Split Second

She smiled. "At our age, what's left?"

King looked down at his glass. "How about you? Ever drink Scotch?"

"Never touch the stuff. Like I said, gin is my game. Scotch is too much like paint thinner. If you want to clear your sinuses out, by all means drink the stuff."

"Well, thanks again. We'll be in touch. Enjoy your evening." King rose and started to turn away. He looked over at Joan, her drink and cigarette in hand, and he froze.

Paint thinner?

He whirled back around. "Millie, can you show me Bill's special stash of Scotch?"

41

It was the Scotch, or at least Bill Martin's secret cache, that Mildred Martin had never bothered to tell the police or FBI about. A relatively simple test at the police lab showed the bottle had been doctored with methanol.

King and Joan sat at the police station while Mildred was thoroughly interrogated.

Joan looked at King. "You're lucky she poured yours out from her regular stock."

King shook his head. "How'd the poisoned bottle get into the house?"

A man in a brown suit walked up to them. "I think we found that out."

He was one of the FBI agents assigned to the case. Joan knew him well.

"Hello, Don," said Joan. "This is Sean King. Don Reynolds."

The men shook hands. "We owe you guys on this one," said Reynolds. "Never would have guessed the Scotch, although she didn't tell us about her husband's secret cache. We had the other stuff tested previously."

"It was Sean's catch actually. Though I hate to admit it," she added, smiling. "You said you know how the doctored Scotch got there?"

"A couple of months ago the Martins hired a woman to helparound the house. To assist with Bill Martin, who was basically an invalid."

"Mildred never mentioned that either?" King said incredulously.

"She said she didn't think it was important. She said the woman never gave Bill any medication or anything, though she said she was licensed to. Mildred liked to do that herself. And the woman left long before Martin died, so Mildred didn't think it was relevant."

"Where'd the woman come from?"

"That was the thing. She just showed up one day, said she understood that they might need some help because of Bill's condition, that she was a professional caregiver and was willing to come cheap because she needed the work. She had papers and stuff to show who she was."

"And now where is this very accommodating lady?"

"She said she'd gotten a permanent job in another town, and that was it. Hasn't been back."

"Obviously she did come back," said Joan.

Reynolds nodded. "Our theory is the woman came back to the house the day before Martin died and doctored the bottle, to make sure his next drink would be his last. The bottle of Scotch we found was loaded with methanol. Now, methanol is slow to metabolize into toxic levels. You're looking at twelve to twenty-four hours. If he'd been young and healthy and been found immediately, maybe Martin could have made it to a hospital and survived. But he wasn't young or healthy; he was terminal, in fact. And the Martins also didn't sleep together. After Mildred gave her husband the last pop through his G-tube, the pain probably would have hit him very soon. And he only weighed about ninety pounds. Normally you'd need one hundred to two hundred milliliters of methanol to kill an adult. I doubt they needed anywhere near that to kill Martin."

Reynolds shook his head and smiled wearily. "It's ironic they put it in the Scotch. Scotch contains ethanol, which is an antidote tomethanol, because they both seek the same enzyme. However, there was so much methanol in the bottle the ethanol couldn't have countered it. Martin might have called out in agony, but Mildred never heard him, or so she says. So he might have lain there all night until he finally died. It's not like he could get out of bed for help. He was a complete invalid by that time."

"Mildred was probably passed out on gin. She likes her libations too," said King.

Joan added, "And this nurse obviously had learned the routine of the house, that both of them drank and didn't sleep together. Once she learned he was a Scotch drinker and had his own stash, and also that Mildred never touched the stuff, she had her method of murder. She'd appear to be long gone before the deed was done."

Reynolds nodded. "He could have been killed any number of ways, but it had to be in a manner that wouldn't require an autopsy, because that would have messed up the timing. Martin had to die in his bed. So he did, and Mildred found him there and assumed he died naturally, although the docs tell me death by methanol is by no means peaceful. And methanol metabolizes into formaldehyde, which is toxic, but then it's oxidized into formic acid. That's six times more lethal than methanol."

"So Martin was basically pickled before he got to the funeral home," said King.