Dead on Ice (A Lovers in Crime Mystery) Read online

  The dented and charred ice box was one of the few things that had survived the explosion intact. The chief forensics officer told Cameron that it had been found tucked away in a room separate from the one in which the bomb had been placed. Even though the upper floors had collapsed on top of it, the drywall and mounds of junk surrounding it had protected the freezer from the explosion and fire.

  Upon its discovery, the investigators pulled it out from the corner and opened it. The smell of death burst forth like evil escaping from Pandora’s box. After regaining their senses, they peered inside to find a body encased in a stark white tomb.

  She looked like she had crawled in and curled up to take a nap. Her makeup was still evident on her leathered flesh. They could see the blue of her eye shadow and thick false eyelashes. Her hair was draped over her face and shoulders. Its platinum color created the illusion of a mermaid captured in a fisherman’s icy net.

  Her jeans and matching vest were faded and discolored to the point of only holding a hint of their original hue, but intact. To fit into the tight confines of the freezer, she was curled up into the fetal position with her high-heeled sandals still on her feet. Her denim hat rested on her knees.

  Cameron was gesturing at the now empty corner of the hole in the ground that had once been Albert’s basement. “Was this thing plugged in when the bomb went off?” She could not see any sign of an electrical outlet where they had found the appliance.

  With a shake of his head, the officer said, “There was no outlet near it. We found the cord wrapped up and tucked in behind the freezer. You can see the thing is ancient. I doubt if it works.”

  Observing the wrecked condition of the appliance, Cameron said, “Certainly not now.”

  The photo recordings of the scene completed, the medical examiner started her physical on-scene examination of the body.

  Tad watched her. “Any ID on her?”

  “Maybe.” She reached down along the wall of the freezer and removed a blue canvas purse covered with beads. She handed it to the detective. “Let’s hope we get lucky, and she has the name of her killer in there.” The medical examiner continued to search the body.

  Having no convenient place in the burnt-out basement to spread out the purse’s contents, Cameron climbed out of the foundation to empty the purse on the hood of her cruiser. With her gloved fingers, she picked through the assortment of what appeared to be the usual feminine fare, except for a few additional surprises. There was a pack of Camel cigarettes, a bag of marijuana with a couple of hand-rolled cigarettes, a wallet, and various cosmetics.

  With gloved hands, Joshua picked up the pack of cigarettes. “We can trace the lot number on this pack of cigarettes to find out when they were made to give us an approximate time period of when she was killed.”

  “I think you meant me. This isn’t your case, Mr. Thornton. So put that back.” Cameron was already checking out the driver’s license in the wallet.

  Joshua placed the cigarettes back in the pile.

  “Got a name, Cam?” Tad asked.

  “California driver’s license. Expiration date: June 1985. Name: Cherry Pickens,” she answered.

  Tad responded to the announcement with a wicked laugh.

  “What’s so funny, Doc?” she asked.

  Tad regarded the two of them. “We just solved a famous unsolved mystery.”

  “Famous unsolved mystery?” Joshua parroted.

  Tad gestured to the freezer. “Take a look, ladies and gentlemen. You are looking at Cherry Pickens, a genuine film legend.”

  “Cherry Pickens,” Cameron countered. “Never heard of her.”

  “You wouldn’t unless you were into porn,” Tad said.

  “I didn’t know you were into porn,” Joshua said with a frown.

  “I’m not into porn,” Tad replied, “but I am into rock and roll. Back in the early eighties, Cherry Pickens was one of the brightest stars of artistic films.” He held up his fingers in the form of quotation marks when he used the word “artistic”.

  “Sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” Joshua said.

  Tad nodded his head in agreement. “Drugs are a big part of the scene in pornography, and Cherry Pickens was in it up to her pretty blue eyeballs.” He added, “But she wasn’t just a hooker who did it on film. They have film awards, and she won a couple. In some circles, she was considered a true actress with the talent to break through into legitimate movies.”

  Cameron brought them back to the present. “How did she end up in a freezer, in a farmhouse, in Hookstown, Pennsylvania?”

  “That’s for you to find out,” Tad told her.

  “You said she won acting awards,” Cameron reminded him. “Are you saying she was actually famous?”

  “She slept with all the big hard core rock musicians, most of whom are now has-beens, the ones who didn’t OD or kill themselves that is,” Tad said. “Humphrey Phoenix, the owner of Player magazine, discovered her when she was dancing at one of his sex parties—”

  “Now I heard of him,” Cameron said.

  “Player magazine was about as hard core porn as you can get,” Tad said. “Humphrey Phoenix was twenty years older than Cherry. He spent a lot of money on her. Then he found out that she was also fooling around with a pop singer while Phoenix was paying for her breast implants and nose job. The FBI believed Phoenix made an example of her by making her disappear.”

  “Hookstown, Pennsylvania, is a long way from Vegas,” Joshua said. “What would a missing porn star be doing here in Cousin Albert’s basement?”

  They stared at Tad who had no answer.

  “If what you’re saying is true,” Cameron said, “this could be a mob hit, which would make this the fed’s turf.” She sucked in her breath. She really didn’t want the FBI butting their way into one of her cases.

  “Albert had no ties to any of that,” Tad told them. “Until the forensics pathologist gets a go at her, we can’t determine the time of death. She could have played it smart and managed to get away from the mob only to get killed over something else years afterwards.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Joshua muttered.

  Stretching her back, which had become sore from bending over into the freezer, the medical examiner said, “Right now, the way she’s positioned in this freezer, I can’t find the cause of death. I need to do a full examination at the state lab.”

  Joshua went over to peer into the freezer. “Can you find any evidence of sexual assault?”

  The ME poked at the clothes on the body. “Her clothes don’t seem to be disturbed.”

  Joshua examined the cap, which contained silk lining. “Looks expensive.”

  “They are.” With the point of her pen, the medical examiner opened the jean vest. “These jeans have a designer label. This lady had the best in clothes.”

  “But what was she doing dying here?” Joshua asked.

  “And in your cousin’s basement?” Cameron asked. “And was she the reason his house was blown sky high?”

  “I think it’s safe to assume she was,” Joshua said. “As big as that blast was, whoever it was clearly wanted everything destroyed.”

  “How ironic that the only thing not destroyed was this freezer,” the detective said.

  “I can’t imagine Albert not noticing that freezer in his basement,” said Tad.

  “You didn’t see his basement,” she countered.

  Joshua agreed. “Donny did, and he’s been keeping his room clean ever since.”

  Cameron said, “The only reason this freezer survived was because it was surrounded by a whole bunch of stuff that cushioned the impact. Maybe it was behind all that stuff in order to hide it from Albert. How long had he been living here?”

  “As long as I can remember,” Joshua answered. “I can see it in the headlines now.”

  In a gentle tone, Cameron told them, “At some point, we will have to release the name of the victim. When we do that, your cousin will be declared a closet sex fiend. Suggestions will be m
ade that we dig up the floor with speculation that there are a dozen other women buried under the concrete.”

  “Albert was no sex fiend,” Tad said.

  Joshua agreed with his cousin. “We’ve known Albert all our lives. He didn’t even date after his wife died.”

  “Publicly,” Cameron said. “That’s what they thought about John Wayne Gacy, and he butchered over thirty-three boys in his house, and the neighbors had no idea.”

  “Albert was no killer,” Tad said. “He went to our church.”

  “The BTK killer was an elder in his church,” Cameron said in a steady tone.

  Unable to find words to argue in the face of her facts, Tad sighed. “Josh, you knew Albert. Tell her. He wasn’t a killer.”

  “No, he wasn’t.” Joshua placed his hands on her shoulders. “Help us.”

  “How?” She held her breath.

  “Keep this under wraps as long as you can.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  In a soft voice, he said, “Give us as much time and information as you can, to find out who did this.”

  “You find out who did this?” she replied. “You keep forgetting that this is my case. You two shouldn’t even be here.”

  Joshua corrected himself. “Then you find out who did this. But, in the meantime, you keep this under wraps.”

  “Are you talking cover-up?” She shook her head. “I can’t go—”

  “Professional courtesy?” Joshua said. “We’ll pay you back when your cases come over to our side.”

  She glanced over at Tad. “When I need info from forensics—”

  “It’s yours.” He nodded his head.

  Joshua cocked his head at her. “What do you say?”

  The corner of her lip curled as it always did when a wicked thought crossed her mind. “Come over to my place later, and we’ll talk about it,” she said in a low, sultry voice.

  Chapter Five

  They were two of a kind. Early in their relationship, Joshua was delighted to discover that Cameron’s love for ice cream and other good foods matched his.

  For this date, they were sharing a sundae-for-two at Cricksters, a retro ice cream and sandwich diner on the West Virginia side of the state line along Route 30. Cricksters was their place.

  The sundae they were sharing was a special order that they had created, which the servers had come to call “The C & J Lovers’ Delight”. The dessert consisted of three scoops of Hershey’s Vanilla Ice Cream in a waffle bowl, served with banana, hot fudge sauce, whipped cream, nuts, miniature chocolate chips, and two cherries on top.

  The lady in the freezer had been sent to the state lab to be examined by a forensic pathologist. As soon as she got the medical examiner’s report, Cameron had called Joshua to drive up from his office in New Cumberland to meet her. She’d brought along a copy of the report in a manila envelope for him to read between spoonfuls of ice cream.

  On his way in from the parking lot, Joshua tried to ignore Irving’s glare from the front seat of her cruiser. The cat’s feeling of being betrayed by his mistress, who had left him in the car to cool his paws in the cold winter weather while meeting the other man, was so intense that Joshua could sense it.

  At the door, Joshua paused and looked over his shoulder to see if the pair of emerald eyeballs he felt boring a hole in his back was imagined. It wasn’t. Irving was sitting on top of the back seat, his eyes directed straight at him. His long tail twitched. “That is one creepy cat,” he muttered before going inside.

  She was waiting at what had unofficially become their booth. After greeting her with a kiss, Joshua saw that the server was already building their sundae behind the counter. After taking off his coat, which he folded and tucked into the corner of the booth, he slid into the seat on the other side of the table.

  “First off,” Cameron began, “the drivers’ license was a fake.”

  “Then she wasn’t the porn star,” Joshua said, after their server delivered the sundae.

  “Wrong there. Our victim was Cherry Pickens.” She opened the envelope. “Her disappearance was big news back then. Since she was a celebrity, it wasn’t hard for me to dig up her past in a background check. Most of my work had already been done when she went missing. While it wasn’t complete, it was thorough enough to give me a good start. Cherry Pickens was her screen name.”

  “Why didn’t we already know that?” he asked. “Cherry Pickens. Perfect name for a sex film star.”

  “Cherry Pickens first appeared on the scene in 1980,” she recounted from her report. “She starred in Humphrey Phoenix’s first X- rated production. Sugar Sugar. Up until then, he was only into porn magazines. With Cherry Pickens as his star, he became a movie producer.”

  “Where did he find her?” Joshua asked. “Tad said she’d been discovered at a party.”

  Cameron slid the police report across to his side of the table. “According to her press releases, she was the daughter of a Texas oil man. She ran off to Hollywood to work as an actress and model. A friend had invited her to one of Phoenix’s parties, which was where he discovered her on the dance floor. She became rich and famous overnight until she ticked her sugar daddy off, and he decided to have her killed.”

  Joshua studied another portion of the autopsy report. “How long had she been dead?”

  Despite the written report in front of him, Cameron said, “That’s hard to say. Contrary to what we first thought, the body was never frozen; but that freezer was air-tight. No bugs or critters to tamper with the body . . . or the evidence. If she hadn’t been put in that air-tight freezer, all of that evidence would have been destroyed over time, including her fingerprints. Whoever put her in there literally put her in a time capsule. Lucky thing for us.”

  “Being air-tight, that meant nothing could get out,” Joshua said. “That’s why the smell was so rancid when the freezer was opened.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she replied. “I’ve narrowed the estimated time of death down to the summer of 1985.”

  “You did? Why the summer of ‘85? Because that’s when she went missing?”

  “That, plus the tobacco manufacturer says the cigarettes we found in her purse were made in the spring of that year. Nothing in her purse was made later than May 1985. Combine that with it being the last time she was seen alive . . .” She lifted her shoulders. “I think it’s a good assumption . . . even though you never assume”

  Joshua was impressed. “Cause of death?”

  She paused to spoon another mouthful of ice cream with hot fudge dripping from it into her mouth. “Cherry was a real party girl. There was enough heroin in her system that she would have OD’d. They found tracks in between her toes and under her armpits. Her lungs showed that she had been a heavy smoker. Her nasal passages were like Swiss cheese from cocaine. Her blood alcohol level was .27. But none of that was what killed her. Her neck was snapped and her spinal cord broken. ME said it wasn’t a twist. It was like a sharp blow to the back of the neck with something hard, heavy, and sharp—like a spade or shovel. Death would have been instantaneous.”

  Joshua reached across the table to wipe a drip of hot fudge from her chin and lick it off the tip of his finger. “With all that alcohol and drugs in her system, maybe she fell and struck the back of her neck against something like the edge of a table. A defense attorney could argue that it was an accident.”

  “Yeah, right,” she replied.

  He cocked his head and an eyebrow at her.

  “Now, for the answer to the $20 million dollar question.” She flashed him a grin. “What was a porn star doing in a freezer, in your cousin’s basement in Hookstown?”

  Grinning, he sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “What was a porn star doing in a freezer, in my cousin’s basement in Hookstown?”

  “While her publicist told one story, her fingerprints tell another.” She scooped up another helping of ice cream.

  “They were able to lift her fingerprints,” Joshua said.

  H
er mouth full with ice cream and hot fudge, Cameron nodded her head.

  While waiting for her to swallow, he turned around the report to read the answer for himself. “AFIS got a match.”

  She dug to the bottom of the bowl for the hot fudge that had slid off the ice cream. “Back in late 1979, Cheryl Smith was arrested in Los Angeles for prostitution and possession of cocaine. The charges were dropped. Six months later, Sugar Sugar was released by Humphrey Phoenix with Cherry Pickens as the star. Phoenix had a lot of people on his payroll, including crooked cops and politicians. I know it’s only circumstantial, but I would conclude that Cheryl Smith was a high class call girl who found herself a big sugar daddy, who reinvented her, complete with a new identity.”

  Joshua put down his spoon. “Cheryl Smith?”

  Cameron flipped the pages of the report. “When you get arrested, not only do you supply your fingerprints, but you also give your social security number. With that, I was able to do a background check. I think I know what Cheryl Smith was doing here when she was killed.”

  “This is her hometown.”

  She looked up from the report to him. Her left eyebrow arched. “You know that already.”

  “Cheryl Smith was from this area,” he said.

  She closed the folder and slid the ice cream over to her side of the table. “Now it’s your turn to report what you know.” The spoon was full of hot fudge sauce that she brought to her mouth.

  “I was in middle school when Angie Sullivan disappeared,” he said.

  Cameron paused with the spoon in her mouth. She saw sadness in his eyes. She lowered the spoon. “Did you know Angie?”

  “Barely.” He shook his head. “Tad knew her, though. He was at Melody Lane Skating Rink when she had that fight with Cheryl Smith.”

  “After which Angie Sullivan disappeared.”

  “I was in high school when her body turned up,” he said. “We had a drought the summer before my senior year. The Ohio River got the lowest that it had ever been. That was when they found her car—and her body—and Cheryl Smith was nowhere to be found.”

  “Because she was in Hollywood making movies under a new identity.”