Part 19 (1/2)

When she went downstairs the next morning, Frank was at the counter chopping spinach. ”It's the last of it,” he said regretfully. ”An omelette, filled with spinach, chopped tomato, scallions, and cheese. You up for some?”

”Are you kidding?” She poured coffee and took it to the dinette table. ”Was the food awful?”

”No, of course not. It's one of those things. After a day or two of restaurant food, you just want something from your own kitchen.”

”Not me,” she said. ”Your nose is sunburned.”

”I know that. You want toast?”

”I don't think there's any bread. I forgot it.”

”What were you planning in the way of a sandwich last night?” he asked with real curiosity.

”When I said sandwich, I remembered that I had forgotten to buy bread,” she said. ”I would have gone out to get some.”

He shook his head. ”Well, I don't want it for myself.”

She understood that they were not going to talk about the book while he was preparing breakfast, and they would not talk about it while they ate. She picked up the newspaper and scanned headlines, turned to the comics, and waited for the real day to start.

After the omelette was gone and they were having more coffee, Barbara said, ”What are you going to do now?”

”Call Hoggarth. Get an exhumation order, open the case again.”

”What about Wrigley? You going to bring up his name?”

”No. I told you, I don't think he's the man. I'll give Hoggarth the fingerprints Bailey lifted, let him take it from there.” Then he scowled. ”d.a.m.n, I forgot. Patsy's off.”

”We could meet in my office,” she said. She did not mention that he would not need Patsy when he talked to Hoggarth; it would do little good to say something like that. He believed that if he was in the office, Patsy should be there also.

She cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher as he made the call to the police lieutenant. The dishwasher was full. Then she remembered that she had not turned it on yesterday, or maybe for several days. She turned it on.

”Twelve-thirty, your office,” Frank said when he hung up the phone. ”He's grouchy. He'll take a few minutes out of his lunch hour, if it's really important.”

”Well, I'll be there. Now I'm off. See you later.” Their meeting promised to be interesting, she thought as she headed out the door.

Milt Hoggarth arrived promptly at twelve-thirty. Barbara and Frank escorted him to her office, where they sat around the coffee table.

”This had better be good,” Hoggarth said. ”We're shorthanded, people out fis.h.i.+ng, taking vacations, and I don't have time for any tomfoolery. Your nose is sunburned,” he added.

”I know,” Frank snapped. ”I have a story to tell you, Milt. Won't take long. I told you at the beginning that I didn't believe Hilde Franz overdosed accidentally, and I sure as h.e.l.l didn't think she was a suicide.”

”Frank, that case is closed. Is that what you want to talk about? Forget it.”

”Sit still and listen,” Frank said. He turned to Barbara. ”Tell him what you learned about those capsules.”

She told him, and watched as he did the arithmetic for himself.

He shrugged.

”You don't know how many she used up, how many she had left,” he said.

”If you ever pulled a muscle, you know you want something to relieve the pain for several days,” she said coldly. ”Ask your doctor.”

”Is that it? You counted pills?”

”Shut up and listen,” Frank said. He told him how Bailey had photographed Hilde's house and lifted fingerprints.

It was interesting, Barbara thought, watching him, the difference it made where the red in the face came from. Frank's nose was red, and Hoggarth's face was reddening, but it was a different sort of coloration, coming from deep within, and not evenly. His red was blotched; Frank's nose was uniformly red.

”It could have been a doork.n.o.b rattler,” Frank said. ”But later the guy came back and broke in. I got a video from Hilde's safe-deposit box, made for her homeowner's insurance, and we compared Bailey's shots with it. These are stills taken from the tapes and Bailey's pictures.” He handed Hoggarth the two sets of pictures of the books. ”A book's missing.”

”He took a book. Is that it? What are you getting at? You want it back?”

”I have it,” Frank said. ”We tracked down the author; I flew to Florida and bought a copy.” He opened the ream box on the table, took out the copyright page and the t.i.tle page, and handed them to Hoggarth, who glanced at them and gave them back. Then Frank gave him a copy of the page of text with part of it highlighted. ”It's a blueprint for murder,” he said icily. ”Read it.”

No one spoke as Hoggarth read the highlighted section, then read it again. ”Jesus Christ!” he said, flinging the paper down on the table. ”She didn't have any knockout drops. It's a piece of a story!”

”Someone doctored those capsules, increased the amount of the drug in each one, and exchanged them that evening,” Frank said. ”A double dose would have rendered her unconscious, incapable of being roused, possibly. That person returned later and opened her mouth, lifted her tongue, and injected a vein beneath the tongue with a paralyzing dose of the drug. Her breathing stopped very soon after that, a minute, two minutes, and she died. He restored the original capsules, and was done. I called Dr. Steiner, and he agreed that the only way we'll know for sure is through another examination. He didn't look under her tongue.”

”f.u.c.k!” Hoggarth muttered. ”You're not serious, Frank. You're talking exhumation.”

”If you don't call for it, I'll speak to the family, tell them what I've told you, and get them to do it. If I have to go that route, I'll have your hide before I'm done with this. Hilde Franz was my client and she was murdered.”

After Hoggarth left, Frank stood up. ”It's in their hands now,” he said. Bailey would deliver a set of the fingerprints he had lifted; they would have copies made of the videotape and photos, and the novel; in the coming week Hilde Franz's body would be exhumed and reexamined.

Barbara had not said a word about the hospital committee, or about Wrigley. A mistake, she was thinking; she should have insisted on giving Hoggarth that also, and if the police cleared Wrigley, no harm done.

At the door Frank paused. ”I have to say something else,” he said in a neutral tone. ”That's a long flight from Florida back home. I had a lot of time to think. I tend to agree with Hoggarth, that the fact that Hilde had a lover is irrelevant. I believe she saw something the day Marchand was killed, and she came to accept that Alex Feldman killed him. I think his doctor friend killed her to protect Feldman.”

She stared at him, aghast. ”No way,” she said. ”It just won't work. He didn't know about the book.”

”She talked about it with someone,” Frank said in that same flat tone. ”Further, I think you should be prepared to deal with this because eventually the police will come up with the same scenario.”

Later that afternoon she told Sh.e.l.ley and Bailey the whole story. Frank had always said not to hold out on Bailey; in order to do his job, he had to have whatever information was available. Although she did not tell him about X or Xander, she did not hold back anything else.

Sh.e.l.ley stared at her wide-eyed. ”He can't really believe that Dr. Minick would do such a thing. And he said the guy who hit him had a key. Dr. Minick wouldn't have a key to her house.”

”He doesn't know Dr. Minick or Alex. He did know Hilde Franz, and he can't believe she had an affair with a younger married man with children. That's what it comes down to. And he'll probably come around to thinking he might have left the door unlocked. But what it means to us is that we need to get the dope on Wrigley, all the way down. Sh.e.l.ley, I think you're due a short vacation, maybe to visit your pals in the Monterey area, get in a little gossip. And, Bailey, canva.s.s that neighborhood like a census taker. Hilde Franz's neighbors, the next block over, the medical complex. And I think it's time to go into some of those out-of-state trips. Were they together? Same hotel, separate rooms? What?”

When Bailey got up to leave, he said, ”Barbara, you know this is going to start adding up to big bucks.”

”I know that, d.a.m.n it. It'll have to come out of my fee, I guess. But don't worry about it. Just get me something on Wrigley.” And he didn't even have a thing to do with her case, she added to herself, accepting that she had to go after him anyway. Bailey looked doubtful, and she said, ”You get me something real, and I'll put in a wet bar here.”

”You're kidding!”

”Nope. Promise. But it has to be real.”