Priced to Kill

by Margaret Evans

  “Nice as in…?”

  “Not jeans.”

  An alarm sounded on her laptop, sitting on the table in the kitchenette. She opened the laptop and her face lit.

  “Oh, I won the bid and got both pieces of furniture! Neat! Hey, Connor, would you know anybody who could help me pick up a loveseat and an étagère at an estate auction? Maybe Max and Nicky?” she asked, mentioning Connor’s two best friends.

  “When do you need them picked up?”

  She looked at the message on the screen.

  “Within three days or seventy-two hours from now.”

  “Well, that works. I’ll borrow Ian’s pickup and help you out. I happen to have the fourteenth off.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “Don’t know. I must have a guardian angel somewhere who knew I needed a day off. I gotta run. Text me the details, we’ll work it out.”

  He pulled her close and kissed her.

  She sighed as he walked out the door. Their first date was almost here!

  thirty-three

  That evening, Laura organized the rest of the library paperwork. She found one letter Madelynne had printed that accused Dorr’s husband of killing her; it was unsigned. Wow. She put that one aside. If the doctors couldn’t find out what killed the lady, why would anyone think the husband did it? She organized piles all over her living room floor by topic. Work abroad. Illness. Doctors. Medicines. Lab tests. The M.E.’s report. Friends. No relatives, unfortunately.

  The M.E.’s report was rather interesting. It wasn’t the official report, just a news article with the information released to the press. Melanie died from natural causes, but she died sooner than her personal physician expected. In fact, there was a quote by a reporter stating that her personal physician expected her to continue to rise and fall with symptoms for years. He concluded that they couldn’t account for any unknown illnesses in one of the countries she had visited and what the life expectancy would be from that illness, but he was still surprised she had died when she had.

  Laura warmed a light supper in the microwave and turned around to find Empress Isabella, who had been scarce for days, sitting on one of the piles of paperwork. Experience with the cat told her to pay attention to this pile, so she shooed the cat away and picked it up.

  And there he was. A picture of the man from her shop, the one who had been so interested in the teal quilt. And his name was Christopher Dorr.

  Melanie’s husband.

  Laura’s supper grew cold as she pored through the details of Christopher’s life. Son of blue collar workers, he had put himself through college and moved into the world of business consulting, working his way up to senior consultant in a short period of time for a large company specializing in medical research projects. He traveled all over the country and on one of his business trips met a woman named Melanie Des Jardin who was promoting her quilting enterprise for third world communities. The couple was of the same age and taken with each other from the start, and within six months, they married and took up residence in upstate New York, later to move to a suburb of Minneapolis to be closer to his employer’s headquarters. Neither of them had any relatives, so the move was easy and uncluttered. They settled in their new home, purchased with money from her parents’ estate. It was large, as Laura could see from the picture, and imposing, and considerably larger than Jenna’s parents’ home in Raging Ford.

  All reports showed they were devoted to each other and Christopher supported his wife’s activities abroad. He attended her quilting and entrepreneurial award ceremonies. By all accounts, they were a very happy couple, pleased with each other and their careers.

  Laura stopped for a moment and thought: Why on earth would someone write a letter to a newspaper claiming they knew that he killed his wife? Especially a man who obviously adored her. Must be a crackpot. Or not. There had to be something here among all this paperwork that held a clue to figuring out what happened earlier than two years ago when she died. And what had gone wrong in their marriage long before that time because everyone knows that it takes time to plan a murder.

  Before she could think further on this, her phone rang. As soon as she answered, a second call came through which she ignored for the present.

  “Hi Brandy,” Laura said.

  “Hey, Laura. That guy I told you about? He came back again and I have a license plate number for you.”

  “Did you snap it with your phone?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Text it to me at this number. And thanks, Brandy. I’ll take it from here.”

  Then she clicked over to the second call, a number she didn’t recognize immediately. She called it back and got the estate agent she’d been trying to reach, Mary Weimer.

  “Oh, Laura, thanks for the quick call back. I’ve been meaning to call you because I got a strange one in here about a week or so ago. Some guy wanting information on the Dorr estate stuff you bought, especially a quilt he thinks you have that really belongs to his mother and she wants it back.”

  Hairs rose on the back of Laura’s neck.

  “His mother?”

  “Yes, he claims his mother is ailing and she wants the quilt back and a caregiver or somebody gave it away without thinking or asking. He wants her to have it.”

  “You’re sure he said his mother?”

  “Absolutely. He called back and spoke with one of my employees and told him the same thing. I just wanted to give you a heads up.”

  “Did you give him my name?”

  “Oh, no. All we told him was that it went to a thrift shop in Raging Ford. So you can be on the alert in case he shows up. He was nice, but I couldn’t really read him, and there was something not right. So my job is done. I’ve called you. Have to run. Bye!”

  Laura sat, holding the phone. That was how he had found her. But why had he lied about the quilt? What was so special about it that a lie was necessary?

  She pulled out her laptop and did more searching on Melanie Dorr’s symptoms. She kept digging and finally located a small article that listed everything:

  Severe stomach and abdominal cramping

  Itchy-rashy skin

  Headaches

  Dizziness

  Difficulty thinking and speaking

  Dark circles under the eyes

  Exhaustion

  Laura froze. It wasn’t just a few of her symptoms—it was all of them!

  And the only thing that Melanie Dorr and Laura had in common was that quilt!

  thirty-four

  It was the day before Valentine’s Day and there were more customers than ever, emptying her shelves. The shop had barely opened when the man she believed was Christopher Dorr came in. She tried to keep an eye on him, but it was so busy that she lost sight of him from time to time. He ignored her, for the most part, focusing on the wares in her shop as if seeking something in particular and zeroed in on kitchen wares. He flashed a quick look around the entire store before heading toward those wares.

  When business slowed as it often did, Laura tried not to stare at him and kept her attention on straightening the bags and reorganizing the teacups and saucers, but she didn’t miss the piercing glance he gave to the tempting quilts arranged near the crackling fire decoration.

  When he purchased a coffee maker, she glanced at the name on his credit card.

  It was indeed Christopher Dorr, the husband of the award-winning quilting star, and he wasn’t bothering to hide his name from her. If everything she’d discovered was true, then this man had inherited a heap of gold from his dead wife and was wealthy enough not to have to buy anything in a thrift shop, whether it was silk roses or a coffee maker. He could probably buy the whole shop with a check if he wanted.

  Laura turned away and rummaged under the counter for a correct sized bag and some paper with which to wrap it, as she did
n’t trust her facial expression to do anything other than betray her. She could not do the cop-face thing like Connor. She’d have to ask him one day to show her how to do it, especially if things like this kept happening to her, or people like Dorr kept showing up in her shop under what she considered mysterious and sinister circumstances. Clearly, he was not here to buy a coffee pot. According to the estate agent, he was trying to track down the quilt with the reworked stitching, claiming his mother had made it, when the quilt in question had won his wife a major competition.

  As she wrapped the coffee pot and carefully packaged it for him, she realized he had signed his name on the credit card slip and was waiting for her to give him a receipt. She would have loved to push the silent alarm, but she had no justification for doing so. It was only her gut certainty that she had just sold a coffee pot to a murderer with no proof whatsoever.

  “Hey, did you ever find that bluish-green quilt I was looking for?”

  She tried to look blank, as if she didn’t remember him. She was determined that he would never have access to the quilt before she could get it to the police. And as soon as the moment appeared, she would close the shop and talk to someone at the station.

  “Oh yes, you were here before and asked about that. I’m afraid I haven’t been able to look through the boxes yet. If you want to leave a number, I can call you when I do get a chance. You know holiday seasons—busy, busy, busy.”

  “No, I’ll check back.”

  “Okay. Maybe in a couple of weeks? I’ve got to clear stuff out for St. Patrick’s Day, so I’m pretty sure I’ll get a chance to organize everything within two weeks. Hey, would you like to sign up for our email newsletter?” she asked, thinking she’d have to create one if he said yes, anything to find out more about this guy and maybe a way to contact him. “We can let you know when a special shipment or sale is happening.”

  He shook his head, looking at her curiously, as if he had suspected she’d made up the whole thing. Or maybe he just thought she was crazy. Who would want a newsletter from a second-hand goods shop?

  A brilliant smile lit her face when the door jangled and another customer arrived. She handed the bagged coffee pot to Dorr and thanked him for the purchase, then turned her attention to the new customer as her heart was racing. It was time to take this situation to Connor’s desk.

  She closed for lunch and drove toward the police station, stopping on her way at the clinic again for blood and urine tests, because she wasn’t really over whatever this was, and Anderson had told her to come back for some tests in a few days. She wasn’t feeling all that much better, she thought, scratching her arm. She had stayed away from the quilt, and was now very glad she had, for the quilt was certainly connected with her symptoms. And she didn’t want to get any worse.

  Like Melanie Dorr.

  thirty-five

  Laura sat in one of Connor Fitzpatrick’s two “visitor” chairs in his office at the police station in which she had grown up, doing her homework after school when her mother was late from a patient counseling appointment. Sometimes her father had been there, sometimes not.

  Everyone knew her, and all of them kept her on task, something she had thought terribly unfair at the time. It reminded her of all of Rose’s friends in Maryland who showed up every day to teach her crochet or Tai Kwon Do or how to write a research paper that would get an A. She barely had a moment to herself. But maybe that had been the whole point.

  For the time being, she was sitting in Connor’s office with no one watching her or trying to keep her busy, something she had had to get used to after Rose passed away. She glanced around the office that had become familiar to her, and a smile lit her face at the memory of last winter’s Christmas party in which Connor had danced with her in his office and kissed her for the first time. It made the minutes pass quickly as she waited for him to return from what he had told her would be a brief meeting with two of his officers.

  When he showed up fifteen minutes later, he looked rushed but not burdened. “What’s up?” he asked.

  She was thinking about him and all that was going on, and unfortunately, the first thing out of her mouth was a memory, not a mystery.

  “Remember when we were kids and went into the tunnel over by the bait and tackle shop that ran under the road and snuck into the Old Library?”

  He stared at her a moment.

  “Laura, I’m busy. Is there a problem at the Old Library?”

  She sat up straighter and shook her head.

  “No, sorry, just reminiscing. Totally unrelated, I think I’ve run into an old murder that wasn’t identified as a murder when it happened, but is now a very suspicious death. I also think I found the murderer. And I think he’s actually been in my shop. And I have his license plate and credit card numbers. And a couple of pictures of him.”

  When she finished giving him all the details, including her own illness symptoms matching the victim’s, along with Christopher Dorr’s name, she saw the same look on his face that she’d seen the last time she had told him about a suspicious person some months before. This time, however, he did take notes.

  “And all of this is because he was in your shop, he’s been seen in town, and you believe the quilt that’s making you sick whenever you touch it is a murder weapon but you don’t know how yet. You said his wife died after a long illness? Why do you think he murdered her? How? Didn’t the M.E. sign off on the death certificate with no questions?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You need more than that, but I will look the case up and see if there was anything suspicious. That’s all I can do without some concrete evidence. And haven’t I warned you before not to dig into old cases where you think something has happened?”

  “Okay,” she said, disappointed he hadn’t agreed with her assessment of the matter.

  “Aren’t you tied up with a lot of tax work right now?” At her nod, he continued, surprised she had backed down so easily. “Focus on that, and I’ll let you know if I find anything. I will look, Laura. And until we find out more, don’t touch that quilt again.”

  She nodded on her way out, gave him a finger wave behind her back.

  It reminded him of their childhood; it was something she had always done when her parents were marching her back to where she should have been.

  Damn, he thought, watching her head toward the central stairway. She found something else we’ve all missed…again.

  And he knew he’d better look seriously into the matter, very quickly if the guy had already been to Laura’s shop.

  Connor ran a standard background check on Christopher Dorr; it was normally something he would have delegated, but he wanted as little fuss about this as possible. He found nothing, not even a parking citation. When someone was as squeaky clean as this guy looked, Connor knew where to look for more. He dug into the man’s family background, found information to indicate that they were always short of cash and had lots of debt, and then he uncovered an even more interesting item: Christopher Dorr was a gambler and a con artist.

  Dorr gambled not only in casinos and private games, losing heavily, but he also had a number of risky ploys in which he conned others to invest. The man hadn’t been very careful where he blogged or commented on his activities in social media. There was mention of a class action lawsuit against Dorr for at least one of the schemes where folks had lost money, but it had been dismissed on technicalities by the judge. There was plenty of material here to make it plausible that he wanted to rid himself of a rich wife quickly to get her money and perhaps leave the country.

  Connor dug deeper and found more. He checked out the public records on the wife’s estate. It was worth tens of millions. Without a court order, however, he couldn’t go much farther. While it wasn’t solid evidence, it was certainly suspicious enough to keep an eye on him. Once again, Laura had found a pattern in the details.

 
Then he shifted to the particulars surrounding Mrs. Dorr’s death. He found few details except for the Medical Examiner’s report, necessitated by her rather earlier than expected death. The M.E. consulted with her physician. She had a long-running illness, diagnosed and re-diagnosed at least three times. Her doctor finally settled on serious chronic gastritis resulting in severe anemia. He changed her diet, removed all acidic foods, and put her on max acid reducers, but her gastritis grew worse, resulting in severe chronic anemia.

  The woman had suffered for two and a half years, but her physician still hoped he could help her. Then suddenly she died. The M.E. had written her death off as pernicious anemia caused by chronic severe gastritis, with the qualifying statement that her personal physician had noted informally that while he knew she suffered greatly, he was surprised she died as suddenly as she had.

  Connor sat, his chin in his hand, and drummed his fingers on his desk. He wondered what tests had been performed and put in a request with a friend of his for a copy of the full autopsy report, citing a recent incident that prompted another look. But again, there was only so far he could go without sufficient evidence and legal grounds to support a court order. He also wondered if there were any blood or tissue samples from the autopsy still frozen somewhere.

  He knew he was making a mistake by telling Laura any of this, but he didn’t want her digging any deeper than she had, and he wanted the control of the research to be his. So he picked up the phone and told her a very brief overview of what he had found thus far and cautioned her strongly not to do anything further and let him do all the legwork. He’d let her know if he found anything else. He urged her to be careful, talk to no one about this, including Harry, and let him know immediately if she saw the man again. It looked as if he could be very dangerous.

  Then he called the M.E. to discuss the case further and find out exactly what lab tests and tox screens had been run. He would need to find incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing or misdeed in order to get Chief Mallory’s approval to reopen the case and a court order signed by a judge to exhume Mrs. Dorr’s body for further testing.