Prodigal Son (26 page)

“Do you think she’s in love with him?” Jack asked. A love triangle was certainly another motive. Peter had shown no sign that he was in love with Maggie when he had seen Jack the day before. But Jack assumed Peter was smart enough to conceal whatever he felt, and Michael looked dismayed as he made accusations about his brother.

“Maybe she’s in love with Peter. I’m not a very exciting person,” Michael smiled shyly, “and he’s always been the handsome one. They had a fling in high school. Sometimes women go back to guys like that years later, to put a little excitement in their lives, and Maggie has a lot of time on her hands. She spends hours on the Internet, and I’ve been thinking. Maybe they’ve been e-mailing for a long time, and set this up. Maybe she broke up his marriage.” He was implicating his wife and brother, but he looked like he sincerely believed it was possible and the idea upset him. “And Bill’s always been just like my brother. The bad seed. I tried to fight it and straighten him out. I never could. Bill’s been a liar all his life, just like Peter.” Jack nodded. He knew that Michael had had trouble with his son for years, and was sad but relieved when he left, because he constantly upset the family, and he and Michael were eternally engaged in battle. He had said it to Jack many times.

“I hope we get enough evidence to clear you,” Jack said sincerely. “I don’t want you in here.” He smiled sadly. “I want to send you home where you belong.” He believed that Michael was the victim of a sinister plot, and Jack was determined to get to the truth. Maybe Michael’s brother and son had conspired against him. He still believed Michael to be as much the victim here as Maggie. He was an
innocent man. And Jack didn’t want him to go to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

“You won’t find the evidence to convict me. It just isn’t there,” Michael assured him. Jack was glad to hear it, and he believed him. He was sure Michael was telling the truth and that he couldn’t understand what had happened any more than Jack could. Knowing Michael as he did, the two bottles of the poison and the toxicology report just made no sense.

“You know, I read up on that paraquat stuff on the Internet last night,” Jack volunteered. “It said that it’s used in underdeveloped countries for suicides, because it’s cheap. Do you think Maggie might have been trying to do herself in?” Jack had thought of it the night before. She was a desperately sick woman, and led a miserable life as a shut-in. Maybe she was just tired of it, and wanted out. And maybe inadvertently, she was taking Michael down with her. And maybe Peter had taken advantage of her. Everyone knew he was broke. He needed Maggie’s money far more than Michael. Jack had Googled him too.

“It’s possible,” Michael admitted reluctantly. “She’s dying and she knows the Parkinson’s will get her sooner or later. Maybe she wants to end her life, and she wouldn’t say that to me, because she knows how hard I fight to extend it.” And then, as though confiding a deep secret, “She’s had psychiatric problems for years, ever since the accident. It’s understandable, given her life and what she has to look forward to. I try not to think about it, but she’s probably suicidal. She may have been poisoning herself without my knowledge.” It sounded like a viable explanation to the chief of police and far more credible than Michael poisoning her, which was ridiculous and truly impossible to believe. But then why weren’t her fingerprints on the
two bottles of poison instead of his? Or maybe his brother had framed him. Jack was more than willing to believe that too. He was willing to believe anything, but not Michael trying to murder his wife. And he looked like an innocent man as he sat there, talking to his friend. Jack Nelson was proud that he had a nose for liars and criminals, and Michael McDowell wasn’t either one. He was dead sure.

“You’d better get yourself a lawyer,” he reminded Michael grimly.

“I don’t even know who to call,” Michael said glumly. He’d been thinking about it all morning. Jack gave him the names of lawyers in Northampton, Hadley, and Springfield, and Michael thanked him.

“Take it easy,” Jack said, touching his shoulder again. “We’ll get you out of here, and get to the bottom of this yet. I promise.” It was a mystery Jack just couldn’t fathom.

“Thanks, Jack,” Michael said gratefully as the chief of police let himself out of the cell. He lay down on his bunk after that and went to sleep. He was feeling reassured by the chief’s visit. None of the police in the station believed he was guilty. They had been talking about it since the night before. He took care of them, their families, their parents. A guy like Dr. Mike didn’t go around killing people, and surely not his sick wife. They all believed it was a mistake, or that he had been framed, and so did their chief. He was certain of it. Given the evidence, Jack had had to arrest him, but he was positive that Michael was innocent.

Peter and Bill went to the station that morning to be fingerprinted and to meet with Jack before they went to the hospital to see Maggie. They had agreed to do so to cooperate with the investigation.
They were wiping their hands clean when the chief asked them to come into his office. He had just left Michael in his cell, and he questioned Peter and Bill about their relationships with Michael. Both readily admitted that they had been difficult, although Peter said that he and his brother had grown close in the past several months and had spent a considerable amount of time together.

“And did he ever give you the impression that he was unhappy with his wife, or tired of taking care of her?” the chief asked him pointedly, and Peter shook his head.

“No, he didn’t. He always seemed very devoted to her, which is why I didn’t believe this at first either. I thought my nephew was crazy.” He smiled apologetically at Bill.

“Are you in love with her?” Jack asked Peter directly then in a stern voice.

“With Maggie?” Peter looked startled. “Of course not. She’s Michael’s wife. I love her like a sister, I always have.”

“What’s your own marital status right now?”

“I’m in the process of divorce,” Peter said with a stony look, wondering if he was becoming a suspect. It sounded like the chief was trying to find a motive, but he didn’t have one, except that he didn’t have any money and had lost all of his, and Maggie had inherited ten million dollars two years before when she sold her father’s mill, so maybe it did look to the police like he had a motive.

“How long have you and Maggie e-mailed each other?” the chief asked harshly. Peter looked startled. “We never have.”

“Employed?” the chief asked him. He already knew the answer from what he’d read on Google, but he wanted to hear what Peter would say.

“Not at the moment. I’m looking for a job. My firm folded in the
market crash last October.” The chief nodded and didn’t say more. And then Peter gingerly brought up another subject he wanted to bring to the chief’s attention. He had discussed it with his nephew before they came in. “A man showed up at my house recently, sent there by Walt Peterson. He claimed that my brother had influenced his father into leaving him, Michael, all his money. He suggested that he might even have killed him, or euthanized him. I think it’s worth looking into,” Peter said politely, and Jack shot him an evil look.

“You really don’t know your brother, do you? And don’t tell me how to run my investigation!” Jack said bluntly. “Your brother takes care of most of the elderly in the county. I don’t think he’s killing all of them, or any of them. But thanks for the tip,” he said sourly, clearly annoyed by the suggestion. Peter could see that he was on Michael’s side and believed him innocent. He had also implied that Peter might be involved with Maggie, but he wouldn’t poison her if that was the case. But he obviously thought Peter might frame Michael to get him out of the way. It was a Machiavellian idea, and Peter wondered if Michael had suggested it to him. It sounded like pure Michael to him.

The chief ended the interview a few minutes later, and Peter and Bill talked about it on the way to see Maggie.

“It sounds like he’s trying to pin it on me,” Peter said, understandably upset.

“Or me,” Bill added, as he looked at the paper. The story of Michael’s arrest was all over the front page, and it didn’t sound like the reporter believed it either. Michael was a hero in three counties. All the article talked about was his good deeds and accomplishments, and the alleged poisoning of his wife got a lot less attention.
It said the matter was under investigation, and Michael was being held for arraignment in a few days. It said that Maggie had been poisoned and Michael was the prime suspect. The nature of the evidence had not been disclosed. And the article said that the possibility of other suspects had not been ruled out. It made a tremor run down Peter’s spine.

“I’m going to be pissed if I wind up in prison because of you,” Peter said to his nephew with a nervous laugh, and Bill shook his head.

“That sounds like my father’s work. He’ll get us both hanged if he can.”

“They’ll have to have hard evidence for that, and they don’t. We didn’t poison her. He did,” Peter said simply. “We have truth on our side.”

The chief of police was Michael’s best friend, and he wasn’t doing either of them any favors. It was obvious that he would have liked to attribute the crime to them, and not Michael, if there was any way to do it. And he clearly hadn’t liked hearing Peter’s implications about his brother’s elderly patients. He had looked outraged by the suggestion, but legitimately he couldn’t ignore anything, and he was an honest man. He had to add up the evidence they had and follow procedures. For now, Michael was his prime suspect, with his fingerprints on the two bottles of poison from the shed. He wouldn’t falsify an investigation, even for a friend. But it was clear to him that Michael McDowell was an innocent man. He’d been framed, and falsely accused. He was sure the truth would come out soon, and he was going to do all he could to make it happen. It was the least he owed Michael, his old friend. He had had an obligation to arrest him, given the evidence, but he did not believe him guilty.

* * *

Peter and Bill decided to go to the diner on the way to see Maggie, and the place was buzzing with the news, and everyone had another angle, explanation, or theory. But almost no one believed Michael did it. And Vi commented as she poured their coffee. She was a brutally honest woman.

“I never liked your brother. You were a little pain in the ass, always getting into fights, and trouble. But you were a sweet kid underneath that. Your brother was different. He always reminded me of that kid on
Leave It to Beaver
, Eddie Haskell. He was always polite, but it never felt real. I see your brother in here all the time, usually with Jack Nelson. But when I read that about him in the paper today, I wasn’t surprised. I know everyone else loves him, but he never struck me as an honest guy.” Peter looked at her in amazement. He didn’t know a single other person in town who would say something like that about Michael. Vi had Michael’s number and always had, even now, with the astonishing discovery that he’d been poisoning Maggie.

On the way to the hospital, Peter told Bill he wanted to tell Maggie what was happening. It seemed entirely wrong that she was the only person in town who didn’t know Michael was in jail, and worse yet, for attempting to kill her. But she had been too sick for them to say anything to her yet.

But when they walked into the hospital late that morning, Maggie looked considerably better. The doctors had run blood tests on her again that morning, and the nurse said the toxic levels were coming down. Her breathing had improved, although they were still monitoring her closely, but her eyes looked brighter, and she looked happy
to see Peter and her son. The one thing she couldn’t understand and kept asking them was where Michael was. He had never disappeared this way before, she couldn’t reach him on his phone, and everyone’s excuses for his absence sounded like lies to her. She asked Peter and Bill about it again the moment they walked in. And this time Peter could see that she expected a real answer, and she looked ready to hear it. She had been waiting anxiously for them for hours.

They both knew they had a hard task ahead of them, just as they had with Lisa. Peter was well aware that this was going to be even worse. But now that she was more alert, they had to tell her, just as they had agreed on the way to the hospital. They couldn’t lie to her forever. The story of Michael’s arrest was all over town. The whole hospital was talking about it too, but not in Maggie’s room. Most people believed in his innocence, and that he would be cleared soon. People were saying that charges like that just wouldn’t stick, not against a man like him. Only his brother and son believed different. And possibly Vi at the diner.

“Tell me the truth, Peter,” she begged. “Did Michael have an accident?” she asked him with worried eyes. Something was wrong, and she knew it, and she knew she’d been poisoned, and had no idea by whom. She assumed it was accidentally, and wanted Michael to explain to her how it had happened. He was the only one she trusted. She had worried all night that he might be dead and they didn’t have the heart to tell her. She wanted the truth. Not knowing was worse.

“No, he didn’t,” Peter said, and looked like he was telling the truth. Maggie seemed less tense after he said it.

“He’s not answering his phone.” Nor was Lisa. Peter and Bill had insisted she not tell her mother yet. She wasn’t strong enough to know. So Lisa texted her, but hadn’t told. Maggie studied Peter with
a worried expression, as he approached her bed and took her hand in his own, and her son stood at the foot of it, watching her. They were about to tell her some very tough stuff, and Peter had no idea how she would take it, or how it would impact her health. It was an awesome responsibility delivering such bad news to a woman who was so ill.

“You know you were poisoned, Maggie,” Peter said slowly, and Maggie nodded.

“I know that.” She wasn’t out of danger yet, particularly with her breathing, but she felt stronger and she looked it. “I want to talk to Michael about it. I don’t understand how it happened. Was it some kind of mistake in my medications? An error at a pharmaceutical company who made them?” She had gone over all the reasonable explanations in her head. And when she got home to her computer, she wanted to do some research on it herself.