1 A Dose of Death

by Gin Jones

  "I'm not afraid of Melissa," Helen told the judge. "I just want her to leave me alone. That's the whole point of restraining orders, isn't it?"

  "You'd think so," Judge Nolan said as she gestured for the clerk to hand her some paperwork. "But you'd be wrong. I don't even have to take this under advisement. Sorry to ruin your courtroom winning streak, Tate, but the request for a restraining order is denied."

  Tate waited until the judge had left before saying, "I did warn you the odds were against you."

  "So what do we do now?"

  He picked up his magazine and stuffed it into his briefcase. "Now I go back to my woodworking shop, and you go stay with friends for a few days while you negotiate a termination of Melissa's contract to visit you."

  "According to the judge, I don't have any friends. I hate everyone."

  "That may have been a bit of an exaggeration," Tate said. "I'm sure you've got friends somewhere."

  She used to, Helen thought. Back before she'd thrown herself into supporting her husband's career and hadn't had time for them. She needed to make amends or find some new friends. As soon as she got rid of Melissa.

  "I won't be chased out of my own house. I'm going back there now, and she'd better be gone."

  "Or what?" he said. "No, don't tell me. Just promise me you won't kill her, and you won't let your driver or one of his cousins do anything illegal."

  "Don't worry," Helen said. "If I kill her, I promise not to tell you in advance, and I'll do my best to make it an interesting case for you."

  * * *

  Jack was leaning against the car, playing a video game, when Helen emerged from the courthouse. Tate had left her at the door, claiming he needed to return to the clerk's office on another matter, and he'd walk back to his office.

  Jack tossed his smartphone into the car and ran up the courthouse steps to give her an arm to lean on if she wanted it. She considered brushing him away, but the stone steps were steep, and the railing looked shaky. She took Jack's arm with the hand not already using her cane.

  After the first step, he asked, "Is it all taken care of?"

  "Not exactly."

  "I'm sorry," Jack said. "It's always the nice people that get taken advantage of, and the law won't do anything about it. It's just not fair."

  "I probably deserved it," Helen said. "I'm not particularly nice."

  Jack held the passenger door open for her. "What are you going to do now?"

  Helen hated to admit it, but Tate was probably right about finding somewhere else to stay tonight. The nieces' homes weren't an option. Lily was out of town on business, and Laura's guestroom had been converted into a nursery. Helen might not have a friend she could stay with, but she could always rent a hotel room. Just until she could have the locks changed.

  Jack would know the local hotels, but Helen couldn't make herself ask him. It wasn't just stubbornness. Her cottage was the only place were she felt comfortable these days. She wasn't going to be scared away from her one refuge by some crazy visiting nurse in silly pink clothes.

  "First, I need a new phone and a locksmith," she told Jack. "And then I'd like to go home."

  After a detour to pick up two new pre-paid cell phones that were now activated and ready for use, Jack rolled the car to a stop at the end of the driveway, headlights shining on the otherwise dark cottage.

  Over his shoulder, Jack said, "Her car is gone. Doesn't look like she's still here."

  "She isn't the type to give up this easily," Helen said. "She might have hidden her car out back."

  "Want me to come in with you?" Jack said. "Just until you've had a chance to look around?"

  She couldn't let him do her dirty work, getting rid of Melissa, but she reconsidered letting him escort her to the front door. It had been a long day, after all, what with falling out the window and all. "Would you mind?"

  "For you, I'd do anything." Jack opened the back passenger door and waited patiently until she was able to emerge from the low seat.

  "This job would be so much better if all the clients were like you." Jack adjusted his pace to her slow one as they made their way up the walkway. "Some of them expect the driver to wait on them hand and foot, when they're perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. There was this one guy last week: he looked like a professional boxer, and you'd think he could carry at least his puny little briefcase or his state-of-the-art-thin laptop, but no, he expected me to carry them for him, along with his three over-sized suitcases. And he had the nerve to complain that he was in a big rush, and it took me too long, because I had to make two trips to get everything into the lobby."

  Jack paused while Helen unlocked the cottage's front door, before adding, "And do you think he left me a decent tip for the extra work? Not likely. Bare minimum. Not even that, really. About ten percent."

  Helen flicked the wall switch to illuminate the entry area and living room, half expecting Melissa to jump out of the darkness.

  All she found, though, was the sound of the talk station blaring from the radio. On the plus side, the rooms were unoccupied, just the way she liked them.

  "She's definitely gone," Jack said. "You think she might come back?"

  "I'm sure she will," Helen said. Probably not tonight, though.

  "Want me to stick around?"

  "No, I have to handle this on my own." Helen crossed the living room and unplugged the radio. "Starting with this. Would you mind taking this away until I've gotten rid of Melissa?"

  "Anything for you, Ms. Binney," he said, wrapping the cord around the radio.

  "I think you should call me Helen, after all you've done for me."

  "You've got your new phones where you can get to them, right?"

  Helen patted one of the tiny phones, safely tucked into her pocket, and shrugged her shoulders until she could feel the spare one that she'd tucked into her bra. "I have them. Melissa might confiscate one of them, but I doubt she'll think to look for a second one on me."

  "Why don't you put my home phone number into the memory?" Jack said, writing it on the back of a business card. "I wouldn't mind if you called me in an emergency. If you can't get through to dispatch, just call me at home. I'll come get you, even if it's my day off. Might not be a fancy car, but at least you can get away from here if you need to."

  "That's very kind." Helen withdrew the first phone from her pocket and keyed in his number to reassure him. "I'm sure it won't be necessary to call anyone except the police, though. If Melissa comes back, she's going to wish she'd never met me, even more than I wish I'd never met her."

  * * *

  Before Helen went to bed, she wrestled the recliner against the front door to keep Melissa out until the locks were changed.

  The next morning, while waiting for the locksmith Jack had recommended, Helen settled at her desk to finish sorting through the pictures of her nieces. Her hip was less irritated than she'd expected after yesterday's escapade, but she was still grateful for the excellent lumbar support of her desk chair.

  While she waited for the computer to boot, Helen glanced out the window at the overcast day and noticed something on the grass, about thirty feet away, halfway between the woods and the stairs to the back deck.

  Helen pushed herself out of her chair and moved closer to the window. It wasn't something. It was someone. She looked again. A woman, lying face down, wearing white clogs, blue pants and a bright pink top. It had to be Melissa. The damned woman must have hidden out there last night, waiting in the shadows for Helen to return and Jack to leave. The joke was apparently on Melissa, falling asleep and missing her chance to impose her will on her patient again.

  Helen shoved the window open. "Melissa! Wake up and go home."

  Melissa didn't move, as oblivious to Helen's wishes as ever.

  "Give it up, Melissa," Helen shouted. "You're fired, and I've barricaded the doors until the locksmith gets here to change the locks. You're not getting inside here ever again."

  The sun came out from behind the
clouds, and in the bright light, Melissa's hands looked deathly pale. It could have been a trick, but Helen didn't think so. No one slept that heavily.

  Helen reached for the phone in her pocket and dialed 911.

  "What is your emergency?" a reassuringly calm male voice said.

  "I'm not sure," Helen said, "but I think there's a dead body in my yard."

  "What's the address?"

  She told him, and he said, "The first responders are on the way. What happened to the person?"

  "I don't know. She's just lying there."

  "Is she breathing?"

  "I don't know." Even as she said it, Helen realized how foolish that sounded. She should have checked. "Give me a minute, and I'll go find out."

  Helen pushed the recliner away from the front door and went outside, across the side yard to where Melissa was still lying, unmoving. Helen had to suppress the feeling that the nurse would, at any minute, jump up and yell, "gotcha!" Oddly enough, she almost wished that would happen.

  The dispatcher said, "Are you still there?"

  "Yes." Helen could hear sirens in the distance. "She's not breathing."

  "What about a pulse?"

  Helen knelt beside Melissa and placed two fingers on the woman's neck. She felt nothing except cold—too cold—skin. Maybe Helen had missed the artery, though. She wasn't a nurse, after all, and she couldn't exactly ask Melissa how to find a pulse.

  Helen moved her fingers around the woman's neck, searching for signs of life and finding nothing. A sharp pain in her hip forced her to change position. As she straightened, she realized the material of her pants was wet where she'd been kneeling on the grass. She glanced at her knee, and it took a moment to comprehend the reason for the damp red stain.

  Helen backed away from the body, absolutely convinced now that it was a body and not a person any longer.

  "There's no way she has a pulse," she told the operator. "I'm not a doctor, but I think she'd need a lot more blood inside her and a lot less of it soaked into the ground in order for her heart to beat."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Confident there was nothing more she could do for Melissa, Helen retreated to her front porch steps and waited for the emergency personnel to arrive.

  All considered, it didn't take long. Her cottage was on the farthest outskirts of the town, the entrance to the private road hid among dense trees, and the narrow gravel driveway offered a challenge even to a compact car.

  At the moment, there were two patrol cars and a fire truck all idling in Helen's front yard, and the ambulance was rolling to a stop. The cottage hadn't seen this many people all at once since the summer ten years ago when her ex-husband and most of his entourage had joined her here for a week. If Melissa's spirit was lingering, it was probably gloating over her posthumous success in ensuring that Helen had plenty of visitors.

  Two men from the fire department still knelt beside Melissa's body, although they seemed to have reached the same conclusion Helen had, and weren't bothering with chest compressions or any other sort of first aid. When the ambulance crew arrived with a stretcher, they exchanged a few words with the firemen, punctuated by a lot of nods, a few head-shakes and several shrugs. Apparently in agreement that Melissa was beyond any help they could give, the firemen returned to their truck. The ambulance crew consulted with the police officers, presumably getting permission to remove the body.

  With this confirmation that Melissa was truly gone, there was no reason for Helen to stay outside, gawking at the crime scene. No one seemed interested in what she had to say, and if they did want to talk to her, they knew where to find her.

  As Helen got to her feet, she heard an additional vehicle coming up the gravel driveway. A car, not a truck. Rubberneckers, probably. As predictable as the political groupies and busybodies she'd endured as the governor's wife. She'd come to feel sorry for them—their own lives were so empty that they had to live vicariously through other people's traumas—but now that she was retired, living on private property, she didn't have to put up with them.

  Helen made her way over to the closest uniformed police officer. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, observing the removal of the body. The officer wasn't much taller than her 5' 6" ex-husband, although he was a bit stockier. His nametag read "H. Peterson."

  Helen planted herself in front of him. "Excuse me."

  "You need to stand back," he said. "This is a crime scene."

  "It's also my yard."

  "You should still step back a ways, ma'am. I'll come with you." He took her elbow and started to lead her back toward her front path as if she didn't know where it was. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine," Helen said, although the way he was bending over her solicitously made her feel even smaller and more fragile than usual. She pulled her arm out of his grasp. "I wasn't the one who was injured. All I did was find the body."

  "Most people are traumatized by that sort of thing," Peterson said. "I can ask the paramedics to check your blood pressure if you'd like. Give you a sedative, maybe."

  "I'm perfectly calm, and my blood pressure is fine." Unlike Melissa's, which was non-existent. Helen's gaze wandered back to the spot where the body had been. Would the grass look different there next year, fertilized by all that blood, becoming a sort of natural memorial to the dead woman?

  "Just take it easy," Peterson said, glancing over his shoulder to watch the paramedics slam the ambulance doors shut, with the body already secured inside. "And don't hesitate to call for help if you're feeling light-headed or anything."

  "I could use your help with one little thing."

  He turned to face her again. "What's that, ma'am?"

  She nodded at the recently arrived car. "Could you have a word with the trespassers, and ask them to leave?"

  "The emergency vehicles will be gone in a minute." He'd already dismissed her from his conscious mind, and was focused instead on the taped-off scene of the crime. He looked at it as if he expected someone to leap out of the surrounding woods and confess to the murder, and he didn't want to miss the excitement.

  "I don't mean the emergency vehicles." Helen pointed at the car parked across her daylily bed. "I'm talking about that vehicle."

  Peterson reluctantly looked away from the scene of the murder and glanced toward the car. "Oh, that's just Geoff Loring. I know him. He's okay."

  She knew that tone of voice. It meant Don't worry your pretty little head about it. She'd heard it far too many times from the people around her ex-husband until the message had gotten around that anyone who underestimated her would find their access to the governor cut off. She hadn't suffered a condescending attitude lightly then, and she wasn't going to start now.

  "Loring's presence here is not okay. He's trespassing on private property, and I want him to leave. If he won't go voluntarily, I expect you to arrest him."

  "No need to get all excited." Peterson stepped back with his hands in the air as if she'd physically attacked him. He might be making light of her request, but at least it had dawned on him that public relations required at least some effort, and she finally had his full attention. "Don't worry about Geoff. He's a reporter. He's just doing his job."

  Which was more than she could say for this officer. "Fine. I'll go ask him to leave if you won't."

  "Now, ma'am, you don't want to do that."

  "Yes, I do." Helen limped across the lawn, with Peterson following. She concentrated on one step at a time, watching where she stepped on the uneven ground and leaning heavily on her cane.

  "But he's a reporter," Peterson said. "You can't ask him to leave. He has First Amendment rights."

  "I have some experience with both the press and First Amendment rights." Helen kept walking. "I'm quite sure that the Constitution does not give reporters the right to trespass on private property in the pursuit of a story."

  "Okay, okay," Peterson said. "I'll have a little chat with him, and you can go on inside where he can't bother you."

  "I'll
wait right here while you go talk to him. It shouldn't take long for you to tell him to leave." Otherwise, she knew, as soon as she was out of sight, Peterson would let the reporter do whatever he wanted. If it was just this one time, one day when there was legitimate news to cover, she wouldn't mind so much. But if she didn't put her foot down now, the reporter would return again and again, each time on a flimsier excuse than the last time. If he wouldn't leave when the police were potentially available to arrest him for trespassing, she'd never get him to leave the next time he invited himself to her property, looking for an interview. "You probably want to take my statement, anyway. As soon as Loring leaves, I'll tell you what I know about Melissa."

  "We've got your name, and we know where you live," Peterson said. "That's all we need from you."

  "You don't want to know where I was last night?" The police should have been grilling her by now, not verbally patting her on the head. "Don't you want to know whether Melissa and I had argued recently?"

  "Not really."

  Maybe they knew something she didn't. "So you know who killed her?"

  "We've got a pretty good idea." Peterson looked past her, checking out the forensic team's activity at the scene of the crime again.

  "A pretty good idea?" Helen felt outrage on Melissa's behalf. The nurse had been annoying, but that didn't mean she'd deserved to die, or that her killer should escape punishment. "We're talking about a murder here. Shouldn't you be considering all the possibilities until you have a beyond-reasonable-doubt certainty?"

  "We will consider everything, ma'am." Peterson dragged his attention back to her.

  "I must have misunderstood you, then," Helen said. "You're planning to have someone else interview me later. A lead detective, maybe."

  "I'm the lead detective." He gestured at his nametag which did, indeed have a Det. in front of his name. "Hank Peterson. The forensics will tell us everything we need to know. There isn't anything useful that you can add."