Iced Under

by Barbara Ross

  “You were right.”

  I jumped, turning around as I did.

  Detective Salinksy stood behind me in the waiting room. “Rose told me you were the one who realized Mrs. Morales needed to be tested. Beta-blockers, it looks like. She was poisoned with an overdose of her own medication. Enough to kill her if her granddaughter hadn’t found her, and if she hadn’t had a doctor and a hospice nurse staying at her house. Especially with the delay of the EMTs due to the storm.” He inclined his head toward the hallway. “Let’s talk.”

  He led me to a cafeteria on the ground floor of another building on the dense MGH campus. Around us tables full of medical personnel talked and joked as coworkers do, while families and friends of the patients quietly played with their meals. A man with a toddler and a preschooler attempted to load food on a tray while the younger one, a little girl, screamed to be picked up. He turned to Salinsky and me. “I’m sorry about the noise. I had to bring them today. Their mom . . .” His eyes welled and the tray wobbled.

  “Not a problem,” Salinsky said, grabbing the tray. “I had two close in age like that myself.” Salinsky carried the tray to the cashier while the man picked up the little girl and took his son’s hand. Salinsky paid for the food, along with our coffees.

  “I can’t let you do that,” the man protested, and tried to fish his wallet out of his back pocket.

  “On me,” Salinsky said in a tone that left the man no choice.

  After the overburdened father thanked us for the third time, Salinsky and I found a table in a corner of the cavernous room. The babble around us created a zone for private conversation.

  “Until she wakes up and tells me she took those pills on purpose or accidentally, I’m treating this as an attempt on Mrs. Morales’s life,” Salinksy said.

  “I don’t believe she took them on purpose,” I said. “She was sad about Hugh’s death, but not despondent. We had a wonderful dinner last night. She was engaged, telling stories. She told Rose and me she wanted to live for at least one more trip around the sun.”

  “That’s what Dr. Morrow told me as well. I don’t imagine you get to Mrs. Morales’s age without developing skills for coping with the passing of people you care about. She’s ninety-six. She’s not ill, but she can’t live forever. Who benefits from her dying sooner than later?”

  “Isn’t that the same question you asked about Hugh?”

  Salinsky took a sip of his coffee. It was black and steam rose off it. He winced slightly when the liquid hit his tongue. “It is, though in his case, the question is who benefited from him dying days before he would have otherwise. In Mrs. Morales’s case, Dr. Morrow says it could be years. She also told me the reason you thought Mrs. Morales should be tested was because you believed there had been an attempt on your life.”

  I blushed. “I didn’t think so at the time. I’m prone to panic attacks, though it didn’t seem like a panic attack to me. When I saw Marguerite struggling to breathe, I wondered. That’s why I said what I did to Rose.”

  Salinsky drained his coffee cup. “Why would someone want to kill you?”

  I’d wondered that since I’d first said the words to Rose. “I don’t think anyone did try to kill me. After a tense family dinner the night before last, Marguerite, Rose, and I went into the living room for after-dinner drinks. There were brandies on a tray, already poured. I think Marguerite was meant to take the glass closest to her chair, but instead, Rose picked up the tray the glasses were on and offered Marguerite a different one.”

  “You got the glass intended for Marguerite.”

  I pictured Rose’s graceful motion as she had picked up the tray, turning it toward Marguerite and then offering a drink to me. “Yes, I think that’s what happened.”

  “You said this was after a tense family meal. What caused the tension?”

  “Clive and Vivian had married that afternoon. Clive acted quite proprietarily toward the town house. He talked about the changes he and Vivian would make when Marguerite was dead. Marguerite told them they would never get the house. She’d leave it to Tallulah.”

  Salinsky’s expression didn’t change. I imagined it took a lot to shock him. “Who poured these brandies?”

  “Rose thought Paolo had done it while she and I were clearing the table, but in reality, anyone in the house could have. I only got sick, a feeling of fatigue I couldn’t shake, difficulty breathing. I didn’t pass out like Marguerite did, but I’m younger and bigger.”

  “Our perpetrator may not know what he’s doing in any precise way. He could be guessing at dosages.” Salinsky paused. “There’s no point in testing you now. These drugs run through your system in six hours. The rapidity of Mrs. Morales’s recovery is one of the indicators of what happened to her. So, you think our erstwhile Mr. Clive Humphries poisoned Marguerite to get control of the house?”

  “Marguerite told Rose and me last night she planned to speak with Mr. Dickison today about moving the property into a trust.”

  “Interesting timing, at a minimum. The amount of beta-blockers in Mrs. Morales’s body should be enough for us to get a warrant to search the house.”

  “Be sure to check the glass on her bedside table. She always kept water there. She told Rose and me she drank a glassful whenever she’d had alcohol. She had a cocktail last night and we split a bottle of wine.”

  “We’ll check it, if it’s still there. And we’ll interview everyone at the house, except ‘Mr. Humphries,’ whom we’ll take to the station for his questioning. I’d like to have him as on edge as possible.”

  “I plan to go home to Maine this afternoon,” I reminded him.

  “No reason you shouldn’t. I have your contact information. I’ll find you when I need you.”

  Salinsky shifted in his chair. “There’s one thing that bothers me. Marguerite was given an overdose of beta-blockers, you think in a drink. You may have ingested beta-blockers too, also in a drink. But Hugh Morales was smothered. Why?”

  “Was he too weak to drink, perhaps?”

  “Not that anyone has told me. I interviewed both Mr. Paolini and Mr. Morales’s physician extensively about his physical condition. The patient was in pain. He hadn’t left that room in a month. He was eating little, but still taking liquids by mouth.” He paused. “Besides, it doesn’t make sense that Humphries would murder him. He had only days to wait for Morales to die naturally. I come back, every time, to the question of who benefited from the timing of Hugh Morales’s death.”

  Chapter 32

  Marguerite had been assigned a room. Rose texted me the number. I followed the signs, got turned around twice, and had to ask for directions. While I walked, my phone buzzed with a text. In Charlotte. Boarding. Looks like I got lucky. Love. I heaved a sigh of relief. Chris had made it out between storms. In three hours I’d pick him up and we’d be on the way home.

  On the right path at last, I entered an elevator and punched the button for the top floor. When the doors opened, I exited into a lounge area that wouldn’t have looked out of place at the Harvard Club. The woodwork was mahogany, the furniture antique. I found Tallulah asleep on a guest bed in Marguerite’s room. Marguerite appeared to sleep too, though I wasn’t sure that was the right word for it. Her eyeballs moved restlessly behind her thin lids. Her hands fluttered and her leg occasionally kicked at the bedclothes. I hated seeing her like that. She was old, but she’d been so alive. I took her hand and squeezed it lightly. “We’ll have dinner again at the Daily Catch this summer,” I promised. “We’ll sit outside and watch the sun go down.”

  The room looked more like it was in a fancy hotel than a hospital, except for the bed, the monitor, and the IV drip hooked up to Marguerite. I went to the big window and looked out. The view swept down the Charles. It was panoramic in the daytime and would be spectacular at night.

  A uniformed policeman stood outside the room. Rose appeared in the doorway. “Detective Salinsky sent him,” she said, with a flick of her head, indicating the officer.


  “Won’t he attract attention?”

  “At Phillips House?” Rose smiled. “She’s probably the only one who checked in without a bodyguard. This is where the rich and famous come to get their ills cured. The rich, the famous, and little old ladies of a certain Boston class, like Marguerite.”

  “She must have the best Medicare supplemental insurance in the world.”

  Rose laughed. “I may have pulled a few strings. Professional courtesy.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She will be. She’s had a major assault on her system, both from the drug overdose and from those of us who worked to save her. It will take a while for her to come out of it, but there are no signs of permanent damage.”

  “Salinsky and others will be at the town house soon,” I told her. “They’ll search for whatever did this to Marguerite. They’ll interview most of the family there, but Clive they’ll take to the station.”

  She nodded to show she understood. “Jake and I are headed back to the house to get cleaned up and maybe rest. Tallulah will stay. I’ll be back in time to see the doctor when he comes this afternoon.”

  “I’ll stay too.”

  “I thought you had to pick up your boyfriend at the airport.”

  “I have some time.”

  * * *

  I stayed for an hour and a half. Marguerite slumbered on, though she had some color in her face and her rest seemed less troubled.

  Tallulah woke up and stretched. “How long was I asleep?” Her gaze flew to her grandmother. “How is she?”

  “Better, I think. Rose seems pretty confident.”

  “Thank God.”

  I gestured toward the corridor. “We need to talk.” We walked into the hallway where Tallulah spotted the uniformed officer and recoiled. I pulled her along to the empty, elegant patient lounge. We were the only ones there.

  “Tallulah, what did you mean yesterday in the coatroom, when you told me I didn’t know what your mother was capable of?”

  Tallulah perched on a couch with an ornate, carved back. She shook her head and kept her lips sealed.

  “Do you think your mother is capable of killing your grandmother, or Hugh?” I’d asked her before and she’d denied it, but after what had happened to Marguerite, perhaps Tallulah had second thoughts.

  She didn’t. “No! Mummy loves Granny. And she loved Hugh. She would never . . .”

  “You heard your grandmother threaten to leave the town house directly to you. That’s millions of dollars of motive.”

  Tallulah shook her head. “That’s the way the two of them are all the time. Granny always threatens, but she never goes through with it.”

  “The threat didn’t mean much until Hugh died,” I reminded her.

  She hesitated for a second. I could tell she was considering the implications. Then she repeated, “No, Mummy would never.”

  “Then what did you mean yesterday in the coatroom?” I pressed. “What is your mother capable of?”

  “I . . . she . . . it’s just that . . .” She took a deep breath. “I think my mother stole something really valuable that Hugh meant to leave to your mother.”

  “A necklace with a big, black diamond?”

  “Yes! How did you know?”

  “It’s in a safety deposit box in Busman’s Harbor, Maine.”

  “Why? How? Omigosh, I am so relieved.”

  “It came in the US mail, addressed to my mom,” I told her. “Uninsured. No return address. How long have you known about it?”

  “The necklace? All my life. When I was little, Hugh used to let me play princess with it, but only in his room. He asked me not to tell anyone about it. He told me it had been his mother’s.”

  “But you did. Tell someone, that is.”

  She hung her head. “I told my mother. I didn’t think anything of it. I never believed the gems were real. Then I got too old for dress-up and I almost, sort of, forgot about it.”

  “Until?”

  “Until one night at dinner, about two weeks before Hugh died. It was just me, Granny, and Mummy. Clive was out. It was Paolo’s night off and Jake was sitting upstairs with Hugh. Anyway, sort of out of the blue, Granny brings up this famous necklace that had belonged to her mother. The Black Widow, she called it. I looked at Mummy and Mummy looked at me, and we knew. Mr. Dickison had come to the house a few months before, and Hugh told us he’d changed his will to leave his personal effects to Jacqueline. ‘A bunch of old junk,’ my mother had said at the time, but once Granny talked about the necklace, we both knew different.

  “The next day, I went to read to Hugh, and he fell asleep. I looked in his top drawer. That’s where the necklace should have been. It was gone. I searched the whole room. Later, when Mom and Clive went out, I looked in her room. I found it right away, in the toe of one of her shoes. She hadn’t even tried hard to hide it. Did she think I’d just go along?

  “I brought it back and told Hugh what had happened. He said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.’ We were so distracted after that. Hugh was obviously going to die soon. I didn’t forget about the necklace, but it wasn’t the most important thing to me, either. After Hugh died, I checked and it was gone again. I was sure my mother took it.” Tallulah smiled for the first time that day. “But it’s okay. Your mom has it. Hugh did take care of it.”

  “Yes, he did.” I gave her a hug. “That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about.”

  She returned my embrace. “I don’t have to, but you do. Mummy’s never going to let you keep it without a fight.”

  Chapter 33

  I returned to Marguerite’s house the way we’d come the night before. On Charles Street, the sidewalks were plowed and the coffee shops and restaurants open. Traffic was light. The governor had asked everyone who could to stay home, and many had complied. As I walked, I turned Detective Salinsky’s question over in my mind. “Who benefited by Hugh dying a few days sooner?”

  When I arrived at the door of the town house, Vivian had her coat on. “That Detective Salinsky was here with some officers. They searched the whole place and talked to all of us. They took Clive to the station house for an interview.” It was only on that last sentence that her voice broke and the strain she had to be under, the suspicions she must have had, showed through.

  “Are you going to the police station?” I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d been headed there, an expensive lawyer in tow.

  “No.” The steel was back in her voice. “I’m going to the hospital to see my mother.”

  As I removed my coat and boots, a mournful piano tune came from the living room. I opened the double doors. “Jake, we need to talk.”

  He stopped playing immediately and closed the cover over the keyboard. He kept his head bowed over the piano and didn’t turn to look at me.

  “I know it was you who sent the Black Widow to my mother.”

  His head hung farther, but he didn’t deny it. “How did you know?”

  I moved Marguerite’s straight-backed chair and placed it across from the piano bench. I sat down, leaning forward. Jake turned so he and I were face to face. “Hugh told Tallulah he’d ‘taken care of it,’” I said. “He would have asked someone he trusted to mail the necklace. Paolo says it wasn’t him, and I believe him. Rose didn’t get to Boston until after it was mailed. Tallulah doesn’t know what happened to it, and Marguerite didn’t know it was in the house. Hugh wouldn’t have trusted Vivian or Clive. Paolo has told me how close you were. Hugh trusted you.”

  We sat quietly for a moment. “Why didn’t you tell Tallulah?” I asked.

  Jake’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Hugh asked me not to.”

  “But why did he send it without any explanation? Why all the secrecy, with no return address and the zip code obscured?” In spite of my best intentions, my voice rose, accusing.

  Jake’s eyes dropped to the oriental carpet. “He didn’t.” He pulled up his head and said a bit louder, “He didn’t send it without explanatio
n. He gave me a letter to put in the package. It was my idea to make it hard for your mom to trace the package. I knew the first thing your mother would do when she got the necklace would be call here and demand to know what was going on. Vivian would find out what I’d done and would be furious. I didn’t want family drama in Hugh’s last days. He’d endured enough for his lifetime. Mr. Dickison would contact your mother about the inheritance eventually, and she’d learn where it came from.”

  I remembered the breather on the landline. “You called my mother’s number in Busman’s Harbor, but you didn’t say anything when I answered.”

  “I did call,” he admitted. “Hugh said he was certain of your mother’s address, but I wanted to make sure she was in town—that she didn’t go away for the winter. I was pretty confident if the package reached one of you, with a rock like that, you weren’t going to throw it away before Mr. Dickison called you.” He hung his head again. “I’m sorry. I wanted Hugh’s last few days to be peaceful.”

  “The last few days while Hugh waited for Rose,” I confirmed.

  “He held on to have his time with her to say good-bye.” Jake’s voice caught at this, and it reminded me this family grieved for the person I’d never known. Jake had spent many hours in Hugh’s room, listening to music, reading to him. There was no doubt he loved Hugh. Jake sat on the piano bench and cried.

  I took his hand. “Jake, how did you know Hugh would die so soon after Rose got here?” He shook his head from side to side, unable to speak. Tears cascaded down his face. “Sending the Black Widow to my mother wasn’t the only thing Hugh asked you to do, was it?”

  He broke down completely. I moved to the piano bench and took him in my arms.

  “Hugh was in so much pain,” Jake sobbed. “Once Rose was here, he had no reason to go on. He asked me quite early on if I would. I promised him I wouldn’t let him suffer needlessly. I was sure he’d change his mind. But a promise is a promise.” Jake buried his head in my shoulder and sobbed. “God forgive me.”