Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Spanish moss along Harbor Street hung completely still, without a breath of wind off the water or even the suggestion of one. July on Grimm Island had no manners and no mercy, and this Wednesday had woken up mean.
I’d left Carly and Genevieve to handle the late morning rush and slipped out the back at nine thirty. The Lila Mae call was at ten, and I had no intention of being late for it.
I trailed behind Chowder’s leash on the way home.
He wore a linen bow tie in pale yellow with a white stripe and was taking his sweet time, stopping to investigate things I couldn’t see and passing silent judgment on passersby.
I caught myself humming “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” somewhere between the bakery and the corner of Broad Street, and it made me think of Dash and things I wasn’t entirely comfortable with.
His truck was pulling up to the front of the house just as Chowder and I came through the garden gate. I waved him around back and we went in together through the kitchen. The Silver Sleuths were already at the dining room table, and I could hear them gossiping from the kitchen.
“There’s fresh lemonade in the pitcher,” Bea called out.
“Don’t do it,” Dottie said. “It has a full bottle of vodka in it. Hank had a glass and then took a nap on the sofa for two hours.”
I chuckled and moved to fill the kettle instead. “How was your morning?” I asked Dash.
“Eventful,” he said. “Harris locked his keys in his patrol car and Galloway fell through a grate into a septic tank while he was responding to a call.”
I squenched my nose automatically. “I don’t even know what to say to that. What’d he do?”
“Not much he could do. He pulled himself out and went home. We’re going to have to use a fire hose to clean out his cruiser.”
“Did Harris ever get his keys?”
“I had to call a locksmith.” He accepted the mug I handed him. Dash liked his tea black and strong. “How was your morning?”
“John Olmsby told everyone the new pharmacist is rude and told everyone in the store about his gout over the loudspeaker, and he got a bunch of seniors in a tizzy and they were going over there to give him a talking-to face-to-face.”
“I guess it didn’t escalate,” he said, wincing. “I didn’t get any calls.”
“Either that or they buried him in someone’s backyard.” I poured my own tea and added milk and sugar. “Other than that, uneventful.”
We carried our mugs through to the dining room to check in with the others.
Walt had three boxes open and was going through them methodically, pen in hand.
Deidre had a stack of correspondence sorted by date.
Bea had her reading glasses on and her lips pressed together over whatever she was reading.
“Find anything interesting?” I asked.
“Not yet,” Walt said, without looking up. “But we have a long way to go.”
“We’ll take the call with Lila Mae in the study so we don’t bother you,” I said.
“Take good notes,” Deidre said. “We want a full report.”
We took our mugs to my study, where I kept the shop’s books and a view of the back garden that I never got tired of looking at. Dash closed the door behind us while I set up the laptop on the desk and pulled two chairs around to face the screen.
Lila Mae Banks appeared on the screen at exactly ten o’clock.
She was a small woman, neat and upright, her white hair set in rows of sausage curls that looked like they had been freshly permed. She sat in a bright sunroom in Arizona with a houseplant behind her, and she held a cup of something hot in her hands.
“Can you see me?” she asked, looking close into the screen so we could see every line on her weathered face.
“We can see you,” Dash said.
“My daughter set this up for me. She knows about technology.”
Her accent was Charleston, softened by decades away.
“We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us,” Dash said, once he’d introduced us.
“Oh, sure,” she said. “I’ve spent a long time wondering if anyone ever would. I knew something wasn’t right with that whole mess. Milton was a real horse’s patoot.”
“You’re not the first person to say that,” Dash replied.
“Well, it’s the truth. Crooked as a three-dollar bill, and all his cronies with him. I hope he rots in that jail cell.”
The ferociousness with which she said it had me raising my eyebrows. Note to self: Do not get on Lila Mae’s bad side.
“After re-examining some key issues in the case,” Dash said, “we’ve decided to treat this as an active homicide investigation.”
She nodded fiercely. “As you should. Henry never would have killed himself.”
“How long did you work for Dr. Wainwright?” I asked.
“Fifteen years,” she said, proudly. “Before Charlotte got sick. She had cancer, you know. Terrible thing when she passed. But they hired me on when things started getting busier with the foundation. Between the clinic, his house calls, and the travel they did with the foundation, they couldn’t keep up with everything.
My job was to do whatever they needed to lighten the load. ”
“Mrs. Wainwright would travel with him when he was working with the foundation?” I asked, surprised.
“Always,” she said. “She was a trauma nurse herself, but only worked for a few years after she and Henry married, though she kept her license up to date. They thought they’d be starting a family and she wanted to be home full-time.
” She sighed and shook her head sadly. “But that never came to be. Charlotte couldn’t have children.
They would have made wonderful parents.”
“Can you tell us about the morning you found Dr. Wainwright?” Dash asked.
“Horrible day,” she said. “I’ll never forget it as long as I live.
My husband had already passed by the time I started working for the Wainwrights.
It’s not easy finding a job when you have three kids and need the flexibility for their schedules.
But the Wainwrights hired me and paid a generous wage.
When Mrs. Wainwright was alive I’d arrive around nine in the morning to start the housecleaning, but after she passed and my kids were off at college, I would arrive at seven thirty every morning to start the coffee and make sure he had a light breakfast to eat.
” She paused and looked off into the distance as she remembered.
“He wasn’t taking good care of himself after she died, and I knew he needed me to be there to put the food in front of him so he’d eat.
I was the same way after my Stan died. You just go through the motions you know. ”
“Yes, I know,” I said, remember those days after Patrick had died.
“I remember we had terrible storms that October,” she said. “And it was raining when I showed up for work that morning. There was space for me to park under the breezeway between the main house and the pool house, so I parked there like usual and let myself in through the back door.”
“Was it locked or unlocked?” Dash asked.
“Unlocked, but that wasn’t unusual,” she said. “That’s the door patients would come through when Henry had home appointments. There was a mudroom and it split in two directions. To the right was the kitchen, and to the left was a room where he saw patients. It looked just like a doctor’s office.”
“Did he see a lot of patients at home?”
“Not really,” she answered. “It was usually older folks who didn’t want to risk getting sick sitting in a doctor’s office.
” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Or people who were ashamed of whatever it was they were coming to see him for and didn’t want to risk that receptionist at the clinic telling everyone in town what their ailment was. ”
“That would be Noreen Goble?” Dash asked.
“Nosy Noreen is what everyone used to call her,” she said. “I wasn’t even from the island and I knew to steer clear of her.”
“What did you do once you came through the back door?” I asked. “Was anything out of place or looked like it had been disturbed?”
“There was a bit of mud on the floor mat and a few leaves and smudges that led into the kitchen, but like I said, the rain was relentless, so it was to be expected. But nothing else was out of place.”
“Did you normally come in on the weekends?” I asked.
“Saturday was my day off, and I’d come in for a half day on Sundays,” she said. “I’d prep food for his lunches throughout the week. So when I came in that Sunday morning I started the coffee like usual and then did the dishes in the sink he’d left from the night before.
“He usually came down by eight or so because he liked to be at the church early enough to greet, but he didn’t come down.
” Her voice faltered and she looked down at her lap.
“So I went upstairs and saw the light coming from his study. He sometimes worked late into the night and would fall asleep at his desk, but I think something inside of me knew it wasn’t right.
I remember my heart pounding and how loud my footsteps sounded on the wood floor.
I thought surely he would hear me coming and call out.
He was always so friendly and sweet. He always made you feel like you were his favorite person in the room. But he didn’t call out.
“I hesitated outside the door. It was cracked just a little bit, enough for the light to come out, and when I knocked it swung open. That’s when I…that’s when I saw him.” She swallowed but her voice was steady.
“His desk faced the door, and he was sitting there in his big leather chair behind the desk, but he was slumped sideways like he was leaning over to get something. But the smell. That’s what hit me first before my eyes registered what I was seeing. Then I saw the blood.”
“You’re doing a good job,” Dash told her. “Can you paint a picture of his study for me? Through your eyes that morning. Don’t focus on his body. Just the study itself.”
“I knew that whole house like the back of my hand,” she said. “I tidied it up every day, and I knew where everything went.”