The Perils of Peaches (Scents of Murder Book 3)

by Lynette Sowell

  I scanned the invoice she handed me. “I recognize most of these drugs.”

  “Look at the list of the morphine and oxycodone. We don’t order those often, and the quantities are small.” Barkha removed another piece of paper from the folder. “And here’s the medicine locker inventory. Every time a drug is put in the cabinet, it’s counted. And when it’s removed, it’s logged.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  Barkha darted a glance toward the entryway door. “The invoices and the incoming inventory don’t match up.”

  “I’m confused.”

  “I mean. Either someone’s not keeping good records of the narcotics, or someone’s been pilfering the drug supply before the medicine even reaches the cabinet.”

  “How long has this been happening?”

  “At least six months, going by these records.”

  “Is it just the narcotics, or are all the drug counts inconsistent?” I was afraid to know the answer to that one.

  She sighed. “It’s just the narcotics. Whoever’s doing this isn’t getting rich, but they can make a good side income by selling them.”

  “Eunice,” I said before I could stop myself. “I saw her earlier today, making some kind of exchange with the bag boy who works at Finley’s. She told me she was tipping him for carrying a bag out to her car for her. But it looked more like he’d slipped her some money, not the other way around. Turns out he’s on the Greenburg High football team and supposedly a star athlete, according to his mother. I think he bears checking out. It could be nothing.”

  “You’re right, it could be nothing.”

  “I just don’t like seeing something suspicious every time I turn around …”

  “I know. I feel guilty, being relieved that my name’s going down lower on the suspect list while we keep finding out other people aren’t what they seem. I know love is supposed to believe the best about people, but you just never know.” Barkha shook her head.

  “ You’re letting Jerry know about this, aren’t you? This is a big motive to murder someone, especially if Dr. Bradley found out about the discrepancy.” I handed the inventory sheet back to her. “Did you ask Franklin about the drug discrepancy?”

  “I did. All he said was that I needn’t worry about inventory, that he and Eunice would handle it just like Dr. Bradley and Eunice had before he passed away. Which of course he can’t do, because he’s not authorized to order controlled substances without my authority.”

  I thought for a moment. “Well, one of them is trying to hide something.”

  Tonight should have turned out differently. Not long after we finished our meal and nibbled on dessert, Ben and I packed Hannah up and went home. Part of me wanted to be there for Barkha, but this meeting with her parents had been a long time coming.

  “I hope Barkha’s going to be all right,” I said as we headed down the road home.

  “I’m sure she will be. Maybe you should call later to check?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to pry. I know she’ll fill me in.”

  “And Dr. Bradley’s nephew in a car accident. That was a shock.” Ben downshifted as we turned into our driveway.

  “Yes. I wonder if it was a simple accident or something more.” Then again, I was probably connecting dots that didn’t match up. An overactive imagination, picturing yet another Bradley dark secret, with someone now following Franklin since his first subject was dead.

  We carefully took a sleeping Hannah and her gear from the back seat. Ben slung her diaper bag over his shoulder. “Do you think someone would try to hurt Franklin?”

  “I don’t know.” Hannah’s head slumped onto my shoulder, and I slammed the truck door closed. “It’s a mess. What can I say? I guess I should be grateful I’m through working there.” I shifted Hannah to my other shoulder. “Let me change her diaper and lay her down, and then I’ll make us a pot of decaf. We can talk more.”

  He kissed me gently. “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

  “Very, very early this morning when I was half-asleep.” I smiled at him. “But you can always tell me again.”

  While I tried to change Hannah’s diaper without waking her up—no easy feat, especially when the phone rang—I went around the block in my mind one more time about Dr. Bradley. What if someone was going after Franklin now? Not that there was any indication of that just yet.

  “I started the coffee.” Ben’s voice boomed in the doorway.

  “Hush.” I swung around and put a finger on my lips. “You wake her, you take her.” I took one last look at Hannah, then turned on her night light.

  Ben and I went back to the kitchen. Once the coffee was ready, I poured a fresh cup. “I’ve been thinking,” I said.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “About Franklin possibly getting attacked.”

  “About that. Jerry called. He thought you’d like to know that Franklin’s going to be all right. He’s got a broken nose, some broken ribs and possibly some bruised organs, but it’s too early to tell. They’re going to keep him for a couple days. No severe damage to his car, but someone ran him off the road into the ditch. His injuries don’t point to a car wreck, either.”

  “Did he say if he knew who did it?”

  Ben shook his head. “They were going to send him for a CAT scan, so Jerry said he’d go back to question him later.”

  I sipped my coffee. “One thing I was thinking about, as I was saying earlier, if someone killed Dr. Bradley by lying in wait for him, why attack his nephew so openly? That doesn’t make sense. Maybe Franklin’s attacker and Dr. Bradley’s killer aren’t the same person.”

  “Makes sense to me.”

  “Which means, I still need to find out how they killed him.” I frowned at my cup. “Barkha and I talked about it before, but now she’s got all this going on with her family in town, so I think she’s got bigger concerns right now than sleuthing.”

  “Try the Internet. You could find the most obscure means of death right there.” Ben shrugged. “Maybe some of what you’ll find there won’t be the most reliable, but I bet there’s something out there.”

  “You’re a genius. But I need to check someone else out too.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Eunice.” Then I explained about Eunice and what I’d seen. “She acted really strange about the whole key issue, too. Like she didn’t like the idea of the police investigating further into the drugs and the breakin.”

  “Eunice, huh?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “She comes into Honey’s sometimes with her sister. I think she really cared for Dr. Bradley, the way she sounded.”

  “I thought you usually don’t pay much mind to customers’ conversations.”

  “Not usually, but after what happened to him, I sort of noticed her more. And not because of her hot pink hair color.”

  “Why didn’t you say something before?”

  Ben unlocked the kitchen door. “There’s other suspects. My guess would be the nephew, even with the ‘solid’ alibi, or Terrance.”

  “This is why I don’t want to think Eunice would hurt Dr. Bradley. I believe she really loved him.”

  “What do you think would have happened if he discovered what Barkha found out about the narcotics? Would he have let it slide? Or would he have confronted Eunice like he confronted Barkha, and possibly fired her and turned her in to the authorities?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. She worked for him for over twenty years and he seemed to trust her without a doubt.”

  “But with his strong sense of justice, if he knew …”

  “And in her desperation, she could have tried to figure out a way to silence him. Besides being the office manager, she’s also a licensed LVN. She knows how to administer shots, not just take vital signs.”

  “Well, let’s get to the computer then and see if we can figure out how someone killed Dr. Bradley.”

  We took our cups of coffee to our office, with a quick glimpse
of Hannah sleeping in her room. I took the leather desk chair, and Ben pulled up another folding chair.

  While the computer booted up, I decided to ask Ben about Barkha’s parents. “So how was your time with Mr. and Mrs. Mukherjee?”

  “Her daddy’s quite an interesting character,” Ben said. “I didn’t really get to ask him much about himself. He spent a lot of time talking to me about the restaurant, and suggesting improvements and ideas for future expansion. He even said we ought to consider expanding, possibly in Adamsville. I actually learned a lot in the short time we talked.”

  “Sounds like he definitely knows business.”

  “And he loves his daughter. I know I’d be crushed if our little girl left us like Barkha did them. Particularly if I didn’t agree with her choices.” Ben sipped his coffee.

  “I didn’t think about how this must be hard on them too,” I admitted. “I’ve been only thinking about how it’s affected Barkha.”

  “I hope they reconciled tonight.”

  “Me too.” I brought up the Internet, and went to my favorite search engine page. Like Ben said, the Internet was chock-full of information, some of it reliable, and some of it not so reliable. Spot joined us in the office, and propped her front paws up on my leg to see what we were doing. Then she jumped up onto my lap.

  I typed in the words poisoning murder no traces system and hit enter. “Okay, there should be a list of medications somewhere or articles about drugs that could poison someone without looking suspicious in the bloodstream. Because if nothing weird came up so far—for example, no arsenic in Dr. Bradley’s system—they’d figured out how to kill him without leaving a trace.”

  “Makes sense to me. How do you know what websites to look at?”

  “I’ve looked at some sites before when trying to find drug spellings for the doctors’ notes. And some patients are really into taking herbal supplements and thing like that.” What made this effort all the more puzzling was what wasn’t in Dr. Bradley’s system. Jerry didn’t mentioned anything unusual coming through on the report. Whatever it was had to have worn off.

  “So anyone could find this, if they type in the right combination of words.”

  “Pretty much.” An interesting page popped up. “Oh, look. Insulin poisoning.”

  “Was he diabetic?” Ben asked.

  “No, not that we know of. But Barkha mentioned something the other day that he’d been checking his blood sugar lately, and was more grouchy than usual.” Barkha’s recollection of him checking his blood sugar was a red flag. With his moodiness, she’d said it was more hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar. This would make him eat a jar of my peach baby food, or something equally as sweet.

  One sentence made me pause:

  “Ben, listen to this.” I read, “If an otherwise healthy person is injected with enough insulin, they go into a hypoglycemic coma, their organs fail, and they die.”

  I skimmed the rest of the article, which went on to say that the cause of this fatal drop in blood sugar was undetectable in the case of a questionable death, even in an autopsy. So of course they wouldn’t find anything.

  “Who could think up something like this?” Ben’s face was close to mine as he leaned closer to the monitor and read along with me.

  “Someone who meant business. And someone who planned to get away with what they’d done.” I turned on the printer. “I’m going to print out this article to show to Barkha, and we can pass it along to Jerry.”

  “But how many people have access to insulin? That’s not something you can just go down to the drugstore and buy off the shelf.”

  “You’re right. So the killer must be diabetic.” I crossed my arms across my chest.

  “Or the relative of a diabetic, or a friend. Just ‘borrow’ enough for one injection, like you said.”

  I let my arms fall to my sides. “Well, that doesn’t narrow it down much. Isn’t diabetes supposed to be one of those fast-growing diseases? Look at Momma. I mean, she takes pills, not insulin injections, but still …”

  “Look at it this way.” Ben put his arm around me. “You have something to go on. A few minutes ago, you had no real ideas.”

  “But it sounds like I’m grabbing at something. I have nothing for Jerry to use. I’m not a doctor. Dr. Bradley barely considered me any type of medical professional, even though I studied medical vocabulary till my brain leaked.” I went back to the original search page. “Hang on. Let me see what else I can find. Surely someone else has committed a crime this way.”

  A few seconds later, I had another set of search engine results. “Look, a court case involving insulin poisoning. Similar scenarios. Except this victim was diabetic.”

  “It’s worth printing out,” Ben said. “Wouldn’t a lawyer call that precedence?”

  “Something like that. But finding this on the Internet showed that this information was accessible to anyone. And anyone with a bit of medical knowledge could use this information to kill. Back to Eunice again. She definitely had the means and opportunity. The medicine locker has insulin on that drug list too.” The printer whined as it printed out the article about the court case.

  I pulled the articles and information about insulin poisoning from the printer and stacked them on the desk. “Okay. Here goes.” I located the school district’s web page and went to the high school athletics section. There he was, Eunice’s helpful young friend from Finley’s. Justin Finley, of all things. Starting wide receiver, offense. Several articles came up about last year’s season.

  “Look at this, Ben.” I skimmed the article. “Justin Finley, or J-Fin as they like to cheer him on from the stands, was known for his speed on and off the football field. He also ran track. Okay, pulled a hamstring, blah, blah, blah. That’s not a threatening injury.”

  “You’re right. Athletes are used to rehabbing their injuries.” Ben had wrestled in high school. “I used to tape my fingers, my knee. Got used to the aches and worked through them anyway.”

  “So an ordinary top athlete normally won’t go looking for painkillers.” I leaned back in the chair, and Spot leaped down from my lap and ran off. “This is ridiculous. I almost sound disappointed that a young star athlete probably isn’t guilty of illegally buying narcotics.”

  “Here. Slide over and let the master work.” Ben nudged my desk chair, so I wheeled to the side so he could have the keyboard. “The school website won’t have all the information.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “The regular news. Maybe superstar J-Fin had other issues.” He did his customary hunt ’n’ peck at the keyboard. A website popped up from this spring. “Lookie, lookie what we have here. I told you we didn’t have the whole story.”

  Single-Car Accident Injures Football Player. I stared at Ben. “He had a car accident?”

  “Keep reading.”

  Varsity Greenburg Wildcat Justin Finley was injured in a one-car accident on River Road March 14. He was the lone passenger in a Camaro, returning home from a party late Saturday evening. Authorities say speed was likely a factor in the crash, which flipped his vehicle several times before coming to rest in a grove of trees. Finley was transported to Hardin County Hospital where he remains in stable condition.

  “I wonder what kind of injuries he had? His mother was very friendly at the store today and more than willing to talk about her high hopes for her son.” The memory of the cashier’s words, how quickly children grow, and the wistful look in her eye, all came back to me. Barkha was right. Maybe I had a gift for seeing people. I knew it would devastate Mrs. Finley if her son were involved in something illegal. Even though I’d only had that brief encounter with her, the idea at causing her grief didn’t set well with me.

  Ben clicked on another link. “Okay, this one says he broke an arm and tore some ligaments in his knee. The coach is hopeful he’ll be fit to train when practice resumes in August.”

  “Fit to train, huh?” I frowned. “Print that, please.”

  I frowned at the prin
ter spewing out more damaging information, which combined with what I’d seen earlier and to the information that Barkha provided, only added up to point that Eunice was guilty. Guilty of murdering Dr. Bradley, I wasn’t exactly sure. We had no way of knowing if Dr. Bradley had discovered what she’d been doing. My deep sigh surprised even me.

  Ben responded by putting his arm around my shoulder and tugged me closer. “You know what I think, Ands?”

  “What’s that?” I leaned against him, an awkward maneuver since we both sat in chairs with arms.

  “We should just shut down the computer, and go to bed. We can’t do anything about these articles, or anything else, until morning. We could be flat-out wrong about our hunches, anyway.”

  I skimmed the first article on insulin poisoning one more time and shivered. Then I stacked all the articles together. “Scary, that this is so accessible. I know people don’t post articles like this to encourage people to commit crimes, but this should show Jerry the killer doesn’t have to be a doctor or someone in the medical community.” We headed down the hallway to our bedroom.

  Ben set the articles on my dresser. “I’m puttin’ this right here, and you’re goin’ to leave it alone. This will keep.”

  “Yes, sir.” I saluted him then turned back the covers and fluffed my pillows.

  “Really, babe.” He sat down on his side of the bed. “I’m serious. You’ll worry yourself into an ulcer. What else is eatin’ at you?”

  The mattress made my tired muscles sing. I rolled over to face Ben. “It’s not just this mess with Dr. Bradley’s death and whatever Eunice has or hasn’t been up to. It’s Momma. I hate knowing that she’s getting older. And now this whole diabetes thing. Daddy’s retirement was a bombshell enough.”

  “But diabetes doesn’t just happen to older people. It can happen to almost anyone.” He leaned back on the headboard and took my hand.

  “I want to help her, because the thought of the future scares me. I don’t want her to end up like some of those patients I transcribed notes about. Losing their vision, their feeling in their fingers and toes. Foot ulcers, amputated toes. Dialysis. Their whole system breaking down.” My eyes stung and I flopped back onto my pillow and stared at the ceiling.