xx,
Jenna B
Personal Success Concierge™
Bestmillenniallife.com
Dear Jenna,
That was a remarkably lucid response (until the tiny house stuff). I hope you won’t be offended that I am going to choose to completely ignore it. I have a lot going on right now and I just can’t deal with having those “unresolved issues” challenged at this time.
PS: I have too many books to ever live in a tiny house. Plus, my dog is huge.
All best,
Riley
Dear Jenna,
Okay, you’ve made your point, you can stop sending me pictures of tiny houses with big bookshelves and even bigger dogs. (But, to be fair, I think that last one with the Great Dane reading Shakespeare was photoshopped.)
All best,
Riley
CHAPTER 23
On my way back to the Times I decided to stop into the sheriff’s office to see what the latest was with Tabitha. I also wanted to see what, if any, progress Carl had made on figuring out who had poisoned David. It still didn’t make any sense to me. Surely that and his father’s murder were related, but I couldn’t see how. If Libby or Bennett Nichols had anything to do with Arthur’s death, why would they have a problem with David? Or if the CEO of Invigor8 had snapped in a fit of rage over Dr. Davenport pulling out of the drug trial, what would any of that have to do with his son?
I walked into the sheriff’s department and Gail smiled at me. “Hey,” she said, looking up from the file she was holding. “He’s in his office. Thad’s being released in a few minutes.”
“Really?”
“Prosecutor hasn’t filed charges yet, so he’s free to go, but can’t leave town.”
“And Tabitha?”
Gail lowered her voice. “Between you, me, and the fence post, I think Carl’s just gonna let her walk on this one if she’ll recant.”
“Cool,” I said, looking around the station. “Is Gerlach Spencer here by any chance?”
I had seen that Spencer had written a piece online about Tabitha’s confession and a few other updated details about the story, so I knew he was on it. I had to be careful. If he saw me catting around here, he’d tell Kay for sure. The obit was my cover story, though, and a pretty good one at that. After all, I could easily be here to interview Dr. Davenport’s eldest son for the obituary.
“Haven’t seen him since this morning. You can go on back to Carl’s office if you want.”
Through the glass to his office I saw Tiffany Peters, the county coroner, and wondered if that meant that the report had come back from the Richmond ME. I hovered just outside Carl’s door and waited for someone to notice me.
“Hey, Riley!” Tiffany said. “You’re so sweet to come down here to hear my report!” She gave me a beauty-queen smile as I walked in the office.
“Okay if I listen in?” I looked at Carl.
He nodded and I noted again how tired he looked—even worse than before; the skin on his cheeks had started to get those red splotches. Not like chickenpox, more like gin blossoms, but I knew Carl didn’t drink. It had to have been the stress.
“As I was saying,” Tiffany said, reading from a sheet of paper. “The autopsy report found congestion of the brain, lungs, and kidneys. And while no identifiable tablets were found, analysis of blood, stomach contents, and liver revealed digitalis concentrations well above therapeutic levels. Myocardial and coronary artery diseases were excluded—that means he didn’t have any kind of underlying heart condition that he would have needed digitalis for.
“There was a single puncture wound on the left side of the abdomen, measuring two by three millimeters, with clean and clear edges and little blood loss, indicating the insult was inflicted post-mortem.” Tiffany looked up. “That means he was stabbed after he died.”
“But what’s the point of stabbing someone after they’re dead?” I asked.
No one ventured a guess.
I continued. “And do we know anything about the timing of all of this? I mean, if Thad left his father—drunk but alive at 7:30 p.m.—do we know anything about when Arthur actually ingested the poison?”
“Great question.” Tiffany flipped to another page in the report. “According to this, Arthur had acute digitalis toxicity, which means the drug was likely introduced into the system fairly rapidly. The Digoxigon pills are point-twenty-five milligrams each, so assuming the killer crushed up the pills and put them into the whiskey, the time it took to take effect would really depend on how much of the stuff he or she used.”
I nodded, thinking this through. “So would it have been possible that the scotch was laced with the pills long before Thad was there, and even though Arthur was drinking it, he just hadn’t taken in a lethal amount yet?”
“It’s possible. This is one of the things the prosecutor is going to have to look at,” Carl said. “There are still a lot of unanswered questions.”
“Does the Davenport estate have any security cameras that might have caught if anyone else came or went from the house that night?” I asked.
“The property has cameras, but apparently they haven’t been used since Mrs. Davenport passed away. Arthur told Jim over at Command Security that he didn’t need any protection beyond the twenty-two he kept in the front closet.” Clearly, Arthur had been wrong about that.
Carl stood up and put his hat on. “Thanks for coming by with this report, Tiffany. I appreciate you rushing it over.”
“There’s one other thing that showed up that I want to point out,” she paused, holding us hostage to the moment just a beat longer than necessary. “There were traces of crushed tobacco leaves ground into the rug around where Arthur’s body was found. The forensic team also found them in the entry and the hallway leading into Arthur’s office.”
“Tobacco leaves?” I asked. “Like
