I blinked. ‘Surely you’re not giving up the law?’
Hutch chuckled. ‘Of course not. But I’ve been scrambling to settle what I can settle, and reassign ongoing matters to my long-suffering associate so I can be free for a couple of months. She hates me now, but it’ll be character-building for her to fly solo.’
‘What happens if that Market House thing blows up?’ I asked. ‘There was something about it in the Post again this morning.’
Hutch represented one of the heirs in a never-ending battle over the historic Annapolis market, built in 1784, and deeded to the city on the condition that unless the property be used ‘for the reception of sales and provisions’ it would revert to the heirs of the original owners. The gourmet market sat on valuable property at water’s edge and was now being run, unprofitably it seems, by an out-of-town management company. There was talk – again – of tearing it down.
‘That market’s been putting shoes on the children of lawyers for three hundred years, and it’s not going to stop now. Any attempt to tear it down will be blocked by Hysterical, er, Historical Annapolis,’ he said with a grin. ‘I’m not worried.’
‘To change the subject for a moment,’ Hutch continued. ‘I have information for you, Nancy Drew.’
‘You do?’
‘I talked to my buddy up at the Medical Examiner’s…’ He paused, I swear, just for the dramatic effect.
‘Stop it! You are making me crazy!’
He raised his free hand. ‘OK. The autopsy’s done.’
‘So soon?’
‘Homicide put a rush on it. The report won’t be official for a couple of days, not until it’s typed up and the M.E. signs off on it, but they did a segmental analysis of Jay’s hair, and it turns out that his exposure to thallium had been going on for quite some time, perhaps more than a year.’
‘Oh my God! Well, that shoots my thallium in the Tylenol capsules theory all to hell.’
‘Exactly.’
Hutch drained his mug and set it down on the end table. ‘What was in Jay’s gym bag, Hannah? Do you remember?’
‘You didn’t look into it?’
‘I didn’t see any reason to.’
I stared at the bright floral drapes and tried to picture the bag’s contents. ‘Clothing, running shoes, socks, hair goo, talcum powder, bottled water…’
Hutch looked thoughtful. ‘Could have been in the water, I suppose, the dose that sent him over the edge.’
‘Or…’ Several thoughts were niggling the back of my brain: Jay’s powdery footprints on the floor of the studio, and something I’d read on the Internet. I sent my cerebral messenger down to retrieve them, and a few seconds later, the little fellow came up trumps. ‘I think I know how it could have been done!’
Hutch stopped toying with Ruth’s fingers, and sat up straight. ‘How?’
‘Thallium is a white powder. Somebody put it in Jay’s talcum powder.’
Ruth made a face. ‘You don’t have to swallow it?’
I shook my head. ‘Thallium can also be absorbed through the skin. Even more quickly, I would think, through hot, sweaty dancer’s skin.’
‘How would anybody know that?’ Ruth wondered.
‘The same way I do, from reading about it on the Internet.’ I leaned forward, resting my forearms on my knees. ‘Two articles come to mind. Back in the sixties, the CIA hatched a plot to discredit Castro by putting thallium in his shoes when he set them outside his hotel-room door for a shine. They didn’t want to kill him, just embarrass him silly by making his trademark beard fall out.’
‘Makes me proud to be an American,’ Hutch quipped.
‘The other side in the Cold War wasn’t so bright, either. Not long ago, a group of Russian soldiers discovered an unlabeled bin of the stuff lying around a dump in Siberia, so they said, what the heck, rolled it up in their cigarettes and used it to powder their feet.’
‘Not much in the way of entertainment in Siberia, I’d guess. No USO.’
Ruth punched her fiancé on the arm. ‘Be serious for once.’ She turned to me and asked, ‘Did the soldiers die?’
I shook my head no. ‘They became desperately ill, but eventually recovered.’
Hutch regarded me seriously. ‘It’s an interesting theory, Hannah, but it’s simply that, a theory.’
Personally, I thought my theory was brilliant and fit the facts as I knew them, but far be it from me to say so. ‘Will the cops let us know if they find anything suspicious in Jay’s bag?’
Hutch snorted. ‘We’ll probably read it first in The Sun, but I have a couple of contacts in Homicide who owe me favors, so perhaps we can get a head’s up.’
I smiled at the two of them snuggled up like teenagers and said, ‘Well, for what it’s worth, lovebirds, I’m betting all my money on the grieving widow.’
Twenty-Seven
Jay’s departure from this world had been agonizing and slow, so it was only right that he be carried off to heaven in a proper, gentler way.
The Capital obituary was laudatory and long, highlighting Jay’s raised-by-his-own-bootstraps journey from oil rig roustabout to ballroom dancing star. The obit in the Sun had been edited with a heavy hand, but both papers invited friends and family to a rosary service at Kramer’s Funeral Home on Monday night at seven, followed by a funeral mass at St Mary’s at ten the following day.
‘C U @ kramer’s,’ Melanie had texted. ‘Something 2 tell U.’
When Paul and I arrived at Kramer’s, it was just as I had remembered it. Rich oriental carpets, a mahogany highboy, a massive circular table supporting a flower arrangement – fresh and very real – the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. To our right, a carpeted staircase led upstairs, but I had never seen it anything but roped off. To our left was the receiving line, and beyond that, an easel and a table decorated with flowers where Giannotti family photographs were on display.
As my husband and I were passed down the receiving line, offering condolences to tanned, rugged Texans who, with the exception of Kay and Lorraine, I did not know, I wondered which photographs Lorraine had chosen. When I got to Lorraine – who wore a suit of in-charge navy blue with bold brass buttons – she greeted me like a long, lost sorority sister, then handed me over to Kay.
Kay looked serene and fragile in a St John’s knit jacket and matching flared skirt that couldn’t have cost a penny less than twelve-hundred dollars at Neiman Marcus. The black color complimented her hair, and emphasized her paleness. ‘I’m so sorry about Jay,’ I told her sincerely as I squeezed her hand. Silently, I admired her notched collar, flap pockets and the elegant gold buttons that marched down her front and thought, Is this what a murderer looks like?
Who was it who said that poison was the weapon of choice for a woman? Dame Agatha Christie again, I suppose. Roman matrons certainly had a field day with it, possibly inspiring those modern-day women who rid themselves of burdensome husbands with loving doses of ‘inheritance powder’. If I crossed her, Kay might not come after me with a gun, but I’d better watch what I ate.
Moving away from the line, I looked around for Melanie, but didn’t see her. We said hello to Chance, and to Tom and Laurie – who had jettisoned her scarf in favor of a violet, scrunch-neck turtle. Under her overcoat she wore a short A-line skirt in a deep, dark purple that matched her heels. Tom, on the other hand, appeared in neat jeans and a collarless shirt. As the four of us dawdled at the photo display I couldn’t resist teasing Laurie, ‘You couldn’t dress down if they paid you to do it!’
She rattled her bracelets at me and said, ‘Girl, if you’ve got it, flaunt it!’
When the pair moved on to the Blue Room to find seats, I examined the photographs more closely. Lorraine had chosen a retrospective picturing Jay alone, acknowledging, I suppose, who was actually the star of the show.