Twice Dead

by Catherine Coulter

  Tennyson asked, “You shot her? Did you kill the brother too?”

  “The brother’s dead, yes. It was a team effort,” Savich said, and nothing more.

  “Those poor little boys,” Lily said. “Their parents must have been torn apart when they were taken.”

  “They were, but as I said, everything turned out okay for them.”

  Nurse Carla Brunswick said from the doorway, “We don’t have to worry about crooks while you guys are in town. Now, I get to order the FBI out. Time for Mrs. Frasier’s sleeping pills. Say good night—even you, Dr. Frasier. Dr. Larch’s orders.”

  IT wasn’t until they were in the hospital parking lot that Tennyson said, “I apologize for not realizing sooner that you’d only just arrived. You will stay with me, won’t you?”

  “Yes,” Savich said. “Thank you, Tennyson. We want to be close.”

  An hour later, after Savich had called his mother and told her not to worry and had spoken to his son, he climbed into the king-size bed beneath the sloped-ceiling guest room, kissed his wife, tucked her against his side, and said, “Why do you really think Mr. Elcott Frasier called us?”

  “The obvious: he was worried about his daughter-in-law and wanted us to know right away. Very thoughtful. He thought it through and didn’t call your mom and scare the daylights out of her.”

  “All right, maybe you’re right. After that heavy dose of craziness with the Tuttles, I guess my mind went automatically to the worst possible motive.”

  Sherlock kissed his neck, then settled back in, her leg over his belly. “I’ve heard so much psychobabble about Lily. She tries to kill herself because it’s the only thing to do if she wants to gain peace. She has to drive her Explorer into a redwood to expiate her guilt. It doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t sound like Lily. Yes, yes, I remember the first time. But that was then.”

  “And this is now.”

  “Yes. Seven months. Lily isn’t neurotic, Dillon. I’ve always thought she was strong, stable. And now I feel guilty because we didn’t make an effort to see her over the last months.”

  “You had a baby, Sherlock, not a week after Beth’s funeral.”

  “And Lily was there for me.”

  “She wasn’t there with you—not like I was. Sherlock, that was the longest day of my life.” He squeezed her so hard, she squeaked.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said.

  “You never curse, but toward the end there you called me more names than I’d ever been called, even by linebackers during football games in college.”

  She laughed, kissed his shoulder again, and said, “Look, I know Lily’s been through a very hard time. She’s been understandably depressed. But we’ve talked to her a lot since Beth died. I simply don’t believe she was in a frame of mind to try to kill herself again.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. He frowned and turned off the lamp on the bedside table. He pulled Sherlock against him again and held her tight. “It really shakes me up, Sherlock, this happening to Lily. It’s so hard to know what to do.”

  She held him hard. And she was thinking how fragile Lily had been seven months before, so hurt and so very broken, and then she’d taken those pills and nearly died. Savich and their mother had flown out to California for the second time, not more than a week after Beth’s funeral, to see Lily lying in that narrow hospital bed, a tube in her nose, an IV line in her arm. But Lily had survived. And she’d been so sorry, so very sorry that she’d frightened everyone. And she’d come back with them to Washington, D.C., to rest and get her bearings. But after three weeks, she’d decided to go back to her husband in Hemlock Bay.

  And seven months later, she’d driven her Explorer into a redwood.

  She squeezed more tightly against him. “I don’t know how I’d handle it if anything happened to Sean. I couldn’t bear that, Dillon. I just couldn’t. No wonder Lily didn’t.”

  After a long time, he said, “No, I couldn’t bear it either, but you know what? You and I would survive it together. Somehow we would. But I think your instincts on this were right. You said something doesn’t feel right. What did you mean?”

  She nuzzled her nose into his shoulder, hummed a bit, a sure sign she was thinking hard, and said, “Well, last week Lily sent us a No Wrinkles Remus strip she’d just finished, her first one since Beth was killed, and she sounded excited. So what happened over the past four days to make her want to try to kill herself again?”

  FOUR

  Hemlock Bay, California

  “I stole the bottle of pills,” Savich said when he walked into the kitchen.

  Sherlock grinned at her husband, gave him a thumbs-up, and said, “How do we check them out?”

  “I called Clark Hoyt in the Eureka field office. I’ll messenger them up to him today. He’ll get back to me tomorrow. Then we’ll know, one way or the other.”

  “Ah, Dillon, I’ve got a confession to make.” She took a sip of her tea, grinned down at the few tea leaves on the bottom of the cup. “The pills you took, well, they’re cold medicine. You see, I’d already stolen the pills and replaced them with Sudafed I found in the medicine cabinet.”

  Sometimes she bowled him over. He toasted her with his tea. “I’m impressed, Sherlock. When did you switch them?”

  “About five A.M. this morning, before anyone was stirring. Oh, yes, Mrs. Scruggins, the housekeeper, should be here soon. We can see what she’s got to say about all this.”

  Mrs. Scruggins responded to Sherlock’s questions by sighing a lot. She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as Savich, and she looked very strong, even those long fingers of hers, including her thumbs, each sporting a ring. She had muscles. Sherlock didn’t think she’d want to tangle with Mrs. Scruggins. She had to be at least sixty years old. It was amazing. There were pictures of her grandchildren lining the window ledge in the kitchen and she looked like she could take any number of muggers out at one time.

  Savich sat back and watched Sherlock work her magic. “An awful thing,” Sherlock said, shaking her head, obviously distressed. “We don’t understand it. But I’ll bet you do, Mrs. Scruggins, here with poor Lily so much of the time. I’ll bet you saw things real clearly.”

  And Mrs. Scruggins said then, her beringed fingers curving gracefully around her coffee cup, “I’d think she was getting better, you know?”

  Both Savich and Sherlock nodded.

  “Then she’d fall into a funk again and curl up in the fetal position and spend the day in bed. She wouldn’t eat, just lie there, barely even blinking. I guess she’d be thinking about little Beth, you know?”

  “Yes, we know,” Sherlock said, sighed, and moved closer to the edge of her chair, inviting more thoughts, more confidences.

  “Every few weeks I’d swear she was getting better, but it wouldn’t last long. Last week I thought she was really improving, nearly back to normal. She was in her office and she was laughing. I actually heard her. It was a laugh. She was drawing that cartoon strip of hers, and she was laughing.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Well, Mrs. Savich, I can’t rightly say. Before I left, Dr. Frasier had come home early and I heard them talking. Then she fell back again, the very next day. It was really fast. Laughing one minute, then, not ten hours later, she was so depressed, so quiet. She just walked around the house that day, not really seeing anything, at least that’s what I think. Then she’d disappear and I knew later that she’d been crying. It’s enough to break your heart, you know?”

  “Yes, we know,” Sherlock said. “These pills, Mrs. Scruggins, the Elavil, do you refill the prescription for her?”

  “Yes, usually. Sometimes Dr. Frasier brings them home for her. They don’t seem to do much good, do they?”

  “No,” said Savich. “Maybe it’s best that she be off them for a while.”

  “Amen to that. Poor little mite, such a hard time she’s had.” Mrs. Scruggins gave another deep sigh, nearly pulling apart the buttons over her large bosom. “I myself missed little Beth so
much I sometimes wanted to lie down and cry and cry and never you mind anything else. And I wasn’t her mama, not like Mrs. Frasier.”

  “What about Dr. Frasier?” Savich asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Was he devastated by Beth’s death?”

  “Ah, he’s a man, Mr. Savich. Sure, he looked glum for a week or so. But you know, men don’t take things like that so much to heart, leastwise my own papa didn’t when my little sister died. Maybe Dr. Frasier keeps it all inside, but I don’t think so. Don’t forget, he wasn’t Beth’s real father. He didn’t know little Beth that long, maybe six months in all.”

  Sherlock said, “But he’s been so very worried about Lily, hasn’t he?”

  Mrs. Scruggins nodded, and the small diamond studs in her ears glittered in the morning sunlight pouring through the window. Diamonds and muscles and rings, Sherlock thought, and wondered. Mrs. Scruggins said, “Poor man, always fretting about her, trying to make her smile, bringing her presents and flowers, but nothing really worked, leastwise in the long term. And now this.” Mrs. Scruggins shook her head. She wore her gray hair in a thick chignon. She had lots of hair and there were a lot of bobby pins worked into the roll.

  It occurred to Sherlock to wonder if Mrs. Scruggins really cared for Lily, or if it was all an act. Could it be that she was really Lily’s companion, or maybe even her guard?

  Now where had that thought come from? Hadn’t Mrs. Scruggins saved Lily’s life that first time Lily had taken the bottle of pills right after Beth’s funeral? She was getting paranoid here; she had to watch it.

  “I have a little boy, Mrs. Scruggins,” Savich said. “I’ve only had him a bit more than seven months, and you can believe that I would be devastated if anything were to happen to him.”

  “Well, that’s good. Some men are different, aren’t they? But my daddy, hard-nosed old bastard he was. Didn’t shed a tear when my little sister got hit by that tractor. Ah, well, I’m afraid I have things to do now. When is Mrs. Frasier coming home?”

  “Perhaps as soon as tomorrow,” Sherlock said. “She’s had major surgery and won’t be feeling very well for several days.”

  “I’ll take care of her,” Mrs. Scruggins said and popped her knuckles.

  Sherlock shuddered, shot Savich a look, and thanked the older woman for all her help. She shook Mrs. Scruggins’s hand, feeling all those rings grind into her fingers.

  Before they left the kitchen, Mrs. Scruggins said, “I’m real glad you’re staying here. Being alone isn’t good for Mrs. Frasier.”

  Savich felt a deep shaft of guilt. He remembered he hadn’t said very much when Lily had insisted on returning here after recuperating with their mother. She’d seemed fine, wanted to be with her husband again, and he’d thought, I would want to be with Sherlock, too, and he’d seen her off at Reagan Airport with the rest of the family. Tennyson Frasier seemed to adore her, and Lily, it seemed then to Savich, had adored him as well.

  During the months she was home, she hadn’t ever called to complain, to ask for help. Her e-mails were invariably upbeat. And whenever he and Sherlock had called, she’d always sounded cheerful.

  And now, all these months later, this happened. He should have done something then, shouldn’t have just kissed her and waved her onto the flight to take her three thousand miles away from her family. To take her back to where Beth had been killed.

  He looked down to see Sherlock squeezing his hand. There was immense love in her eyes and she said only, “We will fix things, Dillon. This time we’ll fix things.”

  He nodded and said, “I really want to see Lily’s in-laws again, don’t you, Sherlock? I have this feeling that perhaps we really don’t know them at all.”

  “Agreed. We can check them out after we’ve seen Lily.”

  At the Hemlock County Hospital, everything was quiet. When they reached Lily’s room, they heard the sound of voices and paused at the door for a moment.

  It was Tennyson.

  And Elcott Frasier, his father.

  Elcott Frasier was saying, his voice all mournful, “Lily, we’re so relieved you survived that crash. It was really dicey there for a while, but you managed to pull through. I can’t tell you how worried Charlotte has been, crying, wringing her hands, talking about her little Lily dying and how dreadful it would be, particularly such a short time after little Beth died. The Explorer, though, it’s totaled.”

  That, Savich thought, was the strangest declaration of caring he’d ever heard.

  “It’s very nice of all of you to be concerned,” Lily said, and Savich heard the pain in her voice, and something else. Was it fear? Dislike? He didn’t know. She said, “I’m very sorry that I wrecked the Explorer.”

  “I don’t want you to worry about it, Lily,” Tennyson said and took her hand. It was limp, Savich saw, she wasn’t returning any pressure.

  “I’ll buy you another one. A gift from me to you, my beautiful little daughter-in-law,” Elcott said.

  “I don’t want another Explorer,” she said.

  “No, of course not,” continued Elcott. “Another Explorer would remind you of the accident, wouldn’t it? We don’t want that. We want you to get well. Oh yes, we’ll do anything to get you well again, Lily. Just this morning, Charlotte was telling me how everyone in Hemlock Bay was talking about it, calling her, commiserating. She’s very upset by it all.”

  Savich, quite simply, wanted to throw Elcott Frasier out the window. He knew Frasier was tough as nails, that he was a powerful man, but Savich was surprised that he hadn’t been a bit more subtle, not this in-your-face bludgeoning. Why? Why this gratuitous cruelty?

  Savich walked into the room like a man bent on violence until he saw his sister’s white face, the pain that glazed her eyes, and he calmed immediately. He ignored the men, walked right to the bed, and leaned down, pressed his forehead lightly against hers.

  “You hurt, kiddo?”

  “A bit,” she whispered, as if she were afraid to speak up. “Well, actually a whole lot. It’s not too awful if I don’t breathe too deeply or laugh or cry.”

  “More than a bit, I’d say,” Savich said. “I’m going to find Dr. Larch and get you some more medication.” He nodded to Sherlock and was out the door.

  Sherlock smiled brightly at both her brother-in-law and Elcott Frasier. He looked the same as he had the first time she’d met him, eleven months before—tall, a bit of a paunch, a full head of thick, white hair, wavy, quite attractive. His eyes were his son’s—light blue, reflective, slightly slanted. She wondered what his vices were, wondered if he really loved Lily and wanted her well. But why wouldn’t he? Lily had been his son’s wife for eleven months now. She was sweet, loving, very talented, and she’d lost her only child and fallen into a deep well of grief and depression.

  She knew Elcott was sixty, but he looked no older than mid-fifties. He’d been a handsome man when he was younger, perhaps as handsome as his only son.

  There was a daughter as well. Tansy was her name and she was, what? Twenty-eight? Thirty? Older than Lily, Sherlock thought. Tansy—an odd name, nearly as whimsical as Tennyson. She lived in Seattle, owned one of the ubiquitous coffeehouses near Pioneer Square. Sherlock had gotten the impression from Lily that Tansy didn’t come back to Hemlock Bay all that often.

  Elcott Frasier walked to Sherlock and grabbed her hand, shook it hard. “Mrs. Savich, what a pleasure.” He looked ever so pleased to see her. She wondered how pleased he was to see Dillon, since she knew, right to her toes, that Mr. Elcott Frasier had little respect for women. It was in his eyes, in his very stance—condescending, patronizing.

  “Mr. Frasier,” she said and gave him her patented, guileless sunny smile. “I wish we could meet again under less trying circumstances.” Go ahead, she thought, believe I’m an idiot, worth less than nothing in brainpower.

  “Your poor husband is very upset by all this,” Mr. Frasier said. “Given all that’s happened, I can’t say I blame him.”

  Sherloc
k said, “Certainly he’s upset. It’s good to see you again, Tennyson.” She went directly to sit on the side of Lily’s bed. She lightly stroked her pale hair. Thick, lank strands framed her face. Sherlock saw the pain in her eyes, how stiffly she was holding her body. She wanted to cry. “Dillon will be back in a moment, Lily. You shouldn’t have to suffer like this.”

  “It is about time for a bit more pain medication,” a nurse said as she came through the door, Savich at her heels. No one said a word as she injected the painkiller into Lily’s IV. She leaned over, checked Lily’s pulse, smoothed the thin blanket to her shoulders, then straightened. “The pain will lessen almost immediately. Call if you have too much more discomfort, Mrs. Frasier.”

  Lily closed her eyes. After a few minutes, she said quietly, “Thank you, Dillon. It was pretty bad, but not now. Thank you.” Then, without another word, she was asleep.

  “Good,” said Savich and motioned for them all to leave. “Let’s go to the waiting room. Last time I looked, it was empty.”

  “My wife and I are grateful to you for being here,” Elcott Frasier said. “Tennyson needs all the support he can get. The past seven months have been very hard on him.”

  “That’s just what I was thinking,” Savich said. “Lily hitting that redwood gave us the excuse we needed to come here and support Tennyson.”

  “My father didn’t mean it the way it sounded, Dillon,” Tennyson said. “It’s been difficult—for all of us.” He looked down at his watch. “I’m afraid I have patients to see. I will be back to check on Lily in about four hours.”

  He left them with Elcott Frasier, who asked a passing nurse to fetch him a cup of coffee. She did without hesitation because, Sherlock knew, she wasn’t stupid. She recognized the Big Man on the hospital board of directors when she saw him. Sherlock wanted to punch his lights out.