This page contains a description, reviews, and the
first chapter of my second novel.
Framework for Death is also available on audio tape at Books
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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.
"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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!"
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.
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."
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."
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.
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."
"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."
"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.
"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?"
"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
Order Now!
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© 2001 Aileen Schumacher. All Rights Reserved.
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