GREER
She catches the Chief on his way out of Tag’s study.
“There’s something I think you should know,” she says.
The Chief barely seems to hear her. He’s looking at his phone. “If you’ll excuse me,” he says. He reads his screen, then says, “Your son Thomas is… where? I’ll need to talk to him next.”
Greer can’t believe he’s brushing her off. She deliberated about her best course of action: Tell him about the pills or not? Yes, she decided, for a couple of reasons. She will tell him about the pills and they will finally be able to put all this to rest.
“I haven’t seen Thomas,” Greer says. “But Chief Kapenash, sir, there’s something I must tell you.”
The Chief finally seems to notice her. They are standing in the hallway; God only knows who’s listening. Tag is in his study. He might have his ear pressed up against the door. Greer wonders if she should have discussed her decision with him first. He has always been good at seeing a problem from every possible angle and ensuring that a strategy won’t backfire. Many times, when Greer needed help with the plot in one of her mysteries, she would consult Tag and he would nearly always come up with a creative answer. Those were some of Greer’s favorite moments in her entire marriage—lying in bed with Tag, her head resting in the crook of his arm as she explained her characters and their motivations while Tag asked provocative questions. He praised her imagination; she gushed over his insightful solutions. Character development required a humanist like Greer, but plotting often benefited from the mind of a mathematician. Greer had felt, in those instances, like part of a team.
Oh, how she hates him! For an instant, she wishes she’d married someone mediocre, uninspiring. Wealthy and uninspiring—her third cousin Reggie, for example; posh accent and not an original bone in his body.
“Shall we go into the living room?” Greer asks the Chief. She turns on her heel, not waiting for an answer.
The Chief follows her into the living room and Greer closes the door behind him. She doesn’t bother with sitting. If she sits, she thinks, she might lose her nerve.
“I forgot to tell the detective something,” she says.
The Chief’s expression hardens into all business. He’s not a bad-looking man, Greer thinks. He has a gruffness that she finds sort of appealing, nearly sexy. And he’s age appropriate. This is what Tag has done; now Greer has to appraise candidates for future romantic interludes. Would the Chief be interested in her?
Never, she decides.
The Greek, maybe, Nick, if he were in the mood for an older woman. Greer flushes, then she notices the Chief looking at her expectantly.
“I didn’t forget, exactly,” Greer says. She wants to clarify this. “It’s something I only just remembered.”
The Chief nods almost imperceptibly.
“I went to bed whenever, midnight or so, but I couldn’t sleep. I was wound up.”
“Wound up,” the Chief says.
“Excited about the wedding. I wanted everything to go well,” Greer says. “So, as I told the detective, I got up and went to the kitchen to pour a glass of champagne.”
“Yes,” the Chief says.
“Well, what I forgot to tell the detective—meaning what I didn’t remember at all until just a little while ago—is that I brought my sleeping pills to the kitchen. My intention was to take a pill with water before I drank my champagne.”
“What kind of pills were they?” the Chief asks.
“I’d have to call my physician in New York to be sure,” Greer says. “They’re quite potent, put me to sleep instantly and knock me out for eight hours straight. Which was why, in the end, I decided not to take a pill. I needed to be up early this morning. So I hoped the champagne would do the trick by itself, and that was, in fact, what happened. But when I looked for the pills a few moments ago in my medicine cabinet, where I keep them, they weren’t there. And that’s when I recalled bringing them to the kitchen. I checked the counter next to the refrigerator plus every shelf, every drawer, every possible hiding place. I asked my housekeeper, Elida. She hasn’t seen them.”
“Were they in a prescription bottle?” the Chief asks. “Were they marked?”
“No,” Greer says. “I have a pillbox. It’s an enamel box with a painting of Queen Elizabeth on the top.”
“So who would have known that the pills inside were sleeping pills?” the Chief asks.
“The sleeping pills and the pillbox were something of a family joke,” Greer says. “My husband obviously knew. And the children.”
“Would Ms. Monaco have known they were sleeping pills?” the Chief says.
Greer knows she can’t hesitate here, even for a second. “Oh, yes,” Greer says. “I offered Merritt a sleeping pill from the box the last time she stayed with us, in May.” This answer wouldn’t pass a polygraph, she knows. The truth is that Greer had offered Merritt aspirin for the headache she had after the wine dinner but never a sleeping pill. “So I think we can conclude what happened.”
“And what’s that?” the Chief says.
“Merritt took a sleeping pill,” Greer says.
The Chief says nothing. It’s infuriating; the man is impossible to read, even for Greer, who can normally see people’s agendas and prevailing emotions as though she were looking into a clear stream.
“She helped herself to my pills,” Greer says. “Then she went for a swim, maybe thinking she would cool down before slipping into bed. And the pill knocked her out. It was an accident.”
The Chief pulls out his pad and pencil. “Describe the pillbox again, please, Ms. Garrison.”
He’s bought it, she thinks, and relief blows through her like a cool breeze. “It’s round, about four centimeters in diameter, cherry red with a portrait of the queen on the top,” she says. “The top is hinged. It flips open.”
“And how many pills inside?” the Chief asks.
“I couldn’t say exactly,” Greer says. “Somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five.”
“The last time you remember seeing the pillbox, it was in the kitchen,” the Chief says. “There’s no chance you brought it back to your bedroom?”
“No chance,” Greer says. Her nerves return, multiplied, quivering.
“So you know there’s no chance you brought the pills back to your bedroom,” the Chief says, “and yet you didn’t remember bringing the pills into the kitchen when you talked to the detective. I guess I’m questioning how you can be so certain.”
