Third Degree (20 page)

“That’s a real change of tune,” I said, my voice sounding thick from the tears backed up in my throat.

“Girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,” Max said.

I stared into my coffee cup. Girl had a point.

“Oh, hi,” she said. “I made some coffee. I hope that’s okay with you.”

“Okay? It’s fantastic,” I said, and poured myself a cup. “How did you sleep?”

“Fine,” she said, nibbling on a piece of toast. Despite the fact that we had just met the night before and she was now staying in my house, she seemed pretty much at ease and at home.

“I only have the two bedrooms and need to use the spare for an office so I put a futon in there. I’m sorry it’s not more comfortable.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “It’s fine. Really. I can’t thank you enough for putting me up.”

“I have to go to school today. Do you have to go to … uh, work?” I asked. What did you call what a Hooters waitress cum private investigator cum reality show participant did?

She stood and came over to the sink to wash out her coffee cup. “I have an assignment to finish for school, then a shift at the restaurant, and then I have to meet with Max and the other private investigators for an update on our latest case.”

Wow, pretty busy. It made my day seem positively tame by comparison and I would probably have to run the Sister Mary, Father Dwyer, President Etheridge gauntlet at some point. “School?”

“Yep,” she said, putting her coffee cup, now dry, back into the cabinet. “Getting a degree in criminal justice from John Jay.”

So there was more to this young chicken wing server than met the eye. Good to know. “There are fresh towels in the upstairs hall closet. Make yourself at home,” I said to this woman whom I had met less than twelve hours earlier. I knew more about my gynecologist, whom I only saw once every year or so, than I did about this woman who was now sharing my house. Max had given me no information beyond “she needs a place to stay,” and I wisely did not press. With Max, it’s better that way; the less you know, the better. “So, okay, well, bye,” I said, not sure how one behaves around one’s new roommate.

I arrived at school a little more than a half hour later and attempted to lie low, something that a nearly six-foot-tall woman with a miasma of messy hair can hardly pull off. I slunk into my office after exchanging a few benign words with Dottie about the weather—wisely avoiding any talk about her relationship with Charlie or any additional relationship advice—and settled in behind my desk. From my messenger bag, I took out the business card that I had been carrying around for the last few days and put it on my desk, smoothing down the edges. After a few minutes of manipulating the card between my fingers, I finally got up the courage to dial the number that was printed on the front.

John McVeigh, Mac the Medical Examiner, answered on the second ring, something I wasn’t counting on. “ME’s office. McVeigh speaking.”

“Um, hi, Medical Examiner McVeigh.” Was he a doctor? Or just a mister? I wasn’t sure, so I went with his full title. “This is Alison Bergeron. We met the other day—”

“Of course! Alison! How are you?” he asked, full of good cheer.

“Well, I’m fine, thank you,” I said, surprised that he had asked. He asked me why I was calling, and up until this moment, I had thought I would go straight to begging for the exhumation of Carter Wilmott’s body, but on second thought, I went with a different tack. It hadn’t occurred to me until just now that my implying that Carter had not died of what the ME said he had died of would be a wee bit uncomfortable for both of us. “I think I have some information that might be germane to the Wilmott case and I wanted to share it with you.” The silence on the other end of the phone was deafening; obviously ME McVeigh was no dummy and could see where this was headed. “Hello?”

“Blunt force trauma to the head,” he said dully.

“I know,” I quickly amended. “That’s what you said. That’s probably what you even put on the certificate of death!” I said, much more cheerily than the circumstances would have required. “I actually just have a question. Regarding death. And stuff.”

“And stuff?”

“Well, maybe not ‘stuff,’ per se, but other things.” Nothing like sounding like a complete moron to solidify your credibility. “Can we have a cup of coffee?”

“I’d much prefer a scotch,” he said.

“Okay! Then scotch it is. What does your schedule look like?”

“It looks like a spiral-bound notebook filled with monthly calendars.”

I was stunned into silence until I realized he was joking. Not exactly gallows humor, but not exactly humor, either. “Oh, right. How is tonight? Say seven? I can meet you anywhere you’d like.”

He asked me to meet him at an Irish pub in White Plains not far from his office and conveniently located across from a funeral home, an appropriate landmark when one was meeting the medical examiner for a drink. Until then, I had a few things to figure out, the first being what I was going to do now that I had a Hooters waitress as a roommate.

I called Crawford and gave him the update, leaving out the part where I was going on a first date with the ME and most of the stuff about Ginny Miller and her thoughts on poison. Crawford knew me well enough that that was just enough information to get me snooping around, and let’s just say that he doesn’t like that aspect of my personality.

“Wait,” he said. “You’re living with a Hooters waitress?” I heard him relay this information to Fred; they were in the car, riding to a homicide. “And she’s a friend of Max?”

“You heard me, brother. Hooters waitress. In my house.”

“Do you know anything about this person?”

“Only that she needs a place to stay.”

“Oh, good. I feel so much better.”

“She’s a nice kid. She’s getting a degree in criminal justice from John Jay.”

“Sounds like a regular Mother Teresa.” Fred mumbled something in the background that I couldn’t understand but it didn’t matter; if Fred had been standing right next to me, chances are I wouldn’t have been able to understand him, either. “I’ve gotta go. Call me later, okay?”

I hated deceiving Crawford but I hated him being mad at me more. I had tossed and turned all night wondering why I was helping Ginny Miller, a woman who up until last night had been my archenemy. But now I saw her for what she was: a lonely, kind of depressed middle-aged woman who had succumbed to the charms of a seemingly sophisticated—if you believed money gave you class, that is, which I didn’t—and wealthy man. I didn’t know a lot about the relationship but I had gleaned that much. And she seemed hell-bent on making amends and saving her marriage. I had to respect that. Albeit begrudgingly, given the way she had treated me.

And there was the added bonus of her having attended to my terminally ill mother in her last days. I had spent every day and night at the hospital for two weeks but was hard-pressed to remember any nurses or doctors whom I had met during that time, so overcome was I with grief and exhaustion. My mind wasn’t my mind then; I was younger than I should have been while attending to a sick parent and it was all I could do to maintain my sanity in the midst of a horrific tragedy. My father had already died several years earlier. But I do remember that the people who had taken care of my mother had kept her comfortable, out of pain, and clean. They were angels who flitted in and did their work silently and without too much disturbance.

If Ginny Miller had been one of those angels, I was certainly in her debt.

The whole poisoning angle was an interesting twist. Although I had seen the guy die, who knew if he had died in the manner to which we all ascribed? What if he had been slowly poisoned? And by whom? It was a question that should be answered. Because if George Miller was innocent, then he shouldn’t have to go to jail. That much was very clear to me and my inbred sense of social and moral justice.

It’s a high horse but someone has to ride it.

The day went quickly, and when I had interviewed my last student, I hightailed it out of there. I was in White Plains, a city in Westchester where the ME’s office was located and which also was the location of my rendezvous with ME McVeigh, in about twenty minutes. I found the bar easily and parked across the street in front of the funeral home.

Mac was at the bar, nursing an amber-colored liquid in a short glass that I assumed was his beloved scotch. He stood when I entered, and not knowing whether to give me a hug or shake my hand, he settled for a pat on the shoulder. “Hello, Ms. Bergeron.”

“It’s Alison.” I slid onto the stool next to him and ordered a club soda.

“Not a drinker?” he asked.

“Not a drinker and a driver,” I explained.

He nodded solemnly. “Good rule.” He motioned to the bartender for another drink. “I can walk from here,” he explained. Once it had been placed in front of him and he took a sip, he turned his full attention to me. “Now, remind me. Why are we here?” His blue eyes were sharp, but kind.

I spread my hands out on the bar and waited a few beats, trying to get the facts—or what I perceived to be the facts—straight in my head. “What would you say if I told you that I had information that led me to believe that Carter Wilmott died from poisoning rather than blunt force trauma?”

Mac studied his drink. “I thought you were a college professor.”

“I am.”

“So what makes you think that you know how to determine cause of death?”

“I don’t.” He waited for me to continue. “It’s just that someone I know who was close to Carter seems to think that his symptoms prior to his death may link to poisoning. And this person would know.”

“How?”

“They’re a nurse.”

“
She’s
a nurse.”

I was caught off guard and stammered a bit. How had he known that? Fifty-fifty guess?

Mac clinked his glass against mine. “Good luck, Ms. Bergeron. But stay away from Ginny Miller. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” He swished his drink around in his glass. “The only reason I wanted to meet you in person was to implore you to stay away from her. I had a feeling she was behind this. She had already contacted someone in my office to express her concerns. But her delusions are dangerous.”

So Ginny had already gotten to him; I wish she had mentioned that before I had invited him out under somewhat false pretenses. It didn’t surprise me that she could get in touch with the ME; being a nurse, she probably had a lot of contacts on his staff. “What if she does know something?” I asked. “She said that you don’t test for poisoning.”

Mac sighed and looked up at the ceiling, as he was wont to do. “I’m telling you, if I had a dime for everyone that came and told me how somebody really died …”

He was exasperated but I could see that he was wavering, ever so slightly. “You don’t test for poisoning, do you?”

He shook his head. “No.” He shook his head again. “Blunt force trauma,” he repeated, almost as if trying to convince himself.

I reached over and grabbed his arm. “I know that it will be a huge embarrassment if you have to revise your cause of death, but do you really want an innocent man to go to jail?”

He looked like he was going to signal for another drink but thought better of it. “Your eye looks better,” he said, smiling.

“Don’t change the subject,” I said.

He sucked down the last of his second scotch. “Let me think about this.”

I reached over and gave him a hug. “You’re the best, Mac.”

“You don’t know that for a fact and I’m not promising anything.” He stood and buttoned his blazer. He smoothed down the few strands of gray hair that covered his mostly bald pate. “I have to go. Reezie’s making pot roast. I’d ask you to join us but you’ve given me quite a headache and I think it would be best if we parted here while I still like you.”

“Thank you. But I have plans,” I lied.

“You teach at St. Thomas, right?” he asked before he left. He threw a ten and a twenty on the bar, a generous tipper, to say the least.

I nodded.

“My friend’s daughter went there. She’s around your age, maybe a little older. Lovely girl. Smart as a whip. Couldn’t do math to save her life.” He mentioned her name but I didn’t know her and by his description she could have been anyone; St. Thomas isn’t known for its math program. “I’ll be in touch, Alison.”