Dead By Midnight

by Carolyn Hart

  The road swung around a lagoon. On the wooded side of the road, Henny turned into a driveway. Pat’s modest home was an early Colonial clapboard cottage. It was well maintained, the white paint fresh. Henny pulled up behind Pat’s blue Chevy. Had she returned home shortly before Henny’s arrival? Henny’s eyes glinted. Had she chosen not to answer the phone?

  On the porch, Henny admired some crimson begonias in a glazed blue vase. A light cotton sweater lay on the green swing. Letters and magazines protruded from the mailbox. Before she could ring, frenzied barking erupted beyond the front door. Gertrude sounded frantic. That was unusual. She was a good-natured dog.

  A frown touched Henny’s narrow face. There had been enough time for Pat to answer the door. The dachshund’s yelps continued, faster and faster.

  Henny glanced out at the drive. That was Pat’s car. Of course, someone might have picked her up . . .

  Dog claws scrabbled on the other side of the door.

  Henny pulled open the screen. She turned the front knob and pushed. She wasn’t surprised to find the door open. Many islanders only locked up at bedtime. “Pat?” The door swung slowly inward. Henny stepped into the small foyer. A grandfather clock ticked to her left.

  Gertrude twisted in a circle, her claws clicking on the wooden floor, then bolted to the living room. She skidded to a stop, lifted her sleek head, and howled, the pitiable cry high and mournful.

  Henny felt a tightness in her chest. She crossed the hall, stopped in the doorway.

  Sun spilled across the room, illuminating the rose sofa and the cream chintz easy chair and the pinewood coffee table. A crystal mug with dark sludge in its bottom sat on the table. Pat slumped to one side of the easy chair, her auburn-gray head resting against the upholstered side, her face slack. One arm dangled over the side of the chair.

  Annie loved the long sweep of the garden behind their house, azaleas bright in spring afternoons, dusky roses damp with dew in summer, billowy white blossoms of sea myrtle in late fall. Tall pines and Spanish-moss-draped live oaks framed the view down to the pond with its resident alligator. Tonight the beauty was dimmed.

  “I feel awful. I was so mad at Pat. And she was dead.” Annie’s voice was shaky.

  Max lounged against the railing, his back to the garden. “Hey, you didn’t know.” He looked at Henny in the red wooden rocking chair next to Annie. “Do they have any idea what caused her death?”

  Henny shook her head. “So far as I know she didn’t have heart trouble, but that’s always possible. They’re doing an autopsy.” She stroked the fluffy white fur of Dorothy L, who snuggled in her lap.

  Annie nodded. That was the law when cause of death could not be certified by an attending physician.

  “She had finished supper. The dishes were done and draining in a rack. She was fully dressed.” The purring cat rose and placed her paws on Henny’s shoulder, butted Henny’s cheek gently with her head. Henny smiled. “Dorothy L is offering comfort. Now, if she could only steer us in the right direction, like her namesake.”

  Annie squeezed her eyes in remembrance, seeing clearly Pat’s uneven features and pale blue eyes and straggling auburn curls. “That last day Pat wore a bandanna-print navy-blue dress with a white seashell necklace.”

  Henny nodded. “Apparently, she came home from work, fixed her dinner, then sat in the living room to drink coffee. I suppose the illness was sudden and she wasn’t able to call for help.”

  Annie felt a wash of sadness. Not sorrow, for she hadn’t known Pat well or long, but sadness. She admired those who landed on their feet and kept on slugging even when life landed a hard blow. Annie had sensed residual anger beneath Pat’s cheery appearance at the bookstore, but her efforts to master her new job had been evident and sincere. She’d carried yet another Christie home that last night. A cynic might suggest that Pat had merely played to her audience when she talked about the books to Annie, but Pat had plucked meaningful bits and pieces from each book. They had last talked about The Secret of Chimneys and Pat had quoted Virginia Revel: “ ‘It’s just as exciting to buy a new experience as it is to buy a new dress—more so, in fact.’ ” Pat’s cheeks had flushed and she’d blurted, “Until now I never thought about doing anything out of the ordinary.”

  At that moment, Annie had a strong sense that Pat had in mind doing something she considered daring. She repeated the quote to Henny.

  “Virginia Revel.” Henny looked intrigued. “I wish we knew what Pat wanted to do. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.”

  Chapter Three

  Annie admired the watercolors above the mantel, then stepped behind the coffee bar at Death on Demand. “Amaretto in your mocha?”

  Laurel beamed at her daughter-in-law. “Such a lovely idea, my dear.”

  Annie added chocolate sprinkles to mounded whipping cream, then placed the mug to one side of the artist’s portfolio Laurel had casually placed atop the counter. Laurel’s mug read: You Can’t Trust Duchesses.

  Laurel glanced at the title and made no comment. Her golden hair shirred short, blue eyes sparkling, face radiant, Laurel looked young and vibrant in a scoop-neck pale blue sweater and knee-length frilly polka-dot-print silk skirt. She crossed her legs. The delicate blue of butterfly-bow denim slides matched her blouse.

  Annie fixed an iced latte with a shot of raspberry syrup for herself. Her mug read: Stalemate.

  Laurel looked amused.

  Not, Annie thought, a good sign.

  A sip and Laurel patted the familiar portfolio. “You always work so hard, my dear.” Her tone was admiring.

  Annie was instantly on alert. The smiling comment, though ostensibly a compliment, was a subtle reminder that Laurel had stepped into the breach when Pat failed to show up. Annie gave a modest shrug. “Same old, same old.”

  “It was such a pleasure for me to be able to help out last week when you were busy at the library and dear Ingrid had the book club all by herself.” Almost as if inadvertently, though Annie knew better, Laurel pushed the portfolio nearer Annie. “I know you didn’t mind my taking advantage of that lovely group of women to raise money for animal rescue. Now I feel in my heart”—a graceful hand was delicately placed—“that I must repay that debt and so”—the words came in a rush as swift as the flutter of mallards honing in on a lagoon—“I’m giving you at no charge, of course, your very own collection of the Paws That Refresh to share with Death on Demand’s wonderful readers.” She picked up the portfolio and held it out to Annie as if presenting her firstborn.

  Annie’s mouth opened. Closed. To refuse a gift was rude. She limply took the manila folder.

  Laurel beamed and plucked the folder back. “Since you are always busy, I will take care of all the details.”

  Laurel twirled in her seat to drop lightly to the heart-pine floor. She dashed another smile. “I use masking tape to mount them and that will make it easy to change them out when I have new ones.”

  Annie gripped the edge of the coffee bar. New ones? Was the collection intended for permanent display? Would cat photos cover every inch of free wall space, spreading like kudzu? There had to be some way of deflecting her mother-in-law, short of a lasso.

  Annie’s cell rang. She plucked it from the pocket of her skirt and glanced at the caller ID. Maybe Henny would have an idea. “Hey, Henny—”

  “Annie, I need help.” Henny’s tone was grim. “I just talked to Billy.”

  Billy Cameron, Broward’s Rock’s stalwart police chief, was a good friend and a fine policeman, devoted to his community, hardworking, fair.

  “He says I’m too close to Pat’s death to be objective.” Henny’s tone was brusque. “He might listen to you. After all, you scarcely knew her, but you saw quite a bit of her in the days before she died. You can describe her state of mind. What upsets me the most is that the report will be released and there will be a story in the Gazette.”

  A chair scraped. Laurel popped up to stand on the seat and survey the rectangle of space on the left side of the
fireplace. She stood on tiptoe to tape a photograph of a thick-furred, piebald Siberian Forest cat, its white front a brilliant contrast to a charcoal head and back. In a side view, the cat’s broad face appeared almost angelic. Always try a smile first.

  If Laurel poached on the space for the mystery paintings, there would be a line drawn in the sand. “A story about what?”

  “The official pronouncement of cause of death: suicide.”

  Annie gripped the cell. “Suicide?” Pat’s days at Death on Demand whirled through her mind. In particular, she remembered Wednesday afternoon when they’d visited over coffee about mysteries. “I don’t think that’s possible. I’ll talk to Billy.”

  Billy Cameron, tall, sturdy, and muscular, pushed back his office chair and stood. “Hey, Annie. What can I do for you?” His thick sandy hair held traces of white. His strong face was genial, but it was ever and always a cop’s face, with an underlying toughness, eyes that had seen the worst of pain and injury and death, a mouth that could tighten into a hard line of confrontation.

  Annie sat on one of two hard wooden chairs that faced his desk.

  Billy settled in his chair, looking large and official.

  She began without preamble. “Pat Merridew worked at Death on Demand.”

  He glanced at her, his blue eyes thoughtful, then pulled a green folder from a stack, flipped it open. “She was fired from the law firm. She started to work at the bookstore two weeks later. She was in your employ for four days.”

  Annie knew that Billy always did his homework. His dispassionate tone suggested Pat Merridew’s file was complete.

  Annie scooted to the edge of the hard wooden seat. “Billy, I think it is very unlikely that Pat Merridew committed suicide.”

  Billy arched one eyebrow. “You knew her well?”

  Annie made an impatient gesture. “I scarcely knew her. I’m not here as a friend. I’m here with specific information that, to my mind, suggests she didn’t end her own life.”

  Billy folded his arms, but asked politely, “What information do you have?”

  Annie could read body language. Billy’s mind was closed. He was asking politely, but his voice was distant. She spoke quietly. “Pat knew very little about mysteries. I gave her some Agatha Christies to read. Billy, two days before she died, we sat at the coffee bar.” Pat had made the drinks under Annie’s tutelage, two iced lattes. “Pat thumbed through her copy of Towards Zero and found the passage where Superintendent Battle figured out the truth about his daughter’s confession. Pat thought that was really clever on his part. I told her my favorite passage was when a young nurse spoke with a would-be suicide bitter at having been saved. The nurse said, ‘It may be just by being somewhere—not doing anything—oh, I can’t say what I mean, but you might just—just walk along a street someday and just by doing that accomplish something terribly important—perhaps without even knowing what it was.’ ”

  “Good book,” Billy said mildly.

  Annie nodded in agreement. “One of Christie’s best. But that’s not the point. Pat said, ‘I wouldn’t make a guy a hero who tried to commit suicide. He should have sucked up his guts, gotten on with life.’ That sure doesn’t sound like someone who’s thinking about suicide. I don’t know anything about how Pat died. But if she didn’t die from natural causes, then I think her death had to be an accident. Or murder.” She threw out the last without conviction. Who would want to kill Pat Merridew?

  Billy picked up the file, found a page. “This is part of the public record now.” He slid a sheet across the desk. “You can look at the toxicology report. She died as the result of ingesting four hundred milligrams of OxyContin, which had been dissolved in Irish coffee.”

  Annie scanned the sheet. The damning information was there. Four hundred milligrams. No one took four hundred milligrams of an opiate by mistake. “Did she have a prescription?” OxyContin was exceedingly strong and one of many prescription painkillers that were commonly abused.

  “Not a current one. She had a prescription a year ago, but it wasn’t renewable. She fell last year, shattered her wrist, had a plate and six screws. The painkiller was prescribed then.”

  “Did you find the container for the OxyContin?”

  Billy nodded. “The last thing thrown in the trash. Empty. Only her fingerprints on the vial.”

  Annie knew that people often didn’t use all of a prescribed med. In fact, she had a plastic vial in a kitchen cabinet that contained pills left over from a prescription she’d been given following a root canal.

  Billy was calm. “No surprise she kept the stuff. People do. In any event, the dregs in her crystal coffee mug contained OxyContin. Her fingerprints were on the mug and only hers. There was no disarray in the room, no evidence anyone else had been present.” His face softened. “Look, Annie, she was distraught after she lost her job—”

  Annie interrupted. “She had a new job. She didn’t skulk around acting upset. She was eager and cheerful and she did everything she could to learn as much as she could as fast as she could.”

  He lifted a hand in negation. “Of course she acted positive at the store. I get your point and”—a bemused head shake—“Henny is adamant she didn’t kill herself because of her dog. Apparently the dog has special medication for a heart problem. Henny claims Pat would never have put the dog in jeopardy.” He paused. “Henny took the dog home with her. But suicides aren’t thinking straight. They’re depressed. They can’t see any hope in their lives.”

  Annie was no psychologist. She couldn’t swear to Pat’s mental stability, but she remembered with clarity Pat’s disdain for the would-be suicide in Towards Zero.

  “If she ground up the pills”—once Annie had read that OxyContin was even more lethal if the pills were broken or mashed—“and put them in her coffee, then you’re right, she was deeply depressed and not herself. But, Billy, if she didn’t put the drug in her coffee, someone else did.”

  Billy slowly shook his head. “It doesn’t play, Annie. I know my job. I don’t take anything for granted. I checked out Pat Merridew upside down and sideways. She was kind of a live wire. She liked to play cards, go bowling.” For an instant, there was a shadow in his eyes. “She bowled the night before she died. She paid her bills. Her only relative was a sister, who lives in California. The sister was at a baseball game in Anaheim the night Pat died. Pat’s estate goes to her sister but it’s modest: the house, a bank account with three thousand dollars, some stocks amounting to about seventy-five thousand, which shows she was thrifty and prudent. Everybody I contacted spoke well of her. The only blot in a happy-days life was losing her job at the law firm. She was upset and angry with Glen Jamison and with his wife-slash-partner, Cleo. If I’d found Glen bashed over the head or a stiletto in Cleo Jamison’s back, I’d have looked at Pat Merridew. Plenty of bad feelings there. But they’re fine and Pat’s dead. So, nobody wanted Pat dead. What does that leave? Accident or suicide? No way it was an accident. Besides, OxyContin is bitter and she’d made Irish coffee. The whiskey and the sugar hid the taste and, of course, the whiskey intensified the effect of the opiate.”

  He didn’t say “case closed,” but he might as well have.

  Annie knew Billy had years of experience and a thorough investigation to back up his conclusion. All she had was the memory of Pat’s conclusion about the would-be suicide: He should have sucked up his guts, gotten on with his life.

  Suicide or murder.

  “Billy, will you do me a favor?”

  He straightened the papers in the folder, flipped the cover shut. “Such as?”

  “I’d like to see Pat’s house. Please.” Maybe there would be something there that would bolster her argument.

  Billy’s mouth turned down in a wry half smile. “I swear to God, when a woman gets an idea in her head . . .” But his voice was genial. His big shoulders rose and fell. “Henny’s handling everything for the sister. I was going to turn the keys over to her. I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm to meet her at the
house. There may be some things she wants to take care of.”

  Annie easily pictured Pat Merridew in the small, cheerful living room. White flowers with yellow centers formed bouquets in light blue wallpaper. Pale yellow drapes were drawn at two side windows and the wide front window. A braided oval rug lay smooth in the center of the wooden floor. Not a trace of dust marred the room.

  Henny pointed at the chintz-covered chair on one side of the coffee table. “Pat was there.” A faint frown. “The chair is out of line. She kept the chairs turned the same way next to the coffee table.”

  Billy took a step forward. “Probably the techs moved the chair when they came for the body.”

  “Everything seems to be in order.” Henny sounded weary. Then her head came up and she gave Billy a combative look. “Pat did not commit suicide.”

  Annie looked at the coffee table. “The drug was in her coffee.”

  Billy was brisk. “Found in the dregs in a ten-ounce crystal coffee mug. The coffee in a carafe was free of drugs.”

  “Only in the mug.” Henny’s dark eyes narrowed in thought. “Let me check.” She whirled and hurried to the kitchen.

  Annie and Billy followed.

  The kitchen was narrow and small. A wooden chair sat at each end of a Formica-topped table. A newspaper, carefully folded, lay to the left of a single, woven red cloth place mat. An old-fashioned six-cup metal percolator sat on the tiled counter next to an avocado-green fifties-era stove. A bottle of Irish whiskey sat on the counter next to a sugar canister.

  Henny didn’t pick up the coffeemaker. Instead, she bent near. “It hasn’t been washed.” She turned and faced Annie and Billy. “Pat ate dinner. She washed her dishes.” Henny nodded toward the drainer, which held a plate, glass, cutlery, saucepan, and skillet. “She made the coffee. So why six cups if she didn’t expect company? Look next to the row of canisters on the counter.” She pointed. “A single-cup French press. That’s what she would use to make a cup for herself. Irish coffee was one of her specialties, with a hefty slug of whiskey and lots of brown sugar.” Now she faced Billy. “How much coffee was left in the carafe?”