Bet felt confident Seeley and Emma had gone into the mine on Friday and been shot the same day. Before Eric continued talking about the water, she had asked him when he found the cave entrance.
“Monday morning.” Eric looked Bet in the eye, though that didn’t prove he wasn’t lying.
“Okay.” Bet would ask Mrs. Villiard what day she’d first noticed Eric home. “Tell me more about your mother.”
Eric described the progression of his mother’s illness. Tracy Chandler had always been an introvert, but she became downright reclusive in the last years of her life. Though she continued to live in Collier, Bet only knew she’d deteriorated; she hadn’t been privy to the specifics. Tracy began having neurological problems. The doctor diagnosed her with Parkinson’s disease because she demonstrated the slowing of movements, lack of facial expressions, and dystonia that often accompanied Parkinson’s.
“Dystonia,” Eric explained, “is basically a sustained muscle cramp. They can show up in various places on the body, but for Mom it focused on her hands.”
“But she didn’t have Parkinson’s?”
“Ultimately, no.”
“Didn’t they test her for it?”
“There is no test for Parkinson’s. If it’s suspected, the patient is given Parkinson’s meds. If they improve, they’re given a diagnosis; if they don’t, the doctor figures it’s something else.”
“Doesn’t sound very scientific.”
Eric went on to explain that his mother hated her medications and refused to take them on a regular basis. Her doctor continued to believe it was a correct diagnosis and that her lack of consistent improvement stemmed from her own unwillingness to stick to her regimen of drugs.
Tracy had lived alone. She’d never dated anyone seriously after Michael left. She’d downplayed her illness to Eric and Dylan. No one had observed her worsening symptoms.
“By the time the illness infiltrated her liver, it was too late.”
“What did she actually have?”
“Wilson’s disease.”
Bet gave Eric a blank look, which launched him into an explanation of the rare disorder. Wilson’s disease had caused Tracy’s body to store unwanted copper, impacting her liver and her brain. When her liver started to fail, her doctor found cirrhosis and believed her to be a drinker. Despite her protestations that she didn’t drink, her doctor remained convinced she had Parkinson’s and was a closet alcoholic.
“If she hadn’t collapsed during a rare trip down to E’burg, I’m not sure I would have ever known the truth.” Eric’s voice caught as he held back tears.
An emergency room nurse had noticed the brown ring around the irises in Tracy’s eyes, a distinctive characteristic of her disease, but by that time it was too late. She died from complete system failure.
“You must be furious at her doctor.”
“I believe she didn’t receive good care from him. But it wasn’t solely his responsibility. Mom became difficult over the years. Even phone calls with her were problematic. I should have come out here and checked on her more, been more proactive in her care. Dylan, too; neither one of us visited much.”
“You feel guilty about what happened to her? It’s not your fault.”
“I should have been paying attention.”
Bet considered the responsibilities of children for their parents. She never delved into her own father’s demons. She never felt she had the right.
Or maybe you just didn’t want to know.
Bet shook off her father’s voice and returned to Tracy’s story.
“How did she get so much copper in her system?”
“That’s what I wanted to know,” Eric said. He went on to explain her diet couldn’t be the culprit. “It’s possible to live with Wilson’s by cutting out any source of copper in your food. I know most of what Mom ate on a regular basis. She was allergic to nuts and seafood, didn’t eat chocolate, and ate all her fruit fresh, so none of the usual culprits made sense.”
“So if it wasn’t her food …”
“She had to be getting it some other way.”
“And you think it’s in the water?”
“Groundwater. I think it’s seeping into the water table from the old mine.”
“So that’s why you were in the tunnel? You’re, what? Snooping around? Playing detective scientist?”
Eric dropped his gaze. “Yeah, I know, it’s stupid. I’m not some Erin Brockovich, but I felt like I had to do something. My life fell apart; I thought I’d come out here and see what I could learn.”
“Lots of people get divorced. You’ll survive.”
“It wasn’t just that. My work, my future, everything feels like a bad fit right now. Like I have made a long series of bad choices. I hate living in Manhattan. I don’t even know my own kids. I was denied tenure.” He paused as if something might be even worse. “I can’t write anymore.” His voice became so quiet Bet could barely hear him.
“Did you contact anyone about your suspicions?” Bet asked, to keep Eric from talking further about his personal problems.
“I wrote to Collier. I thought he’d want to know if his mine was leaching toxins into the groundwater, but all I heard back was a vaguely threatening letter from his attorney.”
“You mean Robert Senior, correct? Rob’s father?” Eric nodded. “So you what? Moved across the country? To research your mother’s death?”
“I thought a change of pace might get me writing again.”
Why had she never wondered about the water in the lake?
She brought her attention back to Eric. “It never occurred to me your mother was poisoned. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Why not go public with what you believe? We should do a study if people are in danger.”
“It’s not as if people drop like flies from unexplained illness around here. Lakers are a hardy bunch. I don’t think the copper is dangerous to anyone if they don’t have a condition like Wilson’s.”
“But it might be why nothing lives in the lake.”
Eric grimaced. “I didn’t want to start a panic until I knew more.”
Bet thought about how much that echoed her own position on Emma’s death. She didn’t want her investigation public until she had more answers. Her anxiety about Jamie Garcia writing about events was personal as well as professional. But she needed to keep Eric from poking around in the tunnels and didn’t want to tell him the truth about the murders and someone stashing stolen property in the cave.
“How did you find the back entrance to the mine?” she asked, to give herself time to think.
“Sheer dumb luck,” Eric said. “I was hiking on the back side of the mountain just trying to get a look around and found it. I went partway down, but my flashlight gave out. I was—well, to be honest, when my flashlight started to give out down there, I panicked. I ran out of the entrance so fast, I must have dropped the flashlight when it happened. I wasn’t paying any attention to it at that point because it wasn’t working. I didn’t notice until later it wasn’t in my pocket.”
Something felt off about Eric’s story.
“You did get lucky,” Bet said. “That entrance is hard to find.”
“It was near dusk. A bat came out of the bushes. I knew there had to be some kind of opening.” Eric leaned back against the wall again, shadows obscuring his features.
“Why didn’t you come to me sooner?”
“If you recall, I’ve been trying to talk to you since I returned.”
“You said you wanted to catch up. You didn’t say you thought your mother died from toxic groundwater.”
Eric squirmed, bringing his face into the light again, and she could see his cheeks flush pink. “When I first arrived, I wanted to come to you, but then I heard about you hanging out with Rob Collier at the tavern and I wondered if you were the right person to talk to. It was already going to be hard enough.”
Bet sighed. She hadn’t made it any easier for Eric to come to her. She could hardly blame him for his suspicions. After all, she considered him a suspect in the murder of Emma Hunter.
“Wasn’t the bat gate locked when you found the tunnel?”
“No. Someone had sawn through it already.”
Eric sat looking at Bet, the wide-eyed boy from his youth appearing briefly on his adult face. Bet wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe he wasn’t lying to her face, convincing her he hadn’t done anything wrong, again.
Bet set her glass back down on the table. She told Eric in no uncertain terms to stay away from the tunnel. He told her he’d have test results on the water soon; a friend of his who worked in a lab back east was doing it for him.
“The bat gate is locked now, so just keep away from that area, okay? It’s Collier’s land, and you’re trespassing to be there.”
Eric promised to stay away.
Bet picked up her beer glass and finished her final sip.
“Pour you another?” Eric said, his voice hopeful. “We could talk about other things for a while. Not just business and my mother’s death.”
“No, I better get home. I have a full plate right now, Eric. But it’s been nice to see you.”
“I hope you mean that,” he said, as his smile reached his eyes.
“I do. But now I need to go.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
The two stepped out into the soft air of the summer night. Eric stepped closer, as if he might hug her or kiss her good-night, but Bet stuck her hand out, stopping his forward momentum.
“See you,” she said.
He shook her hand, and Bet headed home for the night. It was only when she reached her front door that she remembered she should have asked Eric how he’d cut himself, leaving blood on the flashlight. Opening her door, she went in to find Schweitzer waiting and, for the first time in her life, locked the door behind her.