Free Voices in the Wardrobe by Marlys Millhiser

added.
    Charlie’d learned a lot from this woman and had always thought she wanted to be like Luella if she ever grew up. They wandered absently along the footpaths, Kenny’s big shoes crunching gravel behind them.
    â€œAnyway, the skinny here is Judith not only went out for a cigarette after her gig, but she swallowed a handful of pills as well. Washed them down with bottled water and somehow choked on the bottle. It’s strongly suspected she had some help with the latter.”
    â€œLegal drugs?” Kenny asked.
    â€œDr. Judy took drugs? Nice old Dr. Judy?”
    â€œYou know anybody who doesn’t? Her assistant says she took them morning and night. She had them divided up in baggies and they were a combination of prescribed drugs, over the counter, and alternative. Her doctor listed an anti-depressant, anti-anxiety, hormones, blood pressure, acid reflux, allergy, cholesterol medications. And she had a sleeping disorder. He was looking through his records and sounded kind of stunned at the length of the list, himself. And then being a doctor herself—who knew what else she had access to with samples and all. Got a problem, take a pill.”
    â€œHow did you get a doctor to give away confidential information like that and on another doctor?” Kenny the investigative reporter sounded impressed. “And over the phone yet?”
    â€œHe’s my doctor too and his client has been murdered in one way or another, and I convinced him I could be of use to him should there be a lawsuit since I was also his patient’s business agent and speaking from the scene of the crime. He has aspirations to become a celebrity doc on TV and will need representation. And I got to him before he’d had time to consult his lawyer. Toxicology won’t be back with results for awhile.”
    â€œMan, you agents kick ass. I thought you were persuasive, diplomatic types.”
    Both women turned to look at him, shielding their eyes from the sun before continuing on their way. Charlie asked, “And the lawyer, did you know him?”
    â€œI’ve dealt with him on estate matters, copyrights, residuals, that kind of thing. Her daughter gets everything, her ex and boyfriend nothing. She’d made that public herself recently, but not that it comes with strings, paid out in healthy yearly sums, forfeited if the daughter should give any of it to her father—trust fund kind of thing, I guess.”
    â€œCouldn’t she have choked on the pills and sucked the water bottle down her throat and then fell in the pool?”
    â€œGot me. That’s your department.”
    â€œNo, it’s not.”
    Kenny brought them up short with, “Anybody know where we are?”
    They were in a valley of ruins, the sound of the sea coming from three sides. Empty reflecting pools with crumbling columns and statues. Long dried-up vines and tipped-over fountains ran along what might have been where an old streambed eroded the rock, taking the rare storm runoff to the sea.
    There had been a lot of less-than-useful building going on, on this bluff, and money squandered. The naked statue of a well-hung young man of the Greek or Roman persuasion tipped dangerously toward a fissure.
    Charlie realized she was staring at the young Mediterranean while her companions tossed path pebbles into the fissure and listened for the reassurance of a landing. Maybe he’d had one orgy too many.
    â€œSomething about this place,” Luella said, hugging her arms. Her last pebble just kept slithering down in the crevice, rattling against one side, bouncing off to hit the other, the sound of its journey fading with the distance but still audible long after it should have been swallowed up by the earth. “Even without Judith’s murder.”
    â€œYeah, look at all this real estate—a bunch of it in ruins. There’s gotta be developers salivating. On the way up here, there are houses stacked above each