by Sonia Parin
“I’m lucky my folks taught me to live within my means,” Faith said. “If I want something, I have to save up for it.”
“Yes, well. Instant gratification is the modern-day plague. We want things now. But it’s not always about overspending. Some people who declare themselves bankrupt usually have a business that went belly up.” Abby stretched her legs. Since returning from hospital, she’d done nothing but sit down. “I need to go out for a walk.”
“You’re supposed to rest and take it easy,” Faith said. “I promised your mom I’d take care of you. You don’t have to lift a finger. Everything is taken care of. Even the cleaning.”
Abby sat up. “I think I just remembered something.” She got on the phone and called Markus. When he picked up, she asked, “Did the maid clean Bert’s room the morning he died?”
“No, she was running late and then the police asked me to make sure no one went in.”
“So, when’s the last time she cleaned the room?”
“This morning.”
So, whatever she thought she saw had now been cleaned away or it had been taken by her attacker. Not that it mattered since she knew Joshua had done a thorough search of the room. She couldn’t possibly think he’d missed something. “While I have you on the line, could you send up some coffee, please?”
“I thought Mitch had gone up,” Markus said.
“Yes, and then I got into trouble with my mom so he beat a hasty retreat.”
“What’s going through your mind?” Faith asked.
Abby disconnected the call and sat back. “I’m entertaining a couple of thoughts. Firstly, I’m wondering if Denise Lowe removed something the police missed when she came to collect her dad’s belongings. She would have known what to look for.” Abby rubbed the tender spot on her head. “Secondly, I think I bent down to pick something up.” She must have had her back to the door. Had she been followed upstairs?
Who would have seen her going upstairs?
“Let’s add a few names to the crime board,” Abby suggested. “I need to remember everyone I saw when I came into the pub.” She surged to her feet but her legs crumbled beneath her. “Whoa. Dizzy.”
***
“WHAT HAPPENED?” ABBY TRIED TO sit up but it felt too comfortable lying down.
“You sort of fainted but you came to straight away and then you curled up on the couch and fell asleep. I called the doctor and he told me to keep you awake.”
“How exactly did you do that?” Abby asked and rubbed her cheek.
“I tapped you on the cheek.” Faith grinned. “Okay, I sort of slapped you. Hey, needs must. You suffered a possible concussion. You’re not supposed to fall asleep.”
Faith rose to her feet and went to answer the door. “Oh, good. Coffee. Abby needs to stay awake.”
Markus strode in and looked around the sitting room. “Is it safe to talk?”
“My mom’s having coffee with her neighbor. At least, I think she is.”
Faith checked the laptop. “Yes. She’s off-line.”
“Okay,” Markus said. “I brought you enough coffee to stave off fatigue. You’re in luck because this is a state of the art dosage.”
“Huh?”
“It’s been scientifically proven,” Markus quirked his eyebrows up. “There’s even an algorithm.” He pointed at the mug of coffee. “This is a 200 milligrams or 3.5 ounces serving. That should keep you going for an hour. I’ll bring another one in an hour’s time.”
“Three and a half ounces? What’s the usual serving?” Abby asked.
Markus gave her a lopsided grin. “Half that. This is bound to keep you upright for a while.” Markus set aside some cushions and sat down. “Has anything come back to you?”
Abby wanted to shake her head but decided against any sudden movements. “I’m trying to remember everyone I saw when I walked into the pub. The killer might have been sitting at the bar.”
“Okay. I might be able to help,” Markus said. “I’d been in the dining room and I walked into the bar. That’s when I saw you going up the stairs.”
“Great.” Abby perked up. “Did you see Denise Lowe coming down the stairs with her husband?”
Markus clasped his hands. “Her husband? No, I didn’t see him. I saw her brother.”
“Huh?”
He nodded. “When she arrived earlier, she made a beeline for the stairs. So, I stopped her.” Markus grinned. “I knew she’d come to clear out her dad’s stuff, but I couldn’t miss the opportunity to annoy her. The woman is made of steel. To be honest with you, I don’t think she cares about her dad’s death. Some people excel at hiding their feelings, she doesn’t have any.”
“How can you be sure?” Abby asked.
“I watch and listen. I’ve been doing it all my life. Easy enough to do when you grow up in a pub. I know you all think she’s been hiding her emotions, but some people just don’t have any to hide. Anyway, long story short, I pretended I didn’t know her and said I couldn’t allow just anyone to waltz in as if they owned the place.”
Abby rubbed her eyes. “Okay. Tell me about the man with her.”
“Oh, since I’d never seen him before, I subjected him to a security check. I actually made him produce his driver’s license. He didn’t like that. His name is Robert Howington.” Markus grinned.
“So, why did Mitch think he was her husband?”
Markus gave her a lift of his eyebrows and drawled out, “I told you. I dropped him on his head when he was a baby.”
Slumping down on the couch, Abby sighed.
“I think she’s having a relapse,” Markus said.
“No, I’m not.” Abby straightened. “So, what happened next?”
“They went upstairs and I went back to the dining room.”
Meaning, he’d gone back to the kitchen to be with Hannah. “What about the tourists? When we left the pub, they weren’t there.”
“Yeah, they came back and sat at the bar. Just don’t ask me to name them. I know they have those ridiculous name tags pinned on but one of the women caught me trying to read it and gave me a pursed lip look. She must have thought I’d been looking at something else.” He bobbed his eyebrows up and down. “If you get my meaning.”
Faith retrieved the photo from the wall and held it up in front of Markus. “Can you point to them?”
“They were all there, except that one.”
Faith leaned down to look at the person he’d pointed at. “Linda. Yes, we saw her at the café.”
“And that one.”
“Alice,” Faith said. “We saw her outside. But when we headed to the café, we saw her coming back to the pub.”
“She might have gone in the residents’ entrance,” Markus suggested and then he pointed to another person.
“Steph.”
“Steph wasn’t there?” Abby drew down her brow. “Has she come up in conversation?”
Markus chuckled. “Are you two about to point the finger of suspicion her way because she escaped your notice?”
Steph hadn’t said or done anything to raise their suspicions. In fact, if Abby had to be honest with herself, she had no idea who the culprit might be. If she had to suspect someone of hitting her on the head…
Alice? If she’d gone back inside the pub via the residents’ entrance, she might have gone straight upstairs to her room. A few scenarios ran through Abby’s mind. Alice could have heard Abby. She might have nudged her door open, taken and peek and then decided to take action. She might even have been inside Bert’s room. When she heard someone coming up, she might have hurried out and hidden around a corner…
“Did you see Denise Lowe go upstairs again?” Abby asked.
“Nope. After I saw you go up, I walked away. Mitch would have been at the bar then. Ask him.” He checked his watch. “In fact, I have to go relieve him from bar duty. I’ll send him up.”
“Thanks, Markus.”
Unfortunately, they were out of luck. Mitch swore he’d been at the bar and had
n’t seen Denise Lowe go up the stairs again. In fact, he hadn’t seen anyone go up the stairs.
If most of the tourists had been downstairs and Denise and her brother had left, who’d attacked her? Steph? Alice? Maybe even Linda.
“I need to get out of here and Doyle needs to go out too.” Abby got his little tartan coat and put it on him. Doyle gave her a half-hearted wag of his tail and hung his head in resignation. “If you don’t like your coat, we can get another one.” Doyle gave her a lick on the chin. “Is that it? You don’t like the color? But dogs are colorblind.”
“Maybe you should get a plain colored one. Something in blue,” Faith suggested.
“Yeah, I might do that. Hey… I remember I had the coat with me. How did it get here?”
“Oh, I picked it up,” Faith said. “I know what you’re thinking. No, I didn’t see your phone. If I had, I would have picked it up.”
“Okay. Let’s go out the residents’ door, it’s closer.” Abby gasped. “The residents’ door. That has to be how my assailant came in.” But it didn’t make sense. Why would Alice hit her on the head? She couldn’t be the killer. Bert had bailed her out.
Yes, but…
She knew all about drying herbs. The knowledge could have been employed to process the digitalis…
Chapter Ten
FAITH GAVE A SLOW SHAKE of her head. “It can’t be Alice.”
“Faith, you’ve spent half an hour saying that, but you haven’t provided any supporting evidence to back your objection.” Abby took Doyle’s coat off and ran a brush through him. “Oh, you like that. Yes, who’s my good doggie. You’re so gorgeous.”
“My reasoning is floating around my head. I have to pluck it out. Give me another minute.” Faith slumped down on the couch and covered her eyes. A moment later, she sprung upright. “I’ve got it. We assume the killer hit you on the head.”
“Yes.”
“Okay. We also assume, and rightly so, the killer is responsible for somehow making sure Bert took his regular dosage of digitalis.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, all along, you’ve been saying you saw someone in Bert’s room the first day you arrived back in town.”
“Yes.”
“So, if the killer is responsible for hitting you on the head and planting the digitalis in Bert’s room, then it can’t be Alice because your mom said she saw her sitting with the group that first night.”
Abby tapped her chin. “Oh. You’re right.”
“See, I’m not just a pretty face.”
“Maybe she didn’t act alone,” Abby said and went to answer a knock at the door.
“We ran the number plates,” Joshua said as he strode into Abby’s apartment. “The car belongs to Denise Lowe’s brother.”
Faith pumped the air. “Yes.”
“And?” Abby asked.
“According to him, he drove into town to give his sister moral support and to help her pack their dad’s belongings.”
“He didn’t exactly look happy about it.” Abby gave a slow shake of her head. “No. I don’t like coincidences. We saw Alice standing by his car.” There had to be a connection. She knew Alice would have a key to the residents’ entrance. Had she opened the door for Robert Howington? Frowning, Abby strode to the window and imagined Robert Howington taking his dad’s suitcase out to the car. Along the way, he contacted Alice and asked her to let him in the residents’ entrance. He came up, found Abby snooping around in his dad’s room and decided to get her out of the way.
“Alice had known Bert for a long time,” Joshua reasoned. “I think we can safely assume she met his son at some point. Think about it. If you lose a family member who’s been traveling around with a group of people, one of them might stop you to offer their condolences.”
Abby exchanged a look with Faith that spoke of silent agreement. “We both got the impression she didn’t want to be seen talking to him. That’s why at first we thought she’d been on the phone or talking to herself.”
“Unless you can read lips and know what she’d been talking about, I don’t have anything to connect them. Despite what you might think, the police can’t go around badgering people just because they stand in a street corner talking to themselves.”
“Did you know Robert Howington is a bankrupt?” Abby asked. “That makes him desperate for money and desperate people make bad decisions and wrong choices.” Abby gave a firm nod. “Also, you need to canvas the area and find out if anyone saw someone coming in through the residents’ door. I’m sure that’s how my assailant came in.” Abby shivered. She had no trouble imagining Robert Howington coming back inside because… because he’d seen her taking the photograph. Yes, that’s it, Abby thought. “You should at least check to make sure he’s left. For all we know, he’s still hanging around town, waiting to finish me off.”
“Anything else?” Joshua asked, his eyes brimming with amusement.
Abby read the notes she’d been taking in case her memory failed her. “Yes. When I went into Bert’s room, I think I saw something in the waste basket.”
“We did a thorough sweep of the room, Abby.”
Abby looked up at the photos Faith had taped to the wall. “You said you took samples of the tea and coffee.”
“We did.”
“Were there any used teabags in the waste basket?” Seeing one would have prompted her to have a closer look.
“We took samples of the tea,” Joshua confirmed. “And the tests came back negative. No traces of digitalis were found.”
Abby fought the urge to surge to her feet because the last time she’d tried to get up too quickly, she’d collapsed. “But you didn’t test all the teabags. What if only some of them were tampered with? We’re looking at a pre-meditated crime. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure Bert succumbed to a heart attack. And I bet anything they didn’t act alone.”
Joshua got up. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“You’re leaving?”
“As per your instructions, I have to go canvas the area.”
***
“YOU’LL GET US INTO TROUBLE, Abby.”
“Just drive.” She’d called the owner of Rosebud Cottage, the bed & breakfast where Denise Lowe had been staying at, and the owner, Glenda Stephens, had told her Denise hadn’t left yet.
Faith grumbled. “Do you even have a plan?”
“Yes. I’m going to be confrontational.”
“And where do you think that will get you?” Faith asked.
“Denise Lowe has to have a breaking point. Push her hard enough and she might make a mistake and say something to incriminate herself or someone else.”
“When did we start suspecting Denise Lowe?”
“If we haven’t, we should have. She had the run of the place. For all we know, she might have spoon-fed her dad the digitalis.” While he’d been at home, Abby reasoned. But then, he’d gone on vacation. Had Denise Lowe engaged the services of a co-conspirator to do the dirty work for her?
“Yes, but… Why do we have to confront her?”
Abby gave a small shrug. “I don’t answer to anyone, so I’m free to ask the tough questions.”
“She could lodge a harassment suit against you,” Faith warned. “Then you’ll be answering to the law.”
“Nonsense. She’s guilty of something. She has to be.”
“Yes, of having a mean temper and unfriendly disposition.” Faith shifted in her seat and tightened her hold on the steering wheel. “Something tells me I’m going to live to regret this.”
Doyle clambered up onto Abby’s lap and looked Abby in the eye. “What? Do you have something to say?”
“If Doyle could talk, I’m sure he’d be asking you to rethink your tactics,” Faith said.
Abby hadn’t been entirely truthful with Faith. Yes, she wanted to see how far she could push Denise Lowe. Everyone had a breaking point. Most importantly, she wanted to see how her brother would react.
He hadn’t le
ft town. Joshua had sent her a text message confirming it.
They pulled up outside Rosebud Cottage. “Looks like we nearly missed them.” Denise Lowe stood on the front porch, a suitcase next to her, her attention on her cell phone.
Faith tapped her finger on the steering wheel. “Here’s an idea. If Joshua checked everyone’s phone records, I bet anything he’d come up with a connection. It always worked for Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote.”
Abby heard her cell phone ringing. She drew both out and held them up. When Faith laughed, Abby said, “What? They both have the same ring tone.” She answered her second cell. “Detective. What can I do for you?”
“You could tell me where you are,” Joshua said.
“Getting some fresh air.”
Joshua sighed. “I know you’ve been restless, so I wanted to let you know I canvassed the area and no one noticed anything unusual. I also followed the trail of the missing teabag.”
“I’m listening.”
“Nothing. Came up empty.”
“I know what I saw,” Abby insisted. At least, she thought she’d seen a teabag. “I think you’ve just confirmed my assailant’s motive. They followed me, saw that I was about to find the teabag, they hit me over the head and made off with the teabag and my cell. That teabag might have been the one that delivered the fatal dosage.”
“According to the pathologist, the digitalis had been delivered in small doses over time,” Joshua explained. “One teabag is not going to cut it. We’ve tested the ones we found and they were free of any foreign substances. That means there’s a hole in your theory.”
“What about the person I saw in his room the night before he died. He or she might have gone in to remove the evidence.”
“Why?”
“Because… Because maybe they knew his time was coming to an end.” Abby rubbed her brow. “For all we know, Bert might have been drinking some other tea. A special blend supplied by one of his friends. My mom said Bert had complained of fatigue. If she heard him, then someone else did too and must have realized their efforts had finally paid off.”
