“You mean,” said Virgil's wife, “like maybe the doctor or the drugstore made a mistake?”
“Those are possibilities. Or maybe your father-in-law took the right medicine in the wrong dosage. We just need to be sure before we close the case. We'd like to have a look around his house—check his medicine bottles, maybe look at the food in the kitchen, anything else that could give us a lead on the cause of death.”
“That's okay with us,” said Virgil, “but you might have to break in. I haven't had a key to Dad's place for years, and I don't think my brother has one either.”
“We'll be checking with him.”
Stamaty's mention of food seemed to have captured Cary's attention. “Were you thinking he died from something he ate? We had a birthday party for him the day before he went to the hospital. We all ate ice cream and cake, but nobody else got sick.”
“What's left of the ice cream and cake is right there in the kitchen,” said Virgil, “if you want to take samples.”
“We understand somebody brought a chocolate pie to the party,” said Auburn, “just for Mr. Rentz.”
They both froze as if an Arctic wind had swept over them. “No pie,” said Cary shortly. “Just ice cream and cake.” Virgil's silence corroborated her statement.
Neither Auburn nor Stamaty chose to bring up the feud over control of the heating and cooling business.
Rentz's older son Kevin and his wife Sheeba lived a couple of miles away in a condo in Black Lake Estates. A panel truck belonging to the heating and cooling business was parked in the driveway next to an imported compact.
This couple displayed considerably more hostility than the people Auburn and Stamaty had just left.And here Stamaty's mention of checking on Howard Rentz's medicine and food instantly raised the question of a homidical overdose.
Kevin Rentz had a short, stiff upper lip that left his front teeth exposed like those of a gopher. He said m's, p's, and b's by bringing his lower lip against his upper teeth. “The doctor said Dad probably just broke a blood vessel and passed out,” he said. “But you're saying he could have been poisoned?”
“Because if you're thinking that,” said Sheeba, “your number-one suspect has to be Dad's little friend Joy Lynn.”
“Ms. Robiche?” asked Auburn. “Why would she be a suspect?”
“Because he just changed his will and left her a big chunk of money. At least we think so. We don't know—maybe he left her everything.” Sheeba had a habit of tossing her long golden bangs to emphasize certain words. “Supposedly, they were going to get married one of these days.”
“But you don't know for certain that Mr. Rentz had changed his will in her favor?”
“We'll find out on Tuesday,” replied Kevin grimly. “That's the earliest we could make an appointment with his lawyer. He's not talking till then.”
“Who is the lawyer?”
“Polderrick, the guy whose face is splashed all over the sides of a couple of those gasoline buses that run on the east side.”
“How long had your dad known Ms. Robiche?”
“Four or five months. She just sort of turned up one day.”
“There's something funny about that woman,” said Sheeba. “People who work for the county seem to have an awful lot of free time. When Dad had his stroke, she whipped him off to the hospital and got him admitted to Intensive Care before any of us even knew anything had happened.”
“As I mentioned,” said Stamaty, “we'd like to get inside Mr. Rentz's house long enough to check his medicines and so forth. Do you have a key?”
“No, I don't. And I'm pretty sure my brother doesn't either.”
“Well, obviously that woman has one,” remarked Sheeba. “Otherwise, how did she get in and find Dad unconscious?” Then, as an afterthought: “Don't you need a warrant for that?”
“Only if the person in control of the premises refuses permission for a search,” said Stamaty. “But in that case it becomes a police matter, and Sergeant Auburn takes over. Since,” he couldn't resist adding, “I work for the county.”
“There was just one other thing,” said Auburn. “We understand there was a chocolate pie at the party.”
“Cake,” Sheeba corrected him. “Angel food. You can't stick candles in a pie. Anyway, not a chocolate pie.”
“But wasn't there a pie as a special treat for Mr. Rentz?”
“If there was,” stated Kevin with calm assurance, “Dad finished it off before we got there.”
Sheeba brought a camera from the living room. “I haven't had time to print these pictures yet, but you can scan them on the screen.” She showed Auburn which button to push, and he and Stamaty hunched over the camera together and scrolled through snapshots from the party.
Neither of them had ever seen Howard Rentz, dead or alive. The thumbnail digital images showed a hulking brute with his sons’ oxlike features, bushy eyebrows, and grizzled sideburns. Among the figures in the background, they recognized Ms. Robiche and Walter Snederle. A couple of youngsters, presumably grandchildren, also appeared in some shots.
They saw Rentz blowing out candles on a cake decorated with white, pink, and green frosting . . . Sheeba slicing and dispensing cake . . . Cary scooping ice cream . . . a youth with spiked hair devouring both treats with animal relish. In none of the images was there any sign of a chocolate pie. So the score stood at three witnesses in favor of pie and four against, plus the negative evidence of the pictures.
“But,” said Stamaty, as they drove back downtown, “although the folks who deny the existence of the pie are in the majority, they're the ones who might have used it to poison Rentz.”
“What's that Common Law maxim? Ponderantur something. It means witnesses need to be weighed rather than counted.”
It was after four thirty when Stamaty dropped Auburn back at headquarters. It still wasn't clear to either of them whether or not they were investigating a homicide, and at this time of day any kind of investigation tended to stall because the first watch was about to end and staff members were queueing up for the stampede to the parking lot.
Paul Polderrick conducted a solo legal practice in the least respectable quarter of downtown. He seemed to specialize in the type of cases that are hard to explain to children. The secretary who took Auburn's call promised him an interview with Polderrick at two o'clock the following afternoon.
Auburn opened a computer file on the Rentz case, recording in outline his investigation so far and keying in material from the hospital pathologist's report on the first autopsy. Through the Public Safety network he requested background checks on Ricedale, Snederle, Ms. Robiche, and the surviving members of the Rentz family. Then he settled down to explore the topic of blood thinners and hemorrhagic strokes.
In the process of earning a degree in criminal justice with a minor in psychology, Auburn had developed valuable research skills, learning not only where to find information but also how to judge its authority and relevance. After spending an hour on Internet searches, he went to the departmental library and returned to his office with a book on forensic pathology and toxicology that seemed to be roughly the size and weight of a concrete block.
All during the time he was working toward a clearer understanding of how Howard Rentz had met his end, a vague but insistent memory kept tormenting him. When he took the book back to the library, he consulted an old city directory and resolved that issue to his complete satisfaction. There being nothing more he could do on the case tonight, he went home to a late dinner.
* * * *
The morning brought an e-mail from Stamaty. The forensic pathologist's repeat autopsy on the remains of Howard Rentz had uncovered no new evidence to support a suspicion of homicide, much less any identifiable vestiges of chocolate pie. Results of laboratory tests wouldn't be available until after the weekend.
Before lunch Auburn presented an outline of the case—if it was a case—to his supervisor, Lieutenant Savage. Since things were quiet in the First District, Savage directed
him to continue the investigation and detailed Patrolman Fritz Dollinger to work with him. Over lunch in the canteen, Auburn briefed Dollinger on the current posture of affairs. His mention of the vexed question of the chocolate pie sent Dollinger, an inveterate chocoholic, back to the serving line for a second dessert.
They took a cruiser for the appointment with Rentz's attorney. Polderrick was a big man with sandy hair, matching complexion, and a rumpled suit. He had the easygoing manner and flourishing paunch of an athlete who has permanently broken training.
Auburn was aware, as Howard Rentz's survivors probably were not, that an attorney is under no legal obligation either to conceal or to reveal the terms of a will between the death of a client and probate of the client's will. He made it clear that an immediate and full disclosure would be very much to Polderrick's advantage.
“Can do,” said Polderrick without turning a hair. He went to an outer office and returned almost at once with a file folder, closing the door behind him. “One question. Did his family send you over here, or was it Mrs. Carpenter?”
“Who,” asked Auburn, “is Mrs. Carpenter?”
“You haven't met the Merry Widow yet? Maybe she's going by Robiche again.”
“We talked to Joy Lynn Robiche.”
“Isn't she a peach? The next time you see her, tell her from me that her timing on this one was a bit off.” Polderrick opened the file, glanced through it, and closed it again. “The Merry Widow isn't my client—not in the technical sense. And at the risk of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, I'm going to dish up some dirt you may find useful.”
A little before three that afternoon, Auburn and Dollinger parked in front of a sprawling mansion in Harmony Heights, mounted the brick steps, and rang the bell. Joy Lynn Robiche, now dressed in a tailored suit of shimmering silk and adorned with makeup and jewelry, admitted them.
“I didn't expect you to make a report in person,” she said, eyeing Dollinger's uniform in her cool, offhand way. She led them to a sumptuous sunken living room, where a dull rosy afternoon glow filtered through sheer curtains to awaken the latent fire of gold and silver threads in Japanese wall hangings.
“We're not here to make a report,” Auburn told her. “We've just been talking to Mr. Polderrick downtown. He told us all about your scheme to have Mr. Rentz make a new will in your favor.”
“I resent the word scheme," she said, her eyebrows arched in an expression of pique. “Mr. Rentz naturally felt it was proper to make a will benefiting his future wife.”
“Except that you had him so tangled up in romantic fantasies that he didn't know up from down. It's a tried and true gimmick. You find a lonely old man of independent means, preferably with failing vision—”
“You don't have to be rude. You're not exactly Denzel Washington yourself.”
“—who's just nutty enough to believe you're in love with him, but not far enough around the bend to be incapable of making a valid will. Then you promise to marry him, and persuade him to make a will in your favor, but you keep putting off the wedding with some story about a legal technicality—maybe a divorce decree not being official yet. Meanwhile, you swear him to secrecy about the wedding plans, telling him you couldn't keep your job if it got out that you had fallen in love with one of your clients.”
“You can't prove I wasn't in love with Howard.”
“True. But it's a matter of public record that you inherited three quarters of a million dollars from Hershel Carpenter, who died at Deer Creek Assisted Living Center a year and a half ago at the age of eighty-one. And that you then bought this place. And a Mercedes. And two Russian wolfhounds.”
“Mr. Carpenter was my husband. He died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm.”
“I wasn't suggesting otherwise. By the way, it's also a matter of public record that you haven't been on the payroll of county social services for the past year and a half.”
She sat glowering at them, as impervious to censure as a granite statue. “All right, so you know all about me. You've probably got my blood type there in your briefcase too. Just tell me this. Are you investigating me, or are you trying to find out who killed Howard Rentz?”
“Both.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why did you tell the coroner's investigator and me that you thought Rentz's sons had killed him?”
“Because I do think so. And his death ruined a . . . scheme I'd been cultivating for the past six months. We'd had two meetings with Polderrick. In another week, the new will would have been ready for Howard to sign.”
“What we're here to find out,” said Auburn, “is whether Rentz said anything at the party about changing his will. Because if he did, that would have given his sons a stronger motive for homicide than just wanting to get their hands on the business.”
“He didn't,” she said without hesitation. “What he told them was that they'd inherit the business when he died. He didn't say anything about what he was going to do with his money.”
“Just one other thing. We'd like to get inside Mr. Rentz's house to check for traces of that chocolate pie and look at his medicine bottles. Do you have a key?”
“No. Howard always left the basement window under the deck open for ventilation, and I climbed in there when he didn't answer the doorbell. But then I closed and bolted it. I imagine his keys were in his pocket when they took him to the hospital, but I really don't know that.”
They thanked Ms. Robiche and took their leave.
“The Merry Widow, huh?” muttered Dollinger as they walked back to the cruiser. “If you ask me, Dracula's Daughter fits better.”
“What do you bet she's got a key and is systematically pillaging the place?”
Dollinger knew a short cut to Howard Rentz's neighborhood, which took them through no fewer than three school zones around dismissal time.
“Back again, officer?” said Walter Snederle as he admitted them to his comfortably shabby place next door to Rentz's. “This looks official. How's the investigation coming?”
“I thought I recognized you when we talked yesterday, Mr. Snederle,” said Auburn, “and now I've got you placed. You wouldn't remember this, but back when I was eight or ten years old you used to sell me candy and chewing gum and comic books at your drugstore on Banks Street.”
“Oh, the store, yes,” said Snederle with a wistful smile. “That was a long time ago.”
“Earlier this afternoon we had a meeting with Mr. Polderrick, who's been handling Howard Rentz's legal affairs recently. He told us how, a few months ago, Joy Lynn Robiche steered you his way so you could make a will leaving everything to her.”
“She's a social worker for the county,” nodded Snederle. “When I was in the hospital getting over cataract surgery she helped me with paperwork, and other things, and then . . . we sort of fell in love.”
“And when she found out all that money you'd told her you had in the bank existed only in your imagination, she fell out of love again.”
Snederle's mood sank from wistful to lugubrious. “All those years of working twelve or fourteen hours a day,” he said, “with no chance to take a vacation, let alone get married . . . and then the big pharmacy chains ran me right out of business.” Tears welled up and spilled over behind the thick lenses. “Was it wrong to hope for a couple years of peace and contentment before I take off on the One-Way Cruise?”
“That's not for us to judge. We're more concerned about what you did when you found out that your next-door neighbor had replaced you in Ms. Robiche's wedding plans.”
Snederle suddenly turned wary and restless. Auburn informed him of his rights under the Miranda ruling.
“As a pharmacist, you know that warfarin, the drug that Rentz was taking to thin his blood, is the active ingredient in several brands of rodenticide, probably including the one you've been using to get rid of the rabbits and squirrels that gnaw your flowers. You also know that warfarin has no taste and no odor and that it dissolves readily in water—or coffee.
“So when Howard Rentz came over to your back porch for coffee on sunny afternoons, you made sure he gradually built up a dangerous level of warfarin by mixing it in with the sugar, which you're not allowed to use. We'd like to have a look around your house, Mr. Snederle. We don't have a warrant, so you're free to refuse. But if you do that we're going to take you into custody as a material witness, and then you won't be here tomorrow when we come back with a warrant and take this place apart.”
They exercised enormous caution in keeping the package of rat poison they found in Snederle's garage separate from the contents of the half-full sugar bowl that turned up in his trash. The laboratory eventually found high concentrations of warfarin in both specimens.
The day after Snederle was found guilty of first-degree murder, Auburn received a phone call from Cary Rentz.
“I'm so embarrassed about this,” she said. “But neither of us can sleep at night till we get it straightened out. There was a pie, of course. I made it myself—chocolate pudding in a prebaked crust, with real whipped cream topping. I put it in the refrigerator at my father-in-law's to keep a chill on it until it was time for the party, but he kept sending the kids out to the kitchen to bring him samples. By serving time, not only was the pie completely gone, but so was the pan I made it in. And nobody—nobody—knew anything about that.
“Afterward, Virgil found the plate and the rest of the pie dumped in some bushes in the backyard. Our nephew Devlin has ADHD. He's a tsunami on two legs and he's constantly in trouble. We figured he probably had an accident getting the pie out of the refrigerator and just threw it away without telling anybody. So we decided not to say anything about it either.
“That day when you asked us about the pie, we realized you were thinking it might have been poisoned. Since we still had ice cream and cake left, we were afraid you might think it was funny that we didn't also have some of the pie. I don't know if you're married, but, after so many years, a husband and wife can sort of communicate by telepathy—well, some of the time. Without a word spoken, Virgil and I decided between us to pretend there had never been a pie in the first place.
AHMM, July/August 2012 Page 4