Free Mercy by David L Lindsey Page B

rhythmically. Palma didn’t believe her. She was too insistent, and her flustered denials seemed out of proportion to the question. She simply could have said she didn’t know. But Palma had no doubts about the sincerity of her grief.
    There was no reason to try to go any further with her now. Palma looked around for the absent couple, but they were nowhere in sight. Or so she thought, until she glimpsed a wisp of bright crimson in a doorway on the other side of a round Venetian table that sat in the center of the room. She remembered the sarong with its pattern of taupe and gold, and its crimson hem.

6
    S he left Vickie Kittrie crying on Nathan Isenberg’s sofa, wondering if Kittrie’s “friends,” who had not yet arrived, really existed. Helena had come back into the room when she heard Palma closing the interview and walked her to the sunken entrance hall where they visited a minute by the front door. Palma learned that she had seen nothing out of the ordinary, no one coming or going from Dorothy Samenov’s home during the past several days. Helena appeared to be in her mid-forties, with dark, kind eyes and the figure of a woman less than half her age. She said she would see that Kittrie got home safely. Palma wondered about these two Good Samaritans and their willingness to help. She had noticed that Helena had worn no wedding ring.
    It was almost noon when she walked out into the heat and bright sunlight again and saw the rear of the morgue van going away from her under the overhanging trees at the far end of Olympia. Cushing and Leeland’s car was already gone, as well as one of the patrol cars. She crossed the street and nodded at VanMeter and another patrolman still lingering in the shade of the magnolia. They would stay there until it was decided the scene could be left alone. Palma walked into Samenov’s condo through the front door, which had been left open. Someone had turned up the thermostat.
    She returned to the bedroom where Birley was standing in Samenov’s large clothes closet taking notes.
    “How’d it go?” he asked, not looking up from his notepad.
    “She was pretty upset. Where’s LeBrun? His van’s still outside.”
    “He’s in one of the back bathrooms, getting the sink traps.”
    “Was he able to get anything from the bathroom floor?”
    “I think so.” He looked at her, his eyes wrinkling with an amused smile. “That was pretty fancy, what you did earlier.”
    “You mean smart aleck,” she said, walking over to him.
    “Yeah, that too.”
    “Sorry, but I wasn’t about to let Cushing take it away from us.”
    “Fine with me. You did good. Here,” he said, leaning out of the closet and handing Palma a brown leather address book, the gauzy sleeve of a peach negligee caught on his left shoulder. “I thought you might like to go through this first thing.”
    Which is just exactly what she did. Dennis Ackley’s name was there, his address and two telephone numbers. The book obviously was not used for her business accounts because, with the exception of a liquor store, a dry cleaner, a shoe shop, a pharmacy, a hairdresser, and a few other similar, personal-use commercial businesses, all the other names were of individuals. And in most cases only the first names were entered and no addresses were given.
    “Kittrie told me about an ex-husband,” Palma said. “It wasn’t a good divorce. He’s in here, address and telephone number. I’m going to have a patrol unit go by and see if he’s at home.”
    “Fine,” Birley said from the closet.
    Using the telephone on a bedside table, Palma called the dispatcher and made the request and then dialed the second number under Ackley’s name, thinking it might be his business. There was no answer. She dialed the first number, but again no answer. She dialed information, which had no listing for Dennis Ackley and did not show an unlisted number. She put the address book in her purse.
    “Kittrie claims she doesn’t have the faintest