“Time of death is dependent on many factors, and it’s complicated.” I won’t give her the satisfaction of making me defensive.
“Tell me why you’re so sure this lady’s been dead since the spring. Tell me why, based on information other than dates on magazines and how wilted the flowers are or how many burned-out lights there are or how overgrown the yard is.”
I check the gas burners on the stovetop, and they flame up.
“The lack of insect damage, the mold on her face and neck, and decomposition of organs, and her core body temperature are indications that she was stored in a closed structure where the air was dry and very cold,” I tell her again. “Possibly she was frozen.”
“According to articles I’ve looked at, complete mummification can occur in as little as two weeks. So it really is rather up for grabs how long this lady’s been dead.”
“It really isn’t.”
“You say months. Someone else says weeks.”
I open the pantry and find nothing that wouldn’t keep. The usual canned goods, all of them sodium-free, and whole-grain cereals, rice, and pasta.
“It requires more than surfing the Internet to have an informed opinion.” I let her know someone is doing just that, probably whoever is sending the e-mails.
“I’m sure I could find experts with your level of training who might have opinions very different from yours.” I’ve made her angry.
“I’m sure you could.” I feel her eyes on my back. “That doesn’t mean those opinions would be correct.”
It appears Peggy Stanton ate a lot of salads. A shelf is filled with bottles of fat-free Italian dressing, what must be two dozen bottles that were on special at Whole Foods. I shut the pantry door.
A lady who was cautious and took good care of herself and her cat. She was frugal. She tightly controlled the world she had left.
“Two weeks.” I consider what Burke said earlier. “Cases of a body completely mummifying in two weeks? That’s very interesting.”
“It’s in the literature.” She’s openly argumentative, and it’s better that way.
It’s easier. Let her skim through whatever lands in her inbox and hammer away.
“And where might this have been? Where human remains were completely desiccated after only two weeks?” I walk out of the kitchen.
“I certainly can’t tell you exactly where. Only that it’s possible.”
“If you’re talking about the Sahara Desert, I suppose.” I head upstairs. “The hottest desert on the planet, and a body in those conditions will have some seventy percent loss of volume through dehydration in no time at all. It will be as dried out as beef jerky.”
Burke is right behind me.
“A hundred-and-forty-pound person who becomes completely mummified will weigh maybe forty pounds, will be leather over bones, hard dried-out skin that splits,” I let her know. “That’s what extreme heat and aridness does. It’s not something you find around here.”
“People are creative. Especially if they’re experts, if it’s what they do professionally.” Of course she means Marino. “Experts in death investigation and all associated forensic evidence.”
A guest room is on the left of the landing, and straight ahead through an open door is the master bedroom. I ignore what she’s so blatant about.
“You were quoted all over the news for saying in court today that it would have taken months for Mildred Lott’s body to turn to soap.” Burke brings this in, and I’m not surprised, and I wonder if that’s been e-mailed to her, too. “You said one of the requirements is submersion in cold water.”
The queen-size bed is canopied, the black-and-white damask duvet smooth and neatly tucked under three pillows. The one nearest the bedside table where the phone is plugged in has been plumped but is wrinkled, the way pillows look when they’ve been slept on.
“But they’ve also found this same soaplike condition when bodies have been sealed in watertight coffins and vaults, isn’t that correct?” Burke isn’t going to quit, and she should. “Bodies forming adipocere when there’s no water.”
“Watertight isn’t always as advertised,” I reply.
“You seem to believe you’re infallible.”
“Nobody is infallible. But a lot of people are misinformed.”
I pull back the duvet, and the sheets and pillows underneath are perfectly smooth on one side of the bed and wrinkled on the side near the phone. I notice cat fur that looks short and grayish-white.
“The linens weren’t changed after whoever slept in here last.” I continue taking photographs of everything I look at. “Someone slept or lay down on the right side of the bed next to the phone. It appears the cat was in the bed at some point. I’d like to check the bedside drawer.”
A night guard in a blue plastic container is labeled with the name and address of the West Palm Beach dentist who caused Peggy Stanton so much damage and unnecessary expense. I set two prescription bottles on the table and photograph them, then place them in separate plastic evidence bags.
“Muscle relaxers prescribed by her dentist, Dr. Pulling,” I let Burke know. “Any meds should go in to the labs. And I’d like to collect the night guards. Dr. Adams might want to take a look at them.”
“What I’m getting at, Kay, and what I need you to objectively comment on—” she starts to say, and I cut her off.
“Why would you assume I might be anything other than objective?” I open the closet door.
“I’m sure you can imagine why I might be concerned.” Her tone is no longer accusing or hostile, but sympathetic, as if she can well understand why I would cover for Marino, why I might slant or even falsify autopsy findings for him.
I run my gloved hands through the clothing on hangers, a lot of pantsuits and slacks and blouses that are prim and old-fashioned, with hanging cedar planks spaced along the rod. I don’t see a dress or a skirt, and no blazers or jackets have antique military buttons or even distinctive ones.
“You care about him,” Burke says, as if it’s a good thing.
Peggy Stanton lost her family and never moved beyond it, everything old and the same, the future she looked forward to crashing with that plane. Her existence was rigidly maintained and obsessively protected, and it’s hard for me to imagine she was on Twitter.
“I’m wondering if you’ve come across a computer?” I ask.
“Not yet.”
Photographs displayed on tables and dressers are of an era when Peggy Stanton had people in her life she loved, her husband a pleasant-looking man with mischievous dark eyes and a lock of dark hair falling over his brow, the two girls into horses and swimming, one of them into airplanes. None of the photographs is recent. Peggy Stanton isn’t in any of them.
“If she has no computer, how was she on Twitter?” I ask.
“Maybe a laptop she took with her. Maybe her phone, her iPad, whatever she had with her when she left here.”
“I see nothing to suggest she was interested in technology,” I reply. “In fact, quite to the contrary, if you look at the old TV in here, at the princess phone.”
I open another closet, where button-up sweaters are folded on shelves with cedar blocks tucked between them, and shoes arranged on a rack on the floor are crepe-soled and low-heeled, made for comfort, not style. I’m not surprised that Peggy Stanton’s hair was prematurely white and that she didn’t bother to dye or style it or that her nail polish was an understated pale pink, almost flesh-colored. I see nothing to indicate she made any effort to be alluring or attractive beyond what the dentist did to her, and I suspect she was talked into those procedures.
“No Tulle or Audrey Marybeth or Peruvian Connection, not a single label like that.” I look at a men’s outback hat box, thick with dust, on the closet floor, PHOTOGRAPHS printed in neat block letters on the lid. “Most of her clothing is size eight or ten, not size six. I’d like to open this.”