ladiesbingo prompt: a terrible solution
Summary: The law wasn't always fair or moral, and sometimes you had to follow your own code.
Disclaimer: Not mine, just this story.
Helga did not at all like Peter Miller hanging around while the police inspected the house, especially since she was already nervous enough after finding everyone standing over the body in the living room, which is not where she and Lila had left it last Saturday.
Peter wouldn't stop yammering about how he knew his friend too well and James Spencer was not this clumsy, and was definitely not suicidal.
"Just because that prescription bottle was empty doesn't mean he swallowed tons of pills. Maybe there was only one left," he insisted.
Unfortunately, Miller had been a necessary part of the plan – Helga was certain it should be one of Jim's friends who found him, not her – so Helga just carefully watched the reaction of the two cops to everything he said and interjected a word here or there to change up their perception as necessary.
Earlier that day Miller had received a frantic call from Lila in Rio de Janeiro. Her husband was supposed to join her that morning but had never shown up for his flight. She'd been trying unsuccessfully to reach him by phone for days and pleaded with Miller to go over to the house to see if everything was okay, which is how he came to be the one to discover Spencer's body.
Jim's passport and the envelope with his boarding pass were in the top drawer of the desk in his home office, proof that he had intended to meet his wife in Brazil. The full voice mail on Jim's cell phone would confirm for the cops that Lila had been desperately trying to reach him for days and had absolutely no idea what was wrong. There was photographic proof that she'd checked in for her flight to Rio last Saturday night, if they wanted to check that, and they could confirm with the hotel in Rio that she'd checked in on Sunday. She was catching a flight home early tomorrow and they could ask her questions then too.
Right now, they didn't seem suspicious of any foul play. They were leaning toward accident, which was fine. Helga and Lila originally wanted them to conclude that it was suicide, but accident worked too.
They'd covered all possible angles.
#
Lila Spencer, née Lila Sawyer, was part of the old Hillwood gang and Helga considered her a good friend. That wasn't always the case. When they were younger and Helga saw Lila as competition for Arnold, the one true love of her life, she had a lot of animosity toward her. To make matters worse at the time, her sister Olga became Lila's big sis as part of the Big Sis, Little Sis program.
Then their fourth-grade class performed Romeo and Juliet, and Lila agreed to drop out of the role of Juliet so Helga could play the part and kiss Arnold, who was playing Romeo. Not only did Lila do her that favor, she kept Helga's secret love for Arnold safe too. That ended up being a turning point for Helga. She felt less resentment toward Lila, and they became friendlier as they got older and found more common ground.
Helga and Arnold were married now, and both of them were friends with Lila. They hadn't been in touch as much lately. Lila had gradually lost contact with most of her old friends after marrying, which wasn't too surprising, since Lila had married 'up'.
Jim Spencer came from money and he earned even more money running his own business. He owned a technology company, was an industry leader, and he had considerable political clout. Lila lived with him in a large five-bedroom house in the most exclusive neighborhood in the already exclusive Hillwood Valley. It made sense that as time went on she would choose to spend more time with him and his friends, become involved with the society and charities and activities he was involved with.
Everyone else liked golden boy Jim. Even Arnold liked him, although Arnold tended to see the good in everybody, no matter what. He was the pillar of society. Rich, good-looking, clean-cut. He had everyone in town wrapped around his finger including the cops, who sent an extra patrol car to this block every night just to keep an eye on the Spencer house. It would never occur to them or anyone else that they needed to offer protection from Jim.
Helga could never warm up to him and now she knew the reason. She just wished she'd known before last Saturday. Maybe they could've handled things differently.
#
When Lila called her last Saturday asking if she could give her a ride to the airport Helga knew something was wrong. She could hear the subtle edge in her tone. Besides, Lila never called her for that kind of thing; she always took a car service any place she wasn't driving. Arnold knew immediately from Helga's look and tone that there was a problem, but she insisted that he didn't need to come and hurried out of the house.
She and Lila stood beside the bed staring down at a too-still Jim Spencer.
"I didn't mean it, Helga. I just wanted to get away. We were supposed to leave tonight for a second honeymoon in Rio. It would've been ever so much worse there." She paused, caught her breath. "I never told you about the first honeymoon."
Jim Spencer had been one of those men who had enough control to land his blows in places that would be covered by clothing. Helga had never seen any bruises on her face, but underneath her clothes, after just a year of marriage, Lila had many scars. Helga wished she'd told her but she understood why she didn't. Fear, shame, doubts of her own perception. Anyone could be fooled by an attractive package and Lila was already berating herself enough.
The important thing now was to clean up this situation the best way possible so that Lila exited it unscathed. Helga removed the wine glass that Jim had been drinking from, the one that would have traces of the many sleeping pills in it, and took it to the sink to wash it out. She replaced it with a plain water glass; she wanted it to look like he'd taken all the pills himself.
Lila's flight wasn't until eleven o'clock that night, so they had the next few hours to work out a plan and set the scene just right. Lila would go ahead and use her ticket to Rio. She changed her husband's departure to Wednesday night and printed out a new boarding pass, which she left in the desk drawer along with his passport. Helga wanted to make sure it looked as if he'd waited for Lila to leave and then taken the pills.
"Call his cell phone at least twice a day starting tomorrow. Start optimistic. Say things like you can't wait until he gets here, you hope he's not working too hard, that he's eating, all that jazz. Get more worried as the days go by and he doesn't answer the phone. Then, on Thursday morning, after he doesn't show up, call Peter Miller. You're a good actress. Sell it, sister."
"This is a terrible idea, Helga."
Eventually Lila concluded that turning herself in would be a worse idea, and at nine o'clock Helga drove her to the airport.
#
Helga sat on the couch next to Lila when the cops spoke to her on Friday morning. Lila clutched her arm the entire time.
She'd gone to the airport early that morning to meet Lila's arriving flight, so she could prepare her for the additional curve ball. The dosage that Lila had put in Jim's wine had obviously been enough to knock him out but not enough to kill him. They should've looked at him more closely; they would've seen he was still breathing. At some point he'd woken up and wandered downstairs to the living room. He'd tripped or staggered or maybe even passed out again, and on the way down hit his left temple on the glass coffee table. The cops drew that conclusion from the wound on his temple and the blood on the corner of the table.
"I don't understand," Lila lamented. She really was quite the little actress and seemed undaunted by Peter Miller's suspicious attitude. The cops had ruled out foul play from the start and were sympathetic. "Jim hated taking pills. He only took them when he absolutely needed them, and usually I had to nag him about it."
"We think it may have been unintentional. Accidental overdoses are very common with this type of medicine. People forget they took a pill or they forget how many they've taken."
"You said he was working and that's why he didn't leave for Rio with you?" Peter asked.
"There was a problem at the office and he wanted to stay here for a couple of days to deal with it. He never talked to me about work, not in any detail, so I don't know exactly what happened."
"He changed his flight on Saturday."
"Yes, Saturday afternoon."
It took every ounce of Helga's willpower to refrain from telling Peter to shut up and let the cops ask the questions.
Lila began to sob when she talked about how she knew something was wrong when two days had passed and he didn't answer her calls.
"At first I thought he was just working so hard and didn't want to stop to take any calls. But then I couldn't reach him and it was already Wednesday night and time for him to leave. When he wasn't on his flight yesterday…"
The interview didn't last long after that. The cops decided they had all the information they needed, offered sympathy to Lila for her loss, and told her that whenever she had her final plans in order they would release Jim's body to whatever funeral home she chose. When Lila walked them to the door, she thanked Peter profusely for being there as well as thanking the police for their help.
She rejoined Helga in the living room once they were gone and broke down completely.
#
"I think I know what you did, Helga."
She was sitting on the couch in their living room, wrapped in a blanket. It was cold and snowy so she'd lit a fire too. The chill she felt now wasn't from the weather. She'd always suspected that Arnold knew more about what happened to Jim Spencer than he let on. He hadn't even mentioned it yet, but she knew that's what this was about.
Two months had passed since Lila had buried Jim. She'd inherited his money and possessions, but she honestly didn't want anything from him. Most of the money went to charity and the house was up for sale. She was living in a two-family house in Hillwood now, not far from where Helga and Arnold lived.
Her heart pounded but she spoke calmly. "What are you talking about, Arnold?"
He sat down beside her and dropped a folder thick with papers in her lap. Helga paused and stared at him.
"I work for the city's most prominent newspaper. I have friends in high places." There was levity in his tone and he smiled ever so slightly.
She picked up the stack and began to thumb through pages of photocopied emergency room records for Lila Spencer. Sprains, broken bones, internal bleeding.
"Your friends in high places need to brush up on how to comply with HIPAA."
Arnold took the stack of papers from her and tossed the whole thing into the fire.
"It's not what you think, Arnold. It really wasn't—"
"I know. I know it, Helga."