“No note.”
“So why would Jack take his own life?”
“Shelley claimed he was terribly depressed. She maintained that he was devastated by the loss of his legs because it meant he would never fly again. Lieutenant Caldwell was working the case and trying to prove that wasn’t true—that Jack really did have something to live for. Barry said he’d heard from an airplane mechanic over in Anchorage who maintained that with the right prosthetics there was no reason Jack couldn’t fly again.”
Wait. This was sounding vaguely familiar. An airplane mechanic in Anchorage who knew Jack and Shelley Loveday? “Not Chad Winkleman!” I exclaimed.
Marvin Price looked at me in utter amazement. “How the hell did you know that?” he demanded.
“Never mind,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. Just tell me what happened.”
“The initial autopsy results came in as undetermined, too, but once the toxicology report arrived, the medical examiner in Anchorage ruled the manner of death to be suicide and the cause of death to be an overdose, due in part to mixing alcohol with the prescribed medications.”
“And that was the end of Lieutenant Caldwell’s case?”
“You’ve got that right. Barry argued until he was blue in the face. Shelley was Jack’s only heir, and she came into a bundle of money as a result of his death, which gave her motive aplenty. In addition, Lieutenant Caldwell believed that since Shelley had provided the liquor, even if she wasn’t guilty of murder, at the very least she was guilty of involuntary manslaughter. The brass basically said that believing that and proving it were two different things.”
“So Caldwell never got to first base?”
“Correct,” Marvin said. “Especially with the M.E.’s eventual determination that Jack’s death was a suicide. Next thing you know, Shelley’s very good friend, Eileen Adams, dies in the hospital while undergoing treatment for cancer, and—”
“And two months later Eileen Adams’s widower and Jack Loveday’s widow just happen to tie the knot, which sounds a little too convenient to me.”
“Me, too,” Marvin agreed glumly.
“What about Eileen’s death?” I asked. “Anything dodgy about that?”
“Could be, but who knows?” Marvin responded. “Eileen Adams was in a medical facility and under a doctor’s care at the time she died. Her passing was reported as an expected medical death, so no autopsy was required.”
“You’re thinking that could have been murder, too,” I asked.
Marvin nodded. “I think it’s possible.”
“In that case,” I said, “our main worry now is making sure Roger Adams doesn’t wind up being victim number four.”
Marvin looked startled. “Wait a minute. You think he might be in danger, too?”
“I do.”
“So tell me,” Marvin said.
“I will,” I said, “but before I do, I think we’d both better have a refill. I’ve got a feeling this is going to be a very long night.”
Chapter 23
And I wasn’t wrong about that. Marvin and I talked steadily until the wee hours of the morning, with neither of us paying the slightest attention to the passage of time. When homicide cops are working a case, the idea of punching a clock disappears. As we spoke, I was amused to notice that I was consulting notes and e-mails from Todd to provide names and dates. Meanwhile Marvin was using a ballpoint pen and a tiny spiral notebook to jot down his own items of interest.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. Here I was, the old guy who’d had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the computer world, relying on high-tech devices to jog my memory while my much younger compatriot was old-school all the way. Marvin Price had made a great first impression, but his using that notebook caused me to like him even more.
I started at square one and told him everything from the beginning, starting with Sue Danielson’s death and explaining how her older son, Jared, had charged me with looking into the disappearance of his younger brother. Then I recounted every detail of what my investigation had unearthed so far. In the process I made note of a couple of additional people who should probably be interviewed now that Shelley Loveday Adams had become the center of not only my investigation but of Marvin Price’s, too.
Among those individuals was one Betsy Norman, Shelley’s good friend who’d been responsible for notifying Penny Olmstead of her sister’s passing. It occurred to me that I should also get in touch with Roger Adams’s life-insurance guy. In the process of doing that change of beneficiary, it was possible that Roger might have mentioned something about what was going on in his personal life at the time. As far as I know, life-insurance salesmen don’t qualify for protection due to client privilege. The third person on my list was Twink’s brother, Chad, who was familiar with both Shelley and Jack Loveday. If his changed physical situation hadn’t left him permanently grounded, then the whole motivation for Jack’s suicide suddenly evaporated.
Marvin took a lot of interest in the description of my visit to the Adamses’ home earlier that day, or the previous day, depending on what time of the morning it was by then.
“You think Roger is being confined against his will?” Marvin asked.
“I can’t say that for sure,” I admitted, “but something doesn’t seem right. Listen to this. I recorded while I was at their place. I had noticed bruising on Roger’s wrists, and I was worried that things weren’t right, and I wanted to have documentation to back me up in case I called for a welfare check.”
With that I pulled out my phone, located the recording, and played it back. “You hear that?” I said when the recording ended. “She says that doctors diagnosed Roger as having early-onset dementia, but according to Helen Sinclair, Roger’s longtime secretary, both Roger and Shelley are now practicing Christian Scientists.”
“So she’s lying about the doctor part,” Marvin mused. “I wonder what else she’s lying about? And about that wellness check. Do you think one is in order?”
I thought about that for a moment before answering. “From what I could tell, Roger isn’t in any immediate danger, although my having shown up asking questions earlier might have put him in a more precarious situation than he was in before.”
“What do you mean by precarious?”
“Helen Sinclair also told me that when Roger and Shelley married, she signed a prenuptial agreement.”