“Tav has some good promotional ideas. Where’s your daughter?” I asked Phineas Drake as we sat. My orange skirt billowed around me and I smoothed it down. “I thought she was handling Maurice’s case.”
“We’ll be working on it together,” Drake said. “She’s flying to Bermuda as we speak, a working flight with one of our corporate clients. Now.” His tone turned businesslike. “I’ve counseled Maurice that it’s not in his best interest to have you here. I recommend against it.”
I must have looked hurt, because he continued. “You’re not subject to privilege. You can be compelled to testify.”
“Since I don’t plan to admit to killing Rinny, it’s not going to be a problem,” Maurice said. “I want Stacy here.”
“Very well.” Drake opened a folder that lay on the gleaming wood table in front of him. “Before you arrived, Stacy, I was telling Maurice that I got a copy of the autopsy report this afternoon. It seems Ms. Blakely died from a myocardial infarction.” He paused.
“A heart attack?” I looked from Drake to Maurice, confused. “Then why…?”
Drake looked pleased, as if I’d come up with the response he was looking for. “Not so fast. The MI was caused by an overdose of epinephrine, apparently ingested in a capsule that was supposed to contain Ms. Blakely’s heart medication. Epinephrine raises blood pressure and increases heart rate, which triggered the heart attack.”
“Rinny took a pill soon after I arrived at the restaurant,” Maurice said, leaning forward with his forearms on the table. “She had a minor heart attack four years ago and has been on medication since. She dropped the bottle and it rolled under the table. I crawled under there to get it for her.”
“An excellent way to account for your fingerprints on the pill bottle,” Drake said, nodding approvingly. “We’ll find someone on the restaurant staff who remembers seeing you retrieve the bottle.” He made a note.
Maurice continued, as if he were thinking aloud. “If the epinephrine was in the capsule, it proves I couldn’t have killed her. I never left the table after I arrived; I didn’t have the opportunity to doctor the capsules.” Relief softened the tightness in his jaw.
“Not so fast,” Drake said, raising a cautionary finger. “You were at Ms. Blakely’s house last Thursday, you said. Did you have access to the medicine cabinet at that time?”
Maurice’s silence answered for him.
“On top of that, the police have a record of you buying an epinephrine-based product at the Walgreens nearest your house two weeks ago. Not enough to start your own meth lab, which is, of course, why you can’t buy those meds now without signing for them, but certainly enough to send Ms. Blakely’s ticker into overdrive.” His look invited Maurice to explain.
“I had a cold! I bought some decongestants.”
“He did have a cold,” I said, remembering a sniffling Maurice. I’d sent him home from one class so he could rest.
“The police are testing all the capsules in Mrs. Blakely’s bottle,” Drake continued, “to see if any others were tampered with. I guess that will tell us how quickly someone wanted her dead.”
“It sounds like a pretty iffy way of killing someone,” I said. “What if she didn’t take the doctored pill? What if she noticed that someone had tampered with it?”
“Perhaps the killer didn’t have a specific time line,” Drake suggested. “He or she could afford to wait until Ms. Blakely ingested the poisoned pill. And who looks at their pills before they take them? I take a handful each morning-blood pressure, cholesterol-and I certainly don’t examine them. I spill ’em out and pop ’em in.” He mimed dumping pills in his hand and tossing them in his mouth. “At any rate, our job’s to prove that Maurice here didn’t do it, and the killer’s made that an easier task for us.”
“How so?” asked Maurice.
“Anyone with access to Ms. Blakely’s house during the time period since she last refilled her prescription-hopefully a month or so ago-could conceivably have put the epinephrine in the capsule. The DA will have a much harder time of hanging this on you,” he said with grim satisfaction, “with such a large window of opportunity for, I imagine, a healthy number of folks.”
“What about Turner?” I asked. “Her grandson. He lives at her house now, and he’s going to inherit everything, right?”
“Oh, believe me,” Drake said, eyes narrowing, “I’ve got an investigator prying into every corner of young Mr. Blakely’s finances and lifestyle as we speak. And into the housekeeper’s. She had unparalleled access to the prescription bottle.”
“Mrs. Laughlin wouldn’t do anything to hurt Rinny,” Maurice said. “They’ve been together for nearly fifty years.”
“The same could be said of many married couples until the wife snaps one day and puts a bullet into hubby dearest, or he loses it and has at her with a poker. In my experience, living with someone for a long time makes you less tolerant of their… foibles, shall we say?… than more tolerant. You can leave the toilet seat up only so long before it’s wood-chipper time.”
I could see that being a criminal defense attorney gave one a cheery outlook on humanity.
“So what do I do now?” Maurice asked, fingers twiddling with a loose button on his blazer sleeve. I gave him a sympathetic look.
“Nothing,” Drake said. “Go to work, go home, don’t talk to the media, and absolutely don’t talk to the police unless I’m present. The ball’s in my court. I’m working on getting a copy of Ms. Blakely’s will so we can see who else might have had a financial motive. I’ve also got someone finagling the memoir outline from the literary agent. I don’t think you have much to worry about, Maurice.”
Maurice crinkled his forehead. “But a jury-”
“I don’t believe in juries,” Drake interrupted. “Nice people, most of ’em, I’m sure, but unpredictable. No, the best way to keep a client out of jail is to make sure he never sees a jury. And that’s what I aim to do in your case. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to meet up with the missus at the bar association shindig before she bids on a time-share in Fiji or some such at the silent auction.” Smoothing his vest over his considerable paunch, he ushered us from the conference room.
Maurice had ridden the Metro to the meeting and was happy to accept a ride home with me. Rush-hour traffic still snarled the streets, and I resigned myself to a long commute. Glancing at Maurice’s profile, I asked, “Do you feel any better about the situation now?”
His mouth twitched in a “not really” way. “I’m less concerned about ending up in the pokey with Drake on the case,” he conceded, “but Rinny’s still dead, isn’t she? And the murderer is still out there.” He gazed through the side window as if hoping to spot the killer in the semi idling beside us, or in the van leaking rap music in front of us.
“Do you know Greta Monk?” I asked, giving him a brief account of my visit with Lavinia Fremont.
“Poor Lavinia.” He sighed. “She was an amazing dancer… so light on her feet you’d have thought she was a piece of dandelion fluff tossed by the wind.”
“Very poetic.”
He reddened and said sheepishly, “Well, she was a born dancer. Maybe not as technically proficient as Corinne, but with a musicality that set her dancing apart. It was a crime-literally-when she lost her leg. Although she’s achieved a lot with her design business.”
“She said Corinne and her husband helped her get set up.”
Maurice nodded. “Indeed. I’ve often thought Corinne felt guilty about Lavinia.”
I took my eyes off the road to look at him-no big deal, since I-395 more nearly resembled a parking lot than a highway. “Really? Why on earth?”