Plaster and Poison (25 page)

“Wow,” I said, leaning back.
Mom nodded. “That’s quite a missive. I’m not surprised she wanted to get it off her chest. Or that she wanted her child to know the truth.”
“A pity he never came and asked for it.”
“That’s life,” Mom said philosophically. “Sometimes, in spite of our best-laid plans, life intervenes. Larry either didn’t know where to find Emily’s family, or he believed the lie and just didn’t care to. At this point, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other. They’re all dust.”
“That’s true,” I admitted. “Amazing that they’d convict her of a murder she didn’t commit, though. Why didn’t she just say that Lawrence did it? That way she could have kept her son and the Ritter name, and avoided going to prison.”
“It was her word against Anna Virginia’s,” Mom said. “And of the two of them, Anna Virginia Cabot was the one who was believed. Emily had been at the navy base that day. She had spoken to William. People had probably seen her. While Lawrence may have avoided being seen.”
I nodded. “Or maybe he was seen, but not really noticed among so many men.”
“And then Anna Virginia cleaned up the mess,” Mom said. “Emily was expendable; she was planning to leave Lawrence anyway; she had betrayed him. Anna Virginia probably didn’t like her much, since she was probably the kind of mother who would have thought that no girl was good enough for her darling boy. But then Lawrence died, and Frederick died, and there was no one left to carry on the Ritter name. So Anna Virginia decided she needed Emily’s child. If it was a boy, anyway; if it had turned out to be a girl, she might have reneged.”
“What an evil witch. It’s amazing what some parents will do for their children, isn’t it? You wouldn’t have helped me cover up a murder, would you?”
“If it was Philippe . . .” Mom said, and then shook her head. “No, of course not, Avery. I love you, but if you killed someone, even if it was Philippe, you’d need to take your punishment like a big girl. Just like when you were little. Remember when you staged that walkout of Mademoiselle Gagnon’s French class in eighth grade?”
“God, yes!” I shuddered. “I talked all of French one-oh-one into going with me, and then they ratted me out and I got detention every day for two weeks. And when I came crying to you, you told me . . .”
“ ‘If you do the crime, you gotta do the time.’ ”
I nodded. “You know, that’s probably what’s wrong with Ray and Randy Stenham. Mary Elizabeth was too wimpy to discipline them. They were allowed to run wild, until they started believing that nothing could touch them. And now they think they can get away with murder.”
Silence reigned for a moment, and I realized what I’d said. “I didn’t mean that literally,” I began, and then I stopped.
“You know,” Mom said thoughtfully, “you’re making a good point. Gerard seemed like the type to check out his environment thoroughly, wouldn’t you say? He liked knowing things about people. And he was staying in the model home at Clovercroft. What if he found something out there, something that proved that the Stenhams were doing something wrong? Financially, maybe? The fact that they can’t go forward with the development, that it’s just sitting there, and all the while they have to pay the mortgage, must be a strain. You and Derek are facing that issue right now, with that little ranch house you renovated this fall.”
“Except our mortgage is under one hundred thousand dollars, and we’ve owned it for only four months. The Stenhams must have borrowed millions to develop Clovercroft, and it’s been sitting barren for a year, at least.”
“Exactly. So let’s say they’ve done something not entirely legal to keep things going. Something that could get them into some trouble.”
“Beatrice did mention something about interesting bookkeeping,” I said, thinking back.
“Did she really? Well, let’s say Gerard found out about it. Either because Beatrice told him or because he was snooping around after hours. What would happen?”
“From what I know about Gerard,” I said slowly, “I’d say he’d try to figure out a way to take advantage of it.”
“Blackmail? ”
“That does seem to have been his habit. And if he blackmailed the Stenhams, they might have gotten mad enough to do away with him. Especially if they see themselves as being above the law.”
“Exactly. And then there’s Mary Elizabeth and her delicate constitution.”
I blinked, not quite following the connection. “OK. But you know, if I knew I was responsible for bringing Ray and Randy into the world, I’d have a delicate constitution, too.”
“I don’t think Mary Elizabeth is anywhere as delicate as she pretends,” Mom said dryly. “She adores those boys. Never did believe that they could do anything wrong.”
“She’s not delicate?”
“She’s about as delicate as fishing wire. Thin, but incredibly strong. What she’s got is a weak heart.”
“No kidding? So she could be taking digitalin? Ray and Randy could have slipped Gerard some of their mother’s medicine? Just like Lawrence did with Anna Virginia’s?”
“Could be,” Mom said. “You know, Avery, I think maybe we need to pay Mary Elizabeth another visit. Have a look at her medicine cabinet. And convince her that it’s time she let her boys take their lumps on their own. They’re grown; she can’t shield them forever.” She headed for the door, briskly.
“Shouldn’t we call Wayne and Reece Tolliver and tell them what we think?” I asked, trotting after. I’d made this mistake once or twice before: going off on my own after a clue and ending up in trouble. I didn’t want to do it again. The Stenham boys were probably safely tucked away at Clovercroft, under the watchful eye of the two chiefs of police, and they wouldn’t be at their mother’s house, but even so I wanted someone to know where we were going.
Mom waved a hand. “By all means. Tell them to come meet us at Mary Elizabeth’s house after they’ve finished booking Ray and Randy. By then, maybe we’ll have convinced her to talk.”
“I’ll call Derek,” I said, as the cafeteria door slammed behind us and we narrowly avoided being reprimanded by a monitor for running in the halls. “That way I can find out if the dog found anything at Clovercroft, too.” I pulled out my phone and dialed as we sped along.
“Hi, Avery,” Derek’s voice said, before I even had a chance to say hello. “There’s nothing new.”
“Are you still at Clovercroft?”
“We are. The dog didn’t mark in the office, which was a relief. Now it’s upstairs sniffing the apartment.”
“That’s good news. I have a lot to tell you about Emily and William, but that can wait. Listen to this.” I went through Mom’s reasoning regarding the twins and Mary Elizabeth.
“Makes sense,” Derek agreed. “I’ll call Wayne. He’s probably at the police station by now. I hope he’s grilling Ray and Randy over hot coals. Are you going to Mary Elizabeth’s? ”
“That seems to be the plan. I’m just following Mom.”
“Don’t you think you should wait? I’m sure Wayne plans to go there later, after he’s finished with the twins.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “I’m not worried. It’s just Mary Elizabeth. But call me when the party breaks up, OK? Just so I know to get out of there because someone might be coming. I’d hate for Ray or Randy to walk in on me snooping through their mother’s medicine cabinet.”
Derek promised he would, since he’d hate that, too, and I turned to Mom, who was standing by the Beetle, tapping her foot impatiently. “Let’s go, already!” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.” I unlocked the doors and we climbed in.

Mary Elizabeth’s big, white house looked exactly the same as when we’d been there yesterday. So did Mary Elizabeth; the only difference being that today’s pantsuit was a pale platinum gray instead of blue. And just like yesterday, she didn’t seem thrilled to see us.
“Oh. It’s you again.”
Mom took it stride, with her best smile. “Hello, Mary Elizabeth. I hoped maybe today was a better day than yesterday to drop in for a chat. May we come in?”
She didn’t wait for Mary Elizabeth’s assent—or refusal—but walked across the threshold into the black-and-white hall. I scurried after.
Mary Elizabeth closed the front door—reluctantly, I don’t doubt, but it was cold outside—and turned to Mom. She opened her mouth to speak, but Mom cut in. “This won’t take long. Why don’t we go sit down somewhere?” She looked around, spying a sofa in one of the rooms just off the hall. “That looks like a good place.”
It was a front parlor, with two matching love seats and a window overlooking the front yard, so we’d have fair warning if someone arrived. Mom didn’t wait to be invited, just hooked her arm through Mary Elizabeth’s and pulled her cousin toward the seating area. Upstairs, I could hear the poodles scratching. Mary Elizabeth glanced up the stairs, her expression boding ill for the poor animals, but allowed herself to be dragged, almost literally, to the nearest sofa and deposited there.
“Isn’t this nice?” Mom said, with a big smile, and sat down opposite.
I looked around. “Um . . . if you don’t mind, I think I need . . .” I cast about for a delicate way of putting it, and came up with, “a lipstick break.” Best I could do for a euphemism on short notice.
“You go ahead, Avery,” Mom said genially, as if it was her house instead of Mary Elizabeth’s. “If I remember correctly, there’s a powder room just at the top of the stairs on the left. Is that right?”
Mary Elizabeth nodded, tight-lipped. Mom beamed. “We’ll just sit here and chat until you get back.”
“Sure,” I said and headed up the staircase.
The scratching got steadily louder as I walked up the stairs, and I could well understand that it was driving Mary Elizabeth crazy, especially if she had to listen to it all day. Although I had to assume that the poodles were allowed out when no one was there. Maybe they were biters.
The powder room was right where Mom said it would be, at the top of the stairs and on the left. It was big and opulent and—of course—white. I closed and locked the door behind me, just to be safe, and then I looked around. There was a medicine cabinet above the sink; I started with that.
All I found there, however, were creams and tweezers and lotions and the like. And the linen closet in the corner was full, but only with towels and sheets and a stack of toilet paper and a plunger and things like that. Seemed I’d have to go looking for Mary Elizabeth’s private bath, and her bedside table, for her medications.
I flushed the toilet before I left the room, just to give some verisimilitude to my trip upstairs. Then I unlocked the door and stepped into the hallway, looking around.
Reproduction Colonials are very symmetrical, usually four rooms over four, laid out around a central hallway. The downstairs had a couple of parlors, a dining room, and a kitchen, while the upstairs had four bedrooms. The scratching noises, now accompanied by some sort of squeaking and muffled thumps, came from the room at the end of the hallway. She must keep the poor things muzzled, too, or surely there’d be full-on barking.
What had to be Mary Elizabeth’s bedroom was on the right, almost opposite the bathroom. It had plush off-white carpeting, I noted, similar to what Kate wanted in her bedroom in the carriage house, as well as a huge four-poster bed with white sheets and a fluffy white duvet and lots of white throw pillows. The whole thing looked cold as ice, and I made a mental note to be sure to add some warmth to the carriage house bedroom; some sort of unifying color that would go well with the black and white, that I could use in the pillows and maybe a quilted satin comforter or blanket across the foot of the bed. Pale pink came to mind—it looks wonderful with black and white—but Wayne might object. Pale blue might be nice; it’s very French, or at least Gustavian, and in the summer, it’s like bringing the sky and water inside.
While mulling this, I tiptoed over to the bedside table and pulled out the drawer. And hit pay dirt: a handful of little brown medicine bottles with screw caps. I scooped them up and read the names. Tenormin, Lanoxin, warfarin, just plain aspirin in a white bottle . . .
I’m not sure what I’d expected—something called digitalin, I guess—but if such a thing existed, Mary Elizabeth wasn’t taking it. Or if she was, one of her sons had removed the entire bottle. One of those I was looking at might even hold digitalin; I don’t know much about medications, but I know that the name of the drug itself is sometimes different from the name of the medication, which usually has a generic name, as well. For all I knew, I could be holding the murder weapon in my hand right now. Derek would know. I put the bottles down and pulled out my cell phone.
“I’m at Mary Elizabeth’s house,” I whispered into it when he’d answered. “If I give you a list of medications, can you tell me if any of them could have been what was in Gerard’s bloodstream? Aspirin, warfarin, Tenormin, Lanoxin . . .”
“That one,” Derek said.
“Lanoxin? That’s digitalis?”
“Sure is. What’s the dose?”
I told him what the bottle said.
“A handful of those would be enough to knock him out. Just put them back where you found them and get out of there. I’ll let Wayne know where they are.”
“Appreciate it. Anything new on your end?”
His voice was tightly controlled. “The dog marked for a body upstairs in the model. Wayne and Reece have already taken Ray and Randy in for questioning. Now they want Melissa, too. Good thing, because I was ready to start beating some answers out of someone.”
“Gosh,” I said, and then stopped, hoping against hope that condolences were premature. Hopefully, Hans was marking for Gerard and not Beatrice. “What are you planning to do now?”
“I guess I’ll head on down to the police station,” Derek said. “Tell Wayne and Reece where you are and what you’ve found. Maybe they can use it to squeeze some information out of one of the boys.”
“We may see you there. If Mom can convince Mary Elizabeth to come clean and rat on one of her darlings. And . . .” I hesitated, trying to hunt down a stray thought. “Tell them to lean on Randy. When I saw him at the lumber depot yesterday, he said something about the skylights in the bedroom at the carriage house. He might have seen them from the outside, before the snow covered the roof, but he might have noticed them while he was leaving the body, too. It’s something to ask him, anyway.”
“I’ll do that. Later, Tink.” He hung up. I did the same, and then, as quietly as I could, put the medicine bottles back in the drawer and eased it shut.
Outside in the hallway, I took an automatic left to go back down the stairs to the parlor and Mom and Aunt Mary Elizabeth, but then I hesitated. That pristine white bedroom was bothering me, and the pristine marble floors downstairs, and the two white love seats in the front parlor, not to mention the icy coldness that exuded from Mary Elizabeth. She didn’t seem like the type to enjoy the companionship of dogs. Everything was too well ordered, too clean, too oppressively neat in this house. There was no dog hair in the corners, no paw prints, no leashes or dog toys or water bowls. No barking. Just that thumping and squeaking noise from the back bedroom. The one with the closed door. The
only
one with a closed door.
I tiptoed in that direction, moving as quickly and as quietly as I could on the Persian runner. By now, Mom and Mary Elizabeth must be wondering what was taking me so long, but surely I could spare another twenty seconds to see what was making the noise. Whether it really was dogs, or whether it was something else.
I put my hand on the doorknob and twisted. And then I pushed the door open.