I couldn’t quote eyebrow waggles; I was going to need him to say the words. “What happened during the course of all those appointments?”
He shifted in his chair, looking uncomfortable over revealing the worst of his departed colleague. “Arthur and Li—I mean, this woman—got to know each other and they started up a little relationship.”
“And did the husband find out?”
Dr. Steeler nodded. “They weren’t exactly discreet about it. Never could figure that out. Anyway, yeah, the husband caught them one day right in his own house and he just about lost his mind. He flew into a rage and ended up collapsing. The irony was, it was a good thing Arthur was there because he did CPR on him until the ambulance arrived.”
I could hardly believe my ears. This was not only scandalous gossip—it provided another suspect who might have wanted Dr. Davenport dead. I wondered if this was the new information David had found out about.
“Can you tell me the name of this patient?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“No chance. HIPAA and all that.” But then he leaned in and lowered his voice. “But I’ll bet if you ask around town you’ll find someone who’ll tell you. Like I said, they weren’t very discreet about the whole thing.”
I thanked him for talking to me and told him how helpful he’d been.
“I’ll look for the obit in the paper. Sunday—is it?”
I nodded. Sunday it would be indeed.
CHAPTER 14
If anyone in town would know with whom Dr. Davenport had had a scandalous affair, it would be Mrs. Eudora Winterthorne. Mrs. Winterthorne was the grand dame of Tuttle Corner. She was as “old as dirt,” as she liked to say, but still had her perfectly manicured finger on the pulse of our town. And lucky for me, she just loved to gossip about other people’s business, though she’d deny that with her dying breath.
I knocked on the large oak door to Villa 302 at Almond Terrace, the retirement community where Mrs. Winterthorne lived. She’d been widowed four years ago and decided to trade the big house she’d raised her family in for the maintenance-free living that Almond Terrace provided. She used a wheelchair because rheumatoid arthritis had ravaged her knees, but other than that Mrs. Winterthorne was in better shape than many people half her age.
“Well hey there, Riley,” said Faye, Mrs. Winterthorne’s nurse, as she opened the door. She leaned in to kiss my cheek. Faye was retired military, a twenty-year Army veteran who had served three tours in Desert Storm. She never married, had no children, and when she retired from service at the age of forty-eight, she took the position as Mrs. Winterthorne’s personal caregiver. The two ended up being a perfect match, and in many ways behaved like an old married couple, griping and sniping at each other despite their deep bond.
I had called ahead to ask Faye if Eudora had time to visit with me to talk about Dr. Davenport’s obituary, and she’d readily agreed. “It does her good to visit with people, especially when she can be useful,” Faye said.
“Is that Riley?” I heard Mrs. Winterthorne’s aged, velvety voice drift in from the other room. “Don’t keep me in suspense, Faye. For heaven’s sake, I can’t roll up the steps myself!”
Faye rolled her eyes at me, not the least bit fazed by Mrs. Winterthorne’s crabbiness. She led me down into the living room. “Come on in, sugar.”
After the three of us chatted for a while and I caught them up on what my parents were up to, Mrs. Winterthorne got down to business.
“Now what is this about you wanting to know about Dr. Davenport’s clandestine affairs?” She pursed her lips in judgment, but her eyes gleamed with excitement. “Surely, you’re not going to print that in the obituary? One musn’t speak ill of the dead, you know.”
“I’m just gathering information right now. Dr. Steeler couldn’t tell me much, but I knew if anyone would know the real scoop about what went on, it’d be you.”
“Oh, Riley, your mother taught you well. Trying to appeal to an old lady’s vanity in order to squeeze some information out of her,” she said, laughing.
I got nervous for a second that she wasn’t going to open up, but then she said, “Well, you know I don’t like to gossip,” and I knew I was in luck.
Mrs. Winterthorne didn’t take a breath for the next fifteen minutes. Turns out the married woman with whom Arthur Davenport had had the affair was Libby Nichols, the wife of Bennett Nichols, who was, as Dr. Steeler had said, forty-three years old.
“It raised more than a few eyebrows when those two got married,” Eudora said. “Her just barely out of high school at the time and him nearly thirty. What with the Nicholses having so much, there were those who thought Libby was just in it for the money.” It sounded from her tone that Mrs. Winterthorne herself had been of that opinion. “But, to their credit, they stayed married all these years, happily as far as we all knew.”
“Until this business with Dr. Davenport?”
Mrs. Winterthorne nodded. “Several months back Bennett was having some minor health issues, according to his mama, Judy—do you know Judy and Jim Nichols? They live out on that farm down by Route K?”
“They own Nichols Insurance Group, right?” I knew this because when my poor Honda Fit had gotten blown up a few months ago, I had to file a claim with them. They’d been great about the whole thing, and actually made the process pretty painless.
“Jim built that business from the ground up and has done quite well. Quite. Anyway, Bennett went to see Arthur for his care, and of course brought his doting bride along on the visits. According to Judy, Libby took detailed notes about what tests he needed done and all that. Played the part
