Weave of Absence (16 page)

Dear Sis, Sorry I haven't written in so long, but I've been crazy busy with work.

As I read, the love between the two sisters was almost palpable. Sybille went on to describe her recent promotion and the added responsibilities it involved. She chatted about a recent splurge, a new dress she had purchased for a date with a new boyfriend—no mention of his name. I finished the letter and selected another. This one was dated November of the same year. Here, Sybille described a recent date she'd had with her boyfriend, and this time she named him—Brent. He had taken her to dinner at a fancy restaurant and then they had club-hopped until the wee hours of
the morning. She went on to admit that she was head over heels and that she expected a proposal by New Year's. I read a few more letters, learning more about the relationship. Brent was secretive, Sybille complained. He resented her asking questions, got moody whenever she asked him to meet her friends. And then I found one letter that had stirred even more questions. In this one Sybille talked about Nancy, mentioning that she seemed cold and distant lately, and wondering whether she might be jealous of her new success at work or perhaps of her romantic life. I put the letter down, staring at the blank wall.

I wondered if Nancy had been the good friend she professed to be, or if she resented her beautiful and successful roommate? Sometimes envy and jealousy could turn into hatred. I was beginning to wonder if Nancy might not have been so sad to see Sybille disappear.

With Sybille gone, she wouldn't have to keep comparing herself to someone who would always be more beautiful and more successful than she could ever hope to be.

When I picked up the letter to read it again, I noticed that it was growing dark. I looked at the time—seven thirty. I'd left the store more than three hours ago. Matthew would have picked up Winston, and was probably—I hoped—wondering where I'd disappeared to. And I'd completely forgotten about Mercedes. I'd told her I would be right back. Was she still waiting for me, or had
Jenny sent her home before locking up? I stuffed the letter in my pocket, threw the pile of paper into the box, and shoved it back under the bed. On my way back to the shop, the evening shadows disappeared into the night.

To my relief, the shop was dark and locked up. I turned and headed upstairs to my apartment.

“Where the hell have you been all this time?” The question, coming from the darkened hall, nearly startled me out of my skin. I flicked on the light.

“Matthew. What in the word are you doing here? You nearly scared me to death.”

“Do you have any idea how worried I've been?”

“You were?” I said, smiling. “For me?”

“I got here at five thirty. Jenny was already gone. And Mercedes told me you should have returned an hour earlier. I waited with her for another hour until, finally, I sent her home and called Jenny to come lock up.”

“Oh, no. Poor Mercedes. Was she very upset?”

“Poor Mercedes? Don't you even care that you had me out of my mind with worry?” he said.

I wasn't sure whether to be pleased or angry. I reached the landing and he stared at me, frowning. Suddenly he reached over and plucked something from my hair. “What is this? Dust bunnies?” His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You've been snooping around again, haven't you?”

“I have not,” I snapped back, my face burning. I shoved the key into the lock and pushed the
door open. “If that's the kind of conversation we're going to have, you might as well leave.”

“Sorry, but I haven't been waiting all this time to be sent home without at least some explanation of what you've been up to.” He signaled to Winnie to follow him in. “Besides”—he brandished a bottle of wine and continued in a gentler tone—“you can't really expect me to drink this all by myself.”

“Fine,” I said, mellowing. “But only because of the wine. And because of Winnie,” I added, patting him on the head. I led the way to the kitchen and pointed Matthew to the glasses while I looked for something to eat.

“I could make pasta,” I said, pulling out a package of spaghetti and a can of tomato and basil sauce. “It'll only take a few minutes.”

“Sounds perfect,” he said, plucking another dust bunny from my hair. He gave me the eyebrow and tossed it into the wastebasket.

“Make yourself useful, won't you?” I said and handed him a couple of plates. He went off to set the table and I busied myself preparing the meal. While the water boiled, I plucked my cell phone from my purse and called Marnie. After four rings, I left a message.

“Hey, Marnie, I'm worried about you. Give me a call.” I hung up. “Do you think she could still be at the police station?” I said, when Matthew returned to the kitchen.

“I stopped by the station on my way here. That
was two hours ago, and they had questioned and released her hours earlier.”

“But she's not answering her phone. I'm getting worried.”

“I expect she'll be sleeping right about now. I'm sure she stayed awake all night yesterday. Maybe she took a sleeping pill.”

That made me feel a bit better. Still, I couldn't brush off my worry entirely. We settled in the dining room and dug into our food.

“Now tell me what you were really doing all this time,” he said.

“Promise you won't be mad at me?”

“How about this? I promise not to yell at you no matter how angry I am.”

“I guess that's the best I can expect,” I said, sighing. “Well, I was thinking about Helen, and it occurred to me that if I'd just had an argument with someone at a party, the first thing I'd do when I got home would be to pick up the phone and call a friend, somebody I could really vent to.” Matthew's eyes narrowed. “Before you freak out, I swear I didn't tamper with evidence. I didn't take anything. All I did was look . . . and maybe touch a few things.”

He paled. “Are you telling me you broke into her house? And you did what? Check her phone?”

“I, er . . . yes. Then I went to search for a picture of Brent Donaldson.”

“You broke in? How?”

“You promised you wouldn't yell.”

He fell against the back of his chair and dragged a hand over his face wearily. “I swear, woman, you are going to be the death of me. I can't believe this. You trespassed onto a police-protected crime scene.”

“I wanted to know for certain whether Brent Donaldson and Bruce Doherty were the same person. Besides, I didn't exactly break in. The lock to the sliding door in the back is broken. All I had to do was slip in between the crime scene tape.”

He wiped his face again. “You illegally entered a crime scene.”

“How else was I supposed to find out whether Helen had a picture of Brent Donaldson?”

“You let the police investigate. That's how.”

“I only wanted to take a quick look around. I was planning to tell you about anything I found, and let you decide what to do about it.”

He closed his eyes, and for a moment he looked as if he was praying. His mouth was moving, but all I could make out was, “Blah, blah, blah, grant me the patience.”

“Honestly, I don't know why you're so upset.”

“Where did you get this brilliant idea?” he said.

“It was something Nancy Cutler told me.” I repeated what she'd said about the photograph of Brent that the police searched for after her roommate's disappearance. “I thought if Sybille had sent a copy to Helen, it would explain the argument she had with him. It would even support my
theory that she recognized Bruce as Brent that night. And it would also give Bruce one hell of a motive for wanting Helen dead.”

“And did you find any pictures?”

I nodded eagerly, and hurried to the kitchen for my purse. “Wait till I show you.” I returned a moment later to find Matthew looking much the way Helen had in death. His face was beet red, as if he was about to explode.

“Please don't tell me you stole a photograph.”

“Don't be silly. All I did was take a picture of it.” I turned on my cell phone and scrolled through the file of pictures until I got to one of Brent. I handed it to him. “See?”

“I never met Marnie's fiancé, so I have no idea whether he's the same man,” he said, his coloring returning to normal.

“Trust me, he is. And that means Bruce Doherty must have killed Helen Dubois.”

“Except for one small detail,” he said, crossing his arms.

“This, I can't wait to hear.”

“I heard from the ME in Charlotte this afternoon. As it turns out, Helen Dubois did not die from manual strangulation.”

“What! But—I'm the one who found her body. She was all purple and bloated. Her tongue was protruding from her mouth. Even the police officers could tell she was strangled.”

“The bloating and discoloration you describe can also be a side effect of cyanide poisoning.”

“Poison? But—”

“Let me explain. When a person swallows or inhales cyanide, it interferes with the red cells' ability to extract oxygen. So the victim literally suffocates to death—thus the bloated face, the protruding tongue, the pitikia of the eyes, just as in strangulation. But in cases of cyanide poisoning, there is usually considerable foaming at the mouth. In Helen's case, there was no evidence of foaming, and this is possibly what led to the original confusion.”

“Foaming at the mouth?” I'd never heard of that except in animals with rabies.

He nodded. “According to the medical examiner, there should have been foaming as she gasped for breath. The only explanation he offered was that somebody must have cleaned her up after she died.”

“That means whoever killed her not only administered the poison but then stood by and watched her die. That would take nerves of steel.” I tried to imagine Bruce Doherty being that cold, and shivered.

“Whoever killed her must have wanted to cover up the poisoning, and try to pass the cause of Helen's death off as strangulation. And if Dr. Cook had signed the death certificate instead of her body being sent to the medical examiner, the true cause of death might never have been discovered.”

“Cyanide poisoning,” I repeated, still trying to
get my mind around this sudden turn of events. “How easy is it to get cyanide? Is it something you can pick up like rat poison?”

“Because it is so deadly and acts fast, it used to be the poison of choice. Now, it's more difficult to find, but not impossible. That's one of the things the police are looking into—who has access to cyanide.”

“Who
would
have access to it?”

“Mostly people who use it for their work, like metal polishers, photographers, jewelers, and probably a dozen others. But there are also people who have some left over from years ago. There was a recent case, an artist had over a hundred pounds of it stored in his basement. He went down to investigate a strange smell and accidentally tipped over a five-gallon bucket of it. By the time the fire department came, he had stopped breathing.”

“All he did was smell it and he died?”

“Any sodium cyanide can produce deadly gas when exposed to acid. That's what they use in gas chambers.”

“If Helen was poisoned, does that mean Bruce is innocent?”

“It doesn't clear him. However, poisoning is usually a woman's crime. Also, if the poisoning was made to look like a strangulation, it suggests that the killer was trying to make the murder appear to be the work of a man.”

I felt a pang of guilt. I'd spent the last few days
trying to find a way to turn Marnie against her fiancé because I was sure he was a killer. As it was looking now, he might not be guilty after all.

As if he read my mind, Matthew said, “Bruce may not have killed Helen, but he was up to something. Why else would he have been using an alias?”

I shook my head in bewilderment. “I'm still trying to figure this out. Whoever killed Helen might have also killed him?”

“That's a possibility,” he said. “It isn't as if Briar Hollow is teeming with criminals.”

“Thank God that intruder didn't see me,” I mumbled without thinking. “Or else I might be dead right now.”

“What are you talking about? What intruder?”

“Somebody broke into Helen's house while I was there.”

“Somebody— What?”

I said to him. “Now you're definitely yelling.”

He dropped his head. “I'm probably going to regret this,” he said, then raised his eyes and glared at me. “Tell me everything.”

So I did. I told him about checking Helen's phone and getting Nancy Cutler's number. And then I repeated as best I could the conversation I'd had with her, in which she'd insisted that the police never found Brent's picture after Sybille disappeared. And then I told him about how I'd hidden under the bed when I'd heard the intruder come in.

“That explains the dust bunnies. And you never saw her face?” I shook my head. “Do you know what she was looking for?” he asked.

“All I know is that she searched the whole house.”

“And you have no idea who she was.”

“None,” I said. “When I finally got out from under the bed, I raced to the window just in time to see a small blue car driving away.”

“Did you think of taking the license plate number?”

“It was too far away.”

“What kind of a car was it?”

I shrugged. “It was small. That's all I know.” He rolled his eyes. “What do you want from me?” I said, exasperated. “You're the car buff. Not me.”

“I'm not asking you what year or model. Surely you can at least tell the make.”

“I don't know what make. But it was lighter than navy, more of a royal blue, okay?” I quickly went on to tell him how I searched the house a second time after the woman left, and how I came across the picture of Brent. “I didn't look under the lamp the first time I searched that room. So for all I know it could have already been there.”