“Eventful,” he said.“Harris locked his keys in his patrol car and Galloway fell through a grate into a septic tank while he was responding to a call.”
I squenched my nose automatically.“I don’t even know what to say to that.What’d he do?”
“Not much he could do.He pulled himself out and went home.We’re going to have to use a fire hose to clean out his cruiser.”
“Did Harris ever get his keys?”
“I had to call a locksmith.”He accepted the mug I handed him.Dash liked his tea black and strong.“How was your morning?”
“John Olmsby told everyone the new pharmacist is rude and told everyone in the store about his gout over the loudspeaker, and he got a bunch of seniors in a tizzy and they were going over there to give him a talking-to face-to-face.”
“I guess it didn’t escalate,” he said, wincing.“I didn’t get any calls.”
“Either that or they buried him in someone’s backyard.”I poured my own tea and added milk and sugar.“Other than that, uneventful.”
We carried our mugs through to the dining room to check in with the others.Walt had three boxes open and was going through them methodically, pen in hand.Deidre had a stack of correspondence sorted by date.Bea had her reading glasses on and her lips pressed together over whatever she was reading.
“Find anything interesting?”I asked.
“Not yet,” Walt said, without looking up.“But we have a long way to go.”
“We’ll take the call with Lila Mae in the study so we don’t bother you,” I said.
“Take good notes,” Deidre said.“We want a full report.”
We took our mugs to my study, where I kept the shop’s books and a view of the back garden that I never got tired of looking at.Dash closed the door behind us while I set up the laptop on the desk and pulled two chairs around to face the screen.
Lila Mae Banks appeared on the screen at exactly ten o’clock.
She was a small woman, neat and upright, her white hair set in rows of sausage curls that looked like they had been freshly permed.She sat in a bright sunroom in Arizona with a houseplant behind her, and she held a cup of something hot in her hands.
“Can you see me?”she asked, looking close into the screen so we could see every line on her weathered face.
“We can see you,” Dash said.
“My daughter set this up for me.She knows about technology.”
Her accent was Charleston, softened by decades away.
“We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us,” Dash said, once he’d introduced us.
“Oh, sure,” she said.“I’ve spent a long time wondering if anyone ever would.I knew something wasn’t right with that whole mess.Milton was a real horse’s patoot.”
“You’re not the first person to say that,” Dash replied.
“Well, it’s the truth.Crooked as a three-dollar bill, and all his cronies with him.I hope he rots in that jail cell.”
The ferociousness with which she said it had me raising my eyebrows.Note to self: Do not get on Lila Mae’s bad side.
“After re-examining some key issues in the case,” Dash said, “we’ve decided to treat this as an active homicide investigation.”
She nodded fiercely.“As you should.Henry never would have killed himself.”
“How long did you work for Dr.Wainwright?”I asked.
“Fifteen years,” she said, proudly.“Before Charlotte got sick.She had cancer, you know.Terrible thing when she passed.But they hired me on when things started getting busier with the foundation.Between the clinic, his house calls, and the travel they did with the foundation, they couldn’t keep up with everything.My job was to do whatever they needed to lighten the load.”
“Mrs.Wainwright would travel with him when he was working with the foundation?”I asked, surprised.
