She Wore Mourning

by P. D. Workman

  She acted as if Zachary had accused Declan of being a serial killer. With her own mental illness issues, was it that awful to suggest that Declan might have a diagnosis as well? ADHD diagnoses were so common; there wasn’t that much of a stigma attached anymore. Isabella clearly did not like this line of questioning.

  Perfectly normal. Perfectly healthy.

  “Then why was he given cough medicine?”

  “Cough medicine.” Isabella stared at him. “He wasn’t given cough medicine. What are you talking about?”

  “When Declan died, he had cough medicine in his body. In his bloodstream. So why was he given cough medicine, if he was perfectly healthy?”

  “He wasn’t. I would never give him that poison. It’s very bad for children.”

  “Do you have cough medicine in the house?”

  “Of course.” She fluttered a hand in the direction of the master bedroom and bath. “Everyone has cough medicine.”

  “But you didn’t have anything for Declan? What would you do if he got sick? Surely you’d give him a decongestant if he was having trouble sleeping.”

  “No.” Her voice was firm. “I wouldn’t. There’s no proof that any of those medicines are good for children. They’ve only been tested on adults, and then the results extrapolated. Children’s bodies don’t work the same way as adults’ bodies. You can never be sure what effect they will have.”

  “You’ve never given cough medicine to Declan?”

  She shook her head. “When he was younger… I don’t know, two or three, he had a bad cold, and I gave him some baby cold medicine. Not the liquid, one of those instant dissolve tablets. I didn’t know how bad they could be for children, but the way he reacted to it… he was practically comatose for the next few hours. I never gave him cold medicine again.”

  Zachary’s heart sped. “Do you know what kind of medicine it was? What was in it?”

  “No… I don’t remember. I don’t know what brand it was or what the active ingredients were. I’ve never used one again.”

  “Would you still have the package around somewhere? It was only a year or two ago; people keep medications around for much longer than that.”

  “You can check. It would be in the medicine cabinet, down the hall.”

  Zachary sped out of the room and looked both ways down the hallway, paranoid that Spencer might have been listening at the door and might reach the bathroom to destroy the evidence ahead of him. But there was no sign of Spencer. Zachary found the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. He had known before he had a chance to itemize the contents that the children’s medicine would not be there. The bathroom, including the cabinet, was pristine. Nothing leaking or out of date. The bottles and sundries in the cabinet stood in rigid rows, equidistant apart. He checked each label anyway. There was, as Isabella had indicated, adult cough medicine. None of the children’s cold tablets that she had referred to. She had probably said that she was never going to use them again, and Spencer had taken her at her word and thrown them out.

  Zachary took out the cough medicine, wondering even as he took it out if he should have put on gloves first. Surely the police had looked at it already when they determined Declan had cough medicine in his system. Zachary tried to keep his fingers to the edges where they wouldn’t smear any other fingerprints anyway and checked the ingredients.

  Pseudoephedrine was listed under the active ingredients and alcohol in the inactive ingredients.

  Had Declan been given cough medicine from that bottle? Or had someone else, a third party, given him cough medicine to keep him quiet and compliant? Maybe panicking when he became ‘almost comatose.’ Certainly, using cough medicine to sedate a child was a widely-known practice, as Zachary himself could attest.

  He set the bottle down on the sink and took pictures of the brand name on the front and the ingredients on the back. He put it back in the medicine cabinet where he had gotten it and took another picture. Just in case it happened to disappear before he could get the police to look at it.

  If the police looked at it.

  Zachary returned to the studio, where Isabella was still painting, running her fingers over the memorial objects, and whispering her never-ending prayer.

  “You’re right,” he told her. “There is a bottle of cough medicine in the cabinet, but not the medicine you gave to Declan when he was younger.”

  She gave a little shrug of unconcern. “I don’t know what would make you think we would give him that. There’s no way I would let anyone give Deck cough medicine.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t feeling well, and Spencer gave him cough medicine,” Zachary suggested.

  “He wasn’t sick. I told you that. Spencer knows I wouldn’t let him give Declan cough medicine. He would never have done that.”

  “Maybe he thought he’d just give it a try. Just to see if it would help. He never expressed any concerns to you?”

  “No. He didn’t say anything was wrong or that he had given Deck medicine. Declan was happy and playing. If he’d had that stuff, he would have been asleep. He wouldn’t have been able to walk around. He wouldn’t have been playing.” When Zachary opened his mouth, she rushed to fill the space. “I was watching him. I would have known if he had been drugged.”

  “But you weren’t watching him the whole time. You were only checking occasionally to make sure he was okay.”

  “I was watching. I never looked away for long.”

  “How long? Five minutes?”

  She shook her head in irritation. “No, I don’t think it was that long. Two or three. I was keeping track of him.”

  “But then you couldn’t see him anymore.”

  “I know that.”

  “And you didn’t go out the first time you looked and couldn’t see him. You waited to see if he came back into view again.”

  “Only for a few minutes.”

  Zachary knew how that was. If she said she hadn’t seen him for five minutes, it was probably at least ten. From what he’d seen, she got pretty wrapped up in her work, and she could have gone half an hour without thinking any time had passed. It was only five minutes at the most to get from the back yard to the pond. It only took two or three minutes for a child to drown. In fifteen minutes, either of them could have done the deed, without the other realizing they’d been out of the house.

  “Could Spencer have left the house without you realizing it?”

  Isabella looked away from her painting and studied him, looking confused. “Of course not, he was here the whole afternoon. I don’t understand why you’re asking that.”

  “He could have left for five minutes without you noticing, just like Declan could wander off for five minutes. You weren’t watching Spencer.”

  “No… but I was watching his coat.”

  “What do you mean, you were watching his coat?”

  Isabella laughed at Zachary’s consternation. “I wasn’t painting in here. I was in the bedroom.”

  “Right. We established that.”

  “And I was standing in front of the closet. Just a few feet away from Spencer’s coat. It was right there in front of my eyes. He wouldn’t leave the house without it.”

  “He could have.”

  “No! It was a cool day. Spencer would never have left the house without it. He’s very rigid about it.”

  OCD as an alibi?

  “Do you know what Spencer was doing during that time? Is there any way we can check his alibi?”

  “His computer,” Isabella said vaguely. “I imagine he left a digital trail somewhere.”

  “And what about you? Is there any way we can verify that you were in the bedroom like you say you were?”

  “Where would I go? I was painting. Watching Deck. I couldn’t go anywhere.”

  “Would Spencer have known if you left the house?”

  “You will have to ask him,” Isabella snapped. “He has a view of the back yard too. We both had a view of the back yard, and neither of us saw anything.”

&
nbsp; “You alibi each other.”

  “Unless you think that we both colluded to murder our son, that’s going to have to be good enough for you.”

  Could they have conspired to kill their son? Zachary couldn’t see it, no matter how he tried to mold the picture in his mind. While they were not demonstrative, he believed they loved Declan. One of them could have hurt him in a moment of anger or frustration, or by accident, but he didn’t see how either of them could have hurt him intentionally.

  And that meant he was back at the beginning again. To a mysterious stranger coming into the yard, or up to the gate, luring Declan out, drugging him with cough syrup, and then abandoning his body in the pond. If the time of death was five o’clock, they would only have had, at most, an hour with the boy. It didn’t make any sense.

  There was a knock at the studio door. Zachary and Isabella looked up. Spencer hovered in the doorway. He held a cordless phone toward Isabella.

  “It’s Melissa Raymond,” he explained. “I thought you would like to talk to her… set something up, maybe?”

  Isabella looked at him for a moment, not excited by the suggestion. Eventually, she laid aside her paintbrush and walked to the door of the studio to take the phone from him.

  “You’re done here?” Spencer asked, looking at Zachary. “Give them some privacy to talk.”

  Zachary conceded, leaving the studio so that Isabella could talk privately with her friend. Spencer led him back toward the front door.

  “Melissa will be good for her,” he said. “She always used to be able to draw Isabella out before. She needs someone to talk with. Someone who isn’t a cop or a therapist or a private investigator.” He considered. “Or her husband.”

  Zachary glanced sideways at him. “Marriage isn’t for cowards.”

  “You’re right about that,” Spencer agreed fervently. “You’re married?”

  “Divorced.”

  “Sorry.”

  Zachary nodded. “Yours has lasted longer than mine did. I hope things improve.”

  “Neither of us is good with change; we’ll avoid it as long as we can.”

  At the door, Zachary offered his hand. “Thanks for your help. One thing before I leave. Did you give Declan cough medicine? That last day?”

  Spencer raised his brows. He pursed his lips and shook his head. “No. He wasn’t sick, and I know how Isabella would feel about that.”

  “When Declan was playing in the back yard, did Isabella leave the house?”

  Spencer scowled as he shook his head. “No, I can’t imagine she would.”

  “I’m not asking if she would. I’m asking if she did. Was there any time that you might have heard or seen her leave? Or when you were away from the windows and wouldn’t have seen her leave?”

  “But why would she do that?”

  “Could she have?”

  “No… maybe when I was in the kitchen, but then she would have had to sneak out the front door instead of the back. Or when I was in the bathroom; but I’m sure she was here the whole time. Neither of us left the house. Just Declan.”

  “How long was Declan playing outside before Isabella said he was missing?”

  “An hour… maybe an hour and twenty…?”

  “And in your experience… how closely did she supervise him? How often would she have looked out at him?”

  “I’ve never sat down and timed the intervals. I don’t know how you could expect me to know. I suppose it depends on how involved she is with her painting.”

  “And does she tend to get distracted and lost in her work?”

  Spencer’s hand was on the door, eager for Zachary to be gone. Wanting just to shut the door and be done with him.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know if she gets distracted by what she’s doing? So involved that she isn’t paying attention to what’s going on around her?”

  “I suppose she does. Anyone does.”

  “Has there been any time when Declan has gotten hurt or upset while he was in the back yard and Isabella was supposed to be supervising him? Or another time when he was her responsibility, and you got angry at her for not watching him closely enough?”

  Spencer’s face got red. “I don’t appreciate your implications. Declan’s death is not Isabella’s fault.”

  “I didn’t say it was. I’m trying to establish how long it was between the last time Isabella checked on him and the time that he died. What is the longest possible length of time he could have been missing from your yard?”

  “It’s impossible to know that.”

  “Unless you know what time it was that Isabella checked on him last, or have a pretty good guess. Did she look in on him every five minutes? Every ten? Every half hour? Maybe she only checked when he came near the window, or she heard him crying.”

  Zachary stared at Spencer, waiting for his answer. Spencer was a man who liked an ordered, predictable experience. He must have had certain expectations of his wife, and must have known when she broke what he considered to be the house rules. If she didn’t do a good job supervising Declan or she left the house unexpectedly, he would have had some idea.

  Spencer wiped his hand down his face in a tired gesture.

  “I can’t tell you how often she checked on him or how long he was missing from the yard. I know she was in the house and I know that she was supervising Declan playing outside. That’s all I can tell you.”

  Zachary stared into Spencer’s face, looking for any sign of deception. He nodded. “Okay. Thanks for your help. Good luck.”

  He had started to turn away to leave when Spencer’s voice recalled him.

  “Zachary…?”

  “Yes?”

  “Your investigation… it will be done soon? It’s causing a lot of stress on the family.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Chapter Nine

  Looking down at his phone, Zachary realized that he had a voicemail message. Swiping over to the screen, he saw a message had been left by ‘unknown caller.’ Probably a telemarketer, but some of his legitimate contacts had blocked caller IDs as well. The police department, for one. He tapped the message and held the phone to his ear.

  You’ve been warned to drop the case. This is your last warning.

  He pulled the phone back away from his ear and stared at it. A voice changer had been used, which made the voice of the caller impossible to recognize. Which, of course, meant that if he were to hear the caller’s voice unaltered, he would have recognized it. Zachary closed his eyes, drumming his fingers on his steering wheel and considering.

  The Antonelli insurance fraud case was rumored to involve the mob, but he suspected that any threat that came to him from organized crime would have more finesse, and they would leave no doubt as to which case it was they wanted him to drop. He had a couple of infidelity cases that he hadn’t reported on yet, but he had most of the information he needed to finish them off, so there wasn’t any point in dropping those cases. The Senator’s background checks weren’t likely to cause him any trouble. They were all routine, and none of the subjects had any reason to threaten him.

  It bothered him that there was no real threat. His ‘last warning’ was not even a legitimate warning. There was a possibility that the warnings were about the Declan Bond case. It was the kind of case that made people emotional. The police or medical examiner might not like him reinvestigating the case. Isabella and Spencer were tired of his questions, and maybe one of them just wanted him off the case. Or Halloran, worried that word would leak out that his star was being investigated. Even Molly, afraid that the expenses were adding up, but too timid to call him off.

  Zachary’s address and phone number weren’t that hard to find. Everyone had his phone number. His home address was more difficult to find, but only slightly. He wasn’t a big name. He wasn’t like the private detectives on TV, solving a murder a week. He was a nobody, and there was no need to hide from the public or discontented clients or police. He received threat
s from time to time. The one on his door had been a little disturbing. He tried to tell himself it was nothing, but whoever had left it wanted him to know that they could reach him. They knew where he lived. That was the message.

  He didn’t delete the voicemail. If the caller did escalate from half-threats to action, Zachary might need something that the police could trace.

  Kenzie had come to Zachary’s apartment when he called her, but she seemed cautious and reserved. She didn’t have her usual bright eyes and quick smile. They sat in the living room, and he told her about the latest developments in the Bond case, the responses from Isabella and Spencer to his questions on whether either of them had given him cough medicine, and exactly how long he might have been missing from the yard before his death. Kenzie didn’t seem to be as interested in the case as she had previously. She stared away from him, her brows down slightly.

  “Maybe it’s time to let it go,” she said finally. “You’re not getting anywhere with it. There’s no indication that there was foul play involved. So why not let it go? Tell them you’ve looked into everything you can, and everything seems to be kosher. No need to pursue it any further.”

  “Not now, when I finally have some actual evidence that there might have been foul play!”

  “You haven’t found anything new. Nothing that the police haven’t already investigated.”

  “It might not be enough to make any arrests, but I think it’s enough for them to investigate it further. The boy was afraid of water. He wouldn’t have walked into the pond to drown. He had cough medicine in his system when his parents deny having given him any. He has a previous history of being knocked out by a single dose of cold medicine. Don’t you think those things add up to suspicion of foul play?”

  “It’s nothing new. The police knew all that and closed their file. They believe that he did walk or fall into the pond. They already know there was cough medicine in his system. It’s in the medical examiner’s report.”

  “You don’t think I should bring my suspicions to anybody. I should just tell the family that I agree it was an accident and let it go.”