Donald Moffitt - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 57, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2012

Rentz snorted scornfully. “And then where are you going to keep the flatbed?”

“Dad,” said Virgil, “we sold the flatbed a year ago, remember? Now that Wagner is bankrupt, he’ll have to practically give away all that gear to whoever buys his shop.”

Howard Rentz reared up in his chair with a flash of wrath. “Now look here, you two,” he stormed, “my brains haven’t turned to mush yet. I’m still running the business, and I’m telling you to leave Steve Wagner’s plant alone. Time we met his price and started paying tax and insurance on a whole ’nother shop, we’d be bankrupt ourselves.”

“There’s something else we need to talk about,” said Kevin, with the air of a man venturing onto thin ice. “We figure it’s about time we had some stake in the business. We’re making all the runs but we’re still selling on straight commission, and both of the girls still have to hold down part-time jobs to keep shoes on our kids’ feet.”

“Yes, and your mother used to do the books and the bills at the shop and sling hash to keep shoes on your feet. When I go, it’ll be soon enough for you two to find out how much fun it is to own a business. Then you can buy another shop or branch out into aluminum siding or do whatever other fool thing you want so you’ll end up in receivership. Till then, this old boy is the top dog, and I don’t need any little pups to tell me when to bark.”

He spoke with such vehemence and decision that Kevin and Virgil fell silent and moved away.

“Where’s that pill-peddling buddy of mine?” roared Rentz, still excited. “Hey, Wally, have you got any of those stomach mints on you? The kind that take the hide right off your tongue and put a chill clear down to your gizzard?”

The phone was ringing when Detective Sergeant Cyrus Auburn got back to his desk after lunch. The dispatcher put through a call from Nick Stamaty, the investigator for the coroner’s office.

“You got a minute, Cy?”

“Sure,” said Auburn. “My manicurist isn’t due until two. What’s up?”

“I’ve got a funny kind of complaint to check out, and I thought you might want to be in on the preliminary investigation in case it turns out to be a homicide.”

“A funny homicide would be a nice change. What’s the story?”

“Woman thinks her boyfriend was murdered by his sons so they could gain control of the family business.”

“Which business?”

“Rentz Heating and Cooling.”

“One of their guys replaced the coil in my air conditioner last summer. Murdered how?”

“Day before yesterday he didn’t answer his phone. The girlfriend went to the house and found him unresponsive. It looked like a massive stroke, so the paramedics ran him to the Chalfont. He died about noon yesterday afternoon without ever regaining consciousness.”

“Autopsy?”

“This morning. Technically, any death within twenty-four hours after hospital admission is a coroner’s case, but the coroner released this one to the hospital pathologist because the decedent was a heart patient.”

“How old?”

“Fifty-seven.”

“You said girlfriend. Is there an ex in the picture?”

“He was a widower.”

“What did the autopsy show?”

“When he first arrived at the hospital, a scan showed that he’d had a brain hemorrhage. The autopsy confirmed that as the cause of death. They didn’t find any scalp wounds or cracks in his skull. He’d been taking a blood thinner for the past three years for heart trouble. You know how it is — one foot in the proverbial grave...”

“And the other on the proverbial banana peel. So why are we having this conversation?”

“Because Rentz’s Quick time was infinity.”

Auburn pondered silently for a moment. “Is that poetry?”

“Not exactly. They measure the effect of blood thinners with a test called the prothrombin time, which was developed by a guy named Quick. The thinner the blood, the longer it takes to clot in a test tube. They’re still waiting for Rentz’s blood to clot.”

“Meaning an overdose of blood thinner?”

“Suggesting it, anyway.”

“Accident... suicide?”

“Possible, but not likely. Doc Valentine says it would probably have taken a whole fistful of pills, and maybe several overdoses given over a period of days, to thin his blood that much.”

Valentine was the forensic pathologist under contract to the coroner’s office.

“So why is the girlfriend thinking homicide?”

“She says the day before Rentz suffered his stroke he had a violent argument with his two sons about some changes they wanted to make in the business. Rentz retired from active involvement a couple of years ago on the advice of his doctor, but he was still the sole proprietor.”

“Nothing more substantial than that?”

“She’s coming here at two o’clock today. You’re welcome to sit in. Then again, if you’re really looking forward to that manicure...”

“See you in an hour or so.”

When Auburn reached Stamaty’s office in the courthouse across the street from headquarters, Joy Lynn Robiche had already arrived. She was lanky, fortyish, and plain featured. Her fawn-colored hair was pulled back tightly into a bun. She wore little or no makeup and no jewelry. According to the photo ID clipped to her sweater, she was employed by county social services.

Stamaty made introductions. “I was just telling Ms. Robiche that Mr. Rentz’s brain hemorrhage could have been a side effect of his blood thinner even at a normal dosage.”

“But the point,” retorted Ms. Robiche, with the doggedness and drive of a social worker standing up for the rights of a downtrodden waif, “is that somehow he got a massive overdose. He couldn’t have made a mistake like that himself. He was as careful about his pills as he was about his money.”

“I understand,” said Auburn, “that you have some specific reasons for thinking his death was a homicide?”

“Tuesday was Howard’s birthday, and his family all went to his place for a party. But celebrating the birthday wasn’t the only thing on his sons’ agenda. They’ve been running the family heating and cooling business since Howard retired after his heart bypass three years ago, but he was still the legal owner and he made all the important decisions.

“They wanted to buy out another business that went bankrupt, and he absolutely refused even to discuss it. And when they told him it was time he made them partners instead of employees, he really blew up. He told them they were going to inherit the business when he died, and they could just wait. Two days later he was dead of an apparent overdose of medicine. Doesn’t that look pretty suspicious to you?”

“How do you think they did it?”

“Howard had a sweet tooth. His blood sugar was normal, so the doctor said he could eat all the carbohydrates he wanted as long as he kept his weight down and stayed away from fat and cholesterol. One of his daughters-in-law, I’m not sure which, brought a chocolate pie just for him. Even before the party got underway, he kept sending his grandchildren into the kitchen to bring him samples. The rest of us had ice cream and cake.”

“Was anybody at the party besides you and Mr. Rentz’s family?”

“A couple of neighbors — the men who live on either side of him, Mr. Ricedale and Mr. Snederle. I’m sure they’ll both confirm that the atmosphere was... poisonous.”

“You’re suggesting the family put an overdose of his medicine in the pie? But they would have had to do that in advance, before they had this argument you mentioned. And where would they get enough of the medicine to make up a fatal overdose?”

“Do I look like a detective? Maybe they foresaw how the discussion was going to turn out even before the party started. Maybe somebody else in the family is on a blood thinner. Heart disease is hereditary, you know.”