Murder, She Wrote--Murder in Red Page 6

  “You’re a friend of Mimi’s, right?”

  “Yes.” Something made me continue, changing the tone. “My name is Jessica Fletcher and she was one of my closest friends. She suffered what appeared to be a diabetic seizure of some kind and died early this morning under suspicious circumstances.”

  “Are you calling for my alibi, Mrs. Fletcher?”

  “Your name will do for now.”

  “Wait, Fletcher . . . J. B. Fletcher? The mystery writer?”

  “One and the same.”

  “I should have guessed, should have known.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because I’ve heard so much about you. From Mimi.”

  “I trust I’m not what you were arguing with her about yesterday.”

  “No, that was something else. More of the same, actually.”

  “You still haven’t told me your name, sir,” I reminded him.

  “Then I suspect the lovely Mimi Van Dorn didn’t speak to you about me in the same manner she spoke to me about you.”

  “I can’t be sure of that without knowing your name.”

  “Yes, you can. There were times when I thought she didn’t know mine; at least, that’s the way she acted.”

  “It sounds like you knew her quite well.”

  “As anybody could, I suppose. You see, Mrs. Fletcher, I’m her son.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I nearly slipped out of my chair, watched George Sutherland do a double take. Just contemplating a potential investigation had flushed the color back into his cheeks, chased the fatigue and whatever else was plaguing him from his eyes. Strange how it was death, a possible murder in particular, that had brought him back to life.

  My reaction was genuine, because how could I not know Mimi had a son? She had told me about all three of her failed marriages, but she’d never mentioned a child springing from any of them. Another puzzle piece that didn’t seem to fit.

  “My name is Tripp,” the man who claimed to be Mimi Van Dorn’s son resumed, before I could. “And that’s my real name. You’ll find it printed on my birth certificate. Tripp Van Dorn Jessup. My mother dropped the Jessup a long time ago.”

  “Your father would’ve been her . . .”

  “First husband. She learned enough from the experience with me not to have another child. I’m not sure which of us was worse: me as the son or her as the mother.”

  “What were you arguing about yesterday, Tripp?”

  He laughed loudly. “You’re just like she told me you were.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Fact and fiction. How you write what you live.”

  “Some would say it’s the other way around.”

  “Whatever, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  “I’m sorry to be the one to break the news to you.”

  “I’m lucky you did,” he said, sounding genuine. “I doubt very much I’m listed anywhere that would be convenient. On the will maybe, but that’s it.”

  I didn’t press him on the oddity of that statement, waited for him to resume on his own.

  “How did she die?”

  “The seizure left her comatose. She died this morning after her ventilator tube was dislodged.”

  “Hence, a possible murder.”

  “There’s some evidence to suggest that, but all of it’s vague.”

  “But that’s what you do for a living, isn’t it? Speculate.”

  “I guess, though I never looked at it that way.”

  “Maybe because you have trouble telling your fiction from the cases you investigate in fact. I started reading your books after my mother told me the two of you were friends. Started right at the beginning with The Corpse Danced at Midnight. I’m about a third of the way through your list, fifteen and counting.”

  “In that case, I imagine you can anticipate what I’m going to say next.”

  “You want to know where I was earlier this morning, as in, do I have an alibi?”

  “Actually, I was going to tell you that I’m sorry for your loss. But now that you’ve opened that door . . .”

  “Where was I when my mother was murdered? Pretty much where I always am.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Tripp.”

  “Of course, how could you know when my mother never even told you I existed?”

  “Know what?” I asked my late friend’s son.

  “That I’m a quadriplegic.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I could feel my mouth drop open and saw George’s do the same, the two of us left looking at each other, spared a response when Tripp Van Dorn continued.

  “Car accident. Totally my fault, mine and alcohol’s. I crashed the sports car my mother gave me for my twenty-first birthday. Both of us totaled, you might say.”

  “And this would’ve been when?” I found enough of my voice to ask him.

  “Nine years, eight months, twenty-six days. Would you like the minutes and seconds, too?”

  “I’m so sorry to hear about all this, Tripp,” I said, the genuine compassion I was feeling clear in my voice. “As sorry as I am about your mother and to be the one delivering you the news.”

  “You shouldn’t be. The fact of the matter is, her death might well prove to be a blessing, thanks to some issues you’re not aware of.”

  “Having something to do with that phone call yesterday afternoon, perhaps?”

  “Everything,” Tripp Van Dorn corrected, leaving it there.

  “I know how difficult this must be, Tripp, but could you share some of that call’s content?”

  “Sure, but not over the phone. Such conversations are better held in person, don’t you think? I’m in a long-term care center a few hours away from Cabot Cove. But take your time,” the son of Mimi Van Dorn advised us. “Visiting hours don’t start until noon.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “Mind if I tag along?” George Sutherland asked me as soon as the call ended.

  “As George or Chief Inspector Sutherland?”

  “How about your driver, unless you think you can find a more suitable chauffeur?”

  I had to admit I liked the prospect, more for George’s company. “An offer I’d normally jump at, except . . .”

  “It’ll take Charles Clifton and his staff until well into the afternoon to review all my test results,” George said when I let my thought dangle. “Gives us plenty of time.”

  He could tell I was hedging.

  “Come on, Jessica, it’ll be good for me. Unless you’re afraid of my showing you up, of course.”

  “Have at it, my good gentleman,” I said, rising.

  Chapter Eight

  The Good Shepherd Manor for Rehabilitation was a misnomer in Tripp Van Dorn’s case, given that he was a long-term care patient for whom rehabilitation had produced only minimal effects typical for someone with a severed spinal cord. It was a stately redbrick building that looked vaguely like an old mansion, which I suspected had been its origins. A single parking lot with only a modest number of spaces sat before it, the primary congestion of which I took to belong to the staff, since visiting hours were still thirty minutes off when George and I arrived.

  “You don’t think the young man killed his mother, do you?” he asked me.

  “Not for a minute, but I think he might have an idea why somebody may have.”

  “Lots of qualifiers there, Jessica.”

  “As is the case with all murder investigations, something I don’t have to remind you about.”

  “Unless my brain is going soft,” George tried to quip. “Perhaps mental incapacity is an advanced symptom of that bloody disease I’m suffering from.”

  His comment made me regret letting him accompany me to meet Tripp Van Dorn. The last thing
George needed right now was to see the lifestyle of those he might soon be joining. Better to be left with hope of successful treatment than resign himself to a future spent in a place like this.

  The Good Shepherd Manor was located in Newburyport, Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border. In all, the drive took almost three hours, because we stopped for a real breakfast on the way. As predicted, George’s mood seemed to have brightened over having something to distract him from the concerns and worries related to the disease that had brought him across the ocean. I fought to detach myself from my personal feelings about Charles Clifton, hoping that beneath that stodgy and arrogant demeanor might lie a doctor who put his patients first.

  The front desk had been alerted to expect us, and a friendly attendant whose name tag identified her as Molly offered to take us up to Tripp Van Dorn’s room. The facility maintained the charm and many of the furnishings of a true manor, not unlike the one in England where George and I had first met and worked on our first case together.

  Might this be our last?

  I dreaded forming that thought, but reality could be a true beast better confronted than ignored. I busied myself with surveying the modifications designed to make the building hospitable for its ambulatory residents. These included handrails across the walls, stained to match the laminate-tile floors that looked like real wood but wouldn’t chip or scratch. Whoever was behind Good Shepherd Manor had spared little expense in making sure such necessary upgrades didn’t detract from the overall decor and ambience. I imagined its residents appreciated this for the homelike atmosphere it provided, making them feel as if they were someplace other than a long-term care facility.

  Molly knocked on the closed door just a few down from the elevator on the third floor.

  “Come in,” a voice I recognized as Tripp Van Dorn’s called.

  She opened it and with a smile bade us to enter. We passed before her to find Mimi’s son seated by the window in the kind of wheelchair reserved for those with only minimal physical capabilities. At the very least, Tripp wasn’t on a ventilator or breathing device of any kind, and I watched his fingers move nimbly about the controls to turn his chair around toward us.

  “I like looking out the window,” he greeted. “Imagining what might be behind all the comings and goings.”

  “I’m Jessica Fletcher, Tripp, and this is George Sutherland.”

  We approached the young man, but stopped short of extending our hands. Tripp bore only a vague resemblance to Mimi at best, his features not as angular and ice-blue eyes significantly lighter than her deep shade of blue, and he boasted thick, dark hair in contrast to her fairer shade. He was attractive in a way I imagined must’ve made him quite the hit with young women at one time. This despite the fact that his cheeks were sunken now and his color sallow from too little time spent outside. It reminded me of the way recently released prison inmates look, the sickly look as difficult to shed as a bad smell. Thinking of Tripp that way made his current plight seem even sadder.

  “Another writer?” Tripp said, eyeing George.

  “A chief inspector with Scotland Yard, actually,” George said by way of introduction.

  “I hope you’re not here to arrest me.”

  “Not unless you committed a crime in my jurisdiction.”

  “I don’t get out much,” Tripp said, trying to sound light.

  “We’re both terribly sorry about your mother,” I said, drawing even with George in front of him.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Tripp offered. “I’d say ‘we,’ but as you can see, I’m already sitting.”

  George and I took seats on a couch that rested against the wall opposite Tripp’s hospital bed. His room was done up with as many furnishings from his former life as could be squeezed in. The built-in bookshelf was crammed with books, magazines, and personal memorabilia, everything but photographs, which wasn’t at all unusual for someone whose life had changed so dramatically. Only a single family photo hung on the wall next to the window, but I was too far away to get a good look at any of those pictured.

  “You wanted to know what we were arguing about yesterday,” Tripp started. “It was the same thing we always argued about, only more heated and for good reason.”

  “Money,” George said when he stopped.

  “Man, they teach you well at Scotland Yard, don’t they? Tell me, are you of the opinion that my mother was murdered, too?”

  “That’s my theory,” I interjected, sparing George a response.

  “Tell me, Mrs. Fletcher, does anyone around you ever die who wasn’t murdered?”

  “Not when someone pulls the cord from the wall, disconnecting the victim’s breathing machine.”

  “You think that’s what happened to my mother.”

  “I feel it’s a genuine possibility, yes.”

  “And you were hoping I might be able to enlighten you on the subject of potential other suspects.”

  “Interesting choice of words, Tripp, as was your comment about your mother’s death potentially turning out to be a blessing. You were speaking of that phone call, the argument from yesterday.”

  “And we’re still speaking of it.”

  He turned his head about as best he could to better survey his surroundings. “Look around you, Mrs. Fletcher. These surroundings don’t come cheap, far from it. Insurance picks up only a portion, not quite half. The rest is out of pocket to the tune of ten thousand dollars a month—that’s out of pocket, not in total. Pay to play, right? And when I can’t pay anymore, they’ll toss me out like last week’s linens.”

  “When,” I echoed. “Then yesterday’s phone call . . .”

  “My mother’s finances have taken a turn for the worse. Partially because of any number of bad investments, but mostly because she’s always had a habit of spending beyond her means.”

  “Which in this case,” George Sutherland piped in from alongside me, “affects your means.”

  “She placed the money required for my long-term care into a trust that pays Good Shepherd directly and, theoretically, in perpetuity.”

  “In my experience perpetuity inevitably costs more than anyone was expecting.”

  “Not relevant in my case, because my mother decided to break the trust.”

  George and I exchanged a glance.

  “She shouldn’t have been able to do so, of course, but I wasn’t exactly in a position to stop her. Yesterday’s argument concerned the second payment missed to Good Shepherd. Another thirty days without some accommodation and I’m out. Not on the street per se, but in a state facility, which isn’t much different or better.”

  “Do you have any idea where the money went?”

  “Oh, my mother was forthcoming about that after the second monthly payment never came in. Admitted she needed the money to support her own health issues. I asked her why all her various health plans weren’t paying. Her answer was to say the state facilities weren’t so bad. I told her, no, they weren’t all that bad; they were awful.”

  “Did she elaborate on the health issue in question?”

  “Well, she’s been diabetic in some form since around the time of the accident, but that wouldn’t account for the million dollars that went missing from the trust.”

  I tried hard not to look as shocked as I was by that number and felt George Sutherland do the same.

  “It wasn’t even her money. It was money from her second husband that was supposed to go to me on my twenty-first birthday. I’d just picked up the car I crashed a couple of days before the accident. When the diagnosis became clear, my mother transferred the money into that trust to provide for my care, with her as the sole administrator. She had it structured like some kind of annuity to ensure it would take years well beyond my life expectancy to run out.”

  Making herself administrator, I reasoned, was how Mimi had been able to break the trust in the
first place. I tried not to consider what would make someone I considered a close and trusted friend do something so monstrous and indefensible. And how could Mimi have gone through so much money so quickly? Had she made a bad investment in the stock market or real estate? Had her love of card playing extended into the gambling variety?

  “I threatened her with a lawsuit yesterday,” Tripp went on, “that she’d left me no choice. A lawyer came down here to see me—from Cabot Cove, just like you. I figured that was the best way to go.”

  “What was his name?” I asked the young man, thinking I might know him.

  “Fred something. He left his card somewhere. If you give me a moment . . .”

  Tripp Van Dorn started to turn his wheelchair around, then stopped and spun it back around. “Cooper, that’s it, Fred Cooper.”

  The name didn’t ring any bells. “Did he take the case?”

  “At first.”

  “At first?” George Sutherland questioned, before I had a chance to.

  “He said he’d look into things. Then he e-mailed to say he wouldn’t be taking the case.”

  “Did he say why?” I asked, beating George to the punch this time.

  “No, that was it. I asked him repeatedly, via both e-mail and phone, but that was the last I ever heard from him.”

  That stuck in my mind, an anomaly I needed to resolve.

  “The money’s gone, anyway,” Tripp lamented. “No lawyer can change that, get blood from a stone, as they say. And whatever’s left, whatever comes my way in the will, won’t be enough to keep me here very long. That ought to get me off the hook in one respect, right, Mrs. Fletcher?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I didn’t really have a motive for killing my mother, did I?”

  Chapter Nine

  George Sutherland and I sat in his rental car with the air-conditioning pumping, just taking in what Tripp Van Dorn had told us without commenting further.

  “I’m sorry, Jessica,” he said finally. “I know she was your friend.”