Killer Market dk-5

by Margaret Maron

  Well, yes, there was that.

  He pulled up to a side door of the courthouse.

  “But everything worked out great after they came to High Point.” His voice turned suddenly venomous. “Until Evelyn married that prick.”

  I wanted to ask what he meant, but a uniformed guard was motioning for us to move it.

  Pell handed me a house key. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, but make yourself at home.”

  I thanked him and hurried inside. Only ten minutes to do the professional courtesies and find the courtroom for Randy J. Verlin vs. April Ann Jenner for the custody of Travis Tritt Verlin, minor.

  Which was where Detective David Underwood found me.

  9

  « ^ » “Chair manufacturing is carried on by contract in several of the prisons and penal establishments in the country, and it is a very important American industry.”The Great Industries of the United States, 1872

  “Chan Nolan’s death was a homicide?” I was bewildered as I followed Detective Underwood out to his car. “But the doctor said it was an allergic reaction. Anaphylactic shock.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He held the door open for me on a car ankle-deep in empty foam coffee cups and crumpled hamburger wrappers—“Just kick ’em out of your way,” he murmured—and we drove the short distance to police headquarters on Leonard Street “We have a little problem with how he ingested the agent.”

  Here at lunchtime, the streets were clogged again with shuttle vans, cars with license plates from a dozen different states, and a couple of black limos of ordinary length.

  “I can’t get over the difference,” I said, telling Detective Underwood how deserted the streets seemed the day my friend and I drove through.

  “Most of the year, we’re just another Piedmont mill town. But during Market, we—oh damn and blast and expletive deleted!” he muttered as a shuttle van stopped in our lane to let someone out.

  Detective David Underwood was an impatient driver and he squeezed his car through nonexistent openings and narrow alleyways.

  The brick and concrete block building on Leonard Street was a remodeled school, he told me, and once we were inside, he took me into a small room that could have been the school nurse’s office. A uniformed officer quickly and efficiently rolled my fingertips, one at a time, from ink pad to a card that could be scanned by the computer.

  I cleaned my hands with a packaged towelette, then followed Underwood as he stopped by the squad room to pick up a legal pad and a bulky manila envelope from a desk that was even messier than his car.

  A few steps farther down the hall was a tiny interview room no bigger than six foot square and bare of all furnishings save two straight-backed chairs that faced each other across a small metal table.

  Underwood rummaged in his manila envelope and pulled out a clear plastic bag with a brown plastic prescription bottle inside.

  “This yours?”

  The label was still intact. If I could clearly read my name and my doctor’s, surely he could as well.

  “Do we really have to play games, Detective Underwood?” I asked. “Of course it’s mine. Penicillin. And it’s hours past my time for another dose.”

  I reached for the bag, but Underwood continued to hold it.

  “How many tablets are supposed to be here?”

  “Six? Or is it four?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you, ma’am.”

  His tone wasn’t threatening, just mildly inquisitive, and I knew he was just doing his job, but lack of food and sleep was starting to make me cranky. Nevertheless I tried to hold on to my temper as I worked it out on my fingers.

  “I started with thirty. Three tablets a day for ten days… breakfast, mid-afternoon and bedtime… But I didn’t take last night’s and I still have today’s to go… Four?”

  He handed me the baggie. “Shake it.”

  Empty.

  The bottom fell out of my stomach.

  “That’s what put Chan Nolan into anaphylactic shock? My penicillin?”

  “According to his allergist, even one tablet would be dangerous for him. Didn’t you see his Medic Alert medallion when you were dancing with him last night?”

  “I remember two gold chains, but if there was a medallion, it must have been tucked inside his shirt. I certainly didn’t read it.”

  “No?” He twisted one end of his thick brown mustache into a sharp point and regarded me with those warm brown eyes.

  “And I certainly wasn’t his only dancing partner.”

  “So far though, you’re the only one with missing penicillin tablets,” he pointed out.

  “The only one you know about,” I snapped.

  “A soft answer turneth away wrath,” warned the preacher deep inside my head.

  “Losing your temper is not the way to go,” agreed the pragmatist who shares the same space. “He’s not Dwight.”

  “Half the medicine cabinets in America must be stocked with half-empty bottles of penicillin,” I said as calmly as I could. “Besides, from early in the evening, I didn’t even have mine.”

  I described the mix-up with tote bags and he wanted to know who’d been where from the minute I set my tote under the table. He wrote down all the names, beginning with Savannah, continuing through Dixie Babcock, Drew Patterson and her father Jay, Kay Adams and her colleague Poppy Jackson, Heather McKenzie, Mai and Jeff Stanberry, and, even though I didn’t know her, that Lavelle Trocchi who was supposed to have given Chan the Hickory-Dock catalog last month and who, according to Dixie, had been next to the table.

  He was particularly interested in the plate of food Drew had fixed for Chan and which Dixie had actually handed to him, “although Dr. Harrison says that with that much penicillin, Nolan would have started to react immediately. You sure you didn’t see him again after you left that ballroom?”

  As he wrote down my denial, the officer who’d taken my fingerprints tapped on the door, stuck his head in and said, “Two hits on the baggie, Dave.”

  “What baggie?” I asked apprehensively.

  “The tablets were crushed and stuck into some brownies. We found a baggie in his jacket pocket with brownie crumbs and some of the penicillin residue. Your prints are on the baggie.”

  “That’s impossible!” I snapped. And then I remembered the zip-lock bag that Savannah had dropped.

  My sudden recollection and hasty account of picking up the bag sounded limp and guilty even to my ears. With as much dignity as I could muster, I said, “Dwight Bryant’s the deputy sheriff over in Colleton County and he’s known me since I was born. He’ll tell you I don’t make a habit of going around killing perfect strangers.”

  (Okay, so maybe that was a slight fudging of the facts, but I knew our brief acquaintance in Maryland wasn’t relevant. For all practical purposes, Chan had been a stranger and I really didn’t want to talk about that time.)

  “I’ll give you his phone number.”

  Underwood’s shaggy brown mustache quivered and I realized he was grinning. “I already talked to Major Bryant this morning before I went over to the courthouse.”

  “Well, then,” I said.

  “Always a first time.” His grin faded as he asked me again about the people I’d seen in Chan Nolan’s company.

  He particularly concentrated on Savannah’s movements. “You’re positive she’d already left the table and the room with your bag before Nolan joined your group?”

  “If you don’t believe me, ask Heather McKenzie. She followed the woman out.”

  His legal pad lay on the narrow table between us and he made no attempt to conceal it as he drew a heavy black arrow on his notepad from Heather’s name to Savannah’s. “Now, Judge, what makes you think I don’t believe you?”

  “The question marks you’re drawing around that arrow, maybe?”

  He smiled. “And you’re staying with Nolan’s mother-in-law, right?”

  “She found me the place, but it’s actually with her neighbor next door.”


  He took down Pell Austin’s address and telephone number, then gave me back my tote bag and purse. The empty penicillin bottle he kept. So far as I could tell, nearly everything else seemed present and accounted for, right down to my cell phone, checkbook and car keys. I usually had three tubes of lipstick. The darkest one was gone. Gone, too, were my nail clippers. And I was in the habit of dropping in my loose change. Sometimes there would be five or six dollars’ worth of coins rattling around at the bottom. At the moment, there were only a nickel and three pennies.

  Underwood made a note of it even though I considered them a small enough payment for getting my other things back.

  “I’ll have someone drive you to your car,” he said, “and, Judge?”

  “Yes?”

  “Major Bryant also told me that you’re bad for sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong—his words, not mine.” His half-teasing tone became wholly serious. “Do us all a favor while you’re in High Point, Judge? Don’t.”

  10

  « ^ » “The younger members of the firm have received all the advantages of education and careful scientific training which our modern times afford… and thus are fully able to take part in keeping the organization.”The Great Industries of the United States, 1872

  As a uniformed officer escorted me out of the building, I met Dixie coming in.

  She gave me a wan smile. ‘They found your bag?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her drawn features and the dark circles under her eyes let me know that she hadn’t caught a nap this morning. What I didn’t know was if she’d been told yet that Chan’s death was a homicide. “You okay?”

  “Hanging in,” she said gamely.

  “Court should adjourn by one-thirty,” I told her. “Want me to take Lynnette for a drive or something?”

  She brightened. “Could you? That’d be great. Cheryl’s with her right now but she’s hyped for Market and there’s so much I need to do before Chan’s sister gets here.”

  I suborned my escort to drive through Hardee’s before taking me on to my car. I tried to buy him a burger, too, but he swore he wasn’t hungry yet. Tasted like ambrosia to me though, and I had my daily dose of grease and red meat half-eaten before we pulled up beside my car, still parked where I’d left it.

  No second ticket on the windshield either.

  Licking ketchup off my fingers, I drove back to the courthouse, parked in a judge’s slot, and made it up to my courtroom where I reconvened Verlin vs. Jenner only eight minutes late.

  Travis Tritt Verlin’s young parents sat almost exactly where I’d left them on opposite sides of the room, and each eyed me anxiously as I leafed through all the documents looking for answers that weren’t there.

  I tried to focus on what was right for this toddler at this time and to keep my mind clear of preconceptions and outside influences.

  When I finally came down on the side of the father, I truly do not think it was because I’d let myself be influenced by Dixie’s fierce love for her granddaughter and her despair at the thought of Lynnette leaving for Malaysia.

  But how can we ever say for sure what tips the balance?

  The tension went out of Mrs. Verlin’s shoulders, April Ann Jenner sat with tears spilling down her thin cheeks, and a big smile split Randy Verlin’s face.

  Holding up my hand for silence, I forced him to look me straight in the eye and said sternly, “Even though I’m giving you custody of Travis, Mr. Verlin, that does not mean that I think Ms. Jenner is unfit or a bad mother.”

  I gentled my voice as I spoke to that unhappy young woman. “Nothing that I’ve read in these documents, nor heard here today, has made me think that. We’ll set up a visitation schedule and if your situation changes radically or if Mr. Verlin moves out of his parents’ house, then you can come back to court and ask for a new judgment. I’ll put that in my written decision. But I think we all want what’s best for Travis, and right now, it’s my opinion that he can have a more secure and stable life in the Verlin household since his grandmother can care for him full-time.”

  Now my eyes moved to the older woman. I told her that her fairness toward April Ann this morning had impressed me. “And I think you can be trusted not to try to turn your grandson against Ms. Jenner.”

  “She’s his mother,” Mrs. Verlin said softly.

  “Exactly,” I said and turned back to the parents of her only grandchild.

  “What both of you need to remember is that the two of you are going to be Travis’s mother and father for the rest of your natural lives. For his sake, I urge you to try to get along. Don’t tear him apart and make him have to choose between you. If you can’t say something nice about each other, at least don’t say anything hurtful, okay?”

  Both of them promised they wouldn’t and we worked out a schedule that gave Travis to April Ann every weekend. We also agreed on the amount of child support she would pay each month.

  By the time I adjourned, she may not have been smiling, but at least she no longer wept.

  Before I left the courthouse, I got through to my doctor’s assistant in Raleigh and explained how I hadn’t taken a penicillin tablet since around six the day before. “And your throat hasn’t bothered you in four days? Then she’ll probably say it’s okay to stop.”

  I gave her Dixie’s office number and told her to leave a message there if it wasn’t okay.

  Road workers with jackhammers and dump trucks were tearing up Johnson Street and I had to maneuver a maze of one-way streets in this older part of town before I finally found my way back to the cul-de-sac a half-block off Johnson.

  No sign of Pell’s van nor of Dixie’s car nor even the California decorina’s bright red rental that had been parked on the street when I left this morning. Instead, I found Drew Patterson pacing up and down the walk. Last night she’d been soft and feminine in her loose hair and low-cut dancing dress, but today she was all business in a crisp black linen miniskirt and matching jacket over a soft white shirt. Her black patent leather shoes had Cuban heels and flat silver buckles, and her blonde hair was gathered off her face in a French braid.

  “Hello again,” she said sadly, as I got out of my car.

  Up close, I could see that her eyes were bloodshot beneath a light coat of mascara.

  “Drew, I’m so sorry,” I said, taking her hand. “Are you okay? I guess you knew him for a long time.”

  “Half my life.” Her blue eyes glazed with tears, but her chin came up as she reined in her emotions. “Ever since I was thirteen and he came to work for us. Before he married Evelyn. Before Lynnette was born.”

  I made comforting noises and she tried to shrug.

  “It’s not like we were lovers or anything—he always acted like I was thirteen and still in braces—but he was so much fun to play with. We were dancing together just last night and now he’s gone. Just like that! I can’t believe—”

  She broke off and took a deep breath.

  “Chan was okay when you last saw him, wasn’t he?” I asked as curiosity got the best of me.

  Drew nodded. “He came back to our party and was schmoozing buyers just like always until Jacob Collier grabbed him and tried to pick a fight.”

  “Did I meet Collier?” I wondered aloud.

  “Probably not. You didn’t come back to our party after you left ALWA’s, did you?”

  “No.”

  “It got a little awkward for a minute there. But Jacob should have retired years ago. He’s seventy-eight, for Pete’s sake. And the Pinecroft account should’ve been converted years ago.”

  “You’ve lost me,” I said.

  “See, some accounts take a lot of hard work. There’s no loyalty or they’re extra fussy or you just can’t count on them to do the same amount of business with you each time. But some accounts are going to be with you forever. They’re comfortable, pleased with the new lines, predictable. You don’t have to stroke them. When that happens, Sales will often convert it to a house account.”

 
; “So why would that anger this Jacob Collier?”

  “Because it means that instead of getting a five percent commission on those sales, he’ll now be getting one percent to service the account and that means he’ll have to hustle up some new business if he wants to make up the four percent he’s losing.”

  “But surely a man who’s seventy-eight is ready to retire?”

  “He is. But his son and granddaughter are taking over the territory and it means less money for them.” Drew shook her head. “It’s not as if they couldn’t see it coming. That’s business.”

  Less for Collier’s family, more for hers, I thought as I gathered up my purse, tote bag and robe from the car.

  “And probably more for a sharp sales director like Chan?” asked my internal pragmatist.

  “Not your business,” the preacher said, sternly reminding me of Detective Underwood’s request to keep my nose out of his investigation.

  “Dixie’s not back yet?”

  Concern crossed her lovely face. “No, and I’m starting to get worried. I stopped by an hour ago to see how she and Lynnette were doing and her friend Cheryl asked me to stay till Dixie got back. She forgot she had an appointment with the marketing head of a sleep chain. Or so she said.”

  Drew’s smile was rueful. “I myself think she saw a way to cut out early. The thing is, she said Dixie would be back by two and I’m supposed to be at the String and Splinter at two-thirty.”

  I glanced at my watch and made shooing motions with my hands. “It’s five after. Go. I saw Dixie at the police station and—”

  “Police station? Cheryl said she had to go sign some papers or something. I thought it was the hospital. What would she be doing at the police station?”

  If Chan’s death were indeed a homicide, it wasn’t my place to tell her.

  (The preacher gave a nod of approval.)

  I made a dismissing motion with my hand. “It’s probably because he died without his own doctor around.”

  “But his doctor’s right over in Lexington,” said Drew, looking confused.