Death In Duplicate

by Valerie Wolzien

  “He graduated from Yale Medical School where he specialized in geriatric medicine. He became the head of our Board of Directors and married a nurse. And ever since then, we have continued to have family members on staff and involved in our future. We are quite proud of our history.”

  “I can see why you would be,” Susan said.

  “You see, we are unique. We remain-and hope to remain-unconnected with any of the many large, impersonal for-profit companies that are building nursing homes faster than they can staff them. We are very proud of our staff-to-resident ratio. It is the highest in the state.”

  Susan noticed the reference to the future, but decided to wait to bring it up. “How do you find staff here on the island?” she asked.

  “Oh, most of our staff lives on the mainland and commutes by ferry.” Astrid Martin glanced down at her watch. “Perhaps I can show you around as we chat,” she suggested, standing.

  Susan got up immediately. “Of course!”

  “You might want to take along our admission forms as well as the rest of our information. You might not know it but we are the only nursing facility of which I’m aware that gives its prospective residents and their families the Medicare comparison form.”

  Susan looked down at the pile of papers she had just grabbed from the desk. “Thank you,” she muttered. She had no idea what a Medicare comparison form was. “I’ll study them when I get home.”

  “Then we had better get going if you’re going to catch the early afternoon ferry. We’re a fifty-bed facility, not counting our small Memory Impaired Unit-and obviously your mother has no need for that-so there’s quite a bit to see.”

  Susan, who had made no plans of any sort, merely smiled and followed the other woman from the room.

  The Perry Island Care Center was bright and clean. Nice smells emanated from its stainless steel clad kitchen. There were flowers (plastic, but it was early in the season, Susan realized) on the tables in the spacious dining room. Attractive paintings lined the walls of the hallways. Bulletin boards announced upcoming events, trips to the Museum of British Art at Yale, and shopping expeditions to the Once in a Blue Moon Outlet Mall right outside of Hancock as well as weekly Friday afternoon musicales in the Art Therapy Room. The nursing stations were staffed by cheerful young people who seemed to be working rather than chatting among themselves. The residents looked well cared for and, those who weren’t asleep, appeared happy and content.

  There was no mention of the murders.

  Perhaps she would have learned more if she had been allowed to wander about on her own, talking with both employees and residents, but Astrid Martin was not about to let that happen. She led Susan from place to place, drawing her attention to the many advantages of the Perry Island Care Center and comparing it to other unnamed institutions that placed profit before resident care.

  Forty-five minutes later, Susan thanked Astrid Martin for the tour and walked out of the front door into the chilly daylight feeling discouraged. She had learned nothing and wasted time that would have been better spent helping her daughter take care of the twins. Thinking of Ethan and Rosie, she perked up immediately. She would catch the next ferry and, after stopping at the drugstore, head home. She’d pull some of the cilantro-spiked chicken chili-Chrissy’s favorite-from the freezer, bake a pan of cornbread, and then help out with the twins. The relaxing family evening she had hoped for last night might only have been delayed. Stuffing the papers Astrid Martin had given her in her purse, she hurried back to the car.

  She was surprised to find a young man leaning on her trunk and smoking a cigarette as he studied the macadam with the sullen expression that so many young people seemed to adopt these days.

  “Pardon me,” Susan started.

  He raised his eyes from the ground, but his expression didn’t change.

  “You’re leaning on my car,” she explained.

  “I wasn’t hurting it,” he said.

  “But I’m afraid I might hurt you when I back up. I want to make the next ferry,” she explained, wondering why he didn’t just move.

  “Oh.” He looked over his shoulder at her car and then back at her. “I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Well, if you could just wait someplace else,” she suggested, concerned about how long this might take.

  “I…Yeah, there she is.” A smile transformed him. “My girl,” he said, looking over Susan’s shoulder as he moved away. “She works here.”

  Susan turned and realized that the young woman who had been sitting at the desk in the entrance was walking toward them. “Do you need a ride?” she offered, seeing another opportunity to learn about the care center.

  “No. We’re fine,” the young man assured her, without turning around.

  Well, she had tried her best, Susan thought, getting into her car.

  EIGHT

  IF IT HADN’T BEEN FOR CLUE’S ENTHUSIASTIC GREETING, Susan would have thought her house abandoned when she arrived home. The kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes and she stopped long enough to fill the dishwasher and turn it on before she started upstairs.

  Except for the wicker laundry basket full of clean, folded, and sweet smelling baby clothes, the hallway was deserted. Susan thought she heard wind chimes and peeked in the open nursery door. The sight that greeted her was so close to what she had envisioned when she created this room that, for a moment, she thought she had imagined it.

  Ethan lay on his back, feet flying in the air, staring up at the nearest knight marching toward the castle, apparently fascinated, and certainly content. Shannon was sitting in the rocking chair giving Rosie her bottle as a CD of the Sonos Handbell Ensemble played. Shannon looked up at Susan and smiled.

  “Is Chrissy lying down?” Susan whispered.

  Shannon shook her head no. “Out after the dogs.”

  “What?”

  They both looked down at the babies, who seemed to be completely disinterested in their conversation. “She ran after her dogs,” Shannon explained, turning up the volume a bit. “Someone left the gate to the backyard open and they ran away.”

  “Oh no!”

  At Susan’s cry, both babies stirred but settled back down almost immediately. Ethan’s eyelids began to close and Rosie sighed deeply before getting back to the serious business of eating.

  “When?” Susan asked. “How long has she been gone?”

  Shannon looked up at the Cow Jumping Over the Moon clock which hung over the door. “About half an hour.”

  “She could be anywhere. I’d better go help her… unless you need me?”

  “I’ll be fine here.”

  Susan didn’t wait around to hear more. She charged down the stairs and out the back door, pausing only long enough to fill the pockets of her jacket with dog biscuits. Clue trotted behind her and Susan was careful to latch the gate, trapping her dog in the backyard. Susan then ran down the driveway and stopped. There was no sign of either her daughter or Rock and Roll. Which way had they gone? She decided to jog around the block. If she didn’t run into them, or someone who had seen them, she would come home and call the police. The mastiffs had visited Hancock on a few occasions, but they didn’t really know their way around. They could be anywhere.

  The afternoon was waning and the warmth of the day disappearing. Susan pulled her jacket tight across her chest and began to speed walk. Early bulbs poked up in gardens, their cheerful color relieving the dull brown that predominates in New England in the spring, but she didn’t stop to admire them. Up ahead, a neighbor appeared, walking a large Irish wolfhound. Susan, who knew the dog’s name was Sage but wasn’t as familiar with its human walker, waved and hurried toward her.

  “Hi! Where’s Clue?”

  “At home. Did you see two bullmastiffs? They’re brindle and they’re my daughter’s and they’ve run away.”

  “No! But if I do…” The woman paused, apparently not sure what to offer.

  “If you do, would you call the police and ask for Brett Fortesque and tell
him where they are?” Susan asked.

  “Of course.” A chipmunk, popping its head out of a crack in a high stone wall, attracted Sage’s attention and he and his mistress took off down the street.

  Susan continued her search, but fifteen minutes later she was rounding the corner back to her street and had seen no sign of either the dogs or her daughter. With a sigh, she decided to go home and call Brett. She probably should have called him in the first place.

  As soon as she made this decision, he appeared. Susan almost couldn’t believe it as the police chief’s car roared around the corner, lights flashing, and pulled up to the curb. She ran over to the driver’s window.

  “Brett! How did you know we needed you?”

  “Chrissy called,” he answered.

  Susan smiled. Her daughter had everything under control.

  “There’s a rig overturned on 95, but we’ll have more officers on the scene in a few minutes,” he said, getting out of the car and starting up the sidewalk.

  “That will help. They don’t know the neighborhood very well. I mean, we walk them when they’re here, but not a lot. You know how it is with two large dogs and-”

  Brett turned and stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “Rock and Roll. Didn’t Chrissy call the police to report missing dogs?”

  “Susan… Chrissy called us, yes. But she was reporting a body.”

  “A what?”

  “A body. Apparently your new next-door neighbor is dead.”

  “Nadine or Donald?”

  “I don’t know who. I didn’t take the call.”

  But Susan was already running up the sidewalk to the Baineses’ house. A not-too-accurate replica of a turn-of-the-century Queen Anne Victorian, the house had four different doorways as well as three porches. Susan dashed to the front door and hammered on the brass knocker shaped like a mermaid. Large panes of engraved glass were set in the door and Susan could see Chrissy as she hurried across the wide foyer. By the time Chrissy had the door open, Brett was at Susan’s side.

  “Chrissy! What happened? Why are you here? Who’s dead?”

  Brett placed his hands on Susan’s shoulders and gently pushed her aside. “Where’s the body?” he asked.

  “The kitchen.” Chrissy sounded calm, but Susan realized her face was unnaturally pale. “She’s lying on the kitchen floor.”

  “An ambulance should be here in a few minutes. Would you stay here and direct them to the kitchen when they arrive?” Brett asked. “Your mother can show me the way. Can’t you?” He looked at Susan for confirmation.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “My dogs. Rock and Roll. They’re in the basement. I didn’t know where else to put them. They’ll scratch up the door,” Chrissy added.

  “How did they get in? They didn’t kill…” Susan couldn’t even finish the question, it was so horrible.

  “Mother!” Chrissy sounded so much like her adolescent self that Susan almost smiled despite the seriousness of the situation. “They didn’t hurt her. They found her. She… she… she was stabbed. A lot.” Chrissy took a deep breath and turned away.

  “Susan, maybe you should stay with your daughter. I can find my way-”

  “I’ll be fine,” Chrissy said. “You go with Brett, Mother. It’s been a shock. That’s all.”

  Susan hesitated. “You’re sure?”

  Chrissy’s shoulders stiffened. “Yes. I’m fine. Really. Fine. You don’t have to treat me like a child.”

  This was not the time to assure her daughter that many grown-ups would fall apart if they discovered a body, and Susan led Brett from the foyer as sirens sounded in the distance.

  Nadine Baines’s elegant “chef’s kitchen” was usually spotless, everything in its place, granite countertops immaculate, Italian hand-glazed floor tiles shining. Now it was covered with blood. Nadine herself was lying beside the dark red Wolf stove, the $200 Sabatier chef’s knife she had bought in France stuck in her chest. Susan suspected it was the first time the knife had actually been used for anything other than status conferral.

  “Can you identify her?”

  “Of course. It’s Nadine Baines. You and Erika probably met her at my Valentine’s Day dessert party. She and Donald moved here in January.”

  “How well do you know her?”

  Susan hesitated. “I see her a lot, but I don’t really know her all that well.”

  Brett, who had been leaning over the body, looked up at her. “You don’t like her.”

  “No, not really. It’s not that she’s a bad person or anything, but she’s sort of self-centered. And she has too much time on her hands… and… and someone must have hated her an awful lot,” Susan concluded.

  “It certainly looks that way,” Brett agreed, walking around the body, being careful not to tread in the blood. The dogs hadn’t been so careful; their paw prints were everywhere.

  “Not exactly a pristine crime scene, is it?” Susan commented.

  “Not exactly. Oh well, it’s amazing what forensics can come up with.” Brett furrowed his brow. “I vaguely remember meeting her-hair a bit too blond, very loud voice-but I can’t come up with a face for the husband.”

  “Donald. His name is Donald. He’s a big deal real estate broker in town and he’s usually talking about it when you see him.”

  “Can’t say that rings a bell.”

  “Are you going to call him and tell him about this? Or just wait until he arrives home?”

  “Where does he work? Do you know what time he usually gets home in the evening?”

  “He has an office in Hancock-Donald Baines Executive Homes. But he doesn’t have a regular schedule as such. Well, most real estate agents don’t, do they? I mean, he shows houses at all hours. And then there are open houses and things.”

  “Is he connected with Blaine Baines Executive Homes and Estates?”

  “Yes. His mother owns that agency. His agency is connected to it. At least, I think it is,” she added.

  “We’ll find out all those things.”

  “I can’t imagine Donald killing anyone.” She looked over at Brett. “I know. You’re going to tell me that people always say that about any murderer.”

  “No, I’m going to ask you if that door is the only way out of the basement. I’d like to get the dogs out of there without them passing through here again.”

  Susan thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. I mean, the house looks old, but it’s fairly new so it does have all the amenities that you expect in a new home. I think there’s an exit on the side.”

  Brett looked out the window toward the fence around the Henshaws’ backyard. “That side?”

  “No, the other one. There’s a garage over there and a small garden shed. And I think there is another door-one of those metal things-that leads to the basement. Do you want me to go around to get the dogs and take them home?”

  “No, I think we’ll wait to see if forensics wants to look at them first… Susan, I’ll let them go as soon as possible. That’s all I can promise.”

  “I was just wondering how much damage they can do down there in the meantime.”

  “Can’t be helped,” Brett said.

  “Brett.” Susan grabbed his arm. “Chrissy gave birth to twins a few weeks ago and they only arrived yesterday and she’s looking so pale.”

  He nodded. “I know, and I’ll make this as easy for her as possible. We’ll need a statement, but after that, she can go on home.” He smiled for the first time since entering the house. “It’s not as though she’ll be difficult to find.”

  The door to the foyer opened as he finished speaking and Chrissy herself appeared. “They’re here,” she said simply as a large group of uniformed officers followed her into the kitchen.

  Brett stood up and the murder investigation began.

  NINE

  THE PHONE WAS RINGING WHEN SUSAN ARRIVED HOME. Kathleen was on the other end of the line.

  “Oh, Kathleen, you won’t believe wha
t’s happened. Nadine was murdered and Chrissy-well, not Chrissy, the dogs really-found her.”

  “What were they doing at the nursing home? Or even on the island? Was Nadine at her summer home? Did you take them there?”

  For one moment Susan thought that the confusion of the past twenty-four hours had affected her brain, but then she understood Kathleen’s assumptions. “I’m not talking about the Perry Island Care Center. Nothing happened there-at least not today. Nadine was murdered next door. In her house. Chrissy and the dogs found her.”

  “They found her inside her house? How did they get in?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Chrissy did. Brett’s there now. Chrissy has to make a statement and then she’ll be home. Kathleen, I’m worried about her. She looks completely wiped out. I’m afraid this is all just too much for her.”

  “She’s young and resilient. But having a doctor check her out might not be a bad idea.”

  “If I can convince her to see one. You know, I should start dinner. Stephen and Jed will be arriving home any minute now. And Chrissy will feel better if she eats something.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help? Our dinner tonight is mac and cheese, carrot sticks, and applesauce. I can get it on the table in minutes if you need me. I could pick up some take-out and bring it over there if that would make things easier.”

  “Thanks, but I think we’re okay.”

  “Then I’ll say good-bye and go see why the kids are so quiet. I always think they’re doing something they shouldn’t be doing when I don’t hear them for a bit,” Kathleen said and hung up.

  Susan put down the receiver and turned around. Shannon was standing in the open doorway, a bulging plastic bag in each hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. But the garbage cans out back are full and I don’t know where to put the overflow.”

  “Oh.” Susan thought for a moment. “Why don’t you just pile them up in a corner of the garage? We’ll have to remember to put them on the curb early tomorrow morning so they get picked up.”