Death In Duplicate

ELEVEN

SUSAN DIDN’T KNOW WHO WAS PALER-SHANNON OR DONALD. But she knew where her priorities lay; she got up to take Ethan and Rosie from their nurse’s arms.

“I… Oh, I…” Shannon seemed unable to express herself.

Donald was not having that problem. “You! You’re that nurse!” He pointed at her dramatically. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here,” Shannon whispered, hugging the babies close to her chest. She turned to Susan. “If you could just check on the warmer for me and put a pan of water on a burner to warm? I don’t trust microwaves to heat evenly and these little guys will realize how hungry they are any min-ute now. I’m going to go back upstairs. I was trying to let Chrissy sleep. But…” She glanced over at Donald Baines. “I…” She left without finishing her sentence.

Donald Baines wasn’t so discreet. “You know who that is, don’t you?” he asked. “That’s the person who killed my wife! Call the police immediately!”

“I won’t and she isn’t,” Susan protested loudly, hoping Shannon was still close enough to overhear. “She was with Chrissy and the twins yesterday-all day. She couldn’t possibly have murdered your wife!”

Donald Baines got up, oblivious to the fact that he was grinding the handle of Susan’s antique Herend cup into her carpet. “If you won’t call, I’ll go home and do it myself!” he announced and stormed out.

Susan sat quietly for a moment, gazing at the mess on her carpet. She didn’t have long to wait. Shannon walked back into the room, bouncing the now whimpering twins in her arms. “Let’s go into the kitchen and warm up those bottles. We can talk while we do it,” Susan suggested.

“What he said… I can explain… but you… It didn’t surprise you, did it?” Shannon asked, following Susan.

“No. Nadine told me about the Perry Island Care Center deaths.”

“And that I was working there at the time.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why you know I was here with Chrissy when the murder occurred. You checked.”

“Yes.” Susan grabbed a heavy copper pan, filled it with water, and plopped it on the stove. She turned back to Shannon. “You know what?”

“No. What?”

“I think we need two baby seats in here. We could put them on the table and then the babies would be nice and safe when you’re working at the stove or getting things from the refrigerator or whatever.”

“Chrissy is trying to keep their stuff from taking over the house.”

Susan smiled. “Fat chance.”

Shannon didn’t return her smile. “Why are you letting me stay here if you knew about P.I.C.C.?”

“You’re such a good nurse. And I don’t believe you’re the murderer.”

“Yesterday you said you have discovered the identity of murderers in the past.”

“Yes,” Susan answered modestly.

“So you can tell who is a killer and who isn’t-that’s why you trust me?”

“No. I’m not psychic or anything. I just… I can figure things out. It started years ago-there was a murder inthe PTA. The police began an investigation immediately, of course. But they didn’t know anyone involved or the various groups or how things work in town. You could say I had inside information.”

“Like you have now. I mean, you knew Nadine and she told you about me.”

“Yes, I knew Nadine but not all that well. She only moved to town a few months ago.”

“And you’ve really found murderers.”

Susan nodded.

“It’s too bad you don’t live out on Perry. My life would be different if someone had figured out who killed our residents. And not just my life, the lives of others as well,” she added sadly.

The water began to simmer and Susan put the bottles in to warm. Ethan started to grizzle so she took him from Shannon ’s arms. Tucking his head underneath her chin, she began to walk about the room. Just as this movement had consoled her babies decades ago, Ethan settled down immediately. “What exactly happened on Perry Island? I remember hearing about some deaths in the nursing home there, but not many of the details.” She decided it was not the time to tell her that she had visited Perry Island only yesterday.

Shannon gently wiped a line of drool off Rosie’s chin before answering. “It’s hard to know where to begin.”

“At the beginning.” Susan was always willing to use a cliché if the circumstances required it.

“That’s just it. I’m not sure when the murders began or who was the first person to be killed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nursing homes aren’t like other places. The residents of nursing homes are old and many of them will die there, so when there is a death, no one thinks of murder. Death is just not all that unusual.”

Susan tried out the formula on her wrist before handing one bottle to Shannon and sitting down to offer the other to Ethan. “I understood that three people were killed.”

“Well, there were deaths that the coroner called murder, but there was one death right after I began working there that struck me as odd-well, not when it happened, but later when we knew about the other three. You see, the murders were all different. More than one method was used. That’s the reason no one knew what was happening at first. There was no pattern.”

Susan smiled down at the baby in her arms and thought how nice it was that he was too young to understand even one word of their conversation. “What do you remember about each death?”

“Everything!”

“Could you tell me about them?”

“I suppose… yes.”

“Why don’t you begin with the one that you didn’t realize was a murder at the time?” Susan said.

“Okay. It was Mr. Roper; we used to call him Mr. Reporter. That’s what he had been. He worked on a paper in California -I don’t remember which one-and he loved to talk about it. The good old days. You know, lots of the residents felt that way about the past and we tried to humor them.”

“Like calling him Mr. Reporter.”

“Exactly.”

“How did he die?”

“He was diabetic and his blood sugar got out of control and he went into shock. After he died, empty bourbon bottles were found in his locked drawer. Each resident had a locked dresser drawer although we never had any problems with theft, at least not while I was working there. Anyway, after they found the bottles, everyone assumed that he had drunk himself to death-not a terribly difficult thing to do if you have diabetes, a serious heart condition, and you’re almost a hundred years old.”

“But you didn’t believe that was the cause of his death?”

“I… it didn’t make sense. See, one night we-some of the younger staff-were having a little celebration for another nurse who had just gotten engaged. We had champagne and little cakes, but we weren’t getting drunk or anything. It was just a toast and a bite to eat and back to work. Anyway, Mr. Reporter was having trouble sleeping and he wandered down the hallway so we asked him to join us. And he did, but he refused any champagne or anything to eat. He said he hadn’t gotten to be as old as he was by ignoring doctor’s orders.”

“So you don’t think he drank?”

“Oh, it’s possible. I know that some alcoholics refuse to indulge in public and will drink only when they’re alone. But… well, everyone was surprised when the bottles were found. And we took good care of our residents. I don’t think something like that could have gone unnoticed.”

“How could he have died then?”

“It would have been possible for someone on the staff to either give him the wrong medication or withhold the proper meds and cause a serious imbalance in his blood sugar levels.”

“And then plant the bottles in his locked drawer?”

“Yes.”

“What about the lock?”

“There was a master key. It was kept in the office. Almost anyone could have gotten hold of it if they had wanted to.”

“Anyone on the staff or anyone at all?”

“Oh, I think just the staff…” She paused and rearranged Rosie’s arms, much to the baby’s dismay. “I guess… I mean, no one ever thought it might be a resident.”

“Why not? Were they so incapacitated that they couldn’t have killed someone, or taken the key and stashed empty bottles in that drawer?”

“No. We had residents who were quite…” She paused as if searching for the correct word.

“Spry?” Susan suggested.

“Spry and more. Most of the residents were elderly and many were incapacitated, but a few were perfectly able to… to do what you just described.”

“Were the residents ever considered suspects?”

“Not that I know of. Not seriously. The police questioned them of course, but one was the result of a lethal injection, one was suffocation, and… and another was pushed off the top of the building.” She shuddered. “That was Mrs. Hershman. I found her.”

“Was she the next person to die after Mr. Roper?” Susan asked.

“No, she was the last. The next person was Mr. Blake. He suffocated.”

“So everyone knew it was murder right away.”

“No, an accident. He was found tangled in his blankets. It sounds odd, but it could have been just one of those things-an old man thrashing around in the night. Anyway, no one thought of murder until Miss Breen died the very next day. She was a lovely lady, a retired school teacher-Latin. She had lived all over the world teaching in unusual places and she knew so many interesting people. P.I.C.C. was pretty out of the way, but she had lots of visitors, people she had taught mainly. Two of her students are now professors at Yale and it was one of them who went to the police and insisted on an investigation. If he had done it earlier, it might have stopped the murderer.”

“She was the one who died because of an injection?”

“Yes… There was no reason for her to have been given it at all, so once it was found in the body, everyone knew something was wrong. But the results of the autopsy didn’t get back until the afternoon of the day I found Mrs. Hershman.”

“Tell me about that.”

Shannon sighed. “She… She was… It was awful. It was late morning and I went outside to get some fresh air. P.I.C.C. was clean and it certainly didn’t smell the way some nursing homes do, but it was hot. Many of our residents had circulation problems of some sort and they all got chilled easily so the thermostats were always turned up way too high. Anyway, I went out to cool off and I found her. She was lying on the ground. Her arms and legs were in a weird position, but I just thought she had fallen down. I called to her and touched her gently on the shoulder, but she didn’t move. I thought maybe she was in shock so I took off my sweater and put it around her and ran back inside to get help. She was dead and… and it was obvious right away that she hadn’t just tripped and fallen down.”

“I’m surprised that residents were allowed to wander around outside on their own.”

“They weren’t. And I don’t remember it ever happening before. There were only a few doors and all of them were alarmed except for the back door where supplies were delivered, and there was a door between that area and the living area that was kept closed as well as alarmed. And there was always someone working in the kitchen twenty-four/seven, so no one could have gone out there without being seen. I don’t think anyone could have just wandered out, but I didn’t think about that then. I mean, what’s more likely-that someone had wandered out the back door where the alarm was turned off or someone had gone up on the roof and been thrown off?”

“Good point,” Susan said. “But how did they know she had been thrown off and not gone up there alone and just fallen?”

“The police searched all over. They thought she might have jumped out of a window, but all the windows on that side of the building are semisealed. They only open a few inches. So they checked out the roof. They found a necklace up there that she always wore. It had been pulled off her neck and broken. The autopsy showed that as well as other signs of a struggle before her death. They also found heavy leather gloves. They had been used to strangle her before she was tossed off the wall.”

“Was there any way to tell who had worn them?”

“No. Apparently the killer had put on surgical gloves before putting on the leather ones-there were boxes of gloves outside of each room; everyone had access to them-and dozens of pairs were tossed out every day, so searching the garbage didn’t reveal anything.”

Susan put down the almost empty bottle and moved Ethan up onto her shoulder and patted his back gently. “But there was no doubt that she was murdered.”

“None. And then they looked into the other two deaths and decided they were also suspicious…”

“But not Mr. Roper’s death.”

“No. I wonder why.”

“Me, too. It doesn’t make sense,” Susan said. But she didn’t mention the other thing that didn’t make sense to her. Why someone who went outside to cool down would still be wearing a sweater.