by Emily James
Russ picked up his empty plate and dropped it in the sink with a clank. “Okay.” Then, as if he were worried I might continue the conversation by asking him about his own feelings, he sat back at the table with me and grabbed the pill bottle I’d set there. “Now what is this you needed my help with?”
“I needed a way—a safe way,” I added quickly, “to tell whether the pills in this bottle are what the bottle says they are. Since you take the same thing, all I need to do is compare them with yours.”
“You can look at any of my medicines you want if it keeps you from talking to people you shouldn’t be.”
Russ went to the cupboard over his sink and brought down a green plastic pill bottle. He popped the top and shook four of them out onto the table. The pills were white and oval shaped.
I gently opened Clement’s pill bottle. With how clumsy I was, I had images of me removing the top too forcefully, sending the pill shooting across the room, and losing it down the drain in Russ’ sink.
I tapped the bottle until one of the two pills slid out into the lid.
It was a yellowish-orange shade and round.
No one could confuse the two pills. I had one more thing I needed to check--the information on the two bottles. It had to match. Otherwise, the difference in color could be a dosage indicator. That wouldn’t explain the difference in shape though. Brand might. If one of them took the name brand and one took a generic brand. Russ took generic medications to save money.
I held out my hand and Russ passed me his bottle. I laid them side by side on the table.
The dosage and brand name were exact.
Someone had swapped out Clement’s pills.
21
I took Velma and Toby home the long way through the woods. My mind worked the case, and if I’d gone directly home, I would have ended up pacing the house.
Darlene wanting to kill Clement made no sense. Clement adored Darlene. He’d taken care of her. What could have possibly motivated her to want to kill a man who, by all evidence, was good and kind and loved her?
If I had any hope of having Clement’s charge reduced or dropped, I needed a strong argument and a lot of proof that his suddenly-cured medical condition had been real and had been inflicted by someone else. Without a clear motive, that’d be difficult.
I walked until my nose turned so cold that it hurt. I must have kept us out longer than I thought because when we got home both dogs dropped immediately to their beds for a nap.
With them quiet, I pulled out all the material I’d collected. Most of it related to Gordon and wasn’t applicable anymore. As much as I hated to admit it, Clement must have been the one to kill Gordon.
I set aside everything that applied to Gordon. All that was left was the background checks Hal, the private investigator who regularly worked for Anderson’s firm, ran for me on Clement and Darlene when he got back from his vacation, the newspaper article about the opening of the museum that I’d printed off, and what Clement told me about their life.
Both background checks were unexceptional. No extra money spent. No outstanding debts. The Dodds were average, responsible people. They’d saved for their retirement, and all their current income came from Clement’s early retirement pension from teaching and the museum. They’d inherited their home and the museum from Clement’s dad, so they didn’t even have a mortgage.
I wasn’t going to get anywhere staring at the same material I’d read multiple times. My brain had already fallen into repeating patterns. My dad always warned new hires about it. You only got one chance to see material fresh, he said.
I’d been blinded by what we thought happened. We thought this was either a horrible accident brought on by a naturally-occurring medical condition or that someone had targeted Gordon. That someone had targeted Clement instead hadn’t even entered my mind.
I wasn’t going to be able to see the material fresh again, so the best alternative was to instead find fresh material.
I called Hal and asked him to put a tail on Darlene for a week. It might end up being a waste of resources, but I didn’t know where else to start. I also started work on a subpoena for Darlene’s cell phone records.
A knock sounded at my door. Hopefully it wasn’t Russ ready to back out of the grief support group meeting already. If he did, I was out of ideas for how to help him.
Stacey stood outside my door instead, a bundled-up stroller behind her on the ground. Since she said Noah was sleeping, we carried the stroller up together, took the blanket off, and left him the way he was even though what I really wanted to do was take him out and snuggle him.
But Stacey was twisting a strand of her hair around her finger before we had the door closed and Noah settled. With Stacey, that was never a good sign.
Russ wouldn’t have called her as soon as I left to talk to her about how much she needed a grief group, would he? If that was it, I’d better jump in and tell her what I’d done before she started the conversation. Otherwise, she could feel like I’d betrayed her somehow and was talking about her behind her back.
“I had an idea about Russ,” I blurted out.
I forced my words to slow down so I didn’t sound so guilt-ridden and filled her in as I made us both a cup of chamomile tea. I would have rather had coffee, but Stacey was off coffee because of Noah and it seemed callous to drink it in front of her.
Stacey gave a doesn’t-matter shrug. “Those are usually free, so it’s probably a good place for me to start, too.”
Her nonchalant attitude made it seem like she hadn’t known and that wasn’t why she came. Yet she kept shifting position in her seat. It made her look a bit like she really needed to use the restroom.
She finally stilled on her seat. “Have you decided whether you’re going back to being a lawyer?”
Technically, I’d never stopped, but I knew what she meant. She wanted to know what I’d decided about joining Anderson’s practice. That shouldn’t have made her nervous, but it seemed like it did. “I’m waiting to make my decision until I’ve had to argue the current case in court.”
If I couldn’t manage a case on my own, it wasn’t right of me to take on clients at all. I’d willingly help Anderson as a consultant whenever he had an innocent client, but I couldn’t sign clients if I couldn’t see their case through to the end. It wasn’t fair to them to pass them off when they were at their most vulnerable.
Besides, despite what Saul said, it wasn’t enough to love a career. You also needed to be good at it. If I couldn’t competently do all aspects of my job, I needed to move on to a new one. That’s what responsible grown-ups did, like it or not.
Stacey had a ring of hair around her finger, and she held it up by her cheek like she wished she could chew on it. With anyone else, I would have simply asked what was going on. With Stacey, I had to approach it a bit more tactfully.
“Are you planning something that we might need to do around here before more of my time would be taken up by the practice?”
Even though Stacey wasn’t supposed to be working during her maternity leave, we hadn’t been able to keep her from unofficially continuing to involve herself in almost everything that came up. She and Nancy had designed the whole new product line for the website and for sale in Short Stack, our pancake house. Nancy would handle all the baking, but Stacey was the organizational genius.
Stacey shook her head. “It’s just that…” She brushed her hair against her lips, seemed to notice what she was doing, and dropped the lock. “I need to make a decision about where I’m going to work once my mat leave is over.”
The chair suddenly felt wobbly underneath me. I wanted to beg Stacey to stay at Sugarwood—literally get down on my knees and offer her whatever it took. All the paperwork and inventory maintenance that Stacey loved required twice the day’s normal allotment of caffeine and more candy than I should eat over the course of two weeks for me to face.
But it wasn’t right of me to say any of that or to pressure her. If I did, I’d be
like everyone else who tried to control her life rather than letting her figure out on her own what she wanted. Besides, any time someone pushed Stacey, she inevitably wanted to go in the opposite direction.
I stopped my mental panic hamster wheel. She’d opened this wanting to know what I planned to do. “I don’t see the link.”
She huffed like it was obvious and I was being intentionally obtuse, making her say something that she didn’t want to say. “If you’re staying on full-time at Sugarwood, then there won’t be a position for me. Since I’m not doing all the jobs Noah did, I can’t expect you to pay me a full-time wage for part-time equipment maintenance. And I need full-time income to support Noah and me.”
She sounded defensive. So much so that I almost missed the little break in her voice when she said for me.
She wasn’t defensive. She was defending herself from the disappointment of not having a place here. She’d decided she wanted to stay, but now that I wasn’t moving to DC—wasn’t even sure I’d continue practicing law—she thought I’d want to take back the roles at Sugarwood that I’d handed over to her.
Even if I went back to working at Sugarwood full-time, I wouldn’t want to take back those jobs. “You have a job here no matter what I choose. I thought you knew that.”
Stacey shook her head, opened her mouth as if she were going to say something, and then shook her head again.
My heart hurt a little with every beat over the thought that she’d been sitting at home worrying over this. Russ and I agreed we wouldn’t talk to Stacey about the job again until she was ready because we didn’t want her to feel pressured. It seemed that had been a mistake.
Stacey wasn’t a hugger, so I didn’t try even though I wanted to. “We’ve been afraid you didn’t want to work here anymore. Both Russ and I want you here, training to take over for him someday, no matter what I decide. Okay?”
Stacey dipped her head. “Then I’d like the job. I’d like to stay here at Sugarwood.”
We ate cookies and chatted about other things for another half hour. Before Stacey left, I couldn’t help myself. I had to hold Noah for a few minutes.
Until he arrived, I hadn’t had much experience with babies, and I hadn’t understood what people meant when they said it was love at first sight with their kids. If I felt this way about Noah, I could only imagine what it would be like when Mark and I had our own children.
It felt like the breath had been sucked from my body. Maybe that was why Darlene tried to kill Clement. Their son. Clement had likely been with him during the fishing trip when he died. He was too young in the photos to have gone alone.
It was possible Darlene blamed Clement for their son’s death and hadn’t been able to take it anymore.
22
I passed the next few days working with Nancy and Stacey to get the new items up on the website, collecting all Clement’s medical records from the specialists he’d seen who’d diagnosed him with fatal insomnia, and researching everything I could find on the condition.
I focused on other cases where people with fatal insomnia had exhibited hallucinations. There wasn’t much information. The condition was so rare. I was able to find a neurologist in New York who’d studied the condition and had published scholarly articles on the topic. He’d agreed to testify if I needed him.
Whether I liked it or not, my trial by fire to see if I should join Anderson in his practice or investigate a new career was turning out to be a case that would have challenged even my parents in the courtroom.
But assuming I could prove Clement’s condition had been genuine, I might have figured out a way to keep Clement out of prison. There’d been a sleep-walking case a few years ago where a man believed he was fighting with an intruder and accidentally killed his wife. It was so similar to Clement’s case that I could argue it set a precedent for finding Clement not guilty.
This afternoon, I planned to go back to the pharmacy since Saul should have returned to work by now. I wanted him to identify the medications in Clement’s pill bottle. Once I knew what they were, I’d find another expert I could call to the stand to confirm that the pills substituted for Clement’s could cause severe insomnia.
I was on my way to the car to head to Dr. Horton’s when my cell phone rang.
“I have pictures for you, Ms. Fitzhenry-Dawes,” Hal said. “The lady you asked me to tail met twice with the same guy, and they looked awfully friendly. You want to come pick physical copies up or you want me to email you the files.”
Awfully friendly was a euphemism for might be having an affair.
I’d been wondering why Darlene would have waited so long to punish Clement if she blamed him for the death of their son. Perhaps it was because she was so dependent on Clement. It was possible she’d been afraid of being on her own. If she’d found someone to take Clement’s place, that could explain why she’d finally acted on a desire to punish her husband for not protecting their child.
I tapped my phone softly against my cheek. We were only a weekend away from Clement’s preliminary hearing. The best idea seemed to be for me to take a picture of the man to Clement today and see if he recognized him in case it was a family member.
I couldn’t afford to waste time investigating this if it turned out he was Darlene’s cousin or something, consoling with her because her husband was in prison on the charge of murder. I had told her it would be good if she had someone to lean on. She might have called a relative.
If I was showing them to Clement, or later to Darlene to confront her, a larger image than I could bring up on my phone would serve better. I still didn’t want to let Clement know I suspected Darlene, though. “I’ll come get them from you. Did you get any pictures of the man alone?”
“A couple when he was getting back in his car.”
“Do you have his name yet?”
“Naw. Be nice if he offered it up, but he didn’t, and I stuck with my tail instead of following him.”
Technically the right call, but frustrating none the less. “See what you can do for me, okay?”
“Sure thing.”
I arranged to meet him in twenty minutes since his office wasn’t in Fair Haven. It meant postponing my trip to the pharmacy, but Saul wasn’t going anywhere, and this could be the lead that finally solved this puzzle. Even knowing what the pills were meant nothing if I didn’t have a motive to show why they’d been put there intentionally and maliciously.
Before I left his office, I looked through the pictures. They didn’t clear up whether the man Darlene had met with was a lover or a friend. He hadn’t gotten any shots of them holding hands or kissing, but they’d met twice in the span of a week. Hal had taken a couple shots of them hugging.
I headed straight for the prison. If Clement didn’t recognize the man, our next step would be figuring out who he was.
I left all but one clear shot of the man’s face in my car. Soon I’d need to tell Clement what I suspected, but I couldn’t gage what would happen when I did. Some men, when faced with their wife’s infidelity or sabotage, turned angry. Others sank into depression. If he ended up going to prison for life for the murder of his best friend because of something his beloved wife did, I was afraid of what he might do to himself.
When I sat across the table from Clement, his leg jiggled so hard that the table had a slight vibration to it like we were sitting next to train tracks with a train going by.
“I didn’t expect to see you again before the arraignment.” He moved a hand under the table and the jittering stopped as if he were holding his leg still. “Has something new happened?”
I handed him the photo. “I’m following every lead I can. Do you recognize this man?”
Clement brought the photo close to him and stared at it. There was no twitch of recognition. His expression didn’t shift at all—no extra swallowing, no downward pull on his lips, no tensing of his eye muscles. Nothing.
But he kept looking at it long enough that I wanted to start squirming in my seat.
I might have if I hadn’t heard my mom’s voice in my head. Don’t ever show a client that you’re uncomfortable.
He set the picture down and brought his other hand back up, but his leg stayed still. He didn’t push the photo back to me the way I expected he would. “I don’t know him.”
His look made me feel like I was being sized up, as if I were a child in the principal’s office, called in to defend against a charge of cheating.
I kept my mouth shut. Defending against an unspoken accusation would only make me seem guiltier of whatever he thought I’d done.
He laid a hand over top of the picture as if he were tired of looking at it. “I’ve been sitting here trying to think of all the possible reasons you would show me a picture of a man I don’t know. Because if I don’t know him, he shouldn’t have had access to my medications or a reason to hurt me.”
The sleep-deprived Clement had been easier to manage. The well-rested Clement showed me the man who must have been a sharp professor and history scholar in the past. This conversation had taken a turn to a direction I’d hoped to avoid.
He was going to want to talk about who this man was and why I was asking about him. All the factors I’d calculated meant nothing because I’d failed to take into account how much sharper Clement would be now. In his career, he’d had to take small pieces of evidence—the things artifacts told him—and come to conclusions about whole societies and eras of history. It wasn’t that much different from what I did in a way. We used a similar interpretive skill set.
He flexed and relaxed his hand over the photo. “So the one reason I can come up with is that you think Darlene is having an affair with this man and she swapped out my medication to kill me.”
I couldn’t deny it, and I couldn’t grasp on to another idea that might distract him. My ruse was up. At this point, I was probably better admitting it. Then I could minimize the damage and hopefully keep Clement calm and focused. To build a solid defense for him, I needed his cooperation.