Unnatural Causes

by Dawn Eastman

  “Dr. LeClair, hello,” he said in a raspy voice.

  He tried to sit up, and Katie stepped forward to help him, finding the remote that worked the bed and pushing the button that would raise his head.

  “Hello, Christopher,” she said. “How are you doing?”

  He closed his eyes. “I’ve been better.”

  Katie pulled up a visitor chair. She didn’t know how long he would be able to talk, so she had to get right to the point. “Christopher, I came to check on you but also to ask you some questions.”

  He opened his eyes and gestured at the cup of water sitting on the tray by the bed.

  Katie picked it up and held the straw out to him.

  He nodded his thanks.

  “Beth and I have been . . . looking into Ellen’s death,” Katie began. “We never thought it was suicide, and Beth knew her mother had been doing some research.”

  Christopher nodded. “It’s true.”

  “What’s true?”

  “Marilyn Talbot is my half-sister. I’ve known forever, but my mother convinced me that the business would fail if I shared ownership with her,” he said. He stopped talking, and Katie thought that was all he was going to say.

  “My mother hated her. I realize that now. She was furious with my father for the affair and did everything she could to make Marilyn’s life unpleasant. My father made me promise to watch out for her, and I did. But I should have told her the truth—especially after my mother died.”

  “Were you fighting with Ellen about it?”

  Christopher closed his eyes. Katie waited.

  “Christopher?”

  “She wanted me to tell Marilyn. She wanted Todd to have more of a stake in the restaurant, and I wanted to wait. I needed to talk to the lawyers and figure out how to take care of everything.”

  “How did Ellen find out?”

  Christopher sighed. “Some comment Beth made about Todd being color-blind triggered a memory. Ellen remembered a story my mother had told about my father’s color-blind troubles. She knew it was rare and started poking around.” Christopher stopped and breathed shallowly.

  Katie sensed there was more and waited.

  Christopher closed his eyes, and Katie worried he had fallen asleep. She pressed the button to put the head of the bed back down, and his eyes snapped open.

  “She finally confronted me about it, and I told her everything. She promised to let me tell Marilyn and Todd after I had talked to the lawyers.”

  “Thank you for telling me,” Katie said.

  “I wish I’d never kept it a secret.” Christopher sighed. He closed his eyes again, and this time Katie knew the medicine had taken effect. He’d be asleep for several hours.

  Katie walked back out to the parking garage thinking about what Christopher had told her. She was starting to understand what Marilyn might have meant about digging up old secrets.

  32

  Katie called ahead to her clinic and asked them to reschedule everyone. She needed to follow up on what Christopher had told her.

  “Lynn Swanson is already here,” Debra said. “Should I ask her to reschedule?”

  “No,” Katie said. “I’ll be there in five minutes, and I can see her. But reschedule the rest. Tell them I have a family emergency.”

  “Oh, no,” Debra said. “Is your brother okay?”

  “He’s fine. I just need an excuse.”

  “Oh, gotcha,” Debra said.

  Katie disconnected the call and turned off the highway at the Baxter exit.

  She rushed in the back door and dumped her bag and jacket on the chair. She walked toward the patient rooms and saw a chart in the bin outside of room five.

  Lynn Swanson. The paperwork on top just said, “Follow-up.” Inside the chart, Angie had logged the vitals and listed the chief complaint as, “Follow-up: refused to elaborate.” Katie could imagine Angie’s exasperation. She hated the idea of a renegade high-maintenance patient scheduling a fifteen-minute slot when they really needed forty-five minutes.

  Katie knocked and opened the door.

  Lynn was alone again. Katie noticed a healing bruise under her left eye. Probably three days old.

  Lynn looked up as Katie entered and smiled. Her face was transformed, and the years fell away. Katie approached her and held out her hand. Lynn grasped it with both of her own.

  “Dr. LeClair, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Katie said. “What for?”

  “The woman you referred me to has found a spot in a safe house. It’s all arranged.”

  Katie sat on her wheeled stool by the low counter.

  “That’s fantastic, Lynn. I’m really happy for you.”

  Lynn nodded, and her eyes teared up.

  “I need to make a few more arrangements, and then I’ll plan to leave during Eric’s poker night tonight. He never comes home before midnight, so we can be long gone by then.”

  “You’re sure he doesn’t have any idea?”

  Lynn shook her head.

  “I don’t think so. They told me to act as normal as possible. I think I’ve been the same as always.”

  Katie wondered if Eric had noticed the new glow of relief and excitement that Katie thought was a tangible energy in the room.

  Katie wrote her cell number on a card and handed it to Lynn.

  “Here’s my personal number if you need anything. You shouldn’t take your cell phone with you. It’s too easy to track someone that way.”

  “Yes, they told me that at the shelter. Thank you,” Lynn said. “I didn’t want to leave without seeing you to say good-bye. If it hadn’t been for you, I don’t know if I would’ve moved forward with this after Mrs. Riley died.”

  Katie briefly examined Lynn’s eye. She told her how to take care of it and to watch for swelling even though she knew it would heal up just fine.

  “I’ve had worse, as you know,” Lynn said.

  Katie squeezed Lynn’s shoulder and nodded.

  “Please let me know how it goes,” Katie said.

  She stepped out of the room and leaned against the wall in the hallway. She knew this was often the most dangerous time in domestic violence cases. She hoped it would go well for Lynn and her kids.

  * * *

  Katie quickly wrote her note and left the chart in her office. She hid it among a stack of medical journals. She was being paranoid, but she didn’t want anyone to know what Lynn was up to until she had made her escape.

  She grabbed her bag and jacket and headed out to her car.

  She planned to talk to Marilyn about Christopher and whether she knew about the possibility that they were related.

  She’d gotten the address from Beth and plugged it into her phone’s GPS app. There were still many areas that Katie had never explored in Baxter. She followed the directions and found herself in a somewhat run-down neighborhood with small ranch houses and cottages. The yards consisted of burned-out grass, and many of the homes needed a new coat of paint.

  She spotted Marilyn’s address and parked just up the street. She was about to get out of her car when a blue pickup truck pulled into the driveway, and Eric Swanson climbed out. Now that she saw him from a distance like this, she recognized him as the man Marilyn had been talking to in the parking lot last week. Katie watched him go inside and then started her engine and pulled away from the curb. She’d have to try again later.

  Her next stop was Todd.

  She pulled up to a cute duplex that was just a couple of blocks from downtown. She knocked on the door and heard noises from deep inside the house.

  Todd pulled the door open with a big smile and a fading black eye and then took a step back.

  “Oh, I thought you were Beth,” he said. “Come in.”

  Katie stepped across the threshold, and Todd closed and bolted the door behind her.

  “Is Beth on her way here?” Katie asked.

  “I think so. She was going to stop to pick up something for lunch.”

  “I wanted to t
alk to you about Dan Riley.”

  Todd rolled his eyes and slumped onto one of the armchairs in his small living room. “Okay, shoot. You probably noticed we don’t really get along.” He pointed to his eye.

  “Yeah, I picked up on that.” Katie sat on the edge of the couch.

  “He’s just mad because Christopher put me in charge of the Chicago restaurant.”

  “Is that all it is?”

  “Yes, what else would it be?”

  “I’m sure Beth told you about our theory that you might be related to Christopher.”

  Todd sighed. “I don’t see what difference it will make. Of course, try to tell that to my mother.”

  “What do you mean?” Did Marilyn want him to claim his birthright? Did she harbor anger that it had been kept from her for so long?

  “Christopher has been very generous. I own part of the restaurant here in town, and I get to run it however I choose. If I’m some kind of half-nephew, I don’t think anything will change. But my mom is all worked up. She says Sylvia Riley made her feel like a loser her whole life.”

  “Why did Sylvia have anything to do with your mom?”

  “I assume Sylvia figured out that her husband had had an affair and took it out on my mom when she was young.” Todd waved his hand to encompass the whole room and maybe the whole town. “And she cleans for tons of people in town. She’s done it for years. When my father left us, apparently Sylvia treated my mom like some sort of Victorian-era servant. I have no idea why my mom put up with it.”

  “I’ve heard Sylvia could be difficult.”

  “That’s not the word I would have used.”

  Katie mentally checked off the question of whether Marilyn had known about her biological father. Apparently the answer was no.

  “How did you get along with Ellen Riley?”

  “Great. I adored her.” Todd leaned forward. “Ellen’s death has been horrible for everyone.”

  “How did she get along with Dan?”

  “Well, that’s another story,” Todd said. “He never warmed to her. I think that Christopher’s realization that Dan couldn’t be trusted with the business happened right around the time he met Ellen. Dan was convinced she had turned Christopher against him. Which is ridiculous because he did enough of that on his own.”

  “Do you think he would have harmed her?”

  Todd shook his head. “Actually, no. Dan is a bit of a bully. Like all bullies, he’s really just insecure and something of a coward. Plus, Beth told me Ellen had been injected with something. Dan wouldn’t know how to do that.”

  The doorbell rang, and Todd hopped up to answer it.

  Beth came into the room carrying paper bags from Pete’s sandwich shop.

  “I would have picked up some for you too, Katie.”

  Katie stood. “No, I should be going now. You two enjoy your lunch.”

  Katie settled into her car and headed toward the police station. She wanted to talk to Carlson. She was starting to wonder if this paternity thing was the key. Todd may not be impressed with the news, but what about Eric? Now that Katie knew they were brothers, Eric would have just as much claim as Todd. Would Eric fight Christopher for part ownership of the business?

  * * *

  She parked down the street from the police station, climbed out, and locked the car. She was almost to the door when Cecily rushed out. Her eyes were red and her makeup smeared. She rummaged in her bag and didn’t see Katie.

  Katie took a few steps toward her. “Cecily? Are you okay?”

  Cecily looked up in surprise. “Oh, it’s you. I’m just fine—can’t you tell?”

  Katie took a step back. She and Cecily had always been cordial, if not friendly. But this was a different level of unfriendly.

  “Can I help? What’s wrong?”

  “I think you’ve done quite enough. Why are you snooping around? You and Ellen are just the same. You can’t just leave things be.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Katie said. She heard the edge to her own voice and worked to keep her temper in check. But her mind flashed to the page in Sylvia’s book about Cecily’s past. Did she think Katie had found out about that? Or was this somehow about Nick?

  Cecily stepped closer and brought her face inches from Katie’s. “I know what you’re up to, and it’s not going to work.” She turned and stalked up the street.

  Katie felt her heart racing, and her head pounded. She took deep breaths to calm down. She hadn’t been threatened like that since a middle school run-in with the class bully. She didn’t like the feeling.

  She continued to the police station and went inside.

  The same young woman was sitting at the desk as last time. Katie approached and asked if Carlson was in.

  “Yup, let me find him for you.” She hopped up from her seat and went to the door leading to the offices. She opened it and yelled, “Is the chief back there?”

  She listened for a moment and then turned to Katie. “Okay, you can go back.” She held the door wide, and Katie walked through.

  John Carlson appeared from one of the offices. “Hi, Doc. Sorry about that.” He tilted his head in the direction of the front. “We got a new intercom system, and no one knows how to use it yet.”

  He led her down the hall to his office. She sat again in the chair in front of his desk. Bubba’s smiling doggy face looked down at her from the wall.

  “What brings you here?” he asked. “You know I can’t tell you anything about an ongoing case.”

  “Two things,” Katie said. She slid the note that she had found on her porch across the desk. She’d sealed it in a ziplock bag.

  Carlson took it out and read it. Furrows appeared between his eyebrows, and his lips compressed to a thin line. He slid the note back in the bag without comment.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  Katie told him about not being able to sleep and going outside to find the note.

  Carlson drummed his fingers on the desk and stared at the photo of Bubba.

  Finally, he said, “You need to take this seriously. Why would you go outside in the middle of the night?”

  Katie shrugged. “I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted to see who was out there.”

  Carlson let out an exasperated breath. “I’ll send this out to the lab for fingerprints. I still don’t have the results from the first note. Promise me you’ll be more careful.”

  Katie nodded.

  Carlson pushed back from his desk. “If your second thing is questions about the case, I can’t help you.” He stood and gestured toward the door.

  “No, I’m bringing you some information.”

  His eyebrows twitched up, and he sat back in his chair. “Excellent. What have you got?”

  Katie told him about the likelihood that Marilyn was Christopher’s half-sister. And what that would mean for Dan and Christopher.

  “Interesting.” He opened his ever-present notepad. “I’d never heard these rumors, but I guess it would have been more my parent’s group who would have suspected. So you think Dan killed Ellen to protect his stake in the business?”

  Katie sensed a thawing in the atmosphere from just a moment earlier.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She leaned forward in her chair. “I assume Dan has an alibi?”

  Carlson held her gaze for a moment. Then she saw his shoulders relax.

  “He claimed he was in Chicago. And we never checked up on it—I mean he lives there, and we had no reason to suspect him. I’ll get one of the guys on it, and we’ll track it down.”

  “Also, someone told me they saw Christopher at his house that night hours before Ellen died.”

  Carlson smiled. “Mrs. Peabody?”

  “Yes,” Katie said with surprise.

  “She called me the other day. Told me exactly what she thought of my policing but shared her information anyway.” Carlson chuckled. “She’s just as terrifying now as she was when I was in school. But Christopher is in the clear. I checked his a
libi myself—he came straight from a meeting in Chicago to the hospital.”

  “Thank you for telling me,” Katie said.

  “Well, I didn’t want you trying to interview the poor guy in the ICU.”

  “Of course not,” Katie said.

  33

  That evening, Katie pored over her notes and followed up on some of the other people in Sylvia’s book. She’d been so focused on Nick and then Christopher that she hadn’t looked at some of the outlier possibilities.

  There was Cecily, who Katie was currently disposed to suspect of any number of crimes. If she thought there was an affair between Ellen and Nick, would she have killed her friend? Did the friendship fizzle because Ellen had mentioned Cecily’s secret past or because of Nick?

  Dan was still a possibility. He had a temper and had possibly seen Ellen as a threat, but surely someone would have recognized him if he had come to town that night. And how would he have gotten Demerol?

  Then Katie changed tactics and looked at the problem from the point of view of opportunity. Who had access to Demerol and access to Ellen’s house?

  She was back to Nick or Cecily. Either of them could have taken Demerol from the clinic, and both could have gotten into Ellen’s house. She would have let them in herself.

  Katie kept circling back to the hoodie-wearing stranger that Mrs. Peabody had seen. She was convinced it was Christopher because he had a key . . .

  Her phone buzzed with a text message from Lynn: I’m sorry to ask this of you, but I can’t take my dog to the safe house. If I leave him behind, Eric might hurt him. He’s threatened as much in the past. I know it’s a lot to ask, but can you take him for a little while, just until things settle down?

  A dog in trouble was Katie’s weakness.

  Katie sent back a message: Yes, I’ll take him. Where’s the dog? I’ll come get him.

  What followed was a list of directions that seemed to wend their way into the woods. Lynn sent a photo of a small cabin: We left Samson with my friend for the evening until you can come get him. Thank you, Doctor! I’ll be in touch soon.