AFTER FIVE HOURS of tossing and turning in a strange bed while a German shepherd snored outside my door, I threw back the covers and got ready to face the day.
A cup of coffee or three would have been great, but Moyra didn’t have a coffee maker, so after I latched Buster in his kennel, I headed to Duke’s for my caffeine fix.
Aunt Alice scowled at me as I entered her kitchen. “You’re here at this hour two days in a row? Girl, you need to get a new bed.”
My bed was just fine. My problem was that I wasn’t in it.
“Look what the cat dragged in, again,” Duke said when I passed him on the way to the coffee station. “Don’t you sleep anymore?”
I squeezed out a smile. “Good morning to you, too, sunshine.”
After I returned to the kitchen with a carafe and a cup, I settled onto the stool across from Alice. “Want more muffins?”
“If you want to make ‘em.”
I grabbed a bowl.
“Any new news?” she asked.
“My mom’s in town.”
“I heard from your granny. I meant news about Emmy Lee.”
“No news.”
“Anything come of Lucille’s theory?”
“Nope.” As was typical for her theories.
“Hmmm. I thought she might’ve been on to something when she talked about someone eliminating the competition.”
Taking a slurp of coffee, the only competition I could come up with for Emmy Lee was a rival Pink who wanted the Chimacam County region all to herself. That could be worth what in terms of sales income? Around two hundred dollars a week?
Hardly a motive for murder.
Since Tim Osborne had given me no indication that he and Emmy Lee were anything more than good friends, that made me very curious about his return to Port Merritt. Beyond that I didn’t know what to think about what he was trying to hide, or the strange behavior of Parker Tuttle.
“Well, can’t say that I’m surprised,” Alice said. “Really, if Emmy Lee were looking for a ‘husband upgrade’ wouldn’t you think she’d meet up with Dr. Osborne some place where they wouldn’t be seen? You know how people around here talk.”
I smiled at one of my favorites doing her fair share of that talking. “Yes, I do.”
A couple hours later, I had her buddy in my ear while I stocked the bakery shelves. And as per usual, Lucille was on the prowl for information.
“You obviously didn’t ask the doc the right questions,” Lucille said, hovering by the register with a coffee carafe in her hand.
“I asked him the pertinent questions.”
“But not who he’s been dating.”
“Not something anyone in my office would be especially interested in.”
She heaved a sigh. “Well, they should be if they want to find out who killed Emmy Lee.”
Right.
While Lucille squeaked away to refill the empty cups of a dozen of Port Merritt’s early risers, Aunt Alice came up behind me with a tray of fruit pies.
“I swear, she’s like a dog with a bone,” she said, loading the pies onto the glass shelves of the rotating display case.
“Her heart’s in the right place.” Lucille just resented it when we didn’t put much stock into her convoluted theories.
“I know, but…” Alice looked up at the sound of the silver bell over the door and sucked in a sharp breath.
My heart skipped a beat. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Then why had all the blood drained from her face?
She clutched the empty tray to her chest like she needed something to hold onto. “It’s just, for a moment, I thought that was Emmy Lee walking through the door.”
Tracking my great-aunt’s gaze, I could see the reason why. The woman was a little taller, but with the knit cap covering her honey hair and the right lighting, Katelyn Quinn and Emmy Lee could pass for sisters.
Alice stole another peek at Katelyn as Lucille handed her a menu. “Funny, I never noticed the resemblance before.”
I didn’t find it funny at all.
Maybe it was the fact that I had seen Katelyn in a black SUV last night. Maybe it was the fact that she had an oddball brother she didn’t seem to be able to control. Maybe it was that her face was aglow with a bright smile, making her look happy and way too much like Emmy Lee.
It all added up to something that felt very wrong. And experience had taught me long ago, if something felt wrong it was usually for a very good reason.
* * *
“Are you trying to wear out the carpet?” Patsy asked, clicking away on her keyboard. “Or my patience?”
I’d bet that the hallway carpet had worn out sometime in the last century. As for Patsy, she wasn’t the only one whose patience was running on fumes this morning, especially while I waited for the closed-door meeting between Frankie and Shondra to break up.
I shifted my attention from Frankie’s door to Patsy’s pinched face. “No, I was just checking to see if Dr. Zuniga’s report had come in yet.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know.”
And I was as sure as the pointy chin Patsy was jutting at me that she did know. As usual, she wasn’t in a sharing mood.
The door swung open and Shondra stepped out. “Come with me,” she said, giving me a sense of déjà vu as she blew by me.
I’d barely made it to her office before she parked herself and started making mouse clicks. “Zuniga’s report is in.”
I sat on the edge of the chair opposite her desk. “And?”
“Pretty much what I’d expected. No visible trauma, no sign of disease, so the preliminary cause of death is Undetermined, pending toxicology.”
Dang, that meant that he’d found nothing to indicate that Emmy Lee’s death was anything other than a suicide.
“But Dr. Zuniga did confirm that the pill found at the scene was Oxycodone, so it’s almost a foregone conclusion what stopped her heart. Combined drug intoxication. In Mrs. Barstow’s case, Oxy and tequila – unfortunately, a very effective way to kill yourself.”
“I really don’t think she committed suicide.”
Shondra slanted me a glance. “We have a note…that text, we have an empty pill bottle, and we have a dead woman. Her loved ones may not want to believe that she decided to end her life, but I don’t know that she left us any other option.”
We might have one if we could find the ball cap guy. “Did you have a chance to talk to Dr. Osborne?”
“I chatted with him on the phone. The only thing I got out of him that you didn’t was that he moved back to be near his girlfriend—not named Emmy Lee, I might add. The fact that the former girlfriend died a few weeks later…. Well, we gotta chalk that up to weird timing.”
There was too much weird surrounding this case.
Shondra raised her hand as if she could hear my thoughts. “Remember, weird happens.”
Didn’t mean I had to like it.
“Is Frankie releasing the body?” I asked.
“Patsy should be contacting the family soon.”
“I’d like Emmy Lee’s husband to hear it from me.”
“You’re not getting too emotionally involved in this case, are you, Charmaine?”
“Of course not.” Although I was sure Steve would disagree.
Shondra sat back in her chair, silently regarding me for several beats of the pendulum clock hanging near her door. “Uh-huh.”
She turned her focus back on her computer monitor, so I thought we were done and headed for the door.
“While you’re there, ask the husband if anyone returned that day-timer,” she said, stopping me in my tracks.
“Will do.”
“Not that it will change anything. It’s just a loose end, and I hate loose ends.”
Me too. And I had every intention of wrapping one up.
* * *
Vernon Barstow answered his doorbell wearing a more rumpled version of the flannel shirt and sweats I’d seen him in on Monday. A smellier version, too.
He squinted at me. “I figured I’d be hearing from one of you today.”
“May I come in?”
Venting a weary breath, Vernon shut the door behind me.
I followed him into the kitchen, where a frying pan and dirty dishes were stacked in the sink, dimly illuminated by the gloom leaking through the window.
I took the same seat as last time. “The autopsy results are in.”
Gripping the edge of the table, Vernon looked like he was preparing himself for impact.
“The forensic pathologist didn’t find anything conclusive, so we’ll have to wait to get the toxicology results back from the lab,” I said.
Vernon didn’t respond, but I got a sense that I wasn’t telling him anything he hadn’t expected to hear.
“The Coroner no longer needs to hold Emmy Lee’s body.” I pulled a business card from my tote and set it on the table in front of him. “You should call Curtis Tolliver today or tomorrow. He can help you with whatever arrangements you want to make.”
“Arrangements.” He wiped away the tears pooling in his bloodshot eyes. “That’s it? I’m just supposed to bury my wife?”
“I’m sorry. There isn’t anything else that the coroner’s office can—”
“Are you frickin’ kidding me? Someone killed my wife!”
“I know.”
“Then how can you sit there and—”
“There isn’t anything my office can do unless you help by pointing us in the right direction.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
“Tell me everything that had been going on with Emmy Lee.”
“I have.”
No, he had held something back two days ago, something that he hadn’t wanted anyone to know.
I pulled out my notebook. “Tell me again.”
His gaze sharpened. “What exactly are you after?”
“A reason for Emmy Lee to go to that hotel.”
“There isn’t one.”
“There would be if she were seeing another man.”
Vernon tensed. “I know how this looks, but she wasn’t cheating on me.”
“Sorry, but some of us are pretty good at hiding secrets from our loved ones.”
“She wasn’t cheating on me,” he said with more volume. “She was just…”
“Just what?”
“Frustrated with me.”
Sexual frustration that led to his wife seeking out a more able-bodied partner. How was this not cheating in his mind?
Vernon winced, shifting in his seat. “Me not working has been tough on our finances.”
“So, she was frustrated about money.” Which was in line with what Katelyn had told me.
He nodded. “Em had been trying to find a part-time job. Thought she might have one at the Valu-Mart, but some kid got the job. That had her pretty down last week.”
“Anything else that had been bothering her?” I asked while I made a note about the job.
“Nothing important.”
I didn’t have to look at him to know he was lying. “Since we don’t know why Emmy Lee was at that hotel and we don’t know who she was with, even the smallest thing could be important.”
Vernon stared out the window, his mouth a grim line. “I don’t think there’s anything else I can tell you.”
Nope, I didn’t believe that for a minute.
“Okay, then let’s shift gears and talk about the pill bottle found at the hotel.”
A tight little muscle in his cheek suggested this wasn’t a subject he wanted to talk about.
“Do you know where your wife got the pills?”
“No.”
Yeah, you do. “There was no prescription label on the bottle, but you’d need a prescription to get the pill that was found at the scene.”
Closing his eyes, he scrubbed his unshaven cheeks.
“Where’d she get them, Vernon?”
“She bought ‘em…for me.”
Holy crap! “For your back pain?”
“My doctor wouldn’t refill my prescription.”
“So, Emmy Lee was getting you pain pills illegally.”
He nodded.
“From someone at that hotel?”
“No, she’s…” He clamped his lips together, muzzling himself.
“Her drug supplier was a woman?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
I wanted to scream at the man. “Don’t you think it’s too late for that?”
“You don’t understand. I need those pills.”
“More than you need to find out who killed your wife?”
Hanging his head, he cursed.
“Vernon, I understand that you’re in an awful situation. Truly, I get it, and I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble. I just want to get to the truth. Emmy Lee deserves that much, don’t you think?”
“Helen Locklear,” he finally said on a sigh.
My breath caught. “I thought Mrs. Locklear was one of Emmy Lee’s customers.”
“She is…was.”
I glanced at the woman’s name still listed on the refrigerator whiteboard. “So, when your wife went over with a delivery last Friday, she was also buying some pills for you?”
He nodded.
“How many?”
“However many Helen had to sell. Usually seven or eight.”
Criminy. That meant Emmy Lee Barstow may have swallowed six pills. Even without the tequila, that could have killed her.
“She hated doing it,” he added, wiping his eyes. “Said it made her feel like a criminal, so we had agreed—that was going to be the last buy she made.”
And it was. It appeared that someone connected to Helen Locklear had made sure of it.
I thanked Vernon and headed for the door, where I caught a glimpse of Emmy Lee’s Mini Cooper in the driveway. “Did anyone locate your wife’s day-timer? It wasn’t found in her car.”
He frowned. “I assumed that you guys had it.”
Which made me assume that the person responsible for Emmy Lee’s death had it.
Our day-timer loose end would have to hang loose for a while longer.