Jeanne Glidewell - Lexie Starr 03 - Haunted (14 page)

“Is Roxie home this morning?” I asked.

“No.”

“Will she be home soon?” I asked Mrs. Kane.

“No.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“She’s got classes today,” she replied.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. It is Monday, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, she’s in physiology right now, and then she goes to her anatomy class.” At least she supplied me with a little more information than I was beginning to think I could dredge out of her. I thanked her and wished her a nice day before hanging up. I wanted to be pleasant to her in case I had to speak with her again in an attempt to track down Roxie. Not that I’m not usually pleasant to people, but I did make a special effort this time.

If I hurried right over to the college I might be able to speak to her between classes. I could ask around, try to locate the anatomy classroom, and catch her before she went in to class. Stone was still chatting with Wyatt in the kitchen, so I blew through the room with a quick, “See you later. I’m going out for a bit this morning.”

* * *

I got to the college a little later than planned, and I had to ask a half dozen or more people before I found the anatomy classroom. It wasn’t anywhere near the lab as I’d expected. By the time I arrived at the room, class was already in session. Looking in the window, I saw the teacher down below, standing at a podium. The seating was stair-stepped up from the podium, in an auditorium-styled setting. It was fairly dark at the top of the auditorium where the door was located, so I stepped in quietly and sat down in the closest seat. Looking around, I was happy to see several older students in the crowd. None were as old as I am, I’m sure. I was closer to retirement age than college age.

I asked the young man next to me if he knew where Roxie Kane was sitting. He didn’t know who she was but, after speaking to several people down the aisle, he was able to point her out to me. She was located about halfway down toward the stage. I thanked him and slowly crept down to where Roxie sat. I bypassed a number of vacant seats. She looked up at me as I plopped down in the empty seat next to her.

She was a brunette like Paula Browne. She had her long hair tied back in a ponytail this morning. She was a good-sized girl, not fat by any means; she just had a large bone structure and broad shoulders. She looked every bit the part of a National Guard recruit.

“Good morning,” I whispered. “Are you Roxie Kane?”

“Yes, I am. Who are you?”

“My name is Lexie Starr,” I said. I had thought about trying to pass myself off as a student who had come back to school later in life to try to further my education. Then I decided it would serve no purpose to lie to her about who I was. She was apt to find out the truth eventually.

“Do I know you?”

“No, but I think you know the young man who died at my boyfriend’s bed and breakfast a few days ago. My partner’s B and B, that is.” Boyfriend sounded so adolescent, but partner could be construed as about any kind of relationship.

“Walter? Walter Sneed?” She asked, incredulously. I could tell she was flabbergasted that I could know who she was, and also know she’d gone out with the man who had died in the inn.

“Yes, Walter. There was a muddy set of footprints outside the door the detectives think were left by you,” I told her. Of course I was stretching the truth a little, as you know I’m prone to do in circumstances such as this one. “Apparently, you were the last to see him alive, which indicates you could have something to do with his death, or at least know something about what happened to the young man. I thought I’d approach you before the authorities did, just to kind of give you the heads-up.”

“Ladies. You over there,” I heard spoken over the microphone. I looked up to see the professor pointing straight at Roxie and me with a laser pointer she’d been using to highlight various bones on a hanging skeleton. The skeleton looked realistic, as if it were actually made of bone and marrow. It would have been a nice addition to the haunted house. I thought it was so much better than the skeleton we’d been able to find at the department store.

“Yes?” I answered meekly. My response was barely audible in the massive auditorium.

“Could you hold it down a little? This is a classroom, and the other students in the class are here to learn, not to listen to you two visiting,” the professor said. “You on the right. Would you like to tell the class where the patella bone is located?”

I looked at Roxie. She pointed at me. Damn it! I was on the right. But thank goodness for childhood sports, making knee surgery necessary a few years ago. I actually knew the answer to her question.

“It’s the kneecap, ma’am.”

“That’s correct. I’m surprised you heard me point it out with all the visiting you’re doing. Now quiet down and pay attention, or leave the auditorium.”

Several minutes went by until I had enough courage to speak to Roxie again. I couldn’t waste this opportunity learning about carpal and tarsal bones.

“What do you know about Walter’s murder?” I whispered. “What were you doing at the inn that morning?”

“Shush!” She whispered back. “I’m trying to listen to the instructor.”

Roxie and I both looked up to see the professor glaring at us. She shook her index finger at us and continued her lecture. Roxie began to scribble furiously on a sheet of paper she’d been taking notes on. She wrote for what seemed like a very long time. When she finally finished, she handed the note to me. According to the note, she knew absolutely nothing about his death. “Yes, I was there for a few minutes,” she had written. “But only to let him know how disgusted I was with him. He used me, and he hurt and humiliated me, so I wanted to give him a piece of my mind. And I did. Then I went back out the front door, and down the sidewalk, the way I’d entered. There was a sign on the door that said ‘Welcome. Come on in,’ so I did. I didn’t see anyone else but Walter in the house, but then, I had walked straight into the room where he was lying in a fake coffin. Coffin or not, he was very much alive when I left.”

This sounded reasonable to me, but it could also be a convenient story she’d made up. I wrote back, “Can anyone confirm your story? What size shoe do you wear?”

Her next message stated no one else knew she’d gone to Alexandria Inn to confront Walter. She was too embarrassed by the whole thing to tell anyone. But she swore she had nothing to do with Walter’s death, and didn’t know anything about it either. And it was none of my business what size shoe she wore. If the detectives wanted to know, she’d tell them, she said, but she was under no obligation to tell me.

“Did you see or hear anything while you were there?” I wrote.

“No,” she answered. “But I noticed Walter was sweating, shaking, and seemed extremely confused at the time. I wasn’t sure he even realized I was there or what I was saying to him. I felt like I was wasting my time trying to tell him off. But I have no idea what was wrong with him, and I swear I had nothing to do with his death.”

“What?” I said out loud, after reading her response. “But that means—”

That was the first time I’d ever been kicked out of a class. The professor had stopped her lecture, pointed her laser light at me, and motioned for me to exit the auditorium. As I stood up to leave, all eyes were on me. It was a long walk of shame up the stairs to the door. I heard the teacher say, “You too, miss,” as I climbed the steps. Darn it, I hadn’t meant to get Roxie kicked out of her anatomy class. I’m sure she needed those credits to get her degree.

“Thanks a lot!” She said to me outside the classroom door. “Now I’ll have to talk with Mrs. Herron to see if I can get back into the class. And tomorrow there’s a major test I need to do well on to pass the course.”

I apologized. I was sincerely sorry. I really was. I had certainly not planned to get her in trouble. But she didn’t accept my apology very well, stomping her foot and turning to leave. I looked at her feet as she stomped. Yes, I’d estimate them to be somewhere between size eight and nine. I’d say the footprints were definitely hers, even though she was wearing tennis shoes today, not boots.

“Good luck with your test,” I said inanely as she walked away. She said nothing in response. With her back still to me, she lifted her left hand in a one-fingered salute. Wow! Kids these days were sure a lot ruder than they were in my day.

At least I’d found out it was Roxie who’d most likely left the footprints and why she claimed to have been at the inn in the first place. If Walter was in the shape he was in at the time Roxie arrived at the inn, he must have begun to come out from under the effect of the chloroform, and had already been injected with the insulin, which was taking effect. I’d have to ask Wendy if sweating, shaking, and confusion were symptoms of low blood sugar. Once his blood sugar dropped to a certain level, he would have collapsed into a coma and eventually died, which is exactly what had occurred. He might have been too confused and out of it to call out for help, not cognizant of what was happening to him.

Could this be a ploy on Roxie’s part? I suddenly wondered. If she were a diabetic herself, she would know the symptoms of low blood sugar and might be using this story to steer suspicion away from herself. If the authorities already knew it was she who’d left the footprints, as I had indicated to her, then she’d want to concoct a story to make them suspect the killer had already come and gone by the time she arrived at the scene. It was definitely something to think about. Being a diabetic, as more and more Americans were each year, would give her access to the insulin too.

“Hey, are you a diabetic?” I hollered down the hallway. There was no response. Even if Roxie hadn’t already left the building, I doubt she would have given me a response. I was not her favorite person right then.

I called Wendy on my cell phone, and she confirmed the symptoms Roxie claimed Walter exhibited were indeed those of a low blood sugar reaction. She was somewhat surprised to hear Walter had already begun to regain consciousness from the affect of chloroform, but deduced he might not have been given a full dose, or a strong enough dose, of it.

Then, as Wendy is prone to do, she began telling me everything she knew about chloroform. I listened politely for a minute or two, although I didn’t really care that chloroform was forty times sweeter than sugar, or that it could also be made by the chlorination of methane by using free radicals to create a reaction in the presence of ultraviolet light. When she lapsed into a story about the American chemist Dr. Samuel Guthrie, who first prepared chloroform, I broke in to tell her I was in heavy traffic (in Rockdale, no less) and needed to pay full attention to the road.

After putting my cell phone back into my purse, I thought about what I’d learned by speaking with Roxie. I now felt as if I’d created more questions than I’d found answers to. I walked out to the parking lot and headed back to the Alexandria Inn in my Jeep, not sure if I’d ever get the chance to speak with Roxie Kane again. I hoped so. I still wanted to get an answer to my last question. If she were a diabetic, she would most likely jump to the top of my suspect list. Being the last known person to see him alive put her in a questionable position. How coincidental was it that she was with him just minutes before he died?

Chapter 12

I stopped by Pete’s Pantry on the way home from the college to pick up a few groceries. Stone was grilling some rib eye steaks for supper, and I wanted to get the ingredients to make an eggplant casserole so Eleanor would have something substantial to eat in lieu of the meat.

The selection of eggplant was pretty lame, even though it was still eggplant season in the Midwest. I also picked up some carrots so I could serve them in Stone’s favorite way—boiled, dipped in milk and cracker crumbs, and then fried in butter. Hopefully, the Dudleys would like them fixed that way, as well.

While I was at the grocery store, I picked up the ingredients I would need to make a broccoli/rice/cheese casserole on Tuesday, and some rather sorry-looking green beans to snap and cook. I would add a bit of bacon grease to add flavor, and serve them along with the casserole. Maybe Eleanor wouldn’t notice the hint of bacon flavor in the beans, and not realize she was eating the by-product of a pig. If I didn’t help raise her cholesterol level, who would?

Then it occurred to me that if her husband’s tongue swelled up like a blowfish and he developed unsightly blotches all over his face due to his pork allergy, Eleanor might catch on that a meat by-product was somehow involved with the supper I was feeding her. I quickly replaced the limp green beans with a large head of cauliflower.