To the Last Drop

by Sandra Balzo

  ‘Nothing.’ I handed her a napkin. ‘When I retrieved my jacket from the conference room the detectives were wrapping up and Lynne was about to call her sister.’

  And understandably wanted some privacy to do so. I’d headed across the tracks to work and Eric had taken the car in search of his father.

  Sarah dunked the corner of the napkin in her coffee and rubbed at her face. ‘So why do you think Swope took his swan dive?’

  ‘Good question. The good doctor has some bucks, judging by the Lexus his daughter drives and the supposed “upmarket clientele” he served. If Pahlke was a pest, why not hire a lawyer or get an injunction to keep her away?’ Two things I’d have tried before jumping off a ten-story building.

  ‘From what you’ve said, Swope wasn’t all that worried. It was Ted who went ape-shit.’

  I winced at the memory, given the aftermath. ‘At both that and whatever Clay Tartare told him on the phone.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Bet that makes you crazy.’

  I frowned at her. ‘No, it doesn’t – why should it? Besides, Pavlik or Ted will tell me.’ Eventually.

  ‘What I do know,’ I continued, ‘is that no matter how angry Ted or anybody else got at me, I sure wouldn’t jump out of a window over it.’

  ‘You’re not a guy.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Four times as many men commit suicide in the US as women.’

  ‘They don’t get help?’ I guessed.

  ‘Maybe that’s part of it, but the statistics are also skewed because guys are better at it.’ Sarah tossed the soggy, crumpled napkin on the table and took a sip of her coffee. ‘More women try, you understand – we just use less certain methods like pills. Guys go for the big guns.’

  ‘Guns? Literally?’

  ‘You bet – like half of all suicides in the US are committed with firearms.’

  Lovely. And my bipolar friend owned a gun. ‘You don’t ever have thoughts, do you?’

  ‘Sure, but I don’t act on them. You’re right to worry, though – ninety percent of suicides have a diagnosable mental disorder of some sort. And here’s another fun fact,’ Sarah said, getting up with her plate and cup.

  Fun fact? I was still reeling from the stats she’d already cited.

  ‘In the UK,’ she continued, ‘where you can’t own a gun, hanging and suffocation is at the top at fifty-two percent and firearms way down at two percent. Their rates overall are lower than ours anyway – apparently the English are a cheerier lot than they appear.’

  ‘How in the world do you know all this?’ I asked, worried.

  ‘I read.’ Her back was toward me as she set her dirty dishes on the counter. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but not necessarily studies on suicide.’

  ‘Not just on suicide.’ She turned to face me. ‘For example, did you know that bipolar disorder can run in families?’

  If Sarah hadn’t already had my full attention, she did now. ‘Are you saying that one of your parents, or—’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  Now she didn’t want to talk. But the fact was that Sarah never said much about her family. Apparently there was a reason for that.

  But I knew my partner well enough not to pursue it. At least for now. ‘Anyway, we don’t know that William committed suicide.’

  Sarah leaned her back against the cabinet, her arms folded. ‘Please don’t tell me you’re going to try to make a homicide out of this.’

  ‘Some things don’t add up. Like William’s shirt was dry.’

  ‘So? You said he landed next to the building. The overhang probably kept the rain off him.’

  ‘The 501 Building has a flat roof. No eaves, no overhang.’

  ‘Even so, if the wind was blowing from the west couldn’t the building have sheltered the body on the east?’

  ‘Yet when the rain started up again, it was hitting William’s shirt. That’s when I realized it had been dry in the first place.’

  But Sarah wasn’t buying it. ‘Winds shift. What did Pavlik say when you showed him?’

  ‘That’s just the problem. I told him about it but couldn’t actually show him because it started to rain while I was still on the phone to nine-one-one. They only have my word that the shirt was dry.’

  ‘And Pavlik thinks you’re lying?’

  ‘No, of course not. But he does seem to be discounting it. Says that William could have jumped after the rain stopped early this morning.’

  Sarah shifted and braced her hands behind her to protect her back from the jutting edge of the counter. ‘Cheer up. In support of your original theory he also could have been murdered after the rain stopped. Happy now?’

  ‘It’s not that I want the man to have been murdered.’ Especially given that the suspect who had access to the building and had just argued with William was the father of my son. ‘It’s just—’

  I broke off as hurried footsteps sounded on the wooden front steps. Before I could get up from the table the door was swung open and slammed back into the condiment cart.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Lynne Swope said. ‘I really need to talk.’

  Standing to pull the door closed behind her, I said, ‘I thought you were with your sister.’

  ‘This isn’t really something I could discuss with Mary. Oh,’ she held up a mug, ‘this was on the porch.’

  William’s coffee mug from the night before, though I thought it best not to remind her.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, taking it. ‘Can I get you a coffee? Or something to eat?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Lynne said. ‘What I do need you to do, though, is help me prove that Rita Pahlke killed my husband.’

  TEN

  ‘But you seemed so sure William’s death was suicide,’ I said, setting the mug of cold coffee aside.

  ‘I know.’ Lynne Swope was unbuttoning her coat. ‘I guess I just assumed William jumped, given the circumstances.’

  I pulled out the chair across from Sarah for her. ‘What changed your mind?’

  ‘The fact that Rita Pahlke is here in Brookhills.’ Lynne sat but didn’t quite meet my eyes as I came around the table to take the seat next to my partner. ‘We already know she was stalking him. Maybe she snuck up to his office last night and pushed him out the window.’

  Sarah frowned. ‘But didn’t you tell Maggy that Pahlke was just a harmless nutcase and William just laughed her off?’

  Lynne’s eyes flashed toward me like she’d caught me sharing confidences. ‘Those were William’s words. I also told Maggy the woman demanded money.’

  ‘And William gave it to her?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ Lynne snapped. ‘He said she was—’

  ‘A harmless nutcase,’ I finished for her, with just a tinge of satisfaction. ‘What makes you think now that William was wrong about her?’

  She jerked up her head and met my eyes squarely. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

  ‘I’m sure the sheriff’s department is looking into all the possibilities.’ I realized I must sound like Pavlik when I ran one of my theories past him. ‘Including, to be honest, Clay Tartare. I noticed you didn’t tell the investigators that he’d been trying to get hold of William and, like Pahlke, had just showed up here.’

  She flushed. ‘I told you, Maggy, whatever Clay wanted was between him and William.’

  ‘Who, as you’ve pointed out, is dead,’ said Sarah.

  If my partner hadn’t vocalized it I would have, because I sure was thinking it. ‘You’re telling us that you never asked William what it was all about?’

  ‘I didn’t want to know.’

  ‘Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.’ It was one of my favorite mantras. ‘But it had to be important. The guy flew all the way here.’

  ‘Maggy’s right,’ Sarah said. ‘That’s gotta involve at least one change of planes.’

  Lynne’s color got deeper. ‘When I was th
eir office manager I was stuck in the middle between those two gigantic egos. Once I became William’s wife I said no more.’

  There was something she wasn’t saying. ‘Did you have more than a professional relationship with Tartare?’

  Lynne’s chin went up. ‘We might have gone out, once or twice. But that was before William and me.’

  Ah, so a romance gone bad. No wonder she didn’t want to talk to the ex-boyfriend. Yet Swope and Tartare had remained partners. ‘Did William know that you and Clay had dated?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And it didn’t bother him?’

  ‘Why would it bother William?’ Lynne said coolly. ‘He’d won.’

  It wasn’t affection I heard in her tone. ‘And Clay?’

  Lynne shrugged. ‘They stayed in the practice together, didn’t they? Nearly fifteen years.’

  Sarah snorted. ‘Long time to be at each other’s throats.’

  ‘Oh, they actually seemed to enjoy the power struggle. And I was quite happy to leave them to it.’ Lynne turned to me. ‘Which is why this can’t be suicide. William was a fighter. He loved competing. I can’t tell you how out of character it would be for him to take his own life.’

  ‘And yet here you are, telling us just that,’ Sarah said.

  Lynne looked sideways at my partner, confused.

  But apparently even the financial planner’s short exposure to Sarah had taught her to ignore and plunge on. ‘Maggy, you heard what Detective Hallonquist said about finding a “precipitating event” to put in their report. I’m afraid the police are going to settle for the obvious solution and move on.’

  ‘“Obvious” is sometimes right,’ Sarah said, glancing at me with a ‘keep your mouth shut and don’t get involved’ expression on her face. ‘In fact, it’s usually right. Which is why it’s obvious, if you get my drift.’

  ‘I don’t believe William killed himself,’ the widow said stubbornly, tears welling in her eyes. ‘And I think you can help me prove it. My sister says you’re the Jessica Fletcher of Brookhills, Maggy.’

  I felt myself flush. ‘Well, maybe so. But younger.’

  ‘And bitchier,’ Sarah added.

  I plunged on this time. ‘Sarah’s right about one thing, Lynne. Sometimes things really are as they appear.’

  The woman’s chin went higher. ‘So how do you explain the glass on the ground? If William jumped wouldn’t he have opened the window first?’

  The office building was built in the sixties with fixed floor-to-ceiling glass panes fronted by low heating/AC registers. Supposedly office workers with a fear of heights would be reassured by the foot-high separation between them and the nothingness outside. It hadn’t done much for me.

  But one thing I did know: ‘Those windows don’t open. William would have had to break the glass to jump.’

  ‘Do we know for sure that he went out the tenth floor?’ Sarah asked. ‘Maybe he swan-dived off the roof and the broken glass is from him bouncing off the building on the way down.’

  Lynne’s head dropped and she let out a strangled sob.

  I glared at my partner, whose ‘don’t get involved’ strategy apparently didn’t include herself. Or maybe her plan was to traumatize Lynne so badly she left.

  But Sarah just shrugged. ‘I’m brainstorming – you know, providing a fresh perspective?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Lynne said. ‘I know you’re both trying to help.’

  I wasn’t so sure of that.

  ‘One pane of glass on the tenth floor was broken out,’ I said, ‘so that’s probably where William … exited the building.’

  When Lynne didn’t flinch this time, I continued, ‘And I did notice the oxygen tank on the ground near William’s body.’

  ‘You think it was used to break the glass?’ Lynne asked.

  ‘Possibly,’ I said, glancing toward Sarah.

  But my partner was busy studying our guest. ‘Suicide clause?’ she asked.

  Lynne sat up straight. ‘What?’

  I didn’t understand where Sarah’s brainstorming had taken her, either, so I kept my mouth shut.

  ‘Maggy says that a couple of hours ago you were convinced your husband killed himself. You already knew about the two visitors from home. Something else had to have changed. Maybe you pulled out your husband’s life insurance policy and found it had a suicide clause?’

  ‘I just had a chance to think,’ Lynne Swope protested. ‘And I’m astounded, quite honestly, that you don’t see it. Rita Pahlke is an extortionist who followed us here and then, ever so conveniently, found William’s body. You don’t call that suspicious?’

  The woman was spinning the story to her benefit, but she had a point. ‘Of course. But you have to admit you’ve done a complete one-eighty from suicide to murder in a very short amount of time.’

  ‘Yes, but—’ Lynne broke off and dove into her purse, murmuring something I couldn’t quite catch.

  ‘I’m sorry. Did you say something about Ginny?’ I asked when she surfaced with a tissue.

  The financial planner dabbed at her nose. ‘Ginny told those detectives it was her fault.’

  ‘She did? When?’

  ‘After you left. I was on the phone with Mary and I heard Ginny talking to the detective.’

  ‘Hallonquist?’ Sarah guessed.

  ‘No, the other one. The one who was talking about people having regrets.’

  Taylor’s moment of humanity. ‘I was surprised, honestly, that he was so caring.’

  ‘Caring?’ Lynne half-snorted, leaving a string of snot dangling that wasn’t nearly as appetizing as Sarah’s sticky bun had been. ‘I think he’s the one who put the idea in her head.’

  ‘Umm, you have something …’ I swiped at my own left nostril.

  She wiped.

  ‘What idea did he put in Ginny’s head?’ I asked now that I could look at the woman without gagging.

  ‘That my daughter should blame herself for her father’s decision.’

  I didn’t like Taylor but I also knew that wasn’t what he’d said. ‘I think what the detective was saying was that survivors of people who commit suicide shouldn’t blame themselves.’

  ‘Exactly. And you know how perverse teenagers are. It’s like sex. Tell them about contraception and they think you’re giving them permission to do it.’

  ‘Oh, please.’ Sarah seemed at the end of both her patience and her brainstorming. ‘Give kids a little credit, will you?’ As the guardian of two teenagers herself, my partner figured she had some experience.

  Before the two women took it out back over sex education, I steered us in the direction of our subject. ‘What exactly did Ginny say to Detective Taylor?’

  Lynne sniffed and shot an uncertain glance at Sarah. ‘That it was her fault that William killed himself.’

  ‘How could it possibly have anything to do with Ginny? She and Eric had just arrived in town.’ Then I remembered what Ginny had told the detectives. ‘You mean her grades? How bad can they be? This is still the first semester of classes.’

  ‘Yes, her grades,’ Lynne said. ‘I had no idea but apparently she’d told William.’

  ‘Told him what?’

  ‘That she’s been,’ she looked around like she was afraid somebody would hear, ‘expelled.’

  ELEVEN

  ‘People don’t commit suicide because their kid flunks out of school.’

  Lynne Swope had long departed and Sarah was wiping tables dirtied by the lunch crowd.

  ‘But William was a guuuuy,’ I said, mimicking my partner from the employee side of the service counter.

  ‘If he killed himself over this, he’s an idiot. Be a man – take the Lexus away.’

  I didn’t disagree. ‘You heard Lynne. The car was contingent on Ginny keeping up her grades.’

  ‘Then she should have been the one to kill herself.’ Sarah tossed the dishrag she’d been using across the counter toward the sink. She missed.

  ‘Nice.’ I leaned down to pick up t
he rag. ‘But that doesn’t change the way Ginny feels. Quorum is expensive enough in the first place. Then add the fact that William bought her the Lexus as a reward for getting in. And that he and Lynne moved all the way here—’

  ‘Not the daughter’s fault,’ Sarah reminded me. ‘That was the “helicopter parents of the year’s” choice.’

  ‘Regardless, from Ginny’s perspective, she’d already let her dad down. And now there was this blow-up with Ted.’

  ‘I thought you said she wasn’t here for that.’

  ‘She and Eric arrived just in time for Ted to burst in and call her dad a son of a bitch. I’m sure she heard the rest of the story last night from Lynne when William didn’t come home.’

  ‘Or from Pavlik and his guys this morning.’ Sarah rubbed her chin. ‘So the kid should feel guilty.’

  ‘She should not,’ I started indignantly. ‘Didn’t you just say—’

  ‘Oh, settle down.’ My partner was grinning. ‘Just trying to get a rise out of you. Ginny’s obviously not responsible for her father’s freefall.’

  ‘Now convince her of that.’ I squinted at the table where the three of us had sat. Sarah had already scrubbed it once but I’d be damned if there weren’t still sticky smudges where she’d sat. I tossed her the rag. ‘Go over that table again.’

  ‘It’s interesting, though,’ my partner said as she re-cleaned her tacky mess, ‘that Lynne has suddenly decided it’s not suicide. She can say all she wants that her change of heart is because Pahlke’s appearance here is suspicious, or she doesn’t want the kid to feel responsible, but I like my theory about the life insurance policy better.’ She sent the damp cloth back airmail.

  I caught it. ‘You mean that she’s discovered there’s no payout on William’s life insurance policy in case of suicide? But he’s been dead for less than twenty-four hours – there’s no death certificate yet and it’s a Saturday to boot. Could she even have filed a claim?’

  ‘No, but how long does it take to go home, pull out the policy and a magnifying glass and read the fine print?’

  About as long as the interval between my leaving Lynne at her office and her showing up at Uncommon Grounds. ‘She is a planner, I guess, by her own admission.’