Dying for Compassion (The Lady Doc Murders Book 2)

by Dr. Barbara Golder

  Reasonable doubt in spades. First, I would make another call to Suskind and then a call to arrange a return charter. I wanted to go home.

  ***

  It was time to go clean Señora Fiona’s room. Isa Robles, one of the three women who shared the big house with Dr. Wallace, gathered her supplies. It was nice to be distracted from the worries about the lady doctor, Señora Doctora to them, Lady Doc to the Anglos in town, who seemed to like her one moment and did not quite know what to do with her the next.

  Señor Patterson called her to do the cleaning of Señora Fiona’s residence. The room was not part of a crime scene, he said, but the police in Colorado were asked to take a walk through it for the police in Ireland and found nothing there. Everything had been packed up, and the place was empty of personal belongings. Even so, the regular cleaning staff refused to go in, because the woman had died so publicly, and her rental of the room did not include cleaning services in the first place. The condo management was making a fuss. No matter that she died somewhere else, they would not go in, and the place needed to be cleaned. It was easier just to take care of it himself. Would Isa help? He would be glad to pay her; he was sure he could get reimbursed. Father Matt said she did good work.

  Por supuesto, of course, of course. Right away. But Dios mio! First Señor Eoin left and Señora Doctora was in a terrible mood, then word came that he was in jail, then Señora Doctora left, then the small priest came to live with them, and then he died. Somehow cleaning the house of an absent woman seemed unimportant, and she let it go for a day. But now she would scour from top to bottom. It was a good way to think, and thinking was all she could do. Isa Robles pulled a coat on over her tidy black uniform, the one she bought herself when she got regular jobs in the good part of town. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail; her coat was new and warm, and her sneakers were the best, bright red, a gift from Señor Ben, the redheaded son of Señora Doctora, the one who worked magic with computers.

  No one told her very much about all that was happening with Señora Doctora because of Señor Eoin, except for Padre Matt. She knew that Señor Eoin was in jail for murder, for killing the woman who claimed to be his wife even though she had left him long ago. Isa held no illusions about the ability of a passionate man to do violence, but for Señora Doctora’s sake, she hoped that was not the case this time. She thought it might not be. But then, Señor Eoin had broken the door at the Center; that she overheard from the man at the morgue when she delivered some papers to Señora Doctora before she left. He could be a violent man, as well as a passionate one. She worried about that.

  The day was bright and sunny. She opened the curtains over the window that overlooked the ski slopes to let in the light — the better to see, the better to think. There were a few dishes in the sink, crusted and hard with some sort of red sauce and cheese, a glass with pale, brown water in the bottom, and a coffee cup with a skim of mold on top of the black coffee remains. Isa wrinkled her nose as she disposed of it in the sink. They should have called sooner. Then she drew some water in the sink for the dishes to soak and went to the bedroom to strip the bed.

  She pulled back the bedclothes, made short work of the sheets, and then grabbed the few clothes that were in the hamper and the towels from the bathroom, and set them washing. The architect designed the bedroom with a washer and dryer in the huge closet. She liked that. If she ever had a house of her own, she’d do that, too. She didn’t think she would need such a big closet, though, and this one was empty, with only a few hangers and the plastic from some dry cleaning scattered on the floor. The closet was almost as big as her bedroom in the old gray house in Montrose.

  Señora Fiona was not a tidy woman. Her bathroom was filled with scattered tissues and towels smeared with makeup. The sink was scummed with soap and a few red hairs clung to the sides. The counter had spills of toothpaste and something sweet-smelling on it. And there were burned matches in the wastebasket, as well as a small bottle with a dropper top and a bit of yellowish liquid still in it. She smiled at the paper towels on the counter, untouched, not a one in the wastebasket. Señor Eoin’s rooms were much different: barely touched, always clean, even down to the sink, with a pile of paper towels in the trash to attest to his fastidiousness. Men — women for that matter — who wiped out their sinks after they used them were rare indeed, and this one was not that kind. Nor did she expect her to be. She hummed as she cleaned.

  On the wall under the window in the bedroom was a desk with papers scattered over the wooden top. She collected them as she had been instructed and put them neatly into the cardboard box that the sheriff had provided. Someone else could decide what to do with them. She sealed the box and put her initials over the tape, just as he told her to.

  Isa dusted the top of the desk and reached to the side to empty the shredder, then frowned and inspected the teeth that showed through the black opening. It was a fancy one, like the one Señora Doctora had, with a deep, narrow slot for things to be put in. She saw a long, rectangular notecard stuck in the mechanism. She started to push the button to continue the shredding but hesitated. This was not the sort of thing she usually found in these machines. It was mostly bills and important papers. This was different. From the part of the envelope that still stuck out of the shredder, she could see that it was a letter that had not been sent. She started to pull out the paper as gently as she could but stopped, remembering the bullet in the wall she had found when cleaning the house of another dead person.

  The paper was thick, scented with perfume and so studded with seeds and flowers that it had gotten stuck in the blades. She had seen similar paper in some of the fancy stores in town, shocked at the expense of it. The paper was covered in fancy writing with purple ink. It was hard to read because of the way the letters were made and because the very bottom part hung in strips beneath the mouth of the shredder, but she was able to figure it out with enough concentration and a few prayers. It was a letter to Señor Eoin, that was obvious. But the return, in the top corner, the one she could see best, had a name, the name of the woman who claimed to be his wife — this one she was cleaning up after.

  It was all she needed. She stopped cleaning, stepped back out of the room, and called Padre Matt, explaining what she had found. Then she sat on the sofa, carefully in the middle, her hands in her lap, until she heard a knock on the door.

  She opened it to admit both the priest and the sheriff. The sheriff greeted her by name, and the priest gave her a quick hug.

  “This way,” she said. She showed them the shredder. Padre Matt watched silently as the sheriff put on gloves and backed the envelope out of the metal teeth, and then he photographed it front and back. Isa peered over his shoulder. It had not been opened. She was right.

  When that was done, the sheriff took his knife out of his pocket and carefully slit the top of the envelope to read the contents. He gave out a low whistle and smoothed the paper carefully. The purple ink and the flowery letters made it hard reading, Isa suspected, but somehow he managed. When he read it aloud, it took her breath away.

  “All I wanted from you was for you to love me again, and you don’t. I can’t live knowing how I’m going to die from this brain cancer I have. I don’t want to die, and I can’t live. With you, I might have been able to do it, but without you, I won’t. If you’d just loved me, you could have had your Jane in a few months. But you didn’t, and now you’ll never have her, either. She’ll never marry you now. She doubts you too much, and she’ll always be just a little afraid of you and that temper of yours. I’ve seen to that. You never could resist rising to the bait. Goodbye, Eoin. I am going back to Ireland, and I’m going to make an end of it — to me and to us — once and for all.”

  The sheriff slid the note back into its envelope, shreds and all, tucked it in a plastic bag, which he then put in his pocket, and looked up at her. More to herself than anyone else, Isa said, “It is important, like the bullet was,” she said, remembering finding something important to Seño
ra Doctora once before. “Only,” she paused, “I was very careful this time. I think it means Señor Eoin did not kill that woman.”

  The sheriff smiled at her. “There’s more to it than this, but yes, I think that’s exactly what it means, Isa.”

  “Good,” she sighed, smiling. Then, taking a long look around her, she asked, “Then may I finish cleaning? Señor Eoin should be back soon, yes?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  January 29

  Back home in Telluride, coffee seemed the right choice for morning. I supposed I left my taste for tea behind me in Ireland. I had decompressed with a few days visiting my pregnant daughter, Zoe, at her Park Slope walk-up. We took long walks in the neighborhood, dreaming of the not-too-distant day when she’d be another Brooklyn mommy pushing a stroller along the sidewalks. I helped with preparing the nursery; we explored local restaurants and spent hours in the botanical gardens. And I regained my taste for coffee at her breakfast table, where the events of recent days and Eoin were never mentioned. Zoe, my oldest, knows me well. She was content to let me stew in my own thoughts for a while. But fish and visitors (even moms) start to smell after three days or so, and I left New York for Telluride, mended at least a bit in spirit, with a promise to return as her delivery date approached.

  The front door squeaked a bit as I tiptoed onto the porch; so much for trying to sneak out into the early morning light. I hoped the sound was not loud enough to wake anyone, but figured the doyenne of the house had not only heard me, but she very likely was on her way to find out where I was going. Pilar would fuss at me, but I needed more peace and quiet than the breakfast table in the big, green Victorian would provide.

  The Bean was just opening when I arrived. I ordered a cup of American and one of their muffins and took my customary spot on the green bus bench in the window, the better to watch Telluride go by.

  Sadie Jackson, on her way down the street, passed by, looked up, caught my eye, and came in. Without preamble or ordering coffee, she sat opposite me. I nodded a greeting.

  “I have something to tell you.”

  “I know about the Gleason kids. Good job, though Lucy had no right to hire you to do that.”

  “No, it’s about the other case. Josie Beck. She was murdered.”

  “Old news. I know that. I can’t prove it.”

  “I can. I don’t think it matters, because there’s nothing except my say-so, but I can prove it to you.”

  She had my attention. “Say more.”

  “I talked with the nurse, Mavis. We’re friends; we both volunteer at Proserpine. She all but admitted to me that she gave her a dose of potassium chloride. She knows the mom. She’s a mess because of the kid. She couldn’t handle it anymore, just waiting for her to die. And the dad wouldn’t listen to her, shut her out. All he could see was Josie, and all he wanted to do was everything he could do to save her when we all know he couldn’t.”

  I tried to remain impassive. I managed, but it was hard.

  “It’s not right, you know, to let that kid suffer so much. If the Dad hadn’t insisted on trying every last treatment option, none of which was going to help her, she would have died long ago. All that treatment did was prolong her suffering. That kid has been dying from the day she was diagnosed, before that even. All that happened was that medicine made the dying longer and worse.”

  I hated to admit it, but she had a point. Maybe there is a point at which it’s best to step aside. Maybe my noble lawsuit on behalf of Josie wasn’t the best idea after all. Maybe it was ill-advised lawyerly jousting at windmills, and the wrong ones at that.

  As if reading my mind, she continued, “Her dad was treating himself, not Josie. He couldn’t let go, and he tortured that kid and his wife because of it.”

  “And…”

  “But. It’s a but. The but is that Mavis had no business taking that decision into her own hands. That’s not what Proserpine is about. It’s about helping people manage their own care, not taking it out of their hands. And the law doesn’t provide for ending the suffering of children. At least not yet. Maybe it should.” She looked me square in the eyes. “But it seems to me that we have to play by the rules, whatever they are. The rules say Mavis couldn’t do that.”

  She surprised me.

  “Anyway, I wanted you to know.”

  I considered her astonishing revelation for a moment. “What made you try to find out?”

  Sadie looked genuinely confused and took some time to gather her thoughts. I had my coffee and a muffin and let her think. “I think it was that old priest. Nothing he said. More like who he was. I can’t really put my finger on it.” Her face grew thoughtful. “He’s the one who gave me the key to figuring out the poisoning deaths.”

  To me, too, I thought. Sadie’s breakthrough had fostered my own. Funny how that works.

  Sadie continued, “Once I had that out of the way, I couldn’t stop thinking about Josie. Something about it bothered me. Mostly, I guess, that you were so sure it was a murder, and I had to agree when I looked at it that I thought so, too. Letting someone die is one thing. Murder is another. So I thought I’d at least try to find out, for my own sake, if not for you. It seemed right.”

  “Would you be willing to testify to what she said to you in court, if it came to that?” I wasn’t sure what we could do with it, but I’d be willing to try. Sadie would be an unlikely ally if I did.

  Sadie looked puzzled. “Sure, but why would anyone take my word for it?”

  I refrained from an explanation of the rules of evidence and exceptions to hearsay and statements against interest. I just told her, “You’d be surprised. They might. But I doubt it will come to that. But I would like to take this to the state’s attorney and to the Board of Nursing. Regardless of our differences, can we agree Mavis isn’t fit to care for patients?”

  Sadie nodded. “Sure. I guess I can help.” She took a deep breath and drew herself up and looked me in the eye. “I’d like my job back.”

  I smiled. The ulterior motive revealed. And here I was thinking that Sadie had had some sort of epiphany. I told her no, but it took me a bit of reflection to make the decision.

  On the way back to the house after my meeting with Sadie, I had a lot to think about. On the one hand, I didn’t want to risk having someone with Sadie’s views on death in my office; that’s my prerogative. On the other hand, she was good at what she did, the risk for the office was small given the current social climate in Colorado, and she’d demonstrated her desire to adhere strictly to the letter of the law in regard to assisted suicide, which was something. My better self rose to challenge me: if those of us with different ideas on the topic never talk to each other, how would we ever come to deal with the problems such topics raise? I suppose it would ultimately boil down to how much I wanted to risk myself in the process, and right now, for my lesser self, that wasn’t much. I stood by my refusal, but felt the better for hashing it out in my head.

  I had no sooner walked into the kitchen than Pilar told me that I was needed at Tom Patterson’s office immediately. Given my state of mind regarding Sadie and the fact that I have a streak of paranoia a mile wide and just as deep, all I could imagine was some disaster involving the Center, so I headed off without so much as a nibble at the breakfast Pilar was loading onto the kitchen counter for the rest of the tribe.

  I found the sheriff, boots up on the desk and on the phone. I expected a tongue lashing for barging in but instead, he just hung up his phone, dropped his dusty size-elevens to the floor, and rocked back in his chair, hands behind his head in an attitude of complete comfort, an enigmatic look on his face. It unsettled me. Father Matt was in the chair opposite the desk. He looked like the Cheshire cat. Something was up.

  “Well, well, the wanderer has returned. How was Ireland? I see by the papers that your Irishman was released.” Tom half-stood and shook my hand.

  “He was? I expected he would be, but I haven’t seen the papers. I figured after I convinced the powers that b
e that Fiona didn’t die from Black Leaf 40, it was only a matter of time.”

  “What?” Tom seemed surprised. “I thought it was because we convinced them she committed suicide with it.”

  Now it was my turn. “Suicide?” It made sense. Completely. It even explained that prescription from Jennie Brownmiller and the barbiturates that were found. Not enough to kill her, but there. Had Fiona hoped to be asleep when the nicotine did its job?

  How could I have been so blind? Working alone, I supposed, with no one to bounce things off of. Life, even forensic life, is better in community than it is lived in isolation.

  “Yup.” Tom shoved a piece of paper across the desk to me. I read it, and I felt my eyes grow wide. There it was: the final piece. The doubt I created was reasonable, after all. I wanted to cry. I was relieved. I was ashamed. I’d sort out the other emotions later.

  “What’s this about not dying from the insecticide?” Father Matt asked. “We had it figured — and so did Peter Suskind — that Fiona was looking around for a way to kill herself that would implicate Eoin. Black Leaf 40 certainly did that.”