A House to Die For (A Darby Farr Mystery) Read online

  Vicki Doudera

  MIDNIGHT INK

  WOODBURY, MINNESOTA

  A House to Die For (c) 2010 by Vicki Doudera. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Midnight Ink, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First Edition First Printing, 2010 Book design and format by Donna Burch Cover design by Lisa Novak Cover illustration (c) Dominick Finelle / The July Group Editing by Connie Hill Midnight Ink, an imprint of Llewellyn Publications

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data. Doudera, Victoria, 196 1A house to die for / Victoria Doudera. -1st ed. p. cm. - (A Darby Farr mystery) ISBN 978-0-7387-1950-4 1. Women real estate agents-Fiction. 2. Murder-Investigation-Fiction. 3. Real estate business-Fiction. 4. San Diego (Calif.)-Fiction. I. Title. PS3604.0895H68 2010 813'.6-dc22 2009050087

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Midnight Ink Llewellyn Publications 2143 Wooddale Drive, Dept. 978-0-7387-1950-4 Woodbury, MN 55125-2989 USA www.midnightinkbooks.com Printed in the United States of America

  Dedicated to my family, and in particular, my husband Ed, for his unflagging help, love, encouragement, and countless dinner preparations; and to Scott Horty, with grateful thanks for giving me my start in real estate.

  PROLOGUE

  THE RING OF THE hospital pager ripped through the quiet night like a gunshot. Dr. Emerson Phipps woke instantly, his body tuned to the sound from years of interrupted slumber. He reached for his watch and swore. Three A.M. So much for a decent night's sleep.

  Phipps pulled himself out of his king-sized bed, unable to suppress a groan. Fumbling in the dark for his cell phone, he hit the speed dial for Boston Memorial Hospital. "Phipps. What is it?"

  A hesitant voice on the other end described an accident in West Roxbury and the badly damaged spine of the victim. "The patient fell off a rooftop deck during a party. I know Dr. Masterson is on call, but he's in the neonatal ICU with a spina bifida delivery. I thought..."

  "You thought correctly." The nurse calling was new to the hospital, but Phipps could picture her ponytailed hair and ready smile. "It's Amanda, isn't it? I really appreciate your diligence and quick thinking."

  "Thank you, Doctor." She was flattered, he could tell, and as he hung up the phone he allowed himself to imagine Amanda in his penthouse. A little wine, a look at his fabulous view of the skyline, a few questions about her work at the hospital ... He yanked off his silk pajamas and tossed them on the bed.

  Once dressed, Phipps padded on the plush carpet down the hallway, his powerful body tensing as he thought about the patient awaiting his skilled hands. No telling how long the operation would take. Depending on the spinal cord injury, he could be in surgery for hours. He stopped before the hall closet and frowned. He'd planned to drive up the coast today, and now he'd have to change his plans. Dick Masterson was a fairly decent surgeon, but he was notoriously slow. It might take all day before the plodding doctor stepped in to relieve him.

  Phipps pulled a butter-soft leather jacket from a hanger, inhaling its rich scent. For a few seconds he was transported back to Milan and the posh store where he'd purchased it. He saw the clerk's appreciative nod of approval when he chose the highest grained leather without regard to the cost, the admiring glances the women on the street had thrown his way. There's a man who knows fine things, their faces said. A man who can afford life's greatest luxuries ...

  And one of those luxuries was waiting for him on an island in Maine: Fairview, a magnificent estate overlooking the Atlantic, a place that spoke of privilege, prestige, and power. He'd wanted it since the first time he saw it, and now, a dozen years later, it would finally be his. He glanced at his overnight bag, already packed for the trip. Why not throw it in the car and leave straight from the hospital? That way, no matter how long Dick Masterson took with his surgery, Phipps would be ready to blow out of town and head north.

  The bag felt light in Phipps' confident grasp, but he knew without looking that he'd packed all that he needed: a few polo shirts, a sailing jacket, and shorts, attire suitable to the yachting haven of Hurricane Harbor. A little different than Haiti, he thought wryly. On his frequent trips to volunteer for the non-profit group Surgeons Who Serve, he lugged a large duffel bag crammed with malaria medication and clothing appropriate for mosquito-infested jungles and Third-World accommodations. It was a different world, and one in which the surgeon found himself oddly at home. A place where money, looks, prestige, and power paled in comparison to medical training and talent.

  Taking one final opportunity to glance in the hall mirror, Phipps made a minute adjustment to the jacket's collar. He grabbed his car's key fob from the antique chest beneath the mirror, where a framed photo of one of his Haitian patients, a toddler named Celina, leaned against the wall. She smiled crookedly at him, her dark hair covered with tiny plastic barrettes, and he remembered the sobs of her mother outside the makeshift operating room in Trou du Nord. Eight hours of surgery to correct the little two-year-old's scoliosis: eight hours cutting gaps between vertebrae, grafting bone from her pelvis, and installing metal rods to hold the spine still while the vertebrae fused correctly, all under a weak 60-watt lightbulb dangling from a piece of jute. The conditions had been atrocious, and yet the little girl could now run normally through the village, a testament to his skill and her tenacious spirit.

  He sighed and willed himself not to wonder whether Celina was still robust and healthy. Instead, he made sure his door was locked and stepped into a waiting elevator.

  The parking garage was eerily quiet and Emerson Phipps' footsteps echoed sharply in the darkness. He strode purposefully to his space and popped open the back of his BMW 760Li, tossing in his overnight bag and closing it securely. Once inside the rich leather interior, he wasted no time in pushing the start button and speeding into the night. Behind him, the garage echoed with the sound of the twin turbocharged engines.

  The streets were vacant and dark, unusually quiet for the tail end of a Saturday. Phipps noted an oily slickness coating the pavement; it had obviously rained while he slept. Despite the slippery surface, he drove the sedan a good twenty miles over the limit. He'd been stopped several times for speeding, but so far had not received a ticket, or a warning for that matter. In fact, the cops who'd approached him and asked for his license and registration had been embarrassed when he explained his haste. Officer, I'm a surgeon, on my way to save a life...

  Minutes later he was inside the brightly lit corridors of Boston Memorial's Emergency Room. The sights and sounds of the ER -haggard relatives slumped on plastic chairs, the drone of CNN on the television, the smell of bitter coffee and hand sanitizer-no longer registered. Oblivious to the banality around him, Emerson Phipps made his way to the trauma rooms, pausing to peer at the charts to find his patient. He felt a light touch on his arm and turned sharply. Amanda's round face quickly colored.

  "Dr. Phipps-I didn't mean to startle you..."

  "No problem," he said smoothly, giving her a dazzling smile. "So where's this SCI you interrupted my beauty sleep for?"

  She giggled softly and pointed at an adjoining room. "In 3. Dr. Chan checked his vitals and she said to tell you she'd be back. The patient's on a backboard-the paramedics did that-but Dr. Chan didn't want him moved until you had a look."

  Emerson Phipps nodded. As it should be, he thought. After all, he was the expert in the f
ield. He gave Amanda a boyish grin and reached up for the chart, but as he opened the door he made his face a mask of composure. Family members would be waiting, and for them, he needed to look appropriately somber.

  To his surprise, there were no anxious visitors at the patient's bedside. Phipps shrugged and focused on the victim. He lay on a gurney, still strapped to a rigid board which the paramedics had used to transport him. One side of his face was covered in a large purple bruise, the eye on that side swollen shut. His looks were the least of his problems, however. Glancing on the chart, Phipps saw that his pelvis and left femur were broken, along with a few ribs and his neck.

  His neck. Phipps gazed at it, dispassionately, trying to gauge the extent of the trauma to the spinal cord. They'd need an MRI to see which vertebrae were damaged, and whether the injury could in some way be improved. Repaired, he knew, was out of the question, but if a piece of bone was pressing on a vertebra or a nerve, some pain might be relieved. He scrawled a note on the chart. Methylprednisone. This medication was a corticosteroid that reduced damage to nerve cells, decreasing inflammation near the site of injury. It seemed to cause some recovery in patients if given within eight hours of injury.

  He looked at the man, little more than a stationary bundle of sheets and mangled bone, and judged him to be in his early twenties. A small diamond stud sparkled from one earlobe. His hair was dark and curly, and needed a washing. And yet Emerson Phipps knew that this patient would never again shampoo his own hair, or change his earring. Without even seeing an X-ray, Phipps sensed that the C-I vertebrae was crushed, the one that controlled the arms, legs, and even breathing. It would be a miracle if the poor guy found the strength to go on living once he realized his fate.

  Phipps sighed and prepared to leave the room when something-an instinct he couldn't define, an unnatural stillness in the room, a sweet thin odor that he only now was just beginning to notice-made him stop, and reach instead to the carotid artery for a pulse. Phipps' trained fingers felt nothing. Puzzled, he put on his stethoscope and listened for a heartbeat. Again, nothing. He sighed and put the stethoscope back in his pocket. This patient was dead, most likely by a heart attack-and, judging by the extent of his injuries, it was probably a good thing.

  Idly he wondered why an alarm hadn't sounded when the patient had stopped breathing. The ventilator was there, and the patient was on it. Just then Phipps noticed the power cord to the ventilator. It lay on the floor, unplugged.

  A stab of alarm pulsed through his body. Why wasn't the guy on a heart monitor? Some clumsy EMT knocked the cord out, he thought. It happened, more often than any hospital wanted to admit. His second thought was one of self-preservation. They're not insinuating I had anything to do with this ...

  Phipps knew the nurse Amanda would have noted the time she phoned, and luckily he had been prompt in answering her page. He'd checked in upon entering the hospital so he was covered there, as well. Timing was everything, and this morning, Phipps had done it all perfectly.

  And yet he didn't want even a hint of a scandal. Twice he'd been called to appear before the hospital ethics committee on charges of negligent behavior, just because he'd started a few surgeries later than scheduled. Both instances had been dismissed, but of course the newspapers had carried the stories. Did Surgeon's Tardiness Lead to Death? He swore under his breath. He was not about to let this night create another hassle with the hospital administration.

  Emerson Phipps knew how to disable the machine's built-in recorder system, and he did it quickly and with a calm that came from making life and death decisions every day. He checked that no one had entered the room without his hearing, and then, taking a quick breath, he plugged the respirator back in.

  While the machine made its reassuring hum and pumped oxygen into non-functioning lungs, Emerson Phipps jotted down a time of death. Calmly, he paged Amanda in the nurses' station and told her the patient had coded. She gasped and hurried into the room, her pretty face puckered with worry.

  He placed a reassuring hand on Amanda's shoulder and locked his eyes with hers. "Poor guy couldn't take the trauma," he said softly. "His body was just too battered."

  Amanda bit her lip and Phipps could see tears in her eyes.

  "He's just a few years younger than me," she whispered. "A college kid. Way too young to die"

  Dr. Phipps nodded gravely. "Ask Dr. Chan to notify the family," he said, putting the chart back in its holder. "I've been called out on urgent business."

  He saw the look of dismay cross the young nurse's face.

  "I hate to leave you with all this," he said, his eyes dropping down to the pink ribbon she wore on her scrubs and lingering there a moment before once more meeting her gaze. "You organized the cancer walk back in the fall, right?"

  She nodded, blushing again, and he smiled. "Make sure you see me for a check next time. I'm happy to help." He glanced at his watch, the pink gold glinting under the fluorescent lights. "Look, if I didn't know how competent you are..."

  She exhaled quickly and shook her head. "You go, Dr. Phipps. Go and do what you need to do. I'll handle this and track down Dr. Chan."

  He smiled. "You're an angel, Amanda."

  Twenty minutes later he was seated in his BMW, speeding north to Maine.

  The sun rose just as he crossed the bridge from New Hampshire, a rosy ball rising up out of the blue water and climbing effortlessly into the sky. After stopping for coffee and a stale blueberry muffin, Phipps climbed back into his car and drove an hour or so more, up the coast to the working-class city of Manatuck. He waited with the fishermen in the line for the first boat of the day, noticing the admiration of the ferry workers as he purred past them and onto the ramp. "Get used to it," he said softly. "You're going to be seeing a lot more of this car." Twenty minutes later, he steered the sedan off the ferry and onto the island of Hurricane Harbor.

  He drove slowly past the trim little cape that served as the ferry office. A few clumps of people stood waiting to board the ferry, but Phipps paid them no attention. Instead he headed up the hill, past the little cafe with its window boxes crammed with flowers, the dingy little bar, and the hotel, a stately Victorian structure upon whose wide porch a few tourists were already perched. Beyond the few buildings that served as the island's center was a crescentshaped piece of land called Long Cove, a sheltered inlet of water dotted here and there with lobster buoys and one or two small sailboats. At the fork in the road, Phipps turned right, where a small wooden sign said simply, "Pemberton Point" and beneath that, in capital letters, "PRIVATE"

  His heart quickened as he drove down the wooded road. He knew he shouldn't have come-Mark had advised him to lay low -but he couldn't help himself. His longing to see the estate again was so intense, he was willing to drive three hours for a ten- or fifteen-minute look. The buyer won't be at the property, he reasoned. Not this early in the morning...

  The buyer. Let her enjoy the feeling, because it wasn't going to last. If all went according to plan-and it would-he would be the one with the keys to Fairview sometime Monday afternoon. She's about to be broadsided and she doesn't even know it. The thought filled him with the same adrenalin that flooded his veins in the operating room.

  Phipps knew that his purchase of Fairview was a gamble, but he was a man used to taking chances and having them go in his favor. As he turned down the curving, tree-lined driveway that led to the Trimble estate, he felt a surge of anticipation. Nevertheless, he drove slowly on the dirt road, careful to keep the rocks from spinning up and damaging his paint job. I'll have it paved next week.

  He slowed to a stop and looked up at the main house, as impressive as any English manor or French chateau. Fairview, he whispered. The very sound filled him with a longing that was almost unbearable. He said it again, letting it roll off his tongue.

  The property was as beautiful as it had been the previous Saturday when he'd raced up from Boston and submitted his offer, as breathtaking as the first time he'd laid eyes on it, all those years be
fore. It was more than the house, or the staggering view, or the formal gardens landscaped to perfection. It was the whole idea of an island retreat and what it represented. A mini-kingdom, his mini-kingdom, with tennis courts, an airstrip, and an indoor pool. It was an estate that rivaled any along the Atlantic coast, a property that was the envy of everyone who knew tony Hurricane Harbor, of anyone back in Boston who knew exquisite taste. It represented everything he had ever worked for, the life he had carefully crafted. Mine, he thought. It will soon be mine.

  He let his eyes linger for a moment more on the weathered shingles and listened to the crash of the surf beyond the house. Phipps had made arrangements to get inside, but the person with the key wasn't due until eight o'clock. Phipps looked at his watch with impatience. Twenty minutes before the hour. He thought fleetingly of the elderly real estate broker upon whose frail shoulders the whole deal rested, and wondered if she was the one meeting him. What the hell was her name? Jean? Joan? Jane. Jane Farr. She still had all her marbles, he had to give her credit for that. And those penetrating eyes ... It was as if she'd seen right through him, and known, somehow, that Fairview was something he would acquire at any cost. She'd come up with the whole thing...

  Phipps looked at the time again. I wish to hell she'd get here. Jane Farr hadn't wanted this meeting, but with nearly six million dollars on the table, she'd been easy to convince. The whole thing had been easy, which was just the way Phipps liked it.

  He decided to walk to the back of the house, stretch his legs before he began driving once more.

  He strode across the verdant grass, damp with the morning dew. A few gulls cried out as he rounded the corner, their shrieks like screams against the early morning stillness. A rabbit darted from behind a clump of beach roses, and Emerson Phipps jumped. I'm not used to peace and quiet. I'm used to life or death.

  The cove was calm, save for the sound of a gentle swell buffeting the rocks below. Phipps peered over the craggy cliffs that jutted out like fingers and saw a path winding down to the small beach below. He'd hire a landscaper and put in stairs, so that his nephews could scamper down there and not break their necks in the process. His thoughts wandered back to the emergency room and the unfortunate patient he'd seen hours earlier. Poor Amanda had seemed rattled by the whole thing. I'll call her later. She may want to talk. The memory of the young nurse and her bouncy little ponytail made him smile. She was pretty, in a wholesome, earnest way, not like the angular models he usually dated. Maybe I'm ready to give all that up. Be the kind of person my sister thinks I am ...