“What were the pill bottles for?” I asked.
“Oxy and Ambien,” Marvin answered. “Jack had prescriptions for both of them.”
“Wait a minute,” I commented. “I doubt either of those should be taken with a chaser of tequila.”
“That’s what Lieutenant Caldwell thought, too. According to his visiting nurse, once Jack was out of bed, he could get around all right in his wheelchair. So Caldwell asked Shelley about the tequila bottle. Where had that come from? She allowed as how, after having a Valentine’s dinner together, Jack had asked her to bring the tequila to the master bedroom so they could share a nightcap.”
“Sounds very romantic,” I said.
“Right,” Marvin muttered. It was one of those sarcastic “Rights” that doesn’t mean right at all.
“In the interview Shelley claimed that even though Jack was on those prescribed meds, he continued to have difficulties with ongoing pain and falling asleep. She said that was why whenever he asked for tequila, she brought it to him—that it helped him sleep.”
“I’ll just bet it did,” I said, “but the whole bottle?”
“That’s what Barry thought,” Marvin said.
“Were there fingerprints?”
“Yes, Shelley’s prints were on both the booze bottle and each pill bottle, but those were easily explained because she was the one who usually dished out his meds. And in all cases, his fingerprints overlaid hers. His were the only prints on the shot glass.”
“If there was a visiting nurse,” I said, “why wasn’t she administering the meds?”
“Have you ever dealt with a visiting nurse?” Marvin asked.
I shook my head. “Not really,” I said. “Why?”
“When my father came down with cancer, he ended up dying at home after being bedridden for the better part of a year. Visiting nurses came by on a regular basis, all right, but as far as I could tell, they did very little nursing. They mostly came by to check the house’s inventory of pills to make sure no one was saving them up in case my father wanted to use a handful of them as an early ticket out.
“Lieutenant Caldwell theorized that since Jack wasn’t getting the kind of relief he needed from the pills, maybe Shelley wasn’t dispensing his meds properly.”
“You mean like maybe she was hoarding up enough pills to be able to get the job done?”
“Something like that,” Marvin replied.
“Was there a note?”
“No note.”
“So why would Jack take his own life?”
“Shelley claimed he was terribly depressed. She maintained that he was devastated by the loss of his legs because it meant he would never fly again. Lieutenant Caldwell was working the case and trying to prove that wasn’t true—that Jack really did have something to live for. Barry said he’d heard from an airplane mechanic over in Anchorage who maintained that with the right prosthetics there was no reason Jack couldn’t fly again.”
Wait. This was sounding vaguely familiar. An airplane mechanic in Anchorage who knew Jack and Shelley Loveday? “Not Chad Winkleman!” I exclaimed.
Marvin Price looked at me in utter amazement. “How the hell did you know that?” he demanded.
“Never mind,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. Just tell me what happened.”
“The initial autopsy results came in as undetermined, too, but once the toxicology report arrived, the medical examiner in Anchorage ruled the manner of death to be suicide and the cause of death to be an overdose, due in part to mixing alcohol with the prescribed medications.”
“And that was the end of Lieutenant Caldwell’s case?”
“You’ve got that right. Barry argued until he was blue in the face. Shelley was Jack’s only heir, and she came into a bundle of money as a result of his death, which gave her motive aplenty. In addition, Lieutenant Caldwell believed that since Shelley had provided the liquor, even if she wasn’t guilty of murder, at the very least she was guilty of involuntary manslaughter. The brass basically said that believing that and proving it were two different things.”
“So Caldwell never got to first base?”
“Correct,” Marvin said. “Especially with the M.E.’s eventual determination that Jack’s death was a suicide. Next thing you know, Shelley’s very good friend, Eileen Adams, dies in the hospital while undergoing treatment for cancer, and—”
“And two months later Eileen Adams’s widower and Jack Loveday’s widow just happen to tie the knot, which sounds a little too convenient to me.”