Chapter Nine
Pete doesn’t like talking about the visions any more than Aunt Ibby does. He calls it “seeing things.” He’s not crazy about discussing the strange things O’Ryan can do either, but I knew that I’d better tell him what the cat had just shown us. I picked up the green jacket, climbed the stairs to my apartment, and called him. As soon as he answered I skipped the preliminaries and jumped right in.
“Was it oxycodone?”
“Yes.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Another vision?”
“No. It was the cat this time. An overdose?”
Cop voice. “The cat. Of course. Yes. An overdose.”
“Intentional?” It was my turn to whisper.
“Very doubtful, but someone went to a lot of trouble to make it look that way. We’ll talk later, okay?”
“Okay. Later. Fried clams and beach walk.”
“Seven o’clock?”
“Perfect,” I said.
I began watching the kitchen clock the second I hung up. It’s a vintage Kit-Cat Klock and the googly eyes and the swinging tail mark the passing seconds with a ticktock sound. Would seven o’clock never come? Who was the someone who tried to make Pat Duncan’s death look intentional? I checked my watch while I changed into jeans and a purple Emerson College sweatshirt, then ran back to the kitchen to watch Kit-Cat some more. I turned on the WICH-TV evening news. There was no mention of Pat Duncan at all, so the news of his recent demise must not have yet been shared.
Seven o’clock did eventually arrive along with my right-on-time date. O’Ryan had already gone downstairs to Aunt Ibby’s place and I was ready to toss my hobo bag over my shoulder, climb into Pete’s car, and get straight to the promised “we’ll talk later” part of the evening. As soon as we’d pulled away from the curb, I began the conversation.
“So tell me everything. Who tried to make Duncan’s death look like suicide?”
“Later,” he said again. “First, what’s all this about the cat telling you about oxycodone? Exactly how does that work? I mean, how come he never says anything smart when I’m around?”
“He doesn’t talk,” I insisted. “That would be silly.”
“But he communicates somehow, right?”
“You know he does. How many times have I told you about the wonderful things he can do? Don’t ask me how he does it. I guess being a witch’s familiar has something to do with it.”
“A witch’s familiar? Sure.” He tried to smother a laugh. “Seriously, Lee. How do you know about the pills?”
“Aunt Ibby had an old prescription for them in her medicine cabinet. There were still pills in the bottle. O’Ryan was insistent that we open the cabinet,” I told him. “Then he simply tapped on the bottle with his paw. Easy peasy.”
“Too easy.” He sounded disappointed. “That’s not exactly something that would stand up in court. Something I could tell the chief.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Like you’d seen Pat gulping down pills once.”
“According to the guys at the Friendly Tavern, he was a total health nut. If he gulped down anything I’ll bet it would be vitamins.”
“So a half-full bottle of oxycodone pills on his coffee table doesn’t fit the picture?”
“Not in the slightest. What does his wife say?”
“As a matter of fact, Pat’s name is on the prescription bottle. Seems he had an old knee injury from when he played baseball in college. It kicks up once in a while and he takes the oxy. Otherwise she says he maintains a strictly healthy diet. He rarely even ate any sweets from the bakery—including the famous cupcakes.”
“But the M.E. found it in his system,” I said. “How did it get there? They aren’t suspecting suicide, are they?”
“Somebody is hoping we think that, but no, we think your guess about vitamins is right on,” he told me. “If Pat was experiencing knee pain he might have taken a couple of pain pills but certainly nowhere near the amount the M.E. found in his system. The M.E. also found significant traces of . . .” He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket. “Hydroxypropyl methylcellulose,” he read aloud, syllable by syllable. “Also known as HPMC.”
“What does it mean?” I prodded.
“It’s what some medical capsules are made from.”
I began to understand. “Like vitamin capsules.”
“Exactly like vitamin capsules—like the ones we found in his bathroom.”
“But the oxycodone wasn’t in capsules,” I said.
“Right again,” he said. “Plain old white pills.” We pulled into the nearly full parking lot behind Dube’s Restaurant, justly famous for their fried clams. “It looks like a full house,” he said. “We’ll talk some more later.” I understood what he meant. The tables at Dube’s are pretty close together and a conversation about a recent murder wasn’t something we’d want nearby diners to overhear. I resigned myself to waiting for the promised walk on the beach to learn more about Pat Duncan’s demise.
It was a short ride over to Marblehead’s Deveraux Beach and, as though by mutual consent, we waited until we arrived there before we resumed the conversation. I began it.
“So somebody dumped out the vitamins that were in the capsules,” I suggested, “and filled them up with the drug.”
“Looks that way,” he agreed. “The capsules themselves are vegetarian based. They don’t contain any preservatives or sugar or anything else except water. They’re easy to swallow and tasteless. He wouldn’t have had a clue that they weren’t his regular vitamins.”
“So somebody mashed up the pain pills and filled the empty capsules. What a dirty trick.” I was angry at the thought. “Who would do such a thing?”
He was quiet for a moment. There was no one else in sight on the beach and the sound of the waves lapping up onto the shore was so peaceful it seemed far removed from talk of murder.
“Off the record?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Somebody knew exactly how many vitamin capsules Pat took every day—and they knew too, how much oxycodone it would take to kill him, and how fast it might work. Somebody waited until they were sure he was dead, and planted the oxy bottle on the coffee table. We figure that Pat ingested the equivalent of at least one hundred sixty milligrams of crushed immediate release pills—probably more. Enough to kill the proverbial moose.”
“But why?” was all I could think of to say.
“The chief always says there are only three reasons for murder.” Pete used his cop voice.
“Really? Only three? What are they?” I wondered aloud.
Pete held up his hand. Counted on three fingers. “Money, love and revenge.”
“So if Pat Duncan is dead because of one of those it has to be money,” I reasoned. “He owed so much of it.”
“Probably so,” Pete agreed, “but what if Dolores and Tommy have a thing going on? And what if one or the other of them thought Pat was in the way of their love?”
It was a surprising new idea. I frowned. “I don’t think so, but I guess it’s possible. Does revenge have a place in this picture?”
“Sure. What if Pat did something to make someone angry enough to pay him back by killing him?”
“Triple-layer reasons for murder,” I realized, “and Pat could be the victim of any one of them.”
“Or more than one of them,” Pete said. “Remember the tip you gave me? The one about the possibility that he might have won something big in the lottery?”
“Sure. The guys at the Friendly said somebody had put the winnings into some kind of trust so people wouldn’t be hounding them for money,” I recalled. “You were going to check that story out.”
“We checked it. It took a while to cut through the red tape, but we found a solid connection to Pat Duncan in the result.”
“So he was rich after all? The money he sent to Dolores is legit? And there’s millions more behind it?” I was happy for her. Even without Pat at her side, she’d be able to hold on to the bakery.
“Not exactly,” Pete said. “There was a wining ten-million-dollar ticket sold on an instant ticket game in Salem about two weeks ago. The store that sold it doesn’t know who bought it. Their surveillance video shows a man who looks somewhat like Pat, but his collar was turned up, covering the lower half of his face. Besides that, Pat didn’t sign it. Somebody else did.”
“No!” I couldn’t believe it. “The first thing they always tell you is to sign your ticket.”
“That’s right. But apparently Pat was so far in debt, he didn’t want to risk having anyone know that he was suddenly a millionaire.”
I thought about that for a moment while we walked along the hard-packed sand at the water’s edge. “That makes a certain amount of sense, I suppose,” I admitted, “but how else could he collect his ten million dollars?”
“If the winner wants to take his prize in cash, after all the taxes he only gets six million, five hundred thousand,” Pete explained. “He arranged for someone else to form a blind trust and to sign for the money.”
“That’s a pretty big ‘only,’ ” I said. “So who picked up the cash for Pat? Was it Dolores?”
“Strictly off the record for now,” Pete said, “Tommy LaGrange picked up the cash.”
“Oh, good,” I said. “Tommy has certainly been a trusted friend of the family for a long time. So where is the money now?”
Pete shrugged his shoulders as we turned and headed back toward the car. “We don’t know for sure. Besides that, we don’t know where Tommy LaGrange is either.”
I stopped short, looking up at Pete. “You don’t think something bad has happened to Tommy too, do you?”
Long pause. Cop voice. “Define bad,” he said.
I didn’t know how to answer that right away. I had to think about it for a minute. My voice, when it came, sounded squeaky. Unsure. “Are you thinking maybe Tommy did something bad—not that something bad could have happened to him?”
“We believe it’s a possibility. The money is gone and so is Tommy.”
“That makes me so sad,” I said, hoping that what I was thinking wasn’t true. “Tommy is—was—Pat’s best friend. What does Dolores think about it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “She doesn’t want to talk about it and we can’t force her to. She’s justifiably upset about Pat’s death, but she refuses to speak about it to anybody. She hasn’t even talked to her workers about it. Maybe she hasn’t accepted the fact that he’s gone. The poor woman is trying hard to keep the business running—a big enough job as it is, especially during the busy Halloween season. She’s been throwing herself into the work. The staff says she barely takes time to sleep or eat. But without either Pat or Tommy around to help—and with Tommy possibly being dishonest or even worse . . . ?” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “She’s between a rock and a hard place for sure.”
“I wonder if there’s anything I can do—or the station can do—to help her. I know what it is to lose your husband. Maybe I can get Mr. Doan to comp some ads for the cupcakes, or maybe Aunt Ibby could round up a few of her girlfriends to volunteer to help out in the bakery, or maybe she needs a go-fund-me page for the funeral expenses.” I was sad and angry at the same time. “The whole community loves that little shop, cupcakes and all. It just wouldn’t be right for Dolores to lose the business when none of this is her fault. Maybe Tommy will show up with the missing winnings and help her make sense of it all.”
“Maybe,” Pete said as we reached the car. He didn’t really sound convinced.
The ride back to Winter Street was quiet—not in a bad way—sometimes we can ride along in silence for quite a while, each of us absorbed in our own thoughts. Pete was first to speak. “You said you’d like to help Dolores, maybe through WICH-TV somehow.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “I would. Can you think of a way I can help without seeming to be nosy? Without intruding on her misery? She’s just lost her husband and now a trusted friend might turn out to be a crook—or worse.”
“Can you think of a good reason to visit the bakery tomorrow morning?”
“I don’t have to think of one. There was a message in my in-box to get some more cinnamon rolls. The first dozen only lasted in the break room for about an hour. I was planning to stop at the bakery on my way to work.”
“That’s good. Tell her you’d like to help, that you understand about her loss. You can share with her about losing Johnny if you want to.” He reached across the console and patted my hand. “Only if you want to. It looks as though Pat trusted Tommy to go and collect the money for him. There was probably an arrangement to give Tommy some of the winnings too. All three names are on the trust. She refuses to talk to us about it. If Tommy LaGrange has grabbed the millions and run, she may never see a penny of it. That’s not what Pat would have wanted.”
“So you think I can get her to talk about something she clearly doesn’t want to talk about?” I was doubtful about my chance of success if a professional police detective couldn’t break her silence.
“The gamblers at the Friendly Tavern told you things they didn’t tell me,” he pointed out. “That was a big help. We need to find Tommy. Maybe he’s perfectly honest. Maybe he knows something about Pat’s death and he’s hiding from a killer. Either way, he’s the key to the whole mystery.”
As soon as Pete said “mystery,” my inner Nancy kicked in. Could I help get us to the end of The Clue in the Old Oak Tree? I decided instantly that I’d do my best to help Dolores Duncan in any way I could—and at the same time to help Pete solve that mystery!