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

“I didn’t expect you to make a report in person,” she said, eyeing Dollinger’s uniform in her cool, offhand way. She led them to a sumptuous sunken living room, where a dull rosy afternoon glow filtered through sheer curtains to awaken the latent fire of gold and silver threads in Japanese wall hangings.

“We’re not here to make a report,” Auburn told her. “We’ve just been talking to Mr. Polderrick downtown. He told us all about your scheme to have Mr. Rentz make a new will in your favor.”

“I resent the word scheme,” she said, her eyebrows arched in an expression of pique. “Mr. Rentz naturally felt it was proper to make a will benefiting his future wife.”

“Except that you had him so tangled up in romantic fantasies that he didn’t know up from down. It’s a tried and true gimmick. You find a lonely old man of independent means, preferably with failing vision—”

“You don’t have to be rude. You’re not exactly Denzel Washington yourself.”

“—who’s just nutty enough to believe you’re in love with him, but not far enough around the bend to be incapable of making a valid will. Then you promise to marry him, and persuade him to make a will in your favor, but you keep putting off the wedding with some story about a legal technicality — maybe a divorce decree not being official yet. Meanwhile, you swear him to secrecy about the wedding plans, telling him you couldn’t keep your job if it got out that you had fallen in love with one of your clients.”

“You can’t prove I wasn’t in love with Howard.”

“True. But it’s a matter of public record that you inherited three quarters of a million dollars from Hershel Carpenter, who died at Deer Creek Assisted Living Center a year and a half ago at the age of eighty-one. And that you then bought this place. And a Mercedes. And two Russian wolfhounds.”

“Mr. Carpenter was my husband. He died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm.”

“I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. By the way, it’s also a matter of public record that you haven’t been on the payroll of county social services for the past year and a half.”

She sat glowering at them, as impervious to censure as a granite statue. “All right, so you know all about me. You’ve probably got my blood type there in your briefcase too. Just tell me this. Are you investigating me, or are you trying to find out who killed Howard Rentz?”

“Both.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why did you tell the coroner’s investigator and me that you thought Rentz’s sons had killed him?”

“Because I do think so. And his death ruined a... scheme I’d been cultivating for the past six months. We’d had two meetings with Polderrick. In another week, the new will would have been ready for Howard to sign.”

“What we’re here to find out,” said Auburn, “is whether Rentz said anything at the party about changing his will. Because if he did, that would have given his sons a stronger motive for homicide than just wanting to get their hands on the business.”

“He didn’t,” she said without hesitation. “What he told them was that they’d inherit the business when he died. He didn’t say anything about what he was going to do with his money.”

“Just one other thing. We’d like to get inside Mr. Rentz’s house to check for traces of that chocolate pie and look at his medicine bottles. Do you have a key?”

“No. Howard always left the basement window under the deck open for ventilation, and I climbed in there when he didn’t answer the doorbell. But then I closed and bolted it. I imagine his keys were in his pocket when they took him to the hospital, but I really don’t know that.”

They thanked Ms. Robiche and took their leave.

“The Merry Widow, huh?” muttered Dollinger as they walked back to the cruiser. “If you ask me, Dracula’s Daughter fits better.”

“What do you bet she’s got a key and is systematically pillaging the place?”

Dollinger knew a short cut to Howard Rentz’s neighborhood, which took them through no fewer than three school zones around dismissal time.

“Back again, officer?” said Walter Snederle as he admitted them to his comfortably shabby place next door to Rentz’s. “This looks official. How’s the investigation coming?”

“I thought I recognized you when we talked yesterday, Mr. Snederle,” said Auburn, “and now I’ve got you placed. You wouldn’t remember this, but back when I was eight or ten years old you used to sell me candy and chewing gum and comic books at your drugstore on Banks Street.”

“Oh, the store, yes,” said Snederle with a wistful smile. “That was a long time ago.”

“Earlier this afternoon we had a meeting with Mr. Polderrick, who’s been handling Howard Rentz’s legal affairs recently. He told us how, a few months ago, Joy Lynn Robiche steered you his way so you could make a will leaving everything to her.”

“She’s a social worker for the county,” nodded Snederle. “When I was in the hospital getting over cataract surgery she helped me with paperwork, and other things, and then... we sort of fell in love.”

“And when she found out all that money you’d told her you had in the bank existed only in your imagination, she fell out of love again.”

Snederle’s mood sank from wistful to lugubrious. “All those years of working twelve or fourteen hours a day,” he said, “with no chance to take a vacation, let alone get married... and then the big pharmacy chains ran me right out of business.” Tears welled up and spilled over behind the thick lenses. “Was it wrong to hope for a couple years of peace and contentment before I take off on the One-Way Cruise?”

“That’s not for us to judge. We’re more concerned about what you did when you found out that your next-door neighbor had replaced you in Ms. Robiche’s wedding plans.”

Snederle suddenly turned wary and restless. Auburn informed him of his rights under the Miranda ruling.

“As a pharmacist, you know that warfarin, the drug that Rentz was taking to thin his blood, is the active ingredient in several brands of rodenticide, probably including the one you’ve been using to get rid of the rabbits and squirrels that gnaw your flowers. You also know that warfarin has no taste and no odor and that it dissolves readily in water — or coffee.

“So when Howard Rentz came over to your back porch for coffee on sunny afternoons, you made sure he gradually built up a dangerous level of warfarin by mixing it in with the sugar, which you’re not allowed to use. We’d like to have a look around your house, Mr. Snederle. We don’t have a warrant, so you’re free to refuse. But if you do that we’re going to take you into custody as a material witness, and then you won’t be here tomorrow when we come back with a warrant and take this place apart.”

They exercised enormous caution in keeping the package of rat poison they found in Snederle’s garage separate from the contents of the half-full sugar bowl that turned up in his trash. The laboratory eventually found high concentrations of warfarin in both specimens.

The day after Snederle was found guilty of first-degree murder, Auburn received a phone call from Cary Rentz.

“I’m so embarrassed about this,” she said. “But neither of us can sleep at night till we get it straightened out. There was a pie, of course. I made it myself — chocolate pudding in a prebaked crust, with real whipped cream topping. I put it in the refrigerator at my father-in-law’s to keep a chill on it until it was time for the party, but he kept sending the kids out to the kitchen to bring him samples. By serving time, not only was the pie completely gone, but so was the pan I made it in. And nobody — nobody — knew anything about that.