived in the house with his wife and their child. He was a strict man who demanded that rules of family conduct be followed to the letter. If they were not, if the woman or the child disobeyed his decrees, he would walk slowly to where he kept the old razor strop on a hook inside the door at the top of the cellar steps. This means of punishment had been in the family for as long as he could remember. His father had used it to make a man out of him, and his grandfather had wielded it before that. It was black leather, worn thin now, with bits of brown showing through, and the metal buckle on the end was tarnished and half-broken, so that it left strange, irregular scars on flesh that looked like half-moons. The embalmer had many half-moons on his back. So did the wife and child.

By the time the child was old enough for the mother to teach him to read and do sums, they both had learned to behave in a way consistent with the embalmer’s house rules. The mother kept the child close to her every minute of the day, and sometimes they sneaked out of the house and took a walk in the woods so the child could run and play. When they were far enough away from the house, they quit whispering, which was one of the rules—everyone in the house always spoke in a reverent whisper. They never stayed away long and made sure they returned home with plenty of time to prepare the evening meal, because the only time the embalmer left the dead bodies in the cellar was at night. A formal evening meal had always been the custom in the embalmer’s household. Although they had never once attended church services, all three of them dressed in their Sunday best for the dinner hour, spent in the big dining room with its brown wallpaper depicting Chinese peasants pulling carts of rice, with cloud-ringed mountains in the background.

The meal routine was set in stone. The mother would give the child a bath, and then she would wash herself because the embalmer demanded cleanliness. Once they were dressed formally, she would lead the child by the hand to the kitchen, and the child would sit quietly at the kitchen table and watch her cook. If they spoke at all, it would be in whispers, because one time the embalmer had come upstairs early and caught them breaking the rule. But that had only happened once. After they healed from the punishment meted out by the embalmer, neither mother nor child ever again spoke above a whisper, not even outside in the woods as they’d done before.

At exactly five minutes after six each evening, the mother would place the food on the dining room table, on warming trivets lit by tiny, white tea candles. Then she would pull the heavy brown velvet curtains tightly together, turn off the electric light suspended over the table, and touch a flame one by one to the tapers in the five-light candelabras positioned in the exact center of the sideboard and at the exact center of the table because the embalmer liked to dine by candlelight. Then mother and child would take their places across from each other, fold their hands in their laps in exactly the correct manner, right hand on top of the left, with right thumb resting inside the curled fingers of the left hand. Silently, they would sit and listen for the embalmer’s slow footfalls as he mounted the cellar steps.

When he reached the wide entrance hall, with its twin brown horsehair sofas and seven-foot antique Bavarian grandfather clock, he would shut the cellar door, turn a key in the ancient lock, and put the key on top of the door header for safekeeping. His family would not say a word as he climbed to the second floor to take off his blood-spattered, black leather apron, wash up, and don his black Sunday-best suit and white shirt and black tie. Then they would listen to the main staircase creak as he descended to the dining room and would grow tense when he slid open the double doors from the foyer. He would loom in the threshold, a huge, dark menace, and neither of them would dare look up from their plate.

And so it was at six-thirty on the dot on this wintry night in early November. It had turned cold suddenly, after a month of Indian summer, gusting autumn winds skittering oak leaves down the cracked sidewalk and making frosty snowflake patterns on the windowpanes in the early morning. It was too cold in the house, but it had always been that way. Low temperatures helped keep fresh the dead bodies in the cellar.

The embalmer turned and closed the doors behind him, walked to the table, and as was his habit, checked to make sure the mother had set it according to his rules. The child sat very still as the father put his big hand down and measured the child’s dinner plate. There was to be exactly the length of the embalmer’s thumb between the table edge and the bottom of the Blue Willow plate, which had been in the family for one hundred years. The child let out a breath of relief when the embalmer found it exactly correct. He measured the child’s glass then, making sure it was filled with milk to only a thumb’s depth from the top rim, and then he checked that the dinner knife was a thumb’s length from the spoon, with the fork in between but not touching. The woman used a Popsicle stick that the embalmer had cut to the proper length with which to measure, and she used it religiously in all her household tasks. The father checked the child’s napkin and found it starched and ironed and folded into perfect thirds. He moved around the table and measured the woman’s place setting, then his own.

“Very good,” he whispered, patting his wife’s bowed head.

The embalmer sat down, and his family watched him so they’d know exactly when to fold their hands in prayer. He prayed about duty and obedience until the hall clock began its hollow chimes announcing the seven o’clock hour. On the third bong, he whispered amen, and the three of them picked up their napkins and unfolded them together. He picked up the platter of fried ham and forked out a piece for the child and the mother, and then put the rest on his plate. He served the steamed rice and black-eyed peas precisely the same way; then they waited for him to lift his fork, and they all took the first bite together. Tonight they ate the rice first.

No one spoke—it was against the rules to speak while dining, even in a whisper—and if they finished the food served to them before the clock struck eight o’clock, they would sit without speaking and wait for the soft bongs to commence. On this night, an unimaginable catastrophe happened at eighteen minutes before eight o’clock. The child dropped a salad fork, and it clinked against the hardwood floor and scattered grains of rice on the faded red-and-brown oriental carpet.

Everybody froze. The mother and the child looked at the embalmer, saw the ruddy flush rise up his neck and darken his face. He put down his own fork exactly a thumb’s length from his plate. He looked at the child, and the child made a low moaning sound deep inside his throat, eyes wide with terror.

The mother whispered, “Please, please don’t.”

The embalmer’s eyes switched to her, and then he moved so quickly, she never saw the fist he drove into her nose. The blow hit her with a sickening crunch of cartilage, and blood spouted all over the white linen tablecloth and pooled in the child’s plate of rice. The force knocked her chair over and onto its back, and she rolled onto her side, unconscious and bleeding.

The embalmer grabbed up the child and shook his thin shoulders until the child gasped for air. The big man dragged the child over to the mother and pushed the child’s face down close to the woman’s head. The embalmer mopped his hand over the mother’s nose and mouth until it was slick with warm red blood, and then he brought it up to the child and rubbed blood, all over the child’s face.

The father whispered harshly, “See what you did? You’ve got your mother’s blood on you now, and you can keep it there until you learn your lesson. Your mother never disobeyed me before you were born. This is all your fault. We were happy before you were born. You are an ugly, stupid brat, and don’t you dare cry. If I see one tear fall, I will put your mother back in that chair, and I will hit her in the face again. I will hit her over and over until you are obedient. Do you understand me?”

The embalmer slammed the child back into the chair, and the child ate the blood-soaked rice while the mother’s blood dried into a tight brown crust on his face. The child did not look at his mother again.

The child was five years old.

I got the call at 5:35 A.M. on my cell phone. As a Canton County Sheriff’s Department detective, I get plenty of early morning calls but none like this one. The temporary dispatcher said, “Like, it’s a real homicide, Claire! Awesome, like, can you believe it?” Guess that tells you a lot about what passes as excitement here at Lake of the Ozarks. I might live on the Lake Tahoe of mid-Missouri, but a haven for gangsters and murderers it ain’t, believe me. My partner, Bud Davis, and I are more likely to investigate who stole somebody’s yard gnome or who left an X-rated message on the answering machine down at Maudie’s beauty shop. That last one comes to mind because I handled it yesterday, all by myself, too. But that’s okay. For years, I worked Los Angeles Robbery/Homicide, or shall we say, Murder Unlimited, California Style, so the quiet life of purloined gnomes was one reason I immigrated to the Midwest.

My heart rate picked up because, hey, a murder is a murder. I sat up on the edge of my couch. I sleep on the couch a lot because I can’t sleep anywhere a lot, and I forced my bleary eyes to focus on the dock in front of my teensy-weensy A-frame cabin. The lake cove was quiet and calm, dark green waters lapping dark green, forested shores. See why I came out here to live? The sky was trying to do the dawn thing it did every morning around this time, but the lake had pulled up its blanket of mist and was saying, not yet, not yet, please let me sleep, just ten more minutes.

“Guess what else, Claire, like, just guess?” Somehow I wasn’t in the mood to guess much, but the question was rhetorical, anyway. Fact is, the dispatcher was an emergency temp named Jacqueline, Jacqee for short, which tells you a lot. On the other hand, she’s the sheriff’s youngest and flightiest of four daughters. My partner and I call her Dude-ette. She was home from college for the summer, and I guess nineteen-year-olds majoring in fashion design like to play guessing games with detectives at the crack of dawn. Thus, Dude-ette went on, oh, so excited: “And it’s a Hollywood celebrity, can you believe it? Like, a real live celebrity down here at the lake that got herself killed!”

Now that one did make me wonder what Jacqee had been smoking down at the station house. “Okay, Jacqee, I’m awake now. Calm down, and tell me when and where.”

“Cedar Bend Lodge.”

“Oh, damn.” Now I believed the celebrity part. Cedar Bend Lodge was the primo address on all fifteen hundred miles of the lake’s mountainous, rugged shoreline. Worse news was that Nicholas Black, world-renowned psychobabbler, owned it. I’d never met the handsome and suave Doctor Black, of course, but word was he was more self-absorbed than his Tinseltown patients. Shorthand for: I am not eager to deal with him.

“Call Bud Davis. Is there a uniform on it?”

“Uh-huh. O’Hara. She’s the one on duty.”

“Does Charlie know?” I felt I needed to guide Jacqee through the drill, she being a student of hem lengths and peasant blouses, and all.

“Daddy had to go to Jeff City last night, and like, talk to some dudes up there, you know, the governor and those guys.”

Oh, them.

“Okay, I’m on my way,” I said, then remembered who was on the other end of the line. “Listen, Jacqee, don’t talk to anybody about this, got it? Nobody. Especially the press. Understand?” Redundant, yes, but it paid to be with Jacqee of the two e’s.

“Well, duh uh, you think I’m a dork, or what?” Yes, Jacqee, you are a dork, and more. The line went dead, the fashion expert affronted to her core, which probably wasn’t all that deep, anyway. Oh, well.

I took my usual ten-second shower, combed my short blond hair straight back off my forehead and left it wet, threw on a black T-shirt and jeans and black-and-orange Nike high-tops, slipped on my shoulder holster with my 9mm Glock snugly buckled in place, and clipped my badge to my belt. The lead detective was on the way in two minutes flat.

The lake at Lake of the Ozarks was formed in 1931, with the construction of Bagnell Dam, and was still impressive now, more than seventy years later. I drove over that mighty edifice, windows down and caffeine deprived. Nicholas Black’s resort was on a coveted point south of Horseshoe Bend, and I picked up speed on the deserted blacktop highways curving along the lakeshore. Later in the week the big Cedar Bend Regatta was supposed to begin, and crowds of tourists would venture out in the ninety-degree-plus July heat to watch. Just what we needed. A murder to get the race started.

I reached the stone gate of Cedar Bend Lodge in fifteen minutes and swung my black Explorer into the entrance road and accidentally ran over the end of a mammoth bed of pink and white impatiens and purple petunias. Uh-oh, a gardener 911 was probably going off somewhere. I guiltily regained the blacktop and drove through Doctor Black’s meticulously manicured 18-hole golf course, pure emerald splendor for tourists with fat wallets and low handicaps. The main lodge loomed a minute later, built with waist-size logs and glinting with a zillion miles of dark plate glass. The famous five-star restaurant Two Cedars was the star of the black-and-gold reception lobby, but the four ballrooms, with cathedral ceilings and crystal chandeliers dripping glittery spangles, offering breathtaking lake views weren’t too shabby, either.

Yes siree, Bob, Cedar Bend Lodge was impressive. The nine-by-twelve-foot front door with beveled stained glass in hues of ruby and emerald and topaz definitely welcomed people who had not come to Lake of the Ozarks to rough it.

I whipped under a portico the size of a basketball court and held aloft by flat, stacked fieldstone columns and slowed at the sight of a resort security guard. I stopped and wound down my window and flashed my badge.

I recognized Suze Eggers right off. She was the best friend of my next door neighbor, Dottie Harper. Suze strutted up to my car, all proud of the sharp black-and-tan uniform, which accentuated her lean, athletic body. I knew she worked security for Black, but to me, she had a gargantuan attitude problem. I sometimes wondered about her sexual orientation, although Dottie assured me she was as straight as the proverbial arrow.

“Well, well, Detective Claire Morgan, up with the birds and lookin’ fine.”

See what I mean? Maybe Dot was kidding herself about the gay thing.

“Hi, Suze, what’s going on? Dispatch said there’s been a murder.”

“Oh yes, ma’am, you got yourself a murder, all right. All cooked up for breakfast.”

Huh?

Suze grinned, made a deal out of pulling off her fancy tan hat with the Cedar Bend logo. She propped her palm on the roof of my car and leaned into the window. She smelled strongly of a unisex Calvin Klein cologne; I forget which one. I had to resist the urge to roll up the window and talk to her through the glass. She said, “Lady got whacked out at one of them fancy gated bungalows. You know the ones I mean? Out on the point goin’ for a coupla grand a week.” Suze seemed pleased about the murder. Not a healthy sign.

She stopped talking and ogled me a minute. It must’ve taken her a good long time to get her white-blond hair up into those stylish spikes that fell over just a little on the ends. She had thick, straight eyebrows over dark, nervous eyes. Maybe she was just excited. Uh-oh, not good.

“Fact is,” Suze lowered her voice, and I guess she thought we were real cop cohorts now, “weird ain’t near bad enough to describe this perp. He whacked her good, then came back for seconds.”

Gangster speak was flowing now. A regular female Tony Soprano. I pictured her in front of a mirror, plastic water gun in hand, muttering things like “Fuhgeddabout it, or You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to ME?”

“Did you find the body, Suze?”

Her eyes darted around some more. “Old lady found the body, one of the guests.”

I said, “What about the victim?”

“She’s a big-time VIP, just like the chick that found her. All them out there are loaded. They had condos next door to each other. The old lady says she gets up early and takes a swim out to that big floatin’ dock Black’s got out off the point, said she does the same thing every day. Anyways, minute she saw the dead girl, she went all hysterical and nearly drowned herself before she made it back to her place. She punched the panic button and held it down till I got there. Took me four minutes to get out there, and she was still screamin’ her friggin’ head off. I called in you guys right off. I did it by the book, Detective. I know procedures. I’ve been studying to be a cop.”

Great. “Did you touch anything at the scene?”

Suze frowned and ran her fingers through her gelled hairdo. We both looked to see how much goop she’d raked out. She wiped the stuff on her pants. “I told you, I know procedure. I ain’t touched nothin’. I went over and checked out the body to make sure the old broad wasn’t seein’ things.”

“And you secured the perimeter after you called dispatch?”

“You bet. Guarded the road myself right here till the first uniform showed up. Name’s O’Hara, I think. She got here in less than ten. She’s that hot new chick that Charlie hired on.”

I rest my case. I pulled the gearshift back. “Okay, Suze, where do I go?”

“Take the main road down ’bout a mile, I reckon. It dead-ends at Doctor Black’s private gate, and that’s something you can’t miss, trust me. It’s gotta big brass B on it. Hang a left there, and follow that road down to the water. It’s got its own security gate, but your partner said to leave it open until you showed up.”

So Bud beat me to the scene. That would cost me a dozen Krispy Kremes. “Listen, Suze, nobody goes down this road except for officers and the crime-scene team, got it?”

“Yeah, sure. Guests out here don’t drag outta bed till noon, anyways. Wild parties go on all night; then everybody sleeps in till their appointment with the doc.”

I told Suze not to talk about the crime scene and then accelerated down the shady blacktop road. Hundreds of red roses festooned the split-rail fences along the way, and I could smell them, sweet and summery and vaguely reminiscent of prom corsages. I only went to a prom once, but I did get a rose corsage. It was a fake one, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

It was still cool, but by nine o’clock, the sun would broil everyone alive. July was hot as hell in Missouri, unlike California’s paradise weather. I drove past closed private gates guarding luxury condos hidden in woodsy tracts.

Now I was invading the most exclusive area, where bungalows nestled in jeweled glades and thick woods touched the water. Black must’ve hired a hundred or so ex-Disney World gardeners to landscape the place. Flowering orange trumpet vines decorated security cameras, and there were plenty watching from tall poles. Strangers loitering here would stick out like Michael Jordan on a junior high basketball team. Black’s security, however, obviously had not done the trick. I’d have to interview every staff member to see if anyone had seen any unwelcome lurkers on the grounds.

Black’s gate loomed up, all ostentatious and gaudy. Somewhere on the other side of that mighty portal worthy of Buckingham Palace, Nicholas Black had magically transplanted a Hollywood-style estate smack dab to the Ozark hills. What I wanted to know was why? I’d actually seen it from the water once when I was fishing with Dottie. The sun reflected off three stories of plate glass windows in a migraine-inspiring glare. The original Cedar Bend was built in 1962, and about five years ago Black had bought it dirt cheap out of bankruptcy and then spent several million remodeling the place. Story was that he saw the view, liked it, and couldn’t rest until he owned it. A real Donald Trump, MD style. A major celebrity, he was always in the news for something and usually sporting a busty blonde on his arm. Another penchant shared with The Donald. Not that he wasn’t devilishly good-looking himself, I had to admit.

I braked and studied the gate of the victim’s condo. Thrown wide open, no guard in sight. Great police work, that. I turned in and, after thirty yards of steep descent, saw the private bungalow. All logs, fieldstone, and glass, beautifully framed by swaying blue-green cedars and deep green lake water.

A dark brown sheriff’s cruiser was parked next to Bud’s unmarked white Bronco. Connie O’Hara, pretty, blond, twenty-five, and impossibly skinny in her brown uniform, stood alone in the driveway. Charlie had hired the young woman at my urging, and I was glad another female had cracked the department. Young and untried, O’Hara had potential, number three in the police academy and on the Kansas City force until her highway-patrolmen husband was transferred south. We practiced on the shooting range and sometimes worked out in the weight room together. So far she was doing just fine.

Then I saw the silver van and the two guys scrambling out of it. Oh, wonderful, Peter Hastings and Jake, his obnoxious cameraman. I killed the engine and got out. Within seconds Hastings had ambushed me with Jake’s camera rolling. I averted my face and kept walking. The brash producer was almost as disgusting as his stupid TV show. Touted as honoring real cops, On The Beat did more sensationalizing of crime scenes than honoring anybody.

Why Hastings and his crew had trekked down to the hinterland of the Missouri Ozarks to immortalize a backwater sheriff’s department was a more interesting question, and nobody seemed to have a good answer. But watch out now, Hastings had hit the jackpot—a murder to exploit—and he was up for the job.

I nodded to O’Hara and tried to outstride the reporter, but Pete would not be deterred. Both men scuttled like cockroaches and cut off my path, and the camera was zeroed in close up when I ducked under the yellow crime scene tape and headed for the front door of the bungalow.

“Give us a statement, Detective Morgan? Reliable sources tell us this is a homicide. Can you confirm that for our viewers?”

Fairly certain he was fishing, I paused, and because Charlie had ordered us all to be polite to the TV crew, I addressed his questions. “I just arrived on scene, Mr. Hastings; any comment at this time would be inappropriate.”

Hastings stuck a live mike over the yellow tape. “Is it true the victim’s a famous actress here to kick a cocaine habit? Can you confirm that much, Detective? Can you tell us who she is?”

I hoped to hell it wasn’t true, and I wanted to know who’d tipped off Hastings. Jacqee or Suze? “No comment. Tell you what, sir, it might be better to take that camera and wait at the entrance gate until we’re finished here. Deputy O’Hara, please escort Mr. Hastings and his cameraman to the gate at the top of the hill and keep everybody out until we’re finished with the crime scene.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Trying not to smirk, O’Hara ushered the newsmen away from the bungalow. Hastings muttered under his breath, and what he said was not pretty. I gladly left O’Hara to deal with the media morons and walked over the quaint, humpbacked little bridge that led onto a wraparound porch. Terra-cotta urns over-flowed with brilliant scarlet geraniums along the planked walkway and deck. The house was spacious, built of rustic brown wood, and it jutted out over the water in an impressive feat of engineering. There were a few windows facing the road, but I bet there were plenty more facing the lake.

The surrounding woods were quiet. Waves gently lapped weathered pilings, and one ecstatic robin warbled his heart out somewhere high atop a tree. I could understand now why celebrities landed out here in the boondocks to screw their heads on straight. Quiet, peaceful, private, no traffic, no sirens, the place could ease the stress, all right. Except that now a murderer had come calling to our little utopia in the woods.

Bud Davis was standing inside the front door, grinning his big, cheesy grin. He spoke with a Georgia drawl that made the gals go all weak-kneed and faint, except for me, of course; I am immune. But most ladies were not, and he used the Southern charm like a fisherman uses a spinnerbait lure.

“Maybe you oughta keep a box of Krispy Kremes in your car since I always beat you to the scene.” Thirty-two years old and handsome in a boyish way, Bud had thick auburn hair and a salon haircut that Tom Brokaw would die for. Although he’d had the misfortune to be named after his daddy’s favorite beer, wardrobe wise, Ralph Lauren had nothing on him. How he had ever lowered himself to work vice in Atlanta I couldn’t imagine, though I was glad he’d grown tired of the big city and moved up here, where he could enjoy hiking and hunting. Once I’d made him show me proof that he’d ever in his life had one hair out of place, and he’d come up with a Polaroid of himself undercover in a dirty flannel shirt, with greasy long hair and a nose ring. He must’ve gone through hell actually being grimy, as pathologically fastidious as he was. Point of proof: The guy keeps a couple of freshly starched dress shirts in the car in case of the dreaded sweat stain.

Bud’s eyes were the color of ashes and lingered in distaste on my wrinkled T-shirt. Okay, so I’d worn it the night before. Hey, this is a homicide; I was in a hurry. So sue me. Bud didn’t care for the way I dressed or for the way I cropped my hair. Last Christmas he’d disappointed me greatly with a year’s gift certificate to Mr. Race’s classy unisex salon called Winning Locks. I’d showed up once for an excruciating hour-long styling session with some guy who kept calling me girlfriend and admiring my high cheekbones and big blue eyes and telling me I ought to be a model ’cause I was so tall and willowy. I left looking like a complete jerk and gratefully forked over the gift certificate to an ecstatic Dottie, who had enough long, silky blond hair to send Mr. Race and his ilk into spasms.

I said, “Give me a break, Bud. It’s frickin’ 6 A.M. What the hell do you do? Jump up at dawn and primp your heart out in case a call comes in? You’re not human anymore. You’re a closet GQ model.”

Bud laughed. “Mama always said ladies go for the well-groomed man. All it takes to look this good is a little preparation.”

“Yeah, right, six to ten hours of it.” I turned and watched the TV van accelerate up the road and ou. . .