Cold Heart

by Karen Pullen

  Fern looked at me and feigned gritting her teeth. Iggy got on her nerves with his incessant chatter, no matter how charmingly delivered in his singsong drawl. We didn’t dare answer Iggy’s question—answers just fueled the flames of his verbal inspiration.

  He leaned on the mop pole. “It was robbery, they say, but in my opinion there were others who had their motives. I love the girl, bless her heart, but he was another one altogether. A type I know too well.”

  This sparked my interest. “How so, Iggy?”

  “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead.”

  “Speak away,” I said. Fern rolled her eyes as if to say, now you’ve done it.

  “I’ll tell you ladies, she put up with more than most wives would. Dirty movies, and the marijuana smell would choke you.”

  I wondered what else Iggy might have noticed. Housekeepers are privy to all the family dirt. “Did Temple know much about his—uh—interests?”

  “She knew and she didn’t, you know. I think she tried to pretend things were all right. On the surface, they looked fine, didn’t they? You ever see the picture they took at Christmas? The two of them, so good-looking, and the dear baby, in front of the Christmas tree? You’d say it was a storybook family from that picture. I see it’s gone from the bookshelf here. Did she take all those pictures to the thrift shop? The frames were nice, I know people like nice frames.”

  “The pictures were stolen the day of the murder,” I said, “along with personal items.”

  Iggy stopped mopping. “Stolen?”

  “Stolen,” said Fern. “Can’t imagine why.”

  Iggy frowned. “Why steal them, then donate them to the thrift shop?”

  I was puzzled. “Did you see them at the thrift shop?”

  “No, I assumed she’d bought them there. You know, since they still had Temple’s pictures in them. They were nice frames. I saw them yesterday, in her laundry room.”

  “Whose laundry room?” I asked, confused.

  The first time I visited June Devon, I noticed the quiet woods, the birds at the multiple feeders, the colorful paintings on her walls. This time, suspecting her laundry room contained items stolen from Kent Mercer, I noticed the seclusion. Here and there a mailbox signaled a home back in the woods, invisible to anyone traveling on the rutted bumpy lane. I asked Iggy whether he knew anyone else living out here.

  “That lighthouse mailbox, those folks are new. I do know two other families on this road. Tommy Wills coming up here on the left. He’s a Burlington Wills, not a Verwood Wills. The Budds down at the end.”

  “George and Ursula Budd?”

  “Yes. She’s in your grandma’s painting group, like I am.”

  I pulled into June’s driveway. Though the trees were greening, I could see Temple and Kent Mercer’s house a few hundred feet across the lake. In a few weeks leafy branches would hide the lake and those homes. Iggy stood behind me as I rang the doorbell. “I have a key, sugar, if no one comes,” he said.

  Ursula Budd opened the door. I had forgotten how tall she was. Her wiry hair added another two inches as it sprang up from her forehead. “Why Iggy! And Stella Lavender! What a surprise. June’s out shopping. What do you want?” She still seemed nervous at the sight of me.

  I showed her the search warrant. “I need to look in the laundry room. Where’s Erwin? I don’t want to disturb him.”

  “He’s outside. He likes to sit on the back porch this time of day.” She blocked the doorway, arms folded across her chest. “Shouldn’t we wait till June gets home? I don’t think I should let you poke around.”

  “We’re here in an official capacity,” I said.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  “It’s not something I can talk about,” I said. “Furthermore, would you mind waiting outside with Erwin?” It was protocol—I didn’t need civilians wandering about “helping.”

  Her tilted green eyes flashed in irritation, but she opened the door to let us in, then went out to the back porch. I peeked to make sure they were settled in. Erwin was sitting in a wicker rocker. He had a rubber ball in each hand, slowly squeezing, first the right, then the left. He turned his head to stare at me with unblinking eyes. I noticed he’d had a shave and a haircut since I last saw him, remarkably improving his appearance. He looked almost well, with a glimmer in his eyes. Intelligence? Or panic and confusion?

  Iggy led me through the kitchen to the laundry room. “I was waiting for a couple of things to finish drying so I could make the beds and go home. I picked up the broom and started sweeping. It gets all linty in here from the dryer. I stuck the broom behind the hot-water heater, and there’s this big plastic bag. Well, I guess you’d call me nosy, but I wondered why she’d stuffed anything back there, so I looked in it and saw the pictures and little glass things, kinda nice. Here, I’ll show you.”

  He reached for the bag, but I stopped him. “We’ll need to get fingerprints, Iggy. Let me do it.” I put on gloves and carefully lifted the bag out. As Iggy had said, it contained framed pictures and small objects—a glazed bowl, a carved elephant, a crystal dolphin. The pictures were family photos—some posed and professional, others candid—of the very photogenic family of Kent and Temple Mercer.

  The contents of this bag had been stolen from Mercer’s house the day of his murder. I rubbed my forehead. Was June involved in Mercer’s death? I remembered her telling me about seeing Nikki and Mercer making love on the deck, Erwin’s anger, his stroke. Would June want to punish Mercer? Underneath that book-and bird-loving mildness, was there the cold heart of a killer?

  I called Anselmo. Next to finding Paige, this was the biggest break in our investigation.

  I took Iggy back to Temple’s, then drove to Roll’s grocery store, grabbed a cart, and put a bunch of bananas in it. I wandered around until I found June Devon in the florist section. Her brown-gray hair hung damply over her shoulders. William Shakespeare peered thoughtfully at me from her t-shirt.

  My stomach roiled with pity and tension as I texted Anselmo:

  Found her in Roll’s, I will tail her

  This civic-minded, middle-aged woman was going to be arrested on breaking and entering charges. She’d be grilled about her involvement in a kidnapping and murder. I wanted to take her hand, warn her that her life as she knew it—her carefully scheduled, solitary, care-giving days—would end in a few minutes. But I also couldn’t wait to get her in the interview room. If she took the items from the Mercers’ bookshelf, then she was there. What did she do? What did she see?

  She held up a bunch of daisies. “Aren’t these cheery? I’m getting them for the cleaning boy, when he comes tomorrow.” She put the daisies into her cart.

  “That’s Iggy?” Iggy, who led me to the ill-gotten gains.

  “Right. You know him? He’s a wonderful cleaner, so thorough. He sees everything that needs to be done. I get impatient with his jibber-jabber, though, and last time I think I hurt his feelings.”

  “Fern says the same. Iggy does go on and on.”

  “Well, mustn’t dawdle. See you later, Stella!” June headed toward the middle of the store. I followed, not closely, but keeping her in view. She was an efficient shopper, not a browser, and in a few minutes she was in the checkout line. As she rolled her cart out the door, I abandoned my bananas and followed her.

  A squad car was parked in front of the store, and Deputy Chamberlain leaned against it, her hand resting on her gun. When I nodded to her, she spoke to June. “Mrs. Devon, the police want to talk to you. Come this way, please.” People had stopped to gawk, excited that something was happening in the grocery store parking lot on a Sunday afternoon.

  June was bewildered. “What? What about my groceries? I have to get home. My husband needs me.” She glared at two little boys who had crept close.

  “Give me your keys, June. I’ll take the groceries to your house,” I said.

  “Oh, please, don’t be ridiculous. What’s this all about?” June asked. Despite her question, I
felt certain she knew what it was about.

  One of the little boys yelled, “Hey, lady, what’d you do? Kill someone?” June shook her head slowly. She slid into the squad car and looked up to catch my eye. She glared at me with a steely anger, and mouthed something I couldn’t hear as Chamberlain took her away.

  After delivering June’s groceries for Ursula to put away, I went to the law enforcement building to interview her. Finding the bag of stolen items in her laundry room was the first real break in this case. I ached to know what she knew. June had to talk. Anselmo wanted me to question her; he would watch the video stream.

  In the interview room, June sat ramrod straight, twiddling her thumbs, her expression wary. I started with what I knew already—Mercer’s affair with her niece, Nikki. We talked about that, and Erwin’s stroke.

  “He’s helpless, isn’t he?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Yes, basically. He’s improved a bit.”

  “And the morning of Mercer’s death, did you look across the lake?”

  “I usually look out that way, watch the birds.”

  “See anything different?”

  “Don’t remember.” Her face was blank, her manner calm and still.

  “Tell me about the bag behind your hot-water heater,” I said.

  “What bag?” She was too casual. Didn’t she realize the stakes of this game? Maybe this was June’s way of reacting to stress—just chill, pretend nothing matters.

  “How did it get there?”

  “I don’t know.” She folded her arms across William Shakespeare and rocked, forward and back. “I have to get home. It’s time for Erwin’s dinner.”

  “Ursula’s there.”

  “It has to be soft or he’ll choke. You want that on your conscience?” Her chin jerked up another inch and she looked down her nose at me. “My lawyer’s on his way. I’ll be out of here in a half hour.”

  Outwardly I was calm, making notes, studying her face for signs of lying. Inside, my stomach knotted with frustration. “You’re either a criminal or a witness or both, and I need to know what you know. Don’t you want to help us solve this murder?”

  She poked a trembling finger into my face, jabbing it with each word: “Whoever killed that son-of-a-bitch did the world a favor.”

  “Whoever it was has also tried to kill two other people.”

  June frowned. “I didn’t know. Listen, I didn’t see anything.”

  “What about the child? Did you see her? Take her?”

  She raked her hands through her long, graying hair and pulled it back into a ponytail. “I’m saying nothing. I want a lawyer now. And a rubber band. I never got a chance to pin my hair up.”

  I left the room, barely able to stop myself from slamming the door, which would be unprofessional, childish, and satisfying. Anselmo noticed my expression.

  “No luck?” he asked.

  “She asked for a lawyer and a rubber band. Put it around her neck, would you?”

  CHAPTER 22

  Monday morning

  I felt no closer to solving the murder of Kent Mercer than a week ago when I’d discovered his body. Terrible things had happened—grievous injuries to Lincoln Teller and Emilie Soto; the abduction of Mercer’s little girl. The only break in the case was finding Mercer’s stolen items in June Devon’s house, but right now that led to a stone wall, since she wasn’t talking. I wasn’t quite ready to call myself a failure, but I sure didn’t feel successful. Evidence was scant, suspects non-existent, theories empty.

  I thought about Bryce Raintree. He reminded me of myself at his age—perverse, a bit lost and sad, making poor choices. Fredricks had forced me to admit that Bryce was salvageable. So why not try harder?

  It had been two days since the dance, when I argued to Bryce that he’d be better off serving his country, advice he’d resisted. I knew from the recordings he was selling painkiller drugs, and he got them from the nursing home where he worked. I didn’t know whether he was buying them directly from the patients, bribing a nurse to give pills to him rather than the patients, or had simply found a way to help himself without being detected. According to his phone conversations, he had only a few customers, each with a big habit he sometimes had trouble feeding.

  Unemployment would curtail his source. So I made an appointment with Wilhelmina Jones, the director of Wisteria Acres, and arrived early. She ushered me right into her office and closed the door. She probably didn’t want the residents and their visitors to know the SBI was paying a call.

  “Call me Willy,” she said. “It’s easier to pronounce, and ‘Mrs. Jones’ reminds everyone of that song, you know which one I mean. ‘We got a thing goin’ on’?” She laughed. She was a tidy gray-haired woman in her sixties, with a wide welcoming smile. She wore a tailored black suit, but what caught my eye was a lapis lazuli pendant, a brilliant deep blue, hanging from a gold chain around her neck.

  “Willy, you do have a thing going on,” I said. “Your employee Bryce Raintree is somehow obtaining painkillers within Wisteria Acres. He’s making very substantial money selling them.”

  Her smile vanished. “Impossible. We have a specific protocol for handling medication here.”

  “How strictly is it enforced? What if a patient is asleep and doesn’t need that sleeping pill? Maybe it goes into a pocket.”

  “The aides make sure the meds are taken.”

  I nodded, but not in agreement. “If someone dies, what happens to their pills?”

  “They’re disposed of. I sign a form. The state is vigilant.” Willy clutched her lapis like a rosary.

  “Do you personally witness the disposal?”

  She searched my face as though looking for a way out.

  “I’m not accusing you,” I said. “We have considerable evidence that prescription drugs are leaving your nursing home and being sold illegally. It could even be the patients hoarding their pills and selling them to Bryce.” I didn’t tell her the evidence was illegal recordings.

  “He’s buying drugs from patients? That makes our patients dealers too!” My message was sinking in. It wasn’t just Bryce who would go to jail; it was Nana complaining of chronic back pain, arthritic Gramps, and Martha, the devoted nurse’s aide with her twenty years of service. Wisteria Acres would make People for all the wrong reasons and empty out faster than the Krispy Kreme box at an SBI staff meeting.

  “I’m sure you keep all medicines locked up,” I said.

  “Of course. But gosh, the patients come in with shoeboxes full of pill bottles. We keep all medications under lock and key, but, if it’s prescribed, the patient gets it.”

  “Then start reviewing all prescriptions, especially painkillers, with their doctors.”

  “I could say we’re concerned about side effects,” she said. “We have a consulting pharmacist; he could take a look.”

  “It’s possible that some of your patients were making a considerable sum of money from Bryce.”

  She was making notes, and looked up. “How much?”

  “The market price for a forty-milligram oxycodone is about forty dollars. Bryce probably paid five to ten dollars apiece.”

  “And Medicare bought them originally, so it’s like pure profit to these people.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “All very friendly, just a way for a senior citizen to make a little extra cash. And after being discharged from here, it was probably easier. No one counting out the pills each day. He could visit them and pick up a bottle. Or give them a ride to the drugstore.”

  She sat very still, waiting for my verdict.

  “There are a couple of ways we can go with this,” I said. “We can bring in the SBI Diversions Unit. They’ll put someone in here undercover to gather evidence, then make arrests, take it to trial, and put folks in jail. That’s the expensive way, both for Wisteria Acres and the State of North Carolina. It makes the SBI look smart: we’re doing our job.”

  “What’s the other way?” She slumped in her chair and fingered her pendant.<
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  “Fire Bryce Raintree. Institute very strict controls on all medication and don’t let the patients hoard any. Reduce the flow of painkillers into your buildings.”

  “I like the second way much better,” she said. “Let me handle things.”

  She didn’t want to shake my hand as I left but I felt positive about the interview. Not progress on the murder case, exactly, but Bryce’s current business enterprise would end, and Mrs. Jones, by cooperating, hadn’t forced my official hand.

  I drove to Temple’s to let her know we’d found the items stolen from her house, though they were evidence and couldn’t be returned to her just yet.

  As I pulled into the driveway, I heard voices and the pounding of hammers. I walked around to the back where Fern, Wesley, and Bryce were assembling an elaborate swing set. They’d already put up the base, a platform accessible by a wide wooden ladder and a yellow plastic slide. Underneath, Bryce was attaching a tire swing. He was shirtless, showing off his bulky muscular torso as he hefted the tire up to connect it with the chains. He nodded to me, cool but not hostile, as though we still had issues, but he’d forgiven me for our last encounter and didn’t yet know I’d gotten him fired from Wisteria Acres. Here, he was Uncle Bryce, a good reason for him to be helping out.

  Fern sat on the ground, a heap of wood pieces and rope in her lap. She peered up at me from under her wide-brimmed straw hat. She said. “Isn’t this terrific? A present from Grandpa Wesley.”

  Wesley looked up from assembling a support for the slide, pulled a handkerchief from his jeans pocket, and wiped his face. “Here she comes now, our princess.”

  Paige started down the steps to the patio, backwards. She looked too tiny in her yellow, gingham sundress to be managing stairs, but she negotiated them easily, clambering down. I took her hand and we walked around the swing set, talking about the ladder, the swing, the slide, the hiding places. I realized her diaper was soggy. “Time for a change?” I asked.