Saving Meghan(109)

Carl had not come to the hospital, either to check on Becky or to visit with Meghan and offer reassuring words about her mother. If he were anywhere near a cell phone, TV, or radio, he’d have known his soon-to-be ex-wife had nearly been fatally poisoned. His absence drew the interest of the two detectives, Capshaw and Spence, who viewed any unusual behavior as cause for suspicion.

Zach had his own hunch about Carl. Pieces of the puzzle began to fit together in unexpected ways. Carl did not have the psychological makeup typical of someone committing Munchausen by proxy, but that did not mean he had no role to play. Zach kept returning to the idea of a somatic reaction in Meghan—that it wasn’t mito, and it never had been mito. Meghan had developed various symptoms that just happened to mirror mito because of some sort of external stress, something related to her father.

It was entirely possible that Zach had embraced the mito diagnosis because it was his proclivity to do so, and Becky had jumped aboard seeking a clear answer, while it may have been Carl pulling the strings all along. Was his plan to manipulate Meghan in order to wage psychological warfare against his wife? If that theory held water, it would mean that Carl had intentionally poisoned Meghan, had killed Levine for reasons still unknown, and had planted the earring to cast suspicion on Becky. While the narrative had some logic to it, the big question Zach could not answer was why.

Becky had told Zach where to find the house key—under a fake rock next to the wooden bench on the side of the house overlooking the stone patio, in what looked to be a professionally landscaped garden. He entered through a side door, half expecting to hear the warning chirps of a house alarm, but Becky had supplied him with the numeric code to deactivate it. There were no sounds of any kind. He found the lights in the kitchen after feeling for a switch plate on the wall. The chair he had knocked over had been righted. The thermos of soup was gone, bagged and tagged for evidence.

Zach located the staircase, which Becky had said would lead to Carl’s office. He ascended the carpeted stairwell, wondering what he would do if he encountered Carl there. He did not think Carl would be eager to hear any of his prepared explanations. From the moment they’d met, the man seemed itching to dish out a good pounding. Or was the bullying part of Carl’s personality all part of his act?

As Zach turned a corner on the stairwell, he spied a sliver of light spilling out from underneath the white painted door at the top of the landing. Zach listened intently for any sounds beyond but, hearing none, turned the brass knob, opening the door a crack to peer inside. He half expected Carl to be standing there, ready to pounce. Emboldened, Zach opened the door fully and went inside.

The office was ransacked.

Zach’s gaze traveled first to the books spilled onto the floor, then to a pile of papers that appeared to have been angrily swept off the expansive desk. While the framed pictures of Carl’s many showpiece homes and family photos of Meghan and Becky remained secured to the walls, the drawers of the desk had been pulled free of their slots, the contents within—pens, pencils, papers—dumped haphazardly onto the floor. It was then that Zach noticed the body, dressed in faded jeans and a navy polo, lying facedown, as still as the tipped-over chair beside him.

Carl.

Zach rushed to Carl’s side, knowing in his gut there was no need to hurry. The skin was cool to the touch as he checked for a pulse, finding none where none had been expected. The muscles were stiff, suggesting that Carl had been dead for some time. The top layer of skin had already begun to loosen and had a telling sheen of early-stage decay.

Near Carl’s body, Zach spied an empty whiskey tumbler. He picked up the glass to examine it, using his shirt as a glove to preserve any fingerprints for the police. Inside the glass was the residue of something green, leafy, not unlike tea leaves. Zach was no botanist, but he very much doubted this was Carl’s favorite Earl Grey. He took a whiff inside the tumbler. He could smell the remnants of whiskey, but not the plant. It was odorless, probably tasteless, too, but he was certain it was the same substance that had sickened Becky.

A scene formed in Zach’s mind: Carl ingesting a fatal dose of some poison, knocking over bookshelves and papers as life was leaving him, then collapsing to the floor, dead. Was it suicide? Had he feared that his secret would be revealed in the wake of Becky’s inadvertent poisoning? Zach scoured the floor with his eyes, searching for answers, when he spotted what appeared to be wrapping paper torn open in haste, not far from Carl’s inert form. Near the crumpled paper was a small open box, colored the distinctive aqua blue that comes only from Tiffany.

As he glanced back at the body, Zach saw that Carl’s right hand was balled in a fist. In his hurry to check for a pulse, Zach had failed to notice the glint of a silver chain barely sticking out from between the fingers of his clenched hand. Zach pried open the fingers, suspecting that what had been inside that jewelry box could very well be the object in Carl’s dead grasp. He unfurled the fingers to reveal a diamond-encrusted silver pendant shaped in the form of a heart. He turned the pendant around in his fingers to examine it—forgetting for a moment the need to preserve what may be a crime scene—and saw the name ANGI engraved on the back.

Zach called 911 and informed the dispatcher he could not stick around for the police. He had to get back to White Memorial. He had to let Becky know what he’d found, because something told him that Carl had sent her a message from the grave.