Life Without Parole Read online

  Cover

  Also by Elaine Viets

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  The Insider’s Guide to Chouteau County Pronunciation

  Also by Elaine Viets

  Angela Richman, Death Investigator

  BRAIN STORM

  FIRE AND ASHES

  A STAR IS DEAD *

  DEATH GRIP *

  Dead-End Job

  FINAL SAIL

  BOARD STIFF

  CATNAPPED!

  CHECKED OUT

  THE ART OF MURDER

  Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper

  DYING IN STYLE

  HIGH HEELS ARE MURDER

  ACCESSORY TO MURDER

  MURDER WITH ALL THE TRIMMINGS

  THE FASHION HOUND MURDERS

  AN UPLIFTING MURDER

  DEATH ON A PLATTER

  MURDER IS A PIECE OF CAKE

  FIXING TO DIE

  A DOG GONE MURDER

  * available from Severn House

  LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE

  Elaine Viets

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2021

  by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.

  Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022

  by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

  This eBook edition first published in 2021 by Severn House,

  an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

  severnhouse.com

  Copyright © Elaine Viets, 2021

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Elaine Viets to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-5028-7 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-827-6 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0565-0 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  For Alison McMahan. With thanks.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Even though I spent hours in front of my computer to finish this book, novel writing is a team effort. Many people helped me write Angela’s latest adventure, Life Without Parole.

  Most important is my husband, Don Crinklaw, my first reader and best critiquer.

  Thanks also to my agent, Joshua Bilmes, president of JABberwocky Literary Agency, and the entire JABberwocky team. Joshua reads my novels and gives me detailed suggestions to improve them.

  Investigating a murder is difficult and intricate work, and I tried to give a taste of that in Life Without Parole. Special thanks to Detective R.C. White, Fort Lauderdale Police Department (retired) and licensed private eye, for his many hours of advice and help on police procedure. Thank you, Dr Sharon L. Plotkin, certified crime scene investigator and professor at the Miami Dade College School of Justice, who read my crime scenes for accuracy. Thanks to death investigator Krysten Addison and Harold R. Messler, retired manager-criminalistics, St. Louis Police Laboratory. Nurse Gregg E. Brickman, author of Imperfect Friendship, helped me kill off my characters. Award-winning author Greg Herren was another big help. Sarah E.C. Byrne made a generous donation to charity to have her name in this novel. She’s a lawyer from Canberra, Australia, and a crime fiction aficionada.

  I’m grateful to my friends Alan Portman, and Jinny Gender, as well as two award-winning writers, Joanna Campbell Slan, author of Love, Die, Neighbor, and Marcia Talley, author of Done Gone. And thank you, Carol, my behind-the-scenes proofreader.

  Thanks to the Severn House staff, especially Editor Sara Porter and Commissioning Editor Carl Smith. Their suggestions greatly improved this novel. Copyeditor Loma Halden made some excellent catches. I’m also grateful to Publishing Assistant Natasha Bell. Cover artist Piers Tilbury perfectly captured my book.

  Special thanks to the many librarians, including those at the Broward County library and St. Louis and St. Louis County libraries. I could not survive without their help and encouragement.

  All these generous people and more helped me write Life Without Parole. Any mistakes are mine.

  Please enjoy Angela Richman’s latest adventure. Email me at [email protected]

  ONE

  Four in the morning. I was wrapped in the arms of my lover, sleeping the sleep of the satisfied, when my work cell phone rang.

  Damn. Someone was dead, probably murdered. Why couldn’t people die at a decent hour?

  I gently pried myself from Chris Ferretti’s arms, and forced myself awake. I’m Angela Richman, a death investigator in Chouteau County, Missouri, a pocket of white privilege some thirty miles west of St. Louis. I work for the medical examiner’s office.

  Officially, I’d been on call since midnight, but I’d hoped everyone would stay alive. I scooted across the warm bed to check the phone’s display – Detective Jace Budewitz, one of the good guys. I padded across the room, flipped on the bathroom light, and answered the phone. ‘Jace, what’s happening?’ I asked, closing the door and keeping my voice low.

  ‘We’ve got a bad one, Angela.’ I heard the worry in his voice. ‘Tom Lockridge is dead. Three shots to the head.’ I couldn’t help wincing when he said that.

  ‘The Ghost Burglars have turned deadly,’ he said.

  ‘They were bound to start shooting soon,’ I said. ‘Did they kill Tom’s wife, too?’

  ‘No. Cynthia is OK. Claims she was on the other side of the house.
’

  Claims. Hm. Sounded like Jace didn’t believe her.

  ‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes,’ I said.

  I hung up, yawned, stretched, and turned on the shower. Cold water first, to shock me awake, followed by soothing warm water.

  Tom’s death would have a big impact on Chouteau County’s social life. Tom was sixty-six, and his sexy wife was thirty-four years younger. Tom and Cynthia were the closest stodgy Chouteau County had to jet-setters, and gossip swirled around them. I’d heard that in summer, Tom’s plane – loaded with his friends – flew to his house at the Lake of the Ozarks, about 175 miles away in the Ozark Mountains. From there, the party piled into Tom’s boat and headed for the lake’s ‘Party Cove,’ a floating sin spot notorious for public sex, drugs and nude sailing. A local paper condemned Party Cove as a ‘giant petri dish of debauchery.’

  Wild child Cynthia and her freethinking friends fostered the colorful gossip: rumor said they drank, they drugged, and they hosted onboard bacchanals.

  Until he met Cynthia, Tom – Thomas J. Lockridge – had been a hardworking contractor. He still worked hard, but now he partied harder. In the winter, Tom and Cynthia flew their party pals to Telluride, Colorado, for skiing and lots of powder – and I don’t just mean snow.

  Tom was generous, and not only to his friends. He was a major donor to every local charity and was frequently photographed in a penguin suit, presenting a hefty check to a smiling, sequined socialite.

  Now he was dead.

  I rinsed the shampoo out of my long dark hair, and didn’t bother blow-drying it. Instead, I pulled it into a practical ponytail, then dried myself with one of Chris’s fluffy towels. I’d spent the night with my new lover. Chris was a Chouteau County patrol officer. He understood why I’d also brought my black DI pantsuit and shoes – sensible black lace-ups – ‘just in case,’ and plugged in my work cell on his night stand.

  When I emerged from the bathroom dressed for work, Chris’s love-rumpled bed was empty. I could hear him banging around in the kitchen.

  I hurried downstairs and saw him in his black bathrobe, scrambling eggs in his cast-iron skillet. He had strong tanned features and brown hair cut short, but not too short.

  I kissed him good morning. ‘Is that coffee I smell?’

  ‘Duty calls, right?’ he said. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Tom Lockridge. Jace Budewitz told me Tom was shot dead in his bedroom. Jace thinks it was the Ghost Burglars – just what we were talking about last night.’

  Chris shook his head. ‘I knew that situation was headed for tragedy. Twelve burglaries in two weeks, and now the Forest’s trigger-happy home owners are armed with everything from shotguns to AK-47s.

  ‘The man who was killed – Lockridge. Is he the guy who lives in the marble palace on Windsor Court?’ Chris asked.

  ‘That’s him,’ I said. ‘The Lockridge mansion is a copy of an Italian palace. Tom bought it for his bride, Cynthia.’

  ‘Do you know him?’ Chris asked.

  ‘I’ve seen Tom and Cynthia enough to recognize them, but I don’t really know them. I’ve never been in their house.’

  Two slices of wheat toast popped up in the toaster. Chris deftly removed them to a blue plate and forked the scrambled eggs on top.

  ‘Breakfast,’ he said.

  ‘Looks delicious, but can I get it to-go?’

  He wrapped the egg sandwich in a paper napkin, handed me the Thermos of hot black coffee and kissed me again. ‘I wish you could stay with me.’ His kiss was long and lingering and I wanted desperately to go back to bed with him.

  ‘I really have to go,’ I said, forcing myself to leave.

  ‘Will I see you tonight?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’ I broke free of his embrace and headed for the door. ‘I’ll call you. Thank you for a lovely time. And breakfast.’

  And I was outside in his condo parking lot, in the cool early morning air. Moonlight gave the prosaic blacktop lot a shimmering shine. Soon it would be another warm May day. I chirped open my black Dodge Charger, leaned my head against the steering wheel and sighed with happiness. I’d been widowed for more than two years when I’d met Chris by accident – for real. Someone had tried to run me down in a parking lot.

  Chris was the officer on call, and it took at least another month before we started dating. When my husband, Donegan, died suddenly of a heart attack, I knew I’d never love again. I was too broken. But Chris courted me slowly and patiently, and I began to come back to life.

  I poured myself a cup of coffee from the Thermos, and took a long drink. I felt the caffeine flowing through my veins. I was finally awake.

  I’d finished my sandwich and the first cup of coffee by the time I turned on to Windsor Court. Tom Lockridge’s bone-white marble mansion glittered in the moonlight. The four-story faux Renaissance palace was designed to impress, overwhelming the other mansions on the court. Perfectly sculpted shrubbery lined the wrought-iron fence. The mansion looked slightly less forbidding with lights blazing in the tall windows.

  Mike, a sleepy-looking uniform cop, stopped me at the gate. ‘Morning, Angela,’ he said. ‘Follow the driveway around to the side by the garage. You can park there. You’ll need to suit up and wear booties. The whole freaking place is a crime scene, and there’s blood everywhere in the bedroom.’

  I signed the crime scene log and got the case number, then drove through a moon-silvered forest that opened on to a vast velvet green lawn. Finally, I reached the parking area. The garage was big enough for eight cars. The parking area held a dozen official vehicles, and there was still room for my car. I parked next to Jace’s gray unmarked sedan that screamed ‘cop car!’

  About an acre of the backyard was marked off with yellow crime scene tape and lit by the glare of portable lights. Uniformed officers were doing a grid search.

  I pulled my death investigator case out of my trunk. It went with me everywhere. The kit was a black rolling suitcase packed with the paraphernalia I needed for a death investigation: Tupperware containers for evidence, plastic and paper evidence bags, evidence tape, my point-and-shoot camera, and more. I donned a white disposable Tyvek suit and rolled my suitcase toward the sunroom off the kitchen. The glassed-in room was a riot of green plants, from palms to giant split-leaf philodendrons. I sat on a teak bench to put on my booties, and saw – and smelled – the basil growing in clay pots.

  I heard Jace talking to a woman in the kitchen. Her voice was thick with tears. Cynthia, the victim’s wife? Too bad the kitchen door didn’t have a window.

  ‘Tell me what happened again, Mrs Lockridge.’ I could hear the skepticism in the detective’s voice.

  ‘But I’ve already told you a hundred times.’ More crying.

  ‘I need to hear it again.’ Jace’s voice was polite but firm.

  ‘I was upstairs, on the other side of the house, in my office, working on the plans for the Chouteau Forest Christmas Ball. I’m the co-chair.’

  The charity ball was the premiere social event in Chouteau Forest. Cynthia was definitely in high cotton if she was co-chair.

  ‘I was planning the menu.’ Cynthia’s voice was wobbly with tears. ‘The Forest Inn wanted to charge too much for filet mignon, and we have to have some kind of red meat. The men demand it. I was figuring the cost of petit filet appetizers, and chicken for the main course, when I heard a popping sound – three pops – and then footsteps running down the back service stairs. My dog started barking and growling. I ran over to the back stairs and saw two men running toward the door—’

  ‘Did you have a gun or any protection when you went running after two adult males?’ Jace interrupted.

  ‘I told you. I had Prince, my Malinois.’ Now the tears had changed to impatience.

  I had one bootie on, but I hesitated putting on the other. I wanted to hear what Cynthia had to say.

  ‘Why didn’t you turn on the alarm system last night, Mrs Lockridge?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking. Besides, I had Prin
ce with me.’

  ‘You weren’t thinking about the Ghost Burglars, even though they’ve been hitting every big home in the Forest?’ I heard the disbelief in Jace’s voice. ‘You weren’t thinking your husband might need protection?’

  ‘No!’ Cynthia gave a tear-drenched shout. ‘My husband had his gun. And this isn’t the ghetto, Detective. I’m not used to living under siege.’ Now she began wailing. ‘My husband is dead! My poor Tom is gone! And you wouldn’t let me give him one last kiss.’

  Jace was right to prevent the widow from contaminating the crime scene.

  ‘We’re done here!’ A male voice, commanding and self-assured. ‘Mrs Lockridge is my client, Detective. She’s suffered a terrible shock and the loss of her husband. She’s been through enough. I’m taking her to my home. My housekeeper, Mrs Mason, will care for her.’

  ‘Fine,’ Jace said. ‘But don’t leave town, Mrs Lockridge. I’m going to be talking to you again in the morning.’

  ‘And I’m going to be there with her,’ the man said.

  ‘You do that, Counselor,’ Jace said.

  I’d just put on the other bootie when the side door was flung open and out stormed the owner of the male voice. Wesley Desloge, an ambitious Forest lawyer trying to make a name for himself. He had his arm protectively around the new widow. Cynthia’s eyes were red and swollen, and her mascara left black streaks on her face, but she was still glamorous. Her black hair tumbled down her back, and she wore black silk lounging pajamas with a black lace peignoir.

  Wes guarded her like she was made of gold.

  TWO

  I rolled my DI case into the kitchen and found Jace pacing the floor. The big detective with the boyish face and short buzzed blond hair looked angry.

  ‘Something’s not right,’ he said. ‘The victim was shot at 1:08 this morning and his wife didn’t call nine-one-one until 1:53. A forty-five-minute gap. What was she doing during that time?’

  ‘How do you know the exact time of death?’ I asked. TOD – time of death – was almost unknowable. Unless someone saw a murder and had a clock nearby, it was difficult to determine the exact time.