Stork Raving Mad

by Donna Andrews

  It was fully dark now. I pulled out my cell phone and glanced at it. 5:30. Early for me to go to bed, but this had been a long day.

  I stepped outside.

  “Meg! Where are you going?”

  Michael appeared in the doorway.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “Close the door, quick. You’re letting all the heat out.”

  “There’s no real heat in here,” Michael said. “It’s just not quite as frigid as outdoors.”

  “You’re letting out all the not-quite-frigid air, then,” I said.

  “I’ll make sure you get safely back,” he said. He pulled the door shut after him and held out his arm to steady me.

  The air had grown much colder, or perhaps it was only the rising wind that made it seem that way. Halfway back to the kitchen steps we had to stop and turn our backs to the wind to ride out one particularly strong gust. I was relieved when we reached the garbage bag gauntlet, since it would partially shield us from the next gust.

  And then I realized that the top of one bag was flapping open in the wind, sending bits of trash skittering across the frozen ground.

  “Damn!” Michael gave chase to the flying garbage. “I’ll have to tell everyone to be more careful.”

  I’d have said that everyone was already being rather careful. None of the other bags was flapping open, and I didn’t remember this one doing so when I’d walked by it earlier. Perhaps someone had opened it to add more garbage and forgotten to tie it up again.

  But why choose this one, which was already full and in the middle of the lineup to boot?

  I stepped closer to the bag, peered in, and sneezed several times.

  “Let me do that,” Michael called from across the yard.

  But I was already reaching into the bag. My hand slid through several squishy things that I tried not to think about. I burrowed a little deeper and my hand encountered the butter-soft texture of expensive leather. I grabbed the leather object and pried it out of the surrounding goop.

  “What’s that?” Michael strode up with his arms full of trash.

  I held the object up so we could see it in the light from the kitchen windows. It was a rectangular black leather clutch purse. It was large for a clutch purse—perhaps six by eleven inches. Even considering its size it had a remarkable number of nonfunctional buckles, straps, zippers, and other bits of metal. And it was too flat to be very practical. It wouldn’t even have held my wallet, much less all the gear I toted every day. The sort of purse you could afford to carry if you spent most of your day in your office and had a briefcase to carry any larger items when you left it.

  “I think it’s Dr. Wright’s purse,” I said. “We need to take this to the chief.”

  Chapter 20

  “Are you sure it’s Dr. Wright’s purse?” Chief Burke asked. He had set the purse on our kitchen table and he, Horace, and Dad were peering at it.

  “Not a hundred percent sure,” I said. I was sitting a few feet away, where I could see but not smell the purse. “I’m not much of a fashion expert. It’s a pity Mother didn’t see Dr. Wright arrive. She’d not only know whether it was Dr. Wright’s purse or not, she could tell you the brand, the model, how much it cost, and whether you could possibly buy one like it in any of the local stores.”

  “Just knowing it’s hers would be sufficient,” the chief said.

  “It’s not mine, and I can’t imagine any of the women students throwing away a perfectly good purse like that. See—it’s a designer brand.”

  I pointed to the word “Coach” embossed onto a leather patch on one side—probably one of the few designer purse brands I’d have recognized.

  “But what convinces me that it’s hers is the smell,” I went on.

  “I assumed it picked up that rotten, garlicky smell in the garbage,” Horace said.

  “Never mind the garlic,” I said. “The thing reeks of Dr. Wright’s perfume. That damned scent made me sneeze every time I got near her, and it permeates that bag.”

  “Did you look inside?” the chief asked.

  “I thought you’d rather do that,” I said.

  “Let’s take it to my—to Dr. Waterston’s office,” the chief said. Horace picked up the purse in gloved hands and carried it out. Dad followed. The chief glanced out the kitchen windows briefly, as if puzzled how it had gotten dark so quickly. I realized he’d spent much of the day in Michael’s office, where the heavy thermal curtains were tightly drawn to keep out drafts. Then he sighed and followed Dad and Horace.

  “I should get back to the rehearsal,” Michael said. “You should go up to rest soon.”

  “Soon,” I said. “I just want to see this through.”

  I followed Horace, Dad, and the chief, bringing up the rear of the procession, keeping far enough back to prevent the chief from getting annoyed.

  Back in Michael’s office, Horace spread out a large sheet of paper on the desk and set the purse carefully on it. I sat down on a book box and tried to fade into the shadows.

  No such luck.

  “Did you touch the purse?” the chief asked me.

  “Only with my gloves on,” I said.

  “Leave your wraps here,” Horace said over his shoulder as he examined the bag. “I’ll need to take samples of the fibers.”

  Presumably he needed to eliminate any threads I’d left on the purse from any the killer might have deposited. I struggled out of my wraps and left them on one of the book boxes.

  I almost fell asleep while Horace was fingerprinting the purse’s exterior. Or perhaps I did fall asleep. But I was jolted wide awake by the chief’s voice.

  “Let’s have a look inside.”

  I watched from afar as Horace carefully began extracting the purse’s contents.

  A gold pen.

  A small perfume vial—presumably the scent I found so annoying.

  “When you get a chance, tell me what that vile stuff is,” I said. “So I can write to the manufacturer and complain.”

  They ignored me.

  A small leather-bound notepad. We all watched eagerly as Horace flipped it open, but we saw only blank pages. Horace shook his head and reached back into the purse.

  “Uh-oh,” Horace said.

  He pulled out a small bottle.

  “Is this what I think it is?” Horace handed the bottle to Dad.

  “Yes,” Dad said. “I’m not surprised.”

  “You did say to keep an eye out for it,” Horace said.

  “It could explain everything!” Dad exclaimed. “Of course there’s no way to tell before the tox screen comes back.”

  “But I bet this is what poisoned her,” Horace said. They were nodding happily at each other and didn’t seem to notice the chief’s growing irritation.

  “It accounts for her condition and the timeline,” Dad went on. “I was never happy with the notion of it being digitalis. Too slow.”

  “And she didn’t drink enough of the tea,” Horace said, nodding. “If they’d put enough digitalis in for that much to kill her, she’d have noticed the taste. And what’s more—”

  “Just what in blue blazes is that thing?” the chief asked.

  “Insulin,” Dad said. “Was there a syringe?”

  Horace peered into the bag again, then carefully inserted his hand and pulled out a syringe. Dad shook his head as if sadly disappointed at the murderer’s clumsiness in leaving such clues behind.

  I leaned a little closer so I could see the vial. There was a tiny amount of clear liquid in the bottom.

  “It’s nearly empty,” I said. “Is this a bad sign?”

  “A very bad sign,” Dad said. “That much insulin could easily have killed her.”

  “But you don’t know that it was given all at once, do you?” I asked.

  “We don’t know, but the odds are it was,” Horace said. “There’s a date on the label. The prescription was refilled yesterday.”

  “So either she picked up her insulin yesterday and had to use it several times wit
hin twenty-four hours, which seems unlikely,” Dad said. “Or it was given all at once.”

  “You’re sure that much insulin would be fatal?” the chief asked.

  “Oh yes,” Dad said.

  “How fast?”

  “That would depend on how it was administered,” Dad said. “IM—in the muscle—maybe four to five minutes. Could take more like ten to fifteen minutes sub-Q—under the skin.”

  “Would that require medical expertise?” the chief asked.

  Dad shook his head.

  “Just about anyone could have managed to do it subcutaneously,” he said. “Especially if she was unconscious and unresisting. Of course, that does leave us with two interesting questions.”

  “I’m all ears,” the chief said.

  “First, who knew that she was an insulin-dependent diabetic?” Dad asked. “She didn’t exactly advertise it—we didn’t find a medic alert bracelet or tag of any kind.”

  “And it’s definitely her prescription?” the chief asked. “Her name on the label?”

  Horace nodded.

  “So the killer had to be someone who knew her well,” Horace said.

  “Not necessarily,” the chief said. “All someone had to do was see her injecting insulin at any time in the past and they could be reasonably certain she’d have it with her.”

  “True,” I said. “But unless she did her injecting very publicly—like in the middle of a class—and a whole lot of people knew about it, I bet you’re going to have a hard time finding anyone who’ll admit to knowing it, since knowing it makes someone even more suspicious.”

  “Of course, right now, only the killer knows that insulin was what killed her,” the chief said. He turned back to Dad. “You said two questions. What was the other?”

  “Just how many attempted killers do we have here?” Dad asked. He sounded rather more gleeful than I would have been if I were asking that question. “It’s almost like Murder on the Orient Express.”

  “Only they don’t play well with others, these killers,” I said. “Since we have three or four separate attempts to kill her instead of one coordinated effort.”

  “Can we reconstruct a sequence of events from this?” the chief asked.

  “A hypothetical one,” Dad said. “Either Ramon or Bronwyn or both doctored her tea with what they claim was sleeping medicine—probably Ramon’s Valium. The order in which they did it doesn’t matter, since she’d have ingested both at the same time. Sometime later, after she had ingested some tea and presumably fallen asleep due to the Valium, she was injected with insulin. And sometime after that, she was hit over the head with the statue—an attack that would have been fatal if she hadn’t been already dead when it occurred.”

  “You’re forgetting one possibility,” the chief said. “We know these people claim to have put Valium in her tea, and we know there was Valium around for them to use, but what if one or both of them drugged her tea with something other than Valium? Señor Mendoza’s heart medicine, for example. Maybe the insulin was unnecessary too. Maybe she was already dead or dying when they gave her the insulin. We won’t be able to tell until the tox screen comes back.”

  “Not for sure,” Dad said. “But I’ll tell you what I bet we’ll find. May I show you something?”

  He had pulled out his iPhone and was waving it about.

  I cringed. Dad’s iPhone was a relatively new acquisition and he was still consumed with the zeal of the recent convert, always trying to find new ways to make use of his expensive little toy. But now was not the time to show it off to the chief.

  “If it’s relevant,” the chief said. “I mean, if there’s a reason I should not arrest Señor Mendoza for the murder of Professor Wright, I’d like to hear it.”

  “Are you serious?” Dad asked anxiously.

  “Of course not,” the chief said. “If I thought the old guy really had bludgeoned her with the statue, I’d have already arrested him, no matter how distinguished he is in Spain. Just because she wasn’t alive when someone hit her doesn’t mean it wasn’t attempted murder. Or if I really believed he was the one who poisoned her, I’d bring him back and question him some more.”

  “Poison doesn’t seem like his style,” I said. “A sword, maybe, or pistols at dawn, but nothing subtle like poison.”

  “And he’s probably the least likely of anyone here to have the inside knowledge that a potentially deadly vial of insulin was in her bag.”

  “He’s the least likely suspect for any of what went on,” the chief said.

  “He was hanging around the kitchen during the time someone drugged Dr. Wright’s tea,” I said. “He could have done that. Or seen it done, or just suspected someone used his pills. Or maybe he confessed so implausibly to the bludgeoning because he put his heart pills in her tea and wanted to make himself look implausible as a suspect.”

  “Yes, but even if Señor Mendoza put his heart pills in her tea, that couldn’t possibly have killed her,” Dad said.

  “And just how do you figure that?” the chief said.

  “They’re not digoxin.”

  “Not digoxin?” the chief said. “How do you know? And if they’re not digoxin, what are they?”

  “They’re not any kind of heart medicine I’ve ever seen. Wrong size, shape, and color.”

  “Couldn’t they be the Spanish versions?”

  “Most common pharmaceuticals are pretty international these days,” Dad said. “And I did some research to see if these could be a variant more common in Europe, but they weren’t. So whether Señor Mendoza or anyone else put them in her tea is irrelevant. They’re almost certainly not what killed her.”

  “How can you be sure?” the chief asked. “I mean, even if they’re not digitalis, they could be something else toxic.”

  “Well, we won’t know anything for sure until the autopsy,” Dad said. “And until the analysis of those pills comes back. But I can hazard a guess. When I first went into medicine, it was pretty easy to tell what a pill was. Not that many meds and only a few manufacturers. These days, there are so many more drugs, plus all the generics—it can be impossible to tell for sure. That’s why I have this nifty little application on my iPhone that’s designed to help doctors identify meds in an emergency. Would you like to see?”

  He held the iPhone up again and waved it around excitedly.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” the chief said, stepping back slightly. Perhaps he shared my tepid enthusiasm for cell phones. “So if they’re not digitalis, what do you and your iPhone think Señor Mendoza’s pills are?”

  “Probably a benzodiazepine,” Dad said. “Could be more diazepam—Valium—or something similar. There’s a European factory making a generic diazepam that looks just like this, so I suspect that’s what it is.”

  “So even if someone tried to use Señor Mendoza’s pills to kill her, all they did was give her more Valium?” I asked.

  “Precisely,” Dad said.

  “Enough Valium to be dangerous?” the chief asked.

  Dad thought for some moments.

  “Probably not,” he said. “Ramon’s pills were two-milligram doses. That’s also what a prudent doctor would probably prescribe for an elderly patient like Señor Mendoza—two milligrams two to four times a day. These look to be two-milligram pills. And the normal dosage can be up to ten milligrams four times a day for a healthy adult.”

  “So someone could throw eight or ten of these pills in the tea, assuming they’d just delivered a lethal dose of digitalis, and still be way short even of the maximum daily dosage of Valium?” I asked.

  Dad nodded.

  “What if they went in for overkill?” the chief said. “And gave her fifteen or twenty milligrams?”

  “They could feed her Señor Mendoza’s whole bottle and it would be extremely unlikely to prove fatal, particularly in the short time we’re talking about,” Dad said. “I’m not saying it’s harmless; she might have side effects. But no matter how much Valium she swallowed, it wouldn
’t cause death so suddenly. Very few poisons could—digitalis wouldn’t, for example; it would take hours. And most of the poisons that fast would cause some pretty dramatic symptoms that we’d be able to pick up on. But the condition of the body’s consistent with insulin poisoning. That’s why I told you earlier I didn’t think testing the tea would get us anywhere.”

  The chief thought for a moment.

  “I don’t have to tell any of you to keep this to yourselves,” he said. He was, of course, looking at me.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I realize that we already have at least two self-confessed criminals in the house, and the total will probably rise to three or four when you figure out who shot her up with the insulin and who bludgeoned her with the statue. I might be a little careless with my own safety, but I have no intention of putting Chip and Dale in danger.”

  I patted the twins as I spoke. Chip responded by attempting to turn a somersault, causing Dale to begin his relentless, rhythmic kicking. I wasn’t looking forward to refereeing when they got older.

  “That’s good,” the chief said. “I appreciate you calling me when you found the purse instead of going off half-cocked and trying to solve the murder yourself. But it might be a good time to get a little rest and keep your distance from all those folks.”

  “At least until you figure out which ones are homicidally inclined and which ones just full of talk when it comes to Dr. Wright,” I said. “Point taken. Actually, I’m heading up to bed. Though I was wondering if I could get my laptop while I’m here.”

  “Allow me,” Horace said. He disappeared into the closet and emerged holding the familiar battered carrying case that held my laptop.

  The chief was eyeing the laptop with disfavor. Surely he knew better than to think me capable of online sleuthing.

  “Thanks,” I said. “If anyone looks for me, I’ll be upstairs, either doing a few last minute searches on those ‘What to Name Your Baby’ sites or taking a long overdue nap.”