Dead Broke (Lana Denae Mystery Series Book 1) Read online

  A Lana Denae Mystery

  #1

  DEAD

  BROKE

  Bruce A. Borders

  BORDERS

  PUBLISHING

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright ©2016

  Bruce A. Borders

  Cover Design ©2016

  Bruce A. Borders

  All Rights Reserved.

  Except for use in any review, the reproduction of this book in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, or in any informational storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the express written permission of the author and publisher.

  Unauthorized reproduction prohibited by law.

  Table of Contents

  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

  About The Author

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  DEAD

  BROKE

  Chapter One

  As a homicide detective, Lana Denae had seen enough dead bodies to last a lifetime. At thirty-five years old, she was ready to trade in her badge for a less morbid career. But first, she needed to solve her current case.

  She frowned, glancing around at the paneled walls in the dimly lit one-room apartment. The way things were going, instead of switching careers; she might well retire on this job. After two weeks of investigating—if it could be called that—there were still no credible leads and she had no suspects. Lana shook her head and gave a frustrated sigh. Some detective she was.

  Lana had been with the department for nine years, making detective after just a year on the force. After the unfortunate death of her partner, Brent Daniels, who also served as her training officer and mentor, she had finished their last case alone. That was the way she liked it—alone.

  Due to her outstanding record, the best in the department, Lana’s captain was satisfied with keeping things the way they were and she had remained a one-woman team. Understandably, the other detectives in the Homicide Detail of the Portland Police Bureau were not always supportive of her sweet deal. They constantly ribbed her for the special treatment, some good-naturedly, and some with a touch of animus.

  But the truth was most of them didn’t want to work alone. They liked having a partner.

  A partner divided the workload, provided another mind to bounce ideas off, and guaranteed, someone would always have their back. A partner also meant having another person to share the blame when things—as things are prone to do—went sideways.

  Of course, that meant sharing the glory as well, when things worked out. This was sometimes hard for an ego-driven individual, made worse when they were constantly compared to a fastidious woman—a woman who worked alone.

  Lana knew there were some hard feelings from a few of her fellow detectives. But that couldn’t be helped. She wasn’t on the force to make friends or win a popularity contest. And she certainly didn’t feel the need to hog all of the limelight.

  Accolades were fine, she supposed, but public acclaim made her extremely uncomfortable. She tended to cringe any time someone offered her praise or recognition for her achievements, and usually skipped the annual awards ceremony for the Portland Police Bureau.

  Her office walls were lined with awards and citations. But while awards were nice, they didn’t help one wit when it came to solving the next murder.

  Lana let out another frustrated sigh. If she didn’t soon find some answers, there would certainly be no awards on this case. That, however, was easier said than done. And murders weren’t solved by mere talk.

  As she had learned early in her career, solving a murder consists of answering a few simple questions: who, what, where, when, how, and why. Nothing more. But while the questions may be simple, the answers seldom were.

  Naturally, investigators tend to focus on the “who” more than anything else. But as Detective Daniels had often told her, “Figure out the ‘why’ and you are a lot closer to finding the ‘who.’ Same goes for the rest of them,” he had said. “Each of the questions, when answered, moves you closer to finding the truth of who was responsible.”

  Lana had come a long way since those early days on the force. She knew how to deal with setbacks; how to cope with obstacles. And she knew how to work a case with little to no evidence.

  Although Daniels had been laid to rest some four years ago, in her mind she could hear him saying, “If all else fails, go back to the scene and start over. Go over the evidence again, piece by piece, from the beginning.”

  Which is why she now stood in the vacant apartment looking for something—anything—she, and the CSI guys might have missed. There had to be a clue somewhere. Amid stacks of papers and women’s magazines, shelves lined with trinkets, pictures of by-gone days decorating the walls, and a floor strewn with piles of sewing scraps and yarn, was perhaps the answer she was looking for.

  Closing her eyes, Lana listened to the silence of the place, trying to concentrate. Noticing the steady tick of a clock, and the loud hum of the refrigerator, she did her best to block out the distractions and envision the scene as it had been described to her.

  Two weeks ago, at nine thirty-two on Monday evening, the Portland Metro 911 Center had received a call from a Paul Borland, building manager of the Rose City Apartments. Mr. Borland reported that he suspected one of his tenants might be incapacitated; sick—at the very least—or worse, God forbid.

  Neighbors had told him they hadn’t heard from the lady in Apartment 607 for three days, the man said. This was more than a little peculiar considering the tenant, Mrs. Wymer, was housebound and depended on her neighbors for many of her day-to-day needs.

  After relaying the information to the dispatcher, Mr. Borland had requested a welfare check.

  The 911 dispatcher immediately notified the Central Precinct and two officers had instantly responded, reaching the apartment complex at twenty-three minutes ’til ten.

  The first thing the officers noticed after climbing the stairs to the sixth floor was the smell. Not an overwhelming smell but strong enough. The kind of stench that burned in one’s nostrils.

  Finding the apartment door locked and getting no response to their repeated knocking, they asked Mr. Borland to open the door.

  “Not without someone more important than you giving me the okay,” the man protested. “No offense, but I’ve got to be careful. People sue for the least little thing these days.”

  Frustrated by the delay
, but nodding in an understanding way, the officers didn’t argue. Notifying dispatch and apprising them of the situation, they proceeded to questioning the neighbors who had reported the missing woman.

  The first couple they talked to from across the hall, the Jensens, did not offer much. No, they hadn’t seen the lady from Apartment 607. Hadn’t heard from her either. But that wasn’t unusual, they said. They both worked long hours and didn’t see too many people in the building.

  The gentleman who lived next to the Jensens said he hadn’t seen or heard from the lady either, which is why he’d called Nellie Langstrom, the woman who lived in Apartment 609 at the end of the hall. After discussing Mrs. Wymer’s notable absence, and becoming concerned, the two decided to inform Mr. Borland. Nellie had placed the call.

  Listening intently, the officers nodded, made a few notes, and moved on down the hall. With Mr. Borland following along behind, the two in uniform approached 609, Nellie Langstrom’s apartment.

  At their knock, a poor, old, ragged lady eased open the door.

  “She’s either sick or, dead,” the woman stated matter-of-factly the minute she saw the officers, knowing why they were there. “Dead more’n likely.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Haven’t heard a peep out of her for three days. Usually, she’s got the TV blaring, banging around in there, or calling for me to pick up something or other from the store. And haven’t you noticed that awful smell?”

  “The smell does seem to be coming from her apartment,” one of the officers agreed.

  “Pff. Seems to be nothing! Ain’t nothing else in the world smells like that. That’s the smell of death. Death, I tell you.”

  “Well, we can’t be sure until we have a look inside,” one of the officers cautioned.

  Nellie eyed him a moment with just a hint of a contemptuous glare. “How come you guys can’t see the obvious? What in the world are they teaching you these days at police school? Open the door! What are you waiting on?”

  “All in due time, Ma’am,” one of them said, speaking calmly and softly. “We’re just waiting on authorization.”

  Without trying to hide her disgust, Nellie said, “Whoever did this is laughing at you right now. You know that, right?”

  “You think someone killed her?”

  “Of course. Makes sense.” Nellie sounded a little annoyed. “You don’t?” she asked, making it clear she wasn’t impressed by their lack of intuitive powers.

  “It’s possible she died of natural causes.”

  “Well, murder does come naturally to some,” Nellie snipped, not yet willing to admit the possibility of being wrong.

  “And that’s why we do investigations,” the other officer spoke up.

  Nellie’s indignant look said the elderly woman wasn’t at all persuaded either of them knew the first thing about investigating but she held her peace. Then, noticing the officers wiping sweat beads from the brow, she said, “Gonna be another hot one today. But then, it is August. Sure would help if this place had air conditioning.”

  “There’s no air in this building?” one of the cops asked with a squint.

  “Not unless you buy your own,” Nellie told him. “Ain’t nobody living here got the money for that.”

  The two officers shook their heads, thinking that three days without air conditioning in the triple digit summer heat was looking like a possible cause of death—if the woman in the apartment was actually deceased. And if that were the case, it was no wonder the smell had gotten so ripe.

  Before either of them could comment on the possibility, the cell phone of one of the officers lit up. Talking briefly, he hung up, looking to the building manager. “Your attorney should be contacting you shortly.”

  As if on cue, Mr. Borland’s phone rang. “Hello?” the man answered.

  Listening intently a moment, and nodding occasionally as if the person on the other end could actually see him, Borland finally uttered a simple, “Okay.” Pocketing the phone, he quickly produced a set of keys and unlocked the door. Moving aside, he allowed the officers the opportunity to enter the apartment first.

  Turning the knob, they pushed open the door until the safety chain caught. But that wasn’t what stopped them. Both officers made a face and recoiled involuntarily. The smell was horrendous! Nellie had been right; this was unmistakably, the smell of death.

  Peering through the small crack, nothing of the inside could be seen except the wall to the right. The place was lit by a lone lamp burning somewhere just out of sight.

  “Bust the chain?” one of them asked. Without waiting for an answer, he leaned his shoulder against the door until it gave way.

  Inside, they found the body. Lying in front of a wooden rocking chair, clad in a soft nightgown, the body was stiff, ashen, and cold. The odd angle of the head and limbs suggested the woman had collapsed there upon standing. She wore an almost puzzled expression.

  The officers’ first inclination was the woman had simply died alone in her apartment. The locked door and the fact the woman had called no one suggested death had possibly come in her sleep. The summer heat had apparently gotten to her, they surmised.

  Then they saw the blood.

  Kneeling to take a pulse, although it was of no use, since the woman was obviously no longer among the living; one of the officers pointed to the clothing. The blood soaked material had dried to a crusty dark mat.

  On closer examination, the bullet hole in her chest could easily be seen. Mrs. Wymer hadn’t just died—she’d been killed. Shot. Like Nellie had said, the woman had been murdered!

  That’s when they called in their report. Captain Mark Hayden of the Central Precinct immediately assigned the case to his best detective, Lana Denae.

  Chapter Two

  Ushering everyone away from the doorway, the two officers moved quickly to cordon off the area. “Go back into your apartment,” they told a suddenly intrusive Nellie. Motioning for the other tenants and Mr. Borland to do the same, one officer added, “Detectives will be here soon.”

  The word “detectives” was a little misleading, since they knew that Lana worked alone. But it sounded better. Besides, with the Crime Scene Investigator guys running around, no one would know there was only one detective on the scene.

  When Lana arrived, she did her best to ignore the smell. Stepping into the apartment, she silently studied the scene for a good fifteen minutes without moving from her position.

  “Are you okay?” asked one of the officers.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You need anything?”

  Lana shook her head. “Not right now. I’ll want to talk to both of you later though.”

  As soon as the CSI guys showed up, the two officers left. Lana began poking around then, picking through the items in the apartment, studying things from different perspectives, going over the details in her head.

  The little she’d learned wasn’t helpful. Perplexing was more like it. And puzzling. As a detective the scene was uniquely fascinating and the details strangely intriguing.

  The door had been locked from the inside, safety chain in place. The two small windows were intact, not even cracked, and painted shut. Lana’s search for bullet holes in the exterior walls proved futile. And, she could find no other way in or out of the apartment. Neither she, nor the CSI guys, had recovered a weapon of any sort.

  To make things even more baffling, from all indications, no one—aside from the victim—had been inside the apartment at the time of the shooting. Yet, to a rationally thinking person, it was obvious that someone had been there. Mrs. Wymer certainly hadn’t shot herself and then disposed of the gun.

  So, despite evidence to the contrary—and against all reasoned possibilities—someone had gained entry, shot the elderly woman once, killing her, and then managed to escape. They’d accomplished this without leaving a trace of having been there—other than the dead body.

  Although the responding officers had already questioned the tenants on t
he floor, Lana chose to talk with them again herself. And got the same story.

  Most of the neighbors did not have much to add to the story. The elderly couple in 605, while not offering anything useful, did seem to welcome the chance to have someone to talk to.

  “I still can’t believe it,” the woman said. “A murder? In our building? It’s usually a very safe place. We’ve lived here for twenty years and nothing like this has ever happened.”

  “It does look like a nice place to live,” Lana said, hoping her words sounded sincere. She’d seen the neglected condition of the building, both inside and out.

  The husband scowled. “Except we’re stuck in a hundred year old apartment building, in the city, and surrounded by strangers,” he grumbled. “It gets a little stuffy cooped up in here. Can’t enjoy the out-of-doors like we used to when we owned our own place. We don’t even have a lawn anymore.”

  “Well, at least they provide the trees for you,” Lana said sweetly, pointing to the potted maple at the end of the hall. She’d noticed one or two of them on every level. “I know they’re artificial but they do add a little color and nice scenery.”

  “Oh, those aren’t fake trees, they’re real,” the lady told her.

  “Might as well be fake,” griped her husband. “It’s not like they serve any purpose.”

  “Now, Henry,” the woman said.

  The man glared at his wife. “Trees are supposed to provide shade,” he mumbled. “Hard to do that inside.”

  Lana cringed. She’d unintentionally started a spat between the two and now had to transform into the role of peacemaker—something she wasn’t very good at. “It can’t be that bad,” she said with a forced soothing tone. “After all, you still have each other.”

  Grumbling, and giving her dirty looks, the couple begrudgingly agreed she was right.