CHAPTER TWO
1390 Words
CHAPTER TWO
Wednesday, 9 p.m. – 2 days, 18 hours before the wedding
Wednesday nights were usually quiet in Homicide, so even though San Francisco Homicide Inspector Rebecca Mayfield and her partner, Inspector Bill Sutter, were the on-call detectives that week, she had gone home early.
Now, she sat in her two-room apartment in her pajamas, a bowl of popcorn on her lap, and her ten-pound Chinese Crested Hairless/Chihuahua mix at her side. She was shedding tears over a weepy old romance from Netflix when her cell phone began to buzz.
Homicide’s dispatcher gave her an address.
She dried her eyes and went into the bedroom to get dressed. The last thing she wanted to do was to look at a dead body, but it was her job. Thirty minutes later she wended her way up the narrow, twisting roads of Telegraph Hill. Police cars told her she had reached the crime scene, but she was surprised by the location, nonetheless.
The two-story building looked as if it had once been a large, luxurious home, but now a discrete chiseled stone plaque near the door read “La Belle Maison.”
As Rebecca showed her credentials to the uniformed SFPD officer guarding the front door, another officer approached. “Inspector Mayfield?” he asked.
At her nod, he gave his name, Carl Beamer, and explained that he and his partner were first on the scene after 9-1-1 reported a number of calls from a party at the location.
Rebecca entered the ornate establishment with Officer Beamer. “The victim’s up there,” Beamer said, pointing to the wide-curving staircase to the left of the foyer. “We stopped everyone from leaving and moved them into the living room, or whatever it is, to clear the crime scene. They want to go home and are getting pretty upset.”
She nodded and glanced in the direction Beamer indicated, to a room with a marble fireplace, sofas and chairs, and a several pockets of nicely dressed people huddled together.
The way they glared at her, upset wasn't the word she'd have used. Ready to riot was more likely.
Near her was a coat and hat check area, and beyond it, a hallway.
“Down the hall,” Beamer said, “are some offices. We put the victim’s family in there for privacy.”
She nodded and decided to take a quick walk through the ground floor before going up to see the body. Rebecca had learned that was a good operating practice. She had seen a few situations where a homicide cop made a bonehead assumption about a crime, and even destroyed some potential evidence, simply because he hadn't taken a moment to look over the location beyond the exact spot where the body was found.
Where a dining room most likely once stood, large, well-appointed men’s and women's restrooms had been built, and beyond them was a small service elevator.
Last of all, she entered the kitchen, a stainless steel wonderland of appliances, from enormous Sub-zero refrigerators, to commercial grade stoves. It had large, deep sinks, stainless steel countertops, pots, pans, bowls, and enough cutting implements to make a knife thrower in a circus happy. A door led from the kitchen to an enclosed porch, and then out to a back alley lined with garbage cans and a dumpster.
“Time to head upstairs,” she said to Beamer.
Reaching the ballroom, she saw a cluster of police to one side near the back, and assumed that was the location of the victim. In the center, looking rather lonely in the large space, Rebecca counted four round tables with six place settings at each, and a dance floor. The decorations were white, with white flowers and white bells. They gave her a bad feeling about just what kind of “party” this might have been.
On one wall, a portable bar had been set up, and on the opposite wall, a station for a DJ.
As she approached the cluster of police officers, they stepped aside so she could see the victim.
She gasped.
Not only had no one told her the party was a wedding reception, no one had said that the victim was the bride.
The bride lay sprawled atop the table, face down in the wedding cake. The table was oblong, the cake in the middle. She looked as if she had stood at one end of the table and toppled forward onto the cake. Her feet dangled in the air.
Blood, lots of blood, oozed from a chef’s knife protruding from her back. Blood saturated her dress, the table cloth, and dripped onto the floor.
“Oh, my,” Rebecca gasped. She had seen plenty of dead bodies, but something about the bride got to her. “Her name?”
“Taylor Redmun,” Beamer replied. “Or, I guess, Taylor Redmun-Blythe since the wedding ceremony had taken place before this happened.”
Rebecca nodded. “We must have over twenty witnesses. Has anyone stepped forward? Are they saying who did this?”
“It's hard to believe, but all we've heard is that no one saw anything other than the fact that the bride came through those swinging doors.” He pointed to doors not far from the wedding cake. “Apparently they open to a small room where the caterer can stage the food he brings up on the elevator, keep extras of anything he might need, or whatever. The service elevator is at the back of the space. Anyway, the guests said the bride burst out of there, through the swinging doors, then ran and stumbled towards the cake with her arms out as if she wanted to grab it, but instead, she fell on it. That was when they saw the knife ... and the blood.”
“Who saw it?”
“It sounds like all of them. Apparently, everyone went crazy, screaming, and running for the exits. The wedding planner, Sally Lankowitz, somehow managed to keep her wits, and she told everyone to sit down and that they couldn't leave until the police arrived.”
“Where is she now?”
“In her office. She’s quite shaken up, as you can imagine. Officer Donaldson is with her.”
“Where's the groom?”
“He's in the owner's office with some of his close friends and relatives.”
“Name?”
“Leland Blythe.”
“And the bride's relatives?”
“I don't know. No one came forward.”
Rebecca saw that the victim had been an attractive woman, very slim, probably around 5'8”, with long, thick blonde hair. She wore a wedding ring with a substantial diamond, and her dress had intricate beading that probably cost a pretty penny.
“Did anyone say why she had left the ballroom to go into the anteroom?” Rebecca asked.
Beamer looked at the other officers. All shook their heads. “Guess not,” he said. “I heard some speculation that she might have used the elevator to come back upstairs from the woman's bathroom, although most people used the stairs. Nobody knows for sure.”
Rebecca was about to ask where the deceased's belongings were—her handbag, phone, wallet—when the Crime Scene Unit showed up. The photographer immediately began taking photos and recording the scene.
Shortly after them, Evelyn Ramirez, the medical examiner, entered with her assistants. “One of these days I'm going to arrive before you do,” she said to Rebecca as she snapped latex gloves into place. “But I see I've beaten Bill Sutter, as usual.”
“And where's the challenge in that?” Rebecca asked with a wry smile. She and Ramirez were accustomed to showing up at crime scenes long before Rebecca's thinking-about-retirement partner. She wished he would turn in his retirement papers and get it over with instead of spending almost every waking hour pondering and talking about leaving the police force. Ironically, he was still a good detective when he put his mind to it.
The M.E. leaned over the deceased to get a better look at her. When the photographer gave the okay, she rolled the victim to one side, and then the other. The knife wound was the only evident cause of death thus far.
“It doesn't appear as if there’ll be any surprises here,” Ramirez said, straightening. “It’s unlikely anything other than the chef’s knife is the murder weapon. Given the size of the blade, it may have penetrated her lungs or caused some other horrific internal bleeding. With either injury, she could potentially walk a few feet before collapsing.”
“How soon will you be able to do an autopsy on her?” Rebecca asked.
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Thanks,” Rebecca said.
She went into the anteroom. It held an empty table, and a set of shelves lined with a number of sets of salt and pepper shakers, sugar bowls, powdered creamers, clean cutlery, dessert plates, and carving knives. A rolling cart with dirty plates, knives, forks, and spoons had been haphazardly shoved to one side of the room.
She saw no blood, but it’s possible the bridal gown absorbed most of it as the bride fled from her killer.
Rebecca left the anteroom to head downstairs to interview the guests and the wedding party, leaving the M.E. and CSI to do their jobs.
- Writer
