Murder by Arrangement (Edna Davies mysteries Book 5) (11 page)

Lily, slowly
turning the pot three rotations to settle the tea leaves, didn’t answer
immediately. When she finally did, it was with a nod. “Yes, I knew him as
Professor Peppafitch. I took a class from him … oh, let’s see, about fifteen
years ago, maybe twenty. I forget exactly which one he taught. I audited
several at the university about the same time.” She poured out a cup for Edna
and handed it to her. “He must have remembered that I keep to myself and never
gossip.” She sat back in her chair, carefully balancing her cup and saucer. “I
think that’s why he knocked on my door when he came back to town. Knew I
wouldn’t spread his business around.”

“Did he ever
mention to you why he didn’t want his ex-wife to know he was back?”

Lily shook her
head. “Nope. Didn’t ask and he didn’t offer. I keep myself to myself, and he
did, too.” She looked at Edna as if the question were slightly offensive.
“Besides, we weren’t exactly social equals. He worked for me.”

Edna ignored the
snobbish remark and asked. “Was he in touch with any of his old friends? Did
anyone come to visit?”

“Not that I knew
of. Never saw anyone talking to him. Nobody ever came to my door looking for
him.”

Edna thought
she’d probably exhausted this line of inquiry, so she sipped her tea as she
considered how to get Lily to talk about her late son-in-law. Hoping there was
a soft spot somewhere in the woman, Edna said, “My granddaughter told me that
Lettie … I mean Violet, went home with her mother.” When Lily simply stared out
the glass walls at the garden beyond, Edna went on. “I thought from what Amanda
said that Violet would be staying with you for the entire week. I was looking
forward to saying hello to her again. She’s a delightful child and I enjoyed
her company on Saturday.” Edna thought that was laying it on pretty thick, but
she hoped her effusiveness would encourage Lily to talk about her family.

“Her mother
changed our plans.” Edna noticed a faint flush creeping up the woman’s neck to
her cheek and thought she heard a muttered “typical” before Lily’s lips
tightened into a firm line. She surprised Edna by speaking again. “She’s too
fiercely protective of the child. Girl’s not able to breath the way Rose
hovers.”

Sensing a tense
frustration to that bit of conversation, Edna tried again, hoping to lighten
Lily’s mood. “Rosie … ah, Rose says Violet is happier since they moved to
Warwick. Do you get that impression also?”

This time, Lily
did turn her head and her lips loosened into a near smile. “Yes, I do think she
seems more cheerful lately.”

Without
thinking, Edna spoke from her heart. “I believe that if the rumors surrounding
her father’s death were put to rest, Lettie could be saved from future
persecution.”

Lily stood abruptly
and dropped her cup and saucer on the table, nearly shattering the fine bone
china. “If you don’t mind, Edna, I will get back to my garden.”

Chapter 16

Edna had known
the son-in-law’s death and subsequent effects on his family would be a difficult
subject to broach, but it had been worth a try. Or had it? Would Lily ever
speak to her again? And what had made her so angry? Was it the possibility of
Lettie being the brunt of other children’s brutality that upset Lily or was it
mention of Gregory Haverstrum? How close had she been to her daughter’s
husband?

Edna sighed.
She’d driven away without much thought to where she was going, but as if by
instinct, she was heading toward her own neighborhood. Glancing at the
dashboard clock, she saw it was nearly noon. Seeing no other traffic on the
straightaway, she pulled onto the shoulder and took out her cell phone to call
Charlie.

“Have you had
lunch?” she asked after greeting the detective and finding out he was at his
desk in the stationhouse.

“Are you
offering or wanting me to take you out?” he replied with a smile in his voice.

She laughed.
“I’m not quite certain what’s in the larder, but if you want to take a chance,
I’m offering.”

“I’ll take a
chance on your cooking any day. Shall I drop around in a half hour?”

“That will be
fine.” Ending the call and pulling back onto the road, she began mentally to
line up the questions she had for him. And, if John Forrester did show up
unannounced, he would be in for a surprise. Edna grinned at the thought, almost
wishing the retired policeman would arrive on her doorstep while Charlie was
there.

Forty minutes
later, she heard a knock at the back door and a voice call from the mud room.
“Hi, Edna. It’s me.”

“Come in,
Charlie,” she called back from the stove where she was stirring bits of ham
into a pot of split-pea soup. He’d removed his coat and was walking into the
kitchen when a dinging noise sounded. “Perfect timing,” she said and pulled a
pan of corn bread out of the oven. “Pour yourself a cup of coffee and sit.”

Over lunch, they
chatted about things unrelated to any police investigation, except for Charlie
to bemoan the fact that work had interfered with a special dinner date with
Starling. When her name came up, Edna was careful to stay away from asking
questions of a too-personal nature. She wondered if she appeared too eager or
pushy, if she would scare Charlie away from her daughter. The two young people
would find their way together or not, but Edna had to admit she was getting
impatient for them to realize they were meant for each other.

When they
reached a dessert of cranberry cake, Edna refilled Charlie’s coffee, served
herself a cup of tea and started in on her reason for inviting the detective to
lunch. “Have you gotten a report from the medical examiner about Clem?”

“Not yet, but
something else has surfaced. I told him about the ranunculin you mentioned as
possibly causing the mouth ulcers. He said Clem’s mouth and esophagus were
clean, but the blisters you mentioned rang a bell in an older case.”

“A poisoning?”

Charlie nodded.
“Yup. Gregory Haverstrum. He had those exact symptoms. At the time, the M.E.
didn’t know for sure the blisters were related to cause of death, but he found
nothing he could test for. Without an idea of what he’d be looking for, it’d be
a waste of taxpayers’ money to go off on a fishing expedition. So, the
investigating team noted the abnormality in Haverstrum’s file, but didn’t think
much more about it. They figured it probably was related to the flu that had
him laid up that week.”

Edna felt her
pulse speed up. “Can the M.E. recheck a two-year-old corpse?”

“Afraid not.
Haverstrum was cremated as soon as his body was released.”

Edna sank back
in her chair, having realized her mistake. “Ranunculin’s a natural substance.
It’s likely it had dissipated anyway before Gregory’s body was found. Two days,
wasn’t it?”

Charlie nodded,
paused, then said, “Well, the M.E. has the information now, so I trust he’ll
know what to do with it if he ever spots those symptoms again. At any rate,
Clem didn’t have skin lesions, so we struck out there.”

“How did he
happen to collapse in Peppa’s driveway, and how did he get there in the first
place?”

“Seems he was on
foot, at least part of the way. Neighbor stepped outside about nine o’clock to
walk her dog. Thought our description of Clem sounded like a man she saw
stumbling down the street. She lives at the opposite end of the block from
Peppa’s house. Said the man was a couple of houses away with his back to her,
so she only got an impression. She figured he was a drunk, stumbling home.
Didn’t think much more about it until we knocked on her door when we canvased
the neighborhood.”

“Surely Clem
couldn’t have walked all the way from Lily Beck’s to Peppa’s, particularly if
he were drunk,” Edna said. “That must be … what … at least three miles.”

Charlie shook
his head, more in bewilderment than denial. “You’re right. Can’t think he could
have made it that far under his own steam, but his truck was in the garage.
Lily’s car, too. Someone must have given him a ride. We’re thinking maybe he
hitched and got dropped off somewhere nearby. That could explain it. Reporters
are getting the story out, asking for anyone who might have picked him up to
contact us. It’s a long shot, but it’s all we got right now.”

“I suppose you
questioned Lily about her comings and goings Saturday night. The way she
treated him when I was there, I can’t imagine she’d offer to drive him
anywhere.” Edna thought of something else. “According to her daughter, Lily
doesn’t drive if the weather is bad or even if it
looks
like it will be
bad.”

Charlie nodded.
“She was one of the first people we interviewed. Said she hadn’t left the
house. She said her daughter and granddaughter were with her the entire
evening. They had dinner together, then decided to watch a movie on TV. Lily
said partway through the show, she began to feel queasy and went to bed after
taking an antacid. Left Rose and Violet around seven and didn’t see them again
until Rose came into her room at five thirty Sunday morning.”

“Five thirty?”
Edna asked, surprised at the news. “Why so early?”

“Apparently,
Rose had to go to work. Told her mother that she promised her boss to make up
for not working late Saturday afternoon.”

“And she took
Violet back to Warwick with her,” Edna interjected.

“That’s right.
Lily said she dozed off again for an hour and when she got up, she realized her
granddaughter was gone. Called Rose just to make certain the girl was with her.
Seemed angry that her daughter hadn’t mentioned it when she left.”

Edna thought for
a minute while she sipped tea. She couldn’t think of anything else to ask
Charlie about Clem until the M.E.’s report was in. She wasn’t finished picking
his brain, though. “Besides the blistering and the fact that Gregory was
cremated, what else do you know about the investigation?”

“The Haverstrum
case?” Charlie held his mug out when Edna lifted the coffee pot in a silent
offer of a refill, then settled back in his chair. “From what I remember, he
was found by his cleaning woman. As you already know, he’d been dead about two
days. He was home with the flu before that, so nobody missed him. No broken
appointments or things of that sort that would have sent someone around sooner.
There were rumors about food poisoning, others about possible suicide. The body
was in pretty bad shape. He’d been pretty sick before he died. Also, the heat
in his condo had been turned up. Granted, it was wintertime, but the
temperature was near ninety in his place. A dead body in those conditions
deteriorates faster than normal.” Charlie sat forward to set his coffee cup on
the table. “Reporters had a number of theories, probably to sell papers, but
nothing amounted to much as far as the investigating team was concerned. Most
of what they found in his place was chalked up to his illness.”

Edna was
confused. “If everything was ruled out, why is John Forrester trying to pin
something on Rosie?”

“Are you sure
that’s what he’s doing?” Before she could respond, Charlie went on. “From what
I know, she went to the condo and cleaned up. Several people had brought
casseroles or soups to Haverstrum. You know, the sort of thing folks do for
sick friends who are helpless around the house.” Charlie grinned at Edna as if
he were speaking from personal experience.

She smiled in
return, but absently. She was thinking of Rosie’s visit to her estranged
husband’s abode. “I assume the timing worked out to prove Gregory was still
alive when she left him?”

“So she claimed
in her statement. She said she’d stopped in to see if he needed anything. Everyone
else was bringing him food, so she was only checking on him. Said she knew he
had a cleaning woman, but the kitchen was such a mess, she figured she’d
straighten it up.”

“She was being
pretty nice to him, considering how badly he’d treated her.”

Charlie shook
his head. “I’ll never understand it, but some marriages are like that. Wife
can’t live with her husband, but can’t seem to live without him, either.”

“And vice
versa,” Edna added.

“And vice
versa,” Charlie agreed.

“Let me guess,”
Edna said, returning to the subject. “Detective Forrester doesn’t buy it that
Rosie cleaned up when she knew Gregory had a cleaning woman coming in.”

Charlie raised
his eyebrows. “You’re onto this detective business pretty well, Mrs. Davies.”

Edna felt a glow
of pleasure over the compliment, but was also a little surprised. “I thought I
was being sarcastic. Does he really think like that? After all, the housekeeper
wasn’t expected for a couple more days. Right? If the kitchen were dirty, her washing
up would make sense to me.”

Charlie nodded.
“To give John his due, Rosie’s efforts were confined to the kitchen. She said
Gregory had taken food out of the refrigerator, left stuff in pots on the
stove, took lids off dishes to see what was inside and hadn’t put anything
back. According to her, some things were beginning to mold and some to smell up
the place, so she ground the garbage in the disposal and ran the pots and pans
through the dishwasher. At the time, our investigators suspected she did that
to destroy evidence.” Charlie shrugged as if to say,
her motive is anyone’s
guess
.

“But,” Edna
speculated, “because the medical examiner didn’t find anything unusual in
Gregory’s body, nobody could prove foul play.”

“That’s right.”

“And you don’t
think John Forrester is trying to implicate Rosie in the death of her husband?”

Charlie shrugged
again. “Seems like you’re jumping to conclusions just because he’s asking
questions about an old case. Maybe he’s curious.”

“But why that
particular case? Didn’t you say he’d been taken off it, less than a day after
the body was found?”

 “Right again.”
Charlie turned his wrist to look at his watch. “Uh, oh. I gotta get back to
work.” He rose and bent to give Edna a quick peck on the cheek. “Thanks for
lunch.”

After he’d gone,
Edna thought about her last question.
Why indeed was John Forrester
investigating a case he was never really on in the first place?