"Now you do." She placed a video call and pushed the laptop towards me. Lo and behold, there he was, filling up the screen, dressed in his doctor’s coat and with a sort of concerned yet reassuring look on his face—the kind I imagined he used in his professional manner every single day.
Cosmo ran over to me and pressed himself against my legs.
"I assume Detective Stone has been to see you?" Nick asked.
"Yes. A little while ago. Why?"
"Your aunt’s autopsy was already done last night."
"That fast? I don’t understand," I said. "Then what did he want from me? Or why did he come to see me after the fact?"
"Maybe because he wanted to see your reaction?" Nick held my gaze.
"That’s absurd. He did say I’m not a suspect."
"Of course you're not," he hastened to say. "Especially since your aunt's crazy will made it very clear that you couldn't be sure which way the cat would jump."
Cosmo bristled at him.
"Literally and figuratively," he said.
"But," I said, "because there is a 'but' coming, right?"
"Your aunt did also have a huge amount of digitalis in her body."
It took a moment to sink in.
"Like Jake?"
"Exactly like Jake."
"And you had no idea?" My voice rose until it sounded like a screech.
"Hear me out," he said as I started to cry. "Your aunt had a weak heart, so her passing away from heart failure didn’t come unexpected. It also wouldn’t have been unusual that, after Jake passed away, she became scared, upped her medication and took an accidental overdose."
"My aunt? You really thought that could happen to Aunt Violet?"
"There is another theory, which I do not believe for a single second. Only, we thought—I thought—you needed to hear it. And from a friend."
"What theory? What could be worse than everybody thinking that my aunt not only killed her friend, but was also demented enough to accidentally do away with herself?"
"The newly considered possibility—and let me make it very clear, this is just a possibility —is that your aunt poisoned Jake and then was overcome with remorse and killed herself."
Chapter twenty-three
"That's absurd."
Cosmo growled and swiped his paws, with his unsheathed claws slashing at the screen and Nick’s face.
"Even if I would entertain that stupid notion for a single heartbeat, then please, why would she not leave a written confession if her guilt drove her to kill herself?" I snarled. "Without her letter to the police, Jake’s death would have been written off as natural. Why not leave it at that? Isn’t it much more likely that she was murdered too?”
"A way out," Nick suggested. “That letter allowed people to know what happened to Jake, and yet she wouldn’t be held responsible. Her family, her heirs, could hold their heads up high. Her legacy would stay intact."
"You thought that through, haven’t you?" I asked suspiciously. "And only a moment ago, you told me that you did not believe that at all."
"I don’t," he said. "But others might. Others much more important to this case. I’m really sorry, Bex."
"Yeah, so am I. I hope that Detective Stone or whoever brought up this ridiculous scenario is going to publicly apologize once I’ve exposed the real killer."
