Death Comes eCalling (12 page)

I followed her into the foyer and looked around. “This is palatial.” The remark was not unlike saying, “This is a big car” while stepping into a limo.

“Phoebe used only a couple of the rooms. The rest…well, you can see for yourself.” She opened a carved oak door and I peeked in. The room was dark, the furniture covered with dustcovers. It appeared to be hunkered down for a sleep, Rip VanWinkle style.

“I’m amazed by all of this,” I said. “When she was teaching, I had no idea she lived in a place like this.”

“Oh, she didn’t, dearie. The money was Bob’s, and they had been saving it and investing. Guess you could say he had the Midas touch. Four years back, when his lung cancer was diagnosed, they realized the time had come to spend some. They bought this old mansion.”

I’d heard of saving for a rainy day, but if the house was any indication, we were talking Noah here.

“So you live here now?”

“Oh, my goodness, no. I’m going back home to Seattle as soon as the estate is settled.” She shuffled through the arched doorway into an enormous room that housed a grand piano and sat down in an antique ladder-back chair. Though I followed, I felt too edgy to sit.

“What will become of the house?”

“It’s going on the market. Some investor will buy it.” She crinkled her nose, and added, “Who’ll probably flatten the house and put in a hundred condos.”

“Why did you think I was here for a will reading? Surely I’m not in it. I was just one of her students from a long time ago.”

“Won’t you be surprised, dearie.” She had a wheezy little laugh, at my expense, apparently. Then she cleared her throat and said, “About a month ago, when Phoebe heard you were coming back, she made out a new will. We discussed it over the phone many times, so it’s no surprise to me. She left a sizable portion to me, as her only survivor. The bulk goes into a scholarship program in her husband’s name.”

“That’s wonderful. But what—”

“Don’t rush me. I’m getting there. A committee of teachers will choose student candidates each year. They supply that list of candidates to one person, who has the final say and handles the dispensations. You.”

“Me? But that’s absurd! Why on earth would she pick me for such a role? She doesn’t even…we hadn’t seen each other in seventeen years. She didn’t even like me!”
Not to mention my accidentally launching a school-board investigation over the false charges of her striking a student.

Ellen Stein way laughed, which caused her to have a brief coughing fit. “That’s just what Phoebe said you would say.”

She led me to an oak roll-top desk against the far wall. With the toe of her orthopedic shoe, she tapped a large cardboard box next to the desk. “You may as well take all of these papers with you. They’re copies of legal documents, and reports and work from current deserving high school students.”

The papers in the box would fill a file cabinet. Perhaps Mrs. Kravett had chosen me for the job to avenge my poem. This must be what Mrs. Kravett had wanted to discuss with me just before she died.

“I have a friend who’s a lawyer in Denver,” I said. “I’ll call him and have him contact Mrs. Kravett’s lawyer and see if they can get this resolved.”

“Oh, dearie. There’s nothing to be resolved. It’s all set and everyone’s quite pleased.”

“Everyone?”

“Except maybe you, Molly, but you’ll get used to the idea. This has all been rather sudden, I suppose.”

That was an understatement.

“I spotted you leaving the funeral, and asked a woman who you were. She told me your name.”

“What woman?”

She looked reflective for a moment. “The name escapes me. She was pretty, a couple of years older than you, wears lots of makeup.”

“Stephanie Saunders?” I grinned, loving the idea of anyone thinking I looked younger than Stephanie.

That’s the one.” She put her hands on her ample hips and narrowed her eyes at me, a pose straight from her sister’s repertoire when appraising an uncooperative student. “Are you a writer?”

“No, well, not exactly. I write greeting cards.”

“Aha. I recently sorted through my sister’s desk. She kept a file of predictions for her former pupils. Would you like to see your class’s?”

“I’d love to.”

She unlocked the roll-top and stared. “I don’t remember leaving this in such a mess. I must just be getting old.”

She flipped through some papers till she found the ones she wanted. She gave one to me and waved several papers folded together. “There’s a copy of the will here, too. I’ll just drop it into your box.” She tottered over to the box and flipped the will into it.

I scanned the list for my name and read Mrs. Kravett’s prediction. She had me down for either a newspaper columnist or a television sitcom writer. I continued to read the predictions. Stephanie’s was fashion model or politician’s wife. Denise was listed only as a future house wife. That surprised me.

“She hit the nail on the head about that Tommy Newton. He’s your backup if you refuse to lead the scholarship board.”

I fought back a smile. I had an out! Tommy had teenagers of his own. He’d be great at selecting scholarship recipients!

She narrowed her eyes at me and added, “Though I’m sure you won’t let my sister down by backing out on her like that.”

“Oh, well, I—” Damn. She was right. I couldn’t let Mrs. Kravett down. Again. “No, I won’t.”

She glanced at the paper in my hand and chuckled. “That boy Tommy’s a sly one.”

I referred to his name. He was down as an accountant or a policeman. Those two fields seemed completely incongruous to me.

“What makes you say that?”

“He figured out she’d given up on life after Bob died. Nobody else in this town did. Certainly that rotten boy Jack Vance didn’t realize it. Of all the people to wind up her boss!”

“But he’s the
elementary
school principal.”

She pursed her lips. “He must have changed jobs. He ran the high school for five years.”

As she was speaking, I looked up his prediction. Insurance salesman.

“Teaching was all she had left. She put her heart and soul into her classroom. When Bob died last April, I came out to stay with her for a couple of weeks. She let her nurse go, the housekeeper, started closing up all the rooms. Just kept one gardener.”

“What did the nurse look like?” I asked, suddenly suspicious about Carolee.

“Black woman. Middle-aged. Why?”

“I was just wondering if she was someone I knew, that’s all.”

“I had a devil of a time, getting her to take her medication. Had to have the doctor threaten her with hospitalization.”

“Was she on a lot of medication?”

She took digitalis once a day, and Lasix every third day. Course, I only remember that because I was with Sergeant Newton when he took the pill bottles, and he asked me about them.”

“About whether she’d been taking them?”

She nodded. “He was asking me all about Phoebe’s medication. The prescription bottles from the bathroom are the only thing the police took with them, at least in my presence.”

I tensed. Maybe Mrs. Kravett was murdered, after all.

“I wonder why he took those.”

“He asked for my permission to do an autopsy, and I said that was fine as long as he gave me the results. They discovered the medicinal levels in her bloodstream weren’t right. That boy Tommy asked me if it was possible she’d stopped taking her pills on purpose.” She snorted. “Of course it was. Her husband died. She had no children, no family except me. And look at me. I’m seventy and have only one lung left. Once that rotten school principal railroaded her out of her job, what did she have to live for?”

I drove home, the box of files in the passenger seat. My head was spinning, more from confusion and surprise than from the minor pain I still felt from my injury. As I turned onto Little John Lane, Carolee was right behind me. She waved and pulled into her garage. After a moment’s debate I parked, then went to her door.

As usual, she greeted me in the doorway and made no move to allow me inside. She corrected my assumption that her work shift already ended; she was actually leaving for the hospital in a half hour.

“Carolee, I want to ask you something. Do you know what Mrs. Kravett was suffering from?”

“She died of congestive heart failure. That’s when blood sloshes back into the lungs, preventing the lungs from filling with air.”

“She was on two types of medication. Digitalis and…. Drat. I’d forgotten the name of the second medication. “Something else.”

Carolee leaned against the doorjamb. Her features were tense. “The digitalis reduces the heart rate and increases the contractility of the heart muscle. She probably would have also been on a diuretic. Lasix, perhaps.”

“A diuretic?”

“That’s a medicine that decreases blood volume by increasing urinary output.”

I involuntarily grimaced. “So she’d take both of these medications daily?”

“She might take digitalis up to three times a day, Lasix every other day or every third day. Cardiology isn’t my specialty, though, so don’t quote me on that.”

“Would it be possible for her to get her pills confused?”

“Sure, It’s
possible
. Unlikely, though. They’re both small white pills, but patients who’ve been on medication for a period of time certainly know one pill from the other.”

“Her husband had died recently, and she was under the stress of being forced to resign from teaching. Also, she used to have a private nurse. So maybe she wasn’t used to giving herself her pills. In that scenario, would it be more likely for her to get her dosage confused?”

“You sound like a lawyer,” Carolee said. “I met her nurse. Susan Jefferson. She brought Bob Kravett into the oncology unit sometimes. She was efficient, but neither Bob nor Phoebe liked her very well.”

“Still, even if Phoebe had gotten confused and taken the wrong pills, all heart patients are monitored closely. She would have had blood tests taken at least every two or three weeks.”

She smiled. “You must have been talking to Tommy, right?”

“What makes you say that?”

“He asked me those same questions last night.”

That was interesting. No doubt Tommy was interviewing the neighbors after Steve’s death. Yet he’d taken the time to be asking Carolee about Mrs. Kravett’s medication. Maybe I could get information about Mrs. Kravett from the pharmacist.

“How do you spell
Lasix
?”

“I’ll write it down for you.” She led me into the kitchen and grabbed a sheet of a notepad by the phone.

A few dirty dishes were stacked by the sink, but the house was far from the disaster area I’d envisioned. My vision focused on a familiar-looking cup near the sink. It was gray with a brown rim, markedly different from the blue flower pattern of her other dishes. I picked it up. “Um, isn’t this my cup?”

“Oh. I…collect cups, and I just borrowed this. I meant to bring it back.”

That excuse had more holes in it than a pincushion. I’d never heard of anyone collecting borrowed items. I was maintaining an idiotic smile, mostly out of embarrassment for Carolee.

“It’s no problem.” I set my cup back on the counter. “If you want the saucer, too, I can bring it over.”

Her eyes grew fierce. “No. Here.” She thrust the cup at me. “Take it. Want to look around? See if there’s anything else you think I’ve stolen from you?”

“Of course not, Carolee. I understand. It’s just a cup, for heaven sakes. You wouldn’t happen to have borrowed my knife, would you?”

“Certainly not. If your knife is missing, I assure you, I don’t have it.”

I made a hasty retreat. No wonder Carolee was so reluctant to let people into her house if she’d lifted items from them. These were very expensive homes, and Carolee had apparently purchased hers on a nurse’s salary. Hmm. Had Tommy considered the fact that Carolee, as a nurse, could have been the one who dispensed those medications to Mrs. Kravett? Perhaps she’d deliberately swapped prescriptions. But what could she possibly have to gain by Mrs. Kravett’s death?

My thoughts were interrupted by the sight of Denise and Sam Bakerton walking up the driveway toward my parents’ house. Their Chevy Suburban was parked in Lauren’s driveway. Once again, teenaged feet protruded from the rear window, this time sporting women’s black shoes.

“Denise, Sam,” I called from Carolee’s front steps.

They turned and waited for me. Denise had a casserole dish. They were formally dressed, as if they’d come straight from church. Their faces looked pale and somber. Before I could ask the reason for their visit. Sam said, “Preston called yesterday. We were so shocked to hear about Steve. We tried Lauren’s door first. but there was no answer.”

Somehow that didn’t surprise me. “Well, she—”

“Is Lauren accepting visitors?” Denise asked.

“No. She’s distraught, of course.” I opened my door. “Do you want to come in?”

They exchanged glances. “Only for a moment. We’re on our way to church, and our daughter is waiting in the car.”

They followed me inside and Denise handed me the dish. “I made Lauren a chicken dinner. Could you give it to her for me, next time you see her?”

“Sure,” I said, though I wondered if Lauren would once again find offense in the gesture. “That reminds me, I have your bowl around here, someplace.”

“No rush. Maybe you should put it in your freezer. That way she can defrost it at her convenience.”

I assumed Denise meant the dinner, not the bowl. “By the way, what happened Friday night? Why did everyone run off like that?”

Denise sighed. “Out of the blue, Steve took offense at a harmless remark of Sam’s.”

“All I said, as a joke, “Sam explained” was that our company was fortunate to be having such a good month so we could cover his bill. Steve turned it around so that it sounded like I was saying he overcharged. Afterwards, I wasn’t going to sit there and let Preston chew my head off. Alienating a consultant who can manipulate the software that runs your company isn’t wise.”

Tiffany skipped down the stairs. She blew out a pink bubble, snapped her gum, then said, “The kids are playing in Karen’s room. That’ll be ten dollars. You were gone over an hour.”