Murder At The Podium

by Alec Peche

  Jill paused and thought for a moment about what she had so far in this strange case.

  “I'm going to analyze the contents of the vomit. As it's likely to contain a variety of substances including what Stacy Johnson had for breakfast and any medication or vitamins she might've taken, it’ll take me several hours to days to sort through the analyzer results for the vomit. What are you working on, Detective, to find Stacy's killer?”

  “I'm waiting for results from our medical examiner on the testing she did on Stacy’s stomach contents.”

  Again the detective hadn't told her any more than she suspected. Since they were having such a strange conversation she thought she may as well throw Antonio's comment at him to see how it stuck.

  “I had a group of potential future thugs in my lab today and I discussed this case with them. The toughest thug of the future thugs suggested that this is not a murder by the cartel because essentially they would not waste time on the whole poison scheme. They would take the easy way and just shoot Stacy in her driveway.”

  She could hear the detective laughing on the other end of the phone and she waited for his next noncommittal comment just so she could grind her teeth.

  “Dr. Quint, you do have a way with words and I can almost picture the teenage boy who made that remark to you.”

  “How do you know it was a teenage boy?”

  “Because I'm a detective and most potential future thugs are presently teenage boys. By the way, I happen to agree with your teenage boy. This is too elaborate a murder plot to be at the behest of the cartel. All of the suspected cartel murders inside the state of Texas have used a gun as the murder weapon.”

  Finally, Jill had dragged some useful information out of the detective. Now if she could only keep him talking.

  “When I was last in your office, you had two suspects on your murder board. Are you now strictly focusing on Stacy’s husband, Adam Johnson?”

  “No. At this point in the investigation it would be foolish to focus only on Mr. Johnson.”

  Great, after that one breakthrough sentence from the detective, she was back to sorting through his cryptic comments. She decided to change course and asked him, “Has any other new information come across your desk?”

  “No.”

  Chapter Ten

  Jill ended her call with the detective and returned to processing the vomit specimen. She mechanically prepared several specimens for analysis, her thoughts elsewhere. Once the equipment started humming away, she sat in her lab and faced the murder board. Who else could she add to the suspects list? When and where was Stacy exposed to poison and just what was the poison? Would she find it in the vomit, or did she need a blood test to identify the poison? She didn’t have a sample of Stacy’s blood and it was likely too late to get one.

  Her murderers might include friends, family, co-workers or maybe a serial killer. Really the whole case was getting weirder by the moment. Just because Adam hired her investigative services didn’t mean that he couldn’t be the murderer either. Her team had researched him thoroughly and Angela and Nathan had interviewed him. Angela hadn't found any inconsistencies in his answers, but Nathan didn't like the man. That's not to say Adam could be capable of his wife's murder, but Nathan said that something was up with the guy.

  Maybe she should do additional research on Stacy. Maybe she supported some organization that rubbed people the wrong way. Perhaps figuring out the poison would point her to the killer. Since she now knew that Stacy was poisoned before the start of her presentation that significantly increased the number of poisons that would react in a one to three hour window. She also didn’t have to worry about the poison being tasteless in water.

  She continued to let her analyzers run for another day and a half. In the end, after sorting through all of the substances in Stacy’s vomit, she thought she had her answer. It was a classic for poisoning - arsenic. It was odorless and colorless and had been used throughout the ages to murder political leaders and ordinary citizens. A catholic bishop discovered the substance in the 13th century. Jill thought, ‘wow how did people discover things so long ago without today’s scientific equipment?’

  Continuing to refresh her memory about arsenic, she noted it would be very easy to put a lethal dose in food. Jill was sorting through the stomach contents contained in the vomit and it was her guess that the arsenic was in the blueberry muffin that Stacy consumed around two hours prior to the presentation. As a poison, arsenic was relatively easy to obtain - Jill checked and she could buy it on-line. So that didn’t limit the possibilities much. She had a feeling that she needed to return to Dallas to gather more evidence from the crime scene. She wondered if Detective Castillo would be cooperative if she moved back inside his territory.

  She looked at the calendar and noted it was the day after Stacy’s burial. Not a great day to call, but there probably wouldn’t be many good days in Adam’s future for a while. She wanted to update him on her findings then get his authorization for additional expenses. She picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” said the male voice.

  “Hi Adam, it’s Jill Quint. Is this an okay time to talk?”

  “Hello Jill, this is a fine time to talk. What’s up? Are you still in Dallas?”

  “No, I’m in my home in California where I have been running tests on samples of the water that Stacy drank as well as a sample from her stomach contents.”

  There was no need to tell the man that the crime scene techs had collected samples from two different piles of vomit near the podium where she collapsed.

  “What did you find? The police haven’t called me with any new information since last week.”

  “Your wife was not poisoned by something in the glass of water at the podium. It appears it was in some food she consumed prior to the meeting.”

  “I thought everyone said that there was a bad substance in the water?”

  “I think everyone thought that because she passed out so soon after taking a few sips of water. She probably wasn’t feeling well and sipped water to see if it would make her feel better given that she was in the middle of delivering a public presentation.”

  “Why haven’t the police called and notified me of that conclusion?”

  “I think they’ll give you a call within the next couple of hours. They may be waiting on identifying just what did poison your wife.”

  “Did you identify the poison?”

  “Yes Adam, it was arsenic.”

  “How could she have swallowed a poison and not realized it?”

  “It is a tasteless poison, so she didn’t knowingly swallow something bad.”

  After a moment of silence wherein Adam had apparently been thinking he said, “I guess you’re done with the case.”

  Jill was a little surprised at Adam’s conclusion and replied, “Not at all Adam! I have simply identified the poison. I don’t have any strong clues as to who the murderer is. In fact I would like to return to Dallas to investigate more crime scene angles, but I wanted to check in with you as you’re my client and there’s an expense to do that.”

  Again there was silence for a while and then Adam said, “Jill, I think I'll end our contract at this point. Instead I’ll just accept the investigation of the Dallas Police Department.”

  Jill, surprised by Adam’s statement said, “Well okay that's your decision to make. I'll make up your final invoice and drop it in the mail to you. Do you have any further questions for me about Stacy's death?”

  “Just one. Do you think she suffered?”

  Jill hated this question and she was surprised how many families asked it. She thought it was a miserable question and so she usually chose to lie as she did with Adam.

  “Our mutual friend, Barb Jordan, said that right up to the end, Stacy was involved in her presentation, then she collapsed and people came to her aid. Her heart stopped inside the convention center, so any suffering that she had would have been very short-lived.”

  Jill winced over her expres
sion of short-lived, but it seemed to have escaped Adam’s attention.

  “Thank you, Dr. Quint, for finding the source of the poison that killed my wife. I hope that the Dallas Police Department closes the case soon.” After a few polite sentences, they ended their call.

  Well, that was a weird conversation, Jill thought as she stretched backward to peer at the murder board. She had just been fired and she wondered at the real reason behind the firing. Was she too expensive? Did Adam not like her as an investigator; did he think he had his answers? Or was he tired of the whole thing and wanting to move beyond his wife’s death with young children at home? Jill could think of at least ten reasons for Adam to fire her.

  Oh well, her mother had always claimed she couldn't cry over spilled milk and this sure felt like spilled milk. She would close up the case by e-mailing information to the various parties and preparing the final bill for Adam. She’d have dinner with Nathan tonight and return to working her vineyard in the morning. She sent those e-mails off to the various parties then went inside to change and take Trixie for a run around her neighborhood.

  An hour later, midway through her run, her cell phone rang. Trixie was running off leash and Jill called to her before answering the phone. As the dog approached, Jill leaned over, leash latch in hand and simultaneously punched the talk button on the phone, craning it between her head and shoulder.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello Dr. Quint, it's Detective Castillo.”

  “Oh hi Detective, pardon my heavy breathing; you called me in the middle of a three mile run. Did you have the opportunity to open my e-mail?”

  “Yes I did that's why I'm calling. Our medical examiner has just begun to examine the stomach contents from Stacy as well as some blood samples taken from the body before it was returned to Mr. Johnson for burial. She found traces of arsenic in the blood and she’ll confirm that it's in the stomach contents today.”

  “I was hoping she examined blood samples from the victim as I would've expected to find arsenic in the blood as well as the stomach.”

  “Thanks for keeping me in the loop, Dr. Quint, and I hope you’ll continue to do that going forward.”

  “Actually I won’t, as Mr. Johnson terminated my services today. He’s satisfied with having your department handle the investigation.”

  There was silence over the phone lines for longer than Jill expected as the detective thought about Jill’s comment, then he surprised her with a question.

  “What steps would you’ve taken next if you were still on the job?”

  “Actually, I prompted the conversation with Adam, by requesting he approve my travel to Dallas. I wanted to look at the crime scene more, talk with the medical examiner and yourself, verify the blueberry muffin as the source of poison and then track it down. I’d also like to interview any cartel members residing in your jails to see if they were aware of anyone in the organization using poison for hits. Why?”

  “Just curious. Are you moving on to another case?”

  “No, statistically I don’t seem to have a case more than once a month, so I’ll go back to working my vineyard.”

  “Thanks Dr. Quint, have a great day.”

  Jill hung up the phone after she exchanged words to end the call, and thought ‘that was a weird call’. Then again she always felt her conversations with the detective were strange as she found him so difficult to read.

  She had cooled off from her run while talking with the detective. Now she needed to pick up her pace and begin running, but she’d have to get her breathing under control again. Rats. Twenty minutes later she sighted her front gates and slowed to a walk. She’d shower, change, and then head over to Nathan’s for dinner.

  Hours later she snuggled with Nathan on his couch. He had seventies music as background noise. Trixie lay at their feet, while Arthur curled up on the sofa’s back corner. They were drinking a dessert wine that Nathan had brought back from a meeting with a new vintner who was fast becoming Jill’s favorite. She liked hearing Nathan’s stories and his advice as she felt that this vintner was about a year and a half ahead of her as far as growing his vineyard. He’d also faced some of the same problems that Jill was facing in regards to geography. She would begin construction on her tasting room in about six months. Her number one worry was how she’d drive car traffic to her tasting room when there were no other wineries in her immediate vicinity.

  “Is he holding regular tasting room hours?” Jill asked.

  “He’s open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday as visitors often travel to the Napa region for long weekends. He said that business is slow but increasing. He had a single visitor his first week-end, five each day on the second weekend. Now he is averaging two customers an hour which is perfect as he can personally serve people and not have to hire additional attendants.”

  “What’s his back-up plan if the tasting room gets slammed?”

  “His wife has stepped in to give him bathroom breaks and add a second person an hour at a time.”

  “I think that is one of the hardest things in the beginning. I may just pay for a second person to be here with me. It might be creepy at times. I’ll need to figure out a way to grow my traffic to support that second person. Maybe I’ll reach out to a few other newer vineyards to see what they have done with staffing the tasting room. Maybe my imagination is much more vivid than the reality.”

  “You know, babe, with all the killers that have focused on you in the past two years, I don’t think it’s your imagination at all. I can help you out for a short time - say the first five weekends you’re open, but you’ll either have to close your ‘second opinion on the cause of death’ practice or hire someone from the start for your tasting room.”

  “That’s true. At least I’ll have a year to think about this. How are the sales of the wine glasses you designed for him going?”

  “He credits the glasses as being his strongest marketing tool because nearly every visitor has bought one or more glasses and he has seen sales from the internet.”

  “So are you working on a set of glasses for me?”

  “Of course. I’ll save my best designs for you. I’m just waiting to hear what wine you’re producing in addition to Moscato. I know you would love to operate a tasting room with only that wine, but your tasting room would die very quickly. I did those additional designs for a few varietals you were thinking about, but you need to decide soon.”

  “I’ve been stuck on the idea that I should grow what I know, which is sweet or dessert wines. I’m not convinced I have a sufficient palate to taste the best Chardonnay, Riesling, or Pinot Grigio. Those grapes do well in this climate, but I am fearful I will have to hire a wine master to handle the fermentation of the non-Moscato wines, but then it doesn’t feel like it is my brand anymore. I don’t want to outsource wine master duties.”

  “I get your dilemma. Why don’t I get a selection of three top wines in each of those varietal categories, and then we can do a taste test and discuss what makes them get so many points with wine experts. Then we’ll taste a few more wines of each variety and you can give me a guess of how many points they earned. This should prove whether or not you’re capable of being the wine master for those other varietals.”

  “That’s a brilliant idea, Nathan, and it will prove whether I have the skill or not. Game on.”

  Jill had been bothered by her indecision as to which additional wines to grow and now with Nathan’s help, she had a game plan going forward. All of a sudden she was tired from the day’s highs and lows, so she stood up and pulled Nathan towards his bedroom. It was time to move on to a passionate night and a new day.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jill returned to her home and vineyard the next morning. She was excited to take on Nathan’s challenge on wine tasting. She knew she had the palate for Moscato, but did she have it for any other wine? She would soon find out. She’d checked her email and her three friends and teammates said good riddance to the Stacy Johnson case. Even though they had
supported her on taking the case, it was clear they had been uneasy with anything connected to the words ‘Mexican drug cartel’. She was just heading outside to work in her vineyard, when her cell phone rang.

  “Hello.”

  “Dr. Quint, it’s Detective Castillo.”

  “Hello detective, what can I do for you this morning?”

  “I’ve a proposition for you.”

  As with all the detective’s words, she spent a few seconds squeezing her brain to guess what he was going to say; giving up, she tuned back-in.

  “The Dallas PD is short one detective in the homicide division as well as a supervisor of the special investigative unit. I’m working two homicides, one suicide, and two unexplained deaths that may become homicides. New facts are trickling in on the Stacy Johnson case, but my time is split among several cases. We are under public pressure to solve this crime as it occurred in our convention center, a huge source of tourism to Dallas,” the detective paused a moment on the other end of the phone perhaps to gather his thoughts.