by Ann Simas
“Wait!” Andi called after her. “Do you mind if we go into your room to get the boxes we put away earlier in your closet?”
Dotty waved over her shoulder. “No problem. See you later.”
Jack and Andi climbed the steps and knocked, per Vaughn’s instructions. He opened the door almost immediately. The two of them stepped inside and Andi made introductions. If Vaughn thought it unusual she had brought a detective with her, he didn’t show it.
He took their coats and led them into a home office that also served as a library. A tray with a coffee carafe, two mugs, and a plate of cookies had been laid out on a coffee table centered among four easy chairs. “I’ll get another cup,” he said. “Be right back.”
“While you’re doing that,” Andi said, “I need Jack to help me carry down a couple of boxes from Dotty’s room.”
Vaughn frowned. “Boxes?”
Andi put a hand on his arm. “I’ll explain. I promise.”
Minutes later, coffee poured, the three of them sat in the circle of chairs. Vaughn watched Andi expectantly. Andi twisted the fingers of her hands together, still uncertain how to begin. Jack waited patiently.
Take a page from Nike, she thought. Just do it. “Vaughn, I know you don’t know me well, so what I have to say may be…unbelievable to you.” She leaned down and withdrew her journal from her purse and set it on the coffee table. Vaughn’s eyes followed her every movement. “I’ll answer all your questions, because I’m sure you’ll have some, but if you can, please wait until I’ve told you what’s been happening.”
Vaughn gripped his coffee mug tightly and nodded a jerky acquiescence.
Andi began at the beginning. Her first day at Orion’s Belt. The scent of smoke no one else could smell. The voices. “One day, one of the voices said something to me I found disturbing. You see, up until that point, what I heard was always” —she paused a moment— “upbeat, for lack of a better word, and this one seemed frantic and trapped. Earlier, another voice had urged me to talk to Father Riley at St. Gemma’s, but it wasn’t until this new voice spoke to me that I finally did.”
Vaughn opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. Andi guessed he’d been about to question the Father Riley tie-in. She gave him the particulars that led them to concluding that the smoke might be coming from the crematorium at the mortuary. “I marked a calendar with every incident for Phil Nelson, so he could confirm cremations at the date and times I heard the voices, but before we could meet, the distressed voice spoke to me again.”
Andi took in a deep, shaky breath. “Since she was having conversations with me, I thought why not just ask her who she is?”
The silence in the room became almost deafening.
Andi’s voice dropped to a whisper. “She said she was Sherry Spence.”
Vaughn’s face went completely white, but still, he didn’t speak.
Andi took him through the events of the malfunctioning grinder, calling Jack in, Jack’s visit to the Medical Examiner, the lost samples from the autopsy, the resubmission, the determination of mercury poisoning.
With unsteady hands, Vaughn set his mug on the table. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and cradled his head in his hands. His body shook with silent sobs. When he finally raised his tear-stained face, he asked, “What did she say to you, exactly, that made you even suspect that she’d been…murdered?” He almost choked on the last word.
Andi handed her Smokie journal to him. “Begin reading on the last page and move back from there. I recorded every word exactly as Sherry said it to me.”
Andi and Jack waited in silence while Vaughn read and reread those pages half a dozen times. When he looked up at her, Andi said, “I can’t explain any of this Vaughn. I don’t know why I hear the voices. Or how. I just do. Not one of them has ever asked me for anything except one lady who wanted me to say hello to Father Riley for her. Not one of them ever seemed to mind that they were crossing over into the afterlife. Not one. Not until Sherry.”
“Dear God in Heaven,” Vaughn said. He put the journal down and swiped at his eyes and cheeks with his fingertips before he picked up a napkin to finish the job. “You think Dawna Stimack murdered my wife.”
Jack took up the gauntlet. “It’s a good possibility. Andi has relayed information to me, passed from your mother- and father-in-law, that Sherry was experiencing some pain from dental work, as well as some that may have been related to stress from her business. The Spences said Dr. Stimack gifted her with copious personal care products, as well as candles, to utilize in aromatherapy treatments for her pain.”
Vaughn nodded, his jaw tightly clenched, his eyes burning with anger.
“The Spences also told Andi that Dawna was profuse in her comments to Sherry about you. Comments that were beyond complimentary, even bordering on egregious, in terms of her personal feelings for you.”
Again Vaughn nodded. “Sherry only went to Dawna because she’d heard rumors that Dawna was having a difficult time getting her practice up to speed.” With a trembling hand, he picked up his mug and drained it. “Sherry felt sorry for her and thought maybe she’d matured since high school, that Dawna had outgrown the remorseless competition she’d exhibited with her. We had a laugh the first time Sherry came home and told me Dawna was ‘hot’ for me. After that, it became problematic and neither of us found it amusing anymore.”
His churning despair and underlying anger hung like a dense fog in the room, though he managed to keep his tone level and his emotions in check.
“Sherry was almost fanatical about taking care of her teeth. Three cleanings a year, daily flossing, brushing three times a day. Who gets a cavity when they’re thirty, for crissakes? We should have been suspicious from the get-go.” He dropped his head into his hands again. “Sherry was so goddamned uncomfortable being subjected to Dawna gushing about me. She just had to sit there with her mouth open and take it. She thought about finding another dentist to complete the work, but Dawna had already done the prep and ordered the crowns, so Sherry decided to stick it out.”
“What do you know about the candles and personal care products Sherry brought home?” Jack asked.
Vaughn dropped his hands and shrugged. “After the kids were in bed at night, Sherry started taking a hot soak in the tub. She religiously lit every freaking candle, put the bath gels in the water, and then slathered on all that crap Dawna gave her.”
“Did you ever join her in the tub or use any of the products Dawna gave her?”
Vaughn seemed to come out of his grief. “What’s going on here? Why are you asking me questions like that?” His eyes left Jack and focused on Andi. “A promise is a promise. Tell me about the boxes.”
“Jack’s not asking because he wants to know the intimate details of your life, Vaughn.” Andi stood and went to the two boxes, which they’d left on the desk. She peeled back the tape, revealing the contents of each. With precision, she told him what she’d learned about elemental mercury poisoning through lit candles, or introduced in the amalgam used to fill cavities, and how it could be used to taint products like fluoride toothpaste and personal care products. “If you shared that tub with Sherry, or were even in the room with her when those candles were burning, you may be at risk of having been poisoned, too.”
Vaughn stared at her as if she’d grown two heads. “You’re shitting me!” He peered into the boxes, then began to reach in.
“Don’t!” Andi and Jack said at the same time.
She asked, “Did you?”
“No. She wanted just one hour a day to herself. I gave her that.”
“Andi used gloves when she boxed all this stuff up,” Jack said. “Elemental mercury is toxic. We have no idea, just standing here, if it’s affecting us adversely.”
“I feel like I’ve just been dropped down some stupid rabbit’s hole,” Vaughn said, a dazed look on his face. “You’re telling me that you think Dawna put poison in all this stuff, knowing it would kill Sherry?”
“It’s like
ly she did. The ME has confirmed your wife definitely died from mercury poisoning.”
“All because Dawna wasn’t kidding when she told Sherry she wanted a man like me?” He rammed the fingers of both hands through his hair as if he’d gone crazy for a moment. “I wouldn’t give that bitch the time of day if I passed her on the street.”
“So you never gave her any encouragement?” Jack asked.
“Are you nuts?” Vaughn demanded, obviously incredulous.
Andi silently seconded that question, even though she knew Jack had to ask it.
“Look,” Vaughn said, his tone patient, if angry, “I only met Dawna Stimack once. We had a function at the country club and she was there, on the prowl, despite the fact that she was with a date. Any guy in his right mind would run like hell in the other direction if a woman like that hit on him. Besides that, I loved my wife. I still love my wife. Sherry is the woman I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. Sappy as it sounds, we were soul mates. I had no reason to look elsewhere.” His voice caught. He swallowed convulsively several times, trying to get his words out. “I don’t know how I’m going to survive the rest of my life without her.”
Jack nodded, as though Vaughn’s words had convinced him of what he needed to know.
“What are you going to do next?” Vaughn asked. “And just so you know, I’d like nothing better than to go over to Stimack’s place right now and choke the living shit out of her.” He took a shuddering breath. “The only thing stopping me is that my kids need a father.”
“Understood,” Jack said quietly, but with steel in his tone.
He met Vaughn’s gaze unflinchingly and Andi sensed some kind of male bonding thing going on.
“I’m asking you now to let me take this stuff in and have it tested and fingerprinted. First things first, we’ll go through both boxes. Before I put each item in an evidence bag, I’d like you to verify that it came from this house. Andi had the foresight to take pictures of everything in place before she boxed it up, so that may help you remember, if you’re uncertain about anything.”
Vaughn grasped Andi’s hand. “Thank God you called when you did today, Andi. If you hadn’t come over to help Dotty, all this stuff would have gone in the trash pick-up tomorrow and been lost to us forever.”
Andi had just been thinking the same thing.
Maybe Father Riley was right. God had allowed her to hear the Smokies for a reason. She had a mission to accomplish.
CHAPTER 21
Andi was wasted by the time she got home.
She barely got her teeth brushed and her pajamas on before she tumbled into bed and fell into a deep sleep.
If only it had been restful. Instead, she dreamed Dawna Stimack was inserting a syringe with a three-inch-long needle into her mouth. She was bound to the dental chair and her mouth was forced open by a block. A band had been placed around her forehead, securing her to the back of the chair. She had no way to escape the however-many ccs of mercury that were being injected into her. The pain that accompanied the injection seemed instantaneous.
Andi began to writhe in her bed. With an effort, she forced her eyes open. Her head felt like someone had split it open with a dull axe. She had a raging headache.
In the dark, she stumbled from the bed and into the kitchen where she kept the ibuprofen. Somehow, she managed to retrieve a glass from the cupboard and fill it with water. Her head hurt so bad, she did not even contemplate trying to make it back to the bed. Instead, she curled up in a ball on the floor of her kitchen and prayed the pain would abate soon.
Hours later, with the morning dawn filtering in, she awoke again, wondering why she wasn’t in her bed. And then it all came back to her, in living color.
Andi knew what she had to do.
Listening to Jack last night at Vaughn’s, talking to him afterward, she wondered if it would be a hard sell, getting a judge to issue a search warrant on Dawna Stimack’s dental office, based on what little evidence they had so far. If it was granted, and no mercury was found, it was even less likely that the judge would approve a warrant for her home. Even if he did, by the time the cops got there, Dawna would have already had an opportunity to clear out everything incriminating.
Andi pushed herself up off the floor. She hadn’t prepped her coffee pot the night before, so she got that going first, then went to the bathroom, where she had a shower and brushed her teeth. Standing in front of the mirror, she debated what kind of dental ailment she should concoct to get her into Dawna Stimack’s office quickly for an appointment.
Ready to go, but still over an hour before she had to leave for work, Andi turned on her laptop and plugged common dental problems into the search engine. Of all the articles and lists that came up, tooth sensitivity seemed to be the one she could claim without involving a boat load of appointments and dental work. The solutions to the problem ranged from simple (try a stannous fluoride toothpaste for a couple of weeks) to not-so-simple (direct fluoride applications, x-rays, gum surgery). Andi wanted to take care of her snooping in one visit, so she hoped Dawna prescribed the easiest solution.
She searched Family Concept Dentistry Edgerton, and made a note of business hours and the phone number. Dawna started early, at 7:00 a.m. Andi glanced at the clock on her laptop. 7:15. She picked up her smartphone and dialed. Within minutes, she had an appointment for the following Monday at 11:15. She was instructed to arrive fifteen minutes early to complete paperwork.
After she disconnected, Andi felt her nose to see if it had grown any. The last thing she wanted to do was turn into Pinocchio. It was intact, but she still experienced a twinge of uneasiness because she’d lied not once but twice in one phone call, the second falsehood being about not having dental insurance. The thing was, she didn’t want a bogus visit showing up on her insurance claims, and how much could an initial visit cost, anyway? She’d just ask for a cash discount and pay it out-of-pocket.
That task accomplished, she set about thinking how she was going to break it to Jack what she planned to do.
. . .
Andi met Sally at the food court promptly at 6:00 pm. Andi opted for pizza and Sally went for pasta. While they ate, they talked about Sherry. She got from the conversation that Vaughn had not shared the gist of her and Jack’s visit the night before with his in-laws. Andi was relieved. Better to wait until the crime lab had completed fingerprinting and tests had been run on everything before subjecting Sally and Eddie to this latest horror.
By nine o’clock, Andi was exhausted from shopping. Sally seemed to still have all her steam. “How do you do it?” she asked the older woman.
“I love shopping. Don’t ask me why. I can spend hours at it and not buy a single thing. Drives Eddie nuts.”
“I window shop on my lunch hour, but generally, when I actually have to go out and buy something, I’m ready to be done with it after an hour.”
Sally laughed. “You seemed to do all right this evening. A new dress for each of the girls and two for yourself. Your young man is sure to be pleased with both of them.”
Andi’s face grew warm. It was one thing to be thinking about Jack when deciding on which dresses to buy. It was quite another to have someone else aware of what she was doing.
“Which one are you going to wear to the birthday party?” Sally asked as they exited the mall. “I like the blue number with the large black dots. The fitted bodice and flare skirt were quite flattering.”
“Me, too.” The other dress, a black one, was sexier, but she thought that should be saved for when she and Jack finally had their dinner date. Alone. “I think my black flats will be cute with it.”
“Perfect. I’m looking forward to dressing up a little myself. Don’t do it so often these days. Eddie and I are mostly stay-at-homes.”
“The dresses you got for the girls will be darling for their first dress-up birthday dinner party.”
“I can hardly believe they’re five years old already. My, how the time flies by us!” She stopped dead in h
er tracks. “They’ll be going to kindergarten next fall and Sherry won’t be here to see it. That’s just not fair, is it?”
“No,” Andi agreed. It wasn’t fair at all.
. . .
Jack picked Andi up at quarter to six on Wednesday. On the way to Hemmers, she told him about the Smokies who had passed through since she’d last seen him. “And,” she added, “Sherry got information from the Smokie who said Dawna had murdered before.”
“The voices talk to each other?” Jack asked, shooting her a look of surprise.
“Apparently they can. Did you learn anything from Dr. Dodge?”
“He and his staff are searching computer records and also hard-copy files. Seems that they had some kind of computer crash a couple of years back and not everything has been re-entered into the database yet. It all takes time and he has only one part-time clerical assistant. What did Sherry tell you?”
“That the victim was an ‘old soul.’” Andi shifted slightly so she could watch Jack’s profile while they talked. “I’ve heard that term, but I never really gave it any thought, so I Googled it. It’s not a state of age, but a state of mind. She could have meant anyone from a child to an old-timer. What do you think?”
Jack spared her a glance, even as he put the signal on for a turn. “I think we need to look into Dawna Stimack’s life a little more and see who she knew who’s died and how she benefitted from it.”
Andi nodded. “I’m on your wave length, then. I spent some time researching—Dawna’s ex, the doctor she bought her practice from, the people who work in her office. I came up with a few possibilities.”
“Seriously?” Jack eased the Highlander up the driveway and shut off the engine. “You didn’t talk to anyone about this, did you?”
“No, not even Father Riley, though I did tell him about how things went when we saw Vaughn on Monday evening.”
“He met with Vaughn yesterday, right?”
Andi nodded.
“Have you talked to him since then?”
“No, but he wouldn’t share that conversation with me anyway.”