Murders of a Feather, page 13
We spoke for almost an hour, with Judy staying on track, for the most part, only straying to inform me about a pop-up art installation to benefit a local women’s shelter. Ten dollars at the door with snacks and a cash bar, as well as the artists speaking about their work. She urged me to attend, even if only for half an hour.
It was when I asked her about José and Alicia that she really let it rip.
Chapter Nineteen
“So now you have three open deaths in Oak Falls?” Gramps asked at the start of our phone conversation. It was a testament to our times that he didn’t sound surprised. “I suppose it’s useless for me to tell you again to leave the investigating to the police.”
I wisely kept my mouth shut.
“Just promise me,” he repeated, a little huskiness to his voice, “you’ll be careful, and always keep that pepper spray in your pocket.”
“I promise, Gramps. Try not to worry about me.”
I’d called him to chat and get him up to speed with the investigation. Earlier Police Chief Garcia announced that José and Alicia’s deaths were now considered to be suspicious. Forensic evidence revealed that José did not commit suicide.
“By the way, Babs knew Alicia well enough to be invited to her wedding,” I told Gramps while opening the fridge.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “They all knew each other, and they all were murdered within a week of each other? I’m betting murdered by the same individual.”
“But why?” The cool air from the refrigerator gave me a momentary chill.
“When you figure that out, you’ll find the killer.”
Between my late-night talk in the restaurant with Judy and a quick phone call to Cindy and Daffy, I better understood the dynamics of the engaged couple so brutally murdered. According to my notes, Alicia felt she was being harassed by her first husband’s ex-wife and filed a lawsuit against her. The wife, Linda, blamed Alicia for ex-hubby’s suicide and for the fact that she and her children were cut out of his will. She came close to wishing Alicia dead. The ex-mother-in-law, Crystal, the children’s grandmother, also got into the act, posting pictures of Alicia’s workplace and advising customers to boycott the law firm. The family wrote nasty reviews saying she was a terrible lawyer and uploaded unflattering pictures of her on Facebook.
José was not without his problems, too. A physician’s assistant, José currently had a malpractice suit pending in the death of a woman from pancreatic cancer. He’d been treating her for a urinary tract infection on and off for several months, before referring her to a specialist. It took his patient another two months to get a CT scan. By then her highly malignant cancer had metastasized. Despite treatment by oncology specialists, she died within a year.
The woman’s husband, Greg Owens, showed up at José’s work and threatened him. A complaint was made but later dropped.
Wait, I thought. Didn’t Judy say the client eating at the counter tonight was Greg Owens? He seemed familiar, but I didn’t remember why. I made a note to find out more about Mr. Owens.
So far, there were no suspects or motive for Babs’s murder, but several suspects for the murder of the engaged couple. Where did all their lives intersect? Did they live near each other?
Tomorrow, we had a two-hour lunch break because of Cindy’s meeting with the estate lawyer. I decided to do a little snooping.
From my experience working house calls, I realized that mere distance between people’s homes didn’t always tell the true story. For example, I met more clients getting gas at the Circle K than at the grocery store or drugstore. Why? Because the Circle K was at the crossroads of two major roads and had a few unbeatable things going for it: cheap gas, lottery tickets, and a small grocery section open for business twenty-four hours a day.
Mari and I usually gassed up before we got back to the animal hospital, and always used Circle K instead of the Chevron, which is closer to the office. Humans are creatures of multiple predictable habits. Was there some place these three people regularly bumped into each other? A coffee joint? Chinese takeout? Or might it be way more complicated than that?
To my surprise, I discovered that both Alicia and José lived with roommates. José shared a house with a fellow physician’s assistant, Rob Patterson, who worked at the Wellness Depot in town. Alicia had sold her home and moved in with Nora Etting, who rented out her second master suite for extra cash.
After confirming Alicia’s home address, I decided to drive over and see how close her place was to Babs’s. When I arrived, I noticed an athletic-looking woman watching her dog run around like a maniac in the front yard. The small black dog with a distinctive white splotch on his back was a patient of mine, I realized. This might be easier than I’d thought.
When I got out of the truck, the dog ran over and yapped a few times.
“Sparky, be quiet,” the woman told her pet, who proceeded to ignore her. He took another look at me and approached the fence, not sure if I was friend or foe. The garage door stood open, revealing stacked boxes and a snowmobile. The car, of necessity, stayed parked in the driveway.
“Can I give Sparky a treat?” I asked. The deep pockets of my winter coat held a multitude of treats for all species. As I’d promised Gramps, the pepper spray was safe in my front pants pocket—so there was no chance of mixing them up.
“He’d love that,” she said, thoughtfully gazing back at me.
My hair, ears, and forehead were covered by a knit hat so I wasn’t sure I’d be recognized. I was wrong.
“You’re Dr. Kate? From the animal hospital?” she asked enthusiastically. “We’re clients of yours.”
“Yes, I remember.” By this time Sparky could smell the dog treat in my outstretched hand and started wagging his tail.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Since she recognized me, it was time for the truth. “I’m trying to find out if the death of our temporary receptionist, Babs Fields, is connected with your roommate Alicia’s death.”
Nora pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and said, “Sure thing. Come on in. Tell you what, I’ll be happy to answer all your questions if you’ll take a look at Sparky’s tail.”
It sounded like a perfect barter.
As we made our way inside, Nora began a running commentary on how she inherited her place from her parents free and clear. She grew up in this house and made a big mistake by taking out a small mortgage then spending all the equity from the transaction. Which is how she ended up with a roommate.
The older home had been updated to Nora’s modern aesthetics. Her parents were probably turning in their graves. She’d painted all the original woodwork white, leaving only the ornate solid mahogany staircase alone. One wall in the living room, I noticed, was Day-Glo yellow, while another appeared to be painted a muddy maroon color. The furniture was modern but cheap, mostly gray.
“Let’s go into the kitchen,” she said as I followed along. Sparky’s nails clicked on the floor. “Want some coffee? French press.”
“Sure,” I answered, and made a resolution to start cutting back on my caffeine intake after Valentine’s Day.
She indicated that I should sit at a round, white lacquered table with four modern bucket-style seats. It reminded me of something out of the classic Jetsons cartoon.
“Alicia’s death has put me in a bind,” Nora began. “I need to rent out her room, but her sister hasn’t arranged for pickup of her things yet. I’ve started carting the boxes of her stuff into the garage, which means I can’t park my car inside.”
I listened sympathetically, noting that Nora didn’t appear overly sad at the brutal demise of her roommate.
“At least I don’t have to get a new kitchen table,” she commented as the smell of coffee began to spread across the room. “Her sister said I could keep Alicia’s furniture if I would temporarily store all her personal belongings.”
Again I nodded. So this very modern-looking table and chairs belonged to Alicia. I took another good look at it, noticing the tulip-like shape and graceful curves. I’d seen something similar not too long ago. But where? It came to me in a burst of clarity. Babs had a table in her house very similar to this one.
Did Babs and Alicia share a fondness for midcentury modern?
Nora chatted away, going on about the French press coffee and how she was addicted to it. My input proved unnecessary to the one-sided conversation. Just below me, Sparky waited, anxiously hoping for food.
“So, did Alicia talk about Babs at all?” I interrupted. “We know that Babs was invited to José and Alicia’s wedding in June,” I explained.
Nora took a sip of coffee and said, “Oh. They canceled the June ceremony. Alicia and José planned to elope on Valentine’s Day. Then off to California.”
“What?”
“Oh, the two kept it secret, but she had to tell me because she was going to move out early. Alicia swore me to secrecy. Very romantic, just the two of them and a minister.”
“Any idea why they decided to move to California?”
“Her sister is out there, first of all,” Nora said, her eyebrows scrunching together. “Maybe ’cause she’d become convinced that someone was following her? Alicia was pretty jumpy lately. Always insisted the curtains stay closed once she got home.”
“You don’t say.”
“Or it might have had something to do with that crazy woman who was harassing her.”
The wronged wife, I assumed. Hopefully, there weren’t any other crazy women in her life. “Do you mean her husband’s ex-wife, Linda?”
“Yeah. That’s the one. Real Looney Tunes.”
It was obvious there was no sympathy to spare.
“Anyway. Here’s the strangest part. I couldn’t tell anyone that she moved. She didn’t even want to leave a forwarding address at the post office, so instead, she offered to pay me to mail everything to California once she got settled. Real cloak-and-dagger stuff. Plus I was supposed to drive into Kingston or Rhinebeck to mail her stuff. In person. Not dropped in the mailbox.”
“That’s pretty complicated.”
“I didn’t mind. She said she’d pay me in cash. Did you know Alicia had to get a restraining order on that bitch? Can you imagine?”
News to me. “Did that upset Alicia? I can’t even imagine.”
Nora excused herself to refresh her coffee. “Get this. She’d gotten to the point of driving around the parking lot checking for that bitch’s car before she’d go into a store—to avoid confrontations. Hiding in booths in restaurants. Alicia confided to me that the decisions about the will were all her husband’s idea. Maybe he felt some kind of vendetta against the first wife? The children each had trust funds set up. Why did that ex-wife hate her so much?”
She possessed a very cavalier attitude about the breakup of a family.
“Is that all you remember?” I asked, sipping the last of my coffee.
“Nope.” Nora held up a dog treat for Sparky, who immediately came to attention. A calculating look came into her eyes. “Now can you look at Sparky’s tail? The fur is falling out.”
A bargain was a bargain. “Sure,” I said. I bent down to see what she pointed to. A tuft of hair was missing at the end of his tail. “No lesion. No active bite wound. It looks fine. Maybe his tail suffered a mild trauma? Just keep an eye on it.” I snapped a picture of it and sent it to my office email. “I’ll put this in his file. Keep an eye on him and see if his tail whacks the walls or furniture. Repeated trauma can look like that.”
“Great. I thought it might be bedbugs.”
Bedbugs didn’t ride around on dog tails, but I skipped that lecture. “You said there was something else?”
“Right. Alicia said the wife and mother-in-law both threatened to kill her.”
José’s home was in a modern community that preserved, for the most part, a farmhouse look. Many were rented out by investor-owners. The builder had elected to install black metal roofing, a boon during high snow loads. There were wide sidewalks and a small park with a gazebo. Prices for these homes had been going up and up, Mari told me. I wondered when José and his roommate had moved in. After passing by once again and seeing no one, I continued into town and parked at the Wellness and Rehabilitation Depot. I hoped to speak with Rob, José’s roommate and friend, and perhaps find out about this malpractice lawsuit that had been pending when José died.
Wellness Depot oozed an ultramodern sensibility, with rows of pictures of athletic happy people hiking, running, and pushing their bodies to the max. Of course they showed good-looking fitness models exercising in fashionable workout gear. No real people with jiggly stomachs in baggy T-shirts. I felt tired being in the same room as them. Even the colors of their workout clothes coordinated with the waiting room colors. The staff I saw all dressed in black athletic-style pants or yoga gear with Wellness Depot logo scrub tops in sky-blue.
The receptionist sang out a good afternoon and asked, “Can I help you?” Whoever hired the trim blond woman at the desk had kept to the athletic corporate image.
“Hi. I’m Dr. Turner. Does Rob have a moment to speak with me?” I asked.
“I’ll see,” she answered, giving me a studied look. The name tag on her uniform top read Missy.
I immediately sucked in my stomach, even though it was invisible underneath my coat. Usually, I expected a receptionist to ask what my request was in reference to, but Missy fired off a text message instead, no questions asked.
“Lovely office,” I told her.
She smiled with big bleached white teeth. “Thanks. We believe that a clean, bright space helps promote mental and physical wellness.”
“Can’t hurt,” I commented and sat down in an uncomfortable black-and-chrome chair near the exit. Best not to quibble.
“I’ll be right back.” Before she disappeared, Missy stopped to check her lipstick in a small pocket mirror fished from her purse.
When the receptionist returned almost five minutes later, her expression reminded me of a cat who’d caught a mouse. Her cheeks flushed with pink and her neatly touched-up lipstick was smudged. Maybe a receptionist with benefits?
After another five minutes, I noticed a pair of Nike sneakers in front of me. When I looked up from my phone, I saw that they were attached to a buff guy, about six feet tall, in workout clothes and a white coat. His dirty blond hair spoke of snow skiing—hair bleached by the winter sun. I figured I’d met José’s roommate Rob.
“Dr. Turner,” he said, offering his hand, “I’m not familiar with your name. Are you here about the job opening?”
Job opening? I wondered who was being replaced.
I stood up, my five-foot-ten almost nose to nose with him. His eyes were an unusual vibrant green color. Tinted contacts? “I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” I explained. “I don’t need a job. It’s about a personal matter involving your former roommate, José.”
A bewildered expression was quickly replaced by a more questioning stare. “Let’s talk privately in my office,” he replied. “But I can only give you about ten minutes before my next appointment.”
I spotted a lipstick smudge close to his left ear. “That’s fine.”
We traveled down a corridor with more pictures of skiing and hiking before I followed him into what I gathered was a consultation room.
“So, did José owe you money? Because I have nothing to do with that,” he began as he sat behind the desk. “Best you contact his lawyer.”
Vivid green eyes caught mine. No hesitation. No sign of distress. His demeanor made it two for two—neither Alicia’s nor José’s roommate seemed devastated by their passing.
“Actually, I’m interested in his friendship with a friend of mine who recently passed away. Babs Fields.” I watched closely. Her name elicited no reaction.
“Listen,” he began, “José and I met when I moved to Oak Falls, and we’ve been roommates for barely two years. We only had our jobs in common, but we worked in different places and in different specialties. Truthfully, I didn’t see much of him this past year because he spent a lot of time over at Alicia’s place—plus I’ve been working crazy long hours.”
I signaled my understanding then tried a different tack. “My friend Babs was planning to attend their wedding in June.”
“Oh?” He fiddled with a pen, writing something on a scratch pad. He appeared distracted.
“You mentioned they planned to be married this June? Correct?”
I noticed a slight hesitancy in his manner for the first time.
“Well, I suppose I’m no longer held to my promise since they’ve both passed.” Another pause for a pen doodle. “They’d decided to cancel the wedding and simply elope. I thought it was a great idea.” He looked down at his drawing. “But all that’s moot now, isn’t it? I still can’t believe what happened.”
“No one knows exactly what happened,” I said.
Again a look of momentary bewilderment before saying, “José killed her. A murder-suicide. Just terrible. I suppose Alicia threatened to break off the engagement and the dude lost it.”
Now it was my turn to be surprised. “Don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
Where has this guy been the past forty-eight hours? “Police Chief Garcia declared both their deaths to be suspicious. José didn’t kill himself and didn’t murder Alicia.”
This came as a shock. I saw it in his face, raw like a scab pulled off a wound. “When did all this happen?”
“The chief of police announced it yesterday, I believe. Your friend isn’t a killer.”
Rob’s mouth twitched then broke into a smile. “Thank heavens.”
“But, Rob,” I said, “that means someone else is.”
The brief meeting with Rob provided some clues to José’s personality. As soon as I mentioned the police, Rob opened his laptop and searched for the chief’s statement, to make sure I wasn’t a wacko off the street spreading false rumors. Once confirmed, Rob said he never believed it to be a murder-suicide anyway because the couple seemed madly in love and rarely fought.
