by Janet Dawson
Carla Erasmus was looking at me with open curiosity, so I introduced myself. “Jeri Howard. I’m the private investigator who spoke with your parents yesterday.”
She nodded. “Yes, my parents told me you’d visited. Mr. Sholto didn’t say you’d be here to help us.”
“I asked Mr. Sholto if I could come. I’d like to look through Benita’s things, to see if I can find anything that might give me some indication who killed her, and why.”
She looked from me to him and then back again. “The police are investigating this. I don’t know what you think you might find that they can’t.”
“I like to think of myself as a fresh pair of eyes,” I said, using the same argument I’d given Sholto earlier. “A calendar, a notepad, a datebook. You’d be surprised what people scribble on pieces of paper. Maybe Benita jotted down something that the police missed.”
Now Carla Erasmus looked at her cousin Toby, as though wordlessly consulting him. He shrugged, and said in a deep voice, “I don’t see what harm it would do.”
It didn’t do much good either, I decided half an hour later in Benita’s bedroom. I hadn’t found a calendar, a notepad, a datebook, or even so much as an address book. If Benita had any of those things, they must have been in the purse she was carrying the first time I’d seen her. The purse which, along with her leased car, hadn’t yet been found.
Benita’s bedroom seemed preternaturally neat, nothing out of place, with an almost obsessive orderliness. It was as though her need to run her own life extended somehow to the neatly rolled bras and panties in the top drawer of the black lacquered dresser, the matched socks folded in exact thirds, nested in the drawer below. The clothing hanging on the closet rail was arranged by type and color. As I stuck my fingers into the pockets of the pants and skirts, I thought of my own propensity for shoving shirts and blouses on the same hangers and draping sweaters over the backs of chairs.
As I finished with each item, I folded it and laid it on the bed, where Carla Erasmus was filling Benita’s soft-sided leather suitcases with the contents of the dresser drawers. Then I turned my attention to the shoes, checking the insides of each one. “Nothing,” I said, slipping the last pair into a nearby box.
“I didn’t think so,” Mrs. Erasmus said with a sidelong glance. “Benita never did reveal much of herself. To anyone, especially her family.”
When she was finished emptying the dresser, I pulled out the drawers to see if anything had been hidden there. Nothing again. The bed didn’t have anything under it but the platform, and when Toby pulled off the bright purple comforter and the pale violet sheets, packing them into a box along with the pillows, there was nothing hidden under the mattress. The only photographs in the whole place were a couple of color shots of Letitia, and one of Benita’s parents, lined up on top of the dresser, next to a purple embroidered case containing jewelry.
The bathroom held the usual toiletries and a few cleaning supplies, which Toby had packed into another box. Sholto was out in the hall, pulling towels and sheets from a small linen closet and stacking them in a box. Another closet had contained a raincoat and several jackets. He’d carried these into the bedroom so I could look them over and then pack them.
When the bedroom and bathroom were cleared of Benita’s belongings, we moved into the living room. “The CD player, disks, and books are... were hers,” Sholto said, pointing them out. “Everything else goes back to the rental company. She had a few dishes in the kitchen, plus the coffeemaker and that little microwave. I think there’s some food in the cupboards and the refrigerator.”
I quickly checked the compact disks and riffled the pages of the paperbacks, finding nothing. Toby unplugged the CD player and packed it into another box. “Let’s take the first load down to my truck.”
“Good idea,” the agent said, picking up a carton and balancing it on his shoulder. Toby did the same and they headed down the stairs.
While I was looking at the books, Mrs. Erasmus moved into the small kitchen and switched on the light. She was removing containers of food from the refrigerator and setting them on the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. I saw her open a quart carton of nonfat milk, sniff the contents, then pour it into the sink. A pint of cottage cheese met a similar fate, in the plastic-lined garbage container under the sink.
I joined her, opening cupboards and drawers, removing the few dishes and cooking implements Benita had collected during her short stay in the Bay Area. There was a cardboard carton near my feet, and I packed the dishes into it, using paper towels from a roll on the counter to cushion them. I found a mug, a bowl, and two spoons in the apartment-sized dishwasher, and I took these out and washed them, drying them on a nearby kitchen towel. Then I added them to the box.
“What is it you hope to find?” Mrs. Erasmus asked me as she tossed a moldy loaf of whole wheat bread into the garbage.
“Something that will tell me why your sister was killed.” I wrapped knives, forks, and spoons into a couple of kitchen towels, then added the cutlery to the box.
“You don’t think it was a robbery.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I think it’s more complicated than that,” I said.
She turned from the refrigerator and fixed me with her dark brown eyes, at that moment very like her sister’s. “You never did tell my parents why you were interested in Benita in the first place.”
I met her gaze. “Let’s just say her name came up in a case I’m working on.”
She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it as footsteps sounded on the metal staircase outside. Sholto and Toby came through the door, ready to collect another load. I unplugged the coffeemaker and tucked the remaining kitchen towels around it to cushion the glass carafe. There wasn’t room for it in the box, so I left it on the counter and picked up the box, stepping past Mrs. Erasmus into the dining area. I set the box on one of the chairs and reached for the light switch. The three-bulb fixture bounced bright light off the glass tabletop below it, bringing the black vase and the drooping flowers into sharp focus.
“Was this vase Benita’s?” I asked Sholto, reaching for it. The black glass was heavy. I’d lifted it a few inches off the tabletop, then I froze and stared at the flowers. They were small, white, and bell-shaped, and they looked familiar. I searched my memory banks. Sholto was saying something about the vase but I didn’t hear exactly what.
“Lily of the valley,” I said. “Why would Benita have lily of the valley in this vase?”
“What’s so odd about lily of the valley?” Sholto asked.
“It’s more of an outdoor plant. And it’s poisonous, both the plant and the water it’s been sitting in.” I glanced inside the vase and saw about three inches of water. “Not something I’d want on my dining room table.”
“And this is not something I’d want in my refrigerator,” Mrs. Erasmus said, an odd look on her face. She held up two large plastic freezer bags. “They were in the vegetable crisper, under the lettuce. Why on earth would she have these? They’re poisonous, too.”
I reached for the plastic bags. Inside each were cuttings of plants. One had thick leathery leaves shaped like lances, six or seven inches long. The other had soft, fuzzy leaves and thimble-shaped purple and white flowers that hung down from the stalk.
“What is it?” Sholto demanded.
I held up the first bag. “Nerium oleander,” I said. “A member of the dogbane family. Despite its lovely flowers and its popularity as an ornamental shrub, the entire plant is extremely toxic.”
I’d done some research on poisonous plants back when I was in college. The house next door to my parents’ home in Alameda had oleander bushes in the front yard. The people who lived there had rushed their six-year-old daughter to the hospital one Saturday afternoon when she’d decided to take a bite out of an oleander leaf. She’d survived, but she was lucky.
“Yeah, don’t you remember that case in Santa Rosa,” Toby was saying to his cousin. “Those g
uys had trimmed some oleander bushes out on Highway 12 and they were burning the stuff. Two of ’em keeled over from just breathing the smoke.”
“And this one,” I said, holding up the second bag so that the purple and white flowers were visible, “contains Digitalis purpurea, otherwise known as foxglove. Also quite toxic.”
“Isn’t that the plant they use to make digitalis?” Sholto asked. “That heart drug?”
“Yes, it is.” I gazed at the plastic bags in my hands, and at the sprig of lily of the valley in the vase. “Besides being poisonous, what do all three of these plants have in common?” I got blank stares from my companions as I dredged up the research I’d done so long ago. “They all contain cardiac glycosides. And if you ingest them, you’ll experience nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain. You might get the shakes, or collapse. And you’d certainly have heart arrhythmia.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Mickey Sholto asked, baffled.
“A heart attack,” I said, reaching for my car keys. “Stan Torrance died of a heart attack.”
Chapter Thirty-one
DAVID VANITZKY’S LIPS TIGHTENED INTO A THIN LINE below his hawk nose. His gray eyes turned cold as the November wind that was blowing across the infield. He was silent for a moment as he considered the implications of my words. “Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Yes. I’m saying Stan Torrance was murdered.”
I had found David a few minutes earlier, in the paddock at Edgewater Downs, where Molly was saddling her entry in the sixth race. Darcy had tagged along with Molly and Carlos, and was chatting happily with the horse’s owners. I’d caught David’s eye and waved to him. When he exited the paddock, I grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the railing, into the busy grandstand. It was crowded this chilly Sunday afternoon, as racegoers lined up at the parimutuel windows to buy the tickets they hoped would be winners.
I moved to one side, trying to avoid a man with a Daily Racing Form tucked under his arm and a large bag of popcorn and a beer in his hands. That brought me even closer to a trio of gray-haired, grandmotherly looking women who were discussing the card for the sixth race. I turned my head toward David so that no one else could hear my words except him. “The phone calls started before Stan died. There’s just as much reason to believe he was the target of those threats as Molly.”
“But murder? That’s a hell of a leap to make,” David cautioned in a low voice, “based on plants in Benita Pascal’s apartment.”
Which was why I hadn’t let the police in on what was admittedly a theory, for all my conviction that Stan had been murdered. Even as I tried to convince David, I pictured Detective Eddy Maltesta’s reaction. I could just imagine what he’d say if I told him I thought Stan Torrance had been poisoned.
“Those aren’t just any plants,” I argued now. “They’re all poisonous.”
David glanced in the direction of the paddock, where Molly was giving Deakin Kelley a leg up on the horse, a chestnut with two white stockings. Deakin was decked out in the owners’ green and gold silks. He gave Molly and Darcy a quick salute with his whip as the horse began moving out onto the track for the post parade.
“I was there in the shedrow when it happened,” David said, and I didn’t have to ask what “it” was. “Stan and I were talking.”
“For how long?” I asked. “An hour, fifteen minutes?”
“Two or three minutes. I’d just walked over from the admin office to say hello. Then Stan clutched his chest and keeled over. It certainly looked like a heart attack to me.”
“I’m sure it was meant to,” I told him. “Any one of the three — oleander, lily of the valley, foxglove — could cause the same sort of symptoms. And whoever poisoned Stan was betting that no one would ever suspect otherwise.”
David sighed as the three women near us settled on a bet and moved as one toward the parimutuel windows. “What about the paramedics who transported him to the hospital?” he asked. “And the doctors in the emergency? Wouldn’t they have picked up on something out of the ordinary?”
“Not necessarily. As you and Molly have both pointed out, Stan was at risk for a heart attack, because of his family history and his diet. He’d already had some chest pains during the weeks before. He put off taking the cardiac tests his doctor wanted him to take. So when he clutched his chest and collapsed, everybody guessed it was his heart, from Molly to you to the paramedics to the doctors. Very convenient.”
“And very theoretical, at this point.” David gazed past me at a TV monitor that was showing a simulcast of another race at another track. “How can you prove Stan was murdered?”
“Was there an autopsy?”
He shook his head. “No, there wasn’t. There was no question about the cause of death. Until now.”
The fact that there had been no autopsy on Stan Torrance’s body didn’t surprise me. California law didn’t require it when the deceased had died from what appeared to be natural causes, such as old age or disease. Stan’s death looked like a textbook case of a heart attack. Maybe that was what had been bothering me ever since Molly described the way her father died. It looked too much like a classic heart attack, preceded by the equally classic visit to his doctor after an episode of chest pains. It was even possible that the killer had given Stan a smaller dose of whatever killed him on that earlier occasion, causing the chest pains and setting the stage for the big event.
And since there had been no autopsy, who would know?
Me, that’s who. I was convinced Stan had been murdered.
But David was right. How was I going to prove it?
“We have to ask Molly to have the body exhumed and autopsied.”
He frowned and glanced over his shoulder. The horses in the sixth race were out on the track now, warming up before the race. Molly and Darcy lingered in the paddock, talking with the horse’s owners. “That might take some doing.”
“You’ve known her a long time. See if you can convince her.”
“The body was embalmed. Wouldn’t that be a problem in determining if he was poisoned?”
“It might,” I conceded. “When a body is embalmed, the blood is removed. But the medical examiner can do a tox screen on the organs, such as the liver. Which hospital was Stan taken to?”
“Washington Hospital, in Fremont. It’s the nearest hospital to the track. Molly and I followed the ambulance in my car. Stan died shortly after we got to the emergency room.”
“How long was that after he collapsed?” I asked. “Give me a time sequence, if you can.”
David frowned. “I’ll try. It’s all blurred together. Stan collapsed, I started CPR, Molly called 911. The paramedics came. I’m not sure, but it seems like it was twenty-five minutes, half an hour, by the time Molly and I got to the hospital. I think Stan died about five or ten minutes after that.”
“So the E.R. docs worked on him for a while. I wonder...” I thought for a moment. It was customary, I knew, for emergency room personnel to draw blood from a patient immediately, for a CBC, or complete blood chemistry, or other tests, such as blood gases or a CPK, the cardiac enzyme test. If the Washington Hospital E.R. had drawn Stan Torrance’s blood, as I was sure they had, I was equally sure that the staff had long since disposed of the blood.
On the other hand, the hospital lab might keep such samples for a longer period of time. I’d have to check their procedures. It was almost too much to hope for that some of Stan Torrance’s blood would still be in a vial somewhere at Washington Hospital. For now, it looked as though exhumation and autopsy of his body was the best means of confirming that Stan had been poisoned. I was hoping Molly would agree.
I saw the owners of the horse Molly had trained riding up the escalator to the clubhouse, to watch their investment race. Molly and Darcy were standing near the railing. Darcy turned, caught my eye, and waved. The horses in the sixth race were being loaded into the starting gate. Then I heard the race caller’s “They’re off!” echo through the loudspeakers as the
thoroughbreds broke from the gate. I glanced at the TV monitor as the horses pounded toward the first turn.
“How on earth could anyone poison Stan?” David asked, his voice cutting through the yells and cheers of the railbirds watching the race. “It’s not like you could toss some oleander leaves or foxglove blossoms into a salad and expect them not to be noticed. As I recall, oleander leaves are quite long and distinctive.”
“And they taste bad.” He gave me a look. “I’m not speaking from experience here. I’m only quoting what I’ve read. Which is that oleander tastes awful, in addition to being highly toxic. So it’s unlikely you’d use the stuff in its natural form. Meaning leaves or bark or flowers.”
“So how would you administer it?” David glanced toward Molly again. She was still at the rail with Darcy, watching the race. On the TV monitor the horses were straggled out now, jockeying for position in the backstretch. “How much oleander does it take to kill someone anyway?”
“One leaf can kill a child. Three or four can kill an adult.” The horses rounded the far turn, with three out in front and the rest of the pack behind. “If I were going to use poisonous plants,” I said slowly, “I’d brew them into some sort of liquid. With lily of the valley, I’d already have the liquid. The water it had been sitting in at Benita’s is equally poisonous. But you’re right. Any of those plants would still taste bad, even if you made them into toxic tea. I’d have to mix the liquid into something. And hope that I could somehow disguise the taste.”
The thoroughbreds were heading down the homestretch toward the finish line, and a shout went up as the race ended. I could tell from Molly’s body language that the horse she’d trained hadn’t won the race, but he hadn’t done too badly either. She waited near the railing, and I knew she wanted to talk with Deakin, to get his perspective on how the horse had run.
