Chapter 23

It was Bridie, not Birdie. The woman was truly concerned about Lady Harrington, and was pleased to hear she was doing well since the officers found her. In her Irish Brogue, she asked bluntly, "Were they trying to hasten her death?"

Bobby glanced at Alex. Given his own mother's condition, every time he thought about the Harringtons, his temper flared.

"Grant and Cheryl fired their home care worker. They blame it all on her," Alex answered, sparing him the need to.

This didn't surprise the woman. She told them Grant and Cheryl wanted her to sign as a witness to the sale of Lady Harrington's home in Westport, and when she refused, they fired her.

The detectives learned that Isabel found out what was going on three months earlier. Isabel's response was that she was going to go public with an article about her family.

Thanks to Alex's computer prowess, they found out that Isabel had been researching her Grandmother's medications, but also her own mother's death. According to the obituary, Lissie Harrington died of a heart arrhythmia 18 years ago. They found out Isabel had searched for the medications Mellaril and Hismanal.

Rodgers told them there had been no autopsy on Lissie Harrington, and no one even looked at the toxicology report until Isabel Harrington requested it three months ago. Sure enough, she'd had both drugs in her system.

"An antipsychotic with that antihistamine? That's a lethal combination," Goren noted, and Rodgers agreed.

"No doctor should have prescribed them at the same time and no doctor should have attributed her death to natural causes," Elizabeth continued, obviously disgusted by the situation.

Alex looked at Bobby. He'd been right again. Now they were working on two murders.

As they sat in the crowded cafeteria of 1PP, Alex studied her partner. Bobby was feeling the strain again. He hadn't said anything more about his mother, except that she seemed to be okay for now. He hadn't mentioned his brother, either, except that he'd still had no word… so it had to be the case.

She couldn't blame him. Alex knew that his family was dysfunctional, at best, but she also knew that Bobby loved his mother. She knew that the woman, in spite of her mental illness, had raised at least one son to be a caring, compassionate, brilliant, upstanding man. She'd raised him right.

And these Harringtons were the scum of the earth in her opinion. She knew without asking that Bobby thought the same thing.

He caught her looking his way, and she lowered her gaze, picking at the remnants of her sandwich. Alex didn't know exactly what Bobby was going through. The only loss in her life that even came close was her maternal grandmother, and she'd only been a teenager then. Her family had sheltered her from seeing her grandmother's slow decline.

When Joe died, he was taken from her suddenly. It had been horrible, but it was a very different kind of loss. When her mother had the stroke, she'd hung on for three days in the hospital before she passed away. Time enough to say goodbye, but not this long, slow kind of suffering that her partner was going through.

She glanced at him again. "What?" he asked.

Alex scoffed. "These people," was all she said.

He nodded his agreement. "We have to decide how to approach Grant. You can bet he'll bring his counsel."

"He's not gonna talk. He's shrewd. He's gotten away with murder. He'll be overconfident about this."

Bobby nodded, and the wheels kept spinning in his brain. "We know Cheryl is involved in the conspiracy… the pilfering…" He thought a moment, then spoke again. "We don't know yet about Ernest's involvement."

"Ernest isn't even a Harrington. I'll bet Grant would be willing to talk about him."

"So we… we confront him. Play hardball, tell him what he's up against."

Alex nodded. "He'll be more than happy to throw someone else under the bus."

The decision made, they went back to the last scraps of their meal. Again, Bobby caught her looking at him. "What?"

"Did you get that FMLA paperwork in?"

Bobby nodded. "I had to, you know, fax it back and forth, but yeah. It's done. It's in."

With a frown, Alex nodded.

"You don't know what's going on here, do you?" Bobby asked. "I mean between your first wife's overdose, your mother's neglect, your daughter's death… you are at best looking like the angel of death."

Grant Harrington, with the blessing of his lawyer, started off by trying to blame Lissie's depression on Isabel's birth.

Alex called him on it. The window of manifestation of Post Partum depression was about two years. "Post partum?" She asked. "Isabel was 7 when she died."

"That's correct. It was seven years of hell."

"Hell for you?" Bobby asked, punctuating his words with the pen in his hand. "Or hell for her?"

Bobby asked what the man had done for his wife, how he'd tried to help. Although they were in an interview room, Bobby acted as if they were in interrogation. He circled the table, stood right behind Harrington, asked his questions into one ear, then bobbed his head and asked in the other. The man admitted she'd been on the antipsychotic, Mellaril. He alleged that she was paranoid and delusional.

"Is that your diagnosis? Or the Doctors? Whose?"

"Maybe he gave her something to be paranoid about," Alex suggested, and Bobby could have leapt for joy. Alex always knew how to play it. "Cheating?"

Harrington shook his head and said she was paranoid about the money, that it wouldn't last.

"Or was she suspicious of you managing the finances?" Bobby pressed.

"Not of me, detective. Of Ernest and my mother. She wanted me to cut them off."

Bobby raised a hand to scratch his ear and Alex simmered. There's that bus, she thought. "Their charitable contributions," Bobby said, and Grant added details about what charities his family was supporting at the time.

Bobby recapped the tale of Lissie's overdose. "Where were you?" he asked.

"On a boat in the Galapagos." Bobby looked to his partner, a touch of surprise on his face. The two detectives shared some sarcastic comments.

"Yet you know it was a suicide."

Grant told the story almost exactly as they expected to hear it, inserting that Lissie had been drinking into the storyline.

Alex looked up at Bobby, then asked about other medications, allergies. She even asked if Grant had allergies.

He said no and reiterated that his wife's death had been a suicide.

Bobby thought in silence a moment, then shared a furious glance with his partner. They were both wondering the same thing: where did the Hismanal come from?

He wasn't planning to stay with Alex that night, but they started a movie after he called his mother, and before she knew it he was sound asleep on the couch.

Alex tried to rouse him, but she got nothing more than some incoherent mumbling. With a smile, she threw a blanket over him and went to bed.

His voice woke her in the middle of the night. Alex sat up in the bed, feeling the sheet slip down her arms and land on her lap.

"Where are you?" Bobby was nearly shouting. "No. No, Frank, I can't hear you. Where are you? Frank? Frank?"

Alex hurried from the bedroom and stood by as Bobby's hand dropped from his ear. He looked defeated. "It… it wasn't long enough for a trace. Sounded like… sounded like a bar or something."

She walked forward and gently touched his arm.

Another thought struck him, and he slouched even more. "I didn't even tell him about Mom."

The furrows above her nose appeared and she nodded, still rubbing his arm. "At least you know he has your number," was the only thing she could think of to say.

Bobby shook himself, as if he was releasing himself from the guilt. His eyes roamed from her bare feet all the way up to her face. "I woke you. I'm sorry."

She gave him a smile. "It's okay. Come to bed."

In that instant, he realized sleeping over hadn't been in the plans at all. He looked out the window at the dark sky and nodded quietly. Bobby took her hand and followed her to the bedroom.