Died in the Wool (12 page)

“Get out!”

“Mommy?” Then she burst into tears.

*   *   *

The ambulance was there within five minutes.

Followed by Sheriff Mort.

Followed by Colin.

Colin entered the house as if he owned the place. “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

“I heard the call go out,” he said.

“You heard— Colin, do you have a police radio on at home?”

“Doesn't everybody?” he asked.

I shook my head as he tried to see around me into the hallway. I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Look, this is Mort's crime scene,” I said. “Don't do anything to step on his toes.”

“What?” he asked. He gazed at me with a faraway look in his eyes. Then reality set in. “Oh. Right. As mayor, I just thought I should be here. What do you think happened?”

“I don't know. It looks like some sort of seizure.”

“Is Maddie an epileptic?” he asked.

“I was just getting ready to ask the same thing,” Mort said as he walked toward us from the bedroom where I'd found Maddie.

“Not that I know of. I don't really know her that well,” I said. “She doesn't wear a bracelet or anything, does she?”

“Didn't find one. I've found nothing in her medicine cabinets that indicates she was taking any medicine for epilepsy. Or any medicine at all. I found some Aleve and some Robitussin. That was it,” Sheriff Mort said.

“Medicine cabinet, that's good,” Colin said. “Good to check there.”

Mort gave him a sideways glance and directed his conversation to me. “Tell me what you were doing here.”

I told him about stopping by to get some information from her. “I just found her like that,” I said.

Mort motioned me back to the bedroom, and Colin followed, nearly bumping into me. “Be careful where you step. What do you see here?” Mort asked.

“Well, she obviously went for the phone,” I said.

The bed was made, and on it, I assumed, was one of Glory Kendall's quilts. It was an unfinished project, pin-basted to the batting but not yet quilted. Maddie had mentioned she was getting the quilts together to give to me for the display. There was a pile of dirty laundry in the corner of the room and a still-life painting on the wall; the nightstand held a glass of water, some straight pins, a hairbrush, and a telephone. “I don't know what you want me to see,” I said.

“If it was a real seizure, she wouldn't have had time to react to get to the phone. Some epileptics, if they've been epileptics for a long time, can sometimes tell when a seizure is about to come on. But for a seizure to just hit a person who's never had one—she honestly wouldn't have been able to get to the phone.”

“Maybe she knocked it off the hook accidentally,” Colin said. “In the violence of the seizure.”

“I'm thinking that's more plausible,” Mort said.

“If it's not epilepsy, what are you suggesting?” I asked.

“Poison,” Colin said.

“It's too early to tell—and she could have had a seizure—but my gut instinct is with Colin on this one. Poison,” Mort said.

“What?” I said. The creepiest feeling overcame me. “But who? And why?”

Then my eyes grew wide. Mort and Colin both looked at me. “What?” Mort said.

“Maddie told me that somebody was in her house last night,” I said. “Sheriff, you need to dust the sliding glass door in the kitchen for prints and … and … check the garden for shoe prints. Especially by the elephant ears and Graham Thomas.”

“The what?” he asked.

I went to Maddie's bookshelf in the living room and chose a book on roses. I checked the glossary for Graham Thomas and then flipped to the page. “A rosebush that looks like this,” I said.

“All right,” Mort said. “I've already called the hospital and the ambulance, telling them I suspect poison. Hopefully, you got here in time and they can give her an antidote.”

“What kind of poison do you think it was?” I asked.

“Strychnine,” Colin said.

“Exactly,” Mort said. “It's the only kind of poison I know of that makes the back arch like that. Which is why I think it was poison instead of a medical condition. She wasn't having a seizure when I saw her. She was locked in this position.”

“Strychnine?” I said. My voice sounded hollow, and my fingers tingled.

“It's a really nasty way to die,” Mort said.

“Die? She's gonna die?” I asked.

“Not necessarily. I think you got here just as it happened,” Mort said. “Plus, I don't know how big of a dose she got. It takes less than seven or eight drops to kill you, but there's a chance … She might live.”

“Might?” I asked.

“Who would do such a thing?” Sheriff Mort said.

Colin inclined his head as though willing me to read his thoughts. Evidently it worked. “No, not Eleanore,” I said.

“Eleanore?” Mort asked.

“Eleanore Murdoch,” I said. “She and Maddie have been arguing over this stupid rose show, but honestly, Eleanore wouldn't hurt a fly.”

“Well, it wasn't a fly that was poisoned,” Sheriff Mort said. “It was a woman.”

Ten

The next day, after lunch, I was at the Gaheimer House helping Geena with the Kendall quilts when the sheriff came by to see me. Mort entered the house with his hat in his hand. There wasn't a line or a crease anywhere on his uniform. It was almost as if he hadn't sat down since he'd gotten dressed. His violet eyes looked worried. “Torie, I, uh…”

“What?” I asked. “How's Maddie?”

“She made it through the night. She's unconscious right now. They're keeping her that way. I'm pretty sure she's going to make it. Evidently, she didn't get enough of the poison to kill her. I've no idea when she'll be able to speak and talk with me, though.”

“Oh, thank God,” I said. “Was it strychnine?”

“Yes,” he said. “Absorbed through the skin. Not ingested.”

“Oh,” I said, because, well, I wasn't sure what else to say to that.

“The prints on the sliding glass door were Eleanore Murdoch's,” he said. “We're checking the shoe prints in the garden with all of the shoes in her closet.”

I was speechless. I felt for the chair behind me as my mouth went dry. I never actually sat down, though. That would have taken far too much concentration.

“She's being arrested as we speak,” he said. “Deputy Miller is doing the deed.”

“I don't believe this,” I said. “Eleanore is arrogant, flighty, petty—and, yeah, sometimes she has a bit of a mean streak, but attempted murder? My God, Mort, I don't think Eleanore could figure out how to get her hands on strychnine! She's not the sharpest tack in the box.”

“Well, she's got motive and her prints are on the back door and you said yourself that Maddie had told you somebody had been in her house the night before,” he said.

“Motive?” I shrieked. “What
motive
?”

“The rose show,” he said. “Something about rose selections. The whole town is talking about it.”

I laughed. “Oh, that is preposterous,” I said. “If Eleanore would try to kill Maddie over a rose, she would have killed me a long time ago. We've butted heads on so many issues, it's not funny. It's also no secret. I mean, honestly, Mort. She'd have more motivation to kill me than she would Maddie, and I'm still here.”

Colin came in the door at that moment, gazed around the room, found Mort and me, and said, “You're arresting Eleanore.”

“Yes,” Mort said.

“Damn,” Colin said. “I've always wanted to arrest that woman.”

“It doesn't make sense,” I said. “If Eleanore broke into Maddie's house to kill her, don't you think she would have worn gloves?” I said.

“Not necessarily. Maybe it didn't occur to her to wear gloves because she never thought the death would be investigated as a homicide,” he said.

“Well, if she's stupid enough to leave prints everywhere, I don't think she'd be smart enough to kill Maddie,” I said. I folded my arms as if there were nothing else to say.

“Nevertheless, Torie, I've got to make the arrest,” he said.

My cell phone rang then. It was my mother. “Eleanore Murdoch's been arrested.”

“I know,” I said. “Mort is here now telling me. Let me call you back.” I hung up. “There has to be something we're not seeing,” I said to the guys. “You know, Maddie was supposed to give me information last night on the Kendall suicides.”

“Uh-oh,” Colin said.

Mort and I glared at him.

“This is the way it always starts,” Colin said. “She finds some little connection, some little bitty thread to link today to back then, and then she won't let you rest until she builds a whole damn bridge.”

“Do you mind?” I said to Colin. “Who let you in, anyway?”

“I don't understand what the century-old Kendall suicides have to do with anything,” Mort said.

“Maybe nothing. I just find it strange that she'd tell me to come see her, that she had information, and then she ends up poisoned. A big coincidence,” I said.

“Coincidences do happen,” Mort said.

“Try telling her that,” Colin said. “Just you try to tell her that.”

“Colin, please go home. Or go chase a tiny ball around with a big stick,” I said.

“Golf course is closed for some reason. A drainage issue,” he said.

“That's not my problem,” I said.

Just then Helen Wickland came in the front door, out of breath and panting. “They've just arrested Eleanore Murdoch,” she said. I think she'd run all the way from the Murdoch Inn to the Gaheimer House to tell me the news.

“We know,” all three of us said simultaneously.

“She's asking for you, Torie,” Helen said.

I glanced at the sheriff. “Are you taking her to Wisteria?”

He nodded.

“All right. Helen, will you go with me?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “I'll even drive. Maybe I'll get to see Eleanore in a prison uniform. That would make my day.”

Helen and I left Mort and Colin to twiddle their thumbs. Helen nodded to her car across the street and held up her keys. Helen loves to drive her little red Mini Cooper. In a town where you don't really need to drive anywhere, Helen would drive from her garage to the mailbox just for the sake of driving. On the drive to Wisteria we broke most of the speed limits all the way there. Except for when we approached the stray cow in the middle of the Outer Road, I don't think Helen braked at all.

“You know there's no love lost between me and Eleanore,” Helen said.

“I know,” I said, gripping the oh-shit bar as she took a turn at fifty.

“But there is no way that woman tried to kill Maddie,” she said. “Besides, if she had tried to kill her, it would have been big and messy and out there. Poison is too subtle for Eleanore.”

“I agree.”

Helen took another turn on two wheels. “Eleanore would have made a production out of it.”

“Yes, I agree again.”

“Who would have a reason to want Maddie dead?” Helen said, shifting gears. “I can't think of anybody.”

“I can't either, but then I don't know her all that well. Maybe it's a disgruntled lover that we know nothing about,” I said. “It could be anybody for any number of reasons.”

Helen whipped her car around into a parking space in front of the jail and stopped it on a dime, just an inch from the curb. She smiled at me. “Ever since I saw
Bourne Identity
I've wanted to do that,” she said.

“I'm happy for you, Helen,” I said. I straightened my hair and my shirt.

“What are you doing?”

“Just making sure I didn't lose anything on the ride over here.”

She laughed at me, and then we went inside. “Hi, Ollie,” I said as I approached the front desk. “I'm here to see Eleanore. They just brought her in.”

“She's not allowed any visitors, you know that,” he said.

“But she's asking for me.”

“Are you her lawyer?”

“No,” I said. I wondered whether if I'd said yes, I'd have had to prove it.

“Then you can't see her.”

“When can I see her? You can't keep visitors from her forever.”

“It could be hours,” he said.

“I'll wait.”

Helen agreed to come back and pick me up, since she'd left her store completely unmanned. My cell phone rang no fewer than thirteen times while I waited to see Eleanore. I knew that Mort could let me see her, if he wanted to, but I wasn't going to make a scene. I'd be a good girl and wait patiently.

After five hours, I was ready to shake off all that good-girl crap I'd been feeding myself earlier and raise holy hell. Just as I stood to go ask to see Mort, my cell phone rang again. It was my house, which meant it was either Rachel calling to tell me some new exciting thing about the play, or it was Mary wanting something.

“Mom,” Mary said.

“What?”

“What's for dinner?”

“What's for dinner?” I repeated. “Look, Mary, I don't have a clue what's for dinner. It's the least of my worries right now.”

“But I'm hungry.”

“So eat something.”

“But I want dinner,” she said.

“Mary, eat something. You'll get dinner.”

“What are we having?” she asked.

“If you ask me one more time, I'm going to feed you pig's feet,” I said.

“No, I'm being serious, Mom,” she said.

“Like I'm not?” I yelled.

“Just tell me what's for dinner.”

I hung up on her.

Mort came out of a door and motioned me toward him. “She's asking for you, so I'm going to let you speak to her,” he said.

“All right,” I said.