A Few Drops of Bitters

by G. A. McKevett

  “That was his point. My patients are dogs and cats, horses and pigs. His were movie stars and ambassadors and even presidents. But that wasn’t the worst of it.”

  Here it comes, Savannah thought. The rest of the motive....

  “My maid of honor wasn’t his only conquest. There were other women, too. Many, many women. He flaunted them right in my face, daring me to leave him. Knowing that I wouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I would lose the life I’d worked so hard to create. Gradually, he’d gone from being financially dependent on me to me depending on him. His practice, mine, our home, and more importantly, my clinic—they were all tied up together. I couldn’t get rid of him without losing everything else that mattered to me.”

  Savannah nodded. “A lot of people remain married because of financial entanglements. Sad, but true.”

  “But still . . . even that wasn’t the worst.”

  “Tell me the worst, Carolyn,” Savannah said, wondering if it was the alcohol that had loosened her tongue so effectively.

  It had been a long time since Savannah had interviewed someone who had opened up and shared so freely.

  Had it not been highly illegal, she would have suggested to Dirk that, in the future, he give his suspects a hot toddy before grilling them at the station house.

  “I could have stood it all,” Carolyn continued, “the infidelities, the adolescent squandering of our money, his arrogance, and the put-downs. But he waited until after we were married to mention to me that he would never want children. He said there was no room for such annoying distractions in a neurosurgeon’s world. ‘Annoying distractions.’ That’s what he called any children we might make together.”

  She looked at Savannah with so much sadness in her eyes that Savannah had to fight back her own tears of empathy. “I’m sorry, Carolyn. So sorry.”

  “Can you imagine anyone referring to little Brody that way?”

  Savannah recalled some of the horrible names Brody’s mother had called him. Casually. With no consideration for his innocence or what such vile language and harsh labels could do to a tender soul.

  “Not being able to have a child of your own is awful enough,” Savannah said, speaking from experience, because of her own premature menopause. “But to have someone deny you that joy, and not even talk to you about it before marriage, that’s rough. I can understand you’d be heartbroken and furious about that.”

  “I guess that’s why I enjoy having children, like Brody, come into the clinic. It’s not like having a little one of my own, I’m sure, but I figure it’s the next best thing.”

  Savannah smiled. “Especially when the kid is Mr. Brody Greyson.”

  “Yes! Especially when it’s him, little live wire that he is.”

  The two women sat in companionable silence for a while, finishing their drinks, soaking in the healing power of the moonlit garden.

  Finally, Savannah decided to gently ask the difficult questions.

  “What do you think happened to Stephen this evening? You may not be a physician, for people anyway, but you have extensive medical training. What do you think caused him to pass so quickly like that?”

  Carolyn thought long and hard before replying, then said, “I have no idea. Stephen took very good care of himself, physically anyway. He worked out, ate right, drank too much, but not enough to kill him. If he got the sniffles, he’d run to a specialist.”

  “So, you don’t think it was disease?”

  “No. Of course, it could have been. But I don’t think so.”

  “He hadn’t suffered any sort of injury lately?”

  “Not even a small spill.”

  “Back at your house, you said he had some bad habits in the past. Did he do any sort of recreational drugs?” Savannah asked, hoping Carolyn wouldn’t take offense.

  The question didn’t seem to upset her. She answered quite matter-of-factly, “He used to.”

  “What was his drug of choice?”

  “Cocaine. But he got treatment for it and was able to stay off it. He’d been clean for years.”

  “Maybe he relapsed.”

  Carolyn shook her head. “No. I would have seen the telltale signs a mile off. Believe me, I knew what to look for.”

  “Then what do you think caused him to . . . pass?”

  Carolyn set her mug on the side table between them and put her hands over her eyes, as though wanting to blot out some terrible sight that only she could see.

  After a few moments, she dropped her hands and turned to Savannah, who could see tears rolling down her cheeks. “I have a bad feeling, Savannah,” she said. “I don’t think it was disease, and he hadn’t suffered any sort of accident or injury. He wasn’t depressed or the sort to harm himself. So that only leaves one thing, doesn’t it?”

  Savannah nodded. “Yes.” She decided to broach the topic, since Carolyn appeared understandably reluctant to do so. “If he wasn’t sick and hadn’t been in any sort of accident, then I’m thinking he might have been the victim of foul play.”

  “But how? He was in a crowded room, being watched every second.”

  “He might have ingested something.”

  “Something . . . toxic?”

  “Yes. I mean, maybe not. Perhaps there’s still a perfectly logical answer that isn’t immediately obvious to you or me. But perhaps something he ate or drank was, well, not good for him.”

  Savannah chided herself for her awkward choice of words. But since Carolyn had chosen not to say the word that was on both of their minds, neither would she.

  Apparently, the newly widowed veterinarian preferred not to use the word poison.

  Savannah could hardly blame her. She pulled a tissue from the box on the side table and handed it to her friend.

  As Carolyn wiped her eyes, Savannah said, “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm Stephen?”

  “You mean like an enemy?”

  “Precisely like an enemy. Did he have one?”

  “One? One single enemy? My Stephen?” She gave a wry chuckle. “Stephen made enemies everywhere he went, and he traveled all around the world. He wasn’t happy unless he was seriously on the outs with someone at all times. He thrived on conflict.”

  “Does anyone in particular come to mind?”

  Carolyn shrugged. “Any of the women he was messing around with. Some of them got very upset that he wouldn’t leave me and marry them, which he never would have done because that would have meant dividing up the toys.”

  “Okay. A bevy of disgruntled girlfriends and who else?”

  “Their husbands and boyfriends. He got death threats from more than one of those.”

  “You may have to produce a list of them. Names. Addresses if you know them. Who else?”

  “His co-workers. My co-workers. Our neighbors. Estranged family members. Patients who had bad outcomes. Their relatives.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yes. I’m telling you. For a guy who was so sure of his own superiority, there are a lot of people who won’t be sorry—quite the contrary, in fact—when they hear he’s gone.”

  “Were any of them at the party?”

  Carolyn thought it over for a few seconds, then nodded. “At least six, maybe eight of them.”

  Oh, goody, Savannah thought. If it did turn out to be a homicide, Dirk was going to have his hands full. As senior officer of little San Carmelita’s two-man Major Crimes Unit, he was bound to catch the case.

  There was nothing quite like trying to find justice for a guy that half of the world hated, and other half didn’t know.

  * * *

  Later, after Savannah had shown Carolyn the guest room and upstairs bathroom and, once again, expressed her condolences, Savannah walked on down the hall and entered her own bedroom.

  To her surprise, instead of finding Dirk in bed, he was pulling off his jeans and getting into a pair of blue and gray plaid, L.A. Dodgers pajama bottoms.

  “You’re wearing jammi
es to bed?” she asked him. “Since when? You haven’t worn clothes to bed since the last earthquake.”

  Like a lot of Southern California folk, Dirk harbored a fear of running out of his house in the middle of a major quake and encountering his neighbors, au naturel.

  For several months after a shaker, he had worn pajamas to bed. But eventually, once the aftershocks had died down, he’d return to his old habits. They hadn’t experienced any tremors over 5.5 on the Richter scale in quite a while.

  “I’m not going to bed yet,” he said, pulling a T-shirt over his head.

  “Really? But you hardly got any sleep at all last night. I thought you’d be dog-tired.”

  “I am.”

  “What do you intend to accomplish this late, sporting those Dodgers britches?”

  “I’m gonna go downstairs and keep an eye on Brody.” Savannah flashed back to the image of the little boy, sound asleep on the sofa with a purring, black kitty tucked beneath his chin. She had given him a kiss on the forehead as she and Carolyn passed through the living room on their way from the backyard to the upstairs bedrooms.

  “I just checked on him. He’s finer than frog hair,” she told him.

  “Good. I intend to make sure he stays that way.”

  He walked over to her, enfolded her in a tight hug, then kissed the top of her head. “You go on to bed. No point in both of us staying up. Besides, I’m the one who was stupid enough to invite her to spend the night with us. Don’t know what I was thinking.”

  As Savannah tried to process what he’d just said, he added, “I guess I’m just not used to having a kid in the house. If it was just you and me, it’d be okay, but a little guy like that, downstairs, by himself and out of earshot . . .”

  “Dirk, are you suggesting you need to protect him from Carolyn?”

  He shrugged. “Why not? I’m pretty sure that Dr. Erling guy was murdered, and she’s my number one suspect, and she’s sleeping under the same roof as my kid.”

  “Whatever you think of Carolyn Erling, I guarantee you, she would never, ever hurt a hair on that little towhead.”

  “Okay. I appreciate you sharing your opinion on the matter, but I gotta do what I gotta do.”

  “What are you gonna do, that you just gotta do, Mr. Manly Man? Sit on the end of the sofa all night with a shotgun across your lap?”

  “No, Miss Smartie Pants. Since you won’t be parked on it yourself, I’m gonna sprawl out in your comfy chair. I don’t need a shotgun to deal with Dr. Carolyn, if she starts trouble.”

  He headed toward the door, and she rushed to intercept him. “Honey, really.” She grabbed his arm. “You’re so tired. You nearly fell asleep with your face in your pizza at dinner. If you really think someone has to keep watch over him, I’ll do it. I can nap tomorrow while you’re at work, probably investigating this case.”

  He took her hand off his arm, kissed her knuckles then ruffled her hair with his big bear hand. “Van, I don’t have to tell you, of all people, how many nights I’ve sat in a cold car outside of some bum’s house, waiting for him to show up or do a drug deal, or whatever. Go to bed, darlin’. I got this.”

  A moment later, he was gone.

  Savannah looked over at the bed that looked all the bigger now for being empty, and she felt a pang of loneliness.

  But she also felt enormously proud of Dirk.

  For a guy who had driven her nuts for the first fifteen years of their working-turned-personal relationship, he’d turned out to be a pretty awesome husband. Now, it appeared he was an equally incredible dad.

  Yes. Dirk Coulter.

  Go figure.

  Chapter 13

  When Savannah set the platter of fried eggs and sausages on the table, it occurred to her that there was a lot less laughter in her home than there had been twenty-four hours before. No pranks. No giggling. No banter between her and Dirk or little boy snickering.

  Brody and Dirk sat, quietly buttering their toast, no doubt out of respect for Carolyn, who was having a simple bowl of cereal—minus the cat food tidbits.

  As Savannah lowered herself onto the chair next to Dirk’s, she stifled a groan. She had awoken to savage pains in her back, the disgruntled muscles complaining bitterly about yesterday’s unaccustomed workout.

  She wouldn’t have minded at all if her CPR activities had actually saved a life. But more than once during her career as a police officer, she had performed the arduous task, pushing her body far beyond its limits, to no avail.

  It made the subsequent back pain harder to bear.

  “You okay?” Dirk asked, keeping his voice low.

  She nodded but thought, If by “okay” you mean am I gonna live? Yes. Barely. But I’ll never be the same.

  One quick, sideways glance at Carolyn told Savannah that her guest had heard Dirk’s question and felt bad about it.

  Carolyn’s expression was one of abject misery, mixed with something that looked like guilt. “I think I owe you a day at one of our better downtown spas,” she said. “At least a nice massage to work out some of that soreness.”

  “Oh, I’m all right,” Savannah lied. “At least, I will be, once I get going. I just slept funny. Got a little crick in my neck.”

  “That’s sweet of you to say, Savannah. But what you did yesterday, I’ve done myself,” Carolyn told her. “I know it’s terribly hard work. I’m not surprised you’re stiff and sore today.”

  Brody perked up and shoved a spoonful of cornflakes into his mouth. “You’ve done that mouth-to-mouth stuff, too, Dr. Carolyn?”

  The vet gave him a smile. “More like mouth-to-snout. A Labrador retriever, a poodle, a hamster, and a Siamese cat.”

  “At least it wasn’t that python,” Savannah muttered under her breath.

  Brody grinned and snickered. “Cool! I’m gonna be a vet, you know, when I grow up. I wanna do that mouth-to-snout stuff, too!”

  Carolyn turned back to Savannah. “I hope he has better luck with his patients than you had with yours.”

  “That’s for sure,” Savannah said, offering her the platter with the eggs and sausages.

  She shook her head and said, “No, thank you, Savannah. I’m sorry that you went to so much work to make this full breakfast. But I just don’t have an appetite this morning.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re sad about your husband,” Brody said with the authority of a psychiatrist delivering a complicated, expert diagnosis.

  Savannah cringed at his bluntness, but Carolyn reached across the table and patted his hand. “You’re absolutely right, Brody. I am sad, which is to be expected under the circumstances. When we lose someone close to us, we can’t help it.”

  “Like when people need you to put their pets to sleep. Only not really to ‘sleep,’ you know . . . and then the people cry there in the clinic, ’cause they’re super sad.”

  “Yes. Exactly like that.”

  Savannah slid the platter to its usual place on the table. Next to Dirk’s plate.

  He wasted no time before wading into it. But just as he was transferring an obscene amount of sausage links to his plate, his phone chimed.

  Savannah had a feeling about who would be calling. Dirk didn’t possess a particularly active social life. Almost always, when someone called his cell phone, it was concerning business, not pleasure.

  “Yeah, Captain. Whuzzup?” he asked, still chewing.

  After listening for a moment, he glanced quickly over at Carolyn and said, “Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. I’ll be coming in soon.”

  He ended the call and shot Savannah a loaded look. She knew what it meant. The captain had assigned him a case, and she had a sneaking feeling it was Stephen Erling’s.

  So, the not-so-popular, former brain surgeon to the rich and famous was now officially a “case”?

  She wondered what new developments there might be.

  The fact that Dirk resumed his breakfast without saying, told her that she shouldn’t ask. At least, not in front of the widow.

  “I’
m going in a little earlier than usual,” Dirk told Brody. “If you can get ready quick, I’ll drop you off at school on my way.”

  “Okay!” Brody shot up from his chair, grabbed his bowl and plate, raced to the sink, placed them inside it, then disappeared. Seconds later, they heard him pounding up the stairs and running down the hall to his bedroom.

  “Wow!” Carolyn said. “Is he that eager to go to school every morning?”

  “He is. But he particularly likes it when Dirk takes him,” Savannah admitted.

  “He likes you, too,” Dirk told Carolyn. “He’s crazy about you.”

  “But I’m a girl,” she replied, “and every boy that age knows that us girls are icky and have cooties.”

  “Yeah, well, give him a few years, and he won’t mind cooties. Especially icky girl ones.” Dirk gave her a wink as he stood and carried his own plate to the sink.

  Who says a wife’s nagging doesn’t pay off in the end? Savannah thought as she watched him rinse off the plate before sticking it inside the dishwasher. You’ve just got to stick with it and not give him a moment’s peace until he adopts the rules of society, one by one.

  “Then you’re saying we girlies do have cooties?” she asked him playfully.

  He walked back to the table, stood beside Savannah, and toyed with one of the curls that was forever hanging down into her eyes. “Present company aside, of course,” he said, tucking it behind her ear. “But once the adolescent hormones get to flowin’, we guys start noticin’ that you ladies have other charms that make up for any cootie infestations.”

  He left Savannah and walked behind Carolyn’s chair. Laying his hand on her shoulder, he said, “I’m sorry, Doctor, for what’s happened to your family. If there’s anything we . . . I . . . can do for you, don’t be shy. Speak up, okay?”

  “You’ve done quite enough already, Sergeant Coulter,” she replied. “I really appreciate you taking me in like you did last night. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t.”

  “Think nothin’ of it,” he said as he picked up his phone from the table and shoved it into his jeans pocket. “Glad to have ya.”

  Savannah looked up at him, noticing the dark circles under his eyes. She could hear the fatigue in his voice.