Stork Raving Mad

by Donna Andrews

  “I wanted to get my laptop from Michael’s office,” I said. And then, remembering the pill bottle in my purse, I added, “And I’d like to see the chief for a few moments.”

  Sammy nodded and gestured toward the small hallway that led to Michael’s office. He looked glum. I suddenly remembered why.

  “Any more news on Hawkeye?” I asked. Sammy’s face clouded.

  “Still doing well, thanks to Clarence and your dad,” he said. “It was touch-and-go for a while, though. And you know what really burns me?”

  I shook my head.

  “The guy who did it didn’t even stop,” Sammy said. “And I’m not even sure we could charge him with much if we manage to locate him. The chief’s going to check with the DA, but I know what will happen. They’ll say it’s only a dog and he wasn’t killed. Except he almost was.”

  “At least he’ll be all right,” I said, patting Sammy’s shoulder.

  He nodded. I could see that he was deeply upset but pretended not to notice and plodded down the hall toward Michael’s office.

  I found the chief sitting back in Michael’s desk chair, his feet up on a trash can. One hand held a cell phone to his ear while the other was scratching Scout, who sat leaning against the chair.

  “You look comfortable,” I said.

  “That doesn’t mean I’m not busy,” he said. He turned to sit up straight, feet on the floor.

  “I was talking to Scout,” I said, reaching down to pet the dog. His short, light-brown tail thumped softly on the rug as I did so. “You, on the other hand, look overworked. Put your feet up again.”

  “Hope it’s okay to have him in here,” the chief said, nodding at Scout. “We’ve all been too busy for me to assign anyone to take him home.”

  “He can stay as long as you like,” I said. “Spike’s staying overnight at the vet’s for observation, so the coast is clear.” I sat down on an ottoman, which I knew from experience was a lot easier to get out of than the pseudo-comfy guest chairs. “I brought you something.”

  I pulled the paper-wrapped pill bottle out of my pocket and put it on the desk in front of him.

  “What’s this?” he asked, peering over his glasses at it.

  “Ramon Soto’s sleeping medication. Which I overheard him admit slipping into Dr. Wright’s tea.”

  “Overheard?” His voice was sharp. “You weren’t interrogating him?”

  “I was trying to nap in the living room while you were interrogating people,” I said. “He and his girlfriend woke me up discussing it.”

  I gave the chief a rundown of what I’d overheard between Ramon and Bronwyn, and for good measure Bronwyn’s conversation with Danny and the page on digitalis Josh had shown me.

  When I finished, the chief continued frowning and scratching Scout’s head for a few moments.

  “When you left here I thought you were going to rest,” he said finally.

  “I was resting,” I said. “Can I help it if some of your suspects chose to wake me up with their plotting?”

  A fleeting hint of a smile interrupted his scowl, so quickly that I wasn’t entirely sure I’d seen it.

  “You weren’t resting when you found this,” he said, nodding at the pill bottle.

  “The kitchen was off-limits the last time I checked,” I said. “I was rummaging through the students’ stuff for something safe to eat.” Which was only a small lie, I figured. The chief didn’t know I’d rummaged twice—once for food and once for incriminating evidence.

  He nodded absently then picked up his cell phone and poked a couple of buttons.

  “Dr. Langslow?” he said. “Could you step in here for a few moments? Thanks.”

  He put the cell phone back on the desk. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a pair of plastic gloves, and began putting them on.

  A few seconds later, Dad appeared through the French doors between the library and Michael’s office. Well, that explained the chain and padlock.

  “Meg!” he exclaimed. “Do you need me?”

  “No,” I said. “The chief does.”

  The chief picked up the pill bottle in one gloved hand and held it out to Dad, whose hands were also gloved. Dad peered at the pill bottle’s label, then smiled and held it up with a flourish, as if the chief had just handed him some kind of trophy.

  “Diazepam!” he exclaimed, as if this alone solved the case.

  “Meg says that’s generic for Valium,” the chief said.

  “Very good,” Dad said, beaming at me. He opened the pill bottle, inspected the contents, and nodded.

  “So this could be the murder weapon?” the chief asked.

  “Oh no,” Dad said. And then, seeing how the chief’s face fell, he added, “But they could be another very useful piece in the puzzle.”

  The chief didn’t look very happy to see the number of puzzle pieces multiplying.

  “So what would happen if someone slipped two or three of these in our victim’s tea?” the chief asked.

  “She’d feel sleepy,” Dad said. “Might even fall asleep, though that’s a pretty minimal dose. And she’d probably be just fine when she woke up, as long as no one came along while she was asleep and did something else to her. Which appears to be what happened.”

  “But I thought Valium was for anxiety, not insomnia,” the chief said.

  “A lot of insomnia is caused by anxiety,” Dad said. “Dull the anxiety and the body’s natural sleep mechanisms take over. And the diazepam itself acts as a mild sedative. It can be very effective in the short term. In the longer term, patients tend to develop tolerance to the sedative effects.”

  The chief pondered this briefly.

  “So,” he said. “If Ramon’s doctor thought his insomnia was due to, say, the stress of trying to finish his dissertation and direct the play, he might prescribe this in the short term?”

  Dad nodded.

  “Or perhaps Ramon prefers to think of himself as taking sleeping medication rather than anxiety medication,” Dad suggested. “So many of us find physical ailments more socially acceptable than even the mildest form of mental illness.”

  “So two or three of these wouldn’t kill her,” the chief said. “What about five or six?”

  “Even a dozen wouldn’t necessarily kill someone,” Dad said. “Certainly not as rapidly as Dr. Wright’s death appears to have been.”

  “What if they were combined with something else?” I asked. “Subdural hematoma, for example?”

  “It wouldn’t be good on top of subdural hematoma,” he said. “But I think it’s unlikely she had that.”

  “Dr. Blanco has been wondering aloud if she died from a subdural hematoma caused by the fall she took in our hallway,” I said.

  “Unlikely,” Dad repeated. “Most people keep their brains in their skulls. She landed on her derriere, not her head.”

  “You’re sure?” the chief asked.

  “I cross-checked it with half a dozen witnesses,” Dad said. “If she’d landed on her head, I’d have insisted she go to the hospital, and if she refused, I’d have kept her under close observation. Can’t be too careful with a head injury.”

  “So Ramon and Bronwyn could chuck handfuls of his sleeping meds into her tea with relative impunity,” I said. “But what if one or both of them is lying? What effect would it have if they used a couple of Señor Mendoza’s heart pills?”

  “That would depend on what his heart pills are,” Dad said. “We should confiscate his pill bottle so we can test it!”

  “We already confiscated it,” the chief said.

  “Great!” Dad said. “Let’s have a look at it!”

  “It’s already on its way by courier to the State Bureau of Investigation in Richmond,” the chief said. “Since we don’t actually have testing facilities here in Caerphilly.”

  Dad’s face fell.

  “Oh,” he said. “Yes, that makes sense. I don’t suppose you took note of what it said on the label.”

  The chief’s face softened
.

  “I did, but it wasn’t any use,” he said. “To start with, it was in Spanish. And Señor Mendoza admitted that he was not carrying the pills in the original prescription container. He combined the contents of two smaller bottles of heart medicine into the big one we all saw. So even though I now have a translation of what the label says, it’s completely irrelevant. It’s for some over-the-counter antacid tablets.”

  “Unwise,” Dad said, shaking his head. “Anyone treating him would have no idea what medication he was on, or the dosage.”

  “And blasted inconvenient for my investigation,” the chief said. “But under the circumstances, you can see why I didn’t think showing it to you would be of any use.”

  “Still, I’d have liked to have seen them,” Dad said.

  “The pills? Is there really much you can tell from visual inspection?” the chief asked. “Assuming the name isn’t stenciled on the pills, and I can tell you that wasn’t the case.”

  “It’s possible I could learn something,” Dad said. “If I’d had a chance to see them.”

  “Then examine this,” the chief said, pulling something out of his pocket. “Dr. Waterston gave it to me. He says it’s one of Señor Mendoza’s, picked up after the spill in the front hallway. As far as Horace and I could see, it looks exactly the same as the ones in the bottle we sent in.”

  He dropped the tiny pill into Dad’s outstretched palm.

  “Excellent!” Dad retreated to the other end of Michael’s desk and trained the desk lamp on the pill.

  Chief Burke shook his head slightly, as if exhausted by such enthusiasm.

  “Meg,” he said. “I have a question for you. Was Dr. Wright carrying a handbag when she arrived?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember.

  “I know she had a briefcase,” I said. “They both did.”

  “We found that,” he said.

  I thought some more.

  “Yes, a very small leather handbag,” I said. “Probably something designer.”

  “Would you recognize it if you saw it?”

  I pondered.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Why?”

  “We didn’t find a purse near her body,” he said. “Her wallet was in the briefcase, but everything else in it was neatly arranged and the wallet was just wedged in. Seemed odd.”

  I nodded.

  “And there wasn’t any other feminine stuff in the briefcase,” the chief said. “She had on makeup and her hair was nicely done, but there wasn’t a lipstick or a compact or a comb or anything like that in the briefcase. It seemed to suggest that there might have been a purse, though we didn’t find one near her body.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open for it,” I said.

  “You can’t remember anything else about it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well,” he said. “Perhaps you could—”

  “Aha! There you are!”

  We all started and turned to see Señor Mendoza standing in the office doorway.

  “Can I help you, Señor?” the chief asked.

  “Just the people I wanted to see,” Mendoza said. “El jefe de polícia, and my poor hostess.”

  The chief sighed, got up from the desk chair, and courteously offered one of the evil guest chairs to Mendoza. Mendoza seated himself with a flourish, planted his cane in front of him with a brisk tap, and leaned both hands on it. The chief reseated himself and pulled out his notebook.

  “First, Señora, I must apologize for having so terribly abused your hospitality,” Mendoza said to me. “How can I possibly make amends?”

  “That depends on what you’ve done,” I said. “If it’s about the fish, you had no way of knowing.”

  “Fish?” Mendoza seemed puzzled. “No, this is not about fish, but murder!”

  “You have more evidence for me, Señor?” the chief asked.

  “I have a confession!” Mendoza exclaimed. “I did it!”

  “Did what?” the chief asked, peering over his glasses.

  “It!” Mendoza repeated. “The assassination of Señora Wright.”

  The chief sighed, took his glasses off, and rubbed his eyes. I found myself thinking, not for the first time, how good Mendoza’s English was. He probably understood a lot more of what was going on around him than some of the students gave him credit for.

  “Aren’t you going to arrest me?” Mendoza asked.

  “We like to take our time about things like that,” the chief said.

  “Since we don’t get that many murders in a small town like Caerphilly,” Dad added. “When we do get one, we like to savor it.”

  The chief winced and cast a sharp glance at Dad, who didn’t notice. Life was finally providing the kind of drama Dad loved in his beloved mystery books, and he sat there beaming happily at Señor Mendoza from his ringside seat.

  “Let’s take things one step at a time,” the chief said, settling the glasses back on his temples. “Just tell me, in your own words, what happened.”

  “Well, if you like,” Señor Mendoza said. His shrug and the expression on his face seemed to suggest that he was puzzled at the chief’s lack of enthusiasm for his confession. “I became enraged at her villainous treatment of young Ramon—her and her friend, the one who has a Spanish name but not, in my opinion, a Spanish soul! To reward his years of patient labor and his courteous treatment of me in this way! The villains! The ingrates! I cannot say how angry I was to hear it. To think that these . . . these . . .”

  “You became enraged,” the chief said. “Got it. Go on.”

  “And I entered the room in which she had hidden herself and confronted her. I rebuked her for her treatment of Ramon and implored her to keep her word to him. But she would not relent. I was enraged. Somehow I found that hideous statue in my hands and before I realized, I had struck her with it.”

  “Hmm,” the chief said. He looked up from his notebook. “You were confronting her, you say? So you struck her . . . where?”

  “On the head,” Señor Mendoza said.

  “Yes, but where on the head? The front? The side? The back?”

  Mendoza frowned. I was already suspicious of his confession. Now I was sure he was lying. I’d bet the chief thought so, too, and had just posed what Mendoza clearly recognized as a trick question.

  “To be truthful, I do not know,” Mendoza said finally. “I was facing her, so it could have been the front. But equally she might have turned away at seeing my rage, or tried to. I really don’t remember. It was all a red blur.”

  “A red blur,” the chief repeated. “Do you mean there was a lot of blood?”

  Clearly Señor Mendoza was on his guard.

  “I have the impression of a great deal of red,” he said. “But I have no idea if I am recalling blood or whether it was merely the force of my rage that made me think so.”

  The chief rubbed one temple absently. I wondered if he was getting a headache. Should I offer him some aspirin? Probably better to wait until he was finished with Señor Mendoza. And considering how many people had been slipping unidentified pills to each other, maybe I should find a brand-new, sealed bottle.

  “And what did you do next?” the chief asked.

  “Next? There is no next! She is dead! I can see that very clearly.”

  “After you saw that she was dead,” the chief said.

  “I go back to the kitchen to continue preparing the paella,” he said. “And the fish stew.”

  “No one noticed your absence?” the chief said.

  “Who notices when an old man leaves the room?” Mendoza said, with a shrug. “No doubt they assume I go to the lavatory.”

  The chief nodded.

  “You didn’t do anything else?” he asked.

  “What else is there to do?” Mendoza said.

  “You didn’t, for example, move the body?”

  “No!”

  “Or take any of her belongings? Her briefcase? Her purse?”

  “I am a murderer, not a common thief!�
� Mendoza drew himself up as tall as he could and pounded his cane on the floor, sending the chair skittering back an inch or so on the polished floor.

  “I wasn’t implying—” the chief said.

  “This is an outrage! I have never been so insulted!”

  “Señor Mendoza—”

  “I will not stay here to be abused by the polícia!” Mendoza said, followed by several exclamations in Spanish that had the singsong sound of oft-used slogans. He seemed to be making an effort to rise, but the inescapable guest chair had him firmly in its clutches.

  “No one thinks you are a thief,” I said, in my most soothing voice. “But of course, even an enraged killer might have the wit and clearheadedness to hide something if he realized it could be used as evidence against him.”

  “Si,” he said, more calmly. “But her purse, her belongings—how could they be evidence?”

  “The chief is only asking,” I said. Actually, I was doing the asking, and the chief, seeing that Mendoza responded to my questioning more calmly, was nodding and scribbling in his notebook. “In case you noticed whether any of her belongings were missing.”

  “I care not for belongings!” Mendoza said. “So I would not notice them.”

  “Just one more thing,” I asked. “Why are you telling us now? Since you seem to have gotten away without anyone catching you—why not keep silent and hope to get away with it?”

  “Ah, that was my plan,” he said. “Until I realized that suspicion would fall upon young Ramon.”

  “So you confessed to save Ramon,” the chief said.

  “To save him from being blamed for my crime,” Mendoza said. “I cannot allow his young life to be ruined because of me. So take me away!”

  He held out his hands as if for handcuffs. The chief sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “Thank you, Señor Mendoza,” he said. “We’ll be in touch.”

  “You do not want to arrest me?” Mendoza looked quite disappointed.

  “We have to wait for the results of the autopsy before we arrest anyone,” the chief said. “And I need to check on the protocol. I don’t know if I have the authority to arrest a foreign citizen. For now, just give me your word that you won’t leave the premises without my permission.”