Chapter 31
The state pathologist’s post-mortem interim report was in Lottie’s inbox on Wednesday morning. She downloaded the file and opened it. The cause of the Healy family’s deaths she thought she already knew. But the toxicology report threw up an interesting fact.
‘They were all drugged, Boyd.’
‘The Healys?’
‘Yes. There’s evidence of sleeping pills in their bloodstreams. Might have been in the wine, perhaps? Did we send the glasses and bottles that were left strewn around the house for analysis?’
‘They’re all with the lab. I’ll follow it up. But there’s a flaw in that reasoning.’
‘I’m sure you are about to point it out to me, Dr Watson. Go on.’
‘Sadie said Caroline didn’t drink much, and Freya wouldn’t have been drinking wine at all. At least she shouldn’t have been.’
‘Then we need to check all the soft drinks bottles, tumblers, mugs, and the left-over pizza and food.’
‘Wouldn’t it have affected others who were at the party?’
‘Not if the drinks and food were tampered with afterwards, when everyone had left.’
‘Good point,’ he conceded. ‘But how were the Clarkes not drugged too? Maybe they killed the Healys.’
‘Possibly. Will you stop picking holes in my theories? I don’t know how it was done. I’m speculating here. Perhaps someone was making sure who drank what. We need to find the evidence and then we can figure out the how and why. Okay?’
‘Okay. So what do we do now?’
‘Check the inventory from the Healy house for sleeping pills, though I don’t recall any drugs being found there.’
‘Just paracetamol and ibuprofen on the SOCO list. No sleeping pills, but I’ll double-check.’
‘And we still need to locate Sadie and Lily.’
‘Alerts have been issued and reissued. All posted online too. The whole damn town has been searched. Neither mother nor daughter has turned up on any CCTV that we’ve secured.’
‘I know they lived on the outskirts of town in a secluded area, but Christ almighty, they didn’t slide down a rabbit hole.’ Lottie scratched her head. ‘They have to be somewhere. Either alive or dead. It’s all so suspicious, them vanishing straight after the murders of their friends.’
‘Back to my point that the Clarkes may have drugged the Healys and killed them.’
She exhaled a loud sigh. ‘Let’s get Thomas in here for an interview.’
When she was alone, Lottie read the report again.
Boyd was right. How were the sleeping pills administered to the Healys and no one else?
Lily went missing the next morning. But did she really?
Could she have been gone since the night before?
The night of the party. She only had Sadie’s word that she hadn’t checked on Lily and about the time she discovered her daughter missing.
And now Sadie was nowhere to be found either. Bloody hell.
Then she read something in the preliminary report that she had missed on her first run-through.
‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.
Jane had found an overdose of barbiturates in Freya Healy’s system. Coupled with the lack of petechiae, the conclusion was that Freya was dead before being strangled.