A Beeline to Murder

Abby read through the statement she had given to Kat. She also read Kat’s and Otto’s narratives. Then she perused for the umpteenth time a two-page form that was broken into sections: investigative activities, physical evidence, victim vulnerability, victim actions, and solvability. Kat had checked the box entitled “significant physical evidence,” but as far as Abby could ascertain, the only evidence was the earring, the photos on the pastry shop wall, the worthless surveillance tape, and the box of recipes with the award in it. The boxes for blood and saliva were checked, but there was nothing marked for prints, weapon, clothing, hair, or bodily fluids.

If, as Chief Bob Allen had inferred, Jean-Louis had killed himself, the evidence pointing to that conclusion seemed scanty. She flipped to the report from the coroner’s office. No mention of an internal exam or a toxicology screen. The X-rays taken noted the ligature mark above the thyroid cartilage and the Adam’s apple, but neither the thyroid cartilage nor the hyoid bone was fractured, another indication that Jean-Louis had died by hanging, instead of from being strangled by a ligature. But no signs of a struggle. If he had been murdered, there would have been a struggle, surely.

Abby’s eyes burned with weariness. Her back ached. She locked her fingers behind her head and twisted her spine in one direction and then the other. The stiffness remained. Her tired eyes gazed at Philippe, who was stretched out on the couch, sleeping. He’d rolled the sleeves of his dress shirt to his forearms. His hands still wore the latex gloves she had insisted they use to go through the boxes of Jean-Louis’s possessions. With his left hand cradling his head, Philippe’s right hand rested over his midsection, rising and falling with each breath. Abby understood grief. The physical and emotional toll of it, the feelings of sadness and deep despair washing over mind and heart like rogue waves. She was sure Philippe needed rest. She’d let him sleep.

Abby searched for a stack of prints—some were crime-scene photos she’d taken of Jean-Louis, and others were pictures of satisfied customers and friends taken down from the pastry shop’s corkboard. In one, Jean-Louis stood with a group of people as he sold pastries at the town’s annual strawberry festival. Another showed Jean-Louis and waiters catering a political fund-raiser. In yet another, he stood in front of the Black Witch with male friends, all of them holding steins of green beer for what surely must have been a St. Patrick’s Day toast.

Meticuously, Abby examined all the photographic images through her magnifying glass. Something caught her attention in one picture of Jean-Louis and a fisherman, but she couldn’t quite figure out what was different or unusual about that particular photo. Weariness was compromising her discerning ability. The fisherman held a large swordfish on the deck of boat. Jean-Louis stood smiling at him less than an arm’s length away. Both men were bare-chested and were wearing swimming trunks. The tall, thin fisherman also wore a white panama hat. Out beyond the boat’s deck, nothing but water stretched to the horizon line. The swordfish was an ocean fish, she thought. Philippe had said his brother had planned a trip to the Caribbean for his birthday. Had he traveled there before? Was the fisherman a friend, foe, lover, or murderer?