by Leslie Caine
At the top of the driveway, Stephanie stopped, pivoted, and brushed past Rachel again—who was having a hard time suppressing a grin—as she walked up to Helen. Gently she said, “Aunt Helen, I apologize for my bluntness. And for my brother’s simpering. But as the de facto head of this family, I’m going to have to insist that my mother’s possessions be separated from yours immediately. Anything you two purchased in common, you can keep. I’m afraid this is the only way we can keep Peter from pilfering yet more belongings from your house.”
“That’s very noble of you, my dear, but since when did you care about someone removing my belongings?” Helen asked. “And do you really think your duties as ‘head of this family’ include trying to drive me out of my house and home?”
Stephanie was momentarily taken aback, but then said, “You aren’t safe in your house with its wall-to-wall clutter. If the only way I can keep you safe is to force you to live in a retirement home, that’s what I’m going to do. Because, yes, Aunt Helen, I do really think that’s my duty.”
A palpable tension hung in the air as we watched Stephanie leave. Peter broke the silence, saying, “Again, Aunt Helen, I’m sorry for entering your house without your permission and removing some of Mother’s things. Maybe I’ll go now, while the door’s open.” He strode down the driveway.
“You know, Helen, all families are a little dysfunctional,” Rachel said, patting her on the shoulder. “If there’s a competency hearing, I’m willing to testify in court that I’ll look out for you.”
Helen chuckled. “Thanks, Rachel. The one thing we know about you is you’re a good watchdog.”
Rachel arched her eyebrow, but said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“And so, in summary,” Sullivan said in Helen’s direction, “we’re grateful that you allowed us to work on this project. We had a lot of fun designing it, and we’re confident that you’ll have even more fun as you enjoy your new sunny and spacious room. Any questions?”
I didn’t dare look at him, for fear that I’d lose control and laugh.
Helen said, “Can I at least see your finished drawings?” she asked.
Sullivan and I exchanged glances. “Of course.” He removed the black cover from the display board.
“Oh, my! This is wonderful,” Helen cried. “I’m so sorry Stephanie and Peter stormed off before they could see this. All that counter space and drawers. It’s just so practical. It’ll take me years to fill up that much storage space.”
Music to any designer’s ear, I inwardly grumbled.
“It’s very nice,” Rachel agreed with a nod.
“We’re going to have to discuss the plans for real at a future time,” Helen said, “but thank you both for doing those lovely drawings.”
Rachel insisted on helping us to take down the easel, then further insisted on carrying it to the van. “Oh, that room you two designed is just so beautiful!” Rachel exclaimed, now that Helen was out of earshot. “Would it be terribly selfish of me to ask that you build one for me too? At my house? I’d like it to be identical to Helen’s...only bigger.”
The rest of the morning, Sullivan and I worked quickly and efficiently in Helen’s den—as well as a quick touch up on her kitchen. We hauled two full truckloads away. Underneath the detritus in the den, the room had the potential for being a cheerful little retreat. There were charming built-in cabinets that hadn’t seen the light of day in years, which featured loving extra touches like dental moldings, and medallions at the center of the cabinet-door panels. By all rights, this should have been the nicest room in the house—and very soon it would be once again.
Unfortunately, part of the reason things were going so well was that Helen had stopped battling to keep anything. All of the fight seemed to have gone out of her. When she told us without a second glance to donate the numerous bags of tattered men’s clothing that had somehow wound up in her den, I asked if everything was all right.
“I’m fine. I’m just tired.”
Searching for a happy subject matter as Sullivan and I were leaving, I said, “I meant to tell you again how impressed I was with the effects of the bleaching technique that you demonstrated on Audrey’s show. In fact, I’m going to try using it on mat boards. I’m framing some pictures for a client.”
“You do that much of the detail work on your clients’ homes?”
“Sometimes. Wall hangings are such an important piece of an interior that I choose them myself...and sometimes do the framing.”
“In that case, I have something for you.”
I half expected her to give me a painting she’d squirreled away under her sink, but she returned with a jug of Clorox bleach. “Here. Take this. I only use it for my scrapbooking.”
“Oh, there’s no need for you to give me your supplies. We have plenty of Clorox in the laundry room at Audrey’s.”
“Keep this bottle in your office, then. Someone might as well get some use out of it.”
Strange of me to be taking a client’s bleach bottle, but maybe this was a breakthrough of sorts for her—a willingness to let go of her unnecessary possessions. That possibility made me smile. “Thanks, Helen. I’ll use it right away.”
At my office that afternoon, I’d planned to complete my bookkeeping, but couldn’t resist trying my hand at Helen’s bleach-and-ink technique first. I poured an inch or so of bleach into a bowl. The phone rang while I was still setting up. It was a client. A rather long-winded one. By the time I was finally able to begin painting, I wondered if the bleach had spoiled somehow. It definitely wasn’t working right; instead of removing the color the paint was pooling. Maybe Helen had diluted it.
I was getting a splitting headache, but was determined to utilize those same lovely ghosting techniques that Helen had used. I heard the door open at the bottom of the staircase. Just that slight movement of my head as I looked away from the mat board made my vision swim. I needed to get out of here, get myself home and to bed before I got any worse.
I rose, feeling strange lightheaded. I had to lean on the desk as I rounded it. My visitor, I realized dimly, was Steve Sullivan. His cocky grin faded as our eyes met. He came toward me.
Sullivan hooked a finger under my chin and stared into my eyes. For a moment, I thought he was going to kiss me, but he furrowed his brow and said, “Hey, Gilbert. No offense, but you don’t look so good.”
“I don’t feel ‘so good’ either. I must be coming down with something.” I dragged myself back over to my chair and slumped down behind my desk.
“What’s this you’re working on?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m trying to teach myself how to duplicate the ink-and-bleach techniques that Helen uses sometimes in her scrapbooks.”
“Is this the bottle you got from Helen?” he asked, eyeing the liquid with suspicion. “Are you sure it’s just bleach?”
“I thought so. Unless . . .” I struggled to my feet again.
“Jeez! Bet it’s been mixed with ammonia. Poisonous fumes!” Sullivan grabbed a breath of air over his shoulder, then poured the liquid in the bowl back into its container. He capped it tight and lifted the bottle.
He put his arm around me and ushered me toward the stairs. “Let’s get you outside for some fresh air...then to the hospital. And while we’re at it, we’ll take this so-called ‘bleach’ to the police station.”
Chapter 19
Following my emergency-room visit, I went to the police station. Detective O’Reilly sat across the table from me, drumming his fingers. He’d made it abundantly clear that he resented my having made his life more difficult by almost becoming a murder victim myself, pesky trouble-maker that I was. I’d informed him that I felt ill from having inhaled toxic fumes but had gotten no sympathy.
With O’Reilly having lapsed into one of his annoying silences, I muttered, “I’m hoping there will be some telltale fingerprints on the doctored bottle. Of bleach.”
O’Reilly scowled at me.
“Ironic that bleach is a household
cleaner. And that now this bottle of a cleaning solution might have some dirty smudges on it that could be evidence. Not to mention the ammonia that was added to the bottle. Which is a second household cleaner. Death by cleaning.” Still no reply. “It’s almost amusing, when you think about it.”
As if O’Reilly could ever be amused. I sighed. He no doubt intimidated suspects with his silences, but I wasn’t guilty of anything and wanted to go home. Maybe some idle chatter would annoy him. “You know, I could do wonders with this room. Have you ever thought about hiring an interior designer to jazz up your workplace? I mean, sure, obviously this room is minimalist by function...the chrome-and-Formica table, the cheap chairs, the stark overhead lighting. But what’s with the chalk-white walls and nine-ninety-five-a-yard charcoal industrial carpet? The whole place is so...eighties. It might be really effective for you guys to establish a sharp contrast in this space...kind of like playing good cop/bad cop with the décor, you know? The officers could be in really nice posh chairs, and the wall behind them could be textured and painted a soothing sage green and illuminated with soft task lighting. That way your suspects will be thinking: I want to be on the nice half of the room. I want to change my ways and—”
“What I don’t get, Ms. Gilbert, is why and how you always manage to get yourself right smack in the middle of murder investigations. Do you go looking for murderers? Or is there something in your character that makes murderers seek you out?”
“That’s something of a no-win question, Detective O’Reilly. I’ll have to let ‘I don’t know’ suffice. Any other questions?”
“Do you have any containers of ammonia in your office building?”
Did he think I intentionally made myself sick? Maybe we should go back to the what-was-it-with-me-and-murderers questions. “Not that I’m aware of. In any case, I certainly did not contaminate the bleach myself.” I pushed back my dreadful chair from the dreadful table. “Since the emergency-room doctor already advised me to do so, I’m going to try to sleep off the flu-like symptoms that the fumes gave me.” I headed for the door. “If you have anything else you want to know, please ask me tomorrow.”
“I do have one last item to discuss.”
I clenched my teeth and turned to face him.
“Were you aware that Helen Walker was once arrested for attempted murder?”
Although I struggled to keep a bland expression on my face, my heart skipped a beat. I’m sure O’Reilly could see my shock. “No. When was this?”
“Four years ago. Her brother-in-law brought the charges against her, though he withdrew them later. Apparently she’d tried to suffocate him.”
“That’s...news to me.” I left the room, heading straight for the exit with my thoughts in a whirl.
Steve Sullivan rose from his seat in the lobby. “You’re still here?” I asked in surprise. “That was nice of you.”
“Didn’t want to leave you stranded,” he replied with a shrug. We strode through the doors toward his van together. “Got to admit, I was beginning to think I’d need to post bail.”
“O’Reilly is never the speediest interrogator.”
“You don’t look any worse for the wear, so I take it he didn’t resort to torture.”
“No, but he acted like he wanted to strangle me throughout.”
My head was still spinning with O’Reilly’s words as we got into the car. Was he telling the truth? Could Helen really have tried to kill her brother-in-law? Linda Delgardio had once told me that police officers were allowed to lie to suspects and witnesses. They did so whenever they felt it best served their purposes.
“Are you clear-headed enough to drive your van?” Sullivan asked as we pulled out of the lot.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Please just drop me off at my office.”
“I can run you home, and Audrey and I could come back and—”
“I’m fine,” I snapped, recognizing on some level that my voice was harsher than I’d meant it to be. “Really. Thanks, but I’ve already taken your entire Saturday afternoon.”
O’Reilly could have been blowing smoke at me. If any of the officers I’d ever met was prone to saying all kinds of vile, misleading things during an interrogation, O’Reilly was. Nevertheless, I needed to find out the truth about Helen. Audrey seemed to be really bonding with her. Linda would have told me right away if Helen had once been arrested for attempted murder. And they’d have never let her go free that first night, after Jack’s fatal “accident.”
“Erin?” Sullivan said gruffly, interrupting my thoughts. We were nearing my office. “I’m following you home. I’ve got to head that direction anyway.”
“No. I’m going to be several minutes. I’ve got some files I have to update,” I fibbed.
“The fumes might not even have dissipated yet!”
“It’s been hours, now. They’re not that toxic.”
He pulled up in front of my door, hitting the brakes a little too hard. “Suit yourself.”
I hesitated. “Thanks so much for helping me today. You...practically saved my life.”
“Yeah. You’re welcome.” He wasn’t even looking at me. “I gotta run, so . . . .”
I fumbled with the latch on my seatbelt and the opened the door, blathering, “Okay, well, I’ll see you at Helen’s first thing Monday morning.”
“See ya,” he muttered without even a semblance of a smile, and he zoomed off the instant I’d shut the passenger door.
He’d spent his Saturday afternoon taking me to the hospital and the police station, and in return I’d snapped at him and shooed him away. “It’s official,” I muttered to myself. “I’m the Wicked Witch of the West when it comes to Sullivan.” I didn’t have time to flog myself now. My life and my business were interwoven with Helen Walker; I had to prove or disprove O’Reilly’s assertion as soon as possible.
I tossed out my bleach-and-ink experiment and went straight to my computer and accessed the Internet, searching on Helen Walker and George Miller’s names as linked in the same article. Nothing. I couldn’t ask Helen directly; she was probably innocent, and she’d be irreparably hurt by my questioning her. Stephanie would sooner bite my head off than verify a story like that. And, if it was true that Helen had tried to kill her father, Stephanie had all the more motive for wanting her aunt dead. Having been caught illicitly entering his aunt’s house the other night, Peter, on the other hand, was in a very weak bargaining position.
If business was as bad as Peter claimed, maybe he’d be pinching pennies and staying home on a Saturday evening. I drove to his house, in a residential section at the outskirts of town. His street address was in a row of town-homes. I parked in a visitor slot and headed along the sidewalk, spotting his “shingle” advertising the office hours of his family-law practice on his door. He had to be saving rent money by working out of his home.
I rang the doorbell, and when Peter called, “Come in,” let myself in.
He was obviously surprised to see me. His cheeks pinked up as he said, “Hello there, Erin. Did Aunt Helen send you for my inventory list of what I reclaimed from her house? I’m just making sure it’s completely accurate before I hand it over.”
“No, I just wanted to talk to you for a minute.”
“Ah. Welcome to my home-slash-office. Like I say, not exactly rolling in the dough here.”
“It’s nice, though. Is this a two-bedroom place?”
“Yep. The spare room upstairs is my office.”
I nodded, wondering if it would behoove me to give him some advice. The front entrance was into his living room, and if he wanted to make a better first impression on potential clients, he really should consider swapping the functions of the two rooms; he could easily convert this space into a comfortable professional-looking office.
“Have a seat, Erin.”
I obliged and sat down on the sofa, which was upholstered in a comfortable and attractive maroon brocade. “I’ve come from an interview at the police station. I think it’s possible that a
second attempt was made on your aunt’s life.”
“When? What happened?”
“Someone mixed ammonia with her bleach, which causes toxic fumes.”
“My God. Is she all right?”
“She’s fine. The police sent someone out to investigate. I was the one who wound up inhaling the fumes, but I’m okay, too...just a little under the weather.” How to broach the subject of Helen’s dislike for Peter’s late father? “I wanted to ask you about your aunt’s enemies.”
“Enemies? She doesn’t have any. Not as far as I know. I mean, sure, she can be a bit blunt, and that can upset people sometimes, but...she’s just a harmless old lady, set in her ways.”
“She and your mother were really close, right?”
“Two peas in a pod.”
“Even though your mom had a husband and family, while Helen was unattached? Didn’t that ever cause some friction?”
He shrugged. “Well, Aunt Helen and my dad were never especially...chummy. But nothing major.”
“A police officer told me that charges were once filed in a domestic disturbance...three or four years ago.”
“Oh, right. That was just an overreaction on Aunt Helen’s part.”
“What happened?”
“Dad didn’t take to retirement real well. One night he and Mom got into an argument after he’d been drinking, and Mom was so mad she pushed his face into the sink when it was filled with water. Aunt Helen happened to be at the house, visiting my mom, and she misinterpreted everything and called the police. All three of them wound up at the stationhouse.”
“So Helen called the police on your mom?” I asked, incredulous.
He shrugged. “Well, I guess Mom almost managed to...drown my father, and Aunt Helen was afraid if she didn’t call the police in to break everything up, my dad was going to retaliate. But, still, she overreacted. It was just a fight. My parents would never have hurt one another. I’m sure of it.”
“Were you there at the time?”
“No, but I was the attorney of record for my mom...she’d called me for legal help. We got everything straightened out right away.”