Chapter 20
Michael did finally make it back to my place that night, but quite late. He rolled into bed, draped an arm across my middle, dug his chin into my back and fell asleep. Still, it was nice. I lay awake awhile, drifting in the pleasant, padded warmth of half-sleep, my mind freed for the moment of worry about tire slashers and killers.
Morning came much too soon and passed in a flurry of disjointed mumbles and grumbles. Most mornings when Michael stays over, we share a quiet, early-morning cup of coffee before he leaves for work. This morning, however, Libby was already up and firmly entrenched at the kitchen table. I made the necessary introductions, which accounted for a good part of the mumbling on both parts. Michael decided to skip the coffee, grabbed a Pop Tart instead, gave me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek and a not so perfunctory warning about being careful, then left.
“That your boyfriend?” Libby asked, as the door shut.
I nodded. It was as good a description as any.
“He’s cute.”
I laughed. Leave it to a teen-ager to cut to the heart of the matter. “Yeah, I think so, too.”
“Is he in trouble?”
“Trouble?”
“Like someone’s after him or something. You know, trouble.”
I shook my head. I had no idea what she was talking about.
“I thought maybe that’s why he was carrying a gun.”
“Ah, that.” She had a good eye, but her logic was scary. I shuddered to think that this was the morality we were passing onto our children. “He’s a cop,” I explained.
“A cop?” She looked at me as though my forehead had sprung a leak. “Doesn’t it kind of choke you up having him around?”
Did it ever. “Sometimes,” I told her, smiling to myself, “but not in the way you mean.”
She shook her head and went back to the newspaper. “Weird.”
I made myself coffee and toast, then joined her. “How did it go with your dad yesterday?”
“Okay,” she said, giving a half-hearted shrug. “We visited some friends of his, then went to the Warriors game. As if I give a damn about his friends or basketball. The tickets were expensive though. He made sure he told me that about a hundred times.”
I sipped my coffee. “You don’t like him much, do you?”
“It’s mutual. He doesn’t like me much either.”
“What makes you—”
Libby cut me off. “It’s too early in the morning for a lecture, okay? And you’d be wrong anyway.” She dumped her dishes in the sink, caught the look I gave her, reconsidered, and put them in the dishwasher instead. “I gotta run. Make-up chem lab at seven sharp. And remember, if Brandon calls tell him I said to get lost.”
“I know it’s none of my business, but it might help if you two talked things out. With all that you’re going through, this is a lousy time to cut yourself off from a friend.”
“Some friend!” Her voice dripped with loathing. “He cheated on me, lied to me, treated me like dirt, and then he expects me to kiss his feet.”
“Maybe if you—”
“My mom always said he took things. Money, drugs, beer. Every time something was missing, she’d accuse Brandon. I thought she was making it up because she didn’t like me hanging around with him.”
“Well, I’m sure she—”
“She didn’t know the half of it! All those times I defended him, and now he has the nerve to laugh about it. He’s a slimy, two-timing lowlife.” She picked up her backpack and headed for the door. “If I never see him again, it will be too soon.”
I wasn’t about to twist her arm. In fact, telling Brandon to get lost might be the highlight of my day. “I’ll give him the message,” I called after her.
<><><>
I was on my way to Sharon’s for our rescheduled auction meeting when the loose end of a thought tickled my mind. I turned around and headed for the high school instead.
“Can you tell me where I’d find Libby Sterling?” I asked the office attendant.
She was a middle-aged woman with a pinched face and heavily wrinkled skin that spoke of too many hours in the sun. She didn’t bother to look up from the stack of pink squares she was busily sorting into smaller stacks. “Libby’s in class.”
“What I meant is, which class?”
The woman raised her eyes. “That’s not information we give out. You from the press, too?”
“Too?”
“There was a man here the other day looking for Libby. Going to do a story about being the child of a suicide victim, if you can imagine. Poor girl has enough to worry about without feeling like a zoo animal.”
“I’m not from the press, I’m a friend.” I introduced myself and explained that Libby was staying with me.
“Then you ought to be able to talk to her this afternoon.”
“She forgot her lunch,” I said, grabbing at the first thought to come to mind. Anna forgot hers at least once a week.
The woman gave my empty hands a hard look. “Money,” I amended. “Lunch money.”
“You want to put it in an envelope? I’ll see that she gets it.”
“Actually, I need to talk with her. Just a quick word about her afternoon plans.”
“You couldn’t have asked her this morning?”
“No. I mean, I could have, but I didn’t. Please, it won’t take but a minute.”
The woman must have decided I was too much of an airhead to be someone worth worrying about. She looked up Libby’s schedule. “Room 310,” she said. “The bell rings in about five minutes. You can catch her on her way out. I don’t advise interrupting class, the teacher is a bear.”
“Thanks.” I turned to leave, then turned back. “Did Libby ever talk to that newsman?”
“She was absent the day he came, but we wouldn’t have allowed it anyway.” The woman twisted a rubber band from her wrist, securing a stack of pink cards. “I said I’d have Libby get in touch with him if she was interested, but he didn’t want to leave his name. Funny guy, not my image of a journalist.”
I headed down the south hallway, following the numbers in sequence from 300 to 308, where they stopped abruptly. A young man in a varsity jacket pointed me in the other direction, down the north corridor, where sure enough, 309 picked up right on the other side of the library, which was designated as Room 4. The architect was either dyslexic or a product of this new math I’d been hearing so much about. I got to room 310 just as the bell was ringing. Libby was the first one out the door.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, without stopping.
“Nothing. I just wanted to ask you something.”
We were weaving our way through a horde of students coming from the opposite direction so conversation was difficult. It apparently hadn’t occurred to them that the rules of the road could also apply to foot traffic. “This morning you mentioned that Brandon took things from your mother, like beer and drugs.”
She nodded.
“What kind of drugs were you talking about?”
Libby spun her head in my direction. “Hey, not those kind. Just pain killers, tranquilizers, that sort of thing.”
“Sleeping pills?”
“Yeah, that too. My mother should have bought stock in the local pharmacy. She gave them enough business.” The guy to my left swung his arm unexpectedly and I ducked. The football he was trying to catch bounced at my feet. I gave him a dirty look, which apparently made no dent at all since he retrieved the ball and tossed it back the length of the crowded corridor.
I did a little two-step to catch up with Libby. “At the memorial service you mentioned your mom and Brandon had a big fight a couple of days before she died. Do you remember what it was about?”
“The usual stuff.”
“Did she accuse him of taking her pills?”
“Among other things. She found a bottle that was practically empty. Claimed she’d just had the prescription filled. She went totally ballistic.”
I whistled softly under
my breath. “Brandon cleaned out practically the whole bottle?”
“The guy’s a toad,” Libby said, slowing her stride to address me directly, “but that’s no reason to make a federal case of it. Shit like that happens all the time. It’s not worth getting him in trouble over.”
“It’s not that. Just an idea I had. I’ll tell you later.” The timing fit. So did the rest of it. The prescription for sleeping pills had been filled on Monday. A few days later Mona had found the bottle nearly empty. Which meant there couldn’t have been enough left to kill her on Saturday.
I found a pay phone in front of the school, called Michael and told him what I’d learned.
“That’s proof she didn’t kill herself,” I said.
“Not proof exactly, but interesting. If it’s true.” Michael took down Brandon’s name. “I’ll have someone talk to him today.”
“Can you keep Libby’s name out of it?”
“We’ll try.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “You have time for lunch or something?”
“What do you mean ‘or something?’ ” In the early days of our relationship, we’d more often than not used lunch as an excuse to satisfy appetites of a different nature.
Michael laughed. “I meant salad, sandwich, taco, maybe just a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, that’s all I have time for.”
“Look what’s happening to us,” I sighed, heavy with the melodrama. “The spark is gone already.”
“Speak for yourself, lady. My spark gets any hotter, I’ll be the first documented case of spontaneous human combustion.”
I laughed and checked my watch. I needed to swing by a couple galleries in my search for Dr. Caulder, but if I skipped the rest of the auction meeting, which was now more than half over, I could manage that and still have time to meet Michael.
We settled on a coffee shop close to the station. It offers little in the way of inspired cuisine, but gets good marks for dependable, quick service. Then I spent the rest of the morning trekking through galleries searching for bland, emotionless art.
<><><>
The restaurant was nearly full, but we found a recently vacated booth near the window. Because my waistline was still feeling the effects of brunch with Gary, I settled for a small fruit salad and a glass of water. Michael, who can eat like an eighteen-year-old quarterback and never gain an ounce, had a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a bowl of minestrone. We’d learned from experience not to order the coffee so he had a Coke instead.
“Did you reach Brandon?” I asked, dipping my spoon into Michael’s soup. It was heavy on the fat and salt, but quite tasty.
“Turns out there’s no hurry. The coroner’s report came in right after you called. Lab analysis shows a fairly high concentration of alcohol in her blood, but no evidence of barbiturates. No trace of any medicines in her stomach at all.”
He paused to watch me dip into his soup a second time. “What did show up,” he said after a moment, “was a high concentration of morphine.”
“Morphine?”
He nodded. “My best guess at this point is that Mona Sterling died of an intravenous overdose.”
I don’t know what I had been expecting, since she obviously hadn’t died of a gunshot or a stab wound, but the news was still something of a surprise. “An accidental overdose?”
Michael shook his head. “I don’t think so. A self-ad-ministered IV injection is pretty tricky under any circumstances. In this case, the puncture mark is in her neck, which is probably why it wasn’t obvious straight off. On the right side of her neck. So unless she was left handed, extremely agile, and close to double jointed, it seems pretty unlikely.”
He waited for a minute for my reaction. “She wasn’t left handed,” I told him.
“Besides, the business with the scotch bottle and pills doesn’t make sense unless it was set up to mislead us. Make something look like a suicide that wasn’t.”
Frowning, I reached for another spoonful of soup. “You were the one who pointed out awhile back that she wouldn’t have let someone pour a bottle of pills down her throat. You think she’d be more receptive to a needle and syringe?”
“No, but an IV is something you can manage without a person’s cooperation, and swallowing isn’t. Mona could have been tied up, knocked out, held down—any number of things.” He saw me eying his soup again, and pushed the bowl across the table. “Here, you can finish it if you want.”
“You sure?”
“That’s why I order so much food when you’re with me. I know I’ll never get a chance to finish it myself.”
I gave him a dirty look, but I took the soup. “So, who do you think did it?”
“You’re the one with all the ideas.”
I doubled the dirty look.
“I’m serious, Kate. I was hoping you might be able to help me out here.”
“Well, I do have a few ideas.”
“I thought you might” His expression was serious, but his voice held a trace of amusement.
The waitress brought my salad, such as it was, and Michael’s burger and fries. He offered me the first bite, which I declined.
“Let’s start with the ex-husband,” Michael said. “You’ve met him?”
I nodded. “We’re practically old buddies by now. And I’d certainly put him high on my list of possible suspects. First off, he’s got an obvious motive. Mona got an interest in his business as part of the divorce settlement. When she died, it reverted back to him. He doesn’t have to pay out support anymore, either.” I paused for a bite of salad. “Of course, he says he didn’t kill her.”
“He just happened to volunteer this?”
“I asked him.”
Michael’s eyes narrowed. “You asked him if he murdered his ex-wife?”
“More or less.”
“And what, exactly, did he say?”
“’In my dreams’ were, I believe, the words he used. He doesn’t try to hide the fact that he’s bitter about the settlement. Andy says the rumor is that Mona had something on Gary, sort of a blackmail type thing, and that’s why he went along with her settlement proposal. My guess is he pulled something shady with his taxes, or maybe with the permits for his new project.”
Michael swallowed with that pained expression he gets whenever I mention Andy’s name. “For a couple in the midst of a divorce, you two sure talk a lot.”
“We talk,” I said. “That doesn’t mean we’re not serious about the divorce.” I reached for a French fry. “There’s also the fiancée to consider. I’m not sure Bambi’s smart enough to plan something like this, but she certainly resents the money Mona got. In fact, she strikes me as pretty hostile toward Mona, period, despite the fact that the two of them got together for lunch awhile back. Plus, Bambi was curious about Susie’s article. Wanted to know what evidence I had that the newspaper hadn’t mentioned.”
Michael took out a notebook and began jotting memos to himself between bites.
“Ike Fisher is another possibility, but you know about him already. He sounds like the unstable type and he did threaten her.” I grabbed the catsup bottle and dumped a bit on the side of my plate. “Are you sure he’s really on that cruise?”
“I haven’t checked with the ship’s captain, but that’s where he’s supposed to be.”
“Of course he could have contracted it out in any case.” I started to grab another fry when I saw Michael looking at me. “You want some canned pear and cottage cheese?” I asked.
He laughed. “I’ll pass, but thanks all the same.”
“You already know about Mona’s sister, Alice. I don’t know what her motive might be, unless she thought somehow she might inherit. Though, from what I understand she and Mona never got along, so why she’d think that, I don’t know. It’s odd that she seems to have disappeared just when her sister was killed.”
Michael scratched some more in his notebook. “What about this Brandon character?”
I hadn’t considered that possibility. Kind of an interesting tw
ist if he’d set it up to look like suicide using a bottle of pills he’d emptied himself. “There was certainly no love lost between him and Mona,” I said. “And I don’t imagine he’s won many good citizenship marks along the way either.”
“Well, that’s a start. What about men? She involved with anyone?”
I told him about Mendocino and the cufflinks. “But she never said a word to any of us, so I don’t know for sure.”
Michael asked a few more questions, wrote down the name of the bed and breakfast in Mendocino, then stared pensively into his notebook while doodling little stars across the top of the page.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say. You know the statistics. Spouses and lovers account for an awful lot of homicides.” He rubbed his cheek. “The fact that she kept quiet about this guy might mean something.”
“Such as?”
“He’s someone important maybe, someone with a reputation to protect. Or maybe he was married. The love triangle offers all sorts of room for speculation.”
“I don’t think she’d get involved with a married man.”
Michael’s eyes drifted to mine and stayed there. “Sometimes,” he said gruffly, “the heart leads us places we wouldn’t ordinarily go.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, in Mona’s case, you can’t rule anything out.” He picked up the check. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car.”
Michael wove his fingers through mine as we headed outside. He seemed unusually quiet.
“Are you thinking your heart has misled you?” I asked, with a tentativeness that surprised me.
Michael shook his head. “Sometimes,” he said, watching me, “I think it’s brought me to a dead-end. But never that it’s misled me.”
Chapter 21
The gray skies and high winds of the preceding week had passed, and spring was beginning to peek out from under the mantle of winter. It wouldn’t last, I knew. It happened that way every year. Just when you were ready to dig out the sunscreen and the lawn chairs, another storm would whip through and convince you that the end of winter was nothing more than a figment of your imagination. All the same, before climbing into the car, I took a moment to savor the sweet scent of jasmine and the feather touch of air warmed by sunlight. Too bad none of that warmth reached deep inside where I needed it most. Inside, where the images of the past week formed a cold reality of their own.
Murder Among Friends (The Kate Austen Mystery Series) Page 16