1 A Dose of Death

by Gin Jones

  "Don't worry." Pierce gave the door a sudden push, jerking it out of Helen's control, and slamming it all the way open. He picked up the messenger bag at his feet and brushed past her into the cottage before turning around to face her again. "I've found you a new nurse. I just need you to sign the revised contract."

  "I'm not signing anything," Helen said. "You need to talk to my lawyer."

  "No time for that." Pierce grabbed her by the elbow with his free hand, and pulled her toward the kitchen island, leaving the front door wide open.

  What would Pierce do if she refused to sign his contract? He wouldn't kill her, because then the contract would be worthless. Still, it might be better to just sign the damned thing and let Tate get it voided on the grounds that it was signed under duress. Now that Pierce had dragged her across the room, she was perfectly willing to swear in court that she was afraid of Pierce in a way that she'd never been afraid of Melissa.

  Helen couldn't count on the court to do the right thing, though. Just because Judge Nolan felt guilty about what had happened to Melissa didn't necessarily mean she'd rule in Helen's favor on another issue. If she could avoid signing Pierce's papers just until Tate returned, it would save everyone a lot of trouble later. Tate should be back any minute, and as soon as he saw the front door open, even before he climbed out of his car, he'd know something was wrong. He'd do what she'd said a sane person would do when he saw something suspicious: call the police. And they'd listen to him.

  All she had to do was to delay signing anything and keep Pierce from closing the front door. Helen stumbled, fumbling with her cane as if she couldn't move without assistance, so Pierce would be unable to let her go while he closed the door.

  He pushed her into the first seat at the kitchen island, which freed him to take a step toward the front door. She needed to get his attention back on her, and that meant dropping her pretense of incompetence. She didn't care if he thought she was crazy. She just needed to provoke him. True or not, being accused of fraud ought to do it.

  "You're wasting valuable time with me, when you should be packing up and leaving town," she said. "Everyone knows about the insurance fraud. Including the Attorney General's office."

  Mentioning the Attorney General was what finally got him to forget about the door. He turned around, his falsely solicitous expression firmly in place. "You shouldn't say such things. Someone might take you seriously."

  "They already did," she said. "Tate is at the police station now, arranging for your arrest."

  "I know that you've been under a great deal of stress." Pierce's voice remained calm and condescending, but he brought his messenger bag up to his chest, hugging it like a security blanket. His fingers were turning white from the tension of his grip on the bag. "Even so, you can't go around slandering people. I understand, of course, but not everyone would, and you could get into a great deal of legal trouble."

  "Don't patronize me," Helen said. "I know what you did. The only thing I don't understand is why you killed Melissa."

  He didn't even blink. He just shook his head sadly. "Melissa was right. You're senile. I'm sure that when you've had the time to think about it, you'll realize I didn't kill anyone."

  "There's no point in lying now," Helen said. "It's just you and me, and no one ever listens to me."

  "You know, I hadn't planned to kill you, but it's starting to sound like a good idea." He tossed his bag on the kitchen island top and flipped it open. "It doesn't have to be that way, though. All I really want is for you to sign a few things. Like you say, no one will pay any attention when you claim I forced you to sign them."

  Tate would pay attention, Helen thought. And he'd make sure others listened too. No point in pushing Pierce too far. Besides, she was curious just what he was planning. Maybe the papers in his bag were just what she needed to prove that Pierce was committing fraud.

  "What do you want signed?"

  "Oh, nothing much," he said, waving a stack of papers at her. "Durable power of attorney, health care proxy, that sort of thing."

  He really was committing fraud, she thought, fighting down the urge to slip off her chair and dance around the room in triumph. Not that she'd be able to take more than a step or two without falling down. Being dragged and tossed into this chair hadn't done her hip any good.

  But she'd been right. Or mostly right. Pierce wasn't just after her medical insurance; he was after everything she had. With those documents, he could have her put in the nursing home against her will. Not only would everyone ignore her wishes like they were already inclined to dobut they'd actually be legally required to ignore them. Pierce could take his time, generating bills for expensive medical services she neither needed nor received, and, if that wasn't enough, he'd simultaneously be looting her personal financial assets.

  "Forget it, Pierce." Helen's exuberance was evaporating, and she understood how Tate felt when a promising legal case turned into a routine matter. The sheer incompetence of Pierce's plan made Melissa's death seem even worse; no one, not even Melissa, deserved to die in furtherance of such an inept crime.

  Helen didn't have to fake the fatigue in her voice as she explained, "Everything I own is in a trust. I can't sign it over to you, even if I wanted to. Besides, I already have a health care proxy filed with my doctor, who's a family friend. He'd be suspicious if I changed it from my niece to someone I'd only met recently."

  Pierce let the papers slip from his hands to scatter across the kitchen island. He leaned over to lay his forearms on the island's top and then clutched his head between his hands. When he spoke again, his voice was too muffled to tell whether he was as distraught as he looked, or if this was just another act. "This is all Melissa's fault. She said you'd be an easy target, and if we pulled it off, we might even get our hooks into some of your Boston contacts as well. I knew we should have stuck to what was working instead of branching out."

  "Greed does lead people to take unnecessary risks." Helen finally heard the familiar—and just this once, eagerly anticipated—sound of a car coming up the far end of her gravel driveway. She pushed herself to her feet and thumped her cane more loudly than necessary, to keep Pierce's attention on her and away from the sound of the approaching vehicle. "How long had you been scamming the nursing home patients before Melissa joined you?"

  "A couple years," he said, straightening slowly and running his hands down his face. A finger snagged on his cravat and undid its neat folds, leaving it a wrinkled lump. "I was so careful not to take much from any one patient. Until Melissa came along. She knew which patients would know immediately if the billing was excessive, so we had to remain cautious with them, but she also knew which patients never looked at the billing or had anyone else do it for them, and there was practically no limit to the padding we could do there. Even after her cut, I made more in the six short months with Melissa than I'd made in the entire two years before that."

  "So that's why you killed Melissa," Helen said. "Geoff Loring started nosing around, asking about Melissa and talking about a big story. You thought he'd figured out what you and Melissa were up to. You blamed Melissa for not covering her tracks better, so you killed her, hoping that would be the end of it."

  "I didn't kill Melissa." He sounded genuinely surprised by the accusation.

  "Yes, you did." She'd seen him lie often enough that she wasn't willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. "And then later, when Geoff kept poking around at the nursing home, following up on his suspicions about you and Melissa, you assaulted him to get him to drop the story. You even threatened Jack so he'd run away too, and everyone would think it was proof of his guilt, and they'd close the case without looking into anyone else's motive."

  "Geoff Loring was a problem, and I took care of it. I didn't need to kill Melissa. Or do anything about Jack. He was doing a pretty good job all by himself of convincing the police of his guilt."

  The tell-tale thunk of Tate's car door slamming startled Pierce. "Who's that?"

  "No
one."

  He glanced frantically around the cottage, as if looking for a place to hide. "Melissa didn't say anything about a silent alarm."

  "I just had it installed," she said, omitting the fact that it hadn't gone live yet. "Marty Reed designed it."

  Pierce looked at the door, and then apparently deciding he'd never get there in time to escape, he took up a position on her left side, with his arm around her shoulder. It would look like he was just being friendly and supportive, but it also had the effect of preventing her from getting up and running—or at least hobbling—away from his control.

  "You're going to tell the responders that everything is okay," he said. "Tell them that you tripped the alarm by mistake and we couldn't figure out how to disarm it."

  "Then what?"

  "It depends on you. Sign the papers, and keep quiet, and everything will be fine."

  She didn't have to see his face to know he was lying. She could feel it in the grip he had on her shoulder, the tension of his body beside her. If she sent Tate away, Pierce would kill her, like he'd killed Melissa, and if that weren't bad enough, he'd probably find a way to implicate Jack. She'd have to be as much of a fool as he obviously thought she was to believe otherwise.

  "I am not an incompetent fool." Her cane was in her right hand, out of Pierce's line of sight. She adjusted her grip on her cane, sliding her hand down the shaft until she could hold it like a baseball bat.

  "What?"

  "I am not a fool, and I am not an easy victim." She flipped the cane up to thwap Pierce's hand on her right shoulder. When he let go of her, she was able to get a few inches' distance from him. She knew she couldn't outrun him, not once he got over the surprise, so she had to find some way to slow him down. The cane wasn't strong enough to do any damage to his legs, but it might be enough to give him a bit of a concussion.

  She reinforced her grip on the cane with her left hand, and, with a moment's regret that she hadn't taken her husband up on his frequent offers to teach her to play golf, she swung the cane at Pierce's head.

  Even as she dropped the cane, Pierce fell back against the island, obviously dazed. She didn't know how long it would take for him to recover, and she was going to need reinforcements before that happened. She knew she was being a little foolish, but she couldn't quite make herself call out for help, not in front of the man who'd banked on her vulnerability. Still, she wasn't foolish enough to risk the possibility that Tate wouldn't have noticed the open front door. Pierce thought there were people responding to an alarm out there, so she just needed to foster that impression. She limped toward the front door, shouting "We're in here!" as she went.

  Tate was just outside, phone in hand, to catch her as she almost tumbled down the front steps.

  "Pierce is inside," she said. "He killed Melissa. Don't let him get away."

  She didn't know whether Tate believed her, but at least he didn't try to tell her she was crazy. He just said, "The police are on the way," and offered his arm to lean on as they walked over to his car. He opened the passenger side door so she'd have a safe place to wait.

  She settled into the seat while Tate kept an eye on the cottage to make sure Pierce didn't leave. Helen almost hoped Pierce would try to run; it would make her story more credible.

  A few anxious minutes later, two police cruisers screeched to a stop behind Tate's car. She told them that Pierce had threatened her and had been defrauding the nursing home patients. They might not have believed her if Tate hadn't been standing beside her. He didn't say anything, but his presence seemed to be enough to convince the officers to go inside the cottage, at least to find out his side of the story.

  Apparently Pierce was even less credible than Helen was, because it wasn't long before the officers escorted him out of the cottage and toward the police cruiser. One of the officers was studying the papers that Pierce had tried to force Helen to sign, and judging by the officer's face they were every bit as bad as she'd believed.

  A trickle of blood ran down Pierce's ear, and he seemed dazed, either by the blow to his head or the shock that the victim he'd thought was such an easy target had actually fought back. Helen didn't regret having hit him, but she did regret having done it before she'd been able to get him to confess to Melissa's murder. His confession to her might not have been enough to convict him, since it would have been her word against Pierce's, but her testimony should at least have been enough to establish reasonable doubt at Jack's trial.

  Pierce's hands were cuffed behind him, holding his cravat, which he'd apparently used to sop up some of the blood from his ear. As he passed Helen, he said plaintively, "Why'd you have to hit me?"

  "You were in my cottage, trying to hurt me, and you wouldn't let me leave," Helen said. "Why wouldn't I hit you?"

  Pierce glanced to his left and then to his right, at the officers flanking him. "You're delusional. I would never hurt one of my clients."

  "Save it for the judge." Helen said, and then she had an idea. There were all sorts of reliable witnesses to anything he said now, and he was a bit off-kilter from the blow to his head. If she could just keep him talking, he might say something incriminating about the murder. "It's ironic, really. I hit you the same way you hit Melissa, in a disagreement over your fraud, and even with the same type of weapon. Except you killed her, and I only gave you a bump on the head."

  "You're crazy. I didn't kill Melissa," he grumbled, but he didn't get a chance to say anything more before the officers stuffed him into the back of one of the cruisers. One of the officers climbed into the cruiser and left with Pierce, while the other one remained just long enough to let Helen know they were planning to charge him with assault immediately, but that the fraud claims would have to wait until they could be investigated by someone in the detective division.

  As the second cruiser was leaving, Tate said, "Don't feel bad that you couldn't get Pierce to confess to Melissa's murder. It was a long shot at best. Confessions don't happen very often, and in the few cases when you get them, they're not always admissible at trial."

  "Even if the confession didn't hold up in court," Helen said, "Detective Peterson would hear about it, and he wouldn't be able to ignore me any longer. I'd have at least had a chance to convince him not to pursue the case against Jack."

  "Once Detective Peterson gets a look at the papers the officers confiscated, you won't have any trouble convincing him to listen to you," Tate said. "According to the nursing home board members I spoke to, they were just starting to think something was wrong with Pierce's agency, but they hadn't realized quite how bad it was. Yours won't be the only voice calling for an investigation."

  "The state is probably looking into it too," Helen said. "But I'm not sure the fraud investigation will help Jack as long as Pierce is denying he killed Melissa."

  "At least now his attorney has an alternative suspect to offer the jury," Tate said. "If it will keep you from doing anything crazy, now that you're no longer a suspect I might consider taking Jack's case. It's probably the easiest way to get our lives back to normal. If you're not worried about him, you can go back to living all alone in your cottage, and I can get back to my woodworking."

  That was exactly what Helen had wanted originally, but the last few days had made her realize that she didn't just want to be left alone. She wanted to find something to do with her solitude. She wanted something that wasn't just a hobby, but was an avocation, a calling, something she could be as passionate about as Tate was with his woodworking and Betty and Josie were with their chemo cap knitting.

  The only thing she'd felt passionate about recently was getting rid of Melissa and then figuring out who had actually gotten rid of Melissa. Unfortunately, she couldn't count on people dying just to give her something interesting to do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  After the police and Tate left, Helen considered calling her nieces to let them know that Melissa's killer had been caught, but then they'd have wanted to know about how Pierce had been caught, and that
explanation was going to upset them. Helen was too tired to deal with it tonight. She'd call them first thing in the morning before the reporters got hold of the story. Tonight, all she wanted to do was go to bed early.

  She was too wired and sore to sleep right away, so she took the painkiller that she'd postponed earlier. While she waited for it to make her sleepy enough to rest, she puttered around the cottage, putting away her notes on Melissa's murder. The police had Pierce in custody, and Jack would be cleared soon enough now that Tate was representing him.

  It still bothered her that Pierce hadn't confessed to the murder, even after conceding the fraud. She understood why he hadn't said anything incriminating when the police were there to overhear it, but why hadn't he confessed when they were alone? He had clearly thought no one would listen to her about the fraud, so why think anyone would listen if she'd started claiming that he'd killed Melissa? Detective Peterson would have patted her on the head and told her not to worry about such things. Tate might have believed her, but he also would have told her that she needed more proof. Betty and Josie might have believed her too, but they also believed that Elvis had been seen at the nursing home two weeks ago, and if they became too agitated in their defense of Helen, the staff would likely send them to their rooms until they calmed down.

  The ache in her hip wasn't going away with the first pill, and she couldn't relax until the pain receded. Reluctantly, she took a second dose of the painkiller and a moment later heard a car coming up the gravel driveway. As far as she knew, Tate hadn't planned to return this evening, Jack was still under court order to stay away from her, and her nieces didn't have any reason for an unannounced visit. Maybe Geoff Loring had heard from the police about Pierce's arrest and had figured out that Pierce was the one who'd attacked him, so it was safe to venture out to do his job.