The Perils of Peaches (Scents of Murder Book 3) (19 page)

I shook my head. “I don’t know. She worked for him for over twenty years and he seemed to trust her without a doubt.”

“But with his strong sense of justice, if he knew . . .”

“And in her desperation, she could have tried to figure out a way to silence him. Besides being the office manager, she’s also a licensed LVN. She knows how to administer shots, not just take vital signs.”

“Well, let’s get to the computer then and see if we can figure out how someone killed Dr. Bradley.”

We took our cups of coffee to our office, with a quick glimpse of Hannah sleeping in her room. I took the leather desk chair, and Ben pulled up another folding chair.

While the computer booted up, I decided to ask Ben about Barkha’s parents. “So how was your time with Mr. and Mrs. Mukherjee?”

“Her daddy’s quite an interesting character,” Ben said. “I didn’t really get to ask him much about himself. He spent a lot of time talking to me about the restaurant, and suggesting improvements and ideas for future expansion. He even said we ought to consider expanding, possibly in Adamsville. I actually learned a lot in the short time we talked.”

“Sounds like he definitely knows business.”

“And he loves his daughter. I know I’d be crushed if our little girl left us like Barkha did them. Particularly if I didn’t agree with her choices.” Ben sipped his coffee.

“I didn’t think about how this must be hard on them too,” I admitted. “I’ve been only thinking about how it’s affected Barkha.”

“I hope they reconciled tonight.”

“Me too.” I brought up the Internet, and went to my favorite search engine page. Like Ben said, the Internet was chock-full of information, some of it reliable, and some of it not so reliable. Spot joined us in the office, and propped her front paws up on my leg to see what we were doing. Then she jumped up onto my lap.

I typed in the words poisoning murder no traces system and hit enter. “Okay, there should be a list of medications somewhere or articles about drugs that could poison someone without looking suspicious in the bloodstream. Because if nothing weird came up so far—for example, no arsenic in Dr. Bradley’s system—they’d figured out how to kill him without leaving a trace.”

“Makes sense to me. How do you know what websites to look at?”

“I’ve looked at some sites before when trying to find drug spellings for the doctors’ notes. And some patients are really into taking herbal supplements and thing like that.” What made this effort all the more puzzling was what wasn’t in Dr. Bradley’s system. Jerry didn’t mentioned anything unusual coming through on the report. Whatever it was had to have worn off.

“So anyone could find this, if they type in the right combination of words.”

“Pretty much.” An interesting page popped up. “Oh, look. Insulin poisoning.”

“Was he diabetic?” Ben asked.

“No, not that we know of. But Barkha mentioned something the other day that he’d been checking his blood sugar lately, and was more grouchy than usual.” Barkha’s recollection of him checking his blood sugar was a red flag. With his moodiness, she’d said it was more hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar. This would make him eat a jar of my peach baby food, or something equally as sweet.

One sentence made me pause:

“Ben, listen to this.” I read, “If an otherwise healthy person is injected with enough insulin, they go into a hypoglycemic coma, their organs fail, and they die.”

I skimmed the rest of the article, which went on to say that the cause of this fatal drop in blood sugar was undetectable in the case of a questionable death, even in an autopsy. So of course they wouldn’t find anything.

“Who could think up something like this?” Ben’s face was close to mine as he leaned closer to the monitor and read along with me.

“Someone who meant business. And someone who planned to get away with what they’d done.” I turned on the printer. “I’m going to print out this article to show to Barkha, and we can pass it along to Jerry.”

“But how many people have access to insulin? That’s not something you can just go down to the drugstore and buy off the shelf.”

“You’re right. So the killer must be diabetic.” I crossed my arms across my chest.

“Or the relative of a diabetic, or a friend. Just ‘borrow’ enough for one injection, like you said.”

I let my arms fall to my sides. “Well, that doesn’t narrow it down much. Isn’t diabetes supposed to be one of those fast-growing diseases? Look at Momma. I mean, she takes pills, not insulin injections, but still . . .”

“Look at it this way.” Ben put his arm around me. “You have something to go on. A few minutes ago, you had no real ideas.”

“But it sounds like I’m grabbing at something. I have nothing for Jerry to use. I’m not a doctor. Dr. Bradley barely considered me any type of medical professional, even though I studied medical vocabulary till my brain leaked.” I went back to the original search page. “Hang on. Let me see what else I can find. Surely someone else has committed a crime this way.”

A few seconds later, I had another set of search engine results. “Look, a court case involving insulin poisoning. Similar scenarios. Except this victim was diabetic.”

“It’s worth printing out,” Ben said. “Wouldn’t a lawyer call that precedence?”

“Something like that. But finding this on the Internet showed that this information was accessible to anyone. And anyone with a bit of medical knowledge could use this information to kill. Back to Eunice again. She definitely had the means and opportunity. The medicine locker has insulin on that drug list too.” The printer whined as it printed out the article about the court case.

I pulled the articles and information about insulin poisoning from the printer and stacked them on the desk. “Okay. Here goes.” I located the school district’s web page and went to the high school athletics section. There he was, Eunice’s helpful young friend from Finley’s. Justin Finley, of all things. Starting wide receiver, offense. Several articles came up about last year’s season.

“Look at this, Ben.” I skimmed the article. “Justin Finley, or J-Fin as they like to cheer him on from the stands, was known for his speed on and off the football field. He also ran track. Okay, pulled a hamstring, blah, blah, blah. That’s not a threatening injury.”

“You’re right. Athletes are used to rehabbing their injuries.” Ben had wrestled in high school. “I used to tape my fingers, my knee. Got used to the aches and worked through them anyway.”

“So an ordinary top athlete normally won’t go looking for painkillers.” I leaned back in the chair, and Spot leaped down from my lap and ran off. “This is ridiculous. I almost sound disappointed that a young star athlete probably isn’t guilty of illegally buying narcotics.”

“Here. Slide over and let the master work.” Ben nudged my desk chair, so I wheeled to the side so he could have the keyboard. “The school website won’t have all the information.”

“Where are you going?”

“The regular news. Maybe superstar J-Fin had other issues.” He did his customary hunt ’n’ peck at the keyboard. A website popped up from this spring. “Lookie, lookie what we have here. I told you we didn’t have the whole story.”

Single-Car Accident Injures Football Player. I stared at Ben. “He had a car accident?”

“Keep reading.”

Varsity Greenburg Wildcat Justin Finley was injured in a one-car accident on River Road March 14. He was the lone passenger in a Camaro, returning home from a party late Saturday evening. Authorities say speed was likely a factor in the crash, which flipped his vehicle several times before coming to rest in a grove of trees. Finley was transported to Hardin County Hospital where he remains in stable condition.

“I wonder what kind of injuries he had? His mother was very friendly at the store today and more than willing to talk about her high hopes for her son.” The memory of the cashier’s words, how quickly children grow, and the wistful look in her eye, all came back to me. Barkha was right. Maybe I had a gift for seeing people. I knew it would devastate Mrs. Finley if her son were involved in something illegal. Even though I’d only had that brief encounter with her, the idea at causing her grief didn’t set well with me.

Ben clicked on another link. “Okay, this one says he broke an arm and tore some ligaments in his knee. The coach is hopeful he’ll be fit to train when practice resumes in August.”

“Fit to train, huh?” I frowned. “Print that, please.”

I frowned at the printer spewing out more damaging information, which combined with what I’d seen earlier and to the information that Barkha provided, only added up to point that Eunice was guilty. Guilty of murdering Dr. Bradley, I wasn’t exactly sure. We had no way of knowing if Dr. Bradley had discovered what she’d been doing. My deep sigh surprised even me.

Ben responded by putting his arm around my shoulder and tugged me closer. “You know what I think, Ands?”

“What’s that?” I leaned against him, an awkward maneuver since we both sat in chairs with arms.

“We should just shut down the computer, and go to bed. We can’t do anything about these articles, or anything else, until morning. We could be flat-out wrong about our hunches, anyway.”

I skimmed the first article on insulin poisoning one more time and shivered. Then I stacked all the articles together. “Scary, that this is so accessible. I know people don’t post articles like this to encourage people to commit crimes, but this should show Jerry the killer doesn’t have to be a doctor or someone in the medical community.” We headed down the hallway to our bedroom.

Ben set the articles on my dresser. “I’m puttin’ this right here, and you’re goin’ to leave it alone. This will keep.”

“Yes, sir.” I saluted him then turned back the covers and fluffed my pillows.

“Really, babe.” He sat down on his side of the bed. “I’m serious. You’ll worry yourself into an ulcer. What else is eatin’ at you?”

The mattress made my tired muscles sing. I rolled over to face Ben. “It’s not just this mess with Dr. Bradley’s death and whatever Eunice has or hasn’t been up to. It’s Momma. I hate knowing that she’s getting older. And now this whole diabetes thing. Daddy’s retirement was a bombshell enough.”

“But diabetes doesn’t just happen to older people. It can happen to almost anyone.” He leaned back on the headboard and took my hand.

“I want to help her, because the thought of the future scares me. I don’t want her to end up like some of those patients I transcribed notes about. Losing their vision, their feeling in their fingers and toes. Foot ulcers, amputated toes. Dialysis. Their whole system breaking down.” My eyes stung and I flopped back onto my pillow and stared at the ceiling.

Ben pulled me up into his arms. “Shh . . . none of that has happened to her.”

“I know,” I mumbled into his strong chest. He smelled of soap, and I clung to him. “I want to do something. I want to fix it.”

“We can’t. But we can trust God to keep her.”

“I know. Easier said than done sometimes. And then I think of Hannah losing her Nana one day—”

“Babe, you’re going to have to stop thinking like that. Your momma would tell you not to borrow trouble.”

“True.” I shifted to look up at him.

“I think we should pray. That will definitely help. I mean, if we say we’re trusting God, we might as well let Him know too.”

“Okay.”

“Lord, You see how we’re worried about Andi’s momma. I know You’re watching over her, and You know every detail of her body and how You designed her. Please help us help her, and please help us keep our noses out when we need to. Give Andi peace that You’re watchin’ over Pearl. Amen.”

“Amen.” I dashed away some tears. “Thank you, Ben. We get so busy, I don’t talk to you like I should. Or take time to pray, either.”

“I know. It happens.” Ben kissed the end of my nose. “Maybe losing your job at Bradley Medical is a blessing in disguise. You’ll have more time.”

“That could be.” I also knew that the more “extra” time we had, there was a good chance something else would come along and eat up that time. “I won’t have a chance to investigate there like before. Franklin Bradley practically tossed me out of the office when I dropped off the last batch of notes. Maybe I’m exaggerating because I’m tired, but . . .”

Ben sighed. “So we’ve come right back around to that investigation.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Well, I can’t help this either.” He kissed me until I forgot all about the printouts on the dresser.

Chapter Sixteen

Promptly at eight the next morning, I heard the crunch of tires on the driveway outside. A small Toyota sedan pulled up beside my Jeep. Gloria had arrived, with Jenna in tow.

I met them at the front door. “Hey, you made it! Hannah’s just finishing some breakfast. Has Jenna eaten yet?”

“She had some crackers, but nothing else.” Gloria shifted Jenna on her hip. “I should be back by one. I’m grocery shopping and doing the laundry, and then I’m getting a haircut.”

“Good! We’ll be here.” I reached for Jenna, but she clung to her mother. “It’s okay. Mommy’s going to be back soon. Gloria, maybe you’d better come inside for a second. If I can distract her, you can sneak out when she’s not looking.”