Gin Jones - Helen Binney 01 - A Dose of Death (25 page)

“
I saw him with you at the nursing home, and getting him arrested seemed like a good way to distract you from investigating Melissa’s death. His family has quite a reputation here in town, so the police were more than happy to follow up on the tip.”

“
You’d let an innocent man go to jail for you?”

“
I’m telling you, I didn’t do anything wrong, and everything would have worked out just fine if you hadn’t meddled. I never thought Jack was really the Remote Control Burglar. I figured the real one wasn’t stupid enough to stick around and get caught after all these years,” she said. “Whatever game he’d been playing might have had its rewards up until recently, but it couldn’t possibly have been worth the risk of being implicated in a murder. If he’d had any sense at all, he would have destroyed any evidence that could connect him to the burglaries and left town for good measure, starting fresh somewhere else, and the police would have had to let Jack go eventually for lack of evidence But no. The burglar had to be a Clary, and Clarys never leave Wharton for more than a few hours at a time. Compared to Jack’s cousins, he’s practically a world traveler, since he drives all the way to the airport on a regular basis, but even he would never completely relocate.”

“
You can still turn yourself in now.”

“
No, I can’t.” She had one of Helen’s prescription bottles in her hand. The one containing narcotic painkillers. Judge Nolan poured all of them into her palm and stared at them.

Helen didn
‘t know for sure how many would constitute a lethal dose, but she’d only taken four or five, including the two this evening, since filling the prescription. There had to be more than enough left for the judge to kill herself with. The only question was how quickly the pills would act. Would there be time to get help after the judge took the pills and passed out? She couldn’t take the chance that it would be too late then.

Could she knock the pills out of the judge
‘s hand? Helen wasn’t even sure she could stand up. She tried, as she spoke. “You don’t need to do this. Everyone respects you. They’ll understand that it was self-defense.”

“
They couldn’t have impeached me for anything I did in self-defense, but they could get me now for the cover-up. I’m not ready to retire, and I probably never will be. Melissa and I had that much in common, our dedication to our jobs. Except I do important and useful work, while she was hurting people.” She closed her hand around the pills and looked up, resolute once again. “The citizens of Wharton need me.”

“
They do need you,” Helen said as she finally managed to push herself onto her feet to stand somewhat unsteadily. “You can’t take those pills.”

“
The pills aren’t for me,” Judge Nolan said, advancing on Helen. “They’re for you.”

“I don’t need any more painkillers right now.”

The judge smiled.
“You already took some? Good. That should confuse the autopsy blood work sufficiently that they won’t know the exact time of the overdose. I doubt anyone would think to question me about your death, but if they do, I was in the courtroom most of the last few hours. I have at least a dozen witnesses to my being there whenever you took the first pills.”

Helen looked for her cane. It had stopped Pierce, and it would stop the judge. Except it wasn
‘t where it should be, next to the front door. Then she remembered she’d taken it into the bathroom to clean off the blood and had left it there. It was too late to retrieve it now, with the judge between Helen and the hallway.

Helen took an involuntary step backwards and bumped against the recliner. It was enough to knock her off balance, and she fell into the chair. There was no time to gather her strength to try standing again. She reached surreptitiously for the cell phone in her pocket. 

The judge leaned over her. “Just relax and take your pills like a good little patient.”

Helen clamped her mouth shut and shook her head.

“Don’t be difficult,” Judge Nolan said. “I’ve done this a time or two before, you know.”

Helen
‘s eyes widened.

“
Oh, don’t look so horrified,” Judge Nolan said. “I didn’t kill anyone. Except Melissa, of course, and that was an accident. I just meant that I’ve given pills to a reluctant patient before. My mother’s been resisting her heart medications for the last few months, on the bad days when she can’t remember who I am.”

The judge pinched Helen
‘s nose, not hard enough to leave a bruise, but enough to make it impossible to breathe without opening her mouth. Helen resisted the automatic urge to do just that. If she was going to use her phone, though, she had to do it now while the judge’s hands were both occupied. Helen hadn’t had this particular model of phone for long enough to dial it without looking, so she raised it just enough to be able to glance down at the numbers.

She only managed to hit the 9 before the judge released Helen
‘s nose to grab the phone. Judge Nolan erased the number and then tossed the phone across the room. “What a pity you dropped your phone and broke it before you took the pills. If you’d had it, you might have been able to call for help when you realized you’d overdosed.”

“
No one who knows me will believe I overdosed,” Helen said before the judge leaned over her again.

“
But that’s the beauty of the situation,” Judge Nolan said. “The people who know you won’t be directly involved in the investigation. And no one here knows you. Not like they know me. I’m sure I can drop a few hints about your instability, and no one will question anything. Now, open wide.”

Helen clamped her mouth shut, and the judge pinched Helen
‘s nose again.

Helen tried to push up out of the chair, but the judge just used the fist holding the pills to press down on Helen
‘s shoulder, keeping her in place. Frustrated, and feeling a little faint from lack of oxygen, Helen struck out with her hands, pushing at the judge, who grunted in surprise but didn’t move more than an inch or so.

Helen needed to do something more decisive than pushing the judge back inch by inch; she needed to incapacitate her, at least briefly. Otherwise, it would be nothing more than a back-and-forth shoving match that Helen couldn
‘t win. She had to aim for a more sensitive spot, one that would hurt enough to give the woman pause. The face or ears, perhaps.

Helen struck out again, this time aiming for the woman
‘s head, but, seated as she was in the depths of the recliner with Judge Nolan leaning over her, she couldn’t reach that high. Her fingers brushed the chunky stones of the judge’s necklace.

How strong was that necklace, anyway? Helen had read once about a woman who was inadvertently strangled by her own necklace, although that one had been made of leather. The judge
‘s necklace wasn’t that heavy, but its stones were strung on a thick silk cord, which looked more than capable of serving as a garrote. The weakest element might be where the two ends connected, but usually one of the hallmarks of pricey jewelry was the strength of its clasp. It was certainly worth a try if the judge really intended to kill her.

The judge had the advantage of having been able to breathe freely for the last few seconds, so Helen had to get at least a little more air into her lungs before she made her move. She kept her teeth clenched but opened her lips in a grimace to let in whatever air she could, without giving the judge access to her mouth.

“That’s a good girl,” the judge said. “Just a little wider, please, opening the jaw too. Although really, this will do. All I have to do is put the pills inside your cheeks and wait for them to dissolve. It will take a bit longer that way, but I’m a patient person. It’s one of the traits that make me a good judge.”

Helen tried to ignore the image of herself sitting here, unable to breathe properly, while the lethal pills dissolved in her mouth and the judge waited patiently for the end. It was a little too easy to picture, which only renewed her determination not to give in. It was bad enough that people insisted on helping her against her will when she knew the help actually
benefited her; she was not going to sit still for someone helping her to die, which definitely didn’t benefit her.

Helen
‘s irritation gave her a spurt of adrenaline, and she used it to grab the judge’s necklace and twist the cord around a finger, making it into a tourniquet. For a moment, she thought it might break, and she forced herself to slow down, tightening it gradually so as not to put any sudden pressure on the cord or the clasp.

“
Cut it out.” The judge pulled back, trying to get Helen to release her without, in turn, releasing Helen’s nose. “You’re going to break it, and I don’t have time to waste on getting it fixed.”

Helen tugged carefully on the necklace and decided that no, the cord was not going to break. She was growing lightheaded, though, so she didn
‘t have time to gloat.

The necklace was going to hold, and the judge needed to choose between freeing herself and feeding Helen the lethal dose of painkillers. The only question was whether the judge would pass out before Helen did. Helen had the advantage that she could get some air, even if it wasn
‘t anywhere near what her panicked lungs were demanding. The judge’s air, as well as the blood supply to her brain was going to be completely cut off in another twist of the necklace. 

Helen twisted, aware that the blood supply to her fingers was also being cut off, and the pain was beyond even the power of the painkillers in her system to deal with. Still, it was better than dying. 

The judge’s lips were turning blue around the edges of her lipstick, and her eyes were going wide in anger, but she remained determined to hold onto Helen’s nose. She even began dropping pills onto Helen’s mouth, pushing them between her teeth and her cheeks.

They were going to kill each other, Helen thought. Just like in the movies, when the hero and the villain manage to shoot each other in the final showdown. The villain would be stopped, but only at the cost of the hero
‘s death.

Better than dying without taking the judge with her, Helen decided, and twisted the necklace one more time.

The judge made a strangled sound, dropped the remaining pills all over Helen’s face, and using the one free hand to grab for the necklace, tried to slip her fingers underneath the thick silk cord. It was too tight, and her only escape would have been to jerk away from Helen, but she couldn’t do that without releasing Helen’s nose.

The judge gave her head a tiny shake, a show of defiance, and stared at Helen, a wordless challenge.

What was she doing? Why didn’t she just give up and save herself? Helen had a belated realization that the judge, given her experience with criminal trials, probably knew just how long it took to pass out from pressure on her neck compared to how long it would take Helen to pass out from lack of oxygen, and had calculated that Helen was going to go first, and then she wouldn’t be able to resist the pills.

And then it dawned on Helen
‘s painkiller-fogged, oxygen-starved brain, that the judge had dropped all the pills, scattering them all over the chair and the floor. Helen could open her mouth to breathe and even spit out the pills already in her cheek long before the judge could possibly retrieve the ones she’d dropped.

Helen
‘s grimace became a smile of triumph as she unclenched her jaw and sucked in as much air as she could. She could breathe, and Judge Nolan couldn’t. Even before her breathing normalized, the judge’s eyes fluttered closed and she dropped to the floor.

Helen waited a moment to make sure the judge wasn
‘t faking it before releasing the necklace, hoping that she hadn’t held it too long. She didn’t want to kill the judge, just give herself enough time to escape.

Helen unwound the cord, massaged the feeling back into her fingers
, and checked the woman’s pulse, which was still beating. Then she limped over to her bedroom, and just in case the judge regained consciousness before the police and ambulance arrived, she locked herself inside. As she dug out one of her spare cell phones, she couldn’t help thinking that if it hadn’t been for Melissa, Helen wouldn’t have had hidden extra phones all around the house, and she’d have had to scramble out of the cottage and through the woods to the neighbors’ house again. She refused to feel grateful, though, as she dialed the emergency number. If it hadn’t been for Melissa, Helen also wouldn’t have been the target of a murderer.

“I’m fine,” Helen told the paramedic twenty minutes later.

For once, Helen didn
‘t mind that her nieces were hovering over her, tidying up the cottage and fluffing her pillows while she sat in the recliner. They could stay, but the paramedic had to leave now. He should be outside with his partner, helping to take care of the judge who was out in the ambulance. Detective Peterson hadn’t been willing to handcuff Judge Nolan to the gurney, but he did have a couple uniformed officers watching her.

“
Aunt Helen is
not
fine,” Lily told the paramedic. “If you knew her you’d know that the fact that she’s letting us fuss over her means that she doesn’t feel strong enough to chase us away. That’s not good.”

Laura stood behind the recliner with her hands on Helen
‘s shoulders, patting them anxiously. “Maybe you should go to the hospital, just to be checked over.”

“
No.” Helen looked at the paramedic, a pleasant but persistent young man who was crouched down to be at her eye level. “I’ve already told you the date, the address here, and the president’s name. I’m a little sleepy from the original doses of painkiller, but I’m fully oriented, I’m breathing normally, and I’m not bleeding. You took my pulse and blood pressure, and they’re fine, considering someone just tried to kill me. I really don’t need your help.”

“
Never mind,” Lily said. “I know that look. She’s not going anywhere. At least not while she’s conscious. If she passes out, we’ll drag her to the hospital.”

“
You’ll keep an eye on her?” the paramedic said. “She shouldn’t be alone for the next few hours.”

Oh, great.
Helen wouldn’t mind someone staying here overnight, but Lily was probably already calculating how many hours there were in a whole week, and considering whether she could argue that it counted as the medically recommended
few
. If Helen wasn’t careful, the nieces would be using the paramedic’s advice to justify a full-time, live-in nurse for the rest of her life.

“
Could you be more specific about that?” Helen asked the paramedic. “Exactly how many hours do I need to be watched?”

The paramedic laughed as he packed away his blood pressure cuff.
“No one’s ever asked me that before. Somewhere between twelve and twenty-four hours. If you’re going to have any problems, they should manifest by tomorrow morning.” 

“
I can stay with her overnight,” Lily said.

Satisfied, the paramedic picked up his equipment and headed for the door.

“Just the one night,” Helen said. “I can take care of myself after that.”

“
You haven’t done so well at it recently,” Lily said. “You’ve been associating with an infamous burglar, you were assaulted in your own home by a con man, and then you opened your door to a murderer.”

Helen decided not to ask how she knew about Pierce. Adam had probably passed along the news, and the nieces had jumped into the car to check on her without calling first. Bringing it up would only remind Lily that Helen hadn
‘t been the one to tell her nieces about the incident. She’d save that conversation for another day. “Jack wouldn’t hurt me, and I dealt with the other two all by myself. No security system, no nurse, no bodyguard. Not bad for a decrepit old woman.”

“
A decrepit
lucky
woman,” Lily said.

On the paramedic
‘s way out he held the front door for Detective Peterson to come in.

The detective loomed over the recliner.
“I just need to go over your story once more. Are you absolutely sure the judge killed Melissa?”

“
I’m sure,” Helen said. “She confessed to me. And you saw the pills she tried to make me swallow.”

“
It’s just that, well, you thought it was Pierce before, from what I’m told,” Peterson said. “And, well, we’re talking about
the judge
.”

She heard the unspoken words: Judge Nolan was someone he
‘d known and respected for years. All of his life, probably. And he didn’t know Helen at all. Not in any good way at least.

She knew it was a lot for the detective to absorb. She wasn
‘t sure she’d absorbed it yet herself. But the detective was listening to her, really listening, which was a big improvement over his previous attitude. She didn’t have enough energy to get out of her chair and do a proper
I told you so
dance right now anyway, so she didn’t demand an apology for his earlier dismissal of her input.

“
I know it’s difficult to believe,” Helen said. “I couldn’t imagine it at first myself, or I wouldn’t have let her into the cottage. I would have caught on faster if I’d remembered that the judge had been here right after you took away the murder weapon. I think she was hoping to find it before you did. She probably hadn’t been too worried when you had the wrong murder weapon, and there was no reason to suspect her. But once you knew about the cane, there was a risk that her fingerprints were on it, just waiting for some time in the future when the judge’s fingerprints might end up in some database. As long as I kept questioning the theory that the Remote Control Burglar had killed Melissa, she would never have been completely safe from exposure.”

Detective Peterson obviously wished Helen was wrong, but he couldn
‘t simply ignore her this time. “The forensics team did lift some prints from the cane. I’ll make sure they’re compared to the judge’s.”

“
There’s probably some evidence in her car too,” Helen said. “The judge gave Melissa a ride to my house the morning she was killed, so there might be something to confirm that they were together then.”

“
Did she tell you anything else we should know?”

“
There’s a bag with the judge’s blood-covered suit somewhere. Maybe still in her car,” Helen said. “Call me if you think of anything else.” Detective Peterson left the cottage, appearing as anxious to leave as Helen was to have him leave.

She could hear voices just outside her front door, although she couldn
‘t make out the actual words as Detective Peterson chatted with Tate and his nephew.

A couple minutes later, the two attorneys let themselves inside. Adam looked past Helen at Lily, an infatuated look on his face, confirming her guess about how the nieces had found out about the situation so quickly. Adam had ratted her out. She was about to lecture Lily on the unfairness of using her feminine wiles on poor, defenseless attorneys, when she noticed that for the first time ever Lily looked equally infatuated with one of her admirers.

No wonder Lily had been so quick to volunteer to stay here overnight. She’d be closer to Adam. Next thing, Lily would be volunteering to move to Wharton. At least this way she’d want her own space without an aunt serving as an inconvenient chaperone.

“
Lily,” Helen said. “Would you and Adam please go outside and see if there are still police and rescue vehicles blocking the driveway? I bet Laura would like to be able to go home to Howie, and I’d like to talk to Tate for a minute.”

Lily herded Laura and Adam outside, and Tate dropped into the sofa across from her.
“I knew you were going to be trouble. Strangling a judge into unconsciousness. How do you think the replacement judge is going to feel about that?”

“
That justice was served?”

“
I doubt it. Judges take a real dim view of their colleagues being attacked, even if it was more than justified. They might even blame the attacker’s attorney.” He looked more energized by the challenge than his words suggested. “You won’t have to work with Judge Nolan’s replacement, but I probably will, since you won’t let me retire from the practice of law.”

“
You did say you liked a challenge,” she said. “And you’ve got to admit that I lived up to my promise that any murder case I got involved with wouldn’t be an ordinary one.”

“
I appreciate that, but I didn’t expect you to get yourself assaulted just to keep me entertained.”

“
It won’t happen again,” Helen said. “I’ll leave you to find your own entertainments, all alone out in the garage, as soon as you make sure that the murder charges against Jack are dismissed.”

“
About the garage,” he said. “Now that you don’t need my legal advice any longer, are you going to evict me?”

“
I hadn’t planned to.” Tate was never intrusive the way Melissa had been, and his presence would keep her nieces from worrying or trying to impose someone else on her. “Not as long as you don’t pester me the way everyone else does.”

“
You’re the one who keeps interrupting me.”

“
It won’t happen again,” Helen said. “Now that Melissa’s murder is solved, I can take care of myself. I won’t be pestering you for any more advice on criminal matters.” 

Still, it was kind of nice to know that while she didn
‘t need help most of the time, on those few occasions when she did she would have someone nearby to call on. She could rely on him to wait until she asked for help, and to never, ever be cheerful when he was helping her.

* * * * *

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