Ice Pick in the Ivy (Lovely Lethal Gardens Book 9) Read online

  He just glared at her. She shrugged and said, “We do need to go home.” It had been about fifteen minutes since Jude’s vehicle had left, and, just as she got Mugs into the front seat and Goliath into the back, the Porsche returned.

  It went past her, stopped, and his driver’s side window rolled down. She’d already put her purse and the paperwork inside by the time Jude asked, “What are you doing here?”

  She looked at him in astonishment. “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t live here.”

  “No, I don’t,” she said, “but I love walking down here. It’s beautiful.”

  He sniffed. “Lazy no-good riffraff,” he said, “that’s all you are.”

  “A murdering, lying cheat is all you are too,” she said cheerfully, throwing the insults right back at him.

  He glared at her. “You are not allowed to say things like that to me. I’ll get my lawyers after you.”

  “Oh, yeah? The same one who put in the fake will for you?”

  At that, his eyes turned beady dark, and his face blanched white.

  She smiled and nodded. “Oh, yeah, we know,” she said. “You can expect some visits from law enforcement any day.”

  “You’re bluffing,” he said, glaring at her.

  “Yeah, and what about your ex-girlfriend? Did you kill her too, expecting to be part of that inheritance? Too bad you didn’t get a chance to change her will for you to inherit that estate as well, huh?”

  He hit the gas and tore into his property. She shouldn’t have let him get to her, but just seeing that smug, supercilious look on his face had her own ire rising. She knew she would have to confess to Mack—but not right now. Besides, he didn’t need to know if it was not important. As far as she was concerned, this guy was not important.

  She hopped inside her car and drove home. By the time she got there, Mack and his truck both were in her driveway. He leaned against the side of his vehicle, his arms crossed over his chest, as he glared at her.

  She groaned. “What did I do wrong now?”

  “Apparently you threatened our little son?”

  “He was basically telling me that I wasn’t allowed to walk on the streets down there because I was … He did say something about being lazy no-good riffraff or something like that.”

  At that, Mack’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously?”

  She nodded, and then she remembered her phone. She brought it up and hit Replay, and the conversation followed. She was getting good at turning it on without anyone noticing. Good thing this time.

  He stared at her. “You can’t leave well enough alone, can you?”

  “Maybe not, but he killed three people,” she snapped, although she had moved closer to Mack to keep her voice down. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “First off, you don’t know that he killed anybody. We’re back to that assumptions-versus-evidence thing.”

  “Maybe not yet,” she said, “but what if he did?”

  “If he did,” Mack snapped back, “there’s a damn good chance he’ll go to extremes in order to not get caught because he has a lot to lose. And, if he’s already killed three, he won’t give a damn about killing a fourth time.”

  “I won’t be quite so easy to kill by heart attack now,” she snapped again.

  “And that’s why I’m here,” Mack said, looking around to see if any nosy neighbors were eavesdropping. “I talked to the captain about Ed’s death certificate, and I eventually went down and talked to the coroner. He stands by his report, but, because it was transferred to another area, another autopsy was done, and the case was moved over to the Kamloops District, so our coroner said it never came to any of our attention.”

  “And why was that?” Doreen dropped her voice like Mack had his.

  “The coroner is not at all happy with the heart attack determination. He said Ed did die of a heart attack, but there was no reason for it. There was no heart disease. There were no high cholesterol counts. Ed Burns had a very clean, almost suspiciously clean health record.”

  “What do you mean by suspiciously clean?”

  Mack shrugged. “Just the fact that he didn’t have anything wrong with him. He should have lived a lot longer. But he didn’t.”

  “And can’t sudden heart attacks like that come along normally, without any outside help?”

  “Sure, with extreme stress or for all kinds of reasons. But the second coroner did a drug analysis and didn’t come up with anything.”

  “So Jude found a perfect murder weapon.”

  “Because that first coroner put suspicious on his finding and refused to put down a heart attack as a cause of death, Jude Burns requested and paid for another autopsy, where that doctor flat-out said it was due to a heart attack and did not give a damn about why.”

  “Money does allow people to say all kinds of things.”

  “I phoned the second coroner, and he said Jude Burns was pretty strict about making sure the report said just a heart attack caused Ed’s death, and Jude didn’t want to bother his sisters with worry over trying to find solutions to a problem they couldn’t solve. The second coroner said it was obvious it was a heart attack, so that’s all he put down—a heart attack.”

  “And the coroner here?”

  “He said he wasn’t at all surprised because Ed did have a heart attack. Our coroner was just hoping somebody would take a closer look as to why because he didn’t have an answer.”

  “Interesting. How can we figure it out?”

  “We can’t,” Mack said. “If Ed was given something, it was something untraceable.”

  “I would love for Jude to be responsible here. But let me come at this differently. I’ll play devil’s advocate for a moment. Is it possible that an untraceable drug brought on the heart attack?”

  “Yes.”

  “But any sudden stress could have brought it on too, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not to mention people drop dead for no reason all the time.”

  Mack nodded slowly. “I did ask our coroner all that, and he said, ‘Absolutely.’ And he named a couple things I haven’t had a chance to research.”

  “So, it’s possible Ed did have a heart attack, and it could have been brought on by something given to him.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Did you look into the death of the lawyer?”

  Mack just glared at her.

  “I know,” she said, raising her hands, palms up. “You know how to do your job.”

  “I do know how to do my job,” he said, “and I did talk to the coroner who looked into the lawyer’s death. She said it was a heart attack, clean and simple.”

  “Did Ranford have a history of heart problems?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “That’s what Sarah said.”

  “Sarah?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The lawyer Ranford’s wife. He had a few health issues, but it had never been his ticker. Apparently it was clean.”

  “So you’re thinking the lawyer wouldn’t accept this new will as valid, and so he had to die?”

  “If you’ve got a will, and it’s a new one, and the lawyer won’t listen to you, you need to get a new lawyer,” Doreen said. “And, if the old lawyer finds anything suspicious about that, then, of course, he’ll send up alarms, won’t he?”

  “Yes,” Mack said. “We did look into the girlfriend too.”

  Doreen beamed at him. “I love it when you’re so thorough.”

  He gave her an eye roll. “You love getting information.”

  “Yes,” she said. “So, what about the girlfriend?”

  “Heart attack,” he said. “And, yes, she did have a heart murmur, but that was about it.”

  She stopped and said, “What? A murmur?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll have to double-check with Corey,” she said slowly, “because his report said she had a history of heart issues.”

  “I just wonder who and what gave hi
m that impression?”

  “Right,” she said. “Come on. I want to take a look at the file and confirm that.”

  They walked inside, the animals more than happy to get inside instead of lying around outside. He looked at the critters and said, “You took them all with you?”

  She nodded. “Some beautiful gardens are down there, Mack. I took a bunch of photos, but wow. Like seriously. Wow.”

  “I know,” he said, “that area is fairly well-known for it. It’s a majorly upscale neighborhood, and the residents have money for gardeners and landscapers and maintenance crews.”

  “Obviously,” she said, “and some of them are stunning.”

  He just smiled.

  Doreen picked up the envelope she had from the investigator, pulled out its contents, and reread his notes. “He says there’s a history of a heart condition.”

  “Sure, but a heart murmur only, that’s it.”

  She read farther. “From birth.”

  He nodded. “She had a hole in her heart when she was born. But not an issue.”

  She thrummed her fingers on the table and then pulled out the investigator’s card and called him. “Corey, its Doreen.”

  “Hi, Doreen,” he said. “Questions already?”

  “You’ve got a history of heart conditions, so the heart attack wasn’t unexpected, right?”

  “Whoa, who are we talking about?”

  “Oh, sorry,” she said. “The ex-girlfriend.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Where did you get that information from?”

  “From the autopsy report, for one. And her sister, I believe.”

  Doreen flipped through the paperwork and saw the notation there. “Right, the sister. Who inherited?”

  “The sister did,” he said, then stopped, and went on. “You’re thinking it wasn’t a heart attack?”

  “Oh, it was a heart attack,” she said. “I’m sure of that. I was just trying to figure out why the coroner thought it was not unexpected.”

  “Because of the heart conditions everybody was talking about.”

  “It was just a murmur,” she said. “From all my various research—yes, of validated scientific studies—I’ve read that, with a murmur, no one should have any reason to expect a heart attack would have taken her. She was pretty young.”

  “Forty-two,” he said, “but unfortunately a lot of people are having heart attacks earlier and earlier.”

  “Quite true there,” she said. “Anyway, thank you.”

  Before he could ask anything else, she hung up.

  Chapter 27

  Monday Early Afternoon …

  Mack was already looking at the file in Doreen’s hand when she put down her phone. “So now you’re thinking Jude might have had something to do with the girlfriend’s heart attack?”

  “Well, the girlfriend’s sister is the one who apparently convinced Corey that her sister did have a heart condition, and, of course, the autopsy report confirmed she did die of a heart attack. But I’d like to see his cause and effect there. What caused her to have her heart attack?” Doreen asked. “I also wonder if Jude really believed his girlfriend had changed her will to include him. Maybe the girlfriend wanted her sister and Jude to share her inheritance. And we all know how Jude feels about sharing. So, before she had a chance to change it, he killed her, only to find out the sister is the one who inherited it all.”

  “So, now what will you do?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest again.

  “I’m not forgetting about it,” she said, “but I was thinking that maybe I would give the sister a call.”

  “Interesting,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “That’s what I would do too.”

  “Good,” she said. “I just have to come up with contact information.” She looked through Corey’s notes and smiled. “I do like somebody who is thorough,” she repeated.

  “So, this Corey guy is thorough too?”

  “So thorough,” she said, “because here’s the sister’s number.” She dialed and realized it was long distance and had to redial. “Of course it’ll cost me,” she grumbled, but she didn’t hang up either. One day she could afford a better cell phone plan. But for the moment it was the cheapest she could find.

  “You’ve got money coming,” he said.

  “I do but not exactly quickly.”

  “Hello?” said the voice at the other end.

  “Hi, my name is Doreen Montgomery, and I’m calling from Kelowna. It’s regarding your ex-boyfriend, Jude Burns,” she said.

  “No,” the sister said with a snap to her tone. “He was my sister’s ex-boyfriend. Goodness, who would say such a thing?”

  “Oops,” Doreen said, “you’re right. I’m sorry. I have my notes here, but I got confused for a moment.” She rolled her eyes at Mack. “I just wondered what you could tell me about him?”

  “He’s a sleaze and a gigolo, looking for an opportunity to move up in life.”

  “Wow, okay, that’s fairly succinct,” Doreen said. “So, trustworthy, not trustworthy?”

  “Not on your life. My sister was looking to break up with him. She was getting a little afraid of being around him.”

  Doreen had the phone on Speaker, and she asked, “Any idea why?”

  “The last few months before her death, she said it felt like he was always watching her.”

  “But isn’t that normal in a relationship?”

  “No,” she said, “not the same way, in a creepy way. It’s hard to explain. But she got really nervous. Plus she told him that she was changing her will to include him, and then it seemed like, after that, their relationship changed.”

  “Did she change her will?”

  “No. I talked her out of it,” the sister said. “And I didn’t know I would be the one she gave everything to, but it makes sense because there are only the two of us, and she was the recipient of everything in my will too.”

  “How did you feel about her saying she would leave him something in her will?”

  “He was one of many,” she said snidely. “Why he should think he was that special, I don’t know.”

  “Was there anything suspicious about your sister’s death?” she asked.

  “I thought about it for a long time,” she said, “but honestly the answer is no. I don’t believe so.”

  “Okay,” Doreen said. “I just wondered.”

  “As much as I would like to think that little bugger had something to do with it, I don’t think he did.”

  “He wasn’t around? He wasn’t there when she died?”

  “No, not really. He was there the day before and that evening. But I was with her the next morning, or rather I found her the next morning. He had already gone off to do whatever.”

  “So, he could have been there during the night?”

  “She was still alive when I found her,” she said. “We rushed her to the hospital, and she died a short time later.”

  “And her boyfriend?”

  “Well, security showed him leaving the house at around midnight.”

  “So you think maybe the heart attack was brought on by an argument? Maybe her breaking up with him?”

  “That is exactly what I thought,” the sister said. “Back then, you know, I didn’t really have any reason to think anything different. She was hung up on him, but, like a lot of her relationships, it was a one-sided situation.”

  “I’m sorry,” Doreen said.

  “Me too. Is there anything else you want to know?”

  “I just was checking on him,” she said. “Did you know his father died, leaving him a massive fortune?”

  The woman sucked in her breath and then said, “So typical of a guy like him to end up smelling like roses. He’s a user. Every woman on this planet should stay away from him.”

  “Well, this user just ended up in the roses,” Doreen said. “So potentially, very potentially, he doesn’t have to prey on women now.”

  “That kind does
n’t change ever,” the sister said. “A leopard doesn’t change spots, and that little gigolo doesn’t change either. He’s only out for one person, and that’s himself. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll hang up and go puke in the toilet,” she said caustically. And she hung up with a click.

  Chapter 28

  Monday Afternoon …

  Doreen looked over at Mack. “Wow,” she said, “that was interesting.”

  He shook his head. “You keep pulling on threads.”

  “The threads are there,” she said quietly, “but I don’t know what it’ll take to prove a will is fake.”

  “I don’t know either,” he said, staring off into space. “I’ll have to talk to the captain about it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, there has to be a reason to go down this path,” he said quietly. “Police resources are not to be used willy-nilly.”

  “And, without any evidence pointing that Jude’s done something wrong, we’re at a dead end?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Just because you want him to be a criminal doesn’t mean he is.”

  “I probably prodded the cat this morning,” she said defiantly.

  “Let’s just hope he doesn’t put in a formal police complaint.”

  “How did you know I was there?”

  “He called in, asking what his rights were.”

  “And?”

  “He was given the same notification as everybody—you didn’t attack him, you just accused him of something. Our guy says you have to watch that.”

  “I didn’t actually accuse him of anything,” she said.

  “Jude has lawyers, and that could make life difficult for you.”

  She grumbled as she thought about it and nodded. “Fine,” she said, then she smiled, remembering the stack of papers still under her arms. “You did say anything in the garbage was free and clear for other people to sort through.”

  “If you mean, it’s not an invasion of privacy. and you don’t need a warrant for it,” he corrected, “then, yes.”

  She dropped the stack of papers on the table and said, “Well, these came from his recycling bin.”