Murder on Old Main Street (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (12 page)

He stood up, managing to conceal any surprise he may have felt. “Why, hello, Kate. How have you been? I hear you’ve got a hot real estate market these days. Good for you.” He rubbed the small of his back. “Either these shelves are getting lower, or my back is getting creakier, but let’s not go there,” he said ruefully. “Sure, I’ve got some time right now, if you like. Ellie,” he signaled to the pretty young pharmacist, “I’ll be in the back room on a consultation. Just let me know if you need me.”

“Sure thing, Ephraim, but it’s pretty quiet right now. I’ll take care of the phones.”

I smiled and nodded to her as I followed Ephraim the few steps behind the partition that concealed his private workspace and accepted the straight chair he cleared off for me. No doubt he thought I was here to consult with him on some embarrassing medical problem, like hot flashes or a scaly rash. I felt like the fraud I was and gulped audibly. “I guess I should say straight out that I’m not here for professional advice, Ephraim,” I began, keeping my voice low. The partition that separated us from the register area didn’t quite reach the store ceiling, and I didn’t want to risk being overheard.

“Oh? What then?” he asked kindly, and I launched into my tale, just wanting to get it over with. I started by reminding him about the circumstances of Prudence Crane’s death, then explained Abby Stoddard’s dilemma, which was the real reason for my visit.

“Abby doesn’t want to point a finger at anyone else, but the fact is, she may be arrested at any moment, and she knows for a fact that Prudy was blackmailing you. She saw you paying her off, Ephraim. You’re not the only one she saw, but I need to know why, if only to eliminate you as another likely suspect besides Abby. I swear to you, anything you say will go only as far as it absolutely needs to go and no further. Can you help Abby out here? Can you trust me?”

It pained me to watch Ephraim’s face change as I rattled on, his open smile fading to weariness as the light went out of his eyes. I squirmed under his scrutiny but managed to keep silent. Could I be trusted, or was I another opportunist trying to glean details of his misfortune? His inner conflict raged on his face.

“Why not?” he said finally. “I’ve been carrying this thing around for too long. It’s nobody’s business, but things have a way of coming out no matter how hard you work to keep them private. Maybe now is the time. Maybe you are the person.” He looked at me for a moment. “Abby Stoddard is a decent person. It’s good of you to try to help her.”

He stood and reached to take a framed photograph down from the wall behind his desk. After blowing the dust off it, he handed it to me. “This is my daughter Amy on the day she graduated from Tufts School of Pharmacy. It was a proud day for Betsy and me. That girl is just the world to us, as sweet and fine a young woman as you would ever want to know.” He stuck his head out the door to be sure Ellie and any customers were still out of earshot, then sat down again and ran a hand over his eyes.

I looked at the photograph. A study, freckle-faced redhead grinned at me from beneath a black graduation cap, her new diploma held triumphantly aloft. Her eyes were clear and guileless, not those you would expect to find on a thief and a substance abuser. “So this is Amy. Actually, I’ve heard quite a bit about her from my daughter Emma. Did you know that they were acquainted?”

Ephraim pursed his lips and looked thoughtful. “Now that you mention it, I did know that. Went to high school together or some such, am I right?” He slapped his knee. “That’s why that pretty young woman at the Law Barn looks so darn familiar.”

I nodded. “Yes, that’s Emma. She went to high school in Newington, not Wethersfield, but she and Amy knew a lot of the same kids. She told me she went to a party at your home once and was introduced to you. You have a very good memory for faces,” I told him.

“Mmm, yes, it’s a help in my line of work.”

I sat up straighter nd got to the hard part. “Emma told me something else, Ephraim. She hasn’t told anyone else. In fact, she only remembered it this morning, but I think it bears on the matter at hand.” As factually and non-judgmentally as I could, I laid out for him the story Emma had shared with me earlier in the day. To my relief, Ephraim seemed almost glad that I already knew about Amy’s Vicodin addiction. He nodded from time to time as I spoke, confirming what Emma had suspected.

“So you know how she got hooked. That’s good,” he commented when I finished telling him what I knew. “But there’s more to the story, much more.” He paused to gather his thoughts. The phone rang at the prescription counter, and Ellie picked it up, then poked her head around the partition.

“It’s Lydia Wentworth, Ephraim, wanting to speak to you. Shall I tell her you’ll call her back?”

He nodded vaguely. “Would you? I’ll just be another few minutes here.” Ellie vanished again, and Ephraim picked up the story where I had left off. “Vicodin is a tricky medication. It’s a very effective pain reliever, which Lord only knows Amy needed after her second knee surgery. The trouble is that it’s also a mood-altering drug. It produces a euphoric feeling, and patients don’t want to give it up. They begin to obsess about how they are going to get more and more of it. Pretty soon, they can’t function normally without it. Even though the pain is gone, or mostly gone, the Vicodin produces an effect in them that they feel they can’t live without. When the prescriptions run out, they start looking for outside sources for more pills. I’ve seen it happen many times, but when it got hold of our Amy …” He stopped, obviously distressed by the memory.

After a few minutes he regained control of his voice and continued. “Amy worked part-time in the pharmacy during breaks from college. It was during spring break after the second operation that I started to suspect she was helping herself to Vicodin from the controlled substance cabinet. I noticed we were short, and I couldn’t account for the discrepancy, so I questioned Ellie and Joanna, my other pharmacist, about it. Joanna confessed that Amy had told her she spilled half of one of those big bottles down the sink. She didn’t really believe Amy at the time, but she didn’t want to tattle on my daughter to me, either, so she kept quiet and hoped I’d get wise on my own. I did, but not in the way Joanna had hoped.”

At this point in his story, Ephraim went far inside himself. He sat, eyes staring at the wall beyond my shoulder, hands clasped tightly on the desk, seeming to shrivel before my eyes. “It was that harridan who confronted me,” he said, his jaw clenched.

“Prudence Crane?” I asked, although I had no doubt who he meant.

“Up until then Amy had been very discreet, kept her secret pretty well, but she got sloppy. She let Prudy see her washing pills down her throat at the diner counter one evening after she got off work, a whole handful of them. When Amy went to the restroom, Prudy took her chance and rummaged through Amy’s book bag on the counter. Found half a bottle of Vicodin and then waited for Amy to come out of the bathroom. Told her there was no way Tufts University was going to give a diploma to a junkie and probably I’d lose my license when the truth came out, as she intended to see it would. She suggested that Amy could pay for her silence on an ongoing basis, however.” He shook his head in disbelief and met my eyes. “Can you believe it? She blackmailed a kid—
my
kid.”

I sat for a moment, imagining how I would have felt if some predator had pulled such a thing on Emma, and my blood boiled for him. “What did Amy do then, Ephraim?”

He raised his eyebrows, clearly surprised that I had to ask. “Why, she came to her mother and me, of course, and we helped her. In many ways that was the wake-up call she needed. We could have sent her off to a de-tox clinic, but we did some research and discovered it was possible to taper off the drug, if you have the right kind of support, and Amy did. We spent the next several months de-toxing her at home with the help of a doctor friend of ours. We tapered her off just like they do at the private clinics. She went through bouts of diarrhea and vomiting, chills and sweats, panic attacks and insomnia. But in the end, we won. She got off the Vicodin and stayed off it for good. So Prudy had nowhere to go with her information. Universities can do drug screens on their students, but they can’t do comprehensive background checks. As long as Amy stayed clean and passed any drug screen that might come along, there was nothing Prudy could do.”

“So why were you spotted giving Prudy money at the diner?”

Ephraim scowled again. “It happened after that photograph was taken, after Amy graduated. Betsy and I were so proud of our girl that day, we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. She had grown so much through her experience. In fact, it helped her make a decision about the kind of work she wanted to do. Instead of coming back here to work in the store or working for someone else, she applied for work as a compliance officer with the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration.”

“But that’s wonderful!” I exclaimed.

“We thought so, too—that is, until Prudence Crane got wind of Amy’s career aspirations and came to see me. It was right here in this room, in fact, that she reminded me of the extensive background checks required for that sort of work and how she planned to let the DEA know about Amy’s little problem unless I cared to make it worth her while not to.” His voice trailed off. “Well, you know the rest. She had us. I couldn’t allow her to destroy my daughter’s future.” He shrugged. “So I paid up.”

I sat quietly, hoping he would answer the question I didn’t want to ask. After half a minute of silence, he understood what I needed to hear.

“Oh, yes. You want to know if I killed the vicious, scandal-mongering old biddy. I admit it crossed my mind. She was threatening my daughter, my whole family, and a father has instincts.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t know how to convince you that I’m innocent of murder, but Kate, consider this. If I’d wanted to do in Prudy, within a few yards of where you’re sitting are a dozen substances I could have used that would never have been detected, and I have all the knowledge necessary to pull it off. I might even have done it with an overdose of Vicodin. Now, that would have been poetic justice, wouldn’t it?”

He smiled without humor. “So why would I choose such a crude, detectable method?” His voice was getting louder, and I worried that we might be overheard. He slammed a hand on the desk defiantly, causing me to jump. “Most importantly, why would anyone set up a nice woman like Abby Stoddard for a murder charge? She has never been anything but decent and hardworking.”

I put one hand on Ephraim’s arm consolingly and made a “Ssshh!” sign with the other. From the other side of the partition came the ting of the service bell that sat on the counter next to the cash register. Ellie must have been called away to another part of the store. Ephraim looked startled, then rose to his feet and straightened his smock.

I nodded to indicate that I understood he needed to take care of this customer and said aloud, “Well, thank you, Mr. Marsh, for giving me your advice about those side effects. I understand everything you’ve told me, and I’m sure there will be no more problems in the future.”

We both plastered smiles on our faces and left the office area as if our consultation had been strictly pharmacist-client. At the counter, holding the copy of
Field & Stream
I had seen him browsing through earlier, stood Mort Delahanty, scowling as always. Behind him, Miriam Drinkwater was holding a package of pantyhose and looking impatiently at her watch. I wondered how long they had been standing there before ringing the service bell. “Goodbye, now,” I said to Ephraim and made a beeline for the door.

Late that afternoon, Margo and I were pursuing the theme of peaceful coexistence between men and women. I had already told her the results of my interview with Ephraim Marsh, and we were enjoying a well-deserved happy hour before heading out for the evening. We had both kicked off our shoes and propped our ankles on opposite sides of the big desk that dominated the MACK Realty office, the better to enjoy our bourbon on the rocks, served discreetly in coffee mugs. Door closed, we sipped our drinks and listened to the Law Barn empty out as Jimmy Seidel’s staff, Emma among them, twittered and giggled their way into the evening.

“Everyone’s always ballyhooin’ about the virtues of compromise in a successful relationship, but I’ve always thought it was highly overrated,” Margo commented. “Think about it. Dissatisfaction is the essence of compromise. Nobody gets precisely what he wants.” She took another sip of her drink.

I nodded solemnly. “So what are two middle-aged adults, trying to coexist under one roof after having their own spaces for more than a decade, supposed to do?”

Personally, I vote for negotiation and accommodation.”

“Do tell.”

Margo warmed to her theme, or perhaps to the bourbon. I was beginning to experience a pleasant buzz myself. “In a good negotiation, everyone leaves the table feelin’ like they’ve won, maybe not every single thing they wanted, but somethin’. It’s the difference between a screamin’ match and a good debate. The screamin’ feels good for the moment, but it doesn’t give you a shot at amelioratin’ your opponent’s point of view over the long haul.”