Morning Glory Circle (25 page)

Ava slowly pushed her cart through the aisles, picking out anything she fancied. Since she’d received notice of Theo’s generous bequest she had been allowing herself to spend a little more freely than she would have before. It may take a year for the will to go through probate, Sean had told her, but after that she would have generous quarterly payments to count on and she was looking forward to it. It felt to Ava that she had been frugal and gone without her entire life, and she was ready to enjoy herself a little more.

Out of the corner of her eye, she was startled by a flash of red hair. She turned quickly and saw that it was only the curly red hair of a baby being carried by an older woman who Ava assumed was its grandmother. Ava was struck by how much the child looked like Timmy at that age, and pushed her cart over to the produce section as if magnetized, to where the woman stood picking through the bananas.

The baby, who could not yet be a year old, had a snotty nose and red eyes, and didn’t look as if it felt well. The child was fussing a little and the old woman shushed it. As she got closer Ava was shocked by the resemblance of this child to her Timmy. In a dazed, odd moment, Ava felt as if this baby actually was Timmy, and that this woman had kidnapped him. A sudden panic seized her, her heart was pounding in her chest, and she felt compelled to speak.

“What a beautiful baby,” Ava said, and smiled kindly as she approached.

The old woman was startled. She quickly turned the baby’s face away and covered it with the grimy blanket she had wrapped around it. She said something that sounded as if it was in another language and waved Ava off.

“Are you visiting someone in Rose Hill?” Ava persisted.

The older woman abandoned her grocery basket and hurried to the front of the store. Ava left her cart with her purse in it and ran after the woman. As she neared the checkout counter, just as the woman pushed out the front door, Ava tripped over the edge of a display and fell face first onto the floor, spraining her wrist as she attempted to break her own fall. IGA owner Matt Delvecchio vaulted over a stack of soda cases to be the first one to assist her. As soon as Ava got to her feet she ran outside, but the woman with the baby was gone.

Holding her wrist, with Matt right behind her, Ava ran to the street corner and looked in every direction.

“She couldn’t just disappear,” Ava said.

“Who are you talking about?” Matt asked her.

“That old woman with the baby.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t see anyone.”

Ava went back inside the store, where Matt gave her a bag of frozen peas to hold on her wrist, and retrieved her cart and purse.

“Can I just put these on your account and deliver them?” he offered.

Ava, still feeling dazed, thanked him as he hung her handbag over her shoulder.

“You should get that wrist looked at,” he said as she left.

Ava stood outside, taking deep breaths of cold air, holding the bag of peas on her painful wrist, and wondered if she was finally cracking up. She hadn’t had much sleep the night before, so maybe she was hallucinating. As soon as the street was clear of traffic, she crossed over to the bookstore, looking for Maggie, but Benjamin said she’d gone out with Hannah. Ava left a message for her and then left the bookstore.

Ava’s wrist ached and was beginning to swell. She was embarrassed about her behavior in the grocery store, and hoped no one who saw it would add that to the gossip about her already circulating around town. She considered calling Patrick but decided not to. It wasn’t fair to keep dragging him into her messy life, and she was determined to keep her distance.

“You look lost, Ava,” Delia Fitzpatrick said, encountering the young woman as she walked out of the bank.

“I think I may have lost my mind,” Ava said.

“You want to talk about it?”

“Do you have a minute?”

“For you, my dear, I always have time.”

Back in the kitchen at the Rose Hill Bed and Breakfast, Delia expertly wrapped Ava’s wrist in an elastic bandage.

“I think it’s just sprained and not broken,” Delia said, “but sometimes sprains hurt just as badly. You should keep an ice pack on it, alternating thirty minutes on and thirty off, and keep it elevated. Take something for the pain if it gets bad.”

“I forgot you used to be a nurse,” Ava said.

“You never forget basic first aid,” Delia said. “It came in handy when all the kids were younger. Someone was always falling off a bike or slamming a finger in a car door.”

Ava told her about the old woman and the baby in the store.

“Now that I’m thinking back, it seems more like something I imagined,” Ava said. “But at the time it really seemed to me that the woman had kidnapped Timmy, who was somehow this baby.”

“You’ve been under way too much strain,” Delia said. “Maggie filled me in on what’s been going on. It’s no wonder you’re on edge.”

Ava blinked back some tears, and Delia busied herself making them some tea.

“There’s something I haven’t told anyone,” Ava said. “I’ve kept it a secret for so long it feels like a cancer inside me.”

“You know I can keep a confidence,” Delia said. “I won’t judge you.”

“I know,” Ava said. “You’ve never let me down.”

“It probably isn’t as bad as you’ve made it in your own mind,” Delia said. “Maybe it won’t seem so large a burden after you share it with someone.”

“No, it’s bad.” Ava said. “It’s about Theo.”

Delia hugged Ava and looked at her with deep sympathy.

“I thought it might be.”

Someone was pounding on Scott’s front door, but he thought it was part of the dream he was having. In his dream, Gabe was pounding on the door of the house he used to share with Maggie, up Possum Holler. The house was on fire, and although Scott knew that Maggie had got out safely, Gabe thought she was still inside. Scott watched Gabe break down the door and rush inside the burning building, but did nothing to stop him. The house began to collapse, and Scott knew Gabe would be killed, but he just stood by and watched. Scott woke up in a cold sweat, and then realized the pounding was taking place in his waking life. It was his deputy Frank at the front door.

“Eldridge College President Newton Moseby committed suicide in his room at the inn,” he said. “He left a letter confessing to Margie’s murder.”

Scott hurriedly dressed and went with Frank in the cruiser to the Eldridge Inn. The paramedics were still there, along with an ambulance and the fire station rescue vehicle. Connie, the innkeeper, was standing on the front porch, sobbing hysterically, clinging to Lily Crawford. Connie tried to talk to Scott, but she was crying so hard she was incoherent. Scott thought she might be having a nervous breakdown.

“Take her to the kitchen,” Scott told Lily, “and call Doc Machalvie. She may need a shot of something to calm down.”

Scott made his way through the phalanx of rescue workers to the top of the interior stairs, where Malcolm Behr, the fire chief, stood in the hallway outside one of the rooms. Malcolm was a tall, powerfully built, very hairy man, whom most people just referred to as “Bear.”

He shook a baggy with an empty pill bottle in it at Scott.

“Overdose,” he said. “Looks like he did it last night.”

Scott dreaded looking at the scene, but knew he had to. He took a deep breath and went in the room with Malcolm close behind. The president of Eldridge College lay on the bed, with a sheet drawn up over his body and face. One arm was uncovered, extending out beyond the bed, the other lay close at his side.

Malcolm pointed to a laptop computer open on the desk. He tapped the touch pad with the end of his pen and the screen lit up, revealing what read like a confessional suicide note.

Scott read out loud, “I can’t stand the guilt so I am ending my life. Tell my wife and daughter I love them very much and I am sorry for what I have done.”

“That’s a suicide note, plain enough,” Scott said.

“If this was one of those murder mysteries,” Malcolm said, “we’d suspect someone typed that after they killed him.”

“We still might. He doesn’t say what it is he feels guilty about, though.”

“Here,” Malcolm said. “Look at this.”

Malcolm pointed to a stack of photos in Newton’s open briefcase, sitting on the nearby dressing table. The photos were very much like the ones locked up in Scott’s safe at the station. There was a piece of paper under them, on which was typed, “$100K in a grocery bag in the barrel behind the tire store at midnight Monday or your crimes will be revealed.”

“That barrel is right up the hill from where Margie’s body was found. It’s at the base of the stairs in the alley just beyond the old tire store,” Malcolm said. “That’s where your guys found the cloth they think has chloroform on it.”

“But is he saying he’s sorry for killing Margie or just for having those photos?”

“Both, I’d wager.”

“It’s not completely clear to me that he is saying he killed Margie,” Scott said.

“Well, she blackmailed him and now she’s dead, and he’s saying he’s sorry, and he’s dead.”

“I’m just not sure yet,” Scott said. “I need to think this through.”

“It’s an awfully tidy-looking crime scene,” Malcolm said. “If it was murder surely there’d be signs of a struggle.”

“You sure you didn’t want to be a policeman instead of a fireman, Malcolm?”

“I read too many murder mysteries, I know,” Malcolm said. “It makes me suspicious of everything and everyone. Drives my wife crazy.”

“Anyone call his wife yet?”

“I leave that privilege to you,” Malcolm said. “I’m going to take my boys and go.”

“Thanks,” Scott said.

Scott went downstairs and found Doc Machalvie in the sunroom behind the kitchen, talking to Connie in a calm, soothing tone while he gave her an injection. Scott waited until Connie was resting comfortably on a chaise with Lily nearby, and then gestured to Doc he’d like a word.

He showed Doc the pill bottle in the plastic baggy.

“Do you know anything about these?” he asked.

Doc put on his reading glasses and read the label.

“Anti-anxiety medication,” he said. “I don’t recognize the doctor’s name.”

“How many would he need to overdose?”

“With alcohol, two or three, I’d guess. Without alcohol, I’d say probably twice that many. It would depend on what tolerance he had developed. May I see him?”

Scott led the doctor up the stairs to the room, where Doc put on some latex gloves and pulled back the sheet. Scott instinctively turned his head away, and then forced himself to turn back and look.

“Hmmm,” Doc said.

“What’s that mean?” Scott asked.

“I know this is hard for you to do, son, but look closely at this.”

The doctor lifted up the corpse’s eyelid to show Scott a red web of broken blood vessels in the eye underneath.

“Is that unusual?” Scott asked him.

“It’s unusual in a narcotic overdose,” Doc said, “unless there was violent vomiting, which there’s no evidence of here. But it’s very normal in someone who’s been smothered to death.”

Scott felt a chill run up his spine.

“You’re sure about that,” Scott said.

“The coroner will be able to verify it,” Doc said, “but it looks very much like someone may have fed him an overdose and then helped him along. Of course, that’s just my opinion.”

“Jesus,” Scott said.

“I am not at liberty to say where and when, but I’ve seen something like this before.”

“I understand,” Scott said. “You can’t divulge medical information.”

“Nothing was proved, you see,” Doc said, looking at Scott meaningfully.

“I get it,” Scott said.

“I wonder if you do,” Doc said, but Scott was no longer listening.

He was debating internally whether to call Sarah or not, but Sarah saved him the trouble by showing up.

“You want me in on this?” she asked from the doorway.

Scott asked Doc Machalvie to tell Sarah what he had told him. Sarah listened intently and watched as Doc repeated his demonstration with the eyelids, and then looked at Scott.

“I think he’s right,” she said, “and that means this is now a county case. Do you agree?

Scott felt demoted but resigned.

“By all means,” he said. “The most important thing is we find out who did this.”

“Where’s the innkeeper?” she asked.

“I just sedated her,” Doc said.

“Are there any other suspects or witnesses you’ve put safely to sleep somewhere?” Sarah asked Scott.

Scott felt himself flush with embarrassment.

“She was hysterical and making herself ill.”

“Maybe because she killed him,” Sarah said.

“Well, at least she can’t get away now,” Doc Machalvie told her. “You can handcuff her to the wicker settee and put armed guards all around her.”

Sarah didn’t see the humor in the situation. She took out her cell phone, called the county dispatcher, and asked to have her team assembled.