The Bad Break

by Jill Orr

  CHAPTER 22

  The first image that popped up when I typed “Invigor8” into my browser was a headshot of a middle-aged bald man with a large black tattoo of a bird on his forearm. An electric buzz zipped through my veins. How many big bald dudes with arm tattoos could there be running around Tuttle Corner, especially with connections to Invigor8? This had to be the guy Dr. Davenport’s patient Susan described as having fought with Arthur on the street. The caption identified this man as Brandon Laytner, age forty-two.

  I read article after article and learned a few key things. Invigor8 was a small-cap biotech startup headquartered on the western edge of Tuttle County. Brandon Laytner had started the company after he dropped out of Stanford’s medical school, and it was still privately owned. He’d been considered “one to watch” by many, and as a result there were dozens of articles in which he was quoted as saying his biopharma tech would revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry. Each article was filled with bravado-laden quotes from him that were increasingly confident, bordering on delusional. He was going to change the world. He was going to cure cancer. He was going to be the best there ever was. Brandon Laytner was the Muhammad Ali of bio-pharmaceutical startups. The product that he and everyone else thought was going to make him rich and famous a few years back was some sort of biologic for the treatment of breast cancer, but it failed in its phase-three trial and those dreams quickly evaporated.

  After that Laytner went into a deep depression. Several articles noted how he went from courting press attention to a relatively reclusive existence. He went through an expensive divorce, moved from Richmond back to Tuttle County to be near his parents, and basically went into hiding. Or so it seemed.

  After suspending operations for over a year and a half, he’d hired back a few key members of his former staff, and went back to work developing a new biologic. This time, however, he kept a much lower profile and avoided talking specifics with the press. From what I read, I could tell only that the drug he was developing had application in cardiac care management, but I couldn’t tell exactly what its function might be.

  This had to be the drug Dr. Davenport was consulting on—but I needed confirmation. Since Mrs. Winterthorne and Faye had been so sure Donna Lopez knew everything there was to know about Arthur, I decided to call her up and see if she could shed any light on his involvement with Invigor8. She confirmed that, yes, he had been involved in the patent-development process for a new drug Invigor8 was developing.

  “Had been?” I asked.

  “Just last week Arthur quit the study. Walked away from some good money, too.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Not really. I just know that Arthur was supposed to read through their research data and give his opinion on the efficacy and safety from a cardiac standpoint. He had binders full of research he was going through. Then last week, real suddenly, he told me to box them all up—he was done with it. Said not to throw it away because of confidentiality, that someone from the company would be coming over to the office to collect it.”

  I asked her if she knew how Invigor8 felt about him leaving the study.

  “The head of the company, Brandon something-or-other, came to the clinic himself demanding to see Arthur.”

  “Was he upset?” I asked, thinking of Susan seeing Dr. Davenport arguing with a bald man on the street.

  “Oh yes. He said he couldn’t accept that Dr. Davenport didn’t want to continue on the project. He wouldn’t even take back the boxes of research files. He said he knew Arthur would change his mind. I had to lug them back into the storage closet myself.”

  “When did he come by? What day?”

  “Must have been late last week.” She thought for another second. “Yes, it was a week ago Tuesday—I remember because Arthur spends all day on Tuesdays in the cath lab. I think Mr. Laytner thought I was fibbing. I even took him back to Arthur’s office to show him it was empty.” She was quiet for a moment and then it sounded like she pressed her mouth right into the phone to say, “Do you think that man could have had something to do with all of this?”

  I didn’t want to start the rumor mill going any more than I probably already had so I said, “I’m just trying to gather as much information about Dr. Davenport’s life as I can. You never know when something is going to be relevant.”

  “That makes sense,” she said thoughtfully. “You know, now that you say that, I think there is something else I should mention. Something I didn’t think was important before, but now I’m not so sure.”

  I had a feeling I knew what she was going to say, and I was right. Donna told me the same basic story about Libby and Bennett Nichols that I’d heard from the others.

  “How did Libby take it when he ended things?”

  “Ended things?”

  “Yeah, when he broke it off.”

  “I didn’t know he had,” she said. “I mean, it wasn’t like he told me everything, but as far as I knew, Arthur and Libby were still seeing each other right up till the very end.”

  It was close to noon by the time I got off the phone with Donna, and Coltrane, who was enjoying having me home during the day, nosed the bell I had hung on the front door to let me know he wanted out. I had taught him to do this in a single twenty-minute training session involving repetition of the phrase “ring the bell” and a handful of Pup-Peronis. As a former police dog, he was such a smart boy. I often thought that if I had the time, I could probably teach him to go get the paper, make my morning coffee, and do my laundry.

  In addition to being smart, Coltrane was a big dog and got cranky if he didn’t get his exercise, so I slipped on my shoes and leashed him up. The air had the beginnings of a fall chill, and I could tell by the extra spring in Coltrane’s step that he appreciated the lower temperatures and decreased humidity as much as I did. Summers were long in Tuttle Corner and the fall was short—but boy was it nice.

  As Coltrane and I walked around my block, I noticed how many houses had already set out their pumpkins and hay bales. The Washingtons had three of those huge inflatable Halloween figures set up on their lawn, and as we passed by the last of them, an at least twenty-foot-tall pumpkin-head guy who looked like the character from The Nightmare Before Christmas flashed and made thunder sounds, scaring poor Coltrane half to death.

  Fallen leaves covered the fading green lawns, while some of the more colorful ones clung to their branches. I loved fall; it was my favorite time of year. I’d been so busy lately, I hadn’t even realized how quickly October was slipping by. Halloween would be here soon, and then after that the other holidays would fall into place one after the next after the next. I wondered if Jay and I would spend Christmas together, or if he’d travel back to Massachusetts to see his family. My parents would love to take him with us to the Christmas Eve service at the Unitarian church. They have this lovely tradition of handing out candles to everyone, turning down all the lights in the sanctuary, and as the light spreads slowly throughout the room candle to candle, everyone sings “Silent Night.” It’s beautiful, and something I look forward to every year. I felt a fizz of excitement at the thought of having Jay there with us this year; I was in the middle of this thought when Ryan called my name from the front porch of Missy Gellerman’s house.

  “Hey Riles!” He trotted out to the sidewalk to meet us and immediately crouched down to give C some love. Coltrane whined and licked Ryan’s face—and I had a feeling if it were socially acceptable, Ryan would have done the same. Those two were like peanut butter and jelly. A few times over the past month, Ryan had asked if he could take Coltrane to work at his parents’ store. I’d always agreed—even though I knew Ryan had been partially using it as an excuse to come over and see me—because Coltrane loved the wide-open spaces out there. I didn’t want to begrudge my dog a fun day just because my ex had delusions of us getting back together.

  “Someone is sure happy to see you.”

  He stood up, maybe a little closer to me than he needed to be, and said, �
��Glad to see you too, sugar.”

  I suppressed a smile. “What’re you doing here?”

  In his UVA T-shirt and long board shorts, Ryan looked just as he had in college. He was tall, over six feet, with sandy brown hair, gorgeous blue eyes, and the kind of lopsided smile that could charm you into any number of bad decisions. Virtually every memory of mine over the past seven years had something to do with Ryan Sanford, and yet we’d hardly talked since he moved back to Tuttle. It had been hard, he had not only been my boyfriend but pretty much my only friend for the past several years. After everything that happened between us, I needed some space to move on and, despite what he said, he did too.

  “I’m buying this place.” Ryan jerked a thumb toward Missy’s house.

  So much for space. “What?”

  “Yeah, Missy’s moving to Asheville to be near her kids, so she’s selling. And I’ve always loved this area, so I thought, why the hell not?” His handsome, optimistic grin belied the obvious problem here: this house backed up to mine. Only my six-foot privacy fence separated the backyards.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  I made some sort of glottal sound that I felt he should understand.

  “What?”

  “Ryan, this house is literally in my backyard.”

  “So?”

  I wasn’t sure if he really didn’t get how inappropriate that was, or if he was just being obtuse. So I asked him exactly that.

  “I don’t even know what obtuse is. I bought this house because it’s in a great neighborhood, it has an awesome yard, and there’s a separate apartment in the basement. I’m going to live down there and give Ridley and our little dudette the upstairs.”

  “Ridley is going to live here too?” My eyes nearly popped out of my head.

  “Yeah,” Ryan said, still looking like he couldn’t understand why this would bother me. “We decided it’d be best for the baby to have us all live together—even though we’re not, you know, a traditional family.”

  There was so much in what he just said that evoked emotion, not the least of which was that Ryan was making mature and responsible decisions to take care of his family. Old habits die hard, so a sliver of me felt proud of him, but the majority of me was straight-up pissed that he was going to make me take a front row seat to watch his new life unfold.

  “Don’t you think it’s going to be a little weird living so close to me?”

  “Nah,” he said. “We’re cool. And Ridley loves you.”

  I was speechless. That is not hyperbole. I honest-to-goodness could not find the words to respond to this information, so I simply turned around and walked back toward my house.

  “I don’t know why you’re so upset about this,” he called after me. “It’ll be fun! You’ll see!”

  Hey Riley,

  So I have to admit that I don’t know that much about owning real estate because due to a small misunderstanding with a Victoria’s Secret credit card, I am apparently considered “high risk” by lenders—haha lol! But I can totally understand what ur saying about how weird it is for ur ex to move in his baby mama drama right behind ur house! In the wise words of Selena Gomez, “That is not okay.”

  But here is the part of the process when I have to [TRIGGER WARNING] challenge ur truth: Why do u think this upsets u so much? I mean, I need u to really think about it. If ur truly over Ryan then why does it matter where he lives? Could there be some unresolved issues hiding inside ur reaction to his home purchase? Do we need to examine them?

  PS: This is why I plan to buy a tiny house as soon as my credit clears up. U can just move it when u need a change of scenery! Plus, they are so freaking ADORABLE! I am obsessed with that show on HGTV. U should totally check it out.

  xx,

  Jenna B

  Personal Success Concierge™

  Bestmillenniallife.com

  Dear Jenna,

  That was a remarkably lucid response (until the tiny house stuff). I hope you won’t be offended that I am going to choose to completely ignore it. I have a lot going on right now and I just can’t deal with having those “unresolved issues” challenged at this time.

  PS: I have too many books to ever live in a tiny house. Plus, my dog is huge.

  All best,

  Riley

  Dear Jenna,

  Okay, you’ve made your point, you can stop sending me pictures of tiny houses with big bookshelves and even bigger dogs. (But, to be fair, I think that last one with the Great Dane reading Shakespeare was photoshopped.)

  All best,

  Riley

  CHAPTER 23

  On my way back to the Times I decided to stop into the sheriff’s office to see what the latest was with Tabitha. I also wanted to see what, if any, progress Carl had made on figuring out who had poisoned David. It still didn’t make any sense to me. Surely that and his father’s murder were related, but I couldn’t see how. If Libby or Bennett Nichols had anything to do with Arthur’s death, why would they have a problem with David? Or if the CEO of Invigor8 had snapped in a fit of rage over Dr. Davenport pulling out of the drug trial, what would any of that have to do with his son?

  I walked into the sheriff’s department and Gail smiled at me. “Hey,” she said, looking up from the file she was holding. “He’s in his office. Thad’s being released in a few minutes.”

  “Really?”

  “Prosecutor hasn’t filed charges yet, so he’s free to go, but can’t leave town.”

  “And Tabitha?”

  Gail lowered her voice. “Between you, me, and the fence post, I think Carl’s just gonna let her walk on this one if she’ll recant.”

  “Cool,” I said, looking around the station. “Is Gerlach Spencer here by any chance?”

  I had seen that Spencer had written a piece online about Tabitha’s confession and a few other updated details about the story, so I knew he was on it. I had to be careful. If he saw me catting around here, he’d tell Kay for sure. The obit was my cover story, though, and a pretty good one at that. After all, I could easily be here to interview Dr. Davenport’s eldest son for the obituary.

  “Haven’t seen him since this morning. You can go on back to Carl’s office if you want.”

  Through the glass to his office I saw Tiffany Peters, the county coroner, and wondered if that meant that the report had come back from the Richmond ME. I hovered just outside Carl’s door and waited for someone to notice me.

  “Hey, Riley!” Tiffany said. “You’re so sweet to come down here to hear my report!” She gave me a beauty-queen smile as I walked in the office.

  “Okay if I listen in?” I looked at Carl.

  He nodded and I noted again how tired he looked—even worse than before; the skin on his cheeks had started to get those red splotches. Not like chickenpox, more like gin blossoms, but I knew Carl didn’t drink. It had to have been the stress.

  “As I was saying,” Tiffany said, reading from a sheet of paper. “The autopsy report found congestion of the brain, lungs, and kidneys. And while no identifiable tablets were found, analysis of blood, stomach contents, and liver revealed digitalis concentrations well above therapeutic levels. Myocardial and coronary artery diseases were excluded—that means he didn’t have any kind of underlying heart condition that he would have needed digitalis for.

  “There was a single puncture wound on the left side of the abdomen, measuring two by three millimeters, with clean and clear edges and little blood loss, indicating the insult was inflicted post-mortem.” Tiffany looked up. “That means he was stabbed after he died.”

  “But what’s the point of stabbing someone after they’re dead?” I asked.

  No one ventured a guess.

  I continued. “And do we know anything about the timing of all of this? I mean, if Thad left his father—drunk but alive at 7:30 p.m.—do we know anything about when Arthur actually ingested the poison?”

  “Great question.” Tiffany flipped to another page in the report. “Acc
ording to this, Arthur had acute digitalis toxicity, which means the drug was likely introduced into the system fairly rapidly. The Digoxigon pills are point-twenty-five milligrams each, so assuming the killer crushed up the pills and put them into the whiskey, the time it took to take effect would really depend on how much of the stuff he or she used.”

  I nodded, thinking this through. “So would it have been possible that the scotch was laced with the pills long before Thad was there, and even though Arthur was drinking it, he just hadn’t taken in a lethal amount yet?”

  “It’s possible. This is one of the things the prosecutor is going to have to look at,” Carl said. “There are still a lot of unanswered questions.”

  “Does the Davenport estate have any security cameras that might have caught if anyone else came or went from the house that night?” I asked.

  “The property has cameras, but apparently they haven’t been used since Mrs. Davenport passed away. Arthur told Jim over at Command Security that he didn’t need any protection beyond the twenty-two he kept in the front closet.” Clearly, Arthur had been wrong about that.

  Carl stood up and put his hat on. “Thanks for coming by with this report, Tiffany. I appreciate you rushing it over.”

  “There’s one other thing that showed up that I want to point out,” she paused, holding us hostage to the moment just a beat longer than necessary. “There were traces of crushed tobacco leaves ground into the rug around where Arthur’s body was found. The forensic team also found them in the entry and the hallway leading into Arthur’s office.”

  “Tobacco leaves?” I asked. “Like from a cigarette?”