Let There Be Suspects (26 page)

The first pocket held the sort of things I always leave in a suitcase for the next trip. Packets of tissues, a container of Tylenol and some cough drops, some extra underwear, an old issue of
InStyle.
I threw everything away and unzipped the second pocket, which appeared to be empty. I swept my hand through it to be sure there was nothing hiding in the corners. Surprised, I felt a bump, and when I opened the flap wider and peered inside, I saw a zipper that opened to an inside pouch. It wasn’t exactly a secret pocket, but close enough. I unzipped it and reached inside.

The bump was a notebook, about five by seven inches, bound with tape and thread like the composition books I used in high school for serious essays. Since I’m basically an optimist, my first thought was that I’d discovered a diary, and with it, perhaps, the key to Sid’s freedom. I opened the notebook and leafed through the pages, not sure at first what I was reading. Then as I started again and read more closely, I understood.

Sid wouldn’t be calling the airlines tonight, but I still hoped that very soon she would be winging her way back to Atlanta.

16

Talking to Ed on Saturday nights is like talking to an astronaut as he’s suiting up to orbit the earth. I’ve learned to wait until Sunday services have ended before I broach anything more important than “I took your blue suit to the cleaners so you’ll have to wear the black one.” I wanted to tell him what I’d found, but instead I decided to call Carol Ann Riley in Kentucky and ask her a few more questions. We’d left on a cordial enough note. I hadn’t made a citizen’s arrest.

I tried twice before I got her, marching outside in the interval to shout “Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” until I was hoarse. By then it was nearly ten, and everyone had gone to bed except Sid and Junie, who were watching the Bette Davis classic
Dark Victory
, and sniffing audibly. I used the telephone in the kitchen and kept my voice down—although they were both so entranced I could have taken the phone to the sofa and carried on my conversation right between them.

I greeted Carol Ann like an old friend, and she was polite. This is the wonderful thing about people from Kentucky. They are politer to strangers than the national average and less likely to hold little things against you—like suspecting them of murder. I didn’t push that theory far, though, and knew better than to engage in chitchat. Carol Ann has lived in other places, too. There’s no telling what she’s learned.

“I’m going to get right down to business,” I said, “because it’s late and I’m sure you’ve had a long day. I have reason to believe Ginger was using and maybe selling drugs, and I wonder if you can confirm it. Remember, she’s gone now and you can’t hurt her by telling the truth. And she can’t retaliate.”

She didn’t hesitate. “That was one of the reasons I left.”

I hoisted myself up to the counter and leaned against a cabinet, something I tell my girls not to do. “You didn’t mention this when we were having coffee.”

“I know. I considered it. But I didn’t want to speak ill of the dead. Well, any more ill than I already did that day.”

I guess Kentucky kindness is extended to the recently murdered, too. Now, however, Carol Ann made up for lost time.

“It all started after her accident. She probably
was
in pain. She certainly complained enough. She’d try one doctor, then she’d try another. I just figured she couldn’t find the right help and was shopping around. Then I started to notice she was seeing more than one doctor at a time. She’d have an appointment with this one, then a few days later with that one. The next week there would be a new one.”

“Not just different types of specialists?”

“Mostly? No. I didn’t keep her calendar. She did that herself, but she would forget and leave it lying open. So I had a pretty good idea.”

“Do you think she behaved like somebody on drugs?”

“Sometimes she would fall asleep in the middle of a sentence, or wobble when she walked. We were working on the cookbook, and we would finish a recipe, and by the next morning she would forget we had even started it. But not all the time. In fact not even most of the time.”

“Was she with Kas Novy when you worked for her?”

“So you know about him?”

“I know he’s in jail on drug charges. Did you?”

“I saw something in the Cincinnati paper, but it was no surprise. Charming? With that accent and those fakey manners? But you couldn’t trust Kas as far as you could drive a semi on a nickel’s worth of gas. He gave me the creeps.”

“So you were working for Ginger when she got involved with him?”

“Yes, and I was still with her when they moved into that place on the river. Ginger was better for a while, like she was happy for a change and didn’t need to be angry at everybody in the room. I almost liked working for her. Then they started fighting, and I can tell you things went straight to hell after that.”

“I’m just asking for an opinion here. But do you think Kas Novy had anything to do with Ginger being on drugs?”

“Being on drugs? No. I think that started with the accident.” I could almost hear her thinking. “But he was involved in it all right.”

“Was she getting drugs and giving them to him to sell?”

“How did you know that?”

“You have proof?”

“Not a bit. But I’d hear snatches of their fights. They were always fighting about money. They bought that condo—”

“Together? Both names on the title?”

“No, and that was funny. Only Ginger’s name was on the title, although I think most of the money that went into it was his. It was something about his taxes and not wanting to list it as an asset, like maybe he was afraid the IRS would wonder where he got the money to buy it. I never got all the details.”

“He must have been madly in love with her to trust her that way.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure. He used to make a lot of jokes about all the friends he had and how nobody ever double-crossed him. He’d say that like it was funny, but she never laughed.”

“Do you think she was getting drugs for her pain and letting him sell them at the club as a way to pay her share of the expenses?”

“Where else was the money coming from? Oh, I think he supported her at first, but he was the kind of man who expected a lot in return. A man with a wandering eye, if you want the truth. In my opinion, Kas started to get tired of Ginger right after they moved in together. So he started asking for more than her warm body in bed. She could have moved out and let him sell the condo, but she liked living there. So I guess she made her choice.”

I thanked her and hung up.

I was still sitting on the counter when Ed came downstairs. “You look pretty silly,” he said. “Don’t let the kids catch you up there.”

“This is what mothers do to get even. I can’t track in mud or have a food fight with myself, because I’m the one who has to clean it up.”

“How much longer is the movie?” He hiked his thumb toward the den.

“Most of an hour.”

“The girls are asleep, and after I make one more poignant plea for Moonpie to come home, we could go to bed.”

“You finished your sermon?”

“Uh huh.”

“The order of service, the readings, the prayers, what to say in social hour when Fern asks if my sister is going to be arrested?”

“I’m going to say that my wife is working on it, and if history is any clue, she’ll nearly get herself killed trying to solve the case.”

I slid to the floor. “That will do nicely. Go call Moonpie and I’ll slip into something warm and toasty.”

He raised a brow.

“Our bed,” I said. Then I kissed him.

 
Sundays are predictable. Church, social hour, Ed staying afterwards to meet with prospective brides and grooms, to do counseling or meeting with newcomers. Dinner when he finally gets home, then a quiet afternoon when the girls either visit friends or have them here. Junie and Sid went through the motions with us, although Sid didn’t attend church. She was too embarrassed and way too old for me to insist. Junie, resplendent in a hat with an entire little town circling the brim and the church steeple rising from the crown, regaled the congregation’s needleworkers with tales of her trip to the fabric shop.

Late in the afternoon Ed closed himself up in his study to take a phone call. I was alone in the living room when he emerged.

“You’re going to love this,” he said.

“I can hardly wait.”

“Ida Bere has asked permission to use the social hall on Wednesday night for a meeting to discuss the illegal sale of prescription drugs on our city streets. Of course we know who her focus will be.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That she can as long as she pays the customary rental fee. She thought since some of the people organizing it were church members, she could have it for free.”

“Would you charge for a group you agreed with?”

“It’s policy.” He flopped down beside me. “They have a right to meet. And besides, I don’t have enough information to know if this is hysteria or grounded in reality.”

“I wanted to talk to you about Peter Schaefer.”

“It’ll be more fun talking to you than it was to her.”

I wasn’t so sure. I told him about running into Peter on the sidewalk and chatting with him as he worked on his pond. “But that’s not all,” I said, before he could take me to task for using Peter to get information. “Remember that suitcase I took home from Ginger’s hotel? I found something I want you to see. You’ll stay right there?”

“I’ll spend the time finding a polite way to tell you to leave people in the church out of your search for Ginger’s killer.”

“He’s not a member yet.” I took off before he could answer.

I returned with the notebook and settled beside him. “This was zipped into a pocket in the front. I nearly didn’t find it. Not hidden, exactly, but not easy to spot, either.”

I opened the notebook and handed it to him. “Look at it, then I’ll tell you what it is.”

He examined the pages, turning them slowly. “So what is it?”

“It’s a medication log. That column on the left is the time a drug was administered. The number next to it? PL? I think that’s pain level. The ratings go from 1 to 10. Next to that”—I pointed—“I’m guessing the letters are a code for the medication taken. ‘O,’ maybe in this case for Oxy-Contin or something else. Beside that? That’s the number of pills. Then beside that is the pain level after an hour. See this note at the top that says one hour?” I pointed to that, too. “And finally, here’s a place to put side effects, which was the real clue to what I was looking at. See, here it says ‘dizziness,’ and here it says ‘headache.’”

“How did you figure this out?”

“When I talked to Peter, he mentioned the importance of record keeping. He said he required his patients to document everything, every symptom, responses, what works, what doesn’t.”

Ed leafed through again, then he closed it. “What are you telling me?”

“The morning before Ginger died, Vel saw her standing on a sidewalk in town. She said Ginger was looking around like she thought someone might be following her. So, of course, Vel followed her, but she lost her.”

“And?”

“And that was when Vel found the Italian grocery store she fell in love with. Or at least she said it was the
store
she loved.”

“Aggie . . .”

“Ed, the store is just a block from Peter Schaefer’s office. I think Ginger was on her way to see him.”

“You think this record is for him?”

“I’m going to find out. Unfortunately it’s not dated, but it has days of the week, and you can see it’s only a few pages. I’ve got good reasons to think Ginger was seeing a lot of different doctors and getting prescriptions for pain meds. Then she was selling them. There’s a big market. You can put yourself through college doing this.”

“Maybe she was seeing somebody at home and making notes to take back.”

“Yes, but don’t you get it? We’ve wondered all along why Ginger came to this reunion. Not because she wanted to catch up with our lives. And not even to make trouble in the family. Sid thought Ginger wanted to get her hands on the money Junie made from her quilt, but that was such a long shot. I think Ginger checked around before she said yes and discovered that we have a resident pain specialist here, a man who speaks out for the right to give large doses of opioids when someone really needs them. She probably made an appointment the moment she realized what an opportunity this could be, and then she told Junie she would come.”

“You’re going to accuse Peter of giving Ginger drugs? A man who wants to join our church?”

“No. I want to ask him if Ginger was his patient, that’s all.”

“And what does this have to do with her murder?”

“What if he was prescribing large amounts of a drug with high street value? And what if she was carrying those meds the night she was killed? Maybe somebody saw her fill the prescription or even watched her come out of his office and figured there was a good chance she had drugs with her. Maybe she resisted.”

“Then tell Roussos. Have him do the asking.”

I sat back. “He doesn’t listen to me. I talk to him and he nods like I’m some kind of looney tune. Then he ignores me.”

“You don’t know that. He likes you. He may even admire you. He just can’t tell you what he’s doing on his end. He can’t compromise his investigation, and you can’t be Watson to his Holmes.”

“I just want to talk to Peter again. If he tells me Ginger had been to see him, then I will tell Roussos. Maybe that’ll be enough information to interest him.”

“What about patient confidentiality?”

“She’s dead!”

He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the back of the sofa. Sundays are hard on Ed, and so am I.

I tried to make it more palatable. “You can come with me tomorrow, if you like. It’s your day off.”