Nothing to Lose (J.P. Beaumont #25)(65)

The subject of drinking too much was familiar territory for me, although José Cuervo was never a friend of mine. I always favored a cheap Canadian blend called MacNaughton’s. As for drinking buddies? Those kinds of friendships generally come to an abrupt end when one or the other of the drinking pals either sobers up or croaks.

“You said obviously Jack never quit,” I observed. “How come ‘obviously’?”

“Hold on,” Marvin said. “I’m getting ahead of myself. In the old days, my folks and Lois and Jack all palled around together—playing cards, fishing, camping, that sort of thing. Once Shelley came into the picture and got her claws into Jack, my dad and he called it quits as far as friendship went.

“As soon as Jack and Lois divorced, he married Shelley. That was ten years or so before his crippling plane crash, which occurred in November of 2008. In January of 2009, he was released from rehab and sent home to continue his recovery. Due to mobility issues, he needed a hospital bed, which was installed in the master bedroom while Shelley slept in a guest bedroom down the hall.

“On the morning of February fifteenth, she went into his room, purportedly to help him out of bed and into his wheelchair. That’s when she found him unresponsive. She dialed 911. When EMTs arrived, they were unable to revive him. Jack was declared dead at the scene, and that’s when Lieutenant Caldwell entered the picture. Inside the bedroom he noticed an empty tequila bottle tipped over on the bedside table along with two separate pill containers lying empty on the bedding. Barry Caldwell, like my dad, wasn’t a big fan of Shelley’s either. Before leaving the scene, he declared the cause of death as undetermined and ordered the body shipped off to the medical examiner’s office in Anchorage so an autopsy could be performed. Then he brought Shelley in for questioning.”

“What were the pill bottles for?” I asked.

“Oxy and Ambien,” Marvin answered. “Jack had prescriptions for both of them.”

“Wait a minute,” I commented. “I doubt either of those should be taken with a chaser of tequila.”

“That’s what Lieutenant Caldwell thought, too. According to his visiting nurse, once Jack was out of bed, he could get around all right in his wheelchair. So Caldwell asked Shelley about the tequila bottle. Where had that come from? She allowed as how, after having a Valentine’s dinner together, Jack had asked her to bring the tequila to the master bedroom so they could share a nightcap.”

“Sounds very romantic,” I said.

“Right,” Marvin muttered. It was one of those sarcastic “Rights” that doesn’t mean right at all.

“In the interview Shelley claimed that even though Jack was on those prescribed meds, he continued to have difficulties with ongoing pain and falling asleep. She said that was why whenever he asked for tequila, she brought it to him—that it helped him sleep.”

“I’ll just bet it did,” I said, “but the whole bottle?”

“That’s what Barry thought,” Marvin said.

“Were there fingerprints?”

“Yes, Shelley’s prints were on both the booze bottle and each pill bottle, but those were easily explained because she was the one who usually dished out his meds. And in all cases, his fingerprints overlaid hers. His were the only prints on the shot glass.”

“If there was a visiting nurse,” I said, “why wasn’t she administering the meds?”

“Have you ever dealt with a visiting nurse?” Marvin asked.

I shook my head. “Not really,” I said. “Why?”

“When my father came down with cancer, he ended up dying at home after being bedridden for the better part of a year. Visiting nurses came by on a regular basis, all right, but as far as I could tell, they did very little nursing. They mostly came by to check the house’s inventory of pills to make sure no one was saving them up in case my father wanted to use a handful of them as an early ticket out.

“Lieutenant Caldwell theorized that since Jack wasn’t getting the kind of relief he needed from the pills, maybe Shelley wasn’t dispensing his meds properly.”

“You mean like maybe she was hoarding up enough pills to be able to get the job done?”

“Something like that,” Marvin replied.

“Was there a note?”

“No note.”

“So why would Jack take his own life?”

“Shelley claimed he was terribly depressed. She maintained that he was devastated by the loss of his legs because it meant he would never fly again. Lieutenant Caldwell was working the case and trying to prove that wasn’t true—that Jack really did have something to live for. Barry said he’d heard from an airplane mechanic over in Anchorage who maintained that with the right prosthetics there was no reason Jack couldn’t fly again.”

Wait. This was sounding vaguely familiar. An airplane mechanic in Anchorage who knew Jack and Shelley Loveday? “Not Chad Winkleman!” I exclaimed.

Marvin Price looked at me in utter amazement. “How the hell did you know that?” he demanded.

“Never mind,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. Just tell me what happened.”

“The initial autopsy results came in as undetermined, too, but once the toxicology report arrived, the medical examiner in Anchorage ruled the manner of death to be suicide and the cause of death to be an overdose, due in part to mixing alcohol with the prescribed medications.”