Lazy Bird a Seth and Ava Mystery Read online

  “Late night?” Fran asked. “You look tired.”

  “O’Malley got home super late — after one in the morning — and found some jerks in suits with Bernie,” Ava said. “I was asleep upstairs, but I heard O’Malley say something — I don’t remember what — and shot out of bed. He sounded really angry. So, I grabbed my service weapon and went to find him. Maresol arrived with the shotgun just before I got there. I mean, you should have seen these guys. They looked like something out of an old movie —. black suits, thin black ties, same haircut and color, even fedoras! Very weird.”

  “Who were they?” Leslie asked.

  “Is Bernie okay?” Fran asked.

  “From some government agency,” Ava said. “O’Malley knew who they were but not who they worked for.”

  “Typical O’Malley,” Fran said. “Bernie?”

  “He’s okay,” Ava said. “These dudes told O’Malley that they would trade information about where US soldiers’ remains were buried.”

  “On Guadal?” Leslie gasped. “No way.”

  Fran shook her head in disgust. Ava nodded.

  “That’s just terrible,” Fran said.

  “What did they want?” Leslie asked. “Can you do that in the other hood? We need the counters for DNA.”

  “Got it,” Ava said. She rolled out the stool under the second hood and opened the hood. She put the bag in the metal box and checked that the vent was on. She closed the hood to finish what she was saying. “Anyway, Maresol got to Bernie before he completely fell apart. She said that he was okay this morning, but I know that he had to take all of his meds. He was pretty zonked this morning.”

  “How did you get them out of the house?” Fran said.

  “Maresol told them that she would shoot them,” Ava said. “I think she would have. After they left, Seth went outside to make some calls and get rid of these glasses they had.”

  Ava opened the hood and started opening the evidence bag.

  Without looking up from her work, Leslie asked, “Glasses?”

  “He said that they looked like regular glasses, but they were connected to the Internet through our WiFi,” Ava said. “They were recording the entire interaction and communicating with someone. O’Malley was furious. He broke them up with a hammer and wrapped them in foil. Put them in the trash bin.”

  The women fell silent as they worked.

  Ava laid the coat flat on the bottom of the hood. She started combing the fabric to collect any fiber, hair, or body fluid that had been picked up by the overcoat. She meticulously put whatever was on the comb into an evidence bag labeled with the specific area of the overcoat it came from.

  “I have the feeling that you’re leaving out the fun part,” Leslie said.

  Ava looked up to see what Leslie was talking about. Fran pointed at Ava.

  “Oh, me?” Ava asked. She chuckled. “He was on fire. I think I slept about an hour. He just showered and went to work.”

  “These government men were there that long?” Fran asked.

  “They left around 2 a.m.,” Ava said. “I helped Maresol get Bernie into bed. Then it was all us. I’m kind of worried what he’ll be like when he’s completely healed from the shooting.”

  The women chuckled conspiratorially.

  “I mean, how will I keep up?” Ava laughed.

  The women laughed again. When Seth and Ava were out in public, men frequently asked Seth how he kept up with a wife in her twenties. Both Fran and Leslie had been there when men had openly asked that question, which made Ava’s question funnier.

  “Sounds like those government men did you a favor,” Fran said.

  “I wonder if they’ll come back tonight,” Ava said.

  She wiggled her eyebrows, and the women laughed.

  “Did you talk about having kids?” Leslie asked.

  “We did no talking,” Ava said.

  “Good for you,” Fran said.

  They were silent for a while as they worked.

  “Wait,” Fran said.

  The women looked up from their work to look at her.

  “Why were those jerks at your house in the middle of the night?” Fran asked. “Did you say?”

  “I didn’t. They told O’Malley that they had a ‘contractor’ in the area around the time this guy was killed,” Ava said. “They wanted to approve our work before we released it, you know — to social media, like we usually do.”

  The women each rolled their eyes at the idea before they fell back to work for a few minutes.

  “What do we think a ‘contractor’ is?” Leslie asked.

  “Assassin,” Ava said. “At least that’s what O’Malley thought. We’ll find out when his friend gets back with us.”

  “This guy was an assassin?” Fran asked.

  “They thought he might be their guy,” Ava said, shrugging. “But who knows?”

  They worked in silence for more than a half hour. Fran set her ELISA plates into the incubator. She went to where Ava was working and took out the evidence bags from the exterior of the overcoat. Ava had started on the inside of the collar.

  “I guess it doesn’t matter what he did,” Leslie said, setting her ELISA plates into the incubator.

  “We still have to figure out who killed him,” Ava said.

  “What if this was a really bad guy?” Leslie asked.

  “It’s always possible,” Ava said.

  “Everyone starts as a little baby,” Fran said. “Sweet and open, ready for the world. That’s what I think of. We bring families some peace of mind by bringing justice to whoever killed their family member.”

  Fran gave Leslie one of the evidence bags. Leslie signed the bag and opened it. She tipped the material in the bag into a Pyrex beaker. From a bottle, she sprayed saline into the beaker to moisten the material.

  “You’re right,” Leslie said. “It doesn’t matter what he did.”

  She turned to Fran and smiled.

  “You are the sweetest woman, Fran,” Leslie said.

  “Now I know that you’re pregnant,” Fran said.

  “Why?” Ava asked laughing.

  “She gets really sweet and sappy when she’s pregnant,” Fran said. “Don’t you remember?”

  Nodding, Ava laughed. Blushing, Leslie focused on what she was working on.

  “Did you call the artist?” Fran asked Ava as she worked.

  “I did,” Ava said. “In fact, that’s how those jerks found us. Seems like they track the artist.”

  “You should call and tell her,” Leslie said.

  “Good point,” Ava said. “I’ll do it after I finish this.”

  “Does she need the skull?” Fran asked.

  “Joan hates to give up the skull,” Leslie said.

  “Nelson scanned and measured the skull,” Ava said. “She has a 3D printer. She was going to print out a copy of the skull and work with that. She said that she does that with the Smithsonian and their historic skulls.”

  “Very high-tech,” Fran said. “Did you know that she could do that?”

  Leslie and Ava shook their heads.

  “The best thing is that we should have an image by tomorrow or the next day,” Ava said.

  “Do you think their ‘contractor’ will be in their database?” Leslie asked.

  “No idea,” Ava said.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” Fran said.

  They worked in companionable silence. Ava combed her way through all of the man’s clothing, shoes, and everything found on the body, while Fran and Leslie processed what she’d found. When Ava finished with the combing, she sprayed his clothing with luminescence fluid to see if there was any blood on the clothing. Bodily fluids lit up under UV light, so Ava closed the hood and went to grab a hand held UV light from a shelf in the clean lab.

  “What do you mean that there is no blood or bodily fluids on his clothing?” Fran asked. “He was found in a dumpster!”

  “I know!” Ava said. “But there’s nothing here. Take a look.”


  Fran and Leslie looked inside the vent hood. Ava turned off the hood’s light. There was no sign of blue luminescence from the fluid. She turned on the UV light and waved it over the fabric of the overcoat. If there was a bodily fluid, any bodily fluid, the UV light would cause the fluid to light up in blue.

  Nothing lit up.

  “That’s just crazy,” Fran said.

  “Was he wrapped in a plastic tarp or something?” Leslie asked. “I would think that, at the very least, there would be something from the bin.”

  “Completely clean,” Ava said.

  “Are we sure that he was found in a dumpster?” Fran asked.

  “It doesn’t look like it, does it?” Ava asked.

  “No,” Leslie agreed.

  “Something for Bob,” Ava said.

  Ava sent Bob an email requesting that he find the detectives who worked the case or, at a minimum, the original crime-scene photos.

  “You know what?” Ava nodded. “I’m going to open the seams to the overcoat. See what I can find inside.”

  “Good idea,” Fran said.

  For the rest of the day, the three women worked through processing the samples Ava had found. The process was labor intensive but worth it if they found anything that would help them identify this man and determine what had happened to him.

  The truth was that Ava had a particular skill at finding what no one else could find. The team had a gift for finding some missed clue or bit of DNA out of the slimmest remnants of someone’s life.

  They usually found something. This time was no exception.

  By the time they had uncovered the DNA profiles, they had an image of the man from the construction dumpster in Mancos. Late Wednesday night, Nelson started the facial-recognition programs on one set of computers. At the same time, Ava started the DNA from the three profiles they had found on the physical evidence on the other set of computers.

  With everything started, they locked up the lab and left for home.

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  Five

  Seth put his arm around Ava’s waist and leaned in to nuzzle her neck. Ava smiled at him, and they kissed. Seth, Bernie, their friend, Bumpy, and his son, Jeraine, had just knocked the socks off the invitation-only crowd there to raise money for the Denver Zoo. Seth moved away to speak to a wealthy couple.

  Ava was wearing a gorgeous black dress that fell to her mid-thighs. Because it was warm, she’d skipped wearing hose. Her bare feet were tucked into five-inch stilettos. Maresol stood at her side, with Bernie’s arm around her. Maresol was wearing a beautiful cotton dress with gorgeous hand-embroidered flowers all over it. Tanesha, Jeraine’s wife, was standing next to Ava. She was wearing a beautiful blue silk dress that hung on her curves. The dress was as short as Ava’s. Like Ava, Tanesha’s bare feet were tucked into her black stilettos. Bumpy’s wife, Dionne, was wearing a lovely pant suit. She’d taken her jacket off to show off her toned arms. She hugged her husband and walked up to stand next to her good friend Maresol.

  “You’ll have to tell me your secret,” the wealthy man said.

  “Secret?” Seth asked.

  “How do you keep up with that gorgeous wife of yours?” the man said with a lurid laugh.

  “Oh, my God,” Tanesha said, under her breath to Ava. “Every single time I’m with you, some jerk asks that question.”

  “You tell no lies,” Ava nodded.

  “No one asks Jeraine that about me,” Tanesha said with a grin.

  “You get asked about other things though,” Ava said. “I’ve been with you when two little chicks openly chatted about Jeraine’s penis. This crowd is just a little old for that.”

  Rolling her eyes, Tanesha nodded.

  “Does it bother you?” Tanesha asked.

  Ava looked at Tanesha. She was a few years younger than Tanesha. They’d grown up within a few miles of each other, but they’d had such different trajectories in life that they hadn’t met until Ava was dating Seth. His eldest child, Sandy, was one of Tanesha’s best friends. Ava always looked forward to spending time with Tanesha whenever they had the chance.

  “Bother me?” Ava asked. She shrugged. “I love my life and my husband. If it requires some pervy old man asking him questions?”

  Ava shrugged.

  Tanesha laughed.

  “You?” Ava asked. “You’re the envy of millions of women around the world.”

  Tanesha’s husband Jeraine was an R & B star. He’d thrown their relationship away in order to embrace “the lifestyle” only to return a few years ago. He’d been a complete wreck. Now, Jeraine was back on his feet, and they were very happy. Tanesha was going to medical school. They were raising three adopted boys, as well as their son, Jabari.

  A waiter came up with a tray of champagne flutes filled with inexpensive champagne.

  “Not for us,” Dionne said, shaking her head at the waiter. “Can you bring us something drinkable? I believe my husband has set up a tab.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the waiter said with a nod.

  “We need to hang out with her,” Ava said.

  Tanesha laughed.

  “You’ll learn,” Dionne said. “After thousands of these events, I’m sick of the taste of that cheap crap.”

  “They’ve been married more than forty years,” Tanesha said in Ava’s ear.

  “I was a child bride,” Dionne said with a grin. “Now, that’s better!”

  The waiter was coming in their direction with a fizzy liquid that was nearly see-through.

  “We have much to learn from you, wise woman,” Ava said.

  Tanesha laughed. The women each took a glass off the waiter’s tray.

  “You’re Miss T,” the waiter stammered.

  “Some people call me that,” Tanesha said.

  “Wow,” the waiter said. “I can’t believe I’m actually meeting you.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Tanesha said.

  “Can I take a selfie?” the waiter asked, panting a bit.

  Tanesha shot Ava a panicked look. Many of Jeraine’s hits had included desperate lines about “Miss T” — his wife, Tanesha.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ava said. “We need to be over there.”

  Ava took Tanesha’s arm, and they zipped off to another area of the party. They leaned into each other and laughed.

  “Does that happen often?” Ava asked.

  “Oh, God, no,” Tanesha said. “Just when he’s around.”

  Tanesha gestured to Jeraine.

  “He is very handsome,” Ava said.

  “And he knows it,” Tanesha said.

  The women laughed.

  “I just don’t understand how you can keep up with a woman in her twenties, O’Malley,” another elderly man said to Seth O’Malley, as they walked by. “Tell me — do you use the pills?”

  “Oh, my God,” Tanesha said.

  Tanesha took Ava’s arm, and they turned, walking right into a tall, older man. Tanesha gasped.

  “I’m so sorry, Senator Hargreaves!” Tanesha said. She added softly to Ava, “This is retired Senator and General Hargreaves.”

  Tanesha pulled Ava closer and started to move.

  “I wished to speak with Ava,” Senator Hargreaves said. “Nice to see you, Tanesha.”

  “Sir,” Tanesha said, blushing. “Should I leave?”

  “Not for me,” Senator Hargreaves said.

  “Are you Alex’s father?” Ava asked.

  “Do you know my daughter?” Senator Hargreaves said with a wide grin.

  “I know Alex and Max,” Ava said. “Colin. Their team helped me when my husband was sick. I know Samantha from my dad’s stuff, and Erin interned in our lab to get back up to speed before returning to school.”

  Ava nodded. Smirking, Tanesha looked away.

  “The First Responder poison,” Senator Hargreaves said. “I’d forgotten about that. I’m not sure I knew that Erin interned with you.”

  “She’d been out of the lab for a few years,
” Ava nodded. “We were happy to have her. She’s brilliant.”

  Senator Hargreaves gave Ava a calculating look.

  “I think I’ll leave,” Tanesha said.

  “Do stay,” Senator Hargreaves said. “I heard that you were visited by a few men who indicated that the case you’re working on might be a contractor? I was asked to review the image you have and give you as much assistance as I’m able.”

  “You mean, you’re the latest spy into my lab?” Ava asked.

  Senator Hargreaves laughed. He shook his head when he stopped laughing.

  “Have you had a lot of spies in your lab?” Senator Hargreaves asked.

  “Yes,” Ava said.

  Tanesha nodded in agreement.

  “One thing that has surprised me about working cold cases, and, really, I’m not sure why, but it does,” Ava said.

  “What has surprised you?” Senator Hargreaves asked.

  “That cold cases are cold for reasons,” Ava said. “We found fifteen reasons in the Pawnee Grasslands and another twenty-five reasons in the mountains outside of Glenwood. There’s always someone who doesn’t want these cases solved.”

  “Her lab’s been broken into on every case,” Tanesha said. “They blew up her vehicles. Burned down her garage.”

  “Until the last one,” Ava said. “Now that the feds are there, no one can even get up to our floor.”

  “They shot you at home, instead,” Tanesha said.

  Ava winced. Her leg had been hurting, but she was enjoying her time with Tanesha so much that she didn’t want to miss hanging out with her. With the mention of being shot, Ava’s leg began to throb.

  “I understand what you’re saying,” Senator Hargreaves said with a nod. “Do you have the image with you?”

  “Of our victim?” Ava asked.

  Senator Hargreaves nodded.

  “I can get it,” Ava said. “Why?”

  “I thought that I could take a look at him, see if I know him, here, and we might not trigger the anxious and most annoying,” Senator Hargreaves said.

  “I need to sit down,” Ava said.

  She glanced at Tanesha, who nodded. Tanesha wasn’t going to leave her side. They made their way to an ornate cement bench and sat down. Senator Hargreaves sat next to Ava.