Crystal Palace

By Douglas Browning

Was the sudden death of Cynthia January accidental, as the police claim, or was it murder? Hired by her sister Sarah, red-headed PI Deirdre Cash agrees that it is unlikely to have been accidental. She begins her investigation with a visit to the palatial mansion of the fascinating Crystal January and meets Crystals brother Drake, whom she discovers to be more than merely fascinating. In her pursuit of evidence, she encounters a bevy of beautiful women, along with police, attorneys, and others who keep her interested. After Sarah is murdered at Crystals mansion, Deirdres persistence leads to attempts on her own life. A case that began with a visit to Crystals palace ends there in its ruins and Deirdres life is never the same.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 27, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462826056

Douglas Browning

Douglas Browning, retired university professor of philosophy, lives outside Georgetown, Texas, where he labors at length over poems and novels, stays up throughout the night reading, writing, and listening to jazz, and enjoys life in his countryside hacienda with his talented and beautiful wife.

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Copyright © 2009 by Douglas Browning.

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Contents

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Part Two

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Part Three

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Coda

When architects have done their part,

The matter may betray their art:

Time, if we use ill-chosen stone,

Soon brings a well-built palace down.

Edmund Waller 1668

Part One

Chapter One

I put down the phone and shook my head. I got up and went through our empty reception room to Hock’s door and knocked. It was getting close to five but I knew he was still there; he wouldn’t leave without stopping by my office and engaging in a bit of racy banter with me.

Come on in, Deed, he said. He knew it was I that knocked, who else could it be?

I opened the door. You busy?

He was leaning back in his swivel chair, his hands behind his head, his feet propped on his desk. Can’t you see how hard I’m working?

Right. Why haven’t you gone home, Hock?

I’m meeting a guy in… he glanced at his small Rolex, a gift from his wife Shydra before they were married,  . . . an hour or so. What’s up?

Interesting call from a woman in Georgetown, wants to hire me to look into the death of her sister.

He raised his eyebrows in question.

She thinks her sister was murdered but the cops say it was an accidental death.

And?

I asked her to come in, but she said she had a baby to care for, wants me to come up to her place.

I sat on the side of his desk and turned toward him. He pulled his feet down and cocked his head at me.

And?

She says it’s her dead sister’s baby, not quite six months old. She says there’s a problem about custody. She said she’d pay me to come up, even if I didn’t take the case. I told her it would cost her for three hours at a hundred an hour and she said fine. I also told her if I agreed to take the case we’d work out something else.

So? What’s the problem?

I don’t know, Hock. Something sounds peculiar. I have a feeling. Maybe it was her voice, the way she spoke, strained like she was terrified, maybe had been crying. I don’t like psychological problems, Hock. I don’t like crying women.

I seem to remember a crying woman you had no trouble with.

"Carlyle. That’s what I mean. I’m a sucker, can’t help feeling sorry for them, want to hug them and say, there, there, darling."

Don’t go then. Why are you hesitating?

"Well, I asked her how she got on to me and she said someone had recommended us, this agency. So I told her my partner had much more experience than I did about murders and cases like that and she said—here’s what she said. But he’s a man. I want a woman. Only a woman can handle what’s going on. Her very words. I asked her why she thought that and she said I’d understand when we could talk more about things. I insisted she tell me something and she said that, for one thing, it would involve a woman who hated her and who could wrap men around her little finger. Interesting, huh?"

I tell you what, sweet. I can go with you tomorrow morning if you wish.

I’m going up there this evening. I’m a little bit intrigued. The only thing I’ve got on my slate is a skip-trace and that’s computer work to begin with. I can do that in the morning.

Ah, Deed, you’re going to do this no matter, so what can I say? It’s your first murder case, is that the problem? You can do it. If that’s what it turns out to be, murder, you’re ready. If it’s my encouragement you’re wanting, you got it.

I’d almost rather stick around and try my hand at finally having hot sex with you. That bed back there keeps preying on my mind.

The house that was now our office had been Hock’s residence before I became his partner, but he still kept up his old bedroom and spent two or three nights a week there when business and other concerns demanded it. It was a mutual arrangement with his wife, Shydra, with whom he spent his other nights at the home she had built for them. Ever so often, usually about twice a month, Hock entertained his steady mistress, if you could call her that, in that bedroom, a wonderful little black beauty named Destinee with whom I had become closer than with any other female. It wasn’t that strange an arrangement once you knew Hock’s wife, an absolutely ravishing former call-girl, who also continued to enjoy a dalliance with a gorgeous young former call-girl named Carlyle. It wasn’t an open marriage, just a marriage with exceptions, a single agreed-upon exception for each which, by the way, they also considered the best of friends. Destinee and Carlyle were almost like family and that made it cozy as well as comfortable. That there might occasionally be a passing one-night-stand sort of thing was tolerated so long as it was happenstance and much too casual to be discussed.

That left me out of the mix. Anything that might happen between Hock and me could never be either happenstance or casual.

He resumed his previous position, put his feet back up on his desk, grinned at me and chuckled. As you well know, it’s the other way around, my darling sexpot. I’ve worked hard to get you into my bed and all you do is tease me with your long legs and high heels. Well, I’ll make do with my girl tonight. Shydra is off to Houston for some business thing.

Don’t tell me Destinee is coming over on a Friday.

She is. Eat your heart out, Deed darling. Just give me a little kiss to keep me going until she gets here.

I blew him a kiss and said, That’ll have to do for now.

And forever it seems, cookie.

We had been going on like this for months. I loved it. We both enjoyed the banter and the titillation that went with it. He called me cookie ever since that time I had gotten so damned juicy talking sex with him and he said I smelled like one of those chewy oatmeal cookies hot from the oven. It had always been an embarrassment for me, getting squishy whenever I got sexed up, which was too damned often. We had a thing for each other and we both knew it and we both had agreed, in an unspoken but binding meeting of the minds, never to consummate our desires. We were after all business partners and that meant something, though we never took time to figure out what. Someday maybe we would go too far. I had Artie, my husband, and my sex with him was unreal, especially given my charged-up state after being around Hock during the day. Well-plotted fantasies of having Hock between my legs and my mouth all over him and other splendid activities only added to my readiness for demonically wild sex with Artie on such nights, though he never looked that gift-horse in the mouth, so to speak. After a few libertine years before I married him I had been faithful to him, physically speaking, for eleven wondrous years and I saw no end to it. It wasn’t just the sex of course, satisfying as it was. The bottom line is I loved him totally. Fantasies were fantasies. Every woman has them. I wasn’t about to give up mine. After all, sexual fantasies about coupling with a wide range of men—or women if one were so inclined—were part of what it was to be a woman and I was that if I was anything.

My name is Deirdre Cash and I am a private investigator in the agency Hocken and Cash Investigations. I’m thirty-seven, five feet ten, a solid 165 pounds, gifted with dark red hair that I wear long, green eyes, and, yes, I’m a second generation Irish-American, if you go for hyphenated names, which I don’t. I’m also, as I have discovered to my amazement, more than a little attractive and, to go along with it, sensual to a fault. Lots of men turn me on and, heaven be praised, I turn them on too. I worked for Hock as a secretary and receptionist before he made me a partner. I’m damned good at the computer and he discovered that I had a memory for conversations and details and found it easy, in addition, to prepare reports for him on his cases. Now, after a couple of years as his apprentice, I had earned my license to practice and to carry a gun. He led me through target practice and discovered another of my talents, an ability to score higher than he did. I started off at forty-sixty as his partner, but now we were fifty-fifty. I had learned to do it all, surveillance, interviewing, shadowing, insurance fraud, skip-trace, the whole enchilada, but I had never taken a case that might involve murder.

I stopped off at Denny’s on my way to Georgetown, hoping for some break in the traffic on IH35, as we call that interstate in Texas, but it didn’t help much. I repaired my face and hair in the rest room and arrived without difficulty at the address right off RR 2243 towards Leander that Sarah Posmann had directed me to. I was to meet her and her husband at seven. I was excited, but I didn’t want to show it. I was wearing the dark green knee-length skirt I had worn to the office, with a white sleeveless blouse that swished at my waist and a pair of three-inch white slingbacks.

Georgetown lay just a mere twenty or so miles north of the Austin city limits. It had once been about a thirty-mile trip, but Austin had spread north and the city of Round Rock, now over a hundred thousand and growing, had spread both north and south, so that their city limits abutted each other. Georgetown was the county seat of Williamson County, a lovely town that had retained its small town ways even though it was now bursting past fifty thousand souls itself. It had a striking courthouse, excellent restaurants, large and old two- and three-story homes, and a jewel of a liberal arts college, Southwestern University, the oldest institution of higher learning in Texas founded in 1840 and moved to its new location in 1845, the year that the Republic of Texas joined the union and became a state.

I took a good look at the neighborhood and the businesses on the road near where I turned south to get to Sarah’s house. There was a strip-mall along the road with a liquor store and a watering hole called—believe it—The Watering Hole. Up the block near the turnoff from IH35 I saw a clean-appearing but modest motel, a good place to stay if I ever needed to remain in Georgetown overnight. Downtown Georgetown lay across the interstate to the east. In Sarah’s neighborhood I took in the upper middle-class houses on quarter and half acres, some larger, some smaller, none over ten years old it seemed. Hers was one of the more modest ones, two-car garage, probably three bedrooms, two baths, big den. On the phone her voice told me she was young, maybe late twenties or early thirties. With a nice home and a nice husband and two cars she should be excited with life, happy, full of the future. But she had sounded distressed and, yes, angry.

I pulled up on the street in front of the house and got out. I took my satchel that held my laptop inside and strode, business-like, up the sidewalk.

Chapter Two

Sarah Cross Posmann’s husband Dash, Dashiell Posmann to be precise, opened the door, held out a hand which I took, and led me through the kitchen to the dining room table right off of it. I smelled fresh coffee and I sat and made myself at home as Sarah poured me a cup. Black, no cream or sugar, as I like it. They sat and we looked at each other.

She did the talking.

Her sister, Cynthia was pronounced dead in the hospital at 4:43 on Thursday the previous week after having collapsed on the entrance steps to her first-floor apartment at around 4:00. The death had been ruled accidental and due to food poisoning, at least as the detective had informed her two days after having told her of the death the night it happened. Cynthia had dropped off her little son, Dustin, almost six months old, earlier that afternoon, having called and asked Sarah to take him for the evening and the night since she was entertaining someone, unnamed, for dinner that night and wouldn’t be able to pick him up until the next morning.

It wasn’t a strange request and I didn’t question it. She had done it a couple of times before, always I was sure because of some arrangement she had with a man. Let me say right up front, my sister is, was, a vivacious woman, four years younger than me—I’m twenty-six—and since her husband died—and let’s be honest, even while he was still alive—had affairs. I know of one man and there were others. To put it bluntly, she enjoyed her sex and her husband—Marshall January—was simply not enough for her. She put it like that. She said it. She didn’t tell me everything or name names, but she told me that much. She married for money, there’s no doubt about it. And there was more to it too, but I’ll get to that later.

I asked her why she thought her sister was murdered.

It makes no sense to die of food poisoning, especially since she was taken to the hospital right after she collapsed. It was too sudden, if you ask me. She was preparing a spaghetti dinner—I was told that—and there was nothing in the sauce that would have caused her a problem like that. I was told that too. Anyhow, she probably tasted the sauce—who wouldn’t?—but she hadn’t eaten anything beforehand but probably a bite of this or that. The detective who spoke to me about it—Prentiss was his name—was not comfortable with his tale of accidental death, kept looking embarrassed. A case of misadventure, he called it. I don’t think he entirely bought the food poisoning story either, but he wouldn’t admit anything, just kept saying he was sorry. And there’s the whole business with Crystal too and the trouble about the baby. I just want it looked into.

Crystal and the baby? We’d come back to that later.

So you’ve talked to the police. Did you tell them you weren’t satisfied with their verdict? Did this Detective Prentiss tell you that an investigation was ongoing?

I told him, but like I said, he just kept saying he was sorry. His attitude was clear enough. The police were satisfied that her death was accidental and that was that. He did say that they would keep an open mind, but he didn’t seem to indicate that anything was being done about it. That’s why Dash and I want you to look into it. Please say you will.

I sipped my coffee. She jumped up and filled my cup. I sat and looked at the two of them. I didn’t say anything for quite a while. She was a pretty thing in spite of her disheveled appearance, slender, good bone structure, long blond hair, a little stringy and not freshly washed I thought. I thought she would be near beautiful if she put herself in the hands of a hairdresser and a make-up artist. I saw signs of recent crying in and around her blue eyes. Her husband was good-looking in a pedestrian way, a little taller than Sarah, and unblinking with brown eyes that seemed calculating to me. He was tight-lipped throughout his wife’s account and never interrupted.

I took out my laptop and set it on the table. "Okay, I’ll do what I can, though I doubt there’s much I can do. Now, let’s go back to the beginning. Start over and tell me in detail what you’ve already said. I’ll take notes and ask questions. Then we’ll do the necessary business and talk about payment and time."

She began over again, trying to hurry through what she had already said. I asked her to slow down. As she continued, her husband leaned back, narrowed his eyes at me and her, and remained silent.

I interrupted when she said again that her sister said she was entertaining a man, though she didn’t name him.

She said it was a man she was having for a late dinner?

Sarah thought about it. No, I guess she didn’t. She said she was having someone over for supper and I just assumed it was a man. It would have been odd, I think, for her to have a woman over. I was sure the dinner was a prelude to sex, you see. That’s my sister, that’s the way she was.

Dash made a derisive sound. It was the first indication of how he felt about Cynthia. I typed a question in parentheses, Dash didn’t care for the sister? I had yet to get a clear view of him.

When she brought up the meeting with the detective, I asked for details.

"He came to me with someone, his sidekick I guess, the first time, just to inform me of what had happened and to check that I had the baby and would be able keep him. He said he’d check with me again regarding the body, when it would be released for burial. He also told me he had informed Cynth’s mother-in-law Crystal and that she had offered to take the child and pay for burial. I told him right off that she could not have the baby and that she had a lot of nerve even suggesting it. I also told him that I told her she could take her money and shove it up her ass. I did. I said just that! He nodded but he didn’t say anything to that. I also told him I wanted to get into Cynth’s apartment, clean it up, empty the ice box, and begin packing up things. He told me that it was not possible and wouldn’t be for a while since it was a crime scene. I argued. He shrugged. I have to say I didn’t like him much. He wasn’t nasty or anything, but he could have been a little more sensitive.

If her death had turned out to be murder, you would have been a suspect. You too, Dash. You realize that?

I never thought of that, but still.

He didn’t ask either of you any other questions, like where you and your husband were that afternoon?

No he didn’t. Well, he asked me why I had the baby and when Cynth brought him over and all that. Anyhow, Dash wasn’t there. He was at work. I told him that.

I looked at Dash. What kind of work do you do, Dash?

I’m an accountant. CPA.

You have your own business or you work for a firm?

He squinted at me. He thought I was prying and he didn’t much like it. Too bad. Of course I was prying and I would continue to do so.

A firm. In Round Rock. He gave me the name.

Thank you. You might as well accept my questions and answer them. If I’m to do this, I’ll ask a lot of them and some may not be as sweet and nice as you would like. Otherwise, I might as well fold up my tent and go home right now.

He tightened his lips and stared at me, but he didn’t respond.

Okay, Dash?

He nodded.

I turned back to Sarah. So, the same detective came back to see you two days later? Tell me about that and give me his full name, if you know it.

"That was to tell me that outrageous conclusion they had come to. An accident, my ass. Sorry. But he was nicer this time. He said it seemed to be food poisoning so far as they could tell, something toxic she had ingested. I asked him to elaborate and he just shook his head. Like I said, I told him it was ridiculous to think she died of food poisoning, it was murder, and at least he didn’t laugh at me. He asked me why I thought that and I told him. I thought he was uncomfortable, but he listened and said the death of a loved one was an unfortunate thing for anyone to accept, especially family, and he was sorry. I asked him if they would keep looking into it and he said it was no longer an open investigation, but he would keep an eye open for whatever might come up and if I had anything to tell him that I thought might be relevant to come see him. About the baby, he said custody was not his business and I might get a visit from someone about it. About letting me into Cynth’s apartment, he said I would probably be able to do so in a day or two and he would let me know. As to release of the body, he said it would take a few days. He asked for the name of the funeral home it would be released to and I said I hadn’t thought about it and would call him later. He suggested I talk to Crystal and straighten things out with her so there would be no trouble."

Did you?

It was taken out of my hands. Crystal came by right after the detective had left, like she was waiting outside, and made demands. Her damned lawyer—officious jerk, really pissed me—came to me the next day. Threatened me in so many words, told me I was facing a long and expensive court proceeding if I didn’t give the child over to Crystal. Asshole. I don’t care if he does have a big reputation for winning in the courtroom, he doesn’t scare me. Gus Frederick is his name and, like I said, he’s just nasty to the bone. There’s a rumor he’s mixed up with some criminal elements in Austin.

I want to hear about that. And I want to hear about you and your sister and this Crystal. But first give me the detective’s name and rank if you know it.

His name is David Prentiss and he’s a sergeant, I think. A detective anyhow on the Georgetown Police Force. He’s called Duke, or so he said. You’ll see him, won’t you?

I’ll talk to him, but not at first. I’ll talk to those who were involved with your sister first, get a feel for them and how they respond. That’s what I want to know about now. You say she was sexually active. With whom, do you know? And her husband and his mother, this Crystal, I want to know about that family and what the issue is with them.

She was shaking her head. I pushed at the cop for details about how things were in the apartment, was the meal being prepared, what she had eaten. I told you that. He said when they went in after her collapse on the front steps, they found a pot of spaghetti sauce simmering, a loaf of crusty French or maybe Italian bread on the counter, a big pot of water with no fire under it, a package of spaghetti on the counter, salad mixings and a pitcher of ice water in the fridge, and also grated parmesan on the counter. So I ask you, what did she ingest, as he put it, that could have poisoned her? He said they tested everything in the kitchen and found nothing that could have been the culprit.

I’ll get the details from the police. Right now tell me about those you think might be involved. I want details, dates, anything you think is important.

She thought a while and then said, I guess I should begin with Marshall, Crystal’s son and how he came to marry Cynth. She started with his birth and went on from there. As we continued the discussion, I prodded her for other details as their relevance occurred to me. I was taking notes for a sort of chronology leading up to the death.

Your and your sister’s parents, are they alive?

Yes, they are. They live in Uvalde. They’re in their fifties.

Cynthia was buried there?

No, she was buried here.

And the funeral was here too I suppose. Did your mother and father attend?

No. Cynth was estranged from them. They wrote her off when she… I don’t want to go into that.

You needn’t. I was just interested in whether they should be consulted about Cynthia’s death, but it appears not.

No.

At one point I asked the burning question that was still unanswered. You said you know one man she was seeing. What’s his name?

Drake. She…

Dash snorted. Sarah swung a fierce look at him. Something not quite right there.  . . . she started with him, with Drake, Sarah continued, even before Marsh went off and joined the damned army. It was easy for them since Marsh spent so many nights in his mother’s place.

Drake who?

His name is Dragón Casquetes, but he’s called Drake. He’s the brother of Crystal, Crystal January. He’s not like her. She’s a bitch, but Drake’s nice.

A lady’s man, rich and spoiled, Dash muttered.

Sarah gave him another of those looks. He smirked.

I didn’t much