“Poor Mercedes? Don’t you even care that you had me out of my mind with worry?” he said.
I wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or angry. I reached the landing and he stared at me, frowning. Suddenly he reached over and plucked something from my hair. “What is this? Dust bunnies?” His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You’ve been snooping around again, haven’t you?”
“I have not,” I snapped back, my face burning. I shoved the key into the lock and pushed the door open. “If that’s the kind of conversation we’re going to have, you might as well leave.”
“Sorry, but I haven’t been waiting all this time to be sent home without at least some explanation of what you’ve been up to.” He signaled to Winnie to follow him in. “Besides”—he brandished a bottle of wine and continued in a gentler tone—“you can’t really expect me to drink this all by myself.”
“Fine,” I said, mellowing. “But only because of the wine. And because of Winnie,” I added, patting him on the head. I led the way to the kitchen and pointed Matthew to the glasses while I looked for something to eat.
“I could make pasta,” I said, pulling out a package of spaghetti and a can of tomato and basil sauce. “It’ll only take a few minutes.”
“Sounds perfect,” he said, plucking another dust bunny from my hair. He gave me the eyebrow and tossed it into the wastebasket.
“Make yourself useful, won’t you?” I said and handed him a couple of plates. He went off to set the table and I busied myself preparing the meal. While the water boiled, I plucked my cell phone from my purse and called Marnie. After four rings, I left a message.
“Hey, Marnie, I’m worried about you. Give me a call.” I hung up. “Do you think she could still be at the police station?” I said, when Matthew returned to the kitchen.
“I stopped by the station on my way here. That was two hours ago, and they had questioned and released her hours earlier.”
“But she’s not answering her phone. I’m getting worried.”
“I expect she’ll be sleeping right about now. I’m sure she stayed awake all night yesterday. Maybe she took a sleeping pill.”
That made me feel a bit better. Still, I couldn’t brush off my worry entirely. We settled in the dining room and dug into our food.
“Now tell me what you were really doing all this time,” he said.
“Promise you won’t be mad at me?”
“How about this? I promise not to yell at you no matter how angry I am.”
“I guess that’s the best I can expect,” I said, sighing. “Well, I was thinking about Helen, and it occurred to me that if I’d just had an argument with someone at a party, the first thing I’d do when I got home would be to pick up the phone and call a friend, somebody I could really vent to.” Matthew’s eyes narrowed. “Before you freak out, I swear I didn’t tamper with evidence. I didn’t take anything. All I did was look . . . and maybe touch a few things.”
He paled. “Are you telling me you broke into her house? And you did what? Check her phone?”
“I, er . . . yes. Then I went to search for a picture of Brent Donaldson.”
“You broke in? How?”
“You promised you wouldn’t yell.”
He fell against the back of his chair and dragged a hand over his face wearily. “I swear, woman, you are going to be the death of me. I can’t believe this. You trespassed onto a police-protected crime scene.”
“I wanted to know for certain whether Brent Donaldson and Bruce Doherty were the same person. Besides, I didn’t exactly break in. The lock to the sliding door in the back is broken. All I had to do was slip in between the crime scene tape.”
He wiped his face again. “You illegally entered a crime scene.”
“How else was I supposed to find out whether Helen had a picture of Brent Donaldson?”
“You let the police investigate. That’s how.”
“I only wanted to take a quick look around. I was planning to tell you about anything I found, and let you decide what to do about it.”
He closed his eyes, and for a moment he looked as if he was praying. His mouth was moving, but all I could make out was, “Blah, blah, blah, grant me the patience.”
“Honestly, I don’t know why you’re so upset.”
“Where did you get this brilliant idea?” he said.
“It was something Nancy Cutler told me.” I repeated what she’d said about the photograph of Brent that the police searched for after her roommate’s disappearance. “I thought if Sybille had sent a copy to Helen, it would explain the argument she had with him. It would even support my theory that she recognized Bruce as Brent that night. And it would also give Bruce one hell of a motive for wanting Helen dead.”
“And did you find any pictures?”
I nodded eagerly, and hurried to the kitchen for my purse. “Wait till I show you.” I returned a moment later to find Matthew looking much the way Helen had in death. His face was beet red, as if he was about to explode.
“Please don’t tell me you stole a photograph.”
“Don’t be silly. All I did was take a picture of it.” I turned on my cell phone and scrolled through the file of pictures until I got to one of Brent. I handed it to him. “See?”
“I never met Marnie’s fiancé, so I have no idea whether he’s the same man,” he said, his coloring returning to normal.
“Trust me, he is. And that means Bruce Doherty must have killed Helen Dubois.”
“Except for one small detail,” he said, crossing his arms.
“This, I can’t wait to hear.”
“I heard from the ME in Charlotte this afternoon. As it turns out, Helen Dubois did not die from manual strangulation.”
“What! But—I’m the one who found her body. She was all purple and bloated. Her tongue was protruding from her mouth. Even the police officers could tell she was strangled.”
“The bloating and discoloration you describe can also be a side effect of cyanide poisoning.”
“Poison? But—”
“Let me explain. When a person swallows or inhales cyanide, it interferes with the red cells’ ability to extract oxygen. So the victim literally suffocates to death—thus the bloated face, the protruding tongue, the pitikia of the eyes, just as in strangulation. But in cases of cyanide poisoning, there is usually considerable foaming at the mouth. In Helen’s case, there was no evidence of foaming, and this is possibly what led to the original confusion.”
“Foaming at the mouth?” I’d never heard of that except in animals with rabies.
He nodded. “According to the medical examiner, there should have been foaming as she gasped for breath. The only explanation he offered was that somebody must have cleaned her up after she died.”
“That means whoever killed her not only administered the poison but then stood by and watched her die. That would take nerves of steel.” I tried to imagine Bruce Doherty being that cold, and shivered.
“Whoever killed her must have wanted to cover up the poisoning, and try to pass the cause of Helen’s death off as strangulation. And if Dr. Cook had signed the death certificate instead of her body being sent to the medical examiner, the true cause of death might never have been discovered.”
“Cyanide poisoning,” I repeated, still trying to get my mind around this sudden turn of events. “How easy is it to get cyanide? Is it something you can pick up like rat poison?”
“Because it is so deadly and acts fast, it used to be the poison of choice. Now, it’s more difficult to find, but not impossible. That’s one of the things the police are looking into—who has access to cyanide.”
“Who would have access to it?”
“Mostly people who use it for their work, like metal polishers, photographers, jewelers, and probably a dozen others. But there are also people who have some left over from years ago
. There was a recent case, an artist had over a hundred pounds of it stored in his basement. He went down to investigate a strange smell and accidentally tipped over a five-gallon bucket of it. By the time the fire department came, he had stopped breathing.”
“All he did was smell it and he died?”
“Any sodium cyanide can produce deadly gas when exposed to acid. That’s what they use in gas chambers.”
“If Helen was poisoned, does that mean Bruce is innocent?”
“It doesn’t clear him. However, poisoning is usually a woman’s crime. Also, if the poisoning was made to look like a strangulation, it suggests that the killer was trying to make the murder appear to be the work of a man.”
I felt a pang of guilt. I’d spent the last few days trying to find a way to turn Marnie against her fiancé because I was sure he was a killer. As it was looking now, he might not be guilty after all.
As if he read my mind, Matthew said, “Bruce may not have killed Helen, but he was up to something. Why else would he have been using an alias?”
I shook my head in bewilderment. “I’m still trying to figure this out. Whoever killed Helen might have also killed him?”
“That’s a possibility,” he said. “It isn’t as if Briar Hollow is teeming with criminals.”
“Thank God that intruder didn’t see me,” I mumbled without thinking. “Or else I might be dead right now.”
“What are you talking about? What intruder?”
“Somebody broke into Helen’s house while I was there.”
“Somebody— What?”
I said to him. “Now you’re definitely yelling.”
He dropped his head. “I’m probably going to regret this,” he said, then raised his eyes and glared at me. “Tell me everything.”
So I did. I told him about checking Helen’s phone and getting Nancy Cutler’s number. And then I repeated as best I could the conversation I’d had with her, in which she’d insisted that the police never found Brent’s picture after Sybille disappeared. And then I told him about how I’d hidden under the bed when I’d heard the intruder come in.
“That explains the dust bunnies. And you never saw her face?” I shook my head. “Do you know what she was looking for?” he asked.
“All I know is that she searched the whole house.”
“And you have no idea who she was.”
“None,” I said. “When I finally got out from under the bed, I raced to the window just in time to see a small blue car driving away.”
“Did you think of taking the license plate number?”
“It was too far away.”
“What kind of a car was it?”
I shrugged. “It was small. That’s all I know.” He rolled his eyes. “What do you want from me?” I said, exasperated. “You’re the car buff. Not me.”
“I’m not asking you what year or model. Surely you can at least tell the make.”
“I don’t know what make. But it was lighter than navy, more of a royal blue, okay?” I quickly went on to tell him how I searched the house a second time after the woman left, and how I came across the picture of Brent. “I didn’t look under the lamp the first time I searched that room. So for all I know it could have already been there.”
“And you didn’t notice anything else that looked different or out of place.”
“Sorry.”
“So, if we look at all the evidence we’ve uncovered today,” he said, and I couldn’t help noticing how he said “we.” “We know that A, the killer poisoned Helen; B, he or she remained in Helen’s house long enough to make certain she was dead; and C, he or she then cleaned up some of the evidence—the foam—perhaps hoping that her death would be attributed to manual strangulation. We also know that this killer is likely to be a woman, but we still don’t know who or why.”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” I said. “And even though I have no proof, I bet the intruder was Nancy Cutler.” I pulled the letter from my pocket. “Wait till you read this.” I handed it over.
“What is it?”
“It’s one of the last letters Sybille wrote to Helen before she disappeared.”
He pulled his hands back as if I was holding out a venomous snake. “Are you crazy? That’s evidence. You shouldn’t even be touching it.”
“This is not evidence. It has nothing to do with Helen’s murder. It was written more than twenty years ago.” I read it out loud to him.
“I hate to tell you this,” he said when I finished, “but if Nancy Cutler killed Helen, that letter would most definitely be classified as evidence. You have to give this to the police.”
“I can’t do that,” I said. “I’d have to explain how I got it.”
“You either give it to the police or you put it back where you found it.”
“Fine. I’ll put it back. But why would it be evidence?”
“Think about it. That letter is in Sybille’s own words. She talks about Nancy becoming cold and distant. The first conclusion you came to when you read that was that Nancy was jealous.”
“It makes sense,” I said. “Sybille was gorgeous, and successful, and she had a boyfriend.”
“That makes me wonder if Helen and the police could have had it wrong all these years.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m beginning to think that Brent might have had nothing to do with Sybille’s disappearance.”
“You think Nancy killed Sybille?” All at once it hit me. “Of course. That’s totally logical. But there’s one thing I don’t understand. If Brent, or Bruce, was innocent, why did he take off when Sybille disappeared? Nancy said the police searched high and low for him and never found so much as a trace of the man.”
“I suspect he was using an alias even back then. Even if he had nothing to do with Sybille’s disappearance, he probably figured, and rightfully so, that as soon as the police found out he was using a false name, they’d think he was guilty. And let’s not fool ourselves. He may not have been responsible for Sybille’s disappearance, but he was guilty of something. Otherwise, why use an alias?”
“Hmm, I just remembered something,” I said. “Nancy told me that at one point after Sybille’s disappearance, Helen was calling her, asking the same questions over and over again. She began to wonder if Helen considered her a suspect.”
“Could be,” he said thoughtfully. “I wonder . . .”
“What? Tell me.”
“Let’s suppose for a moment that Nancy killed Sybille twenty years ago. And somehow she managed to make everybody believe that Brent did it. That would have been easy, considering that there was never a body and that Brent disappeared around the same time she did. Now, we move forward twenty years, and Nancy recognizes Bruce at a party. What do you think her first reaction would be?”
I gasped. “No wonder she ran out in a panic. Bruce was the only person in the world who knew what had really happened, and if he said anything she could be charged for murder.”
“Then,” he continued, “she’s home wondering how she can keep him from talking, and the phone rings. When she answers, it’s not Bruce—even worse, it’s Helen. She’s recognized him as Brent and she wants to call the police.” Matthew picked up his glass and raised it. “And that, my dear, gives us a recipe for not only one but two murders.”
“You’re right. The only thing she could have done to stay safe was kill both Helen and Bruce.” I raised my own glass to him. “Damn. You’re good at this.” I took a sip of wine and put my glass down. “So what do we do now? Do we call the police and tell them?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because as likely as this scenario may sound, it isn’t the only possibility. The only thing on which we can agree on right now is that Sybille was probably right. Nancy was envious of her. She may have secretly bee
n in love with Brent.”
“That’s ridiculous. Nancy said they never even met.”
“So she says. But, even then, a lot of women fall for men they’ve never met—movie stars, the man they see every day at the bus stop, the model in the aftershave ad. It happens all the time. There are even cases of women falling in love with convicted murderers who are in prison for life.”
I could imagine how that might have happened in Nancy’s case. “Sybille was crazy about Brent, so she probably gushed about him all the time—how wonderful he was, how handsome he was. Even if Nancy never met him, Sybille fed her a continuous stream of fantasy about him. Nancy did tell me that they spoke on the phone a few times when he called for Sybille. If he was flirtatious during their conversations, Nancy may have given those chats a lot of importance.”
“Or,” he said, “they could have been having an affair.”
“He and Nancy?” I said, laughing. “I’m sorry. That’s just ridiculous. You have no idea how gorgeous Sybille used to be.” I pulled out my cell phone again and showed him. “Look at her.”
“She certainly was,” he said, handing me back my phone.
“Next to her, nobody would have looked twice at Nancy.”
“You’d be surprised how many men will fool around with unattractive women even when they have beautiful wives at home,” he said. “Some men are cads.”
“So I’m told,” I said.
“Present company excluded,” he said with a wink.
“But of course.”
“So let’s say Nancy was infatuated with Brent. When Sybille vanished, she might have thought that she now had a chance to get him for herself. She probably never imagined he had anything to do with Sybille’s disappearance, but even if she did, she would have wanted to protect him. Who knows what kind of excuses she made for him in her mind? Sybille was a bitch. She ran off with another man. If he did something to her, she deserved it.”
“That’s awful.”
“It’s called denial. People do it all the time when they don’t want to look at the truth. When the police showed up, she might even have given them a wrong description of Brent.”
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