A Lonely Way to Die: A Utah O'Brien Mystery Novel (Minnesota Mysteries Series Book 2) (13 page)

Mort got up and gave Josie his seat on the couch. She reached over and took the baby out of Mildred’s arms. Mildred didn’t seem to notice. Josie kissed Grace on the nose, and the baby stopped crying.

I asked Mildred if she would like a cup of coffee, but she said no.

I turned a wooden chair around so I could sit between the table and the couch, facing Mildred. Our knees were almost touching. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, and she made an extra effort to hold her head up straight. She was still wearing her new flowered dress. I said, “Mildred, are you all right?”

“No, I’m fine, but I feel a little …” She waved a hand in the air, aimlessly. Then she let it drop. She started to talk, her speech much slower than usual.

“I had to get out of the house. Emma went home and Mark came, but he had to leave because his wife was bringing the kids for the day. Then Emma came back and started talking about the baby again, and those silly gossip columns. I don’t think she should read those papers. They make things up, everybody knows that. She reads every one of them.”

She noticed the baby, and listlessly reached for one of the little feet. Her hand didn’t get that far before it dropped back in her lap.

“They used to talk about Elvis sightings, do you remember? And space aliens, babies that were half human, half pig. And there’s always a famous old actor who struggles courageously against cancer in his last days. How can you struggle against cancer, anyway? Isn’t it the doctor who does all the work, and you either die or you don’t? I don’t understand what that means. Emma says such bad things about Gwyneth. I didn’t mind, before. But now she’s saying things about the husband, and we never met the man. I was all by myself and I needed to get away from the house for a little while. I didn’t know where else to go. We have all those cookies at the house. Who’s going to eat all those cookies?”

She ran out of steam. This was not the Mildred I knew. She runs City Hall like a pro. You need anything done in town, she knows who to call. She’s bright and chipper every morning, which can be downright annoying when you don’t happen to feel chipper yourself. She’s smart, articulate, and talkative.

Usually, that is. Now, grief, or something else, had turned her into a whole different person. I suspected it was something else.

I looked at Josie. I made a tippling motion with my hand and raised my eyebrows. Could Mildred be drunk, so early in the day? If anyone had an excuse to be drunk, it would be this woman. Josie shrugged, maybe.

Mort moved around the table and sat next to Mildred. He picked up Mildred’s hand and felt her pulse while watching the second hand on his watch. Mildred didn’t stop him.

“Her pulse is OK. I checked it earlier, before you came, and it hasn’t changed.”

He reached up and turned the woman’s head towards him so he could look into her eyes. She let him do that, too. “Pupils are still normal. Mildred, are you having any trouble breathing at all?”

Mildred took in a deep breath and let it out again. Then she shook her head, and looked at Josie for an explanation.

She didn’t get one, so she started talking again. “Emma and I were baking Gwyneth’s favorite cookies this morning, because we didn’t know she was dead. Emma has been so moody lately. They used to be so close, before Gwyneth left …”

Her voice trailed off, as if she couldn’t remember what she was talking about. “I think you need to go home, now,” I said. “You aren’t yourself. A little rest would do you good.”

“Well, I—”

I stood and held out my hand, offering to help Mildred up off the couch. She took my hand and stood.

“I should have brought Emma,” she said. “I’ll come back tomorrow, and bring Emma. She wanted to come today to see the baby, but she’s so upset, I didn’t think it would be good for her, and I sent her home. She needs to get some rest. But we’ll come back tomorrow.”

“Yes, that will be nice,” Josie said. “Gavril will be here tomorrow.”

“Who?”

“Gavril. Sonje’s husband.”

“You mean Gwyneth?”

“Yes, Mildred. You come back tomorrow. But now, you need to go home.”

I said, “Mildred, you shouldn’t be driving in the state you’re in. I’ll take you home.” I really didn’t want to, but what choice did I have?

I retrieved Mildred’s coat from the peg by the door and helped her put it on. I drove her home in her car, with Mort following in my little green pickup.

The wind was dying down and it was barely snowing, but there were drifts across the streets. I drove slowly to the north end of town. I pulled into Mildred’s driveway, but I didn’t open my door. She didn’t move, either.

I put my hand on her arm to get her attention. “Mildred, have you been drinking?”

She shook her head in slow motion. “Mark gave me something to make me less upset. It must have made my brain all fuzzy. I’m so sorry—I don’t think I’ve been—”

Her mind wandered off before she could finish the thought.

“What did he give you?”

“Huh?”

She looked at me like I was speaking Swahili. Mort pulled up to the curb in front of Mildred’s house and got out of the truck. I rolled down my window, and when he was close enough, I said, “Could you take Mildred into the house? Mark gave her something to relax. I’ll call Emma to come sit with her until it wears off.”

“No—call Rita Hansen. See if she can come over to sit with Mildred. Tell her we don’t know what’s going on, but it could be painkillers. She should call Louise Martin, over at the fire station. Rita might need a volunteer to bring the Naloxone from the emergency kit if Mildred starts to have trouble breathing. And don’t call Mark Price, either,” he said. “We’ll surprise him.”

He walked around the car, opened the door on Mildred’s side, and managed to get her out of the car and up the steps to her kitchen door.

I pulled out my cell phone and made the call. Rita lives next door to Mildred. It would only take a few minutes for her to get organized and come over. Her father was with her and I told her to bring Pete, too.

Mort came back out of the house. I climbed out of Mildred’s car and into the passenger side of my pickup. Mort took the wheel.

Before he started the vehicle, Mort called the sheriff and told him about the possible poisoning. When he stopped talking he listened, grunted a few times, and then hung up.

“I thought he might want to send a deputy out or have us bring her to the clinic for blood tests or something. I guess not.”

I said, “Naloxone is for an opiate OD, isn’t it? Do you think Mark tried to kill his mother?”

“I think somebody tried to kill her, but he messed up and didn’t give her the full dose. But I could be wrong.”

While he drove, I told him about the talk Josie and I had with the pastor. “I’m pretty sure he came up with John Meecham’s name because he was looking at the flier I found at the diner, but we still have to check it out, I suppose.”

He grimaced. “Great—talking to Meecham will be a whole bunch of fun. I can’t wait.”

To cheer him up, I told him the pastor thought Josie was a bad influence for me. He started laughing and he didn’t stop until we reached Mark’s house on the east side of town.

FIFTEEN

Mark Price lives in a plain, rectangular gray house, probably built in the ‘60s. There’s a lot of these little houses around town. They were well-built back in the day, but they all look exactly alike, with a big picture window in front, a garage attached to the side, and clapboard siding. There was no porch, just a cement stoop in front of the door. The back door would be inside the garage. Mark wasn’t keeping the place up, and it needed a coat of paint.

Mort held the storm door open, and I walked up the steps and stood next to him. Mark answered the door but didn’t move to let us inside. Children were talking in the living room. Then something crashed to the floor and a small child shrieked in anger. Mark winced.

“Utah, Mort. What can I do for you?”

“You can let us in, for starters,” Mort said. “It’s cold out here.”

Mark hesitated. Then he stepped back, opening the door wider, allowing us to enter. It wasn’t an invitation, just an acknowledgment of the inevitable.

“The place is a mess,” he said. “Try to find a place to sit.”

We didn’t move towards the couch. There wasn’t much point. It was covered with clothes, probably a stopping point on the way from the dryer to the closet. Plastic toys littered the floor, and his two children were fighting. Mildred told me the girl was in first grade, supposedly the smartest kid in her class. The older one, the boy, was in fourth grade. He was the best soccer player in school, according to Mildred. Mark made no move to separate the children or stop the fight. The girl seemed to be winning, based on decibel level.

“You have the kiddies all weekend?” Mort asked, raising his voice to be heard over the din.

“No. Millie’s coming for them later. Around five. What do you want, Mort? I’m not really in the mood to chat, if you want to know the truth. It hasn’t been a real good day.”

“Not a good day for your mother, either,” I said. “She came over to the museum to see the baby, but she shouldn’t have been driving, the way she was acting—”

“She said you gave her a pill,” Mort said. “She acted like she was drunk, slurring her voice, stumbling around. What did you give her? You got painkillers around here, with these children?”

“I didn’t give her a pill, you old coot. I just gave her a cup of tea. Her daughter committed suicide last night, and she was upset. I was just trying to help.”

Mort glanced at me, one eyebrow raised. Then he said, “What kind of tea, Mark? It must have been something special to make her act like that.”

Mark had a smug look on his face, and he answered. “It’s that tea that Josie O’Brien gave my wife a few months back. It was supposed to mellow her out, make her less worried about the money situation or something. She got mellow, all right—and then she filed for divorce. She got so mellow, she didn’t even bother to take the tea with her when she moved out.”

Mort looked at me for an explanation.

“Earl Grey tea,” I said. “The oil of bergamot calms the nerves, and it can lower your blood pressure a little if you’re upset. I drink it after every city council meeting. It doesn’t make you act the way Mildred was acting.”

The children were watching us now, instead of fighting. Mort said, “You don’t mind if we look in your medicine cabinet, do you, Mark?”

“Of course I mind. You’re not the sheriff, Mort Schwaab. You have no right to come into my house and scare my kids and make accusations—”

The kids were watching us the way they’d watch the morning cartoons. They weren’t the least bit scared.

I said, in my most diplomatic voice, “Mark, we’re worried about Mildred, that’s all. You see, we think someone slipped Sonje some painkillers, and that’s why she died. Then Mildred shows up, and she’s drugged, too—”

“Sure, we were worried, that’s all,” Mort said. “But you’re right. We should call the real sheriff and have him get a search warrant, like they do on TV. That’s the right way to handle things. I’ll make the call. Utah, go clear a spot on that sofa so we can sit down and wait for Wally, would you, hon?”

He had the cell phone to his ear when Mark said, in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “Can it, Mort. Go look in the bathroom if you want to. I don’t have any painkillers. Then get out of here and leave me alone.”

I headed down the hall while Mort moved clothes aside and sat on the couch. He leaned over to talk to the ‘kiddies.’ Mark left the room. I found the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet, which had all the usual medicine cabinet stuff—Band-Aids, antibacterial creme, toothbrush still in the carton, shaving cream, razor. And a plastic pill bottle. The label said it was a generic, called Zaleplon. I’d never heard of it. I pulled out my cell phone and called Josie.

When she answered, I asked her to turn on my laptop and look up the drug on the Internet. It took her less than a minute to find it and read me the side effects. Drowsiness, of course, since it’s a sleeping pill. Some of the other things on the list were lack of coordination, confusion, unusual behavior, and sleepwalking. I didn’t think Mildred was sleepwalking, but still, three out of four.

I didn’t ask her to look for the side effects of painkillers. Mort would already know, since the heroin and prescription opiate epidemic was already in full swing in the county before he retired.

When I walked back into the messy living room, Mark was coming out of the kitchen holding an open bottle of beer and a carton of Earl Grey tea.

“Hey,” he said, “are you saying somebody killed my sister?”

Mort was rising from the couch. “You’re a little slow on the uptake, Mark, but you do get there in the end.” The children were ignoring us again. The girl was on the floor playing with plastic dolls, while the boy was sitting on a chair with an electronic gizmo. It was making little pinging sounds. When Mort looked at his watch, I did the same. It was a little after noon.

I held out the bottle so both men could see it. Mort took it from me and walked up close to Mark, getting into his space. “You slip one of these pills into your mother’s tea?”