I arrived at school a little more than a half hour later and attempted to lie low, something that a nearly six-foot-tall woman with a miasma of messy hair can hardly pull off. I slunk into my office after exchanging a few benign words with Dottie about the weather—wisely avoiding any talk about her relationship with Charlie or any additional relationship advice—and settled in behind my desk. From my messenger bag, I took out the business card that I had been carrying around for the last few days and put it on my desk, smoothing down the edges. After a few minutes of manipulating the card between my fingers, I finally got up the courage to dial the number that was printed on the front.
John McVeigh, Mac the Medical Examiner, answered on the second ring, something I wasn’t counting on. “ME’s office. McVeigh speaking.”
“Um, hi, Medical Examiner McVeigh.” Was he a doctor? Or just a mister? I wasn’t sure, so I went with his full title. “This is Alison Bergeron. We met the other day—”
“Of course! Alison! How are you?” he asked, full of good cheer.
“Well, I’m fine, thank you,” I said, surprised that he had asked. He asked me why I was calling, and up until this moment, I had thought I would go straight to begging for the exhumation of Carter Wilmott’s body, but on second thought, I went with a different tack. It hadn’t occurred to me until just now that my implying that Carter had not died of what the ME said he had died of would be a wee bit uncomfortable for both of us. “I think I have some information that might be germane to the Wilmott case and I wanted to share it with you.” The silence on the other end of the phone was deafening; obviously ME McVeigh was no dummy and could see where this was headed. “Hello?”
“Blunt force trauma to the head,” he said dully.
“I know,” I quickly amended. “That’s what you said. That’s probably what you even put on the certificate of death!” I said, much more cheerily than the circumstances would have required. “I actually just have a question. Regarding death. And stuff.”
“And stuff?”
“Well, maybe not ‘stuff,’ per se, but other things.” Nothing like sounding like a complete moron to solidify your credibility. “Can we have a cup of coffee?”
“I’d much prefer a scotch,” he said.
“Okay! Then scotch it is. What does your schedule look like?”
“It looks like a spiral-bound notebook filled with monthly calendars.”
I was stunned into silence until I realized he was joking. Not exactly gallows humor, but not exactly humor, either. “Oh, right. How is tonight? Say seven? I can meet you anywhere you’d like.”
He asked me to meet him at an Irish pub in White Plains not far from his office and conveniently located across from a funeral home, an appropriate landmark when one was meeting the medical examiner for a drink. Until then, I had a few things to figure out, the first being what I was going to do now that I had a Hooters waitress as a roommate.
I called Crawford and gave him the update, leaving out the part where I was going on a first date with the ME and most of the stuff about Ginny Miller and her thoughts on poison. Crawford knew me well enough that that was just enough information to get me snooping around, and let’s just say that he doesn’t like that aspect of my personality.
“Wait,” he said. “You’re living with a Hooters waitress?” I heard him relay this information to Fred; they were in the car, riding to a homicide. “And she’s a friend of Max?”
“You heard me, brother. Hooters waitress. In my house.”
“Do you know anything about this person?”
“Only that she needs a place to stay.”
“Oh, good. I feel so much better.”
“She’s a nice kid. She’s getting a degree in criminal justice from John Jay.”
“Sounds like a regular Mother Teresa.” Fred mumbled something in the background that I couldn’t understand but it didn’t matter; if Fred had been standing right next to me, chances are I wouldn’t have been able to understand him, either. “I’ve gotta go. Call me later, okay?”
I hated deceiving Crawford but I hated him being mad at me more. I had tossed and turned all night wondering why I was helping Ginny Miller, a woman who up until last night had been my archenemy. But now I saw her for what she was: a lonely, kind of depressed middle-aged woman who had succumbed to the charms of a seemingly sophisticated—if you believed money gave you class, that is, which I didn’t—and wealthy man. I didn’t know a lot about the relationship but I had gleaned that much. And she seemed hell-bent on making amends and saving her marriage. I had to respect that. Albeit begrudgingly, given the way she had treated me.
And there was the added bonus of her having attended to my terminally ill mother in her last days. I had spent every day and night at the hospital for two weeks but was hard-pressed to remember any nurses or doctors whom I had met during that time, so overcome was I with grief and exhaustion. My mind wasn’t my mind then; I was younger than I should have been while attending to a sick parent and it was all I could do to maintain my sanity in the midst of a horrific tragedy. My father had already died several years earlier. But I do remember that the people who had taken care of my mother had kept her comfortable, out of pain, and clean. They were angels who flitted in and did their work silently and without too much disturbance.
If Ginny Miller had been one of those angels, I was certainly in her debt.
The whole poisoning angle was an interesting twist. Although I had seen the guy die, who knew if he had died in the manner to which we all ascribed? What if he had been slowly poisoned? And by whom? It was a question that should be answered. Because if George Miller was innocent, then he shouldn’t have to go to jail. That much was very clear to me and my inbred sense of social and moral justice.
It’s a high horse but someone has to ride it.
The day went quickly, and when I had interviewed my last student, I hightailed it out of there. I was in White Plains, a city in Westchester where the ME’s office was located and which also was the location of my rendezvous with ME McVeigh, in about twenty minutes. I found the bar easily and parked across the street in front of the funeral home.
Mac was at the bar, nursing an amber-colored liquid in a short glass that I assumed was his beloved scotch. He stood when I entered, and not knowing whether to give me a hug or shake my hand, he settled for a pat on the shoulder. “Hello, Ms. Bergeron.”
“It’s Alison.” I slid onto the stool next to him and ordered a club soda.
“Not a drinker?” he asked.
“Not a drinker and a driver,” I explained.
He nodded solemnly. “Good rule.” He motioned to the bartender for another drink. “I can walk from here,” he explained. Once it had been placed in front of him and he took a sip, he turned his full attention to me. “Now, remind me. Why are we here?” His blue eyes were sharp, but kind.
I spread my hands out on the bar and waited a few beats, trying to get the facts—or what I perceived to be the facts—straight in my head. “What would you say if I told you that I had information that led me to believe that Carter Wilmott died from poisoning rather than blunt force trauma?”
Mac studied his drink. “I thought you were a college professor.”
“I am.”
“So what makes you think that you know how to determine cause of death?”
“I don’t.” He waited for me to continue. “It’s just that someone I know who was close to Carter seems to think that his symptoms prior to his death may link to poisoning. And this person would know.”
“How?”
“They’re a nurse.”
“She’s a nurse.”
I was caught off guard and stammered a bit. How had he known that? Fifty-fifty guess?
Mac clinked his glass against mine. “Good luck, Ms. Bergeron. But stay away from Ginny Miller. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” He swished his drink around in his glass. “The only reason I wanted to meet you in person was to implore you to stay away from
her. I had a feeling she was behind this. She had already contacted someone in my office to express her concerns. But her delusions are dangerous.”
So Ginny had already gotten to him; I wish she had mentioned that before I had invited him out under somewhat false pretenses. It didn’t surprise me that she could get in touch with the ME; being a nurse, she probably had a lot of contacts on his staff. “What if she does know something?” I asked. “She said that you don’t test for poisoning.”
Mac sighed and looked up at the ceiling, as he was wont to do. “I’m telling you, if I had a dime for everyone that came and told me how somebody really died …”
He was exasperated but I could see that he was wavering, ever so slightly. “You don’t test for poisoning, do you?”
He shook his head. “No.” He shook his head again. “Blunt force trauma,” he repeated, almost as if trying to convince himself.
I reached over and grabbed his arm. “I know that it will be a huge embarrassment if you have to revise your cause of death, but do you really want an innocent man to go to jail?”
He looked like he was going to signal for another drink but thought better of it. “Your eye looks better,” he said, smiling.
“Don’t change the subject,” I said.
He sucked down the last of his second scotch. “Let me think about this.”
I reached over and gave him a hug. “You’re the best, Mac.”
“You don’t know that for a fact and I’m not promising anything.” He stood and buttoned his blazer. He smoothed down the few strands of gray hair that covered his mostly bald pate. “I have to go. Reezie’s making pot roast. I’d ask you to join us but you’ve given me quite a headache and I think it would be best if we parted here while I still like you.”
“Thank you. But I have plans,” I lied.
“You teach at St. Thomas, right?” he asked before he left. He threw a ten and a twenty on the bar, a generous tipper, to say the least.
I nodded.
“My friend’s daughter went there. She’s around your age, maybe a little older. Lovely girl. Smart as a whip. Couldn’t do math to save her life.” He mentioned her name but I didn’t know her and by his description she could have been anyone; St. Thomas isn’t known for its math program. “I’ll be in touch, Alison.”
I watched him go, hands in his pockets, whistling as he walked down the street and out of sight. I believed he would be in touch. But I wasn’t so sure I would like what he had to say.
Twenty-Five
My first tip-off that things weren’t going to be normal when I entered my house were the Crime TV production trucks parked at the curb. I drove up the driveway to the garage and parked the car, my hands gripping the steering wheel and my heart racing. I decided that if Max was inside the house, I was going to wring her neck. Then, I was going to mix myself a nice dry vodka martini.
First things first.
I went in through the back door; the house was a beehive of activity, and packed to the gills with strangers. I took in the three Crime TV crew members sitting at my kitchen table, devouring a pepperoni pizza. One, a young hipster-looking guy with long hair, threw a piece to Trixie, who happily jumped in the air to catch it in her mouth.
“Hey, chief,” I said, grabbing the dog by the collar and pulling her away from the pizza. “I’ll call you at midnight when she’s throwing up pepperoni.”
“Who are you?” hipster kid asked, shoving another slice of pizza into his mouth.
“Just the owner of the house,” I said. I put the dog in the powder room in the hallway and walked into the living room where a bevy of Hooters waitresses had convened. I tripped over a large cable that transversed the area between the kitchen and the front door. There were lights, cameras, and microphones littered everywhere, and a technician on the stairs leading up to my second floor recording my every move. I slapped the camera out of his hand as if I were Sean Penn coming out of the Ivy in Hollywood. Max was in the living room holding court, instructing them on the next case, it seemed, while they sat in rapt attention. I was momentarily blinded by the preponderance of enormous breasts but managed not to appear gobsmacked. Or so I thought.
“We’ll do a stakeout in front of the cheater’s house,” Max said. “Oh, hi, Alison!” she said, noticing me in the archway leading into the living room. “Everyone, this is Alison Bergeron, my best friend in the whole world and maybe the smartest person I know.”
Flattery will get you nowhere. “Hi, everyone. Now get out.”
Max was mid-sentence, giving the waitress/private investigators their next assignment, when she realized that hell hath no fury like a sexually frustrated college professor. She looked over at me. “Excuse me?”
“Out.”
“We’re having a meeting,” she explained in her usual clueless fashion.
“I can see that,” I said, using my supercilious polite tone. “But this is my house and I need to eat. And drink. And do some work. And generally live the life that I work so hard to have.”
Max snorted. “We’ll only be five more minutes.” She seemed genuinely put out.
“No, you’ll be gone now.” I took in the doe-eyed stares of the Hooters gals, Queen among them. I pointed at her. “You can stay.”
Max strode toward me, Tinker Bell in five-hundred-dollar shoes. “A word, please?”
We stood in the hallway, the camera guy training his lens on us. I turned my back on him, blocking his view. “What the hell is this?” I hissed.
“This is our preproduction meeting,” Max said, as if it were the most apparent thing in the entire world. “We decided to have it here instead at the office because Queen has a lot of homework and a test to study for.”
“Don’t you think you should have asked me first?”
Max considered this and then made a decision. “No.”
“No?”
“Queen lives here so it’s kind of like her house and I didn’t think you’d mind.”
The cameraman was inches from my face and I gently pushed him away. “You were wrong. I’m going to take the dog for a walk. You have ten minutes to get everyone out of here. Got it?”
Max’s look was a cross between sad and angry but she nodded her head dutifully. “Fine. We’ll be gone in fifteen minutes.”
“Ten.” I turned and opened the powder room door, liberating a very grateful Trixie.
“I don’t know if—”
“Ten!” I called back over my shoulder as I hooked Trixie’s leash onto her collar and went out the back door into the blissful calm of my backyard. Good God, I thought, as I crossed the lawn and walked down the driveway, Trixie setting the pace. As a result, I was being dragged more than walking of my own accord. Nevertheless, I was relieved to be out of the house and on a quiet street in a suburban neighborhood and away from the prying eyes, and pendulous breasts, of a bunch of Hooters waitresses. Sorry. Make that “private investigators.”
Although I tried not to, I replayed the events of the last several days in my mind, spending way too much time on thoughts of my mother and her untimely death at the age of forty-eight. Heck, I wasn’t that far off from that myself. I had managed, for all of these years, to keep those emotions pressed down deep in my subconscious, thinking of her often but only focusing on the good times, when she was a raven-haired beauty with not a care in the world save her awkward, studious daughter and her place in the world. Goddamn Ginny Miller, I thought. As painful as it was to witness Carter Wilmott’s death, it was way harder to sift through the emotional wreckage that was years of repressed grief over the loss of a woman whom I had treasured.
I didn’t really owe Ginny anything but she had played her trump card and I had fallen for it. How could I not help the woman who had helped my mother pass from this world into the next? And how could I not help a man, George Miller, who was guilty of only a really bad temper but not manslaughter if Ginny’s theory was proved? I had once been suspected of something I hadn’t done and it was a very painful time
. The helplessness that I felt then came rushing back to me now and gave me some insight into the hell in which George Miller resided.
I kept walking, thinking that if I gave myself enough time, I could just walk away from this whole mess completely.
But I know myself better than that. I couldn’t. And I’m sure that’s what Ginny was banking on. I’m nothing if not completely transparent.
My heart was heavy as I started back to the house, Trixie having been successful in her mission to mark her territory throughout the entire neighborhood. My feet hurt; I hadn’t changed out of my high heels upon entering the house and I now had a little more sympathy for women who served hot wings and beer in platform shoes while running investigations. These women were to be lauded. I looked for signs of the Crime TV crew, but there were none. The trucks were gone, as was Max’s bright red Mini Cooper. All that was left at the curb was a brown Honda Fit, parked at an angle, its front wheels resting on my lawn.
I ran up the driveway, the dog dragging me once again, and burst through the back door. Kevin was sitting at the kitchen table with Queen, the two of them deep in conversation. He looked at me with sad eyes.
“Is there any room at the inn?”
Twenty-Six
Technically, there was no room at the inn, but that didn’t stop me from letting Kevin sleep on the couch. His family didn’t really know what was going on with him so staying with one of them was out of the question for the foreseeable future, and he had overstayed his welcome with his “friend” from the seminary, a person about whom I needed more information. I went to bed, one Hooters waitress in the guest room on the futon, and one almost-defrocked priest in the living room on the couch.
Any more wayward souls coming into my life and I was moving into Crawford’s, his “personal space” issues be damned. Yes, that’s what a tampon in the medicine cabinet will get you: admonitions about personal space.
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