Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Since anyone who might have been a suspect was long gone, Ewan decided to help Abigail and me with the initial examination. Once that was done, we’d transport the body to my office.
“Before we go in, Mara, we’ll need a list of the guests.
Give that to Henry, please.” He turned to his team.
“It’s late, but first thing tomorrow we’ll work on narrowing down the suspects.
That is, if Dr. Em says it is a suspicious death.
We’ll look for connections between the victim and the other guests. ”
I was fairly certain the victim hadn’t stuck himself in a broom closet, but Ewan worked with evidence and was never a fan of assuming anything.
“Henry, I need a full workup on the deceased tonight. Get his information from Mara.”
“Yes, sir,” Henry said.
After suiting up, Ewan followed Abigail and me into the small office area, made tinier by his enormous presence.
He understood the drill and handed Abigail evidence bags as I went about the initial examination.
“Temp tells me he died just before the train took off,” I said. “And rigor has begun settling in, which will make it difficult to move him in his current position.”
Some parts of the job were not very glamorous, including scooping up some of the sick for testing.
Thank goodness for mint-scented masks. I’d had Henry as well as Abigail order them not long after solving our first case.
I poked and I prodded.
“What are your initial thoughts?”
“From the outward signs, I’d say anaphylactic shock.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Blue tinge on the lips and the yellowing of the eyes,” Abigail said, as she closed one of the evidence bags.
I smiled, and Ewan looked from me to her.
My assistant’s eyes opened wide. “Sorry. I said that out loud, didn’t I?”
I chuckled. “You did. And you’re right.”
“So, it’s possible it could be he just ate or drank something he was allergic to, and this isn’t murder.”
“I seriously doubt he stuffed himself into the closet and then latched it from the outside. And I find it suspicious that he would get sick and not remove himself from it. Which means he may have been unconscious when that happened.”
“So,” Ewan said, “someone poisoned him, and he couldn’t move. Then they put him in a closet.”
I shrugged. “Until I can run toxicology, I can’t confirm any of that. All I can say right now is it does look like anaphylactic shock.”
“So, someone gave him peanuts or something?” he asked.
I glanced back at him. “Ewan, I have no idea what he was allergic to so I can’t say. The only thing I can tell you for certain is he’s been dead for at least three hours. Like I said, I can give you more specifics once we get everything back to the lab and tested.”
I found some fibers on his coat and put them into the small Petri dishes we used for evidence. I could feel Ewan’s frustration rolling off of him, but I tried to ignore it.
I wasn’t certain his frustration was from us finding a dead body. Where had he been before joining us? While he was always quite serious, tonight he had an edginess that I’d never seen before.
By the time I’d finished gathering evidence, I was stiff from bending down so much that Abigail helped me to stand.
“From the state of rigor, your officers will have trouble moving him out of that narrow closet,” I said.
“We’ll take care of it,” he said. “And we’ll have the body to you in less than an hour.”
I stifled a yawn. It had been a very long day.
Unfortunately, it was about to be a long night as well.
I never liked to leave a body before we’d gathered all the evidence.
That was based on the experience of the first time I’d had to do my coroner’s job, and the killer had stolen the body out of the makeshift morgue at my practice.
“I can do the rest alone,” I told Abigail.
“I’m too wired to sleep, and Tommy is cared for at Ewan’s. I’ll be helping you run the labs,” Abigail said in her matter-of-fact way.
I’d learned from experience that it was no use arguing with her. Also, she was twice as fast as I would ever be with the equipment we had. In my defense, she had a great deal more experience with it.
When we walked out of the office, we found Mara curled up on one of the benches with her eyes closed.
I touched her shoulder, and she jumped.
“You’re OK,” I said. “Why didn’t you go home and go to bed?”
She cleared her throat. “I know it isn’t my fault, but I feel responsible. I mean, I’m head of the committee who pulled this event together.”
“You aren’t responsible,” Ewan said from behind me. “It may not even have been murder.”
Her eyes went wide. “Really? So, he put himself in that cupboard?”
I covered my laugh with my hand. She made a good point. One I’d mentioned earlier.
“Right. We need a key,” he said. “We’ll close up after we’ve finished. You head home.”
Mara glanced at me.
“Abigail and I are heading back to my practice. There’s nothing more we can do here.”
“OK,” Mara said as she followed us out.
Jasper was asleep in his van.
“Why is he still here?” I asked.
“He thought we might need a ride back down the mountain,” Abigail said.
“More than likely he wanted in on the gossip,” Mara added.
He jumped when Mara opened the passenger side door.
“Are you finished?”
“For now,” I said climbing into the back of his catering van. “Do you mind giving us a ride down the mountain?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“I said it was because you’d want all the juicy facts about the case,” Mara said.
He chuckled. “Well, I’m a part of the Dr. Em Scooby gang, so yes.” That’s what my friends started calling themselves after helping with my first case almost a year ago.
We’d been through a lot together since then, and they were more like family now.
“True,” I said. “But you know how Ewan feels about sharing information on cases.”
He started up the van. “But it isn’t like I’m going to say anything.”
That was true. The man could keep a secret.
“Did you by chance know the deceased?” I asked him.
“Do you have a picture?”
Abigail leaned forward and showed him a picture from the digital camera she used for crime scenes.
He made a face in the rearview mirror, before pulling out of his parking spot. “Oh. My,” he said. “He does not look good. No. I dinnae think I’ve ever seen him before.”
Abigail sat back, and then Jasper maneuvered the van down the mountain.
“Any idea how he died?” he asked.
“I’m curious about that as well,” Mara said.
Abigail and I glanced at one another.
“I do not even have to turn around to know you two are looking at one another,” Mara said. “Maybe Jasper and I can help if you give us something to go on.”
“This stays in this van,” I said.
“Promise,” Jasper and Mara said at the same time.
“I better not hear a word has leaked at the pub.”
Mara sighed. “I’ve never said a word about your cases to anyone outside our group. But that doesn’t keep people in our small town from talking. My guess is half the town already knows something bad happened.”
She wasn’t wrong. The grapevine in Sea Isle was a quick one. That was one of the many things I’d learned about small-town living.
As a doctor, I knew more than I wanted about most of my patients. Of course, I never said a word because of confidentiality. That didn’t stop my patients from gossiping about their neighbors as that was the town’s main form of communication.
As we made our way down the mountain, I explained that he may have died from an allergy.
“Did he mention anything to you, Mara?”
She shook her head. “Since we were doing small plates and desserts only, we didn’t have dietary restrictions. We tried to have a good mix.”
“Do you have any idea what caused the reaction?” Jasper asked. “I’d hate it if something I prepared killed him.” He’d provided petits fours and macarons for the event.
“I don’t think you have to worry,” I said. “From what I could see, he never made it onto the train. So, whatever caused the reaction was most likely ingested before he arrived or inside the station.”
“But all we had in the station was the champagne,” Mara said. “Maybe, he was allergic to alcohol.”
“Could be,” Abigail relayed. “But wouldn’t he know not to drink it?
I think the Doc is right. Whatever reaction he had was caused by something either before or just after he got here.
His time of death, which she’ll be able to be more precise about once the labs come back, will most likely show when he ingested whatever it was. ”
I smiled. Abigail was a flower who had blossomed over the past year. She was confident about her skills, as she should be. She was a marvel.
“So, he was allergic to something but that doesn’t mean someone killed him,” Mara said.
I didn’t blame her for wanting the case to be murder-free. I’d feel the same way if I’d worked as hard as she had to launch the Storytellers’ Train.
“We’ll see,” I said. “We have a lot more testing to do.”
“That doesn’t sound good.” Mara sighed.
“It will be OK,” I said. “No one is going to blame you.”
“And who knows,” Jasper said. “Some people might want to take the train even more if they feel like their lives might be in danger. I mean, there is a reason there are so many murder shows and podcasts.”
“Not. Helping,” Mara told him.
We pulled up at the corner behind the pub, which was just down from my home and practice.
“Get some rest,” I said to Mara. “I promise to share what we find out tomorrow. Just please …”
“I know. Don’t say anything in public.”
I nodded.
Jasper drove us up the small hill to my home.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said as I helped Abigail move my kit out of the van.
“Promise you’ll let me know if you find anything out?”
“I will,” I said.
As soon as we made it inside, I headed for my coffee machine. It was going to be an even longer night, and I needed a brain boost.
While I made coffee, Abigail headed to the back of the practice to start the lab testing.
The town was remote and sometimes we were cut off from the outside world.
Ewan had made certain the practice was equipped for anything that might happen.
We had more up-to-date equipment than many small hospitals in America.
Abigail was a marvel and had taught herself how to run all the machines. I trusted her more than I would any other lab tech.
By the time I had the autopsy suite set up, Ewan and his team arrived with the body. They had to roll him in the cramped position he’d been in because of rigor.
As Abigail took more samples from him and cut his clothes off, I began lining up my tools.
The other officers left, but Ewan stayed behind to help. At some point he’d changed into a cable-knit sweater with dark jeans and boots. Mara and I called it his working uniform.
“You don’t have to be here,” I said. “I’m sure you’re exhausted.”
“As are you,” he said. “And I remind you that as the Assistant Chief Constable, I must be here to oversee the findings.”
He told me that every time, but I wasn’t sure it was true.
That said, I didn’t question him. He’d been through this so many times with us that we all worked like a well-oiled machine.
Abigail handed him the chain of evidence clipboard. He recorded things as we went about our business.
Almost an hour later, I made my first cuts. And it was easy to see why the victim had died. His windpipe was closed off, and his lungs had signs of extreme irritation. As did his heart, which showed signs of the same sort of stress.
“Any idea what could have caused such a reaction and failure so quickly?” Ewan asked.
“We’ll know more when the tox screens are done,” I said.
I glanced at Abigail, who checked her watch. “Another couple of hours,” she said.
After that, we worked quickly and efficiently. Ewan logged things down, as Abigail put things in evidence bags or helped me with the weighing and measuring.
We finished in the early hours of the morning. By that time, all I could think of was going to bed.
“Everyone go home,” I said as we covered the body. “We can look at all the tests in the morning. But I need some sleep.”
“You do look dead on your feet.” Ewan nodded.
“Uh. Thanks.”
“I can stay and run more tests,” Abigail said.
“No. You need to rest as well. Just lock everything up in the lab. We’ll take a look at the results later on. I promise to send over the reports first thing to you, Ewan.”
I didn’t bother stifling a huge yawn, as I nearly shoved them both out the front door.
But even though I was exhausted, I couldn’t resist checking some of the labs that I knew would be finished.
I headed through my practice and back to the lab.
Almost all of the machines were still running. But something dinged on the main computer. When I brought it up, it was the first part of the tox screen.
I frowned. “That’s odd.”
I headed back to the autopsy room. I still had work to do.