Sam Latham had been hurt in a car accident, and there was certainly no vehicular homicide in any of Poe’s stories. Nor had a note been found at the scene.
Lori’s murder was the only one that really lined up with Poe’s work, and even then, the parallels weren’t definitive.
Was the killer trying to slay every member of the society, or at least the board? There was no way to know, but certainly the killer wasn’t limiting himself to that group, though Lori Star had connected herself to the case.
Okay, she told herself. Time to try eliminating some possibilities.
She made a list of the members of the board, then looked down it, considering each one as a suspect. She eliminated three names right off the bat: Thorne, because he was dead; Sam, because he was in the hospital; her mother…
Because she was her mother.
That left Jared Bigelow and Mary Vincenzo, whom she suspected were sleeping together. Both stood to gain from Thorne Bigelow’s death—Jared directly, and Mary through her relationship with Jared. Lila Hawkins, unlikely, but not impossible. Lou Sayles? God, she hoped not. The woman had worked with the city’s children for years, and the thought of a murderer having that kind of access…She shuddered. Barbara Hirshorn, such a timid little bird, but you never knew…Still waters and all that.
It took ingenuity, not strength, to administer poison, but what had been done to Lori Star had taken strength.
Four men remained as possible suspects. Five, if she counted Albee Bennet, and she knew Joe would. After all, he had admitted being in the house when Thorne was murdered. So she added him to the list that still included Larry Levine, Brook Avery, Don Tracy and Nat Halloway.
She was anxious to talk to Joe now, but she was afraid, as well, given that she had called in the ghostbusters. But something was disturbing him deeply, and she couldn’t help feeling that Adam Harrison was the man who could help.
Her phone rang, and she picked it up absently.
She could hear noise and Irish music in the background, and frowned. Someone was calling her from O’Malley’s, she thought.
“Hello?”
“Is that you, lovely Genevieve?”
The slight Irish lilt was a giveaway.
“Paddy? What’s up? Why are you calling me?”
“I just thought you should know. Your mum is here. And all her bird society people.”
“You mean, the Poe Society? Thanks for letting me know, Paddy,” she said, then hung up a moment later and leapt to her feet. What was Eileen doing going out without protection, and with that group, of all people? Disturbed, she grabbed her purse and headed out.
Joe had been shoved out of the way when the doctors and nurses rushed in, but he was quick to warn them that they needed to find out what had been in Sam’s IV.
He’d actually been afraid he was going to be tackled by the security guard, but Dorothy had jumped to his defense, and then, thank God, a nurse had shouted that she didn’t like the look of the IV fluid, and taken the bag of fluids away for testing. One of the doctors suspected a morphine overdose, but final word would have to wait for the lab results.
Once the medical personnel got Sam stabilized—though he was still unconscious—inserted a fresh IV and left, Dorothy broke into sobs, and Joe tried to calm her.
“I hired security and everything,” she said. “Why does someone want to kill Sam?”
Why indeed? Joe asked himself.
Two police officers arrived a few minutes later, men Joe didn’t know. They started by interviewing the security guard, then Dorothy, then him, followed by all the medical personnel on duty on the floor, none of whom had been in to change Sam’s IV.
The shift change had been at seven, about fifteen minutes before Joe had arrived, and Dorothy’s best recollection was that someone had come in right in the middle of it to adjust the IV. It had been the perfect opportunity for someone to slip into hospital scrubs during the busy changeover, then casually walk in and inject something that shouldn’t have been there into Sam’s IV.
Dorothy wasn’t certain she could identify whoever who had come in. She had dozed off and still been half asleep when the last person came in to adjust the IV.
The guard in the hallway swore up and down that no one who wasn’t in proper hospital attire had gotten past him.
It seemed forever before things began to calm down. By then, Raif and Tom Dooley, looking seriously worse for wear, had arrived.
Another round of questioning began.
The police ordered official round-the-clock surveillance. Other than Dorothy and anyone she approved, no one wearing a surgical mask or without hospital ID was to be allowed into Sam’s room, which was immediately changed. Records were altered so he was no longer listed under his own name.