A Darling of Death

by Gin Jones

  "It still doesn't make any sense to me," Helen said. "Especially since I didn't think Danica had any friends."

  "Me neither," Almeida said. "I assumed Silvia was simply making their association seem more personal than it really was. It's possible Danica had made a campaign donation in the hopes of furthering some business goal."

  "You may be right." It seemed to fit the facts, although it didn't explain Silvia's rush to get involved. Maybe she just wasn't very good at judging when to spend her limited political capital. Helen made a mental note to do some research on the woman as soon as she got home. "Danica was apparently looking to expand her B&B empire. Starting with buying her local competition."

  "The Wharton B&B?" Almeida said. "Yeah, I heard that too. I also heard that Neil Campbell would never sell in a million years. That place has been in his family for generations."

  "Danica didn't strike me as the type who'd take no for an answer."

  "Or who'd stay away from forbidden fruit," Almeida said as the door behind her started to open soundlessly. "That's why Spencer's the prime suspect. There's been some speculation that Danica had been cheating on Spencer, and he found out shortly before she died. That could be a pretty compelling motive for murder."

  Spencer was in the half-open doorway behind Almeida's back, his handsome face frozen in obvious shock.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Spencer had insisted he was fine, which was a blatant lie, but Helen thought he didn't want to be fussed over any more than she herself liked that sort of attention. It would be better if they left him alone to deal with this latest trauma and get his emotions under control before Tate arrived.

  On the way out of the law office, with the front door securely shut behind them, Helen quietly asked Almeida, "Did you see his face? He didn't know about the cheating. Assuming it even happened."

  "I saw. Not that it would do any good to tell Peterson." Almeida paused at the bottom of the front stairs. "There are a number of other angles to pursue, but I didn't get far with them. Like your friend Zubov still hasn't confessed to where he was when Danica was in New York."

  "He said he was going to call you."

  "Not yet," Almeida said. "I'll keep working on the case, but I'll have to prioritize whatever leads Peterson wants to pursue, so it's likely to take me twice as long to get any useful information."

  "And with Representative Silvia breathing down your neck, you can't afford any delays."

  "Exactly." Almeida glanced at where Jack had the latest loaner car idling. "So, what are your plans for the rest of the week?"

  "Oh, you know. Some errands. Visit some friends." Helen thought it would be better if she didn't answer the question in any detail. She no longer felt bound by her promise to Almeida to avoid interfering in her investigation, since it was no longer her investigation.

  Almeida avoided looking Helen in the eye. "Probably another Tai Chi lesson or two at the House of Sambo."

  "Probably." Helen quashed her glee at the realization that Almeida was giving her tacit approval to talk to Kolya and anyone else who might have some useful information that she could pass along. "I'm determined to get stronger."

  "Let me know if you're going to do anything fun, so I can tag along," Almeida said. "And be careful. Pushing too hard, even for a good reason, can be dangerous to your health."

  * * *

  It was too late to go to the House of Sambo that evening without being too obvious about her investigation, so Helen had Jack take her home. She had a visiting nurse appointment scheduled for the next morning, but she arranged for Jack to pick her up right after that. By then, Helen would have worked out a plan for questioning her suspects.

  She'd have liked to visit the Darling B&B again to see if she could find out more from the loose-lipped Jeremy, but she couldn't risk it. The staff there had been polite in escorting Helen off the property before, but they might make good on their threat to call the police if she went back. That would give Peterson the excuse he'd been looking for to arrest her.

  On the other hand, she thought Neil Campbell might be more receptive to answering her questions. If things didn't go well, and he called the police, she at least had a credible reason for being there since she could claim to be investigating the nursing home director's meetings there, rather than anything related to the murder. Peterson probably hadn't even figured out that Neil was one of Danica's exes. After she was finished with Neil, she'd go have another talk with Kolya, making sure he told Almeida everything she needed to know.

  That settled, Helen had a light dinner and then booted up her computer to get some background information on State Representative Jane Silvia. She had a substantial number of mentions on the internet, which took hours to go through, but they generated surprisingly few details about the woman, her history, or her policies. By the time the ache in Helen's hip grew to the point that she had to abandon her research for the night, Helen wished she'd done it old-school by digging her Rolodex out of the basement. It might have had more useful information than what she'd found online, but she couldn't remember exactly where it was in the dozens of boxes in the basement. Or possibly in the additional storage in the attic.

  All the internet could tell her was that Jane Silvia was a state representative, whose only apparent political agenda was advocating for solutions to domestic abuse. She was divorced from an abusive spouse after a twenty-year marriage that had produced one child.

  One advantage of the internet over a Rolodex, Helen conceded grudgingly, was that she'd been able to see a picture of Representative Silvia on her official page at the legislature's website. She was a petite woman with short, dark brown hair and a face that had been photoshopped mercilessly, making a woman who, according to her bio, was in her early fifties appear to be in her mid-twenties.

  The picture hadn't jogged any memories of meeting the woman at some past political function, perhaps because of the photo manipulation, although she did look vaguely familiar. They must have met at one of Helen's ex-husband's events, but she just couldn't recall the details. Frank had always been the one in charge of remembering names and faces.

  The next morning, Helen called Mia to postpone her Tai Chi session until the afternoon so she would have plenty of time to interrogate Neil Campbell. Then, she went to look out the cottage's front window, anxious for Rebecca's arrival. Not for the mandatory blood pressure and pulse readings or for the usual lecture on lifestyle choices that might reduce her lupus flares, but for information on shoulder injuries. She needed to know if Danica's sparring partner was as incapacitated as he'd claimed or if he could have pushed through the pain to kill her.

  After letting Rebecca inside, Helen waited in her recliner for her vital statistics to be collected and recorded. She wished she had as much patience as her cat, who had settled on one of the stools at the kitchen island and was watching for an opportunity to make off with the mini-flashlight dangling from the nurse's laptop case.

  Finally, Rebecca finished her notes and closed her laptop. She turned on the stool to lean against the kitchen island, facing her patient. The worry lines on her face were more pronounced than when she'd arrived. "Your blood pressure is higher than normal. Are you in more pain than usual? I could refer you to a specialist. It's been a while since you were seen by a pain clinic."

  "I don't need another doctor to tell me that she doesn't know how to help me." What Helen needed was some answers to the ups and downs and unpredictable nature of her symptoms, but she wasn't going to get them today, maybe not ever, and thinking about it would only raise her blood pressure even higher. "In any event, I'm no worse than usual today. The elevated blood pressure is probably just because I'm anxious to finish here and go do some errands."

  "I can't help you if you don't trust me with the truth." Rebecca's expression grew earnest. "Perhaps you would feel more comfortable sharing your issues with a different visiting nurse. I could see who else is available from the agency. It wouldn't be a problem."

  "Now w
ho's not telling the truth?" Helen said. "I'm pretty sure my reputation as a difficult patient has scared off everyone else at your agency, and that's why you're stuck with me. Besides, I don't want a different nurse. I like and respect you. I just want to be able to decide what issues we deal with during our appointments. Sometimes it isn't what you want to talk about. Like today. The absolute last thing I want to discuss right now is chronic pain."

  "Does that mean you will want to talk about it some other day?" Rebecca asked. "Because it's not good to ignore it too long."

  "I'll let you know when it gets bad enough," Helen said. "Today, I want to talk about shoulder injuries."

  "I wasn't aware that your shoulder was bothering you." She glanced behind her as if she could see through the exterior of the laptop to the data within. "There's nothing in your records about previous flares there."

  "It's not my shoulder that's hurt," Helen said. "I was just wondering about how an injury there would affect a person's ability to kill someone."

  "You're investigating another murder." Rebecca's worry lines deepened again. "I bet that's why you don't want another nurse. You think they wouldn't answer your questions about things that don't directly affect you. I probably shouldn't do it either. It only encourages you to take unnecessary risks."

  "I can't just sit around the cottage," Helen said. "I need to keep busy and get out and interact with people. You've said so yourself. It's therapeutic."

  Rebecca sighed, but her eyes held a hint of curiosity about the murder investigation. "I'll play along for now, but you've got to promise me you won't put yourself in danger."

  Helen nodded her assent. She'd never intentionally put herself in danger, after all. It had just sort of happened in the past, but she'd learned her lesson. She wasn't going to take any more chances.

  "All right, then," Rebecca said. "What do you need to know?"

  "The cause of death was drowning, and the water was only a couple of inches deep, so I'm thinking the killer must have submerged Danica's face for several minutes. That couldn't have been easy. She trained as a Sambo fighter. My suspect did too, but he'd injured the shoulder of his dominant arm."

  "What was the diagnosis? Torn rotator cuff? Dislocated?"

  "I'm not sure," Helen said. "He was icing it the first time I saw him, and then it was wrapped later, after he'd been to the hospital."

  "Dislocated, perhaps," Rebecca said. "Or a torn rotator cuff, although that doesn't usually cause swelling. Either one would have limited his range of motion, and it would have hurt to exert much pressure with that arm. More so with the dislocation than a tear. It's hard to know without an exact diagnosis. Plus, it's not uncommon for athletes to play through the pain. They do things that medical professionals would consider impossible, especially if they've got a lot of adrenaline flowing, like they would during a fight."

  "I don't know about adrenaline," Helen said, "but he would have had plenty of anger to fuel him. He blamed Danica for his injury. I saw them sparring shortly before she died, and she did something painful to his shoulder."

  Rebecca's forehead furrowed. "Probably not a torn rotator cuff then. That sort of injury is usually caused by repetitive movements that build up over time, not a single event."

  "All I know is that he'd been to the hospital," Helen said. "And that he was convinced it was Danica's fault. He was definitely angry enough to want her dead. I just wasn't sure if he was physically capable of the murder while injured."

  "It's unlikely with either injury, but unless he was in a coma, anything is possible." Rebecca reached behind her to grab her laptop and hug it to her chest. Fortunately, the mini flashlight was still dangling from the case rather than from the cat's mouth. "If you don't have any other medical questions, I should probably be heading out."

  "I'll see you next week." Helen started to get up from the recliner to prepare for her trip to see Neil Campbell.

  Rebecca hesitated on the way to the door and turned around. "I heard that Spencer Nagle is a suspect in Danica's death, and I know he's been going to the Zubov House of Sambo. I hope he's not your suspect with the injured shoulder."

  "You know Spencer?"

  "I've run into him a few times." Rebecca's tone was one of studied nonchalance. "I'm not sure he would remember me."

  Rebecca might well have met him while providing nursing services for Spencer's father. She'd never breach patient confidentiality enough to confirm that Tracy Nagle had been her patient, but it seemed likely. He must have needed medical assistance for quite some time before his admission to the nursing home, and there weren't that many options for hiring a nurse in Wharton.

  Regardless of where they'd met, it was obvious that Spencer had made quite an impression on the shy and—to the best of Helen's knowledge—unmarried/unattached Rebecca.

  Too bad Spencer hadn't noticed her and dated her instead of Danica. It would have been so much better for any number of reasons, starting with his not now being suspected of murder. Maybe once Spencer was out from under the current cloud, Helen could set him up on a date with Rebecca. He might not have seen all of her good qualities when she was working with his parents. Helen herself had dismissed the nurse as weak and not particularly bright at their first meeting, but had since come to recognize Rebecca as highly intelligent and relentless in doing what was best for her patients. She would be a good match for Spencer if he could see past the shyness that made people overlook and underestimate her. He hadn't been misled by Helen's fragile physical appearance, so he might be able to see the real Rebecca with only a little prompting.

  Assuming, of course, that Helen was right about her nurse having a crush on him. "Would it matter if Spencer is my suspect?"

  "I suppose not." The slightest tinge of pink blossoming in her round cheeks suggested otherwise. "It's just that I can't believe he'd ever hurt anyone. He's such a kind man. Surely there must be other suspects."

  "Spencer isn't injured. It's Danica's sparring partner who is. He's my most likely suspect, despite his injury. But there are other possibilities too. No need to worry about Spencer just yet."

  "But you're worried," Rebecca said. "I can tell. You can pretend otherwise, but blood pressure readings don't lie."

  "I'm not worried exactly." Part of what made Rebecca a good nurse was how carefully she paid attention to her patients. She always noticed when Helen wasn't telling the whole truth. "I'm a little concerned, though. And a bit frustrated, because I'd really like to know more about Danica's brother, Damian, and I can't simply go talk to him at the B&B. He's her only known heir, so he's an automatic suspect. He was probably out of the country when Danica was killed, but he still could have hired someone to do it."

  "Would anyone really kill his own sister?" Rebecca asked. "I used to threaten to kill my siblings when we were kids, but it was a joke. I can't even imagine intentionally hurting them."

  "That's why I'd like to meet Damian face to face. Then I could see if he's as competitive and nasty as his sister was. I can definitely picture her killing a family member for the inheritance, and it's possible he's just like her."

  "So why aren't you going to see him?"

  "He's still out of town," Helen said, wishing she could send Jack to pick up Danica's brother at the airport. Jack had made the trip hundreds of times before when he'd worked for the local car service, and he never minded driving anywhere she asked him to. She'd need to know the brother's itinerary, though, and she doubted the staff at the Darling B&B would share it with someone they'd kicked off the property. "It's not all that critical, I suppose. Damian should be at the memorial service tomorrow, and I can get a look at him then. I'd rather talk to him before that, but I'm not welcome at the Darling B&B."

  Rebecca hugged her laptop even closer to her chest and spoke almost too softly to be heard. "I could go."

  "I can't ask you to do that. It might not be—" Helen came to an abrupt stop, aware of the trap she'd almost fallen into. If it wasn't safe for the young, able-bodied Rebecca to
investigate, then it was even less so for Helen.

  Except Rebecca hadn't meant it to be a trap. She seemed oblivious to her patient's wellbeing for the moment, totally wrapped up in her worry for Spencer. And once she started worrying about someone, she could be persistent in making sure that person was safe.

  "It might not be a good use of your time," Helen said. "I'm sure you have other commitments this afternoon, and I can see Damian tomorrow, after all."

  "There are plenty of other nurses who would be happy to take over my schedule this afternoon if needed, and none of today's patients, other than you, is particularly finicky about who visits," Rebecca said. "I want to help if I can."

  "Just be careful." Helen couldn't help saying it, even as she was aware of how much she hated to hear it.

  "Um, okay," Rebecca said. "But what exactly am I supposed to do? I've got checklists for identifying and treating all sorts of medical conditions, but not for figuring out if someone's a potential murderer."

  "I usually improvise."

  Rebecca wrinkled her nose. "That's how you work, though, not me. I prefer checklists."

  "I do too. You should have seen the ones I created for the major fundraising events I oversaw for my husband. But I'm sure you'll adapt, just like I have." The sound of Jack's truck coming up her driveway gave her an idea. "I need to do something else first, but let me talk to Jack about staking out the Darling B&B with you. I'll also see if I can find out when the brother is likely to be arriving, and then Jack will get in touch to arrange to pick you up. If you're lucky, you might even catch Damian arriving from the airport. Jack's got years of experience with picking up passengers. Perhaps he'll notice something odd about Damian's luggage or his attitude or something. You can take some pictures and just observe like you would if he were a patient, looking for signs that he's hiding something or faking his grief."