Too Much Blood

by Jane Bennett Munro

  I didn’t tell him I was sitting around the corner from Ruthie’s burned house. “I’ll be home in a few,” I said and hung up.

  I got out of the car and walked back toward Ruthie’s house, hoping Rebecca was busy in her kitchen instead of looking out the living room window.

  Ruthie’s house had originally been painted dark green, but most of the front was charred black. The corner facing Rebecca’s house contained a gaping hole. Yellow caution tape circled the yard. I stood on the sidewalk, facing the house and wondering where one would hide a stash of Lovenox where the fire department wouldn’t find it. That reminded me that I still didn’t know if they’d found it or not. I sighed. So many loose ends.

  Well, no point in trying to look around in there until I knew there was something to look for. I should come back after dark, anyway. No point in having inquisitive eyes watching my every move and tattling to the cops about it. I could do my own tattling, thank you very much.

  I went home.

  Chapter 27

  The good die first,

  And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust

  Burn to the socket.

  —William Wordsworth

  The house seemed very empty when I got back: just Hal and the dogs. “Where is everybody?” I asked.

  Hal got up to fix me a drink. “Kathleen decided to go spend the holidays in Boise with her mother, Fiona’s taking a nap, Elliott’s at work, and Jodi and Bambi took the kids to the mall.”

  “So, Kathleen and the kids and Tiffany are gone?”

  “Yep. They left not too long after you and Elliott.”

  Wow, that was fast, I thought. They weren’t even up when we left.

  “The police wanted to talk to Tiffany,” I said. “I gave them all that stuff we printed off the computer yesterday.”

  “Pete was here looking for her,” Hal said. He handed me my drink. “But they were already gone. So what have you been doing all day?”

  “Well, after the police, I went to the hospital and talked to Mitzi, and then I visited Rebecca Sorensen.”

  “What did you find out from the police?” he asked. “Pete was kind of in a hurry when he was here. He didn’t say much.”

  “Didn’t Elliott—”

  “I haven’t seen Elliott all day,” he interrupted me. “So tell me, already.”

  I told him about going through the contents of the safes, and the provisions of the various wills, particularly Lance’s and Ruthie’s, with the Commander.

  “Who the hell is Mildred Atterbury?”

  “A relative?” I speculated. “A childhood best friend? A nanny? Or is it Ruthie herself—an alternate identity to slip into when this is all over and everybody else is dead?”

  “Jesus, Toni, that’s cold,” Hal remarked.

  “No colder than poisoning one’s husband and seven other people,” I defended myself. “Is it too much to surmise that Jay and Lance intended to do the same thing, with all that money in offshore accounts? If Jay hadn’t come back here to get Kathleen and the kids, we’d never know anything about it. He couldn’t stay here, not after his Ponzi scheme became common knowledge; he’d be facing a prison sentence at the very least. And he couldn’t retire to a Caribbean island using his own identity, because the Russian Mafia would find him and kill him.”

  “You’ve got a point,” Hal said. “He could be the late Mr. Atterbury.”

  “I suspect that the police are going to try to find out if there really is a Mrs. Mildred Atterbury living at that address,” I said. “Problem is, if Jay has already bought that place as Mr. Atterbury, it’ll look all legal and aboveboard. So that won’t accomplish anything.”

  “But they have to check it anyway,” Hal pointed out, “or their investigation will be incomplete.”

  “Well, whatever she calls herself,” I said, “you can’t get away from the fact that Ruthie is the only one who has Lovenox and rivaroxaban, and she’s had experience with both of them. She knows how much to give and how long to give it in order to achieve the desired level of anticoagulation for her purposes.”

  “So what you’re saying is …”

  “She knows too damn much not to be the murderer.”

  “And according to the provisions of Lance’s will,” Hal said, “Ruthie still has a reason to kill the Burkes, even though Lance is already dead. Jesus. I wonder where she is.”

  “Pete and Bernie went after her while we were still there,” I said. “But they weren’t back when we left. I hope they’ve got her in custody.”

  “Me too,” he said. “Now, what’s all the hoo-hah about brownies?”

  “Rebecca told me that Ruthie made brownies this morning in her kitchen and told her they were a gift for Kathleen and the kids.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Hal said. “But they didn’t have any brownies when they left here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. I helped them pack up and load the car. I should know if there were brownies or not.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” I said.

  The doorbell rang. The dogs and I ran to answer it, and it was Pete. “Can I come in?”

  “Of course.” I swung the door wide. Pete bent to fondle Killer and Geraldine and then took a seat on the couch. Hal offered him a beer, which he declined. “I’m still on duty,” he said.

  I offered him a Coke, which he accepted.

  At this point, Jodi, Bambi, and the Maynard kids returned from the mall. Bambi ran upstairs. Jodi made a beeline for the downstairs bathroom. The kids dumped the shopping bags full of already-wrapped presents out under the tree and turned on the TV while all talking at once. I threw up my hands in frustration. “Let’s go in the kitchen,” I suggested, “where we can hear ourselves think.”

  We arranged ourselves around the kitchen table.

  Pete reached in his pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper and handed it to Hal.

  “Holy shit,” Hal said and handed it to me. It was a wanted poster from the St. Louis County, Minnesota, sheriff’s office, showing a female (at least I think it was a female) with straggly dark hair framing a sullen face that looked nothing like Tiffany. Mary Bernadette Kowalski, it said, wanted on one count of arson and three counts of felony manslaughter in Duluth in 1995.

  “Yikes,” I commented. “I’d hate to run into her in a dark alley. This can’t be the Tiffany we know. Can it?” I appealed to the room in general. Bambi had come back downstairs and was looking over Pete’s shoulder. Mum came in and pulled up a chair next to me.

  Jodi looked over my shoulder. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “She might clean up all right. If she bleached her hair, put a nice blonde rinse on it, and smiled …maybe.”

  “She is a bottle blonde,” Bambi said. “Couldn’t you tell? I mean really, you could see her roots for miles.”

  Spoken with the complacency of a natural blonde who knew how fortunate she was.

  Pete turned around, saw Bambi, and jumped to his feet. Their eyes met, and I could practically see sparks fly. “Hi,” he said huskily, putting the entire spectrum of emotion into that one simple word. Bambi looked up at him, an expression of wonder on her face as she replied, “Hi, I’m Bambi.”

  “My daughter Barbara, known to all as Bambi,” said Hal. “Bambi, this is Pete Vincent.”

  Pete, still staring, shell-shocked, at Bambi, repeated, “Hi.”

  “Down, boy,” Hal said. “Pete? Earth to Pete?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Pete said. “Let me get you a chair.” He got one from the dining room and put it next to his own chair. “Please, sit here.”

  Bambi sat, a secret smile on her lips.

  “Pete, dear,” said Mum, “are you saying that the person we know as Tiffany is actually a criminal? And that she stole that little girl’s identity?”

&n
bsp; “It’s a good bet,” Pete said. “At this point, we can’t rule it out.”

  “Wait a minute,” Bambi spoke up. “Wouldn’t they have different Social Security numbers?”

  Elliott fielded that one before Pete had a chance to. “Not necessarily. Kids didn’t have to have Social Security numbers back then. The way the law was,” he went on to explain, “a person could get a Social Security number at any age, but most didn’t until they were old enough to get a job. But the Tax Reform Act of 1986 required Social Security numbers for all dependents over five years old. Then in 1990 it changed to one year old in order for their parents to deduct them on their income tax returns. As of 1996, kids get Social Security numbers at birth.”

  “Mary Bernadette Kowalski,” Pete said, consulting his notes, “was born in 1972.”

  “That means that ‘Tiffany’ is actually thirty-six years old,” Hal said.

  “What you’re saying is, the real Tiffany Sue Summers didn’t have a Social Security number,” I said. “So Mary Bernadette could just apply for one as Tiffany Sue, with no one the wiser.”

  “Right,” said Pete. “As long as she had identification.”

  “So what happens now?” I asked. “Are you or the Boise police going to arrest her?”

  “Hopefully they’ve already done that,” Pete said. “Ray called as soon as we got back after we failed to find her here. She should be in custody by now.”

  “Should be?” Hal asked. “I’d sure feel better if I knew for sure.”

  “I’ll check when I get back,” Pete assured him.

  “But what if, in the meantime, she sets fire to Kathleen’s mother’s house?” I asked. “She sets fires everywhere the Burkes go, and now they’re on their way to Kathleen’s mother’s house.”

  “Right. Why wait?” Pete said. “I’ll find out right now.” He hauled out his cell and pressed a button. “Ray? Can you check with Boise and find out if they’ve intercepted the Burkes yet? These folks are real anxious to know if they’ve got Tiffany Summers in custody yet. They’re afraid she’s gonna burn down Mary Reilly’s house. Call me back. I’ll be right here. Thanks.” He hung up. “That’s the best I can do right now.”

  “Thank you, Pete, dear,” Mum said.

  “What about Ruthie?” I asked. “Is she in custody, or did you just ask her questions and let her go?”

  “Oh, she’s in custody,” he said, “but I don’t know for how long. She was screaming for her lawyer when I left, so I don’t know what’s gonna happen.”

  “Pete, dear,” my mother said, “do you mean to say that both Ruthie and Tiffany might be at large after all this?”

  “Mrs. Day, we do the best we can,” Pete said. I could almost hear his teeth grinding. “Sometimes it just isn’t good enough.”

  “It’s the freakin’ lawyers,” Elliott said.

  Pete smiled. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  Bambi saw Pete to the door, where, after a brief conversation that we couldn’t hear, he left. Bambi came back to the table smiling, followed by taunts of “Bambi’s got a boyfriend,” from the peanut gallery in front of the TV.

  “Got a date?” I asked her sotto voce.

  She nodded. “Saturday night.”

  “Good girl.”

  Jodi clutched her head and put her elbows on the table. “What a mess,” she moaned. “How do guys like Jay Braithwaite Burke manage to bamboozle a bunch of doctors? You’d think they’d be smarter than that.”

  “Doctors are smart,” I told her. “Just not about money.”

  “Do you include yourself in that assessment, kitten?” Mum asked. “I thought I brought you up better than that.”

  “You did, Mum,” I assured her. “So far I haven’t been suckered by anybody. But it’s not for lack of trying. You wouldn’t believe the phone calls I get at work from salesmen wanting me to invest in gas futures, or art, or diamonds, or cattle ranches, or oil wells.”

  “She gets them at home too,” Hal said.

  “So what do you do, dear?” asked Mum.

  “Hang up on ’em,” Hal said.

  “What I usually do is tell them to send me the literature in the mail so I can go over it with my accountant, and I hang up when they try to argue with me.”

  “And I suppose the literature never arrives,” Jodi said.

  “Of course not, and I never buy their product, either. As far as I’m concerned, if I can’t wear it, hang it on my wall, eat it, drink it, read it, drive it, or plant it in my garden, I’m not buying it, especially sight unseen over the phone.”

  “Attagirl,” said Hal.

  “Mitzi,” I said, “is a million dollars in debt. Can you imagine? I can’t. It boggles my mind. But she owes the IRS seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars and her ex-husband two hundred fifty thousand, and she’s completely calm about it.”

  “Of course, this is Mitzi we’re talking about,” Hal said.

  “Well, that’s true.”

  “What do you mean by that, Hal, dear?” asked my mother.

  “Mitzi doesn’t show her emotions,” I explained. “One can never tell what she’s thinking just by looking at her.”

  “Unlike Toni, whose face is an open book,” Hal said.

  “Yes, kitten, you always were a terrible liar,” Mum agreed.

  “More’s the pity,” I said. “It’s a real liability when trying to detect things. I wonder,” I went on with a meaningful look at my mother, “who I inherited that from.”

  Mum smiled. “Yes, dear.”

  “But getting back to doctors and money,” I said, “the banks just aid and abet by giving them huge mortgages so that they can buy huge, palatial mansions—just because they’re doctors and have the earning potential to pay it off.”

  “Of course, now,” Elliott said, “those houses aren’t worth the amount owed on them.”

  “This one probably isn’t worth what we paid for it thirteen years ago,” I said. “But we’ve already paid it down enough that we could pay it off if we wanted to.”

  “But still,” Jodi said, “you guys have handled your finances well and stayed away from scam artists.”

  “We aren’t typical,” I said. “Hal was used to living on a professor’s salary, and Mum taught me well.”

  “But those other guys,” Hal said, “you know the next time a shyster like Jay Braithwaite Burke comes along, they’ll flock to throw their hard-earned money away on the latest tax-evasion scam, just like before. The learning curve never goes up.”

  Jodi and Elliott had sent Kevin and Renee to get fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, and whatever other fixings they wanted, and now, with full bellies and a cozy fire in the fireplace, I had just drifted off to sleep.

  I didn’t get to sleep long. Hal woke me and handed me the phone. I looked up at him uncomprehendingly. “What?” I said.

  “It’s for you. Some doctor in Boise.”

  “Why does a doctor in Boise want to talk to me?”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  Hal was clearly running out of patience. “Toni …”

  With resignation, I pulled myself up to a sitting position and took the phone. “Hello?”

  “Dr. Day?” She sounded quite young.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “This is Dr. Vicki Page in the Emergency Department at St. Luke’s in Boise,” she said, “and I was told that I needed to talk to you about some patients we have here, Kathleen Burke and several children.”

  “You’ve got them in your emergency room?” I asked in disbelief. I looked at my watch. To my astonishment, it was ten fifteen. I looked around. Kids in sleeping bags lay sprawled all over the floor, sound asleep.

  “Yes, I do, and the
y’re all bleeding.”

  “Really.”

  “They all have nosebleeds, and we can’t get them stopped. Mrs. Burke asked me to call you.”

  “Hang on a second,” I said and put my hand over the mouthpiece. “Where is everybody?”

  “They’ve all gone to bed,” Hal said. “I wasn’t going to wake you, but then the phone rang.”

  “Okay.” I removed my hand and said to Dr. Page, “Who exactly do you have there? Kathleen Burke and how many children?”

  “Four,” she answered. “Bryan, Robert, Megan, and Angela Burke.”

  “And no other adults?”

  “No, should there be?”

  Shit. Where the hell are Tiffany and Emily? “Not necessarily. Did you ask them what they’ve eaten?”

  “Yes, and about medications too. But—”

  “Have they eaten any brownies?”

  “Brownies? What the hell …”

  “Ask them if they’ve eaten brownies and ask where they got them. Please, it’s important.”

  “Hang on.”

  I put my hand over the mouthpiece. “Tiffany and Emily aren’t with them.”

  “Where are they?” Hal demanded.

  “Shhh, keep your voice down.”

  Dr. Page’s voice sounded in my ear. “Are you there?”

  “Yes, what did they say?”

  “Mrs. Burke says that a friend called and said she’d left a gift for them at the Blue Lakes Inn. They picked it up on the way out of town, and the children opened it and found it to be a box of brownies.”

  “Did they all eat them?”

  “Hang on.”

  “They ate the brownies Ruthie made,” I told Hal.

  “Mrs. Burke said they all ate the brownies, but the kids ate more than she and Tiffany did,” Dr. Page said. “Who is Tiffany?”

  “Somebody who should be with them,” I said. “She has a child too.”

  “Just a minute,” she said.

  I heard voices as Dr. Page spoke with someone. Then she was back. “The charge nurse says a blonde lady brought them in and then left. Now can you tell me what’s going on?”