Chapter 25
“I don’t understand,” Patricia said, her eyes blazing, her hands on her hips. “Why are you asking me my whereabouts yesterday? Do you and your little half-ass security detail consider me a suspect?”
Savannah swallowed the insult to her agency and held Patricia’s gaze, her own eyes intense and searching. Since the moment Savannah had asked the woman to have a chat with her in the privacy of her room, Patricia had been difficult. She had taken Savannah to the unit she shared with Granny, and offered her a seat in the room’s one chair beside the dresser. But that had been the extent of her hospitality.
Once Savannah had asked the first hard question, the woman had gone from neutral to overdrive in a heartbeat.
“We consider everyone a suspect until we can prove that they aren’t,” Savannah told her. “We’re just naturally suspicious people. Comes in handy for PIs.”
Patricia stomped over to the stack of suitcases and shopping bags. She began tossing the bags onto the bed. “Yes, I have an alibi. Yesterday, I had a lovely day shopping,” she said. “I bought Alaska stuff for my sister, my nieces and nephews, and everybody back at the office. That’s what I did with my day. I didn’t spend it murdering anybody.”
She sat down abruptly on the foot of the bed, as though she had just run out of fuel. Tears filled her eyes. “I didn’t even hear about what had happened until I got back to the ship.”
“How were you informed?”
“I went to the cafeteria to get a soft serve ice-cream cone, and I overheard two little old ladies discussing it as they raided the cookie bar. They were very upset because they’d booked the cruise just to see Natasha. They had signed up for an onboard writing class with her and everything. They were heartbroken.”
She sniffed and wiped away the tears that were spilling down her cheeks. “I didn’t like Natasha, okay? Your grandma probably told you that I said that. She was a pompous diva who treated the people beneath her badly. Between you and me, she was highly overrated as a talent. But I wouldn’t kill her.”
Savannah hesitated, wondering whether or not to play her ace.
She decided that she might as well slap it on the table, and whatever happened, so be it. If push came to shove and Tammy was accused of something, Savannah was ready to confess to it herself.
“You wouldn’t kill her,” Savannah said softly. “But you would threaten to.”
Patricia’s breath left her in one, huge gasp, as though a heavyweight boxer had just punched her in the diaphragm. “What?” she said.
Savannah kept her own face as neutral as possible, though her heart was pounding. “You heard me. We know you wrote the letters, Patricia. There’s no use in denying it.”
“No! No, I wouldn’t! I didn’t!”
She had her hand over her chest, clutching the front of her shirt. For a moment, Savannah thought she might be having a heart attack.
“Yes, Patricia. You did. We have absolute, irrefutable proof. So let’s move on to why.”
Suddenly, the editor’s entire body sagged, as though her last bit of strength had deserted her. “It was a stupid, stupid thing to do, and I regretted it the moment I dropped the letter into the slot there in the post office wall.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“I was exhausted. I had been working, day and night for a month, doing a complete rewrite on a horrible manuscript that she’d turned in. It was awful. The worst book ever written in the history of the world. Obviously, she hadn’t even tried to produce a novel that was coherent, let alone entertaining.”
Patricia looked out the window, but her eyes seemed vacant, as though she was gazing into a most troubling chapter of her past. “She was late with the book, too, which played havoc with Production’s schedule. They needed it. I had to get it done.”
She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. “I was drinking more than I should. Wine instead of food is never a good idea. I finished the book, sent it in, and then drank myself stupid. I thought about how she sat out there in her mansion on the beach in sunny California while I was stuck in the New York slush and snow, writing her book for her.”
She drew a shuddering breath. “So I wrote her a little something else to read. Something I hoped would ruin her day, sitting there on her sun-drenched patio overlooking the Pacific, and I stuck it in the mail.”
“When did she tell you that she’d gotten it?”
“Three days later. As soon as she received it. She was beside herself. So worried. So upset. She said things had been really bad for her lately anyway, what with Colin messing around with Olive.”
“Colin was messing with Olive?”
“Colin was an absolute whore. He messed with anybody he could get his hands on.”
That’s worth knowing, Savannah told herself.
“Anyway,” Patricia continued, “after hearing how awful her life was, I realized why she’d had such a hard time with the book. I felt like a total jerk for adding to her problems.”
Savannah thought of all the enjoyable hours her favorite author had given her over the years. Such great books with intricately woven plots, sympathetic characters, all interspersed with bits of humor and wise observations on life.
She couldn’t imagine how difficult it would be to produce something wonderful like that if your personal life was in a shambles.
“If you felt so bad about writing that letter,” Savannah said, “why did you keep writing them?”
Of course, she didn’t know for sure that Patricia had written the second and third one, but a stab in the dark frequently hit its target.
“I didn’t! I swear to you, I did not write those. I don’t know who did. I’m serious when I tell you that I felt awful that I’d written one. I was horrified to hear that someone else was keeping it going.”
“Then why do all three letters look exactly the same?”
“I don’t know! I wondered about that myself. But they’re on standard copy paper sold by a well-known chain of office supply stores. They were written with the default font of a common word-processing program. You can’t get more generic than that. It might just be a coincidence.”
Savannah said nothing, just quietly studied the woman before her with the predatory eyes of a former police detective. From the way the woman bit her lower lip to the way she was twisting the large turquoise ring on her finger around and around. From Patricia’s tearstained cheeks to her slumped shoulders, Savannah could see she was a broken woman, haunted by what she had done.
The problem was: Savannah wasn’t sure what, exactly, she had and hadn’t done.
“You said you shopped all day yesterday,” Savannah finally said. “From the time you left the ship until you returned.”
“That’s right.”
“Okay, then start opening up those bags of souvenirs, the ones you bought for your nieces and nephews and everybody back at the office. Let’s have a look at your receipts. Every last one of them. We’re going to see if you really do have an alibi or not.”
* * *
“She had nothing to do with it,” Savannah told Waycross and Tammy as Dirk drove the four of them to the coroner’s office. “I’m well acquainted with the shopping habits of females, and I assure you, no woman can buy that many things in one day and still have time to commit murder. Patricia’s innocent.”
“But she wrote the threatening letter,” Tammy insisted. “No nice person does something like that.”
“A nice person with a drinking problem might if they were stuck on Stupid,” Waycross said. “If they were as tired and mad as she told Savannah she was.”
“Then who wrote the others?” Dirk asked.
“Yeah,” Tammy said, “that really narrows down the list. It had to be someone who knew about the first letter. Someone who actually saw it. Otherwise, how could they duplicate it?”
“That’s a good point,” Dirk said, getting excited. “Let’s think about who’s on that list.”
Savannah got far less excited. “Okay, here we go. Natasha, Patricia, Olive, Colin, her publisher, and anyone there at the publishing house that he might’ve shown it to. I would’ve passed a thing like that around to my closest friends. Wouldn’t you? Then there are the people on the ship. Natasha told me that she had to inform the security staff and the cruise director. And of course the captain had to know. She probably told her best friends and closest relatives. Oh, and the butler was there when she received a letter, and you know what they say about butlers.”
“That they did it,” Tammy supplied.
“Okay,” Dirk said, far less excited. “So the short list is actually a very long list. Which puts us back at square one.”
Savannah turned halfway in her seat to look back at Waycross. “I’m glad Dr. Johnson invited us over today, and that he’s going to let you take a look at the car. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that you’ll be able to find something.”
Waycross looked doubtful. “You might as well uncross your fingers, Sis. I’ve seen insurance jobs, cars that were burnt to a crisp. You can’t tell much about them. But I’ll sure give it a try.”
“I’m sure you will, darlin’. If there’s anything there to find, I know you’ll spot it.”
* * *
They passed through the town and out the other side, then turned inland on a small side road. Since there were only three buildings on the one-block long street, it wasn’t difficult to figure out which was the doctor’s.
There was also the telltale sign stuck in the front lawn.
Tammy read it aloud: DR. ARTHUR JOHNSON, VETERINARIAN.
“He’s a vet?” Dirk was mortified. “We have a coroner who’s a veterinarian?”
“Hey!” Tammy shouted, springing to the defense of vets everywhere. “It just so happens that animal doctors have to know as much as human doctors do, only about all the different species.”
“Dirk has a lot of respect for vets,” Savannah said. “But we were hoping for a medical doctor, the kind who is accustomed to examining human bodies. I guess it was too much to hope that they might have a bit of forensic schooling, too.”
“At least in little ol’ wide-spot-in-the-road McGill, the coroner’s an undertaker,” Waycross observed. “He’s used to messing with dead bodies.”
Dirk parked the Bronco, and they all started to climb out.
“Maybe we shouldn’t judge this fellow till we talk to him,” Savannah suggested. “We have to be fair and give him a chance.”
“Eh,” Dirk mumbled, “fair’s overrated.”
* * *
The moment they entered the veterinarian’s office, Savannah was overwhelmed by the pungent odor of wet fur. One of her memory bells chimed. She had smelled that same odor recently, but she couldn’t recall when or the circumstances.
Doctor Johnson came out of the back room, wiping his hands on a large, white cloth. Savannah could see that the rag was stained with gray and black ash.
Oh, no, she thought, he’s still working on them.
She had somehow hoped he had finished with the bodies. But if he had been working on them since yesterday, she was grateful that he was taking his time.
Dirk didn’t wait to exchange pleasantries. “How’s it going, Doc?” he asked. “Are these worse than the ones you’ve seen before?”
“I’ve never seen a burnt body before,” the doctor replied.
Dirk shot Savannah a quick “I-told-you-so” look.
“Having seen these,” the coroner continued, “I hope never to again.”
“How are the autopsies coming?” Tammy asked.
“I just finished.” He walked over to the benches where patients and their owners usually sat, waiting to be seen. Sitting down, he gave a long, weary sigh. “I feel bad that I couldn’t do a proper postmortem on them. There’s just, frankly, not much left to work with.”
He waved to them to be seated and peeled off his soiled jacket, which had once been white but now, like the cloth, was dingy gray.
As they chose seats and sat down, he said, “You may or may not be relieved to hear that it was, indeed, the Van Cleefs. I just made a positive identification from the dental records.”
“You got their dental records this quick?” Savannah was flabbergasted. For some reason, she assumed that the postal service only delivered mail to this remote village once a month. Weekly at best.
He smiled, as though reading her thoughts. “When we need to, we can get an overnight express service to bring us something from the lower forty-eight. They fly it to Ketchikan and then they bring it to us by boat. It costs a fortune, but if you need it, what can you do?” He shrugged. “We’re in a remote region, to be sure, but technology’s been building inroads into even our little niche in the world.”
“The dental records that you got from California,” Savannah said, “they match without a doubt?”
“No doubt at all. It was them.”
Savannah had assumed it was from the very beginning. Yet, actually hearing the words hurt her heart more than she had anticipated it would.
Looking over at her brother, Savannah could see that he was antsy to get his hands on the vehicle. He’d talked of nothing else since Dr. Johnson had called him that morning and made the offer.
“Would you mind, Doctor,” she said, “if my brother got started on the SUV?”
“No, of course not. It’s out back in my garage. Help yourself. If you need any tools, just look around on my walls and take whatever you want. If you take something apart, please put it back to the way it was. Other investigators might need to look at it.”
“I won’t take anything apart,” Waycross said as he shot to his feet and started toward the door.
“Wait a minute,” Tammy called out, hurrying after him. “I want to come with.”
“Are you sure, sugar?” Waycross looked doubtful.
“Of course. I’ll be your assistant.”
When the two of them had gone, Savannah turned back to the vet. “Did you get a chance to analyze the stuff that was in the syringe we found in Olive Kelly’s purse?”
“That was an easy one because of its unpleasant odor,” he said. “I’d know that smell a mile off. It’s pentocholine.”
“That’s a liquid you’re familiar with, Doc?” Dirk asked.
“Sadly, very.” He paused to wipe the sweat off his brow with his shirt sleeve. “We vets use it all the time when we have to euthanize animals. It’s very humane. Quick. Even for larger animals.”
“Who has access to that drug in this area?” Dirk wanted to know.
“Anyone who raises animals might have it. Farmers, dairymen. We do have a few in the area. Some put down their own animals when the time comes. Others call on me to do it for them.”
“Where do they get this pento . . . ?” Savannah asked.
“Pentocholine. It can be purchased online from companies who sell pet supplies.”
“Something that powerful?” Dirk looked doubtful. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“It’s intended to be used only on animals. There are a lot of drugs that require a prescription when you’re buying them for humans, but not if they’re for pets or livestock.”
“That liquid in the syringe,” Savannah said, “is it strong enough to kill a human being?”
“If that syringe was full,” Dr. Johnson said, “there’s no doubt that it would be enough to kill two.”
* * *
When they had concluded their conversation, Dr. Johnson led Savannah and Dirk around the house to a large garage in the rear of the property. Inside he had placed the burned Chevy.
Tammy was standing in the doorway and Waycross was just inside, putting his shirt back on and running a bottle of water over his hands to clean them.
“Did you find anything interesting?” the vet asked him as he walked out of the garage.
“Only that the gas tank is in one piece,” Waycross replied. “It wasn’t punctured at all. Also, the gear shift’s in Drive, not Neutral. They didn’t coast to the bottom of that mountain.”
“Unless somebody allowed it to coast down in Neutral and then shifted it into Drive after the accident,” Savannah suggested.
Waycross nodded. “Yes. I reckon if they had a mind to, there’d be nothing to stop ’em.”
Savannah walked over to the garage door and glanced inside. She had already seen more than she wanted to of the wrecked car the day before. Yet, she seemed drawn to look at it one more time.
Once her eyes adjusted to the gloom of the interior, she noticed some rough wooden shelves lining one wall of the building. On the shelves sat all different sizes of boxes. Some as small as a foot long. Others were four feet or more.
The boxes didn’t look like storage containers. To Savannah, they looked like small coffins.
“What are those?” she asked Dr. Johnson.
He gave her a funny look and said, “Those are pets who passed in the winter when the ground was too hard to bury them. Around Memorial Day, the ground will be thawed enough for us to start putting them in the ground.”
When she looked surprised, he shrugged and said, “I know. We have to do a lot of things differently up here. It’s a different world.”
Savannah looked at the line of little coffins and thought of all the town’s kids waiting until spring thawed to bury poor Fluffy and Rover. “You’re right about that,” she said. “Alaska is beautiful and wild and wonderful, and it’s strange. A very different world, indeed.”