Catherine Coulter: Hemlock Bay

“Ah, Dillon, I’ve got a confession to make.” She took a sip of her tea, grinned down at the few tea leaves on the bottom of the cup. “The pills you took, well, they’re cold medicine. You see, I’d already stolen the pills and replaced them with Sudafed I found in the medicine cabinet.”

Sometimes she just bowled him over. He toasted her with his tea. “I’m impressed, Sherlock. When did you switch them?”

“About five A.M. this morning, before anyone was stirring. Oh, yes, Mrs. Scruggins, the housekeeper, should be here soon. We can see what she’s got to say about all this.”

Mrs. Scruggins responded to Sherlock’s questions by sighing a lot. She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as Savich, and she looked strong, very strong, even those long fingers of hers including her thumbs, that each sported a ring. She had muscles. Sherlock didn’t think she’d want to tangle with Mrs. Scruggins. She had to be at least sixty years old. It was amazing. There were pictures of her grandchildren lining the window ledge in the kitchen and she looked like she could take any number of muggers out at one time.

Savich sat back and watched Sherlock work her magic. “An awful thing,” Sherlock said, shaking her head, obviously distressed. “We just can’t understand it. But I’ll bet you do, Mrs. Scruggins, here with poor Lily so much of the time. I’ll bet you saw things real clearly.”

And Mrs. Scruggins said then, her beringed fingers curving gracefully around her coffee cup, “I’d think she was getting better, you know?”

Both Savich and Sherlock nodded.

“Then she’d just fall into a funk again and curl up in the fetal position and spend the day in bed. She wouldn’t eat, just lie there, barely even blinking. I guess she’d be thinking about little Beth, you know?”

“Yes, we know,” Sherlock said, sighed, and moved closer to the edge of her chair, inviting more thoughts, more confidences.

“Every few weeks I’d swear she was getting better, but it wouldn’t last long. Just last week I thought she was really improving, nearly back to normal. She was in her office and she was laughing. I actually heard her. It was a laugh. She was drawing that cartoon strip of hers, and she was laughing.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, Mrs. Savich, I can’t rightly say. Before I left, Dr. Frasier had come home early and I heard them talking. Then she just fell back again, the very next day. It was really fast. Laughing one minute, then, not ten hours later, she was so depressed, so quiet. She just walked around the house that day, not really seeing anything, at least that’s what I think. Then she’d disappear and I knew later that she’d been crying. It’s enough to break your heart, you know?”

“Yes, we know,” Sherlock said. “These pills, Mrs. Scruggins, the Elavil, do you refill the prescription for her?”

“Yes, usually. Sometimes Dr. Frasier just brings them home for her. They don’t seem to do much good, do they?”

“No,” said Savich. “Maybe it’s best that she be off them for a while.”

“Amen to that. Poor little mite, such a hard time she’s had.” Mrs. Scruggins gave another deep sigh, nearly pulling apart the buttons over her large bosom. “I myself missed little Beth so much I just wanted sometimes to lie down and cry and cry and never you mind anything else. And I wasn’t her mama, not like Mrs. Frasier.”

“What about Dr. Frasier?” Savich asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Was he devastated by Beth’s death?”

“Ah, he’s a man, Mr. Savich. Sure, he looked glum for a week or so. But you know, men just don’t take things like that so much to heart, leastwise my own papa didn’t when my little sister died. Maybe Dr. Frasier keeps it all inside, but I don’t think so. Don’t forget, he wasn’t Beth’s real father. He didn’t know little Beth that long, maybe six months in all.”

Sherlock said, “But he’s been so very worried about Lily, hasn’t he?”

Mrs. Scruggins nodded, and the small diamond studs in her ears glittered in the morning sunlight pouring through the window. Diamonds and muscles and rings, Sherlock thought, and wondered. Mrs. Scruggins said, “Poor man, always fretting about her, trying to make her smile, bringing her presents and flowers, but nothing really worked, leastwise in the long term. And now this.” Mrs. Scruggins shook her head. She wore her gray hair in a thick chignon. She had lots of hair and there were a lot of bobby pins worked into the roll.

It occurred to Sherlock to wonder if Mrs. Scruggins really cared for Lily, or if it was all an act. Could it be that she was really Lily’s companion, or maybe even her guard?

Now where had that thought come from? Hadn’t Mrs. Scruggins saved Lily’s life that first time Lily had taken the bottle of pills right after Beth’s funeral? She was getting paranoid here; she had to watch it.

“I have a little boy, Mrs. Scruggins,” Savich said. “I’ve only had him a bit more than seven months, and you can believe that I would be devastated if anything were to happen to him.”

“Well, that’s good. Some men are different, aren’t they? But my daddy, hard-nosed old bastard he was. Didn’t shed a tear when my little sister got hit by that tractor. Ah, well, I’m afraid I have things to do now. When is Mrs. Frasier coming home?”

“Perhaps as soon as tomorrow,” Sherlock said. “She’s had major surgery and won’t be feeling very well for several days.”

“I’ll take care of her,” Mrs. Scruggins said and popped her knuckles.

Sherlock shuddered, shot Savich a look, and thanked the older woman for all her help. She shook Mrs. Scruggins’s hand, feeling all those rings grind into her fingers.

Just before they left the kitchen, Mrs. Scruggins said, “I’m real glad you’re staying here. Being alone just isn’t good for Mrs. Frasier.”

Savich felt a deep shaft of guilt. He remembered he hadn’t said very much when Lily had insisted on returning here after recuperating with their mother. She’d seemed just fine, wanted to be with her husband again, and he’d thought, I would want to be with Sherlock, too, and he’d seen her off at Reagan Airport with the rest of the family. Tennyson Frasier seemed to adore her, and Lily, it seemed then to Savich, had adored him as well.

During the months she was home, she hadn’t ever called to complain, to ask for help. Her e-mails were invariably upbeat. And whenever he and Sherlock had called, she’d always sounded cheerful.

And now, all these months later, this happened. He should have done something then, shouldn’t have just kissed her and waved her onto the flight to take her three thousand miles away from her family. To take her back to where Beth had been killed.

He looked down to see Sherlock squeezing his hand. There was immense love in her eyes and she said only, “We will fix things, Dillon. This time we’ll fix things.”

He nodded and said, “I really want to see Lily’s in-laws again, don’t you, Sherlock? I have this feeling that perhaps we really don’t know them at all.”

“Agreed. We can check them out after we’ve seen Lily.”

At the Hemlock County Hospital, everything was quiet. When they reached Lily’s room, they heard the sound of voices and paused at the door for a moment.

It was Tennyson.

And Elcott Frasier, his father.

Elcott Frasier was saying, his voice all mournful, “Lily, we’re so relieved that you survived that crash. It was really dicey there for a while, but you managed to pull through. I can’t tell you how worried Charlotte has been, crying, wringing her hands, talking about her little Lily dying and how dreadful it would be, particularly such a short time after little Beth died. The Explorer, though, it’s totaled.”