The Snow White Christmas Cookie

It led to a bedroom that was right off of the den. A bedroom that was so tiny that Des guessed it was a converted sunporch. There was barely enough room for a chest of drawers, a pair of nightstands and the double bed where the late Bryce Peck lay propped up against a couple of pillows, his head flopped over to one side like a Raggedy Andy doll. His eyes were closed, his complexion already faintly bluish. The Jewett girls were attending to him in their usual quiet, efficient manner. Bryce’s stringy hair was uncombed, his gaunt, weathered face unshaven. He wore a ratty old tie-dyed T-shirt over a long-sleeved thermal undershirt. His hands lay open on the bed, palms up. Next to his right hand there were three empty prescription pill bottles. Next to his left lay an empty fifth of Jose Cuervo Gold tequila.

A hand-scrawled note on a yellow Post-it was affixed to Bryce’s chest. Des read it, frowning, before she said, “Good morning, girls.”

“Oh, it’s a lovely one,” Marge responded.

“What did he take?”

“Quite some cocktail,” Mary said. “We’re looking at twenty-four Xanax, thirty Vicodin and another thirty Ambien sleep aids.”

“Were they his pills?”

Mary nodded. “Prescribed by Ed Swibold, that country club shrink up in Essex. The prescriptions were filled in November.”

“Mind you, we have no way of knowing if all three pill bottles were full,” Marge pointed out. “But Josie swears that they were. Also that the fifth of Cuervo had never been opened. She told us Bryce was alive when she left to go running with Mitch. She was gone for an hour and change. By the time she got back here, he was dead.”

“Say those pill bottles were full. Would they be enough to kill him within the time frame we’re talking about?”

“Him and a good-sized herd of elephants,” Marge affirmed.

Des glanced around the room. No furniture was overturned, no lamps or windows broken. She moved in more closely and examined Bryce’s skull, throat and hands. Saw no head wounds. No bruising around his throat. No fresh scratches on his hands. No skin, blood or other foreign matter under his nails. There was no reason to think that Bryce’s death was anything other than what it appeared to be-a straight suicide by a man who had a long history of emotional problems and drug dependency. As resident trooper her job now was to report her preliminary observations to the Troop F barracks in Westbrook and obtain contact information for the victim’s next of kin. A detective would take over from there. And a death investigator from the Medical Examiner’s office in Farmington would slog his way down to photograph the body and take Josie’s statement. After that, Bryce’s body would be delivered by hearse to Farmington for an autopsy. The M.E.’s people no longer transported bodies in their own fleet of vans. The job had been outsourced to undertakers.

Des studied that hand-scrawled Post-it on Bryce’s chest again, which read: Just an awkward stage. “What do you suppose that means?” she wondered aloud.

“Bryce used to say that to me whenever he went off into one of his dark places,” Josie answered softly, standing there in the doorway with Mitch. “He’d shrug his shoulders and say ‘It’s just an awkward stage.’ I ought to have those words carved on his headstone except…”

“Except what, Josie?”

“He told me he wanted to be cremated.”

“So his death was something that you two had talked about?”

“He talked about it all of the time. I kept telling the gnarly doofus that I intended to keep him around for a good thirty years. But he … he didn’t expect to be around for long.”

Des nodded, glancing around at the cramped little room.

“We’ve been sleeping down here to save on the fuel bill,” Josie explained. “It costs a fortune to heat this big old place. We don’t go upstairs at all.”

“About those pill bottles,” Des said. “You’re sure they were full?”

“Positive. I count them every morning to make sure. He wasn’t taking any of that stuff anymore. Their presence in our medicine chest was entirely totemic.”

“Entirely what?”

“They were symbolic. They represented what he didn’t need anymore.”

“Was that your idea or Bryce’s?”

“It was something we both agreed to.”

The tiny room fell silent as all of them stood there trying not to look at her dead boyfriend.

“Josie, why don’t we continue this conversation in the kitchen?”

Mitch joined them, topping off Josie’s coffee mug and his own before he sat with them at the round oak table.

“I don’t happen to believe in pills,” Josie stated firmly. “I don’t think they make you healthy-just drug dependent. I’m strictly about self-healing that utilizes energy-based modalities and mind-body practices.”

“Forgive me, but I don’t understand what you just said.”

“I’m saying that we concentrated on harnessing the vast power of Bryce’s mind to return his body to its natural state of being. We detoxified his system of artificial chemicals. We reduced his stress levels. We placed him on a…” She trailed off, staring at Des accusingly. “You think I’m full of crap, don’t you?”

“That’s not true at all, Josie,” Des said.

“Yes, it is. I can see it in your eyes. I happen to be a fully accredited life coach, you know. People value what I do. You would, too, if you needed me. You don’t. You’re someone who has tremendous personal discipline. You exercise, eat right, don’t smoke or do drugs. You’ve got it together.”

Des glanced down at the graphite stick residue that was always there underneath the middle fingernail of her right hand. Yeah, I’ve got it together. I just see dead people is all.

“But most people aren’t like you, Des. They’re weak. And an amazing number of them don’t like themselves very much. I have one client who pays me seventy-five dollars an hour just to go grocery shopping with her twice a week. She says she’d be lost without me. This is an affluent, well-educated career woman. You wouldn’t think she’d need me, but she does. Most of my clients do.”

“Bryce was more than a client to you.”

“Much more,” Josie acknowledged, lowering her blue eyes. “That … never happened before. I’ve never fallen in love with a client. I can’t explain it.”

“You don’t have to.”

The Jewett girls were done in the bedroom. They said their good-byes and headed back out by way of the mudroom. Des heard their van start up and pull away.

Josie gazed out the kitchen window at the snow, which was now coming down so hard that you could barely see across the beach to the water. “I could never, ever convince him that he deserved to be loved. And he was so depressed this morning that I decided he ought to see Dr. Swibold again. Mitch and I were talking about it while we were running.”

“It’s true, we were,” he confirmed.

“Josie, is there any chance Bryce was self-medicating without your knowledge? Scoring drugs on his own?”

“I don’t believe so. He hardly ever left the island. Didn’t hang out with anyone. Plus he was flat broke. The monthly check from his trust fund barely covered a week’s worth of groceries.”

“If that’s the case then how did he pay you? When he was seeing you professionally, I mean. You say you charge seventy-five dollars an hour. Where was the money coming from?”

“Why is that important?” Josie asked, sipping her coffee.

“It may not be. I’m just wondering.”

“Preston paid for it. Also for Bryce’s sessions with Dr. Swibold. Preston and Bryce had a-a strained relationship. When Bryce showed up last summer it hit Preston really hard. He told me he felt awful about the way he’d treated Bryce. Preston is in his sixties now, and he’s had two heart attacks. I got the impression that he didn’t want Bryce sitting on his conscience.”

“So you’ve been in personal contact with Preston?”

“By phone and e-mail. And he sent me checks from Chicago when I was coaching Bryce.”

“I’ll need a phone number for him.”