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I PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE been frightened. Any sensible person would have been. I should have run out into the hot sunshine, hopped into my car, and lurched away as fast as I could. But I was more curious than afraid.
I remembered what Glenn had said to Emma and me in the gym, as he was struggling to explain Sherry’s extreme diet to us. It would be really bad if she took two doses of insulin by mistake.
The insulin needles and the dieters’ HCG needles looked identical. Sherry knew that very well. She’d used them both. All Sherry had to do was go into Kathy’s purse, or wherever Kathy kept her prefilled diet syringes, and make the switch.
“You used your insulin!” I blurted out. “That’s what happened, right?”
She let out a sharp laugh. “Whoa! You’re smart. Course you are, what am I saying? You’re a freakin' college professor.”
“I don’t know anything,” I hastened to assure her. “I’m only guessing.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad way to go, Dr. B. Insulin shock. I’ve been there. Your blood sugar goes way down, like when you forget to eat.”
I couldn’t grasp that at all. How could someone forget to eat?
“You just feel a little lightheaded,” she continued. “You get confused, and then you pass out. And if you don’t get medical attention right away, you’re done. You don’t wake up.”
“I don’t understand. Why? It’s so irreversible!”
Had it been that important for Sherry to secure a seat in the canoe? I knew things could get competitive among the crew members, and everyone wanted to paddle in the Labor Day race. But murder?
“Look, Dr. B., I know you don’t understand. You’re freakin' Snow White, no disrespect. You could shoot someone in the head, and walk into the police station, and say ‘Oh gosh, sorry officer, it was self-defense’ and they’d sit you down and make you a nice cuppa tea and call you a cab.”
I thought that was kind of uncalled for. She was making me sound like some insipid goody-two-shoes. Hey, I was an actual punk rocker once upon a time.
“Sherry, I don’t understand. Things were going so well. You finally got your financial aid straightened out. Thanks to Kathy, from what you told me. You’re doing well in school. And you have the paddling.”
“The paddling, yeah. I’m not happy about walking away. I think paddling’s what kept me sane.”
“Yes, well. So why—”
“What’s done is done. I can’t stay here now, can I? Look how you figured everything out. Lucky for me you’re cool about it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly—”
“Pretty soon other people are gonna start catching on,” Sherry said. “I gotta look out for myself. No one else is gonna look out for me.”
Her face looked hard now.
“That’s how it’s always been for me. I gotta watch out for myself. I can’t count on things going my way. You know, me and Mad Dog could never get married officially. And we sure couldn’t do it in a real church. You know why? Cause Donnie made sure to take his sweet time filling out the paperwork.”
Donnie.
“Maybe he wasn’t trying to mess up your life,” I said. “Maybe he wanted to make sure you could stay on his health insurance. Or, you know, something like that.”
That was the story Donnie had told me. When we were first starting to spend time together, and I’d found out, whoops, he was still married. He did finish filing the paperwork eventually, but by then he’d spent over a decade in marital limbo. And, of course, so had his ex-wife.
“It would’ve been hard for you to get medical coverage on your own, with type 1 diabetes, right?” I asked. “Pre-existing condition? Maybe he was trying to look out for you.”
“Yeah, nice to think he could spare a thought for me. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Anyway, I gotta go.”
“Emma and the crew should be back in a few minutes,” I said.
“I wasn’t planning to see anyone. I just wanted to take one last look. I’m kinda glad I ran into you, though, Dr. B. I should thank you. Cause if it wasn’t for you...anyhow, yeah, thanks.”
“Sherry, wait! There’s something I don’t understand. Why couldn’t you get an escort boat? That way three more people could have paddled in the race. And no one would have had to—”
“A what boat? Look. I found pictures of Kathy. In Glenn’s stuff.”
She turned her palms up. “Photographs. You need any more evidence than that?”
She paused as if she were expecting me to supply an answer to her question.
“Glenn? Had photographs of Kathy Banks?”
“I know I don’t need to spell it out for you,” she said. “Like I said, I did what I hadda do.”
Sherry slipped out into the bright afternoon, and she was gone.
“Wait!” I called after her, uselessly. “What did you mean, if it wasn’t for me?”
What just happened here? For a moment, I wondered whether I had imagined the whole thing.
Did Sherry confess to killing Kathy Banks? Kathy, her teammate and friend? And over Glenn? If recent events were any indication, Sherry clearly wasn’t that attached to him.
But she had stood there, next to the koa canoe, and said it.
Do people think Kathy Banks died of natural causes? Insulin shock. It wouldn’t be a bad way to go.
And had she called her ex by name? Donnie? I had already suspected that Sherry was Donnie’s ex-wife and Davison’s mother. In fact, I’d defended the idea when Emma and Pat discounted it. But hearing Sherry say it was surreal.
The headache came on suddenly, with no advance warning. The inside of my head felt like a fifty-car pileup. My eyeballs throbbed with pain so intense I could barely see. I groped in my bag until my fingers closed around what I was looking for.