Emory dialed 911 on his cell phone as he told Jeff, “It looks like a reaction to poison.” When the operator answered, Emory said he believed he had a potential poisoning victim, and he described Pristine’s symptoms.
As Pristine’s convulsions persisted, Jeff cradled her head in his hands to keep it from banging against the floor. Emory continued talking to the operator while he ran to get a pillow, which he handed to Jeff to place behind her head. He asked the operator, “Should we try to make her throw up?” Once he heard her answer, he shook his head at Jeff.
Pristine’s convulsions came to an abrupt stop. Jeff checked for a pulse in her neck. “She’s still alive.”
Emory let the operator know, and she told them to just keep her comfortable until help arrived. He hung up the phone and called Victor to let him know. Cupping his hand over the phone, he whispered to Jeff, “He’s on his way.”
Jeff glanced at the ceiling. “What about Ian?”
“I’ll go check on him. Are you okay here?”
“I’ll stay with her.”
Emory left the parlor and walked up to the second floor. At the top of the stairs, he saw a long hallway with several doors in either direction and a red runner rug bisecting the burnished hardwood floor. He didn’t know where Ian’s room was, so he started with the left hall and listened for movement. The first door he came to was closed. He put his ear to it, just shy of touching, and moved on when he heard nothing. He then passed by a room that had been converted into a home gym, complete with a treadmill, a few machines and pink dumbbells. Must be Pristine’s. The next door was open, which he found surprising because it was Britt’s bedroom. That’s odd. A parent in mourning will typically shut off a dead child’s bedroom to preserve its essence.
Emory walked into the lavender-hued room and looked around. Among the trophies, medals, competition photos and jewelry boxes cluttering the tops of the furniture was her laptop where he presumed Ian had returned it. He opened one of the jewelry boxes and found a few costume pieces comingled with the finer ones. “Probably from Dan Claymon,” he muttered about the inexpensive items. He opened the smaller jewelry box and found condoms inside. “Probably for Dan.” He picked up a small framed picture of Victor and Meredith, the children’s mother, holding a baby Britt following her birth. Apart from some crow’s feet, Victor looks pretty much the same. I hope I age so well.
Emory’s eyes wandered around the room, landing on a poster-sized picture inside a gold frame that, instead of hanging on the wall, was lying on top of the bed. “Wow,” he whispered in reference to the beautiful shot. It was a black and white photo of Britt looking over her shoulder at the photographer as she walked toward the lake where she would later die. The trees and ground were covered in snow, and she had skates hanging from her shoulder. Her smile was radiant and sweet with no hint of sadness, yet that’s all Emory felt as he stared at it. He snapped a picture of the photo with his phone.
“That’s the picture we had at her funeral,” a woman said from behind him.
Startled, Emory jerked around to face the doorway, where Margaret – the now jobless maid – stood. “Margaret. The door was open.”
The old woman nodded. “I keep shutting it, and someone keeps opening it again.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked in as delicate a tone as he could.
She nodded to the half-full grocery tote in her right hand. “I came through the back to get some things I left over here.”
Emory wondered if they were her belongings, but he left it alone. “This is a great photo.”
Margaret stepped into the room. “That’s the last picture of her taken alive. Tati, her best friend, fancies herself a photographer, and Britt was her favorite model. She took pictures of her the weekend before she died. She had that one blown up and framed, and gave it to Mr. Algarotti.” Margaret admired the picture, shaking her head. “She was such a beautiful girl. She didn’t belong in this family.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” She turned from him and headed toward the door. “I should go.”
“Could you tell me where Ian’s room is?”
Margaret pointed toward the direction from which he had come. “He’s on that side.” She left him and headed back down the stairs.
Could Margaret have poisoned Pristine? Closing the bedroom door, he walked down the hall, listening at each door before opening them to see if the room behind it belonged to Ian. He reached a door and heard the squeaking of a chair on the other side. “Ian?” he called, knocking on the door. “I need to talk to you.”
“Just a minute,” Ian told him. The squeaking halted, replaced by the sound of rustling plastic followed by a drawer shutting. A few seconds later, Ian cracked the door open, wearing a robe and clutching it closed at his abdomen. “What is it?”
Emory saw a blank computer monitor on the desk next to the bed. “Uh, I’m sorry to tell you this, but there’s been an incident with your stepmother.”
“What’s wrong?”
“We believe she’s been poisoned.”
“Oh my god!” Ian opened the door wider like he was going to rush to her, but Emory stopped him with a hand to his shoulder.
“An ambulance is on the way.” I should give him a task to occupy him so he doesn’t have to see her in her present state. “You could really help out by packing an overnight bag for her, anything she might need while in the hospital.”
Ian nodded. “Okay.” He hurried down the long hall to the master bedroom.
Once Emory saw the boy had disappeared behind the master bedroom door, his curiosity got the better of him. He slipped into Ian’s room. Walking past the padded blue footlocker at the foot of the bed, he went to the desk. The computer monitor had been turned off, so he powered it back on. What replaced the black screen sent his hand to his gasping mouth.
Splayed across the entire screen was a collage of pictures – all of Victor Algarotti. Some were of Victor by the pool in his swim trunks, but most were taken while he seemed to be asleep in bed. The covers of the bed had been lifted from the lower corner to expose his right, hairy leg and high enough to reveal that Victor slept in the nude. The light in the picture appeared to come from another source instead of a camera flash, perhaps the hallway or the master bathroom.
Emory snapped pictures with his phone as he scrolled through several of the photos until he was startled by a sudden movement behind him. He poked the monitor’s power button to shut it off and turned around to see Ian standing in the doorway.
Holding a pink overnight bag in his hand, Ian asked, “What are you doing?” with accusatory eyes flaming from his face.
Emory had no idea how long Ian had been watching or if he had just reached the door. He decided to act as if it were the latter. His eyes darted from Ian to the blue duvet draped over the bed. The paned sunshine that illuminated one corner of the bed gave him an idea.
He pointed to the window that was to the side of the desk. “Admiring your view.” Emory turned his head to look through the window, to which he had paid little attention before, and was relieved to find that it did indeed offer a nice view. “The mountains are spectacular.”
Emory started toward the door. “It’s a lot different from the bedroom view I had as a kid – a bunch of hemlock trees. Is that the bag?” He took it from Ian, whose expression remained unchanged. “Thank you for doing that.”
Emory headed down the hall toward the stairs. He looked back at Ian, who seemed stuck in place. “Come down when you hear the ambulance leave.”
“I need to change,” Ian told him with frosted tongue before retreating into his bedroom and shutting the door.
Hearing an approaching siren, Emory hurried down the stairs and out the front door. Once the ambulance stopped, he escorted the emergency medical technicians to the parlor. Jeff moved away as they took over Pristine’s care. A moment later, they carried Pristine out on a gurney, and the ambulance departed.
Emory pulled some plastic baggies from his jacket pocket and told Jeff, “I need to bag everything she put into her protein drink.”
“Need any help?” Jeff asked, although he knew what Emory’s answer would be.
“I have to do it myself.”
“Understood.” Jeff walked around the parlor for any clues while the special agent worked.
Once Emory zipped up his last baggie, he told Jeff, “You know, now that this house is a crime scene, I’d like to conduct a thorough search—”
“That’s not going to happen,” Victor growled as he stormed into the parlor.
Emory tried to explain. “Your wife was just poisoned here.”
“In this room. Isn’t that what you told me?”
Jeff said, “This is where she passed out, but we can’t be sure it’s where she was poisoned.”
“I’m not going to have you rummaging through my house and tearing each room apart on a snipe hunt.” Victor noticed the baggies on the bar. “Was it in her protein drink?”
“Possibly,” Emory answered. “Did anyone else ever drink this?”
“Just Pristine.” Victor’s eyes welled. “Why is someone trying to kill off my family?”
Emory responded, “We don’t know, which is why I need to search the house.”
Victor nodded toward the baggies. “I suggest you check what you have first. If you don’t find it in there, you have my permission to return and look for it. Where’s Ian?”
Ian appeared behind his father, dressed and holding a hairbrush. He walked it over to Emory. “I forgot to pack this. She loves to brush her hair.”
“Thank you, Ian.” Emory took the brush, which had several pulled strands of hair weaved among the bristles, and stared at it for a brief moment before stuffing it into the overnight bag, which Victor then commandeered.
“Ian, wait for me in the car.” The boy obeyed his father. “Gentlemen, get your stuff, and I’ll walk you out.”
Emory picked up the evidence. “I have to say, Mr. Algarotti, I’ve never met anyone who has lost a loved one and then put up so many roadblocks to determining why.”
“You’re looking in the wrong place! My home? No one here could’ve done that to Britt. And now to Pristine. Who’s left? Me? Ian?” Victor turned to Jeff. “I’m paying you to find the truth.” He pointed toward the front door. “The truth is out there. My daughter was beautiful, successful and rich – qualities that taken alone could rile jealousy in the purest hearts, but put them all together?” He waved them to the door. “Let’s go.”
Emory and Jeff walked outside, followed by Victor, who locked the front door and didn’t say a word to them on the way to his car.
Jeff asked, “You want to go to the hospital?”
Emory stepped off the porch. “To tell you the truth, I want to call it a day.”