Murder on Old Main Street (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) Read online

  “Why not?” he said finally. “I’ve been carrying this thing around for too long. It’s nobody’s business, but things have a way of coming out no matter how hard you work to keep them private. Maybe now is the time. Maybe you are the person.” He looked at me for a moment. “Abby Stoddard is a decent person. It’s good of you to try to help her.”

  He stood and reached to take a framed photograph down from the wall behind his desk. After blowing the dust off it, he handed it to me. “This is my daughter Amy on the day she graduated from Tufts School of Pharmacy. It was a proud day for Betsy and me. That girl is just the world to us, as sweet and fine a young woman as you would ever want to know.” He stuck his head out the door to be sure Ellie and any customers were still out of earshot, then sat down again and ran a hand over his eyes.

  I looked at the photograph. A study, freckle-faced redhead grinned at me from beneath a black graduation cap, her new diploma held triumphantly aloft. Her eyes were clear and guileless, not those you would expect to find on a thief and a substance abuser. “So this is Amy. Actually, I’ve heard quite a bit about her from my daughter Emma. Did you know that they were acquainted?”

  Ephraim pursed his lips and looked thoughtful. “Now that you mention it, I did know that. Went to high school together or some such, am I right?” He slapped his knee. “That’s why that pretty young woman at the Law Barn looks so darn familiar.”

  I nodded. “Yes, that’s Emma. She went to high school in Newington, not Wethersfield, but she and Amy knew a lot of the same kids. She told me she went to a party at your home once and was introduced to you. You have a very good memory for faces,” I told him.

  “Mmm, yes, it’s a help in my line of work.”

  I sat up straighter nd got to the hard part. “Emma told me something else, Ephraim. She hasn’t told anyone else. In fact, she only remembered it this morning, but I think it bears on the matter at hand.” As factually and non-judgmentally as I could, I laid out for him the story Emma had shared with me earlier in the day. To my relief, Ephraim seemed almost glad that I already knew about Amy’s Vicodin addiction. He nodded from time to time as I spoke, confirming what Emma had suspected.

  “So you know how she got hooked. That’s good,” he commented when I finished telling him what I knew. “But there’s more to the story, much more.” He paused to gather his thoughts. The phone rang at the prescription counter, and Ellie picked it up, then poked her head around the partition.

  “It’s Lydia Wentworth, Ephraim, wanting to speak to you. Shall I tell her you’ll call her back?”

  He nodded vaguely. “Would you? I’ll just be another few minutes here.” Ellie vanished again, and Ephraim picked up the story where I had left off. “Vicodin is a tricky medication. It’s a very effective pain reliever, which Lord only knows Amy needed after her second knee surgery. The trouble is that it’s also a mood-altering drug. It produces a euphoric feeling, and patients don’t want to give it up. They begin to obsess about how they are going to get more and more of it. Pretty soon, they can’t function normally without it. Even though the pain is gone, or mostly gone, the Vicodin produces an effect in them that they feel they can’t live without. When the prescriptions run out, they start looking for outside sources for more pills. I’ve seen it happen many times, but when it got hold of our Amy …” He stopped, obviously distressed by the memory.

  After a few minutes he regained control of his voice and continued. “Amy worked part-time in the pharmacy during breaks from college. It was during spring break after the second operation that I started to suspect she was helping herself to Vicodin from the controlled substance cabinet. I noticed we were short, and I couldn’t account for the discrepancy, so I questioned Ellie and Joanna, my other pharmacist, about it. Joanna confessed that Amy had told her she spilled half of one of those big bottles down the sink. She didn’t really believe Amy at the time, but she didn’t want to tattle on my daughter to me, either, so she kept quiet and hoped I’d get wise on my own. I did, but not in the way Joanna had hoped.”

  At this point in his story, Ephraim went far inside himself. He sat, eyes staring at the wall beyond my shoulder, hands clasped tightly on the desk, seeming to shrivel before my eyes. “It was that harridan who confronted me,” he said, his jaw clenched.

  “Prudence Crane?” I asked, although I had no doubt who he meant.

  “Up until then Amy had been very discreet, kept her secret pretty well, but she got sloppy. She let Prudy see her washing pills down her throat at the diner counter one evening after she got off work, a whole handful of them. When Amy went to the restroom, Prudy took her chance and rummaged through Amy’s book bag on the counter. Found half a bottle of Vicodin and then waited for Amy to come out of the bathroom. Told her there was no way Tufts University was going to give a diploma to a junkie and probably I’d lose my license when the truth came out, as she intended to see it would. She suggested that Amy could pay for her silence on an ongoing basis, however.” He shook his head in disbelief and met my eyes. “Can you believe it? She blackmailed a kid—my kid.”

  I sat for a moment, imagining how I would have felt if some predator had pulled such a thing on Emma, and my blood boiled for him. “What did Amy do then, Ephraim?”

  He raised his eyebrows, clearly surprised that I had to ask. “Why, she came to her mother and me, of course, and we helped her. In many ways that was the wake-up call she needed. We could have sent her off to a de-tox clinic, but we did some research and discovered it was possible to taper off the drug, if you have the right kind of support, and Amy did. We spent the next several months de-toxing her at home with the help of a doctor friend of ours. We tapered her off just like they do at the private clinics. She went through bouts of diarrhea and vomiting, chills and sweats, panic attacks and insomnia. But in the end, we won. She got off the Vicodin and stayed off it for good. So Prudy had nowhere to go with her information. Universities can do drug screens on their students, but they can’t do comprehensive background checks. As long as Amy stayed clean and passed any drug screen that might come along, there was nothing Prudy could do.”

  “So why were you spotted giving Prudy money at the diner?”

  Ephraim scowled again. “It happened after that photograph was taken, after Amy graduated. Betsy and I were so proud of our girl that day, we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. She had grown so much through her experience. In fact, it helped her make a decision about the kind of work she wanted to do. Instead of coming back here to work in the store or working for someone else, she applied for work as a compliance officer with the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration.”

  “But that’s wonderful!” I exclaimed.

  “We thought so, too—that is, until Prudence Crane got wind of Amy’s career aspirations and came to see me. It was right here in this room, in fact, that she reminded me of the extensive background checks required for that sort of work and how she planned to let the DEA know about Amy’s little problem unless I cared to make it worth her while not to.” His voice trailed off. “Well, you know the rest. She had us. I couldn’t allow her to destroy my daughter’s future.” He shrugged. “So I paid up.”

  I sat quietly, hoping he would answer the question I didn’t want to ask. After half a minute of silence, he understood what I needed to hear.

  “Oh, yes. You want to know if I killed the vicious, scandal-mongering old biddy. I admit it crossed my mind. She was threatening my daughter, my whole family, and a father has instincts.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t know how to convince you that I’m innocent of murder, but Kate, consider this. If I’d wanted to do in Prudy, within a few yards of where you’re sitting are a dozen substances I could have used that would never have been detected, and I have all the knowledge necessary to pull it off. I might even have done it with an overdose of Vicodin. Now, that would have been poetic justice, wouldn’t it?”

  He smiled without humor. “So why would I choose such a crude, detectable method?” His voice was g
etting louder, and I worried that we might be overheard. He slammed a hand on the desk defiantly, causing me to jump. “Most importantly, why would anyone set up a nice woman like Abby Stoddard for a murder charge? She has never been anything but decent and hardworking.”

  I put one hand on Ephraim’s arm consolingly and made a “Ssshh!” sign with the other. From the other side of the partition came the ting of the service bell that sat on the counter next to the cash register. Ellie must have been called away to another part of the store. Ephraim looked startled, then rose to his feet and straightened his smock.

  I nodded to indicate that I understood he needed to take care of this customer and said aloud, “Well, thank you, Mr. Marsh, for giving me your advice about those side effects. I understand everything you’ve told me, and I’m sure there will be no more problems in the future.”

  We both plastered smiles on our faces and left the office area as if our consultation had been strictly pharmacist-client. At the counter, holding the copy of Field & Stream I had seen him browsing through earlier, stood Mort Delahanty, scowling as always. Behind him, Miriam Drinkwater was holding a package of pantyhose and looking impatiently at her watch. I wondered how long they had been standing there before ringing the service bell. “Goodbye, now,” I said to Ephraim and made a beeline for the door.

  Late that afternoon, Margo and I were pursuing the theme of peaceful coexistence between men and women. I had already told her the results of my interview with Ephraim Marsh, and we were enjoying a well-deserved happy hour before heading out for the evening. We had both kicked off our shoes and propped our ankles on opposite sides of the big desk that dominated the MACK Realty office, the better to enjoy our bourbon on the rocks, served discreetly in coffee mugs. Door closed, we sipped our drinks and listened to the Law Barn empty out as Jimmy Seidel’s staff, Emma among them, twittered and giggled their way into the evening.

  “Everyone’s always ballyhooin’ about the virtues of compromise in a successful relationship, but I’ve always thought it was highly overrated,” Margo commented. “Think about it. Dissatisfaction is the essence of compromise. Nobody gets precisely what he wants.” She took another sip of her drink.

  I nodded solemnly. “So what are two middle-aged adults, trying to coexist under one roof after having their own spaces for more than a decade, supposed to do?”

  Personally, I vote for negotiation and accommodation.”

  “Do tell.”

  Margo warmed to her theme, or perhaps to the bourbon. I was beginning to experience a pleasant buzz myself. “In a good negotiation, everyone leaves the table feelin’ like they’ve won, maybe not every single thing they wanted, but somethin’. It’s the difference between a screamin’ match and a good debate. The screamin’ feels good for the moment, but it doesn’t give you a shot at amelioratin’ your opponent’s point of view over the long haul.”

  “Ameliorating?” I mocked. Margo frowned and went on.

  “Then there’s accommodation, which comes at a difference of opinion a whole other way. You have to say, okay, doin’ X is important to you, and doin’ Y is just as important to me, so out of affection and consideration, we’ll accommodate each other.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to need an example on that one, Teach. Try not to make it too graphically sexual, please.”

  “I can give you two examples, Smartass, and neither one of ‘em takes place between the sheets.”

  I smiled encouragingly.

  “You’re always goin’ on about Armando’s insistence on drinkin’ one hundred percent Colombian coffee. Nothin’ else will do. And I know for a fact that you have the palate of a turnip and drink that tacky half-caf stuff in the mornin’. So instead of quarrelin’ about such a silly thing, why not just make two pots of coffee, his and hers? I mean, what would it take, an extra coffee filter and two extra minutes to get everybody’s day off to a good start?”

  “And if you wanted to be extra accommodatin’, you could bring him a cup in bed, since you leave for work so much earlier than he does. Who knows where that might lead?” She grinned bawdily.

  “See, I knew this would wind up in the bedroom.” I shook my head in resignation. “What’s the second example?

  Margo thought for a moment. “Space. You’re both just paralyzed with fright about givin’ up your own space. So why give it up entirely?”

  “You mean, we should keep both houses but live in one of them most of the time? That would sort of negate the financial benefits of living together, wouldn’t it?”

  Margo shook her head. “No, no, no. Having space of your own doesn’t have to mean a whole house or even a separate apartment. Now that I think about it, your place is set up perfectly. You have a bedroom and an adjoinin’ bath on the first floor. In fact, you hardly even go upstairs except to your office. So Armando can have his own bedroom and bathroom upstairs all to his little ol’ self, and you can retreat to your downstairs suite whenever you feel the need!” she finished triumphantly.

  I stared at her. “You mean, not share a bedroom? What would people think?”

  Margo snorted into her glass, an unladylike habit of her. “Now what in the world do you care what people think? If it works for you, it’s nobody’s damn business, Sugar.”

  “You know I don’t give a fig for most people’s opinions. I meant Emma and Joey and Mary and Strutter … you know, my people. Wouldn’t they think that’s odd?”

  “No, because all of those people know you and love you both. Besides, havin’ separate bedrooms and bathrooms is considered the height of elegance these days.” She tipped her drink all the way up and captured the last ice cube in her mouth, then grinned wickedly. “Of course, you could always clarify the situation by doin’ what a lady of my acquaintance did when visitors were clearly wonderin’ about the separate bedroom thin.”

  “I know I’m going to regret asking this, but what did she do?”

  “She hung a beautifully framed cross-stitch on the wall outside her bedroom. It read, ‘We Do It Here’.” She dissolved into giggles.

  I couldn’t help laughing. “Couldn’t you just see Philpott’s face at my holiday open house?” Edna Philpott was my neighbor two doors down, a prim, self-righteous type who had appointed herself chief enforcer of the rules in my condominium community. Most of us delighted in torturing her by side-stepping minor regulations whenever we thought we could get away with it.

  The thought of Edna’s reaction, coupled with the bourbon we had consumed, kept us whooping. As I locked the office door, I noticed that Millie Haines’ light was still on and attempted unsuccessfully to shush Margo. Millie spent her days on the go and caught up on her paperwork in the evening. The best we could do was to muffle our snorts and chortles as we made our way through the lobby. Emma’s day had apparently also ended, as no light was visible when I stuck my head into the loft stairwell, so we let ourselves out the front door and locked it behind us. We wiped our eyes on a shared tissue and bid each other goodnight after agreeing on a time to meet at the Wheeler house the next morning. It promised to be an interesting day, but also one that involved a lot of work.

  After an early dinner with Armando at Costa del Sol, I let myself into the condo and fed the cats, then drew my customary bubble bath. It was a peaceful way to end the day, and I had a lot to think about. When the water cooled, I levered myself out of the tub and went through my bedtime ritual of creams and potions before heading for my bed, where Jasmine and Simon already lay neatly curled to one side. It had taken years of training to make them understand that I was entitled to spread out into the middle of the mattress, but cats were expected to fit along the perimeter. When Armando spent the night, they really took issue, especially Jasmine, who considered him her personal heat source.

  The crossword puzzle I held propped before me was ignored as I continued to turn over my conversation with Ephraim Marsh in my mind. On the plus side, I was convinced that he had nothing to do with Prudy’s death. On the negative side, that elim
inated all of the suspects Abby had asked me to question. Unless she had thought of someone else, or we found Harriett Wheeler’s diaries the next day, I was out of ideas on where else to look for Prudy’s murderer. I wondered if the police were having any better luck.

  It was only then that I realized that Margo hadn’t said a word about her evening with John Harkness, and I had forgotten to tell her about my surprising discovery in the reading room that morning. Oh, well, I thought drowsily as the puzzle slipped to the floor and I reached to switch off my bedside table lamp, we’ll have a lot to talk about tomorrow.

  About that, I turned out to be right. Oh, boy, was I.

  Eight

  At 10:30 sharp, I drove up in front of Will and Janet Copeland’s house, which stood next to the old Wheeler residence on Wolcott Hill Road. The street was an interesting one to a realtor and probably to anyone else who had occasion to view its entire length. It extended south from the Hartford border to its terminus at Prospect Street, which fairly accurately bisected Wethersfield from east to west. One of the main thoroughfares in the older part of town, it had evolved over the years into a pleasing microcosm of the evolution of the town itself. Victorians, such as the Wheeler house, sat next to post-World War II frame residences, such as the Copelands’, which in turn enjoyed a ‘60s bungalow as its neighbor on the other side.

  The pleasant jumble of building periods and styles was knit together by well-tended lawns and gardens of every shape and size, which spilled over with spider mums, kale, ornamental cabbages, and asters. Their vivid colors were set off by backdrops of thistle and decorative grasses. In this part of town, driveways were edged, and even the foundation plantings were weeded regularly. It all looked perfectly lovely, hardly what one would expect of a murder scene. But then, it wasn’t a murder scene, as far as we knew. It was merely the former home of a murder victim.