Motherhood Is Murder

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

To Do:

1. It’s hopeless—if the police can’t do it, what makes me think I can?

2. Where is Margaret?—Who cares? If she doesn’t want to call me back, then forget it. Maybe she’s in Mexico getting away with murder.

3. ?

4. Order turkey—Oh, yeah, holiday, festive, joy, joy, joy.

5. ?

6. ?

7. Buy new pajamas.

I sulked around the store and found what I was looking for in the back. I rummaged through the pajamas in the bin and picked up a teal pair with pink flamingos. I held them up for Laurie to view.

She was nestled in her stroller looking contented.

“What do you think of this set, lemon blossom?”

Laurie’s eyes shifted to the hanging purple puppy strapped to the side of her stroller. I pinched the puppy’s ear and recorded myself asking in a booming voice, “Do you like the pajamas?”

Laurie pedaled her feet but kept a serious expression on her face.

“Hmmm, you don’t like them?” I returned the teal pair and moved a few other sets out of the way. At the bottom of the stack I found a fuzzy pair with fuchsia lips all over. “Well, I’m not even going to ask you. I like these.”

I pulled the puppy off the stroller and recorded myself saying, “I’m buying them.”

I placed the puppy near Laurie’s ear and replayed it for her. She smiled and cooed at my voice then tried to eat the puppy.

I poked around looking for my size as my cell phone rang. I rummaged past the baby paraphernalia in the diaper bag and pulled out my phone. The caller ID read Paula’s number.

“Hi,” I mumbled.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, alarm in her voice.

“Nothing. Just shopping.”

“For what?” she asked suspicious.

“PJs.”

“For you or for Laurie?”

I sighed. “Me.”

“No! Not pajamas! How many pairs have you bought?”

“None yet.”

“Where are you?” she asked.

“At Bed Head and More.”

“Drop the PJs and step away from the counter right now!”

“I found a pair I really like. Well, two, but Laurie didn’t seem so fond of one of them.”

“Don’t buy them. You’ll wear them for weeks and never get out of that mood.”

“I’m not in a mood,” I said.

Paula knew me too well. If I was seriously down in the dumps, shopping for new pajamas seemed to help. Nothing would comfort me more than a cozy pair of new pajamas.

“Do you think they have footed pajamas for adults?” I asked.

“What?”

“You know, like the kind for kids with the feet. Do they make them for adults?”

“Yeah, that sounds really sexy, Kate. You’ve gone off the deep end. Come over immediately.”

“No. I’m going to buy these, go straight home, and snuggle up in them. They’re fleece and fuzzy and super-warm. I’ll sleep all week in them, lounge on the couch with Laurie in my lap, and eat bonbons if I want to. I’m going to—”

“Shut up, you nut. You’re a mom now, you can’t indulge your every whim. Like Laurie is going to let you sleep at all, much less for a week. And Jim? And what about Thanksgiving, you have too—”

“I’m hanging up now. I’m going to buy them. Both pairs and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

I snapped my phone shut and found my size in both pairs. I turned the stroller toward the counter, and Laurie’s puppy fell to the floor. I picked it up, wiped the drool off it onto my jeans, and shoved it into the diaper purse. When I wheeled Laurie up to the counter, the store phone rang.

The girl working smiled at me as she held up her index finger. “Just a second.” She picked up the phone. “Thank you for calling Bed Head and More, may I help you?”

I perused the fashion jewelry while waiting. I picked up a pair of silver earrings and held them to my ear, evaluating them in the mirror behind the counter.

“Uh . . . yes. She’s right here,” said the girl. “Do you want to talk to her?”

She seemed to be referring to me, but that couldn’t be right. I glanced over my shoulder. There was no one else in the store.

She must be referring to another employee in the back or something.

“Oh. Okay,” she said into the phone.

I replaced the silver earrings and picked up a pair made of delicate pink beads.

How old did Laurie have to be to get her ears pierced?

“Oh!” The girl’s voice dropped several octaves and her eyes darted up at me then down again.

What was going on?

I put the beaded earrings down and wheeled Laurie up to the counter. Now, it was just plain annoying. The girl was obviously having a personal conversation and I was meant to wait it out.

Well, nope. I had some serious lounging around to catch up on. So, she’d better get her butt in gear and check me out.

I placed my pajamas on the counter and smiled. The girl kept her eyes down and almost ducked her head.

“Uh-huh,” she said into the phone. “Okay.” She hung up and looked at me. “I’m sorry. We’re closed.”

“What?” I looked at my watch. “It’s one fifteen in the afternoon.”

She blinked. “Yeah. Sorry.”

We stared at each other in an awkward moment. My cell phone rang.

“You called the store, didn’t you?” I said into the phone.

The clerk smiled.

“Yeah. Come over,” Paula said.

“No!” I exclaimed as stubbornly as I could.

“I’m trying out a new recipe for pumpkin pie.”

“Okay.”

I sat in Paula’s kitchen, stirring the hot cocoa she’d made me and staring out into her garden. Her once green grass had yellowed and all the pots were empty. Keeping up the garden while she’d been away had been too much of an effort to coordinate, so she’d let it go—which, knowing Paula, had probably killed her.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said, cutting me a piece of the still steaming pie. “The police have a hard time closing cases, why shouldn’t you?”

Danny ran into the kitchen holding a plush blue ball and screamed, “Ball!”

I put my hands out to collect it from him and he gave me the biggest smile I’d seen in a long time.

“Kiss Auntie,” Paula said.

Danny leaned into me and said, “Kiss!”

He pressed his lips, tongue, and teeth against my cheek and made his own clicking sound, bringing a smile to my face.

I wrapped my arms around him and pulled his small body onto my lap. “Thank you, buddy, that was the best kiss ever!”

Laurie watched us from the safety of her bucket seat.

“So are you convinced it was Bruce?” Paula asked, liberally dolloping whipped cream onto the pie.

Danny spotted Laurie and screamed excitedly, “Baby Lo-ly!”

“Of course it was Bruce. Only now Gary the Grizzly is going to try and get me to pin it on Margaret.”

Danny scrambled out of my lap and ran to the glass door that separated the kitchen from the garden. He placed his pudgy palms on the glass and banged. “Danny garden!”

Paula pulled him away from the glass door. “No. Danny. Cold. Brrr!” Paula picked up the ball and threw it into the other room.

Danny lost interest in the garden, left fingerprints smudged on the glass, and ran out of the room with as much gusto as he had when he’d run in.

“Do you know if Margaret has access to that drug?” Paula asked, placing the pie in front of me.

“Fentanyl? Well, I suppose she could—being married to a doctor, right?” I tore into the pie. The pumpkin was still warm, the cream chilled, and the crust crisp. “Oh my God!”

Paula smiled. “Is it good? Is this the one I should make?”

I shook my head and shoveled another piece into my mouth. “It’s terrible. You need to try a different one tomorrow. I’ll come over and taste-test. In the meantime, don’t eat this one. I’ll take it home.”

Paula laughed. “I’ll give you the recipe. Why do think she hasn’t called you back?”

“Margaret? I don’t know.”

“Maybe it’s time you talked to Alan.”

I cringed. “You mean tell him his wife suspected him of murder?”

Paula pulled out a Windex bottle. “Oh, I don’t know why I bother!” she said, squirting the glass door. “Look at it this way, Kate. You can go talk to the doctor and possibly solve this thing or go home, clean house, and start getting ready for Thanksgiving.”

“No. I don’t even have fuzzy pajamas to put on.”

I drove straight home to drop Laurie off with Jim. I found him in the living room watching the news of the spiraling Dow Jones and praying the downturn wouldn’t affect his client so adversely that his contract would be canceled.

“Hi, honey, can you babysit?”

Jim looked up from the television. “You’re going out again?”

I nodded.

“Okay. What do I need to do? Feed her? Is there milk?”

I rubbed his shoulders. “Yes, there’s three ounces in a little bottle in the fridge.”

“Can I microwave it?”

“No, you have to heat water—you can do that in the microwave—then put the bottle into the cup of hot water to heat. Otherwise the nuker will destroy the beneficial properties in the breast milk, whatever they are.”

Jim nodded. “When will you be back?” he asked, his brow furrowing.

“I won’t be long. I need to go to Sacramento Street.”

It was almost 5:00 P.M. and I hoped Alan would still be at his office finishing paperwork after his final appointment. I pushed open the door to the medical office and entered the waiting room. Joan sat behind the closed-in glass counter. She was in her uniform lab coat, her gray hair curled around her ears.

When I stepped up to the counter, she blinked at me, trying to place me.

I smiled. “Is Dr. Lipe available?”

She frowned. “He’s with a patient right now. How may I help you?”

“Will you kindly let him know Kate Connolly is here?”

She stared at me. Did she see a resemblance to my mom? She didn’t know I was Vera’s daughter. That was the ace in my back pocket should she not wish to cooperate.

Ha! I know you are gossiping about your boss. You better let me get my way!

She pushed herself away from the desk and rose, not hesitating to give me a look of contempt as she disappeared down the hallway.

A few moments later, she pulled open the connecting door. “He’ll see you in his office, third door on the right.”

She resumed her perch at the counter and I walked down the hallway.

Hmm, no patient, huh?

At the third door I peeked in and saw Alan at his desk. The office was no more than a desk with a computer on it, two chairs, and a bookcase along the far wall, which was actually so close to the desk it seemed that books would crash onto our heads in an earthquake.

He stood when he saw me. The last time I’d been at his office, he’d had dark circles under his eyes. Now the circles were even darker and his clothes were wrinkled, making him look like a train wreck. “Mrs. Connolly, what can I do you for?”

“Thank you for your time.” I offered him my hand. “Do you have a few minutes to answer some questions, Doctor?”

He nodded, indicating for me to sit. “Of course, of course. Uh . . . about your feet?” He stared at my Converse-clad feet.

“No.”

He clenched his fist then relaxed it and seated himself.

“It was brought to my attention that after Helene was killed, you asked for a full toxicology scan from the medical examiner,” I said.

He seemed surprised. “Yes. That night on the boat, I told the EMTs and the police to please request a full tox screen.”

“Can you tell me why?”

He rubbed at his face. “I thought her death was odd. I didn’t think the fall down the stairs had killed her. Her neck wasn’t broken, her skull hadn’t cracked. No trauma from the fall that I would deem severe or deadly. So, I reasoned that the medical examiner would call the cause of death an internal organ failure. Like, say, heart failure. While technically that may have been true, I wanted to know what caused the heart failure. I thought we at least deserved to know.”

“Were you close to Helene?”

“Sure. She was Margaret’s best friend.”

It was confession time, I needed to get everything I could out of Alan and I didn’t think confrontation would be best.

I titled my head and softened my voice. “You wanted to know because you were in love with her?”

Alan eyes opened wide. “What?”

“I have it on pretty good authority that you were having an affair with Helene.”

His face turned red. “What authority? Who said this? Who have you been talking to?” He jumped out of his chair. “Who’s saying I’m having an affair?”

Okay, maybe eliciting a confession wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d thought.

I remained seated. I couldn’t disclose that I had access through Galigani to things I shouldn’t have had access to.

An ugly vein was pulsating on his forehead. “And what about my wife? Did you mention this outrageous gossip to her?”

My hand involuntarily came to my throat, maybe because he looked like he could strangle me. It kicked up a self-protection instinct in me. “No. I haven’t been able to reach her.”

Suddenly my stomach clenched and I tasted bile in the back of my throat.

My God! Where was Margaret? Had something happened to her?

A bubble of anxiety crept along my spine and I did my best to suppress the shudder it was causing me. Alan, who was still hovering over me, suddenly dropped into his chair as though he’d just realized how physically imposing he was in this confined space.

“Margaret didn’t know about Helene. She suspected I was seeing someone, but she didn’t know it was . . .” He rubbed at his temple. “Please don’t tell her. She left me. There’s no point in her knowing now, is there? She took the kids and went to her mother’s. You can reach her there.”

“She hired me to investigate you. She thought you were trying to kill her.”

Alan’s hands dropped to his side. “What? That’s absurd!”

“I left several messages for her. She hasn’t returned my calls.”

Alan’s eyes narrowed. “I spoke with her yesterday. Let me give you her mother’s number.”

He proceeded to write the same phone number Margaret had left for me on her last voice mail.

“Do you have her mother’s address?”

Alan scowled, but jotted an address down for me nonetheless. “Look, I don’t know where this is going, but even though Margaret and I were having problems, I would certainly never physically harm her. I’m a doctor, for Christ’s sake.”

He glared at me, waiting for me to respond, but I simply closed my mouth and looked at him. He tapped at his desk. “Helene and I fell in love. Things weren’t working in her marriage. She wanted kids and we thought . . .” He sank his head into his hands.

“What about adoption? I thought Helene and Bruce were arranging for an adoption.”

Alan dropped his hands to the desk. He held on to the edge of the desk as though he were afraid it would run off on him. After a moment, he said, “We thought I could get custody of my kids. Margaret . . . well . . . she’s had some stability problems.” He moved his head from side to side, evaluating what to say next. “She was addicted to prescription painkillers for a long time. I’m sure any judge would give me custody. Helene was excited about the opportunity to raise my kids.”

He wouldn’t “harm” Margaret, but he’d take her kids away.

Might as well kill her.

I remembered Margaret asking me to keep quiet on Alan’s access to drugs. Now that I knew she had an addiction, this made sense.

I stood.

He stood with me, his face lined with sadness. “I need to know what happened to Helene. Do you have any additional information?”

I was furious. He was a cheat. Had practically destroyed his poor wife and was colluding to steal the kids from her. The entire thing made me feel sick to my stomach and I didn’t want to help him in any way.

And Helene?

What kind of person had an affair with her best friend’s husband and schemed to take her kids?

I shook my head. “You’ll have to speak with the homicide cops. Inspector McNearny is assigned.”

He nodded as I stepped to the door.

“Doctor, one last question. Can you tell me where you were on Tuesday the fifteenth?”

His eyes narrowed. “Here. I had appointments all day.”