“Lieutenant! We think we’ve found something important!” said a man as he jogged up the aisle carrying a brown-paper lunch sack. He wore blue coveralls, latex gloves, and a ball cap that bore the embroidered letters, bcpd csi, which meant the guy was an evidence technician.
I heard Delcambre quietly sigh with relief as Mulvaney turned to the tech. “What do you have?”
“He did a great job of hiding it, but we found it hidden behind the ventilation duct grate in the bathroom,” the tech said proudly as he carefully lifted an asthma inhaler from the bag. “Check this out. There was a tiny hole drilled in the canister and then he tried to reseal it, so that it wouldn’t be noticed.”
“But the repair didn’t hold,” said Delcambre, squinting at the inhaler.
“Exactly. We also found the drill—eighteen volt, battery-operated and a box of bits.”
“What is that clear stuff oozing out?” asked Mulvaney.
“Not medicine, that’s for sure. We’ll obviously have to wait for the crime lab, but if I had to guess . . .”
“What do you think it is?” Mulvaney demanded.
“It could be superglue.”
“If she inhaled enough of the fumes, what would happen?”
“It would likely immediately freeze the cilia of her lungs and she’d quickly drown in her own fluids,” I interjected.
Everyone looked at me and Mulvaney asked, “How do you know that?”
“Back in the nineties, I knew an evidence tech that was 76
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doing the superglue process to raise prints from a gun. He got a big huff by accident and was in the hospital for two weeks. His lungs never completely healed.”
Delcambre was shaking his head angrily. “Jesus, and remember that residue we noticed on Tony’s hands? Now that I think about it, it might have been dried superglue.”
“Where is Swift?” Mulvaney asked the tech.
“Still in the room with Detectives Oleszak and Crawford.”
“Does he know you found this?”
“I don’t think so. I told Oleszak about it in the corridor because I figured you wouldn’t want the guy to know.”
“Good work. Did the detectives let Swift use the bathroom?”
“I . . . uh, I don’t know.”
“We’ve got to get up there before he cleans his hands.
Come on, Delcambre.” Mulvaney turned and jogged for the exit with her partner and the tech hard on her heels as they cut a path through the crowds of teddy bear collectors.
As Ash and I watched the cops leave, I shouted, “We accept your apology.”
Eight
Can you please explain something to me? I was a cop most of my adult life, I’ve always been a law-abiding citizen, I’m crippled, I’ve never cut off one of those menacing do not remove under penalty of law tags from a new pillow, and I’m of a mature enough age to remember when Woody Allen’s comedy films were funny. Add those elements together and I think it’s pretty clear I don’t fit the criminal profile. So why is it that over the past nine months, I’ve been threatened with jail so many times that you’d have thought I was Robert Downey Jr.?
And make no mistake; if that evidence tech hadn’t shown up with the inhaler, Lieutenant Mulvaney would have arrested us for
something
, just to show us that she was the boss. The formal charge against us would probably have been that we’d interfered with a homicide investigation—which of course, we hadn’t—but we
had
committed the grave and unofficial crime of “contempt of cop” by our refusal to grovel before the detective as if she were a demigod.
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“What in the name of God is wrong with that woman?” Although the cops were gone, Ash continued to glare in the direction in which they’d departed.
“An acute case of being badge-heavy. She’s in a hurry to pit someone for this homicide and viewed our lack of cooperation as a deliberate challenge to her authority.”
“But how can she solve the case if she randomly accuses people of murder?”
“Unfortunately, it wasn’t a random accusation. It’s obvious that Tony did a first-rate job of twisting the circumstances to make it look as if I might have killed Jennifer.”
“To cover his own guilt for the murder of his wife.”
Ash shook her head and sighed. “What a scumbag.”
“Agreed, he’s a scumbag, but I’m not so certain he killed Jennifer.”
“Huh?” Ash turned to look at me. “Sweetheart, less than an hour ago you were explaining to me in detail why Tony was the prime suspect.”
“I know, but something doesn’t make sense. Let’s go sit down and I’ll explain.” I nodded in the direction of our table.
“Your leg is hurting, isn’t it?”
“A little. I’ve been on my feet a lot this morning.” I lowered myself onto a folding chair with a tiny moan.
Ash got the black leather satchel we use to carry our sales receipt books, business cards, sewing kit, and other miscellanies we need at a teddy bear show, which unfortunately also includes painkillers. Unzipping the bag, she said, “Ibuprofen?”
“Please.”
She handed me three white pills and I took them with a swallow of bottled water. But before I could begin my explanation we had some potential customers visit the table. Ash chatted with the women, one of whom was admiring Suzy Cinnamon Streusel. Suzy was one of Ash’s masterpieces: a bear wearing an amazing realistic coffee The False-Hearted Teddy
79
cake costume that included drizzled white icing made from melted silicon. After a few minutes of conversation, the lady put Suzy down and said she’d be back after she’d seen the rest of the show.
That meant one of two things: either the woman wasn’t interested in Suzy and was lying to us to be cour-teous or she was a teddy bear show rookie and didn’t yet understand that if a bear really calls to you, that you should buy it now instead of later. Wait, and the odds are good that the bear will be gone when you come back.
Teddy bear shows are a lot like life and finding true love; you have to be a little adventurous.
Once the women were out of earshot, Ash said, “Okay, so why isn’t Tony the killer?”
“I’m not completely eliminating him from consideration, but think about it: if he was smart and cunning enough to come up with the idea of using superglue as a toxin and altering the inhaler like that, then why was the inhaler found in his hotel room? That should have been the very last place on the planet we’d expect to find it.”
Ash’s eyes widened. “I see what you mean. He would have had a plan to dispose of it someplace else.”
“Right. He had plenty of time and a thousand opportunities to ditch the thing in a restroom wastebasket, along the road as he drove to the hospital, or even in the bay. Yet it was found in his room.”
“Maybe he wasn’t expecting us to get involved and when we did, he panicked. I mean, what’s the likelihood that there was going to be a retired homicide inspector attending a teddy bear artisan breakfast?”
“He knew I’d been a cop. I told him.”
“But not a detective.”
“I suppose . . . but hold it right there. Are you suggesting that manly-men don’t attend teddy bear shows?” I pretended to be offended.
Ash leaned over to kiss my cheek. “My manly-man 80
John J. Lamb
does, but not many others do. You being there could have derailed Tony’s plans.”
“Possibly, but it doesn’t change the fact that he’d have known that once the cops realized Jennifer had been poisoned, they’d begin their search for evidence in his room.”
“Why?”
“Because his priors for DV would make him an immediate and obvious suspect.”
“True.”
“Furthermore, it just doesn’t make any sense that Tony would run the risk of being seen by a hundred witnesses as he picked the inhaler up from the floor, only to take it to his room. That’s felony-stupid.”
“I agree, but how do you explain the glue they said was on his hands?”
“Again, if he went to all the trouble of developing this James Bond-quality plan, don’t you think he’d have worn gloves while sabotaging the inhaler? Besides, just before things went to hell, I overheard him telling someone that he’d repaired a broken plastic teddy bear stand earlier this morning.”
“Convenient. Maybe he was trying to establish an alibi.”
“Honey, I’m troubled by your distrustful view of your fellow creatures. Wherever could you have picked up such a deplorable tendency?”
Ash smiled sweetly. “Why, I have no idea.”
“However, I like the fact you’re thinking like a homicide detective. Mulvaney could take lessons from you.”
“Thank you.”
“But how he got glue on his hands isn’t nearly as important as this question: would Tony give Mulvaney permission to search his room if he’d just hidden the inhaler there?”
“No. That would be suicidal.”
The False-Hearted Teddy
81
“Exactly.”
“So, he didn’t know it was there?”
“And following the progression of logic, that means the real killer planted it in his room to frame him for first-degree murder. Considering he tried to do precisely the same thing to me, I find it deliciously ironic.”
“But what are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean ‘nothing’?”
“Just what I said, sweetheart. Nothing,
nada
, zilch, zip, not happening. I have no desire to see the inside of the Baltimore City Jail and if I start meddling in this investigation, and Lieutenant BOTOX finds out, that’s exactly where I’ll end up.”
Ash frowned. “But an innocent man is going to jail for a murder he didn’t commit.”
“An innocent man who threatened to assault me yesterday, who’s also a convicted felon, and who smashed his wife up so badly that she was in the hospital for a week.
Sorry, honey, but I won’t be real upset if Tony spends a couple of days in the slammer until the Baltimore cops decide he isn’t the killer. Besides which, it’s out of our control because I’m not a cop anymore.”
“I suppose you’re right.” She pretended to watch the teddy bear aficionados as they strolled by, but only a second or two passed before she turned back to me and said,
“So, who’s the real killer?”
“Beats me.”
“And you aren’t even interested?”
“I won’t go so far as to say that.”
“And you don’t think you’d enjoy identifying the real killer before Mulvaney even knows that she’s arrested the wrong person?”
“Get thee behind me, Satan.”
“You would. Don’t deny it.”
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“Okay, I’ll admit it would give me a great deal of unsavory pleasure to rub her nose in it by solving the case, if you’ll explain to me why you’re egging me on.”
“Because she treated us like dirt in front of everyone and all but accused you of murder. That was flat wrong and I think she needs to be taken down a peg or two.” You can always tell when Ash is genuinely angry because her normally dormant Shenandoah Valley accent becomes more pronounced.
“No argument it was wrong, but there’s nothing we can do about it unless . . . no! You aren’t suggesting I—”
“Conduct your own homicide investigation.”
“Danger, danger, Will Robinson!” I waved my arms spasmodically like the robot from
Lost In Space
. “Honey, let me preface this by saying I love you more than life, but at what point this morning did you lose your mind?
Just think of how many teddy bears you’d have to sell to post my bail.”
“Mulvaney would have to catch you first and she won’t even be here if she’s at the police station questioning Tony.”
“There’ll still be a platoon of cops and evidence techs here.”
“Looking in the wrong places.”
I covered my ears. “La, la, la, la, la! I’m not listening.”
“Think of the unhappy expression on Mulvaney’s face when you solve the case.”
“We wouldn’t be able to tell what she felt, because her face is paralyzed.”
Ash gave me a grave look. “Okay, what if I asked you to find the real killer because you and I both know it’s the right thing to do?”
I was going to offer another feeble protest, but stifled it because she was absolutely correct. Whatever Jennifer Swift’s faults were, she didn’t deserve to be murdered, The False-Hearted Teddy
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much less spend her final moments of life in a tortured gagging panic, trying to force her inoperative lungs to work. It was a hellish way to die. During my career as a homicide inspector I’d investigated over a thousand murders and this one belonged in the top tier—or bottom, depending on how you looked at it—for sheer, cool, premeditated cruelty. So, regardless of the fact I was no longer a peace officer, I felt I had a moral duty to help identify and capture the killer, especially if the police had arrested the wrong person for murder.
At the same time, my motivation wasn’t entirely altru-istic. I was fascinated by the prospect of investigating one of the most rare forms of homicide, a poisoning murder, and I craved the excitement of going monster hunting again. Furthermore, the murder had been committed in my presence and, rightly or wrongly, I viewed that as a personal challenge. Most of all, I wanted revenge on Mulvaney for abusing Ash and me in front of our teddy bear artisan peers. The best way to do that was to identify the killer and withhold the information from the egomaniacal lieutenant until she’d made a groveling apology.
As you’ll have gathered by now, “forgive and forget” isn’t one of my maxims.
At last, I said, “Does it
ever
bother you that you’re always right?”
She pretended to be lost in thought for a moment. “No, not really. So, where are you going to begin?”
“By trying to figure out all the angles associated with the inhaler. It tells us an awful lot about the murderer, such as it was someone that understood what the superglue fumes would do to Jennifer’s lungs.”
“And it also has to be someone that was well acquainted with Jennifer, since the suspect had to know she used an inhaler. That means Todd or Donna.”
“As far as we know right now, although I’d have to 84
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imagine that some of the other teddy bear artists would have known Jennifer was an asthmatic.”
“But how many of them would have wanted her dead?”