A Dish Best Served Cold Ch. 01

"Look. We've yet to fully process the crime scene and Brendan is yet to conduct the autopsy but a cursory inspection of the scene supports a theory that there was at least one other man and a woman present. Whether they were both involved in the death of the victim is not certain. Whether this was a role-play sex party that went wrong or a murder is also for you to ascertain. We will get you preliminary results at the end of the day and we will update you as we learn more," Bob Tanner summed up the situation.

"Ok gentlemen, we'll leave you to it while we do the policework. Come on Silvia it's time to get head down and ass up interviewing potential witnesses," Penelope indicated the door.

"Oh one more thing ladies. We were so engrossed with the deceased I forgot to point out something else that is likely to be important. Look on the wall above the bed," Bob said.

The letters Ā Ĥ П were written on the wall in red lipstick.

"My Greek is rusty but is that Eta Lambda Pi?" Silvia asked, staring at the wall.

"Indeed Miz Bickle; although I have no inkling what the significance is. That falls under your domain," Bob turned back to the crime scene and Penelope took out her phone and snapped a picture of the Greek lettering.

"Likely to be important... Bob can be an asshole sometimes," Penelope grumbled as they left the bedroom.

"You know he just likes to project an air of superiority," Silvia replied, scrolling through her messages.

"Fuck! Gary Rasmussen is waiting for us outside. Hope you wore your big girl panties today Penny," Silvia ribbed her partner.

"How do you know I'm wearing any?" Penelope punched Silvia in the arm playfully.

Gary Rasmussen was Balwyn PD's Chief of Detectives. He and Penelope Bishop went way back. He had handpicked Penelope to join his detective squad over the objections of other senior police officials; she was still not popular with some of the hierarchy. Whistle-blowers were never really trusted by other cops.

Penelope had history and came with considerable baggage. She had become a brilliant detective but her marriage to Sargent Randy Cody began to break down when she spent more time attending to the job than to her marriage. When her husband was killed by a hit and run driver whilst attending a vehicular accident Penelope spiralled out of control using drugs and sex to try to ease the pain.

Gary finally issued her an ultimatum, get sober or get out. At the same time Penelope met and fell in love with an FBI agent named Bradley Wilson. Penelope considered that both of those men had saved her life and she and Gary Rasmussen had the utmost respect for each other and she had regained his trust. But Gary was still her boss.

They found him leaning against Penelope's BMW drinking coffee and smoking a Tareyton. As soon as she smelled the tobacco Penelope began jonesing but she had been smoke free for almost as long as she had been sober.

"You detectives know who Spencer Duvall is, right?" Gary launched straight into it.

"Yes we know," Silvia sighed.

"Bob Tanner gave me the gist of what he found up there," Gary indicated the townhouse with his chin.

"Sex, murder and money. The media are going to have a field day with this shit. Keep a tight lid on it ladies. Spencer was married and has two kids, let's try and keep the sordid details away from the press," he threw his butt on the road and ground it out.

"I don't suppose the fact that he comes from one of the most powerful and influential families in the State has anything to do with the importance that Balwyn PD is putting on this case?" Penelope sniped.

"Asses and elbows ladies. Everything goes through me. Your budget on this is unlimited. Get it solved and keep it quiet," Gary pushed his girth off Penelope's car and turned away from the two detectives.

He turned around after a few paces.

"Has that lanky clotheshorse who wears an FBI shield proposed to you yet Penelope?" Gary gave her a sardonic smile.

"Not yet Chief but like with everything else, you will be the first to know," Penelope replied sarcastically.

"If he doesn't do it soon I'm going to throw my hat in the ring," he chuckled.

"You know that Balwyn PD has strict rules about superiors fucking their subordinates," Penelope smiled at Gary.

Gary Rasmussen was happily married and would never play up on his wife but he Penelope and Silvia liked to joke around.

"Check your texts. Duvall's wife is in town. She's been informed of his death and the Chief of Police met her at the airport and settled her into the Hilton. She's allowing you to interview her later this morning," Gary rummaged in his pockets for his car keys.

"Allowing?" Silvia said incredulously.

"She's rich and she's a bitch. Don't fuck with her Bickle; play nice," Gary found his keys and waddled over to his service vehicle.

*****

"Which one of you has the dick and which one of you is the box-biter? I'm guessing the one wearing the pants is the pillow princess so you must be packing under that skirt," Cynthia Duvall waved a hand at Penelope.

Penelope and Silvia looked at each other and nodded imperceptibly. They had dealt with entitled affluent bitches like Cynthia Duvall before and they knew that they needed to keep their cool to get anywhere with her.

Cynthia had opened the door to the penthouse and turned her back on the two detectives immediately and sauntered back into the suite leaving the door open. They had followed her in and stood in the middle of the opulent living room.

Cynthia settled into one of the white leather couches and folded her legs under her. She was wearing a designer white skirt suit with a black silk blouse, her expensive hosiery glittered on her long legs and the red soles on her heels indicated they were Christian Louboutin. Her hair and makeup was perfect. She did not look like a grieving widow.

"Sorry for your loss Mrs Duvall," Penelope replied, ignoring the sleight.

"Oh please... Mrs Duvall is my mother-in-law," Cynthia guffawed and reached for her gin and tonic.

It wasn't even noon but Penelope couldn't take anyone's inventory. She knew that she was only one drink away from becoming the lush she had been before she found AA.

"May we sit?" Silvia asked, indicating the sofa adjacent to where Cynthia reposed on the couch.

Cynthia just nodded and guzzled her drink.

Both women took out their credentials but Cynthia waved them away.

"I know who you are. Your Chief of Police tells me that you are Balwyn's finest," she looked at the two women like they were dogshit on her shoe.

"We would like to ask you a few questions about your husband," Penelope began.

"Do I need a lawyer?" Cynthia dropped ice chips into a crystal glass and topped it up with gin.

"You are not under investigation Ms Duvall, you were in Houston when your husband died but if you say anything incriminating we will stop you and Mirandize you. This isn't like on TV, we're not here to trap you," Penelope opened her notebook.

Cynthia nodded and reached for her cigarettes. The hotel had a strict no-smoking policy but Cynthia was the type of person who believed that rules did not apply to her. She offered the pack to Penelope who shook her head.

"But you want to. I can tell by the way you watched me light up. You're fucking jonesing for that cigarette, this too," Cynthia held up her drink so that the light reflected off the cut crystal.

"What was your husband doing in Balwyn?" Penelope ignored Cynthia's taunts and began her questioning.

"He keeps a townhouse here. His parents bought it for him when he went to college. He could have gone to any of the big colleges, even the University of Houston, but he wanted to play football and he was average at best. Daddy paid Balwyn College a handsome stipend on the proviso he be guaranteed a position in their starting line-up," Cynthia blew smoke at the ceiling.

"It was money wasted really. He and his cronies spent most of their time drinking and fucking co-eds. He likes to come to Balwyn to cat around. Both the family and I prefer it. Nobody cares what he does in this shithole city. He can carouse as much he likes here but when he comes home to Houston he's the respectable family man and successful businessman," Cynthia paused to take a drink.

"You knew about his extramarital affairs? Have you been informed of the circumstances of his death?" Silvia interjected.

"He liked to do kinky shit in bed in which I have no interest. I allowed him to do whatever he liked with whomever he liked so long as he didn't disgrace the family name or bring home a venereal disease. I wouldn't let him fuck me after he returned from each little excursion until he produced a doctor's certificate," Cynthia said matter-of-factly.

"You're very candid," Silvia postulated.

"I'm a breeder Ms Bickle. I come from the right family, I have the right upbringing and I have an unblemished reputation. Spencer's father breeds longhorns as well as drills for oil so he has an eye for good breeding stock. He personally selected me to be Spencer's wife," Cynthia tapped ash into a vase on the side table.

"That's rather archaic," Penelope commented.

"It's a matter of practicality. My family has the right name, we're Texas aristocracy so to speak, but we can't rub two nickels together so a marriage of convenience suits us both. Besides, I let his Daddy 'try before you buy' so to speak," Cynthia winked at Penelope who shuddered at the thought.

"Do you know if Spencer had any girlfriends, lovers, or women he met on a regular basis? I know these questions are painful," Silvia brought the interview back on track.

"That was part of our agreement. No relationships! Hook up with girls in bars, use callgirls or hookers but nothing long-term or with any emotional attachment. Not that I was worried. Spencer only cared for himself and his children and of course his college buddies," Cynthia went about the business of making herself another drink.

"Do his college buddies live in Balwyn?" Silvia asked.

"Fucked if I know; fucked if I care. They get together a couple of times a year and relive their glory days, which means an orgy of booze drugs and girls," Cynthia sniffed.

"I do know that Jamaal Washington lives in Houston because Spencer got him a job with Armadillo Oil. I let him fuck me once bent over the garden wall at the annual Christmas ball. I wanted to know if it was true what they said about black men. It is. I was walking bowlegged for a week after," Cynthia said flippantly.

"You'd know about that wouldn't you Detective Bickle... oh no you wouldn't... you're a rug muncher aren't you," Cynthia glared at Silvia Bickle.

Silvia ignored the racial slur and the insult regarding her sexuality.

"Do you know if your husband had a predilection for bondage or sadomasochism?" Penelope asked bitingly.

"If there was a kink then Spencer was into it. He and his college cronies got up to all manner of perversions. He'd sometimes try to shock me by showing me videos on his phone. He did it once too often and I pointed to some random penis and told him that it looked just like his Daddy's."

"Are we finished now ladies? That isn't a question by the way," Cynthia got up from the couch and was steady on her feet despite the amount of alcohol she had consumed

"One last question," Penelope said as she and Silvia arose to leave.

"Does the phrase Eta Lambda Pi mean anything to you?" they were walking to the door.

"Ah! That's was Spencer's college fraternity. All his freaky pals were pledged. Fucking gown men behaving like delinquent teenagers," Cynthia guffawed.

"Good luck ladies. I hope you find out who killed my husband and if you don't, well she probably deserves to get away with it. He probably deserved what he got if he treated her the same way he treats the other floozies," Cynthia closed the door on Penelope and Silvia who just stared at each other dumbfounded.

"She could have hired someone to murder her husband; there's certainly no love lost there," Silvia speculated.

"I don't think she would have been so candid if she had but let's not rule it out," Penelope replied as they made their way to the elevator.

Back at Police Plaza the CSI team and Medical Examiner had news.

"Cause of death was strangulation, Mister Duvall was strangled with the nylon stocking we found at the scene, just as we suspected," Brendan Scott began.

"The stocking was so deeply and firmly embedded in the flesh of the neck that the murderer must have sat astride him, holding Duvall down, pulling on the stocking at the same time. That corroborates how we found his body at the crime scene."

"Mister Duvall had very recently had sex and was likely engaged in coitus when he was killed, it is also likely that the sex was protracted and extremis had been achieved more than once. His blood test revealed he had ingested high concentrations of alcohol, cocaine hydrochloride and Sildenafil," Brendan Scott completed his summary and handed the autopsy report to Silvia Bickle.

"Sildenafil? Isn't that..." Penelope began to ask.

"Viagra or the generic equivalent. He had ingested four times the recommended dose for a man of his age and medical condition. Hence the priapism we observed at the crime scene," Doctor Scott concluded.

"Okay... Bob what did you and your team find?" Silvia turned to Bob Tanner.

"There was definitely sex involved in the murder. A lot of sex. We found semen from two donors all over Mister Duvall's body and on the bedding. We will assume that Mister Duvall is one donor but we won't who the other donor is until we run the DNA. The second donor is a non-secretor," Bob Tanner began.

"Interestingly there was no sign of any vaginal fluids either on his body or in the bedding. We swabbed his penis and found only semen, lipstick, and microscopic faecal matter which suggests anal sex," Bob was reading from a summary sheet so the women were unable to see the expression on his face.

"But the lipstick?" Penelope asked.

"Yes the same lipstick that we found on Mister Duvall's penis was used to write the inscription on the wall. We also found traces of it on Mister Duvall's lips and on the pillow, as well as mascara and face powder. We are analysing the makeup to see if we can find out what brand it is," Bob tapped the summary sheet.

"We have collected a number of hairs and fibres, in particular a number of long hairs that have brunette roots but are dyed blonde. We didn't find the second stocking to match the one used to strangle the victim so the perp either brought only one stocking to the scene or took the other one with them."

"The place is covered in fingerprints and we've lifted all the prints that are likely to be useful and we will run them through IAFIS and see if we get a hit," Bob handed the summary sheet to Silvia who put it alongside the autopsy report.

"CSI is finished with the crime scene and we have released it to the PD so you're free to examine it. Alice Leasingham has taken a laptop computer and mobile phone into evidence and is examining them; she'll get back to you with her findings," Bob concluded.

"Bob, fast-track the DNA and fingerprints, we have the budget to jump the queue. Brendan, don't release the body to the mortuary yet in case we need to run further tests. Silvia and I will retrace Spencer Duvall's comings and goings on his final evening. Let's get this case solved," Penelope wheeled out her storyboard and began to lay out the case evidence.

"We'll start at the crime scene and spiral out," Penelope said to Silvia.

*****

In the manager's office of 'Ride em' Cowgirl' nightclub, one of Balwyn's LGBTI friendly venues, Felicity Benson pulled a nylon stocking out of her purse and examined it under the desklamp. It was an exact match for the stocking found wrapped around Spencer Duvall's neck.

She held the stocking over the litter bin and ignited it with her gold cigarette lighter and watched it burn, releasing it when the flames licked her fingertips. She lit a cigarette and watched the last of the diaphanous garment disintegrate.

She was smiling.

To be continued