Bloodroot

by Cynthia Riggs

  “We need to address several questions,” she said. “One, of course, is who had motive. The second is who had intent, and the third is who had the opportunity.”

  “This sounds like a criminal proceeding,” said Wesley.

  “Let Mrs. Trumbull finish,” Scott said.

  “Thank you. Let’s talk openly about all three questions,” she said. “I don’t mean to cast suspicion on any of you, but your comments may shed light on the identity of the killer.”

  “You want us to comment just on our thoughts or on anyone we think of?” asked Heather.

  “Anything you can contribute will be worthwhile,” Victoria responded.

  “Let’s start,” said Scott. “To be quite candid, Mrs. Trumbull, every one of us had motive. Revenge and money. The two most powerful motives there are. For years I’ve passed pleasant hours visualizing how I’d get that woman out of my life permanently.” He sat forward with his elbows on the chair arms. “The old lady’s treatment of us as kids was shameful. She thrived on tormenting us. Four kids who’d been orphaned. Can you imagine? She knew our weaknesses and how to make each of us feel like shit, if you’ll pardon the expression. Revenge is a powerful motive.” He sat back again. “When she insisted that we four come for the first visit in a decade, we knew it was to tell us something unpleasant.”

  “That was grandmother,” agreed Wesley.

  Victoria sat quietly.

  “The other most powerful motive is money. We all have money problems. Definitely a motive.” Scott glanced up at the portrait. “Our grandmother was secretive about money, but the old lady had money and we knew it. Every one of us is desperate for money. Desperate enough to kill?” He shifted his gaze back to Victoria. “I doubt it. Of course the main deterrent was the likelihood of getting caught.” He turned to his brother, who was sitting to his left. “You want to say anything, Wes?”

  Wesley nodded. “Since I was the youngest, my brother and sisters shielded me to some extent.” He glanced around at his siblings. “On the other hand, I was such a little kid at the time, I was helpless.” He paused for a moment. “I came to this reunion, or whatever she called it, because I planned to ask her for a loan.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Heather. “Fat chance.”

  Victoria felt growing pity as they talked about their grandmother. She felt sorry for the four grandchildren, and she felt sorry for their dead grandmother. The grandparent relationship was, or could be, so rewarding.

  “None of you seemed to feel great affection toward her.”

  “That’s for sure,” said Heather.

  “What about you, Susan. You lived with her.”

  The other three stared at Susan, who had been sitting with her head bowed, her knees together, and her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

  Without looking up, Susan said, “I knew she intended to change her will.”

  “How did you get that bit of information? She tell you?” asked Wesley.

  Susan glanced over at him. “I saw some papers on her desk.”

  “You were prying?” said Heather.

  Susan shrugged. “I cleaned her house. I couldn’t help seeing her papers.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Heather. “I suppose she was leaving us fifty dollars each. A token of her affection.”

  “I’d be interested in knowing what the change would have been,” said Scott.

  “She planned to leave five thousand to each of us and the house and property to the Island Conservation Foundation.”

  “Cutting you out, too,” exclaimed Heather. “That’s a laugh. What did you do to deserve that?”

  Susan flushed. “I deserved the property, Heather. For twenty years, I worked like a slave for that woman. Cooked, cleaned house, did laundry, put up with her insults and complaints. You know what she was like. You three escaped.” She pointed to herself. “I earned that house and land.”

  “Bitch,” muttered Heather.

  “Let Mrs. Trumbull move us on,” said Scott.

  “I think I’ll change my mind about a drink,” Victoria said. “Would you mind pouring me a light bourbon and water, Scott?”

  “My pleasure,” said Scott, getting unsteadily to his feet. “I’ll try not to breathe in when I pour.”

  “Thank you, Scott,” said Victoria, picking up her glass. “I’m sorry you hurt.”

  “Susan’s fault,” said Heather. “She did that cute mushroom thing on purpose. She knew how the mushrooms acted and she knew we had that bottle of Scotch.”

  “Stop it!” said Susan.

  Victoria cleared her throat. “What about you, Wesley?”

  “I lost track of the question,” said Wesley.

  “Revenge,” said Scott. “Money. Motive.”

  Wesley leaned back in his chair. “I made some unwise investments. My creditors are after me.”

  Scott laughed. “He’s an addicted gambler, Mrs. Trumbull. His creditors intend to get their money.”

  “Grandmother had a soft spot for me,” Wesley said.

  “Yeah, a soft spot like cast iron,” said Heather.

  “I figured I could talk her into lending me what I needed.”

  “Had you asked her?” asked Victoria.

  “I did. No dice.”

  “So to speak,” said Scott.

  Victoria turned to Susan. “Did you know when the change in the will was to go in effect?”

  “She had an appointment to meet with her lawyer on what turned out to be the day the will was read.”

  Wesley said, “Old ice maiden?”

  “If you mean Darya, yes.”

  “That’s why we were able to get an appointment,” said Wesley. “Ironic, no?”

  “What about your financial problem, Heather?” asked Victoria.

  “Champagne taste, peanut butter budget,” Heather said.

  “Nicely mixed metaphor,” said Wesley.

  “That wasn’t a metaphor, dummy. I ran up bills on my credit cards that I haven’t been able to pay. I thought Grandmother might just possibly lend me the pearl necklace that belonged to our mother for a film festival I’d thought of attending.”

  “You wouldn’t sell our mother’s pearl necklace?” said Susan.

  “Of course I would.”

  “That was to go to both of us.”

  “You got the entire house and land. What do you care about a necklace?”

  “That’s stealing.”

  “No it’s not. Our father gave that necklace to our mother, not to her.”

  Victoria took a long sip of her drink.

  “Brrr,” said Scott, turning away.

  Victoria set her glass down and after a pause said, “Did you talk to each other about murder?”

  They looked at one another.

  “Yes,” said Scott.

  “Oh, shut up, Scott,” said Heather.

  Wesley said, “People contemplate murders they never intend to commit all the time. We were no exception.”

  “What were your thoughts on how you might kill her?” asked Victoria.

  “Do we need this?” cried Susan. “That’s not getting us anywhere.”

  “I hope you’ll bear with me. I have reasons for asking.”

  “I seem to be the spokesman,” said Scott, “so I’ll speak. Three of us, Heather, Wesley, and I—Susan wasn’t in on the discussions because she was usually with Grandmother—talked about guns, knives, bludgeons, poisons, throttlings, and hangings, and we talked about them in some detail. How they might work, where we would stage the murder, how we might escape detection.”

  “We even thought about a staged suicide,” said Wesley, with a smile.

  “Come on, you guys,” said Heather.

  Susan said nothing.

  Scott added, “We ruled out the obvious methods. Guns, knives, blunt instruments, strangling, and hanging. None of us had the money to buy a gun, and the rest were too intimate. That left poison.”

  “Which is how she was killed,” said Wesley with a shrug.

 
“Does that answer your question, Mrs. Trumbull?”

  “What I’m trying to learn,” said Victoria, trying not to show her exasperation, “is what might have been going through the mind of the actual murderer. He or she undoubtedly went through the same thought processes.”

  “Pretty obvious,” said Wesley.

  “How would you determine what poison to use and how would you obtain it?”

  “We never got that far,” said Heather. “We talked about arsenic, because that’s what the elderly aunts use in the play Arsenic and Old Lace. I don’t know how you’d get it. Google it, I suppose.”

  Victoria glanced around at the four, but Heather seemed to have spoken for them.

  “Did any of you know Vivian, the clinic’s receptionist?”

  “I did,” said Susan. “A quiet, mousy person.”

  “What did you think of her?”

  “I didn’t think anything about her. She answered the phone and made reservations. She was okay. No pleasantries or anything like that. She always seemed like a scared rabbit with a hawk soaring overhead.”

  “What about the rest of you?”

  They looked at each other and shrugged.

  “You were all patients at the clinic at some time, weren’t you?”

  “I still am. I get annual checkups and Dr. Minnowfish has been my dentist ever since we moved to the Island,” said Susan.

  “And you accompanied your grandmother on her trips to the clinic?”

  “Not usually. The day she died, though, I was there.”

  “I recall seeing you. Not a pleasant occasion for you.” Victoria turned to the others. “You all became patients when Dr. Mann first opened the clinic, didn’t you?”

  “Mann had opened the clinic several months before we arrived. I don’t know how long before,” Scott answered. “Dr. Minnowfish and Dr. Demetrios were with him when we first went, along with the two technicians who are still there, Roosevelt Mark and Arthur Morgan.”

  “Did you keep in touch with any of the clinic’s staff after you left the Island?”

  “Sam Minnowfish had been my dentist. He was a big influence on me, kind of a father figure,” said Scott. “I wrote to him occasionally. Later, kept in touch on Facebook. You did, too, right, Wes?”

  “I was a lot younger,” said Wesley. “I was crazy about cowboys and Indians. Dr. Minnowfish was an Indian and I thought he was God.”

  “And he capitalized on that,” said Heather. “I remember he’d say, ‘How!’ when we went for our checkups and hold up his hand like some movie Indian.”

  “A good way to keep a child from being afraid to go to the dentist,” said Victoria. She turned to Scott. “Did you or Wesley drop by the clinic for a visit when you came back?”

  “I did,” said Scott. “Guess you did, too, right, Wes?”

  Wesley nodded.

  “What about you, Heather?”

  “When I lost a filling earlier I went off Island to have it fixed.” Heather glanced over at Victoria. “Does that answer your question?”

  “I think it does.”

  “My dentist was Dr. Demetrios. She was kind of scary with that sleek dark hair pulled back tight and her accent. I can imagine her poisoning someone.”

  Inwardly, Victoria winced. But she recovered and asked, “Did you keep in touch with her?”

  “No way.” Heather shook her head.

  CHAPTER 42

  The phone rang while Victoria was eating her supper. Elizabeth had gone back to the harbor. It was Casey.

  “Are you at work?” asked Victoria. “It’s Saturday.”

  “You forget. The president is coming. Just called to ask how things are going.”

  “I talked to the four Wilmington grandchildren this afternoon and I’m not sure I learned much. They all disliked their grandmother, and they had talked together about killing her.”

  “They told you that?”

  “Fantasies, I suspect,” said Victoria. “All had been patients at the clinic and knew their way around.”

  Victoria pushed her plate with her half-eaten meal aside.

  “Any connections to Vivian?”

  “The only person who seemed to know Vivian was Susan, who thought she was an adequate receptionist, but called her mousy.”

  “Have you ruled them out?”

  “No,” said Victoria. “They have strong motives for killing their grandmother and were careful about not letting me know too much.”

  “Do you think they might have worked together?”

  Victoria thought about it. “If they did, it was the three who’d moved off Island who worked together. They’re hostile to Susan, especially after learning she inherited the property.”

  “What about Susan?”

  “Much as I like Susan, I can’t rule her out.”

  “No?”

  “She’d poked around in her grandmother’s papers and found that her grandmother intended to change her will to cut Susan out of inheriting the house and property.”

  “Whew. That would do it.”

  “Susan knows the clinic and its staff and knew Vivian. The others didn’t seem to know her, although I’m not sure they weren’t playing dumb.”

  “Are you busy now?” Casey asked.

  “You mean, right now? I’m eating my supper.”

  “I could use some help on another batch of names that just came in. Care to help me vet them?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll give you fifteen minutes to finish supper, and then I’ll come by.”

  “Come right now and I’ll give you a cup of coffee.”

  “I’d love to, but I honestly don’t have time. See you shortly. Bye.” Casey hung up.

  * * *

  The batch of names took Victoria an hour to go through and identify. Included in the names was Lockwood’s. She pointed this out to Casey.

  “Yeah, I saw his name. You’re not the one doing this, remember? I am. I’ll put a notation next to his name. Don’t worry about it, Victoria.”

  “Does anyone know where he is now?”

  “He was staying at the hostel, but I checked and they told me he’d left. I’ve alerted the other five police departments to watch out for him. I don’t think he’s a threat to the president, but who knows? If the president of the United States gets in the way of Lockwood, it’s a concern for sure. We need to locate him.”

  “I’ll keep ears and eyes open,” said Victoria.

  * * *

  The next day after church, Victoria went through her notes. On her list of everyone even remotely connected with the clinic, she checked off the most likely suspects.

  Dr. Mann, certainly. She put a check next to his name. He resented this odious woman who turned out to be his birth mother. He needed money to support the clinic, and Mrs. Wilmington had indicated that she was leaving him a sizable amount. It was he who had reported to the hospital the phone call Vivian had received. He was her number one suspect. The only drawback was that he was too obvious a suspect. If he was found guilty, that was the end of his clinic and his hopes to acquire Mrs. Wilmington’s fortune.

  On the clinic staff, the second most likely was Dr. McBride, Mrs. Wilmington’s dentist, and she put a check next to her name. McBride had hoped to capture the attentions of Dr. Mann, who’d managed to keep his marriage a secret from most of his staff. She, too, was too obvious a suspect.

  Dr. Minnowfish, Dr. Demetrios, Roosevelt Mark, she crossed out. She thought about Jane Douglas and put a faint pencil line through her name. Why should she doubt Jane’s innocence? She thought about that and erased the pencil line. She decided she felt uneasy about the way Jane was willing to join the clinic staff in order to get even with Dr. Mann. Was she cold-blooded enough to be able to kill Mrs. Wilmington and lay the blame on Dr. Mann or Dr. McBride? She thought about Jane’s baby and put back the faint pencil line she’d erased.

  Arthur Morgan she would have to talk to again. How would he react when he was faced with the fact that the father
of Jane’s baby was actually Dr. Mann? Victoria had put a light pencil line through his name the first time through, but erased it. She would talk to him again. Besides, she would like to see that magnificent rhododendron again before it finished blooming.

  She put a check next to Susan’s name as not only likely, but the one with motive and opportunity. Arsenic, Victoria was convinced, was more easily available than Casey suggested.

  It was quite possible that the other three Wilmington grandchildren had collaborated in killing their grandmother. The three had made no secret of their feelings about their grandmother. When she’d met with them, she’d had the sense that the three were a bit too complaisant in playing their game of imagined murder.

  The call to Vivian announcing Mrs. Wilmington’s death was key. The killings were connected, she felt sure, and the killer had to have known about the call. Would any of the grandchildren have heard about it?

  * * *

  Elizabeth came home late that evening, exhausted, cranky, and hungry. She went upstairs to take a shower. By the time she came downstairs again, Victoria had cooked spinach, scrambled two eggs, made toast, and had a pot of tea waiting for her.

  “Exactly what I needed, Gram. Thank you.”

  They sat at the cookroom table and while Elizabeth ate she told her grandmother about the preparations going on in the harbor. “You know how tiny the harbormaster’s shack is?”

  Victoria nodded.

  “Five Secret Service guys were in there getting in our way and keeping us from getting anything done.”

  “In what way?”

  “We’d get a radio call from a boat asking about accommodations in the harbor and these macho guys insisted on taking the call and checking the caller out, sure it was some terrorist hoping to bring his sailboat into the harbor with a load of explosives.”

  “I thought the harbor was closed for the week around the visit.”

  “It is. I wanted to tell the caller the harbor is closed and suggest they go to Falmouth. But no, every radio call had to be checked out.”

  “I’m sure they can’t be too careful. After all, it is the president.”

  “Then why don’t they just take over and let the rest of us go home?” Elizabeth took a ferocious bite of her toast. “They might as well. They’re keeping us from doing anything useful. There isn’t room enough in the shack for all those huge guys plus us.”