Merry, Merry Ghost

Peg hurried from the kitchen. She was already dressed in a pullover sweater and jeans. She pulled a cell phone from her pocket. She carefully shut the living room door after her and stood by the cold fire. She pushed a button.

I arrived at a rambling ranch house on Peace Pipe Lane, the home of Everett Lewis, and found Dave in tartan plaid boxers, shaving. He heard the phone, grabbed a towel, and wiped his hands. His face still lathered, he walked into the bedroom to scoop up a cell phone from the nightstand. “Hey, Peg.” He listened and looked astonished. “Smothered?”

His shock was evident. Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing whether the shock came from the event or from the news that a death that should have been accepted as accidental was now deemed a homicide.

“That’s crazy. Did somebody break in?” His eyes narrowed as he listened. “Oh…Well, that’s tough. I know you were really close to her…This afternoon?…Right. I’ll be there. And hey, Peg, God knows this is pretty grim, but she wouldn’t have lived long anyway. Everybody knows that, and the truth of the matter is that the timing is good for us…Don’t take my head off. I’m just facing facts. She’d always promised the money to all of you and now it looks like it will all work out, and hey, we can take good care of the kid.” His tone was magnanimous.

Obviously the prospect of marrying a woman with a substantial inheritance was pleasing to him.

“Do you want me to come over now?…Oh. Okay then. I’ll see you this afternoon.”

I wasn’t surprised to find Police Chief Sam Cobb in his office on Sunday. His suit coat hung from the back of his office chair so I judged he’d been to church. He was as big as I remembered, a stocky man, grizzled dark hair receding from a domed forehead. His face was heavy, his jaw blunt. He’d known unhappy times. Even though only a short span of earthly time had passed, he looked older than when we’d last met, if one could describe our fleeting encounters as meeting. It had been my pleasure on my previous visit to Adelaide to assist the police in the guise of Officer M. Loy.

His oak desk was as battered and stained as I remembered. His computer screen was on. He turned from the computer to pick up a legal pad. He began to write:

Susan Pritchard Flynn stopped for speeding by Officer Johnny Cain at 12:14 A.M. Sunday in a blue Ford belonging to her sister-in-law Jacqueline Flynn. Car taken without permission. Mrs. Flynn accompanied by unidentified young woman described as very attractive redhead.

The chief paused, a frown tugging at his iron gray brows. I hoped he wasn’t recalling the occasional presence of redheaded Officer Loy.

With a brief headshake, he resumed writing:

At shortly before 1 A.M., Officer Cain observed the Ford driven recklessly down Persimmon Hill. Officer Cain gave chase. The car stopped at the base of the hill. Officer briefly glimpsed driver, the redheaded woman previously seen with Mrs. Flynn. Mrs. Flynn was not in the car. Driver was not apprehended. Officer Cain overheard a man and woman quarreling but never saw them. A woman cried, “Murder.” Woman may or may not have been driver.

The reason for Mrs. Flynn’s midnight trip is unknown. According to family, she was too ill to be out. Officer Cain knew Mrs. Flynn personally, had known her for years, and insists that he saw and spoke with her.

The identity of redheaded woman is unknown. Family claims they know of no one—

The phone rang. Chief Cobb glanced at the caller ID, punched the button for the speakerphone. “Hey, Doc. Hope you aren’t calling to say the autopsy’s on hold.”

“Man, I’m done. Started the autopsy at three A.M., got a pitiful nap, ran the tox test this morning. Major fact: The dig level was out of sight, 6.0. Normal is 1 to 2. The digitalis vial on the nightstand only had a couple of tabs. I didn’t notice the fill date. Better check. My guess is it was a fresh prescription and Mrs. Flynn ingested most of the tablets.”

The chief rustled through some papers. “Got a report here that digitalis was found in the dregs of the pot that had held cocoa as well as the cup. How did the medicine get in the cocoa?”

“I’m no fortune-teller, Chief, and that’s what you’re going to need here. Maybe the tablets fell in her cup by accident. That’s unlikely but things happen. Maybe she tossed the tablets in the cocoa in an absentminded moment, one tablet two, three tablet four, who knows how many more, you get the picture. Maybe she dropped them into the cup on purpose. Maybe somebody brought her cocoa laced with enough digitalis to drop a horse. It’s your pick: accident, suicide, murder.”

I don’t know when I’ve been more distressed. I’d assumed the medical examiner would find the cause of death, but I hadn’t considered the possibility that Susan’s death might not be deemed homicide. After all, I knew she had been murdered. I had it on excellent authority. Wiggins said so. Besides, Susan would never have committed suicide. I’d not known her long, but I had no doubt. She knew she had to finish the course, no matter how difficult the path. Susan Flynn had understood and accepted that the road wound uphill all the way.

Chief Cobb didn’t know Susan. I watched as he wrote:

Accident? Suicide? Murder?

“But,” boomed the voice on the speakerphone—for a man who’d likely been up most of the night, the medical examiner was ebullient—“I got more interesting news for you.”

Cobb’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t like the sound of your voice. May you too live in interesting times.”

The bark of laughter was satisfied. “You got yourself a muddy sandpile to play in, Chief.

“One: Except for the circumstances of her discovery, i.e., on the floor with a pillow on her face, the death would have passed as natural. She had severe congestive heart failure and coronary artery disease. No attending physician would have suggested an autopsy.

“Two: She didn’t pop down on the floor of her own accord. She was placed there after death. Lividity indicates she died while resting on her left side. Now this is interesting. There were some traces of lividity on her back but the major lividity was on her left side. That’s consistent with the body being moved less than six hours after her death. If more than six hours had passed, the lividity wouldn’t have been changed by movement. Instead, from the amount of lividity on her side, I’d guess—and this has to be a guess—that the body was moved about three hours after she died.