As he drove us to the nearest safe place to stop outside of Darlene’s view, I told him exactly what had happened.
By the time he stopped and I swapped positions into the front passenger’s seat, he was laughing outright. “I might not believe that story unless I saw the cobweb in your hair.”
“What?” I swiped a hand over my hair and it really did come away with sticky web tendrils on it. I shuddered. “At least I got the pill bottle, and I managed to find one with a couple pills left in it.”
“Did you check the date? We don’t know how long ago he lost them under the bed.”
Arg. He was right. I turned my cell phone light back on and shone it on the bottle. The date on the one I’d found under the bed said it was two months old, so it was well within the range of time when Clement had been suffering from what the doctors thought was fatal insomnia.
Tomorrow I’d work on figuring out what the pills were. Tonight, all I was going to do was get a shower to make sure there weren’t any spiders nesting in my hair.
20
For the rest of the night, even after my shower, I kept jumping, feeling like something was crawling on me. I slept terribly because I had two separate nightmares about spiders coming up from under my bed to crawl on me. When I woke up from the second nightmare, I dragged the vacuum up the stairs and cleaned underneath my bed.
By the time I finished, I couldn’t fall back asleep. The clock told me it was 6:30 am. Even though I wouldn’t have dropped in on anyone else that early, Russ would have been up for at least half an hour already.
I didn’t want to take the pills to anyone for analysis until I’d confirmed that they weren’t the medication they were supposed to be. Clement’s next court date was rapidly approaching. If the pill in the bottle was exactly what it was supposed to be, I didn’t want to waste time chasing mirages under the assumption they were going to give us something we could use. Since Russ took the same medication, I could compare what I’d found to his.
Velma and Toby’s tails rattled their crates when they heard my footsteps on the stairs. I fed them, suited them up in the extra-large winter doggie coats I’d bought them, and took them with me. Russ always enjoyed a visit from the dogs, so they might as well come along.
The ground outside was covered in one of the extra-thick frost layers that I hadn’t known existed until I moved to Michigan. Looking out the window and seeing it covering the leaves and barren tree branches, it looked almost like a light dusting of snow, but it wasn’t. By the time the sun came up, it would vanish except for in the shadows, and by noon it’d be completely gone. As they sniffed along the path on our walk, Velma and Toby’s breath came out white, like they had fires lit in their bellies.
Russ answered the door, already dressed in the jeans and flannel shirt that seemed to be his uniform as soon as the weather turned. The house smelled like eggs, bacon, and wood smoke. My mouth watered, but it wasn’t the best breakfast for someone trying to look good in her wedding dress…or someone who was already on high cholesterol and high blood pressure meds.
“Come on in.” His smile lacked the Santa Claus sparkle I’d come to expect. “Word of advice. Don’t read the obituaries over breakfast. It’s depressing when you see so many people who’ve died who are your age and younger.”
Maybe I could make this trip serve a dual purpose and take my turn speaking to Russ about my fears for his health.
I let the dogs loose once we were inside the door. “Anyone you know?”
“Two people I went to school with. Victor Kristoffersen and Edna Orr. Edna was two years younger. Always fit. She even used to be on the girls’ swim team. She went of a heart attack, and Victor died of a stroke.” He sank into his chair and looked up at me. “You wouldn’t know Edna. She moved a couple towns over after she got married, but Victor owned the pharmacy. I should go to both their funerals and pay my respects to the families.”
I knew the name sounded familiar. That was from where. So even if Victor had kept his word to Saul, Saul wouldn’t have gotten the chance to purchase the business from Victor, though maybe whoever inherited it from Victor might have still given him a fair deal. It was a moot point now. The pharmacy was sold before Victor’s death.
Russ’ plate still had two pieces of buttered toast and a slice of bacon on it. He shoved the bacon into his mouth and chewed, but it was almost like he wasn’t paying attention. “Makes you think.”
I dragged a chair close to his and put a hand on his shoulder. “Makes me think about how I don’t want to lose you early, too.”
Russ wagged a piece of toast at me. “I’ll tell you what I told Stacey when she made a fuss about a tiny bit of tightness in my chest—I’m fine.”
How did you convince someone who didn’t see the way they were sabotaging themselves? Everyone around Russ could see how he was hurting himself and where he’d be headed if he didn’t start taking better care of his health. He didn’t.
I wasn’t sure how to convince him—how any of us, together or separately, would be able to convince him. Everything I could think to say was a regurgitation of conversations we’d had before.
I pulled the pill bottle from my purse instead. “I’m working a case where we think a medication might have been swapped out. I need a bit of help.”
Russ set aside his toast. “You’re not getting yourself involved in something dangerous again, are you? I’ve also been thinking I was wrong to encourage you to go back to being a lawyer. Working at Sugarwood is safer.”
If I wasn’t careful, he wouldn’t let me see his pills at all. From my very first investigation into Uncle Stan’s death, Russ hadn’t liked me poking around in what he considered private business and drawing attention to myself from dangerous people.
He shoved back his chair and waddled to the counter. He poured another cup of coffee, and added milk and sugar to it. It had to be for me. He took his black.
He dropped it down in front of me, and the coffee splashed out onto his table. “You can’t just think about yourself anymore either. Think about Mark.”
This conversation was not supposed to be about me or about me and Mark. It was supposed to be about Russ’ health and Clement’s pills. Somehow I’d lost control of it.
Russ added another swipe of butter to his cold toast. The knife hopped across the surface of the bread instead of drawing across smoothly, like he was taking his frustration at me out on the poor toast slice.
And then I understood. What he said was think about Mark. What he meant was I can’t stand to lose anyone else.
Maybe Russ knew on some level what he was doing to his health, but he didn’t care because eating made him feel better for a little while. Eating was a classic way to try to deal with emotional pain. I knew it because I was a stress and emotional eater. That wasn’t a healthy way to deal with stress and grief and disappointment, but it was the easiest one, especially if you weren’t sure what else to do.
Russ had lost so many people, both in the past and more recently. I understood what that did to you. I was afraid of losing him, too.
Maybe we’d been approaching his health from the wrong direction. If his physical health reflected his mental health, then maybe that was where we needed to start.
Problem was, I didn’t know how to get there. Russ came from an era that didn’t understand mental health and felt that needing to see a therapist was a weakness.
But he was worried about me. Maybe that could be our first step. He might be more open to the idea if I made it about me and Stacey needing help. She’d asked me last week about whether I found my counseling sessions helpful. She’d been considering seeing someone.
“Mark and I have talked about my safety a lot.” We’d actually talked about it months ago, and we’d come to a workable agreement for both of us. Russ didn’t need to know that. He also didn’t need to know that I hadn’t been taking risks intentionally, consciously or otherwise. “I’ve always found it easier to deal with grief by acting, and so that might have made me take more risks than I should have. I don’t want anyone to wonder what really happened to their loved one. Stacey does it, too, working even when she should be resting because that’s how she’s been dealing with Noah’s death. Maybe we both need a little more support, like a grief group or something.”
Russ was nodding along with me.
“Would you…” I dropped my gaze to the coffee cup as if it were hard for me to ask. I hated to trick him the way I did suspects, but it was better than him dying within the next few years. “Would you come with us?”
Keeping my gaze down was more challenging than not asking What is it? when someone says I have a secret. But I wasn’t used to exercising my interviewing skills on a friend. If I didn’t continue to stare at my mug of coffee, my expression might give something away.
