“That’s a thought.”
“Boss, I didn’t get a chance to really talk to you yesterday, what with the police and all. I did pop my head in last night to see that you were okay.”
“Three-ring circus, wasn’t it?” She rolled up a hose.
“How did you know?”
“At first, I didn’t. Iffy’s behavior kept me focused on her. I’m convinced she tried to shoot Gray. Wasn’t a hunter catching the last days of deer season. Can’t prove it, but I believe it to be so.”
“Gray was on to her.”
“Well, he was on to someone cooking the books. He couldn’t discuss it, but I knew something was amiss. I thought maybe Garvey was stealing the cream. That idea soon faded, but Iffy could have worked with Garvey and discovered she was going to take the fall. A lot of thoughts flitted through my peabrain.”
“But she was guilty?” His thick eyebrows moved upwards.
“Yes, she was—and what’s even more disgusting is she killed Angel. Jason gave her the scopolamine, the stuff that’s used for motion sickness and arthritis.” She walked into the kennel office, Shaker following. “Tell you one thing, Ben Sidell is good. He put his nose down and followed every scent trail.”
“Thorough.”
“That he is. He figured out the insurance scam. I had no idea about that. Ben and his staff interviewed every living patient on Jason’s roster. Jason did save lives, but there were people on his roster who feigned symptoms, including Alfred DuCharme. They were never sick in the first place. Jason wrote up treatment in collusion with the phony patient, and the money rolled in. When Ben went through his patient roster, since some called Jason, that tipped him off to the fact that he was under suspicion, but he was confident he’d covered his tracks.”
“Two crimes?” Shaker dropped in the chair by the desk, turning it so he could face Sister as she sat behind the desk.
“More than that. One attempted murder. I’m counting Iffy shooting Sam. One murder: Angel. Then Iffy’s murder. A brilliant insurance scam, two million dollars pilfered from Aluminum Manufacturing. The insurance companies will get involved with their own investigation, but Ben’s estimate is that Jason sucked up about nine million dollars.”
“Nine million!” Shaker exclaimed.
“It’s obvious you haven’t seen a hospital bill in a long time. Jason specialized in cancer. The diagnostic tests, the chemo and radiation if needed, the operations if needed, the aftercare, the pharmacy bills. It’s insane. Really, it’s easier to die. It’s certainly cheaper.”
“I’ll remember that.” His wry smile was engaging.
“Here’s the thing I don’t understand. By all accounts Jason was a good doctor. Why wasn’t that enough? Doctors make a good living. But he must have had some kind of instinct, some sixth sense of who could be corrupted. Someone might have a few cancer cells on the skin. He’d talk them into letting him invent a major cancer, and they’d split the insurance money. He even went so far as to perform some operations, not cut-open-the-chest stuff, but still, in-office procedures on healthy people. Mostly he threw patients into a fake radiation and chemo program and raked in the money. Walter—who is tremendously upset, by the way—said it’s not that hard to acquire x-rays and records. He thinks Jason took those of deceased people. He’d x-ray his ‘patient’ later, and lo and behold, the tumor or the cancer would be in remission. The cleverness of it, the attention to detail—it’s almost admirable.”
“Nine million dollars.” Shaker fixated on the loot.
“Think what we could do with that money?” Sister sighed, then glanced out the window. “Sun’s up.”
“Clearing up.” He rose and walked to the hot plate. “Tea? Coffee?”
“Tea.”
“Angel loathed Iffy. How could Iffy kill her without Angel knowing? I mean, Angel wouldn’t take motion sickness stuff from Iffy, I don’t think.” Shaker returned to the main subject.
These two, working cheek by jowl for decades—for Shaker had been hired as a young man to whip-in—had long ago divested themselves of connecting every sentence to the one prior.
“Angel had some arthritis, common enough in someone eighty-four. Walter suggested an over-the-counter remedy. Remember, Ben had questioned him thoroughly when the news about Angel came back from the labs. First he visited Margaret DuCharme. Later, after he saw me he questioned Walter, and Walter said he’d recommended cream with scopolamine in it. No big deal; we could go down to Rite Aid and buy a jar. Iffy mentioned to Angel that much faster relief could be had by putting a patch behind her ear.” Sister gratefully accepted her tea, the bag steeping. “She said this in front of Garvey. I mean Iffy was smart, and she was bold. Garvey told Ben that Iffy told him to try it if he stiffened up, and also to take shark cartilage pills.”
Shaker blushed. “I take them. Glucosamine and chondroitin, too. Works.”
“The things I find out.” She put the teabag on her teaspoon and wrapped the string around it to squeeze out the excess water, then dropped the spent bag into the wastebasket.
It landed with a plop.
“Try it.”
“Long as it isn’t a lethal dose.”
“Doesn’t it have that stuff in, soopy—”
“Scopolamine.” She pronounced each syllable. “There’s no way to know, but the logical conclusion is that Iffy brought in a patch loaded with the stuff and told Angel to put it behind her ear. If she didn’t, no one would know it was murderous. Who else would use it? Iffy would have to find another way to kill Angel as Angel’s suspicions of Iffy’s stealing intensified. But Angel did put the patch on. Iffy timed it, walked into Angel’s office forty minutes later—remember, Angel’s age played a part in the speed of this stuff—and she removed the ear patch.”
“But where’d the two million go? Iffy was tight as a tick.”
“Went to Jason, who obviously wasn’t.”
“Jesus. She killed for that bastard?”
“She was in love with him. We’ll never know what he promised her. Marriage?” She shrugged.
Shaker absorbed this. “Iffy in love.”
“Hard to imagine.”
“He must have really played her.” Shaker shook his head in disbelief and disgust.
“We can all be fools in love. I guess it just proves that Iffy was human.”
“I guess.” He sipped his tea. “Lorraine’s got me off coffee completely now. She says tea is better for me.”
“Reckon it is.” She rose and looked outside the window up to the house. “Gray’s still asleep. Light’s not on upstairs. Poor guy; he’s exhausted. First he finds the coverup at Garvey’s. Then Sam gets shot. Then he’s in the dark until I nearly bought the farm yesterday. I was lucky Jason didn’t shoot me. He was slick; I’ll give him that.”
“Why wouldn’t he shoot you?” Shaker quickly amended that. “Not that I wanted him to.”
“Ha. You say.” She teased him and sat back down. “Ben only had him on insurance fraud. Iffy was the embezzler, not Jason. He received the proceeds of her ill-gotten gains, but he was technically innocent. If he’d shot me yesterday he’d have had a much tougher time in court.”
“He shot Iffy.”
“We know that, but Ben still would have to prove it. And it wouldn’t be easy. Jason’s big bucks could have hired a lawyer that would make Sherman’s march look like trespassing.”
“That’s a fact.” Shaker appreciated the wiles of high-paid lawyers, thanks to a divorce many years earlier.
“That was my first clue that Jason was our man.”
“Damn. I sure didn’t have any idea. All I knew was that Iffy had been planted over Jemima Lorillard. How do you get to Jason from that?”
“He thought he was clever, but he was no fox. He didn’t know squat about hounds. I mean the man hunted with us and not once during the season did he really study the hounds at work. No, he was a run and gun.” She held up her hand as if holding off a protest. “I know, I know, they pay their dues and I am grateful so long as they don’t interfere with hounds or staff, but really, how can you foxhunt and not study hounds? I will never understand it. If they want to run and jump all the time they should take up three-day eventing.”