“I’ll give it a try.” Ray pulled out his wallet. “I’ve got a question about Vicodin.”
Her face contorted. “Oh, that’s definitely not for sleep issues.”
“I know. I’m interested in knowing if it’s prescribed for migraines. Could I speak with a pharmacist?”
“I can answer that for you. My niece uses Vicodin for those. Terrible things migraines. Just awful.”
It opened the door to another question. Ray checked the name tag pinned to the front of her periwinkle-blue blouse. “Mrs. Bergstrom, was Valerie Davis a customer here?”
“That poor woman,” she moaned. “What a horrible, horrible tragedy, dying that way.”
“Yes,” he said. “Was she a customer?”
“She stopped in occasionally when she came to town. She liked our ice cream floats.”
“But did she fill her prescriptions here?”
“No.” The woman stopped to think for a moment. “Well, except for that Friday before she was killed.”
Ray’s stomach knotted. “She filled a prescription here that day?”
“She had to have her doctor in Minneapolis approve the prescription over the phone. She said she hadn’t needed it for so long that she’d let the prescription lapse.”
“Was it for Vicodin?” he asked, already certain he knew the answer. “For a migraine?”
Her head bobbed. “The poor thing felt one coming on. She said she could always tell—sometimes well in advance.”
Ray wished he could give a Neil Lloyd a high-five.
The clerk looked left, right and behind. “I probably shouldn’t have given you that information,” she said, “but the privacy laws can’t be of any concern to her now.”
A chunky, redheaded woman stepped past him to the computer station on the other side of the counter. He watched her shove a stack of small, white papers aside. His found his attention divided between the clerk and the woman at the computer as she blundered her way from screen to screen.
“Mrs.Bergstrom, did Mrs. Davis discuss anything else with you that day? Did she mention if she was expecting anyone over the weekend? Maybe a friend, an associate, anyone?”
“No. I remember her saying she planned to work on a decorating project. One of the bathrooms, I think. She was disappointed that the headache would mean putting it off. She’d just picked up a couple gallons of paint at Sheehan’s Interiors.”
“Paint.” His last breath lodged in his chest. “Any chance you know what colors she bought?”
At the computer, the woman turned her chair 180 degrees. “Mrs. Bergstrom, excuse me. I can’t find the right program. It keeps bringing up customer files.”
“New employee,” Mrs. Bergstrom said, lowering her voice. “Her kids are grown. She’s trying to get back into the workforce. Doesn’t know a thing about computers.” She rolled her eyes. “Almost makes me wish Katie was back. Excuse me. This won’t take a minute.”
The clerk leaned over the woman’s shoulder, jockeying the mouse around the pad, tapping keys and explaining. She apologized as she returned. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“No problem,” he said. “This Katie you mentioned. That wouldn’t be Katie Springfield, would it?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Did she have access to that computer?”
“All the gift department employees use it to manage inventory records.”
“And prescription records are kept in the computer files?”
“Well…yes, they are.”
He pointed at the stack of small, white squares of paper beside the computer. “Prescription slips?”
“The filled orders. We keep them there so the pharmacy staff can record them when they find time.”
Teeth gritted, Ray asked, “How long has Katie Springfield worked here?”
The woman’s brow creased. “She worked for about two months, then just stopped coming in.”
“She quit?”
“Presumably. Young people these days don’t seem to have much staying power.”
“Mrs. Bergstrom, what about Michael Sumner? Did he—”
The woman stopped him. “I’ll repeat what I already told Officer Cooper when he asked. Mr. Sumner never filled a prescription here. Whichever of her husband’s medications Lydia Sumner reported missing, they didn’t come from here,” she said. “Maybe he’d just run out.”
Ray could see her mind working and decided to wait.
She knuckled the bifocals higher up her nose, “Actually, I’d be surprised if that was the case with Mr. Sumner, though.”
“Why’s that?”
“Every time he came in, he’d stop at the soda fountain for an egg cream to wash down one pill or another—sometimes several. I think he always had his pillbox with him. He seemed very conscientious about his meds.”
“Then anyone in the store might’ve been aware that Michael Sumner took a lot of prescription drugs—Katie Springfield, yourself, anybody.”
“I suppose so. Most of us take our breaks at the soda fountain.”
“Katie, too?”
“Yes. In fact, the last time Mr. Sumner was here, I remember the store manager going to the soda fountain to tell her to get back to work. Ten minutes after her break had ended, she was still there chatting with Mr. Sumner.”
It was a small detail, a fragile thread of information, but many threads could make up a sturdy rope on which he could hang the case. Ray picked up his bag and turned toward the door. “Thanks.”
“Wait,” she said. “Blue and white.”
“What?”
“The paint. I remember now. Mrs. Davis set the paint cans on the counter while she waited for her prescription. There was a gallon of white and one of blue.”
“I’d have bet on that,” he said.
Ray hurried from the drugstore and radioed the station. “Irene, patch me through to Cooper.”
48
After comparing notes, Ray and Frank Cooper parked their squad cars nose to tail in Greg Speltz’s unpaved driveway along Euclid Road. From the second step of wobbly black, metal stairs, Ray knocked on the flimsy hollow-core door of the old, green and white mobile home. Cars traveling the gravel road had coated the trailer with layers of dust, which spring showers had turned into grimy streaks. Ray knocked more forcibly a second time, a third, then a fourth. Cooper stood on the grit-covered grass, waiting for a response.
The door finally opened, and Greg Speltz peered out. “Whatd’ya want?”
“We want to talk with you,” Ray said.
“I’m busy.” The door started to swing shut.
Ray stopped it with the palm of his hand. “Hold it. Where’s your girlfriend? We’d like to talk to both of you.”
Speltz brushed a batch of unruly hair out of his eyes. “Well, you’re shit out of luck ’cause I don’t have time to talk, and Katie’s not here.”
“Where is she?”
Speltz shrugged. His gesture could be interpreted several ways: he didn’t know, didn’t care, or wasn’t about to say.
“Hey,” Cooper said, looking up from his spot at the bottom of the steps, “if you’re not going to ask us in, how about coming down here? I’m getting a crick in my neck.”
Clumping down the steps, Speltz jerked the door shut behind him. The two-day-old stubble looked out of place on his boyish twenty-year-old face.
Ray asked, “When’s Katie going to be back?”
“She won’t.” Speltz shoved both hands into the pockets of his threadbare jeans. “She took off.”
“Where?”
Speltz gave them another noncommittal shrug, refusing to meet their eyes.
“You’re saying she left for good?” Cooper asked.
“Yeah.”
“Lover’s quarrel?”
“Whatever. She’s gone.”
“That’s too bad,” Ray said.
“It’s no big deal.”
Ray stuck with it, hoping to get at least a shred of useful information. “Why’d she leave?”<
br />
“Said she was sick of living in this piece of shit and just took off one night. Left half her crap behind, too. If she wants it, she’ll have to dig it out of the Dumpster in back.”
“When did she leave?”
Suddenly wary, Speltz started walking toward the garage. “I’m in the middle of something. I don’t have time for this.”
“We’re in the middle of something, too,” Ray told him. “Maybe you’d better come with us.”
Speltz stopped and turned. “The station again? C’mon, man, you gotta be kiddin’ me.”
“We need a statement from you.”
“About what? I told you I did the number on Kramer’s barn. What more do you want?”
Cooper crooked a finger at Speltz, summoning him to the rear seat of his squad car. “C’mon, son. Hop in.”
The kid got in back. “Shit. I’ve got a job to finish.”
“Us, too.” Cooper closed the door and climbed behind the wheel. “Meet you at the station,” he called to Ray.
Speltz alternately sulked and grumbled on the way into town. At the station, seated in an interview room, his annoyance gave way to nervous tension.
Ray wanted him at ease. “We don’t want to hold you up, Greg. Cooperate and we can be done here in no time.”
“I got a deadline. I can’t afford to louse it up.”
“A detailing job?” Coop asked.
“Yeah. Can we just get on with this?”
“All right, let’s get to it.” Ray leaned against a wall, casual, almost indifferent. “You said Katie left. When?”
“A while back.”
“Can you narrow it down?” Ray asked.
“A couple weeks ago,” the kid said. “Maybe a little longer.” He screwed up his face, trying to remember. “The last time you had me in here—it was that night.”
Ray remembered the occasion. “The day you confessed to vandalizing Hank Kramer’s barn.” He made it sound like idle chit-chat. “Katie must’ve been really pissed off about that.”
Speltz laughed. “Are you kidding me? She didn’t give a damn about that, only that I admitted doing it. Katie hated Kramer’s guts, his son’s, too. There was nothing wrong with the logos I painted on that old bastard’s truck. They had no business stiffing me.”
“Where’d she go, Greg?”
“Beats me.”
“She must’ve left a phone number or address for you. Something,” he insisted.
“Hey, she didn’t offer, and I didn’t ask. We met in rehab. A couple months after I got out, she showed up looking for a place to stay. Roommates with benefits, you know?”
“Nothing more?” Ray asked.
“Nah.” The kid’s knee bounced under the table with increasing speed. “Hey, why don’t you just let her be? What happened was an accident.”
Something unexpected was coming their way; Ray felt it like an electrical shock coursing through his body. Cooper started to open his mouth—probably to ask the same thing going through his own mind: What was an accident?
He stopped Cooper by jumping in ahead of him with a purposely ambiguous question. “Is that what she told you—that it was an accident?”
Speltz looked up at him. “My dad told you, right?”
Whoa. What? “What difference does it make who told us? Katie’s not here. If you want us to hear her side of it, you’re going to have to fill us in.” He prayed the kid would take the bait.
“Okay, but I didn’t have anything to do with it. I swear. Hell, I didn’t even know about it until the night she left.” He wiped his face with a sleeve of his sweatshirt.
The wait felt endless. “We’re listening,” Ray said.
“Katie didn’t mean to hurt anyone; she just wanted to even the score.”
Questions whirled through Ray’s mind. What could Valerie Davis have done that called for retaliation? In the short time Katie Springfield stayed in Widmer, had she offended the girl in somehow? He kept up the pretense that they knew what he was talking about. “You think what she did was justified?”
“I wouldn’t have taken it that far, but Katie lost it. We needed that money bad. Her especially. Hell, I had that money coming to me.”
Shit. This isn’t about Valerie Davis. He’s talking about Hank Kramer. Unsure where it was leading, Ray said, “Okay. Give us Katie’s version.”
Greg sat there, silent and brooding.
“C’mon, Greg,” Ray said. “We need to hear it.”
With both hands, Speltz hung onto the ankle he’d crossed over his knee. “Katie said she was on her way home when she saw Hank Kramer driving into town that day. Just seeing him pissed her off all over again. She knew nobody would be there to see her, so she drove to Kramer’s farm and got one of the tools I borrowed from my dad out of the trunk of the car.”
“The wrench.”
“Yeah.”
Finally. Ray felt a weight lift off his shoulders.
“She figured she’d mess with the old man’s milking equipment. Payback, you know? When she saw the bull penned up in the barn, she changed her mind.”
Ray got the picture. “So instead, she decided to do a number on his bull.”
Speltz nodded. “Kramer wasn’t supposed to get hurt.”
“He was more than hurt, Greg. Hank Kramer was killed.”
“Not by her,” the kid argued. “It was an accident. While she was taking a few swings at that bull, her jacket got caught on the gate bolt. It slid out when she tried to get her jacket loose. Before she could slide it back in place, the bull knocked the gate open. Katie had to run like hell. She barely got the door to the barn latched in time to keep from getting trampled.”
“Like Kramer,” Ray pointed out.
“Well…yeah.”
“So, when Kramer got back,” Cooper said, “he must’ve gone into the barn thinking the bull was still penned up.”
“That was his mistake,” Greg said, “not hers.”
Cooper shook his head, muttering something unintelligible under his breath.
“And your father knew about this?” Ray asked.
The kid’s eyebrows shot up. “What? No.”
“Then why’d you ask if he’s the one who told us?”
“He kept at me all the time about how I was gonna wind up on drugs again because of her. He couldn’t stand her. I figured he said something trying to get her in trouble.”
“If he didn’t know about it,” Ray asked, “why’d he take the wrench out of Officer Lloyd’s car?”
“It was his wrench,” the kid said. “He wanted it back.”
“Give me a break, Greg. Your father lied about having it. At his suggestion, I went on a wild goose chase looking for it at the accident site.”
“Okay, yeah, not cool. But he didn’t actually know anything. He figured if his wrench was sitting in a police car, I’d gotten into some kind of trouble. Typical. I didn’t have to be a genius to catch his drift and play along when you came nosing around and he told you I never had it.” Greg dragged a sleeve under his nose. “Once you hauled me down here, though, he started climbing all over me again wanting to know what I did. Hell. I didn’t do a damn thing. It pissed me off. That’s when I got on Katie’s case about the wrench and found out what happened. ’Til then, I didn’t know, and if I didn’t know, he sure didn’t. He still doesn’t.”
“I want you to be straight with me, Greg.” Ray asked. “Have you started using again?”
He shook his head.
“But Katie’s actively using, right?” Cooper asked.
The kid clammed up.
“At Rittman’s Pharmacy she had access to customer records,” Ray told him. “Filled prescription slips, too. She could find out who took what.” He leaned in closer. “Did she pass the information on to you? Was it you who broke into the Davises’ place? The Sumners?”
The kid’s jaw dropped.
“Did Katie have you steal the drugs for her, or the money to buy them?”
“What are you talking
about?” Speltz shoved his chair back, ready to bolt.
Cooper put a hand on his shoulder. “Steady, son.”
The kid twisted his shoulder out of Cooper’s grip. “Are you guys crazy?”
Ray leaned closer, palms on the table. “We’re going to check that Dumpster behind your place, Greg. We can get a search warrant for the trailer if necessary. Want to tell us what we’re going to find?”
“Nothing.”
“No drug paraphernalia? No discarded prescription bottles?” Ray was only inches from Speltz’s face. “Think about it, Greg. You said Katie left things behind—things you got rid of. Your prints will be on everything you touched.”
“Yeah, I threw her stuff out, but I didn’t see any of that crap. If she was involved in something, she was doing it herself. I had nothing to do with it.”
“How do you think that’ll fly in court?” Cooper said.
“You’re in a world of hurt,” Ray told him. The time was right. “Tell us about the paint.”
“The paint? The stuff I used on Kramer’s barn? Holy shit. I told you guys I did it. I’ll find a way to pay a fine if that’s what this is about. What more do you want from me?”
“We want to know where you got the paint.”
“What the fuck? What does that have to do with—”
“The paint,” Ray insisted. “How’d you wind up with it?”
Speltz shrugged again. “Katie must’ve bought it, I guess.”
“The two of you were barely scraping by. Why would she spend what little you had on that?” Ray saw the blank look on Speltz’s face. “When do you first remember seeing it at your place?”
“I don’t know. End of March. Beginning of April maybe. Why?”
Ray and Cooper exchanged knowing looks. It fit with the time of Valerie Davis’s murder.
“That paint…” Cooper said, “it came from the Davises’ house.”
Speltz stared at them, his eyes wide, his lips parted as he tried to suck in some air.
“Valerie Davis went into town that Saturday—the last Saturday of her life,” Ray told him. “She picked up two gallons of paint from Sheehan’s Interiors. One blue, one white, Greg. When she stopped at Rittman’s to get Vicodin, she had it with her. The next morning when her body was discovered, both the paint and the Vicodin had disappeared.”
Dear Crossing (The Ray Schiller Series) Page 25