Hemlock Bay

I’ve always thought she was strong, stable. And now I feel guilty because we didn’t make an effort to see her over the last months.”
    “You had a baby, Sherlock, not a week after Beth’s funeral.”
    “And Lily was there for me.”
    “She wasn’t there with you—not like I was. My God, Sherlock, that was the longest day of my life.” He squeezed her so hard, she squeaked.
    “Yeah, yeah,” she said.
    “You never curse, but toward the end there you called me more names than I’d ever been called, even by linebackers during football games in college.”
    She laughed, kissed his shoulder again, and said, “Look, I know Lily’s been through a very hard time. She’s been understandably depressed. But we’ve talked to her a lot since Beth died. I just don’t believe she was in a frame of mind to try to kill herself again.”
    “I don’t know,” he said. He frowned and turned off the lamp on the bedside table. He pulled Sherlock against him again and held her tight. “It really shakes me up, Sherlock, this happening to Lily. It’s so hard to know what to do.”
    She held him harder than she had in her life. And she was thinking how fragile Lily had been seven months before, so hurt and so very broken, and then she’d taken those pills and nearly died. Savich and their mother had flown out to California for the second time, not more than a week after Beth’s funeral, to see Lily lying in that narrow hospital bed, a tube in her nose, an IV line in her arm. But Lily had survived. And she’d been so sorry, so very sorry that she’d frightened everyone. And she’d come back with them to Washington, D.C., to rest and get her bearings. But after three weeks, she’d decided to go back to her husband in Hemlock Bay.
    And seven months later, she’d driven her Explorer into a redwood.
    She squeezed more tightly against him. “I just don’t know how I’d handle it if anything happened to Sean. I couldn’t bear that, Dillon. I just couldn’t. No wonder Lily didn’t.”
    After a long time, he said, “No, I couldn’t bear it either, but you know what? You and I would survive it together. Somehow we would. But I think your instincts on this were right. You said something doesn’t feel right. What did you mean?”
    She nuzzled her nose into his shoulder, hummed a bit, a sure sign she was thinking hard, and said, “Well, just last week, Lily sent us a No Wrinkles Remus strip she’d just finished, her first one since Beth was killed, and she sounded excited. So what happened over the past four days to make her want to try to kill herself again?”

4
    Hemlock Bay, California

    “I stole the bottle of pills,” Savich said, as he walked into the kitchen.
    Sherlock grinned at her husband, gave him a thumbs-up, and said, “How do we check them out?”
    “I called Clark Hoyt in the Eureka field office. I’ll messenger them up to him today. He’ll get back to me tomorrow. Then we’ll know, one way or the other.”
    “Ah, Dillon, I’ve got a confession to make.” She took a sip of her tea, grinned down at the few tea leaves on the bottom of the cup. “The pills you took, well, they’re cold medicine. You see, I’d already stolen the pills and replaced them with Sudafed I found in the medicine cabinet.”
    Sometimes she just bowled him over. He toasted her with his tea. “I’m impressed, Sherlock. When did you switch them?”
    “About five A . M . this morning, before anyone was stirring. Oh, yes, Mrs. Scruggins, the housekeeper, should be here soon. We can see what she’s got to say about all this.”
    Mrs. Scruggins responded to Sherlock’s questions by sighing a lot. She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as Savich, and she looked strong, very strong, even those long fingers of hers including her thumbs, that each sported a ring. She had muscles. Sherlock didn’t think she’d want to tangle with Mrs. Scruggins. She had to be at least sixty years old. It was amazing. There were pictures of her grandchildren lining the window ledge in the kitchen and she looked like she could take any number of muggers out at one time.
    Savich sat back and watched Sherlock work her magic. “An awful thing,” Sherlock said, shaking her head, obviously distressed. “We just can’t understand it. But I’ll bet you do, Mrs. Scruggins, here with poor Lily so much of the time. I’ll bet you saw things real clearly.”
    And Mrs. Scruggins said then, her beringed fingers curving gracefully around her coffee