* * *
• • •
I’d needed that file for one primary reason: to learn Tripp’s blood type, which was AB. Mimi’s blood type, according to her hospital records, was O and, as I proceeded to explain to Fred Cooper, a mother with that blood type cannot bear a child with Tripp’s.
“There’s a simple explanation for that, Mrs. Fletcher,” Cooper said, trying to pretend that revelation hadn’t rattled him. “Tripp was adopted.”
“Not according to state and county records in Massachusetts. See, I know this private eye who’s an absolute whiz at turning over rocks. When he looked into turning over that one, there was nothing beneath it. But he did sneak a peek at Tripp Van Dorn’s original birth certificate. His father is listed as John Jessup. Care to guess who was listed as his mother?”
Cooper visibly stiffened behind his desk. “I’m not at liberty to say any more.”
“Citing attorney-client privilege again, right? Even though your client is no longer with us. But I do understand your not wanting to implicate Mimi in some baby-snatching scheme. At least we know you couldn’t have been party to her crimes, since you’d barely been born yourself. Of course, there are the issues to contend with regarding the commission or covering up of a crime. I’ve never totally understood that term, but I understand enough to know what we’re looking at here is likely a textbook example.”
I waited for Fred Cooper to say something, then resumed when he didn’t.
“I wonder if breaking the trust that was paying for Tripp’s treatment was made any easier by the fact that he wasn’t her flesh and blood. And I also have to wonder how this might have been connected to his murder.”
“Which hasn’t been confirmed, Mrs. Fletcher. It’s still listed as a suicide.”
“Not for long,” I corrected, thinking of the bruise the medical examiner had found on the back of Tripp’s head, confirming my theory as to how he’d been killed. “His killer was good, almost perfect. But, like all almost perfect killers, he made one mistake.”
Cooper rocked forward in his new desk chair. “Anything else I can do for you, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“I was hoping you could tell me who Tripp Van Dorn was. I mean his true identity. Because I’m thinking his real parents have a right to know the truth, as doubly sad and tragic as that is.”
He shook his head, obviously not getting the point of that at all. “This isn’t a book. You can’t make everybody happy in the end.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t try.”
Cooper came around his oversized desk, pulling one of those fancy titanium business cards from a holder near the edge. “This is where the real police can find me.”
I rose, able to look him right in the eye even in flat shoes.
“Please don’t come here anymore, Mrs. Fletcher, unless you’d like to retain my services.”
I dropped the card into my bag. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
* * *
• • •
Harry McGraw was still waiting patiently when I exited the building.
“You look like you’ve been in a scrape,” he noted.
“Close enough.”
“Worth the damage inflicted?”
“No. I don’t know what I was expecting to get out of Fred Cooper, but whatever it was never emerged. There’s something . . . well, off about Cooper, about this whole case.”
“You mean, besides the multiple murders?”
“Yes, Harry. I think I’m too close to this thing. The answer I’m looking for is right in front of me, but I can’t see it.”
“You mean like that feeling somebody was following us yesterday?”
“You’re sure there wasn’t, right? You’re not just trying to make me feel better?”
That scowl came with a nod this time. “I’m almost sure there wasn’t, and I’m not just trying to make you feel better. Don’t forget, Jessica, I’m a trained investigator.”
“It’s just that, well . . .”
“What?”
“I could have sworn an old Jeep Cherokee drove past us after we pulled into Mass General.”
“Didn’t you say something about an old Cherokee nearly running Mimi down?”
I nodded. “I think you’re getting my point.”
“I also need to get out of town.” Harry moved around to the driver’s side of his rental. “And get this car back to the city before I have to pay for a whole week.”
* * *
• • •
But Harry wasn’t able to leave as quickly as he thought he’d be able to, because standing beside a BMW when we pulled into Hill House’s cramped parking lot was Jeffrey Archibald, CEO of LGX Pharmaceuticals.
“May I have a word with you, Mrs. Fletcher?”
I joined him by his BMW, leaving Harry out of earshot but close enough to make me feel safe in Archibald’s presence.
“In search of another signed book for your wife?” I asked, approaching him.
He forced a smile. “No, but she hasn’t stopped talking about meeting you.” Archibald’s expression tightened. “I heard about your, er, visit with Dr. Clifton.”
“From Dr. Clifton, no doubt.”
“You’ve got this all wrong, Mrs. Fletcher, particularly about LGX Pharmaceuticals’ association with Charles Clifton and Clifton Care Partners. You’re aware, of course, of the prohibitive costs associated with bringing a drug to market.”
“I know very few of them ever turn a real profit. I know about so-called orphan drugs used to treat rare afflictions.”
“I believe we’re on the same page,” he said, not bothering to disguise the bad pun. “I’m not going to deny the truth you’ve uncovered behind my association with Charles Clifton.”
“You mean that the two of you have concocted fake clinical trials to influence vulnerable people to give up everything they have to participate in them?”
“The alternative for your friend Mr. Sutherland could be far worse than that. The trial he signed up for, until you must’ve made him change his mind, was the only chance he had. That drug showed great promise in treating his particular form of cancer, but there wasn’t enough anecdotal evidence to petition the FDA for a trial.”
“So you leapfrogged the process by faking your own trial. Tell me, what did you and Clifton charge George Sutherland? Was it as much or more than you bilked out of Mimi Van Dorn?”
Archibald glanced toward his gleaming black sedan, as if he wanted very much to be inside it driving away from Cabot Cove. “Nobody twisted their arms in either case.”
I took a step closer to him. “Mr. Archibald, I understand the point you’re making about George Sutherland and even the more general one about drugs like the one he’d come all the way to Cabot Cove to get. But Mimi Van Dorn didn’t have cancer. She had a psychological disorder you preyed on to the point she liquidated a trust that was providing for her quadriplegic son’s care.”
Archibald nodded. “Have you spoken to your nephew Grady recently, Mrs. Fletcher?” he asked, getting to the basis for his driving all the way up here.
“Choose your next words very carefully,” I warned him.
“Don’t get the wrong idea. I didn’t mean that as a threat, nothing like that. I only thought you should know he’s had some . . . employment issues at his accounting firm. Not easy finding a comparable position these days, which I’m sure is a source of anxiety for him, since he has a young son to provide for.”
“Did you arrange these employment issues, Mr. Archibald? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Not at all.”
“Because a more suspicious and jaded woman might see that as a threat.”
“Quite the opposite. If you’d have let me finish, I was going to say we have a top-level opening in our accounting department that would suit him perfectly. He’d have to reloc
ate to Rhode Island, but I don’t imagine that would be too much of a bother. And he’d be closer to you to boot.”
“I see. And this would be in return for my backing off the case involving you and Dr. Clifton. Is that it?”
“There is no such case.”
The moment froze between us, my own thinking trapped between being repulsed by his involving my nephew in this and concerned over Grady’s current plight, my emotions as jumbled as my thoughts.
That’s when I heard a pop, followed by pop, pop.
The windshield of Archibald’s BMW had exploded and one of his side mirrors had broken off. I twisted instinctively toward the expected origin of the shots to spot a male figure at the edge of the woods rimming the rear of Hill House, one eye pressed against a rifle sight.
And that’s when something hit me with enough force to knock me off my feet and steal my breath.
Chapter Twenty-six
I looked up to find Archibald over me, having tackled me to the ground.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine, yes,” I managed, huffing.
Had Jeffrey Archibald just saved my life?
I recovered enough of my bearings to perch myself against his BMW and peer over the hood, just as the figure I’d glimpsed disappeared into the woods.
“Harry!” I cried out.
He’d already lit out into motion, but got only halfway to the woods. I swiftly caught up with him, leaving Archibald behind.
Harry had his hands on his knees and was heaving for breath.
“Wouldn’t happen to have a gun, would you?”
“I haven’t carried since the nineties,” he managed, between gasps.
“I’m going after him, Harry.”
He flailed a hand outward, trying to grab hold of me, but it flopped back down having not even come close. I was in motion by then, running as fast as I could into the woods on the trail of the rifle-wielding man. I’d been a jogger for years, enjoying nothing better than following Cabot Cove’s beloved coastline as my favored route. That, along with my daily bike rides around town, except in the winter months, had kept me in good shape for years, a practice I’d renewed thanks to the Hill House basement gym, open only to guests. I wasn’t all that fast but boasted decent stamina, again thanks to those workouts, and I knew these woods well enough to follow the trail blindfolded.
Had the shooter been firing at me or Archibald?
Given the angle of the shots and the shooter’s positioning, it must’ve been Archibald. That made no sense I could find, even if trying to chase down the gunman hadn’t stolen all other thinking from me. I thought I detected his pounding steps no longer that far ahead of me, but it could have been the pounding in my own head instead as I heaved for breath myself.
Another sound greeted me, and I realized it was the sound of cars heading down a back road at the rear of the woods, still known almost exclusively to locals as one of the last well-kept secrets of Cabot Cove. A bit out of the way but nonetheless utilized to get around when the traffic was at its worst during the summer.
I thought I’d caught another glimpse of the figure when the woods thinned briefly, close enough to note the rifle slung from his shoulder bouncing behind him. By the time I reached the road, though, he was gone.
* * *
• • •
I was retracing my path back through the woods when I found Harry McGraw in the very same position I’d left him in back at Hill House: doubled over with hands on his knees.
“You know how much I charge when gunshots are involved?” he managed, the words emerging in stops and starts. “Did you at least get a look at him?”
I shook my head. “Never got that close.”
“A good thing maybe,” Harry said, finally straightening himself up. “I already called nine-one-one.”
Just then, I heard the first sounds of sirens screaming toward the area.
“When are you going to stop playing one of your characters, Jessica? The danger’s real out there, in case you haven’t noticed.”
I thought of Mimi and Tripp Van Dorn. “Tell me something I don’t know, Harry.”
* * *
• • •
Mort’s SUV squealed to a halt on the street fronting Hill House just behind two Cabot Cove cruisers that had beaten him there.
“Don’t make me say it, Jessica,” Mort said, storming toward me and having dropped the “Mrs. Fletcher” again.
I realized Jeffrey Archibald’s damaged BMW was nowhere to be found. “It wasn’t me he was after—it was Archibald.”
Mort’s eyes widened. “The drug guy from Rhode Island? He was here?”
“The shooter was gunning for him,” I said, nodding. “I’m sure of it.”
“Sure, Mrs. Fletcher, given that you’re such an expert on gunfights.”
Well, that didn’t last.
Meanwhile, two of Mort’s deputies were canvassing the area around where Archibald’s BMW had been parked. Two more trotted toward the woods to look for expended shells and any other evidence that might help lead to the shooter’s identity. Not that I was holding out much hope as far as that was concerned.
“What did Archibald want from you?”
“To keep me quiet, with a combination of an apology and an explanation,” I said, stopping short of adding what he’d told me about Grady losing his job.
“Any chance it’ll work?”
“What do you think?”
His expression looked more like Harry’s. “Right, why’d I bother to ask? I’m putting an officer on guard duty.”
“I told you, Mort, the shooter wasn’t going after me.”
“It’s not the shooter I’m worried about, Jessica. The officer’s instructions will be to protect you from yourself.”
“Speaking of which, I paid another visit to our friend Fred Cooper.”
“Oh no . . .”
“Don’t worry. I had Harry to watch my back.”
Mort glanced toward Harry, who was currently leaning against his car still trying to get all of his breath back.
“Right, that’s comforting.” He looked back at me. “Can you make any sense of all this?”
“I thought I was getting closer,” I told him. “Now I’m not so sure anymore.”
“That’s not so comforting.”
“Whatever’s going on didn’t start a week ago, Mort. It started long before that, even before the car accident that put Tripp Van Dorn in a wheelchair.”
“We back to that again?”
I nodded. “Because it’s the key, at least one of them. The mystery that explains everything we’re facing.”
“This isn’t one of your books, Jessica.”
“That’s the same thing Harry told me.”
Mort shot another glance Harry’s way. “Then I take it back.”
“No sign of George Sutherland, I assume.”
Mort shook his head. “It’s like he’s vanished into thin air.”
“He’d never do something like that, not without saying a word to me. And his belongings are still in his room here at the hotel.”
“You think it was Clifton, don’t you?”
“There’s another possibility.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Not yet, Mort. It’s probably wishful thinking on my part, not even worth raising yet.”
Before he could argue that point, Mort’s phone rang and he turned away from me to answer it. I could see fresh concern form over his features as he paced through the course of the brief, terse call, which ended with him turning back to me still clutching his phone.
“Turns out some guy with a rifle just took a potshot at Charles Clifton climbing into his car outside the clinic.”
I did a rough estimate on the passage of time, concluding it jibed pretty well with th
e same shooter being responsible.
“But this time,” Mort continued, “we caught him before he could run off. He’s in custody now. Care to join me down at the station?”
* * *
• • •
“Think I’ll be getting back to the big city, if nobody has a problem with that,” Harry McGraw told us.
“Thanks, Harry,” I said, giving him a light hug.
He flashed that scowl in response, jowls dropping lower than usual. “Don’t thank me. Pay me.”
“Send me a bill.”
“I’m behind on my paperwork.”
“How far?”
“I’m finishing out my box of carbon paper.”
“How about I just give you a blank check so you can fill in the amount?”
“There isn’t room for enough zeros.” He looked toward Mort. “Keep an eye on her, Mort. She’s bound to do something else stupid before the day’s out.”
“I’ll do my best, Harry.”
Harry’s expression tightened. “You watch yourself and call me if you need me. Can’t wait to hear how this one turns out.”
“Neither can I,” I told him.
* * *
• • •
“You had somebody watching Charles Clifton,” I said to Mort in the drive over to the sheriff’s station.
“Those keen powers of observation tell you that?”
I shrugged. “How else could you have had officers already on-site when the gunman took a shot at Clifton, too?”
“You told me he and Jeffrey Archibald were joined at the hip. I figured it was a logical move and sent a squad car to the Clifton Clinic as soon as I got word Archibald was the likely target.”
“You’re pretty good at this stuff, aren’t you?”
“I know this writer who keeps me on my toes.”
Murder, She Wrote--Murder in Red Page 19