Dead Pan Read online

  “Are there any drug interactions that have an adverse effect when taken with this drug?” I asked.

  “None that they’re currently aware of.”

  “Did Dr. Holloway ask the people if they were currently taking any meds or had known drug allergies prior to dispensing the drug?”

  “He did. He also had them sign waivers. Well, I think they more literally initialed the waivers,” Ben said. “Most of them weren’t physically able to sign their names.”

  “Ugh. Why didn’t they rush the people to the hospital rather than doing on-the-spot first aid?”

  “They did call an ambulance. While they were awaiting paramedics, they administered the new drug. By the time the ambulance arrived, seventy-five percent of the people affected were feeling some better.” Ben spread his hands. “Everyone else—with the exception of Fred, of course—recovered completely within twenty-four hours.”

  “Wow. Whatever the drug is, it must be a hundred times better than the over-the-counter stuff.”

  “I guess so. Brea Ridge Pharmaceuticals stands to make billions off it. Or, at least, they did.”

  “So now what?”

  “Now they have to see what the fallout from this incident will be.”

  “Is Dr. Holloway optimistic?” I asked.

  “He’s guarded. He’s waiting for Fred’s autopsy report to see what that reveals.”

  “Was he guarded when he talked with you?”

  “No. He was open and candid. He did ask me to refrain from painting Brea Ridge Pharmaceuticals in a bad light to the best of my ability.”

  “What did you say to that?” I asked.

  “I told him I certainly didn’t want to portray Brea Ridge Pharmaceuticals negatively and that I would report the facts objectively,” he said. “And I told him I’d report the fact that he and Brea Ridge Pharmaceuticals are working diligently to learn what happened to cause Fred Duncan’s death.”

  “That’s good.” I sighed. “I feel so sorry for Fred’s family. You know they’re thinking, ‘Why Fred?’”

  “I know. But, then, that’s what we’re all wondering. Isn’t it?”

  Chapter Four

  After leaving the newspaper offices, I was ready to go home, rock out and lose myself in a virtual world for a little while. Then I got home and checked my messages. Mr. Franklin had called with eight more cake orders—four birthday and four seasonal. Cara had called with the name and number of the publicist I “absolutely have” to call. And Belinda Fremont, who has the prize-winning guinea pigs, wanted to talk with me about catering a New Year’s Eve affair.

  The video game would have to wait. I decided to unwind by losing myself in butter cream. Belinda would also have to wait, for at least an hour or so. Cara’s publicist would have to wait longer . . . much, much longer.

  Eight cakes. Mr. Franklin hadn’t specified what kinds—other than four birthday and four seasonal. I had two white round cakes in the freezer, along with two chocolate quarter sheet cakes. I sat those out to thaw. For two of the cakes, I decided to prepare a pumpkin crème cake with cream cheese filling and vanilla butter cream frosting.

  I got out my favorite blue mixing bowl, my whisk, my pumpkin crème cake recipe and the necessary ingredients. I put my phone headset on, turned on the radio and began singing Christmas carols while I worked. Soon the kitchen smelled like pumpkin and vanilla, and my soul was content.

  While the pumpkin cakes were baking, I mixed up two marble cakes and poured those into the pans. Then I put the ingredients for a double batch of vanilla butter cream in my stand mixer bowl.

  The phone rang and I answered, “Daphne’s Delectable Cakes. How may I help you?”

  “Daphne, it’s Fran. Sorry about how my mom acted this morning.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, that’s fine. She’s only concerned about your aunt.”

  “I know,” Fran said, “but sometimes she can be a little over the top.”

  I chuckled. “All moms can be.”

  “Thank you for breakfast. Everything was delicious. I wish I could cook like you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Instead of tomorrow, would you care to go with me to Aunt Connie’s house later this afternoon?” she asked. “The funeral home is having Aunt Connie come to view Fred’s body at four-thirty to make sure he looks okay . . . or something. Mom is taking Aunt Connie over there, so I thought that might be a good time for us to begin investigating. What do you think?”

  “Is it all right with your Aunt Connie?”

  “Yeah, sure, it’s fine. I asked her. Only I didn’t let Mom hear me.”

  I didn’t blame her, but I refrained from saying so. “Shall I meet you there then?”

  “Or I could come by and pick you up at around four,” she said.

  “All right. I’ll see you at four.”

  “Good deal.”

  After talking with Fran and while keeping butter cream off the sides of the mixing bowl with a silicone spatula, I returned Belinda’s call.

  “Daphne, darling, how are you?” she asked.

  “I’m doing well. And you?”

  “I’m excited. As you already know from the message I left you earlier, I’m hosting a New Year’s Eve soiree. Of course, I’ll need something for the people and something for the cavies. Can you come by sometime tomorrow to discuss?”

  “I certainly can. Morning or afternoon?”

  “Let’s do one-thirty, but we’ll have to be quiet. The babies go down for their naps at one p.m.”

  The “babies” are, naturally, Belinda’s champion Satin Peruvian guinea pigs. “I’ll be all tiptoes and whispers,” I said.

  “Great. And bring not only your ideas about cakes but also about dessert bars and cold buffet foods . . . maybe hot buffet foods, too. We’ll see what we come up with when we put our heads together.”

  *

  By the time the four freshly baked cakes had cooled enough—and the four previously frozen cakes had warmed enough—to be crumb coated, it was two-thirty. By the time I’d crumb coated all eight cakes, Fran was pulling into my driveway. She knocked on the kitchen door as I was cleaning up.

  “Come on in,” I said. “Can you give me five minutes?”

  “No problem. Anything I can do to help?”

  “Nope. I’ve almost got it.” I followed her confused stare to the eight crumb-coated cakes sitting on cake stands on the island in the center of the kitchen. “Don’t worry,” I said with a laugh. “I’m not leaving them like that. That’s a crumb coat.”

  “Oh, sure. Yeah.”

  I could tell she still had no idea what I was talking about. “It’s like a paint primer . . . or a base coat when you polish your nails. When I get back, I’ll put another layer of frosting on the cake; and the cakes will be even and crumb free.”

  She turned and smiled at me. “I get it now. Cool.”

  I finished putting bowls, spoons and spatulas into the dishwasher. Then I threw away the waxed paper I’d been using as a tablecloth and ran a kitchen wipe over the counter.

  “All done,” I said. “Ready to go?”

  “Yeah. And we’ll probably need to be finished at Aunt Connie’s house by five o’clock.”

  I cocked my head. “Are you sure your Aunt Connie knows we’re coming?”

  “She does. But Mom doesn’t.”

  “Don’t you think we should tell her?” I asked.

  “Later, maybe. Not tonight, though. We’d better go.”

  Although still a little hesitant given the fact that Fran’s mother wasn’t on board with our investigation—and neither was my sister, for that matter—I went on with Fran. After all, Connie knew Fran and I would be there; and she was desperate to know what had happened to her son. I felt I owed it to her and to Fran to help find out, if I could.

  The house was still and quiet when Fran unlocked the door and we walked in. I hadn’t expected it to be loud and lively, of course, but the air of sadness and gloom hung in the house like a thick fog. Somewhere a cl
ock ticked, a constant reminder of time’s limits and preciousness.

  Fran flipped a switch, but the ensuring overhead light did little to expel the gloom. The room had dark wood paneling and dark furniture. I wondered if I’d have found it cozy under different circumstances. Somehow, I didn’t think so.

  “Fred’s room is this way,” Fran said.

  I followed her down a narrow hallway lined on both sides with pictures of Fred at various stages of his life. In high school, he’d evidently been quite the athlete: baseball, football, basketball. There was even a photo of Fred as a member of a bowling league. I wondered—not for the first time, but more intensely now—how Fred’s car accident had affected his life . . . how it had affected Connie’s life.

  Fran led me into a room cluttered with clothes, sketchbooks and magazines featuring athletes and reptiles. I was struck by the fact that there were no video game systems in the room. Maybe his brain injury had prevented him from playing video games. Fran had said computers gave Fred a headache.

  Fran turned on the lamp which sat on Fred’s nightstand, and I got a better view of the room. There was a shelf on the wall across from the neatly-made bed that held an array of trophies. The dresser held a small television set, another trophy and an aquarium containing Fred’s ball python Rusty.

  Fred must have had such a promising future before the accident. Not that he didn’t have a promising future after the accident, but this was not the room of a young man whose dream was to bag groceries at Save-A-Buck for the rest of his life.

  “I never knew Fred was so invested in sports,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Fran said, running her finger gently over the nameplate of the trophy on the dresser. “He was something.”

  “We don’t have to do this right now.”

  She sniffled. “We need to. Let’s get it done.” She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “What are we looking for?”

  “An address book, notebook, phone numbers, business cards . . . anything like that.” I picked up a sketchbook from off the nightstand and began thumbing through it. The sketches were mostly of cars, and I knew I didn’t have time to look through it carefully. “Can we take this with us? We can look it over at my house, and you can bring it back.”

  Fran looked over her shoulder. “Yeah, that’s fine. What about this?” She held up a small, black, spiral-bound notepad. “It has some writing in it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s take anything that might have potential back to my house where we’ll have time to look it over. You can return it later this evening.” At her troubled expression, I added, “Or, you know, at your discretion.”

  “Okay.” She looked relieved.

  I understood. Sneak it out; sneak it back in. Mom is none the wiser. That one gave me a momentary twinge of guilt, but I had a speedy recovery. I felt Carol had been a tad harsh with Fran at breakfast; although, admittedly, having no children of my own left me in no position to pass judgment.

  I didn’t find any business cards or scraps of paper with phone numbers written on them. Neither did Fran. We decided Fred would have likely kept anything like that which was important to him in his wallet. And we had no idea where that was.

  I was also disappointed that we didn’t find a calendar or day planner. In the end, we wound up taking only a couple sketchbooks and the black notebook back to my house for closer inspection.

  When Fran and I got back to my house, I made us both a decaf café au lait with whipped cream and cinnamon. I put on my favorite instrumental jazz CD so the kitchen wouldn’t be too quiet as we poured over the sketchbooks and the notebook.

  We decided to go through the sketchbooks first. I was hoping that if Fred did have a girlfriend in Haysi or anywhere else, there would be some sketches of her.

  In the book I had, there was a drawing of Rusty, the python, lying on the rock in his aquarium. There was also a terrific likeness of Fran.

  “Look,” I said, turning the book around toward Fran. “This is great. Fred really could draw.”

  “Yeah.” Fran smiled slightly. “I remember when he did this one. It was back in August. I’d been over there helping Aunt Connie make apple butter. My hair frizzes really bad when it’s humid out—like that day—and I was complaining about it.” She closed her eyes momentarily. “He told me I just couldn’t see myself realistically. And then he drew this.”

  “Why don’t you ask Connie if you can have it? If she says yes, I’ll take it to Johnson City and get it matted and framed for you.”

  “I’ll do that,” she said. “Thank you.”

  There were several sketches of cars . . . or, more accurately, a car. It was a black four-door sedan of ambiguous make and model. In some drawings, the car appeared to be in good condition. In others, it was wrecked. In one drawing, the car was on fire.

  “What’s with this car?” I asked Fran. “Is this the car Fred was driving when he had his accident?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not the car he was driving. It’s the car the drunk driver was in.”

  “Was the other driver convicted?”

  “No, he was never found. He left the scene of the accident. Plus, nobody showed up at any of the local hospitals that night or the next day for treatment for injuries sustained in a car accident.”

  “How about the car?”

  “It was never found either.”

  “That’s a shame. Poor Fred.”

  “Yeah. It made him angry that the other driver was never found.”

  “I can imagine. How did police come to the conclusion the other driver was drunk?”

  “Someone had reported the guy a few minutes before the accident. The car was swerving all over the road.” She rubbed her eyes. “The fact that the guy ran was also fairly damning.”

  “Were there any witnesses to the accident?”

  “The man who’d reported the car weaving had turned off the road and pulled into his driveway. As he was walking to the door, he heard the crash. He jumped back in his car and went to the scene of the accident, but he only saw Fred’s car smashed against the telephone pole. The other car was speeding away.”

  “The man didn’t get the car’s license tag?” I asked. “Not even when he called police with the initial report?”

  “No. Their cars were too far apart. The man who called and reported the guy on suspicion of drunk driving had been afraid to get close enough to get a tag number. He was scared the guy would cause him to wreck.” She sighed. “Besides, he thought police would be able to stop him before he did much damage. It wasn’t a heavily trafficked road.”

  “So is that why Fred kept drawing this particular type of car?”

  She needed. “He always said he’d recognize it if he ever saw it again.”

  We went back to flipping through the drawings. There was a rough sketch of the birthday cake Fred had wanted me to make for his grandfather. It was a round cake with a snake’s body wrapped around the middle and its head resting atop the cake.

  The emotional impact of that sketch hit me hard. I quickly scooted my chair back from the table so my tears wouldn’t fall on Fred’s work.

  “Are you okay?” Fran asked.

  “Yeah . . . I just . . . . Could you hand me a napkin please?”

  She took a napkin from the rack in the center of the table and gave it to me. I wiped my eyes.

  “Sorry,” I said. “That sketch got to me, that’s all. I remember when Fred called and asked me to make this cake.” This prompted fresh tears, so Fran handed me another napkin. She took one for herself as well.

  “I still want to make this cake,” I said. “For free. For Fred. I’d like to make it for your grandfather on his birthday, so he’ll know how much he meant to Fred.”

  “He’d appreciate that,” Fran said.

  We returned to looking at the drawings in silence until a couple minutes later when Fran said, “Well, look at that.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Given how you felt about the ca
ke picture, this one will really blow you away.” She turned the book toward me.

  “It’s me.”

  It was my face almost in profile, looking down slightly. My expression was soft and pensive. It was as if he’d drawn it from a photograph.

  I covered my mouth with my hand. When I glanced up at Fran, she was crying softly. I closed both books.

  “That’s enough for this evening,” I said. “Let’s go into the living room.”

  We moved to the living room where I curled up on the club chair and Fran sat on the sofa. After a few minutes of sitting in silence, I asked Fran if she was all right.

  “Yeah,” she said. “It’s just tough, you know. Fred was a good guy. His dad died when he was ten, and after that Fred always tried to be a grown up. He didn’t deserve any of this.”

  “I know, Fran. I’m so sorry.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Do you still want to investigate?” I asked. “I know the police are doing everything they can, and—”

  “No. I want to do this. I need to do this.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll try to help you find answers.”

  *

  After Fran left, I put the second layer of frosting on the cakes and placed them in the refrigerator. I’d decorate them tomorrow.

  I heated up a can of tomato soup and then poured it into a mug. I sat on a stool at the island and opened Fred’s notebook. There wasn’t much information in it. I sipped my soup and tried to make sense of the scant notes.

  “SAB 4-10 MWTF, 8-1 SS.”

  I figured that was Fred’s schedule at the Save-A-Buck.

  “HMRA – T – 11.”

  I made a mental note to look that acronym up on the computer after I’d finished my soup. I flipped the pages and came across Rusty’s feeding schedule. It nearly made me gag on my soup to read that Rusty had ingested a thawed mouse only four days ago. I remembered Fred once telling me he bought Rusty frozen mice to eat. As incredible as it sounds, live rodents can sometimes hurt snakes.

  I got up to retrieve my cordless phone and to pour the remainder of my soup down the sink. Fran answered her cell phone on the first ring.