Free Jeanne Glidewell - Lexie Starr 06 - Cozy Camping by Jeanne Glidewell Page A

health impediment that rendered her unable to function, of course. I was just saying the exact same thing to Stone.”
    “Eli, the coroner, said her liver temperature was eighty-four degrees, which indicates she’s been dead for around nine hours, which would make her drowning somewhere about ten last night. The pool is heated because of the cool evenings here, but the temperature of the water still factors into the formula to determine the time of death. So she could have died even later than that; maybe around eleven.”
    Wendy loved to flaunt her knowledge of the science of mortality, even to someone like me, who was likely to turn a deaf ear as soon as she began spouting words like rigor mortis, lividity and dissection. I often wondered where I’d gone wrong raising my only child to make her turn into someone so fascinated by what caused some unfortunate person to bite the dust. But out of an inborn curiosity I wasn’t proud of, I reluctantly paid attention to what Wendy was saying.
    “As you just mentioned, I’d guess her drowning was probably precipitated by a heart attack, aneurysm, stroke, or seizure. I’m sure that an autopsy will determine what caused her to lose consciousness and drown.” As an assistant to the county coroner back home in Missouri, Wendy sounded confident of her assessment. I had to agree it was the only reasonable explanation for Fanny’s untimely death. Or, at least it was until I spotted a shiny silver object under the hedge row just inside the fence surrounding the pool patio. It was barely discernible, but something told me it would turn out to be an important factor in Fanny’s demise.

 
     
     
    Chapter 6

     
    The shiny object turned out to be a hair dryer hooked to a long orange extension cord rolled up and used to hide the hair dryer in the dense foliage. If not for the sun glinting off a tiny exposed area of the silver plastic, I wouldn’t have noticed it, even though it would have been just a matter of time before one of the detectives discovered it. The unplugged and spooled-up extension cord appeared to have been plugged into an electrical outlet behind the pool’s pump. It was now being photographed from every imaginable angle by a team of homicide detectives who’d been called in when I brought the hair dryer to the attention of the closest police officer.
    Wendy tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned to face her. “Now I’m certain the official cause of death will be listed as asystole of the heart.”
    “Layman’s terms, please.”
    “Basically, it’s ventricular fibrillation, or cardiac arrest. Detective Colmer told me the hair dryer is fried and nonfunctional. It’s probable that someone attached that hair dryer to the electrical cord, turned it on, and tossed it into the pool near Fanny, causing her to die of electrocution.”
    Wendy was obviously proud of her ability to explain the chain of events leading to Fanny’s death to her slightly queasy mother. The smugness she exhibited was almost disturbing. It was a trait she’d inherited from her father, Chester Starr. Chester, my first husband, had died from an embolism many years ago when Wendy was only seven years old. But I can still remember Wendy’s exact expression on Chester’s face after he’d correctly guessed something as trivial as the outdoor temperature.
    Wendy left me and walked over to where the rest of our little group was discussing the new discovery, presumably to impress them with her expertise in the field of necropsy. I saw Emily giving information to a homicide detective. Rather than follow my daughter repeat her reasoning, I decided to go over and wait for the campground owner to finish up with the detective. I was anxious to get Emily’s take on what had happened in her RV Park.
    After relating what little she knew about the events that unfolded the previous evening, she moved away from the detective and turned to me with a look of total exasperation.
    “I was afraid something