Framework for Death
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first chapter of my second novel.
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FRAMEWORK for DEATH
1999 Anthony Award nominee

by Aileen Schumacher

Answers are few and far between when El Paso Police Detective David Alvarez is called to investigate an unexplained collapse in the residence of an affluent matron. The dead home owner and another unidentified body are discovered in the basement in what appears to be a concealed room. If this isn't enough to figure out--a live, unidentified infant is discovered upstairs.

When Alvarez calls in engineer Tory Travers to figure out what happened to cause the collapse, the media turns the case into a circus. Soon Alvarez is dealing with an alleged drug king, his DEA shadow, a mystery woman who unapologetically works outside the law, and Tory's inclination to go searching for solutions on her own. While Tory and her foreman look for the builder of the secret room, her son and the infant son of Alvarez's partner are threatened if they don't drop the case. top.gif (626 bytes)

"This long-awaited sequel to Engineered for Murder was well worth the wait. A tightly-woven plot with more twists and turns than a rollercoaster ride. Kept me turning pages until the wee hours of the morn. Highly recommended!" -- JoAnne Bowers, Cemetery Plots Bookstore

"Aileen Schumacher delivers another engaging mystery, brought to life by a smart, sassy engineer and a suave, sarcastic detective whose combustible relationship leaves you laughing and guessing at the same time!" -- Jane Gaboury, Editor, Civil Engineering News

"The dialogue's snappy, there's humor, the situations are realistic, the tension builds, there's a sexy romance ... what more could you ask for?" -- Judy Flanigan, Managing Editor, Public Works

"Excellent mystery filled with fun banter among the characters, who kept me guessing right up until the ideal solution!" -- Sandra Herron, A Novel Idea Bookstore

"No sophomore slump for this engineer, whose second book is better constructed (ahem) and more fun than the first. I really enjoyed the time spent with these characters; this book gives better-than-equal time to David Alvarez, the attractive police detective that engineer Tory Travers met in the course of Engineered for Murder. -- Kate Derie, creator of the ClueLass Home Page top.gif (626 bytes)

Ms. Schumacher's first Travers/Alvarez mystery, Engineered for Murder sold out in hardcover, and went to a paperback reprint. Ms. Schumacher is a civil/environmental engineer. She lives in Florida.

ISBN: 0373263554

Framework for Death
A Mystery
by

Aileen Schumacher

PROLOGUE

Omaha, Nebraska:
Thursday, December 28, mid-afternoon

It took Alicia Boyce a minute to realize that she was actually awake, because she hadn't been aware of falling asleep. Waking and sleeping seemed the same lately, both filled with a sense of anxious waiting. She looked at her watch. She had dozed for less than an hour, and she didn't hear any sounds from the next room. With any luck, the baby would sleep on for a while. top.gif (626 bytes)

One more day. Only one more. Alicia turned on her back and surveyed the room that had become her prison, reaching into her nightstand to pull a cigarette from its hiding place. She had started smoking when she was sixteen, as a way to control her weight and nerves. Raymond didn't allow her to smoke. He said it wasn't in keeping with her image as a former Miss Nebraska, but after tomorrow, what Raymond liked or didn't like wouldn't matter.

Alicia remembered when a cigarette had been a handy substitute for an overwhelming urge to eat, but now, the need to control her weight was like a forgotten dream. Eating was just a means to an end, a way to stay strong, strong enough to get away from Raymond.

Her hands shook as she lit the cigarette. She sometimes thought that she had been shaking from the moment she made the decision to leave, but surely no one could shake for that long. Luckily Raymond was too busy to notice--too busy with his business deals, his colleagues, his other women. top.gif (626 bytes)

The details of the arrangements swirled in her mind, an endless pinwheel of anxiety. She reviewed one part of the plan and let it go, only to pick up another part and look for possible flaws. She had decided that they would leave tomorrow, just before the New Year. Much more waiting and she would lose what little sanity she had left.

It was abnormally quiet in the house. Raymond had left on a business trip the day after Christmas and wouldn't return until New Year's Eve. He hadn't questioned her decision to remain behind and give the household staff a week of holiday leave. He was so sure of her, so certain he'd eliminated every vestige of free will and courage. For a long time, she had feared he was right. But that was before she found the video tape.

Of course Raymond would never leave her totally alone. The chauffeur lived over the garage, the groundskeeper and his wife were in their house down by the electronic gate, and her stepdaughter Patty came and went at will. But as long as the groundskeeper stayed at his house, and the chauffeur would drive her and the baby anywhere they wanted to go, everything would be fine.

And with only one more day to wait, it was unlikely she would see Patty again, which was just fine with Alicia. This was the height of the party season, and if Patty excelled at anything, it was parties. Alicia had always been intimidated by her husband's fashion-model daughter, only two years her junior, but now the feelings had intensified and grown more complicated. She feared and loathed Patty, but she also felt small stirrings of pity toward her stepdaughter. Altogether too many emotions to try to keep off her face. top.gif (626 bytes)

Patty would have to deal with her own problems; Alicia had enough of her own. She took one last drag on the cigarette and snubbed it out, running her hands through her dark shoulder-length hair as she looked at the room one more time. She remembered when the luxury of her surroundings had filled her with delight, and when she would wake up every morning, look around, and feel like a princess living in a fairy tale come true.

That stage hadn't lasted long, but the memory was enough to bring a bitter taste of self-loathing up the back of her throat. What a fool she'd been, a young girl with no experience at anything but farm chores and sweet young boys, tongue-tied and shy as she herself had been. Alicia was ripe for the taking in the glittering tinsel world of beauty pageants, strutting the catwalks unprotected by any street smarts, thinking the best of everyone, just happy to be winning, with nothing whatsoever going for her but her long legs, slim body, and sleek dark-haired beauty.

Raymond had swept her right off her feet, with his own dark good looks and his money, which bought entry to a world Alicia hadn't known existed. The first time Raymond closed one hand over her breast as he smoothly unzipped the back of her gown with the other, there in the back of his limousine, he didn't pause to raise the tinted glass window that separated them from the driver, and Alicia thought that she would die of embarrassment. top.gif (626 bytes)

Raymond touched her like he had a right to, with none of the whispered entreaties of those other suitors, and it never occurred to Alicia to question what was happening. Then a wedding ring joined the five carat diamond engagement ring on her finger, and it was too late to get out.

Five long years she lived with Raymond, four of those with the knowledge that she was now a caged possession in the luxury that she had lusted after, a possession who knew too much to ever be set free. She hadn't wanted the baby, but Raymond had, and Raymond usually got what Raymond wanted.

For a while after Hannah was born, Alicia thought that she could make a go of it, closing her eyes to the things that went on around her and concentrating on Hannah, the love of her life. But that was before she found the video. She couldn't let herself think too much about the video, or she would go mad.

She thought about lighting another cigarette to still the growing symptoms of a full-blown panic attack, but she fought against the urge. A good mother didn't smoke, and she planned to quit just as soon as they were safely away. When she felt like she was losing her mind, like she couldn't stand one more minute without screaming, she had found something that worked almost as well as a cigarette. She would go into the nursery and look at the sleeping Hannah.

Hannah meant everything. Hannah was more important than Raymond and his business dealings, more important even than her all-consuming fear. She would do anything for Hannah. Alicia could be brave for Hannah; for Hannah she would take risks that she would never have dared contemplate on her own. She would die for Hannah, if need be. top.gif (626 bytes)

And right now, she would go look at Hannah, and let the sight of her sleeping daughter calm her fears and strengthen her intent. She would think about how, after tomorrow, she and Hannah would never come back to this place. Alicia smiled to herself, as she pulled back the covers and swung her legs to the side of the bed. She reached for her designer robe, the one that matched her designer gown, the two together costing more than her father earned in a month of farming. Tomorrow, she and Hannah, free.

Chapter One:

COLLAPSE
El Paso, Texas: Sunday, January 1, early afternoon

Second quarter, eleven minutes to go, the underdogs just scored a touchdown, and his damn beeper went off.

David Alvarez didn't put much credence in statistics that correlated crime with natural phenomena. Some studies claimed more murders were committed in hot weather, others purported that crimes of passion increased during the full moon, and still others linked incidences of violence to snow storm cabin-fever. As a detective with the El Paso Police Department Special Case Force, Alvarez had reached the unshakable conclusion that crimes were invariably committed, or discovered, whenever he was attending a major sporting event. So it was no surprise to hear his beeper go off after a spectacular touchdown at the Sun Bowl game in the football stadium at the University of Texas at El Paso.

The crowd surged to their feet in the clear cold air that characterized winter in this Southwestern part of Texas. At two o'clock in the afternoon the sun was steady and bright, but every breath or utterance from the crowd puffed steamy white into the cold, dry desert air.

Alvarez glanced at his partner, Scott Faulkner, when they sat back down. Scott's wife, Donna, had provided Alvarez with the perky blond sitting next to him.

Donna, like Scott, was from a wealthy El Paso family, and had relatives and connections to spare. Alvarez was of mixed Hispanic and Anglo heritage, had grown up in near poverty, and didn't relate well to perky. He didn't really relate all that well to Donna, either. top.gif (626 bytes)

Still, the blond next to him was young and supple and seemed eager for whatever other contact sports activities might follow the football game. Being tall, never married, and undeniably good-looking didn't hurt Alvarez's appeal to the opposite sex, but his relationship with the blond hadn't progressed that far yet. They were still in the happy-happy stage of a blind date, where one was simply grateful to learn that the provided companion had neither limb nor substantial IQ missing. However, this gratitude hadn't kept a familiar sensation of boredom from circling around the edges of his consciousness before his beeper went off.

Having spent close to two decades of his 38 years involved in law enforcement, youthful enthusiasm sometimes made Alvarez weary. But that didn't mean he would rather be at a crime scene. Surely he hadn't become that jaded. Or had he? He glanced at the blond next to him, noting her flawless complexion and the freckles scattered across her nose before he turned his attention to his partner.

Faulkner and Alvarez looked at each other while the beeper issued its insistent call for attention, neither willing to be the first to acknowledge its existence. As the cheering died down the beeper seemed to get louder.

It was Donna Faulkner who spoke first. "Not now, Scott," she said. "Tell me that isn't what I think it is."

"What is it?" asked the perky blond. "Is that the police department? It must be something really important for them to try and get in touch with you here, right? This is exciting!" top.gif (626 bytes)

Alvarez decided to make his exit. "I'll make the call," he offered, standing up.

Faulkner stuck to him like they were glued together at the shoulders. "I'll g-go with you," he said.

"What's going on? Are you coming back?" the blonde asked.

"Fat chance," Donna said tersely.

"If we don't come back, we'll take my car," Alvarez offered, which didn't seem to make Donna feel a lot better.

"I'll see you l-later back at the house," Scott chimed in. "I'll c-call if it's going to be late." He leaned over and kissed his wife before he started moving toward the aisle.

Alvarez turned to his date. "It was nice to meet you," he said. "Enjoy the game."

"Wait-can't I come with you?"

Alvarez didn't bother to turn back. "I don't think so," he tossed over his shoulder. He winked at Donna as he passed in front of her. "Catch you later."

He and Scott headed for a pay phone on a wall next to a massive column. Ever since the homicide case involving the construction of a stadium like this one, Alvarez was conscious of the structural parts holding everything up. An engineer involved with the case had told him that if the case hadn't been solved, the problems with the construction could have resulted in a structural collapse at a later date. Police work was like that, affecting things that normal people took for granted and turning them into something forever to be viewed askance.

It had been months since that case, and he hadn't been able to get the engineer out of his mind. All five-feet ten-inches of her, and the way she managed to look down her nose at him, in spite of the fact that he was six-foot-two. top.gif (626 bytes)

Alvarez reached in his pocket for some change to feed the phone. Faulkner stood leaning against the wall, waiting patiently. There was an unspoken agreement between the two about who would make the call-dispatchers at headquarters actually preferred to talk to Faulkner, who was much more easy-going than his partner. But, with Scott's stutter, it was sometimes difficult for him to be understood.

"You didn't have to leave the game, man," Alvarez said, dialing the number. "I could have made the call and gotten back to you."

Scott shrugged. "It was getting pretty uncomfortable," he said, stutter-free.

Alvarez had made a practice of studying the circumstances under which Scott's stutter appeared and disappeared. It was merely an intellectual exercise for personal entertainment, since he knew from experience that Faulkner could yell "Watch out!" or "Get down!" as clearly and quickly as anyone.

"She's Donna's cousin and she's a nice person," Scott continued, "but she's really ..."

"Perky?" Alvarez asked, feeding coins into the phone.

"Yeah," Scott said. "She's short, too," he added dismally, as if he felt personally responsible for the fact. Scott was well aware of Alvarez's preference for tall women.

"Tell Donna to give it a rest," Alvarez suggested while he waited for someone to come on the line. Maybe it would be faster to dial 911 and ask to be patched through, he thought.

"She thinks you don't like her," Scott answered. Alvarez knew he was referring to Donna.

This was an old conversation. "It's not that I don't like her. I think she's great for you, man. I just don't want one like her," Alvarez said. "And she doesn't like that." top.gif (626 bytes)

Scott shrugged again. Their relationship pre-dated his marriage, so Alvarez didn't have to tiptoe around the difficulty he had in dealing with his partner's wife. The bottom line was that David Alvarez and Donna Faulkner had to share Scott. Donna didn't particularly approve of Alvarez, and Alvarez didn't especially like her or the fact that his partner had married her. But, unlike Donna, Alvarez was willing to live with the situation without trying to fix it. In his opinion, it was about as good as personal relationships got for law enforcement types.

Hell, it worked for the three of them. Donna just hadn't realized it yet. Maybe when she did, there would be an end to the continuous stream of eligible female relatives and friends. Maybe he could suggest a height criteria-go over to Scott's house and make a mark on the door jam and have Donna line up potential candidates to see how they measured up.

Where he'd grown up, he and his sister Ana used the walls in the bedroom they shared to mark heights and dates and things. But that didn't mean his household had been without standards: a sheet served as a divider in the bedroom the two siblings shared, and only pencil marks were allowed. Further, no markings were tolerated in the bedroom shared by Alvarez's Kansas-bred mother and his paternal grandmother, a wizened Hispanic woman who spoke minimal English. There, the wall art had consisted only of crucifixes and religious pictures.

Alvarez cupped his hand over his free ear to better hear the dispatcher who had finally fielded his call. Then, lifting his shoulder to cradle the phone and leave his hands free, he searched in his pocket for a notebook and pencil.

The one-sided conversation would have piqued most people's curiosity, but Scott Faulkner waited patiently, knowing he would get the whole story as soon as Alvarez got off the phone. However, even by their standards, the conversation was unusual.

"He what? ... I hate it when a cop falls into the middle of a crime scene, it makes our job so much harder... No lead on the call? ... There was what in the bedroom? ... Yeah, I'm happy the kid's okay, I've still got a cop falling into the middle of a crime scene, man, it makes us all look bad ... Yeah, that is strange. Maybe there's a couple more bodies to go with the extra IDs ... it was a joke, man, simmer down ... Give us thirty minutes-hey, we're in the middle of the damn Sun Bowl, okay? ... No, I'm not allowing for time to stay and watch the rest of the game." top.gif (626 bytes)

Alvarez hung up the phone and looked at his partner. "We're headed to your old stomping grounds-Rim Road. Maybe we can stop and chew the fat with your folks. I know how much they love to see you on the job. Come on, I'll fill you in on the way."

Alvarez heard another cheer go up from the crowd, remembered that this would be another one of the countless football games that he would never see completed, and cursed in Spanish under his breath.

"Creo que si tambien," said Scott, which loosely translated as "Yeah, I feel that way, too." When Scott started working with Alvarez, he had virtually no knowledge of Spanish slang and profanity, a void in his education that Alvarez had taken great pains to fill. "L-look at it this way. We'll b-b-beat the rush out of the stadium."

"And everyone keeps telling me you have no sense of humor."

Literal, methodical, and detail-oriented, Scott Faulkner did in fact have a reputation for being humorless. Alvarez found his partner's single-mindedness itself to be a source of comic irony. Alvarez was thankful for whatever had led Scott into police work, even though it had alienated him from his wealthy family.

And Scott Faulkner had the benefit of the best secondary education that money could buy. A background like that was good for an endless store of quotations; today was no exception. As they walked out of the stadium, Scott grinned at him and said, "Let the games begin."

The two detectives referred to their work as story-telling. Starting with whatever facts were known, the goal was to relate a story that best filled in the information that was missing. A good story could trigger investigative efforts that might yield more facts, which would allow the hypothesis to be refined until it was no longer a hypothesis. top.gif (626 bytes)

Alvarez and Faulkner set no limits on the plausibility of their stories, even though both were familiar with the theory that claimed simple explanations were the most likely to be true-they'd been detectives too long to believe that all the answers were simple ones. Some of their cases had been solved by an idea embedded in a story initially told as a joke. One or the other would take it seriously, look into it, and suddenly a fantastic explanation of how a crime was committed and who did it was no longer fantastic, but as close to the truth as they were likely to come.

Some cases started out simple and got complicated. Some cases started out complicated and got bizarre. The one phone call had already told Alvarez which type of case they had on their hands.

He had plenty of time to tell Scott about his conversation with the dispatcher as they walked to his car. Alvarez had been too cheap to ante up for the prime parking area. Instead, he had opted for general parking and hitched a ride with the Faulkners and the perky blond to the expensive parking closer to the stadium.

"What we have is a structural collapse in a residence, apparently resulting in two fatalities."

Scott was unimpressed with his technical description. "Before that c-c-case last summer, you would have said the roof fell in," he observed. "I remember how you couldn't get the difference between c-c-c-concrete and cement straight." top.gif (626 bytes)

"Police work gives you a chance to associate with and learn from so many different types of people," replied Alvarez, generously not taking offense.

"Yeah, I've wondered about that," Scott's breath puffed white into the clear afternoon air as they walked past what seemed to be acres of cars. "Every time we flip a coin over something, you win," Scott continued. "Every t-t-time we play pin ball, you win. Every time we play c-c-cards, you win. Considering the people we come across, maybe you should be more s-s-selective about what you learn and who you learn it from."

"Have you ever noticed that you stutter more when you're bitter about something?" Alvarez countered. "That, and having your in-laws around. Anyhow, the roof didn't fall in, as you so simplistically put it. The floor did. But the floor happened to be the ceiling to a room in the basement, so you're partially right."

"Where is this? Don't tell me we're going to be next door to my p-parents."

"No, it's on the other end of Rim Road from your ancestral abode." Alvarez consulted his notebook while his partner shaded his eyes and looked in vain for Alvarez's vehicle, a shockingly purple rental car that Alvarez was tolerating while his cherished bronze Corvette was in the shop. "The house belongs to one Lenora Keaton Hinson, who is assumed to be one of the deceased."

"Hinson," Faulkner repeated to himself, as Alvarez took off in the opposite direction. "I know who they are. The son was a f-few years younger than me, and he had a younger sister, too. Their father died years ago; he was a p-p-partner in the original development of Rim Road. Left a lot of money. I remember my parents saying something about a disagreement over the will- Where the hell is your c-c-c-car, David?"

"See, you get upset, you start to stutter. I didn't plan on having to find the car. You were supposed to drive me to it, remember?"

"If we have to hike around much longer I'm going to need s-some sun screen." top.gif (626 bytes)

"See what I mean about your stuttering? There." Alvarez pointed at the distance and took off with purpose. "You're wrong about the original development of Rim Road-typical Anglo tunnel-vision perspective. You and your family probably think the land just sat there in pristine condition, all those years, waiting for rich Anglos to come live on it. My old abuela used to dandle me on her knee and tell me stories about how the people of La Raza used to live there in their own little barrio they called home, until the Anglos wised up."

"You're kidding," Scott said flatly.

"No, I'm not kidding," answered Alvarez. "The settlement was called Stormsville, a nice Anglo name, filled with lots of little brown people and no utilities. The city condemned it for sanitary reasons and relocated the inhabitants. How the property then came to be in the hands of people like your parents is a story likely too complicated for my simple pachuco mind to grasp."

"I m-m-meant you were kidding about your grandmother dandling you on her knee. Didn't she think you were a juvenile d-delinquent on the road to hell?"

"Do you want to hear about this case or not? Emergency dispatch got an anonymous phone call reporting an accident at the Hinson house. When the uniforms couldn't get a response, they went on in. One of the officers fell through some kind of entry hall into the room below. Some kind of fancy rug had been stretched and tacked to the baseboard in the entry hall, so it stayed in place when the floor under it fell in. Pretty weird, huh? Some poor cop thought he was walking into the living room when the rug came untacked. He fell through it into the basement, right on top of a bunch of debris covering two bodies, one of whom might be the owner of the house."

"I don't remember ever going d-down to the basement when I was in the house."

Alvarez looked at him. "Yeah, I'll bet you don't."

"So what does all this have to do with us? How do we even know that a crime has b-b-been committed?"

"We don't. But we've got lots of questions. Did I mention that a live female infant was discovered in an upstairs bedroom? No, don't get all sentimental on me-it looks like the kid is going to be okay."

"That's not g-g-good enough," Scott said flatly. top.gif (626 bytes)

"I'm with you, man. But the cop who fell into the room brought out a purse to try to ID the second body, and maybe get a handle on who the kid is."

"What did they find?"

"Three different sets of IDs with three different names, all for one single person-presumably the second body."

Scott let out a low whistle of appreciation.

"And there's more. Seems there was a reason Mrs. Hinson never let you into her basement. It's been refinished, all right, into a big rec room or den or something."

"So? Sounds like someone didn't do a very g-good job of it."

Alvarez rounded a van, blinked at the glaring shade of purple which still managed to surprise him, and unlocked the door to his rental car.

"So what else about the b-b-basement?" Scott asked doggedly.

Alvarez grinned. This was almost as good as telling a story. Scott might have read the complete works of Shakespeare at Harvard, but Alvarez had read all of Dame Agatha Christie. "We're doing one better than a locked room investigation," he said. "If that poor cop hadn't fallen through the floor, they'd have had a hell of a time finding the bodies."

"Why's that?" top.gif (626 bytes)

"There's no visible entrance into the room where the bodies were. From all outside appearances, the basement is unfinished. It looks like what we've got is a real, genuine secret room."

Scott thought about that as Alvarez drove out of the congested parking area. "Now you see it, now you don't," he commented sagely.

Alvarez groaned and accelerated. He needed to make up for lost time.

End of Chapter One

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© 2001 Aileen Schumacher. All Rights Reserved.