The Poisoned Pawn (27 page)

Apiro sat down on a stool and lit his pipe.

Why would Michael Ellis bother to put poisoned birth control pills in the bottles of rum in the mini-bar when his wife would have died simply by taking her medication as prescribed?

Perhaps Ramirez was right and Ellis wanted to make sure of her death by finding more than one mechanism to kill her. But Apiro had never liked the concept of overkill.

Why poison the rum at all?

Water, Apiro could understand, but there was nothing in the Canadian tests that pointed to Hillary Ellis having any dependence on alcohol. Her liver wasn’t fatty, and her enzyme levels were normal.

He shook his head. It made no sense. Something was wrong.

According to the medical reports provided by Celia Jones to Ramirez when he was investigating Ellis for Arturo’s murder, Señor Ellis was infertile. Then why was his wife taking birth control pills?

Apiro spread out the various test results from the three dead women. He lined them up in rows as if they were cards in a game of solitaire: two red queens, one black. He scanned down the pages and then across them, comparing results.

His eyes stopped on one test from the blood samples the
Canadian medical authorities had removed from Hillary Ellis’s remains.

A woman on birth control pills should have a decreased level of follicle-stimulating hormone, or FSH. Unless, of course, she was menopausal, which would result in higher levels of FSH than normal.

At only thirty-nine years of age, Hillary Ellis was unlikely to be going through menopause. The Canadians had tested her blood and urine for FSH, perhaps to rule out adrenal disease or disorders of the hypothalamus. But her FSH levels were normal. She definitely wasn’t taking birth control pills, then, thought Apiro. And she hadn’t for some time—at least four to eight weeks.

He put his pipe in the glass ashtray and pulled his latex gloves back on. He walked over to the counter and picked up the plastic envelope in which he had placed the package of birth control pills.

He opened the envelope and turned the package over. The label on the back was from a pharmacy in Ottawa. Kelly’s Pharmacy. The drugs were dispensed in Hillary Ellis’s name.

Apiro shook his head, puzzled. Señora Ellis had a prescription for birth control pills that she took all the way to Cuba but never used. Did she know her husband’s pencil had no lead? If so, why bother?

Apiro sat down once more to think about this. He drew on his pipe again, watching the smoke float to the ceiling.

According to the hotel records, the maids had replaced only one tiny bottle of rum during Nicole Caron’s stay in Room 612. Apiro picked up the test results from Caron’s tissue samples and reviewed them again.

She had a very low level of blood alcohol, not enough to be intoxicated. But it meant she had consumed at least one alcoholic drink. The maids had replaced the empty bottle of rum at two in
the afternoon, less than an hour after Nicole Caron collapsed on the sidewalk in front of the hotel.

A free afternoon in Havana, thought Apiro. A hot day, a cold drink. But that one small bottle could have held enough fluoroacetate to kill a village.

Ramirez had it backwards, Apiro suddenly realized. Michael Ellis hadn’t murdered his wife; Hillary Ellis had tried to kill
him.

Michael Ellis didn’t drink water when he was in Cuba, he drank rum. A good two bottles of it in the bar on Christmas Eve after his wife left him alone in Old Havana.
He
was the one with the drinking problem, not her.

She had knowingly brought the poisoned pills into Cuba. It made sense, now that Apiro thought about it. Señor Ellis would not have hidden birth control pills in his wife’s luggage; Customs officials might have asked her questions about them. Besides, they were prescribed in her name. No, she must have brought them herself, knowing full well what they were. That was the only way to explain it.

She had put the fluoroacetate in the rum in the mini-bar after she returned to their room to pack, anticipating that her husband would start drinking when he returned. But he went out that night to get drunk instead. He was taken into custody the next morning in connection with the death of Arturo Montenegro. Those two events—his going out to drink and his arrest—had saved his life.

Apiro had to reach Ramirez.

He hopped over to the phone on the wall. He dialed the number he had used previously, but Ramirez had already checked out of the Chateau Laurier. There was no answer on Celia Jones’s cell phone either.

He tried to think where else he could try. Then he remembered that Ramirez had phoned him once from Chief O’Malley’s
office, a call that Sophia had transferred to the morgue. He called the switchboard and asked the operator if she could kindly locate the Canadian police chief’s number and patch him through directly as the matter was urgent.

Chief O’Malley answered on the second ring.

“Forgive me for interrupting you, Chief O’Malley. My name is Hector Apiro. I’m the pathologist with the Major Crimes Unit in Havana. Is it possible for me to speak to Inspector Ramirez before he leaves for his flight?”

“He may still be here, Doctor. If so, he won’t be for long. I’ll transfer your call. If no one answers, then I’m afraid he’s already gone.”

When the phone rang, Andrew Britton picked it up. He handed it to Ramirez. Apiro filled Ramirez in while Britton fidgeted.

“That
is
very interesting, Hector. Was the prescription issued in her name?”

“Yes,” Apiro said. “Dispensed by Kelly’s Pharmacy in Ottawa. And Ricardo, a pharmacist would be able to get fluoroacetate easily. It would be almost impossible for someone else to insert pills into that plastic case without breaking it. They’re designed to be tamper-proof. To keep children from being poisoned.”

Kelly. Ramirez had heard that name before. But where?

He put the phone down and signed the affidavit without reading it. Andrew Britton witnessed his signature and crimped the document with a round metal notary seal, imprinting his name in raised letters.

“Thank you very much, Señor Britton,” Ramirez said. “I appreciate that you stayed behind to take care of this.”

“I have to go back to the office tonight anyway, Inspector Ramirez. The weather’s too bad right now to take a chance on the
Queensway,” the prosecutor said as he stood up. “I don’t think we’re going to get very far with the charges against Mike Ellis. Just so you know. But at least that travel advisory wasn’t issued.”

“That’s a relief, trust me,” said Ramirez. “Please, let me help you gather your papers.”

He pulled the Crown attorney’s documents towards him. As he did, some fell from the desk to the floor. When Britton bent down to pick them up, he lost sight of Ramirez momentarily. Ramirez felt guilty for a moment as he palmed the notary seal, but that was probably his Catholic upbringing.

“Again, thank you for your help, Mr. Britton. I’m sorry if I did something wrong under your laws. In my country, it would not have been a problem.”

“Don’t worry about it. Like Celia said, it’s not your fault. We’ll find a way to get Ellis. I hope your flight doesn’t get grounded by bad weather. That snow is getting worse. Have a good flight back to Havana. Day like this, I wish I was going with you.”

Britton closed his briefcase and shook Ramirez’s hand. The two men walked down the hall to the elevators, where Corporal Tremblay and his prisoner waited with Charlie Pike.

“Chief O’Malley asked me to arrange a ride to the airport for the two of you,” Pike said to Ramirez. “The weather is getting pretty bad. I was thinking maybe I’ll take you there myself. My truck can get through just about anything, and I have a cherry— that’s a portable flashing red light—and a siren if we need it.”

“That would be very helpful, thank you.”

Ramirez handed Yves Tremblay the notarized statement. It had felt strange to swear a document on the Bible, to the Christian God, after all the messengers Eshu had sent Ramirez’s way. But then again, the document wasn’t true, which was something that Eshu might find amusing.

What was it Francesca had said about
The Beggar’s Opera
?
Ramirez cast his mind back, trying to recall. That she wouldn’t believe they were really going to the opera until she heard the Peachums plot to kill their son-in-law for his money.

“Corporal Tremblay, I need to speak with Chief O’Malley briefly before I take custody of the prisoner,” said Ramirez. “Can you stay a few minutes longer? I do apologize for making you wait.”

Tremblay nodded unhappily. His working day was supposed to be long over. Ramirez could see through the windows how the traffic had slowed to a near standstill. Cars crawled forward a foot at a time.

“I promise, this won’t take long.” Ramirez walked the few steps down the hall to the police chief’s office. Clare Adams was putting on her coat and gloves.

“May I see Chief O’Malley for a moment before I leave?”

“He’s getting ready to go home, but I’m sure he won’t mind,” she smiled. “Go ahead, Inspector.”

Ramirez poked his head through the door. “Excuse me for disturbing you, Chief O’Malley, but what was the last name of Hillary Ellis’s mother?”

“Kelly,” said O’Malley. He pulled on a dark-green parka with grey fur around the hood, then took a black toque out of the pocket and pulled it over his ears.

“Do you know if she owns a drugstore?”

“The family does. Why do you ask?”

“Chief O’Malley, I think your patrol officers may want to treat Señor Ellis’s home as a crime scene. Someone from your technical services should check the pills in that prescription bottle of his to see what they really are. They should be extremely careful how they handle them. If the bottle contains what I think it does, it could be lethal.”

“What’s going on here, Inspector?” O’Malley frowned.

“I’ve just spoken to our pathologist, Hector Apiro.”

“Yes, he called here. I put him through.”

“Well, Dr. Apiro thinks that Hillary Ellis poisoned the rum in the hotel mini-bar. She planned to murder her husband. Señor Ellis has a serious drinking problem. She probably expected him to start drinking as soon as she was gone. But he went out to get drunk instead, and we arrested him the next morning. By the time he was released from custody, he was determined to quit drinking altogether. Nicole Caron checked into Room 612 on the same day that Señor Ellis checked out. She drank rum from the mini-bar. She died shortly after.”

“My God,” said O’Malley, astonished. “But if Hillary Ellis was trying to murder Michael, then who the hell killed
her
?”

“She may have poisoned herself by handling the pills. The drug is highly toxic; it could have been absorbed through her skin. Or the test results could be wrong. But the birth control pills were obtained from Kelly’s Pharmacy; that’s clear from the label. Dr. Apiro says Señora Ellis could not have tampered with the pills herself; the packaging was intact. Fluoroacetate is hard to find, so she had to have help. The logical person is her mother.”

“She was certainly quick enough to blame Michael for her daughter’s death,” said O’Malley, shaking his head. “I thought she was crazy when she went running to the media. But I suppose that could have been a smokescreen. Something to distract us.”

Ramirez nodded. “Something else troubles me. I had assumed that Señor Ellis had his wife’s body cremated to hide the fact that she died from a rare poison. But he was in Havana when that decision was made. It was Dr. Apiro who pointed out to me that cremation made no sense if the family itself was alleging murder.”

“It was the mother who demanded cremation,” said O’Malley.
“Michael didn’t even know about Hillary’s death. The General Hospital dealt with her when they couldn’t find him.”

“I think Señora Kelly conspired with her daughter to murder Señor Ellis in Havana. And I think she tried to kill him again today by putting fluoroacetate in the prescription that was delivered to his door this afternoon. With everything that’s happened, the first assumption would be suicide.”

“Oh, Christ,” said O’Malley, slapping his forehead. “Celia went over to their address about an hour ago to drop off Hillary’s belongings.” He dialed her cell phone number. “I’m only getting her voice mail, but you heard her: she said she was going to keep her cell phone on.” He tried Jones’s home number. “No, nothing important, Alex. Just wondered if she’d made it home yet. … Yes, I know. Probably the snow.”

He put down the phone. “I need to get someone over to the Kellys’ right away to check on Celia’s welfare. Sometimes she’s too goddamn smart for her own good.”

“Nothing’s going to be moving very fast in this weather, Chief,” said Charlie Pike, appearing at the door. “Dispatch says all the squad cars are tied up at accidents. Celia’s probably stuck in traffic somewhere and can’t answer the phone. I’m sure she’s fine. But I can stop by the Kellys’ when I’m taking Rick and the prisoner to the airport and check on things. It’s not too far out of the way.”

FIFTY

“You really don’t want to do this, Walter.” The words sounded lame coming out of Jones’s mouth. From the look on Walter Kelly’s face, he really did. June Kelly re-entered the kitchen gripping a long syringe.

“It won’t be painful, Miss Jones. I promise you that.”

Not a good sign, thought Jones. The fact that he was no longer calling her by her first name was a way of depersonalizing her.

“An air bubble in the main artery will stop your heart in seconds,” said Walter Kelly. “Carrying that heavy box in this cold weather can do that, too. Think how many out-of-shape men die this time of year starting snow blowers or shovelling snow. I know it’s not perfect, but it’s the best we can do on short notice.” His wife nodded. “No one will suspect us. We’re old; they think we’re stupid. That stereotype has worked pretty well for us so far.”

“Now, look, let’s not be hasty about this. I work for the police, remember?”

Jones felt behind her. She ran one hand along the cabinets, trying to find something to defend herself with.

“She’s their lawyer,” June Kelly said. “I saw her name on the door to her office. It was near that police chief’s. She won’t have
a gun. You grab hold of her, Walter. Let’s get this over with.” She pulled the plunger back on the syringe.