Chapter 5 #2
He wasn’t wrong. “I forgot. You’re right.
He could have been poisoned before he ever walked into the train station, and become disoriented after applying the lip balm, perhaps one too many times.
But I still stand by the fact it looked like he was stuffed into that cupboard.
I suppose he could have done it to himself if he was out of his mind.
There were no contusions on the body, which I admit would be strange if someone put him in there.
” I snapped my fingers. “Unless he was already dead. Those bruises might not show up as clearly.”
“Do you need to head back to your office?” Ewan asked. “I’m going to meet Henry at the victim’s home. Do you want to go with me?”
I stopped. It was so unusual for him to ask me to help. Usually, I had to beg to be included.
“What’s going on?”
He paused with me on the sidewalk. “What do you mean?”
“You never let me be involved in the active investigation. I usually have to figure things out on my own.”
“Well, I decided that perhaps it is best to involve you so that you don’t find yourself in a predicament like the last few cases.”
“None of that was my fault,” I said. That sounded weak even to me. I wasn’t great about keeping my nose out of police business, and my life had been threatened more than once. While trying to investigate on my own, I sometimes found myself in jeopardy.
As one does.
“Where is his house?”
“Up the mountain. Once we finish up there, we’ll head to his office.”
It was my day off, but I had nothing better to do. Besides, it beat trying to find a way to sneak in on my own later. Easier to walk through the front door with Ewan.
“OK, I’m in.”
A half-hour later, we were in a neighborhood near the big library in the middle of town. There were rows of small brownstone houses on a tree-lined street. The main street in downtown Sea Isle was only a few blocks away, along with the train station. So, the victim had most likely walked there.
Our small town had CCTV cameras along the main avenues. And I was curious about something.
“Did you see him walking to the station on CCTV?” I asked as we climbed the steps.
“He walked there alone,” he said. “From what we could tell on the cameras he came from the direction of his home. His executive assistant said he’d left work early to go change into his costume for the evening. So, that checked out on the timeline.”
“OK. I guess it was too much to ask that the killer might have been walking with him forcing him to use lip balm.”
He chuckled.
One of Ewan’s officers stood by the door and nodded as we went by. Henry was in the main living area searching through bookshelves.
“Find anything?” Ewan asked.
“No sir. Nothing out of the ordinary. I have bagged and tagged the lip balms we found. I also found some shaving items and lotions we took into evidence.”
“Good. Let’s have those tested by the Doc and Abigail. Take them down when we’re finished here.”
“Yes, sir.”
I pulled a pair of gloves from my bag and headed for the bathroom. Even though it sounded as if Henry had done a thorough job, I wanted to double-check. The accountant wasn’t one of my patients. I was curious if he had any prescriptions.
As I passed by the kitchen, it was noticeably tidy. All the rooms were quite stark and clean. I wondered if perhaps Jacks had OCD. Nothing in the home appeared out of place.
The bathroom was no exception. I wondered if he kept it this way or if he had a housekeeper, who cleaned for him.
I was lucky that Abigail was OCD when it came to neatness, she kept the practice and my house tidy.
Even though, I’d offered more than once to have cleaners come in and take care of it.
She had acted offended, and I had given up trying to help out.
She didn’t like the way I loaded the dishwasher or hung my clothes in the closet either.
It was easier to let her do things her way.
As I went through the deceased man’s bathroom, I was surprised by just how clean it was. The medicine cabinet was empty, except for some shaving cream, the tree tea oil, and toothpaste. He didn’t have any prescriptions. Nor did he have an epi pen.
I found that odd. Most people with that sort of allergy would keep one nearby and on their person.
“Henry?”
“Yes, Doc?”
“Were there any medications in the cabinet in the bathroom?”
“No, ma’am. There were some vitamins, though. I have them bagged for Abigail. They are in a box in the entry with the loo label.”
I went to find the box. He was right. There were no prescriptions.
I needed to speak to his physician to make certain about the allergies and to find out if he’d had any other illnesses.
I found several items including the lip balms. There were vitamins sometimes used to treat anxiety and depression. Which made me wonder if he’d been having some kind of trouble with his mental state.
Most people were these days. Or at least, we were all a bit more open about mental health. Even the stubborn Scots who did not like to show any sort of weakness.
“I’ll search the database to see if I can find out who his primary doctor was.”
“Sounds good, Doc.”
After putting the lid back on the box, I went in search of Ewan. He was in the main bedroom, of which there were two.
“Find anything interesting?”
He shrugged. “The bed was made.”
“He seemed like a tidy sort if the rest of the house is any indication.”
There was a neat stack of books, most of them historical fiction, on his bedside. Some of them were about Scottish lore, and there were a couple of detective novels. They were from the 1940s or so, which I remembered were the kind of stories he was supposed to tell on the train.
“Hmmm.”
“What?” Ewan asked as he perused the closet.
“Nothing much. I just remembered that Mara said he was going to tell old-fashioned detective stories on the train. Some of the books on his bedside are exactly that. The sort of thing Humphrey Bogart might star in back in the day.
“I thought it odd that he’d choose that subject when there is so much Scottish folklore around here,” I said. “Maybe he liked the idea of the costume.”
Ewan shrugged. “Mara wanted to interest all sorts of people to ride the train,” he said. “I sat in on one of the committee meetings a few months ago. They were trying to round up an eclectic group.”
“True. I remember her saying that. He was a fastidious man, who used a lot of lip balm and was worried about his dry skin. That isn’t much for us to go by.”
“And he was an accountant, who also worked as an investment counselor. Could be one of his clients wasn’t happy about his work. People can be strange when it comes to their money.”
“Quite true. Money is one of the main reasons for murder.”
“When we finish here, I’m heading to his office.”
“I’ll come with you,” I said.
The victim lived a very tidy and clean life. But murder was messy, and there was almost always a motive.
We just had to find what instigated this one.