Noah turned back to her. “In that case he’s in for a rude shock. Ray Whittaker’s guilt is an indisputable fact.” His statement reflected fierce conviction.
“Maybe he just needs to find that out for himself.”
The interior door swung open and Alice stuck her head out. “Noah, Carol La Rosa’s on the line. She says her mother fell down some steps. You better talk to her.”
“Excuse me,” he said to Kit, before hurrying through the door.
She sat for a minute watching Bryan clear brush from around the tree stump, with Max supervising. She wondered how long Noah would be occupied with this phone call, and glanced at the door through which he’d disappeared.
Without letting herself reconsider, she rose and went into the house. As she slipped past the parlor, she heard Noah’s voice through the open doorway to his office, patient but firm as he attempted to extract details from the agitated woman on the other end of the line. “Take a deep breath, Carol. Sit down. Is she bleeding at all?”
Silently Kit peered into a large living room, with the same stuffy, time-worn decor as the parlor. She doubted Noah actually used either room. Ditto for the formal dining room with its humongous, gleaming cherrywood table and... two, four, six, eight... twenty chairs!
Down a short corridor was a smaller room that appeared to be a library or study. Here he’d clearly made his own mark, decades-old wallpaper notwithstanding. The southern exposure admitted plenty of sunshine through large, latticed windows. Ceiling-high Scandinavian-style blond-wood bookshelves occupied all wall space not claimed by windows or the door. In one corner was a cozy reading nook—armchair and cluttered lamp table.
Here’s where Noah lived.
It was as if he’d carved out his own private little enclave within the hostile borders of another man’s domain. She had no business being here. It was Ray’s environment she wanted to study, she reminded herself as she tentatively stepped through the doorway. Not Noah’s.
She walked the perimeter of the room. The contents of the bookshelves reflected a varied and voracious appetite for the written word: hardcover bestsellers, beat-up paperbacks, books on history and science. Plenty of medical tomes, naturally, along with stacks of AMA journals. A book on transcendental meditation caught her eye, and she pulled it out, remembering he’d tried to get Jo interested in TM. The pages were dog-eared, with stripes of yellow highlighting and notes scribbled in the margins. Malcolm wouldn’t approve.
She tucked it back in place and ran her finger over its neighbors: books on Buddhist and Hindu teachings, including the Bhagavad-Gita; a study of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism; a book on Wicca, the ancient Celtic witchcraft religion. The next one brought her up short. The Search for Bridey Murphy. What was he doing with that? As a young girl, she’d been fascinated by this story of a woman’s discovery of her past life through regressive hypnosis. Kit had outgrown her juvenile interest in the paranormal about the time she’d tossed out her training bra.
Her eyes wandered back over the books on philosophy and religion. On reflection, Bridey Murphy wasn’t so out of place here. From her studies at Northwestern and her own readings, she knew that the concept of reincarnation enjoyed widespread acceptance in Eastern religions and in the ancient and obscure roots of Western religion. Just as it suffered nearly universal rejection by modern men of science. Men like Noah.
What was it he’d told Etta? She must have been a saint in a former life. Good karma, he says I have.
She scanned the book titles as she began to retrace her steps toward the door. A good deal of space was devoted to medical books, which didn’t surprise her. A family practitioner must be something of a jack-of-all-trades. She saw volumes on a multitude of specialties and subspecialties. She’d seen still more in his office, probably those he consulted most frequently.
Poisons.
The word drew her eyes. She didn’t consciously reach for the book, but found it in her hands nonetheless. She flipped through the pages. It was a scholarly directory of every known poison, including relative toxicity, sources, and properties. She slid it back onto the shelf and pulled out the one next to it, a physician’s guide to diagnosis and treatment of poisoning. Before returning it to the shelf, she riffled the pages, stopping where a slip of paper had been tucked into the pages as a bookmark.
“Neuromuscular Blocking Agents.” That was the term Noah had used when discussing Jo’s death. She scanned the pages. Pavulon... Tubarine... Norcuron. He’d mentioned Norcuron, she recalled, as a curare derivative used in medicine.
Well, he did say he’d done a little research into curare after Jo’s death. Of course, there was no mention here of Zaparos Indians or blow darts. She glanced at his makeshift bookmark: a cash-register receipt from the local five-and-dime. He’d spent $3.12 on January 31.
She slapped the book closed, shoved it back on the shelf, and left the room, retracing her steps down the corridor.
January 31.
She stopped in her tracks. Five months ago. Either Noah bad grabbed an old receipt just lying around or...
His interest in curare predated Jo’s demise.
She returned to the study, pulled out the book once more, and flipped it open to the bookmark. The date was January 31, sure enough, two years ago! This was a two-and-a-half-year-old receipt, for items purchased shortly after he’d moved to Pratte. She checked the copyright page of the book. I had been published four years earlier.
Kit shoved it back on the bookshelf with trembling fingers and pulled out the other book on poisons. If Noah had barreled into the room just then, she’d never have heard him over the pounding of her heart. This one was published seven years ago. No bookmarks here, but a quick flip through the pages bore fruit. Yellow highlighting directed her attention to two sections: true curare, under poisonous plants, and curare derivatives like Norcuron, under medical poisons. Noah had marked various words and sentences dealing with such issues as toxicity, symptoms, and reaction times. The rest of the book was untouched.
She returned it to the shelf and quickly looked around to make sure she’d left everything as she’d found it, then quietly made her way back through the house. The door to Noah’s office was closed, and her pulse raced anew as she realized he’d finished his phone call. She took a deep breath and nonchalantly walked out onto the porch.
He wasn’t there, and automatically her eyes scanned the lawn. Bryan was nowhere in sight, but Noah was there by the tree stump, hefting the logs into a rough pile. He looked up and smiled as she approached, but something in his eyes slowed her footsteps.
“The emergency get resolved?” she asked.
“There was no emergency. Carol overreacted. I spoke to her mom. She said her foot slipped on the last step and she landed on her well-padded rump. No harm done. Where were you?”
“Bathroom.”
“I assume you found the yellow one all right.”
She hesitated. Every instinct screamed, Trick question! “Uh... I used the blue one.” Where he’d told Alice to find the sunblock. There probably was no yellow bathroom!
“I hope the lack of running water in the blue bathroom didn’t inconvenience you. We’ve had some plumbing problems there.”
He looked at her expectantly, awaiting a response, the swine. Plumbing problems, huh? Right then his smile took on a very Ray-like quality. Just for a split second. Long enough to make her wonder if she was imagining the murderer’s face everywhere she turned. When she got back to the boardinghouse, would Malcolm have freckles and pockmarks? Would Etta be sporting a red wig and a hypodermic?
She had no hope of outmaneuvering Noah in the what-color-is-my-bathroom game. “Where’s Bryan?” she asked.
“In the barn.” He cocked his head toward an outbuilding at the rear of the property. “Getting an ax to split up this wood.”
She imagined Ray Whittaker’s look-alike wielding an ax in one hand and a chainsaw in the other.
“Did I say something funny?” he asked.
&n
bsp; She bit back her smile. “I’m just getting a little giddy. Must be the sun.” She started across the lawn, heading for her car—well, it was her car now—and Noah walked with her.
“Where to?” he asked.
“The Pratte Public Library. My chat with Henry showed me just how ignorant I am about what happened here thirty-two years ago.”
He didn’t say anything until they’d reached the car. “And here I thought you were interested in the last eleven months—Jo’s time in Pratte.”
She couldn’t say, Jo’s time in Pratte had more to do with what happened thirty-two years ago than the past eleven months. But then, could be he already knew that.
“If Jo’s death was some sick reenactment of Anita David’s murder, then it makes sense to look back thirty-two years,” she said, retrieving her car keys from the pocket of her pink jeans. “For one thing, maybe I can find out why the killer targeted Jo. Did she and Anita have anything in common, for instance.”
Noah had the strangest look on his face. A little sad, perhaps. Or resigned. “Still looking for logical answers, Kit?”
She shrugged and opened the car door. “Can’t help it.” The alternative was to buy in to Bryan’s enigmatic mental meanderings, and she wasn’t that desperate. Yet.
She slid behind the steering wheel, and Noah leaned on the open doorframe. “How can you be so sure Jo was targeted? Maybe the killer is so twisted, he just needed a victim—a surrogate Anita—and she was convenient.”
“In the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Something like that.”
“Ah, the triumph of absurdity over cold reason,” she said. “You’re beginning to sound like Bryan.”
That seemed to amuse him. He closed the car door. “Good luck at the library, Kit.”
Chapter Six
KIT STARED INTO the dresser drawer for a full minute without touching anything. Her clothes wore all there: blue jeans and a couple of tops, a nightgown and underwear. Just as she’d left them.
Or were they? Her nape prickled. Slowly she reached toward the drawer, and stopped herself, racking her brain. Something was different.
She lifted the neatly stacked T-shirts, and that’s when it hit her. The neatness of the stack. As opposed to how she’d left these items, folded but askew when she’d quickly yanked out the clothes she was wearing. Kit wasn’t a slob, but she wasn’t exactly meticulous, either.
Whoever had gone through her things was giving her too much credit.
Her breathing quickened as the impact hit her. Someone had searched this room. Jo’s frantic message replayed itself in her head.
Kit, someone broke into my room. They ransacked it!
Well, this wasn’t exactly ransacking, and as far as she could tell, nothing had been taken, but...
Could she be mistaken? She did a slow-motion turn in place, peering at her surroundings, trying to ascertain whether anything else had been touched.
The closet door was slightly ajar. Had she left it like that? Maybe. Kit pulled open the door and looked at the skirt and blazer she’d hung in the closet after clearing out Jo’s things. She raised her eyes to her battered old green vinyl suitcase lying on the closet shelf, the top edge just visible. She hadn’t pushed it so far back, she was certain. She yanked it out and opened it, glanced at the empty interior, then dropped it. No way to tell if it had been tampered with.
It was nearly dinnertime, and Kit had just returned to the boardinghouse for the first time since breakfast. Plenty of time for someone to sneak in. She had a good idea what the person had been searching for, and it could fit almost anywhere. Such as...
She stalked to the bed and tossed back the bedspread at the edge of the mattress. Was it her imagination or was the bed skirt bunched in places—as if someone had knelt and shoved an arm between the mattress and box spring, groping for something? Like a three-and-a-half-inch computer disk.
Damn. Maybe she was losing her mind.
From downstairs came the sound of Etta’s voice welcoming Malcolm home from work.
Etta.
Of course. She allowed herself a tentative sigh of relief. Etta must have come in and straightened her clothing. Maybe that’s the sort of thing boardinghouse landladies did, she reasoned. Tidied the dresser drawers. Straightened the closet shelves.
And Etta had a key. Not that the ineffectual little lock on the bedroom door would discourage a determined prowler. Ten seconds with a hairpin could open any door in the place, Kit knew.
She went down to the kitchen. Two other rooms had apparently been occupied over the weekend, but now, at midweek, only she and Malcolm remained. Over roast chicken, rice pilaf, and spinach salad, she thanked Etta for tidying up her room. The landlady’s look of bewilderment wasn’t the response she’d been hoping for.
“But didn’t you—” Kit started.
“My guests’ rooms, I don’t bother with.” Etta gave a negligent wave of her fork. “You’re on your own as far as that goes.”
Kit didn’t share her fears that her room had been searched. Etta didn’t need any more stress, and what if Kit was mistaken? She shook a bottle of ranch dressing and decided to try a different tack. “Did you have any visitors today?” she asked both Etta and Malcolm.
“I was at work today, at Fine Food,” Malcolm said, carving the chicken. “I didn’t get home until five twenty-three.”
Etta shrugged. “People always pop in. You know. Everyone knows where to find me on a day like this. Out back, I was. Working on my roses and mulching the veggies.”
“Who came by? Anyone I might know?”
The landlady thought a moment. “Did you meet Henry’s wife when you talked to him this morning?”
“Yeah, Bettina came in for a few minutes.”
“Well, she called after lunch and said she wanted to see my peace roses. She’s thinking of putting some in on her property.”
Kit remembered the elaborate gardens at the Davids’ home. “Does she care for her own flowers?”
“I never thought so, but maybe she wants to start. Or maybe she just wants to know what to tell the gardener to put in. Huh. Me, I couldn’t afford a gardener, and even if I could, I wouldn’t hire one. Making things grow keeps me young.”
Kit became aware of the aroma of new-mown grass drifting through the screened windows. “But you don’t do the heavy work, do you? Like mowing and trimming bushes?”
“A coronary, I don’t need. That Carlisle boy comes once a week. Bryan. He does all that.”
“Wednesday afternoons,” Malcolm said.
So both Bettina David and the Bad Seed had been there that afternoon. She took a deep breath, steeling herself. “Noah didn’t happen to drop by, did he?”
“No. Why?”
Kit shrugged. “Just curious.” She was relieved until it occurred to her that anyone who knew that Etta was out back gardening could have slipped into the house without her even knowing. She had to wonder if anyone in Pratte knew Jo had saved a computer disk of her book. Or indeed, if anyone in Pratte even knew she was working on the book.
Not for the first time, she wished Jo had disclosed the location of the backup disk she’d referred to in her message. Kit didn’t relish the prospect of scouring Etta’s garage and basement for it, but at this point those were the only places she could think of. She’d checked with the local bank that afternoon, as well as those in neighboring towns, and sure enough, none of them had any record of a Joanne Merino renting a safe-deposit box.
Earlier she’d spent a couple of hours at the Pratte Public Library, researching the history of the Whittakers, and the Anita David murder in particular. Henry’s account jibed with the public record. It was all there in decades-old newspaper accounts: Anita’s death, Ray’s arrest, and his death during a struggle with Henry. Kit realized Jo would have made copies of all those old newspaper articles, and that they must have been stolen along with her computer, the hard copy of her book in progress, and the rest of her research notes.
&nbs
p; After checking the banks, she’d gone to Wescott Community Hospital and talked with the pharmacist there, Nina Shore, about curare. Wescott used the derivative Norcuron, Nina told her. The usual procedure was to start a patient with an injection from a vial, followed by a regulated IV drip. A respirator is used, naturally, since curare paralyzes breathing.
When Kit questioned her about security, Nina assured her that access to all medications was strictly controlled. It simply wasn’t possible for the general public, including the more homicidal elements, to walk in off the street and snatch their poison of choice.
She remembered the way Noah had put it. It’s not like your basic psychopath can just waltz in and borrow some. Of course, Noah was a member of the medical staff at Wescott. She assumed restricted access didn’t apply to him.
Leaving the pharmacy, Kit passed a nurses’ station. A young male RN was on the phone, discussing a patient’s postoperative care and referring to a folder open on the desk before him. As she passed, Kit noticed an open doorway behind the station, leading to a storage closet of some sort.
Even from a distance, she could see shelves lined with small boxes. She recognized the brand names of various common analgesics, along with other, less familiar drugs. Clearly this was where prescribed medications waited to be dispensed.
Her steps slowed as she approached the elevator. Distractedly she stabbed the Down button.
She knew precious little about hospital organization. Was there a medications closet on each patient floor, behind each nurses’ station?
She searched her memory for what Noah and Nina had both told her about the medical use of curare. A respirator is needed. Where did they use respirators?
The elevator arrived and an orderly stepped out, pushing an empty wheelchair. “Excuse me,” Kit said. “What floor is the Intensive Care Unit on?”
“Fourth.”
She found herself taking the elevator up instead of down. On the fourth floor the ICU was easy to find. She entered the area through well-marked double doors, passing two RNs on their way out, clearly leaving for the day. The changing of the guard.
A Case of You Page 8