The Murder of Twelve

by Jessica Fletcher

  “I believe I’ve already found the cause of her seizure.”

  “Have you really, Doctor Fletcher?”

  “I think she was poisoned, Seth,” I said, and proceeded to tell him about the residue I’d spotted on her wineglass.

  “Murder really does follow you around, doesn’t it, Jess?”

  “Any way of determining what she was poisoned with?”

  “What color was the residue?” Seth asked me.

  “A kind of yellowish white, with specks of red from the wine.”

  “You said yellowish white?”

  “I did.”

  I could feel Seth perking up on the other end of the line. “Okay, Jess, I want you to check the bathroom.”

  “For what?”

  “Prescription bottles.”

  I took the phone with me as I followed his instructions. “None I can see anywhere.”

  “Just as I suspected.”

  “Then why’d you have me look?”

  “You’ll see. Now check the woman’s handbag and tell me what you find.”

  Sure enough, I located an orange prescription bottle right at the very top. “Found one!”

  “Read me the name of the drug on the label.”

  Because I didn’t have my reading glasses with me I had to squint, and even then reading it was a chore. “I can’t pronounce it, Seth.”

  “Then spell it for me.”

  “B-U-P-R—”

  “Bupropion,” Seth interrupted, before I could finish.

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “An antidepressant, Jess. All antidepressants lower the threshold for seizures, but bupropion is the grand champion in the field. In fact, it’s been reported that bupropion ingestion is the third most common cause of drug-induced seizures, after cocaine ingestion and benzodiazepine withdrawal.”

  I didn’t bother quizzing Seth further on that.

  “Is she an older woman?” he asked me.

  “No older than I. What makes you ask?”

  “Because elderly patients taking the drug are at a greater risk of suffering a seizure from chronic dosing. Any idea if the woman is taking any other prescription drugs?”

  “I don’t know. Should I check her bag again?”

  “Not yet. Pop open that prescription bottle instead.”

  “Done,” I said, once the bottle was open.

  “Describe the pills inside.”

  “Solid yellow.”

  “That’s the microencapsulation coating to make the medication release over time, either twelve or twenty-four hours.”

  “The bottle says to take one pill in the morning with food.”

  “And if the pills were powdered to make them dissolve in the wine, the entire medicinal content would be absorbed into the bloodstream immediately. The fact that there was enough residue left on the glass for you to identify it so readily tells me several pills were mixed with the wine, as many as five or six.”

  “Looks like there’s about fifteen left in the bottle.”

  “When was it filled?”

  “Eight days ago. Thirty pills total.”

  “Then we’re on the right track.”

  “Seven pills,” I said, doing the math. “There are seven pills unaccounted for.”

  “More than enough to explain that chalky residue. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that’s what saved the woman’s life, at least for the time being. Had whoever poisoned her managed to dilute the pills entirely, the dose would almost surely have been fatal. Any thoughts on a suspect?”

  “More of them than I can count on all fingers, Seth.”

  “Then you’d best be careful, ayuh. I’d head over there myself, but the snow’s already piled up past the tires of my old Volvo. Remind me to clean out the garage ’fore next winter, will you?”

  “Even though you won’t listen? Even though you’ll probably say something like, ‘Never get another like last year’s storm, ayuh’?” I said, doing my best Seth Hazlitt impersonation.

  “You know,” he responded, “this weather must be good for your constitution, because that’s the best you’ve ever sounded. That said, I hope you take stock of this conversation, Jess, because whoever tried to kill this woman must have known she was taking these pills and exactly where to find them.”

  “Someone close to her, in other words,” I said, completing for Seth the thought I’d already reached myself. “Maybe you should consider abandoning medicine for detective work.”

  “In that case, let me state something else you no doubt already know: There’s a murderer among you there, Jess, and he or she may not be finished yet.”

  Chapter Eleven

  That was the reason I’d volunteered for the first shift. If Constance Mulroy’s would-be killer came back to finish the job while she was still in a coma, it would likely be sooner rather than later.

  I sat back in the desk chair I’d placed at her bedside and ruminated on the logistics of her poisoning. When we’d last spoken, when she’d been on the verge of telling me why she feared her life might be in danger, she was holding a glass of red wine in her hand. Since that was sometime more than ninety minutes before she’d risen to make her toast, it was clear that particular glass had not been the one contaminated with seven ground-up bupropion tablets.

  I thought back to the particulars of our table setting. Since I seldom, if ever, drink, I normally don’t notice the inclusion of a wineglass before me. But I was now able to conjure a wineglass in its customary place to the left of the water glass, as with every setting. I also recalled a male server carrying bottles of both red and white wine around the table at regular intervals. I’d demurred on each occasion, and the reason why I remembered the server so clearly was that he was wearing an ill-fitting Hill House smock that suggested he’d been pressed into action for the evening’s storm-bred contingency plans.

  That server had filled Connie’s glass with red wine on at least one occasion, and likely more. That added to the mystery, then, of how her would-be murderer had managed to mix the ground-up tablets into her glass. The residue indicated that he or she might not have had the opportunity to complete the work. In any case, I was at a loss to come up with a theory about how precisely that had transpired.

  All my life, I’ve been a fan of magicians. To this day, I watch shows like America’s Got Talent utterly amazed by their ability to make you believe their tricks might truly be magic, since there seems by all accounts to be no other explanation. I’m old enough to remember a time when critics claimed that magic as a performance art would never survive television, because you can’t misdirect a camera. Especially now, with flat-screen televisions and the ability to slow a broadcast recording virtually to frame by frame—which, I confess, I’ve done myself, never once successfully gleaning how this magician or that was able to perform the impossible.

  I felt the same way now. With the information I currently had before me, I could see no feasible way Constance Mulroy’s wine could have been tampered with. And there was also the matter of the murdered private investigator, Loomis Winslow, to take into account here. Although nothing at this point indicated his murder was at all connected with the attempt on Connie’s life, I couldn’t chase away the possibility that someone among the wedding party had hired him to look into some issue pertaining to money, likely connected with the financial malfeasance committed by none other than Connie’s husband, Heath Mulroy. Had the groom-to-be Daniel Mulroy not phoned his brother Mark to pass word on that he and the bride-to-be Allison Castavette were holing up for the night at the Roadrunner Motel, I’d be looking at the night’s events from an entirely different angle. I might even now be assuming that whoever had dragged gravel from that old mill into the backseat of the abandoned Lexus was a member of this very wedding party and responsible for the coma in which Constance Mulroy currently rested, not to
mention the murder of Loomis Winslow.

  As soon as I sat down in the chair I’d set by Connie’s bedside, I felt an immense wave of exhaustion wash over me. But I snapped alert moments away from drifting off, both by presence of mind and by the power of my imagination to wonder whether I might have been somehow poisoned, too, and was about to slip off into a slumber from which I might never awake. When was the last time I had a sip of anything? Who had handed me the glass? And what about the ginger ale I’d had refilled on multiple occasions, several by that server wearing the ill-fitting smock? I almost called Seth to ask him about symptoms beyond the fatigue that had nearly overtaken me.

  But that fatigue was far more likely rooted in the stress, pace, and mere length of this day that had brought me from Mara’s to one murder scene and then, later, another potential one. Not to mention bearing witness to local drunk Hank Weathers identifying Bigfoot as present in the old mill where Loomis Winslow had been murdered. I was tired because, well, I was tired. Nothing Dr. Seth Hazlitt could do about that.

  To keep myself alert for as long as possible, I proceeded to busy myself with a thorough check of Constance Mulroy’s room, just to see if anything jumped out at me as amiss. There was nothing hidden in the bureau or desk drawers, nor was there anything concealed in less likely locations of note, like the back of the toilet tank or behind one of the room’s paintings. I even did a thorough inspection of the drawn window blinds to see if Connie might have hidden anything there. Finally, just for good measure, I checked under the bed as well, and then searched both the in-room refrigerator and the microwave, the kinds of places those not necessarily used to concealing something might choose.

  I guess you could say I was looking for a secret, something that might explain why someone would have tried to kill her. But the only anomaly I found was inside the closet, in relatively plain view. It was there that I spotted a set of luggage that matched Connie’s designer handbag; Hermès, Louis Vuitton, or some other upscale brand. There was a large suitcase, and a medium-sized one resting next to it, indication that for the weekend of her son’s wedding Constance Mulroy wasn’t traveling light. The anomaly lay in the fact that there was a noticeable gap between the medium-sized suitcase and an old-fashioned cosmetics case that similarly rested on the closet floor. I imagined the set came complete with a matching soft tote, which would have neatly filled the empty slot but was nowhere to be found. That left me thinking what the potentially missing tote may have contained and why another member of the wedding party might have absconded with it.

  I laid my cell phone down in my lap to make sure an incoming call from Mort or Seth wouldn’t go unnoticed if I happened to nod off while fulfilling my shift’s duties. I was just thinking of calling Harry McGraw when it rang with his name lighting up at the top of the screen.

  “I’m working on something,” he said after I’d greeted him.

  “Care to tell me what?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you calling me?”

  “To tell you I’m working on something. Besides, I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to, because I’d risk making you an accessory to a crime.”

  “What crime would that be, Harry?”

  “I’m not sure. Bearing false witness or giving false testimony, maybe. Or impersonating a detective.”

  “You are a detective.”

  “I mean a real detective.”

  “You are a real detective,” I told him.

  “I meant a police officer. I’m not that, according to my ID. Then again, according to my ID my name is Marvin Linquist, on account of the fact that he doesn’t have any outstanding parking tickets or tax bills, while Harry McGraw has a mountain of both.”

  “So sorry to hear that, Harry.”

  “That’s what happens when you’ve got deadbeat clients,” he told me wryly. “Anyway, stay tuned for my surprise.”

  “What surprise?”

  “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, but there is something I need from you in order to make the surprise happen.”

  I had no idea where Harry was going with this, but I decided to play along. “Okay, what do you need?”

  “It’s so simple, it’s not even worth charging you for.”

  “Can you just tell me what you need, Harry?”

  “The names of all the guests who make up the wedding party and are currently staying at Hill House.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “Again, for the surprise I’m putting together for you.”

  “Can you at least give a hint?”

  “It’s a surprise, Jessica, but okay,” he relented. “If my instincts are correct, the information I’m this close to getting will tell us who hired this private eye Loomis Winslow for a job that very likely got him killed. I guess we should be thankful for one thing.”

  “What’s that, Harry?”

  “That whoever it was didn’t hire me instead.”

  * * *

  * * *

  It seemed I’d barely finished texting Harry all the names of those in the wedding party when my phone rang again, this time with a call from Mort Metzger.

  “What’s the latest, Mrs. F.?”

  “Good evening to you, too, Mort.”

  “What’s good about it? I’m stuck here at the station, fielding any and all emergency calls, and just heard from Dick Mann that his trucks can’t maneuver in this amount of snow. I stuck a yardstick in the ground outside the station I’m about to file a missing-persons report on. Ethan Cragg has pulled the plows that aren’t already stuck off the road and the Weather Channel just mentioned Cabot Cove by name as being the actual vortex of the storm, whatever that means. Maybe it’s all connected.”

  “Maybe all what is connected?” I asked him.

  “That there really is some weird cosmic convergence in this town that makes bad things more likely to happen. Speaking of which, I just heard from Harry.”

  “I got off the phone with him barely a minute ago.”

  “And I was already keying your number up when I saw his in the caller ID, Mrs. F. When were you going to tell me about the connection between Loomis Winslow and someone in this wedding party?”

  “When I confirmed there was one.”

  “Quite the wordsmith, aren’t you?”

  “It is how I make a living.”

  “My point exactly. As hard as it might be to believe, you don’t make your living solving murders. And since I’m not there for you to advise me after I ask for your advice . . .”

  “Hill House is three miles from the Sheriff’s Department, Mort. It’s not like it’s in another country.”

  “It might as well be tonight, Mrs. F. I need you to stay in touch with me through the night on any new developments, and I mean immediately.”

  “What makes you think there are going to be any new developments?”

  “Because we’re inside the vortex that is Cabot Cove.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Speaking with Mort had lent an air of normalcy, if you could call it that, to the events of the evening. Our conversation had also served to focus my mind not so much on the foreboding sense of more bad turns in the offing, but more on the investigatory aspects with which I was at home.

  My next thought was to reach out to the groom-to-be, Daniel Mulroy, myself. I had no evidence, after all, that Mark Mulroy had ever actually spoken to his brother, besides his word, and I resolved to press the young man further on that as soon as he came to relieve me at the close of my shift. For all I knew, he had made the whole story up for reasons yet unknown. So I googled ROADRUNNER MOTEL MAINE on my phone and tapped the number that loaded with the profile.

  Unfortunately, the call didn’t go through, didn’t even produce a ring. I tried again, then a third and fourth time, all with the same results. But the fifth provoked a different re
sult—no rings, but a monotone message.

  “Your call cannot be completed at this time. Please try your call again later. Operator—”

  I ended the call before the voice had completed identifying itself by number. Given the storm’s battering assault, it was hardly surprising lines were either down or overloaded, as was the case during any true emergency. And if either the mounting snows or gale-force winds accompanying the storm had put a cell tower or two out of commission, other towers would be hard-pressed to compensate for the decline in service. I remembered all the terrible stories that had emerged out of 9/11 in this regard and got a chill just thinking of all the people trying desperately to reach loved ones lost after the Twin Towers fell.

  I resolved to keep calling the Roadrunner every few minutes and, in the meantime, tuned the television in Constance Mulroy’s room to the Weather Channel so Jim Cantore could keep me company. He was broadcasting live from a nearby site when I must have drifted off, and he was on-screen again when a rapping on the door drove me from my inadvertent slumber.

  I awoke with a start, my eyes going immediately to Constance Mulroy once my disorientation passed. She looked exactly as she’d been when I’d nodded off what must have been nearly an hour ago. I cleared my throat, shook the sense back into myself, and moved to answer the door.

  “Mrs. Fletcher,” a young woman greeted me once I opened it.

  For a moment I had no idea who she was, until I recalled briefly meeting Lois Mulroy-Dodge, Connie’s niece, in the waning moments of the cocktail hour.

  “Ms. Dodge, so sorry I didn’t . . .”

  “It’s me that’s sorry, Mrs. Fletcher. I came up to see if Mark needed anything. This is his shift, isn’t it?”

  Indeed, my hour had ended as much as a half hour ago, and Connie’s son Mark had not appeared to replace me.

  “It’s supposed to be,” I affirmed. “Something must have delayed him.”

  Lois Mulroy-Dodge flashed her phone. “I’ve tried calling him, but he’s not answering.”

  I remembered Mark mentioning something about going to the gym to calm his nerves. “Would you mind staying with your aunt while I go and look for him?”