Face the music?
Dr. Craine sat with her feet planted on the floor, arms resting on the arms of the chair, leaning forward in what came across as an ever-so-slightly tense and anxious posture, only moving her head as she shifted her gaze from the chief, to Horace, to me, and then back to the chief again.
“Face what music?” the chief asked.
“To come clean. I knocked off Frogmore. I can’t let Monty take the fall for something I did.”
Face the music. Come clean. Knock off. Take the fall. What was it about a murder investigation that compelled people to pepper their speech with clichés out of a thirties gangster movie?
Her confession didn’t completely surprise me—after all, she’d been on the list of suspects I’d pointed out to the chief. But still, I wasn’t sure I believed her. Or maybe I just didn’t want to.
The chief studied her for a few moments. Was he running over what he remembered from her interview? Sizing up the probability that she’d thrown the quilted blanket over my head? She was tall enough.
“Why don’t you tell us all about it?” he said finally.
“Glad to.” She leaned back, crossed her legs, and launched into an account of how Frogmore had tried to ruin her career.
A lengthy account. In much more detail than she’d given me Saturday morning in the bar. She’d told me Frogmore had accused her of falsifying her research—now she gave chapter and verse of every accusation, every refutation. After twenty minutes she’d only just begun to touch on the charges of plagiarism. Horace was scribbling in his notebook as fast as he could but the chief just sat and listened. I knew he often liked to let his witnesses talk freely—give them enough rope to hang themselves, if they were guilty. But I was a little puzzled that he hadn’t made at least some attempt to move her along from motive to means and opportunity.
Or maybe he’d decided she was talking so fast that he didn’t fancy his chances of getting a word in edgewise. Eventually she unscrewed the top of the water bottle she was carrying and took a long pull. The chief used that brief pause to take back the conversation.
“I think we can understand your motive, Dr. Craine,” he said. “And I’m sure your defense attorney will be able to make constructive use of this information. But perhaps we could move forward to the actual crime. As I’m sure you’re aware, due to the extreme weather conditions, we haven’t yet been able to pursue our investigations in quite the way we usually would. Limited technical capabilities. But perhaps you can help us out—just how did you kill Dr. Frogmore?”
“I poisoned him, of course.”
She beamed at us as if very pleased with herself.
“Yes. Precisely what did you use?”
She frowned.
“You mean you haven’t figured that out yet?”
“We haven’t yet been able to get any samples off the grounds of the Inn,” the chief said. “Much less down to Richmond for toxicology testing. And to be perfectly frank, those tests cost an arm and a leg—and we’re a very small county. If we can tell them what to look for and they just have to confirm it, the bill will be a lot lower than if they have to test for every poison in creation.”
Odd. I’d never heard the chief say that before. Of course, we were in the last few weeks of the budget year, but still …
“Dr. Langslow hasn’t figured it out yet?” Dr. Craine said.
“He’s still working on his theories. So you could help us out here.…”
Now I knew the chief was up to something.
“I’m not sure I should say any more,” Dr. Craine said. “I don’t want to get anyone else in trouble.”
“So you had an accomplice?” the chief asked.
“No! I did it all myself. But I don’t want to get anyone else in trouble for unwittingly helping me.”
“And I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what you put this unknown poison in.”
She paused as if considering, then shook her head.
The chief was silent for a few moments. Then he chuckled slightly.
“Dr. Craine, I’m perfectly willing to believe you have the strongest possible motive for killing Dr. Frogmore. But unless you can tell me how you did it, you’re not going to convince me that you killed him.”
She frowned at him.
“Ironic,” she said finally. “I bet if I were denying that I’d done it you’d be trying to prove I did. But now…”
She shrugged, sat back in her chair, and took another swig from her water bottle.
Horace looked completely puzzled. Anyone who knew him would think the chief’s face was impassive. I could tell he was slight puzzled and more than slightly annoyed—probably because he shared my suspicion that Dr. Craine’s confession was taking time from more urgent things.
“Dr. Craine was telling me about all this yesterday.” I kept my eyes on her. “About how Dr. Frogmore did his best to ruin her career. She also told me about how Grandfather saved it. Dr. Craine, would it ease your mind at all to know that the chief doesn’t seriously suspect Grandfather?”
She frowned and appeared to be choosing her words carefully.
“That would be good to know,” she said finally. “I had heard rumors. Including one that incriminating evidence had been found in his room. Which I knew was nonsense, of course, since I did it. The murder, I mean. If incriminating evidence was found in Monty’s cottage, someone else must have planted it.”
“And anyone could have done it.” Horace had obviously picked up on what I was suggesting. “The SPOOR members were rehearsing there, Dr. Blake let a whole bunch of people use it for meetings if they couldn’t find a room someplace else. Finding something in his room would be about as incriminating as finding it in the lobby.”
“Dr. Craine, where were you for the last forty-five minutes?”
“In a panel. Appearing on it, I should say. The panel started at one.”
“And you were in it all the time?”
She frowned, then nodded.
“Who else was with you?”
“Ben Green and George Voss. And Ned Czerny, of course, but Monty sort of added him in as a sop, since he’d canceled the panel he and Dr. Frogmore were going to give at two thirty.”
“Were you together the whole time?” the chief asked.
“Hard to give a panel from separate rooms,” she said.
“I meant, did any of you come in late, leave early, or skip out in the middle for any reason?”
“Oh, I see. No. Even Ned Czerny stuck it out till the bitter end, even though it was clear the poor man was out of his depth.”
The chief nodded.
“Dr. Craine,” he said. “If you want to continue confessing, you’re welcome to, but unless you’re prepared to give a few more specific details about how you did in Dr. Frogmore, it’s a little hard to take you seriously.”
“Okay,” she said. “It was a stupid idea, anyway. I was worried about Monty—Dr. Blake. I’m sure all this has taken it out of him, and the idea that he might end up in jail, even temporarily…”
“You heard rumors,” I said. “Exactly what were they?”
“Word around the conference is that they’d had a knock-down-drag-out quarrel about something Frogmore did that made Monty completely lose it,” she said. “And that Chief Burke snowmobiled over specially to arrest Monty. And worst of all, that when you searched his cottage you’d found the package from whatever poison was used to kill Frogmore. I heard that part from George Voss. No idea where he got it.”
The chief nodded thoughtfully. Horace was frowning. So was I. The rumor wasn’t entirely accurate—we’d found the package insert, not the package, in Dr. Lindquist’s room, not Grandfather’s. But still, how had anyone known?
“I’ll stop interfering with your work, then.” Dr. Craine rose.
She opened the door just as Dr. Lindquist was about to knock on it.
“You missed a good panel,” Dr. Craine said to him on her way out.
“So I heard.” Lindquist looked perfectly cheerful. “With any luck I can catch most of the next panel—after the chief asks me whatever he wants to ask?” He didn’t look worried. But he did look a little sweaty and disheveled.
He raised an eyebrow and stood in the doorway as if expecting he could answer a quick question and then catch up with Dr. Craine and rejoin the conference.
“Come in, Dr. Lindquist. Horace, if you wouldn’t mind getting started on that new search. Meg, you look as if you could use a rest.”
In other words, the chief wanted to be alone with Dr. Lindquist.
Horace picked up his forensic kit and left. I grabbed my tote bag and followed him out.
I went straight to the Mount Vernon Grill and begged Eduardo to put a rush on a chicken Caesar salad.
“Are you sure?” he said. “Because the combination Hanukkah, winter solstice, end of the conference dinner is going to be fabulous. You don’t want to spoil your appetite for that.”
“I haven’t eaten since breakfast,” I said. “Which consisted of a single croissant. If I have to wait until six to eat, I will probably die of starvation.”
“Give me five minutes.”
I took a seat at a table just inside the restaurant entrance, where I’d be able to see anyone who went into or came out of the Command Post.
Dad came rushing up.
“Let me see your fingers!” he said. “And was there any sign of numbness in your toes? Let’s check them out.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “No sign of numbness.”
But Dad insisted, so I let him check me for signs of frostbite. It would pass the time until my salad arrived. And as I watched him tugging off my shoes and socks, it occurred to me that he could help me catch up on whatever had happened while I’d been gone.
“Did I miss any excitement?” I asked. “While I was helping with the search and crawling through the snow tunnels?”
“Well … Ned Czerny had kind of a breakdown during lunch,” he said. “Some people at the table next to him were laughing over something—nothing to do with Dr. Frogmore, but he suddenly got up and yelled something about how heartless everyone was and ran out.”
“Sounds dramatic,” I said.
“Rose Noire and Ben Green ran after him, and I guess they calmed him down. He showed up for the one o’clock panel, at any rate, and seemed calm and composed, although come to think of it, he didn’t say a word. And I was a little worried when your grandfather rather took him to task—came right out and told him to grow a backbone and find a new boss who wasn’t a jackass like Frogmore, but Czerny actually took it pretty well. And Nils Lindquist disappeared for quite a while—we might not have noticed except that we thought maybe Czerny wouldn’t be up for the one o’clock panel and we might want Nils to sub.”
“But Dr. Czerny showed up and all was well.”
“Ye-es—except by then we were a little worried about Nils. I mean, we’d had one person poisoned already. And he wasn’t anywhere to be found and didn’t answer his room phone or come to his door when they knocked on it. And then when the chief said he wanted to interview him again—well, that got us really worried. But then he showed up just as the one o’clock panel was ending, and it turned out he’d felt a migraine coming on and had to lie down for a bit to let his meds work.”
Eduardo showed up with my salad, and I dug in. Dad waited until Eduardo had left before continuing.
“And then just as the panel was breaking up, I heard a rumor that your search had found something incriminating.” He looked at me with a faint air of disappointment, no doubt because he’d had to hear the rumor from someone else, instead of the straight scoop from me. Since this was the first time I’d seen him since the end of the search, I resisted the urge to apologize.
“What did the rumor say?” I asked instead.
“You should know,” he protested. “You were there.”
“And I’ll tell you what we found. First, tell me what the rumor was.”
“I heard two versions. Both involved finding incriminating evidence in your grandfather’s cottage. Which wouldn’t be all that incriminating, of course, since anyone at the conference could waltz in there anytime during the day.”
“As the chief well knows. What did the rumor say they found?”
“One version was that it was the package from the poison used to kill Dr. Frogmore.”
I nodded. That was the version Dr. Craine had heard.
“The other was that they found … well … more Viagra tablets in his bedside drawer. Minus the proper packaging. Which doesn’t seem very plausible.”
“I wonder if Grandfather would find that statement insulting or a vote of confidence.” I found it amusing that Dad seemed mildly embarrassed—normally he’d have had no qualms about discussing erectile dysfunction medications. “No, they didn’t find any more Viagra. They did find a folded-up paper that appears to be the product information insert from a package of nitroglycerin lingual spray.”
“Oh, my.”
“Horace thinks it’s the same brand and dosage as the almost empty spray bottle he found under Frogmore’s table. It’s on his to-do list to check with you to make sure, but with only the two of them—”
“I understand. And someone planted it in your grandfather’s cottage?”
“No. We found it in Lindquist’s room.”
Dad’s eyes widened and I could see him putting pieces together.
“Oh, dear,” he said finally. “I do hope it’s not him. I rather like him. As does your grandfather. And I know he was very angry with Dr. Frogmore but that doesn’t automatically mean…”
His voice trailed off.
“He’s in with the chief now,” I said. “And—”
I broke off when I saw the door to the Command Post open. Dr. Lindquist stumbled out looking anxious and disoriented. The chief followed him. They exchanged a few words. Then Dr. Lindquist stumbled off. Not toward the conference. Toward the elevators.
The chief saw the two of us peering out of the restaurant and walked over.
“Are you arresting Dr. Lindquist?” Dad asked.
“Not yet,” the chief said. “But I’ve told him I don’t want him leaving town just yet, even assuming that might become possible sometime soon. We don’t have a full case yet—we don’t even officially know what Frogmore died of—but it’s not looking good for Dr. Lindquist.”
“Grandfather thinks the world of him,” I said.
Dad nodded and looked worried, no doubt at the thought of how Grandfather would react. The chief merely nodded. I wondered if the bits of evidence I knew about—the stolen key and the package insert—were enough to convince him of Lindquist’s guilt or if there were other factors. Since Lindquist was from Washington State—well west of the storm—the chief could have used his satellite phone to check up on Lindquist. What had he found?
Maybe I should put in my own call to my nephew Kevin.
“Does Lindquist have an alibi for the time when I was getting shoved out in the cold?” I asked.
“No.” The chief frowned. “He says he started feeling a migraine coming on about the time we were starting to search people’s rooms, and since he couldn’t lie down in his own room, he put a towel over his face and lay down on the floor of one of the ice- and vending-machine rooms until his medicine took effect. Doesn’t sound all that plausible. Peculiar thing to do.”
“Not if you get migraines,” Dad said. “If you’re lucky enough that you get warning of an oncoming migraine—and lucky enough to have found a medication that will stave it off—you’ll do anything that works. Lying down in whatever place you can find is pretty normal. I had a patient who swore that he could short-circuit a migraine by drinking a slushy really fast—brings on a sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia—”
“In English, that’s a brain freeze,” I put in.
“—and when that goes away, so does his migraine,” Dad continued.
“Point taken,” the chief said. “Although it would help if we could find anyone who actually saw Dr. Lindquist lying on the ice- and vending-machine room floor—we’re checking with the staff who handle that floor. Because right now we have only his word for it that he was getting a migraine—and I hope you won’t consider me insensitive to the pain of the migraine sufferer if I point out that it would be a pretty easy thing to fake if you needed an excuse for not being someplace you’re expected to be.”
“Agreed,” Dad said. “Although he does appear to be a migraine sufferer.”
“Really?” The chief looked slightly surprised. “You can tell by looking at him?”
“No, I can tell from his medications,” Dad explained. “Horace shared the list of those you found in the rooms you searched—in case any of them might be substances that could have contributed to Dr. Frogmore’s condition. Dr. Lindquist had Imitrex in his bathroom. Which is one of the medicines that can help avert a migraine if you feel it coming on. And it’s not something doctors hand out just because someone complains of headaches—there’s a whole diagnostic procedure.”
“So Dr. Lindquist probably is a migraine sufferer,” the chief said. “It still doesn’t prove he was having one today.”
“No.” Dad shook his head.
“I’m off to help Horace process our latest crime scene,” the chief said. “You’ve got the number of my satellite phone in case anything comes up.”
Dad and I both nodded, and the chief headed off toward the elevators.
“And the last panel should be starting any minute now,” Dad said. “Let’s go.”
He hurried off toward the door that led to the conference area. I finished the last forkful of salad and followed. I wasn’t sure I would find the contents of the last panel interesting. But I definitely wanted to see it. Because it would be the last panel of the conference.