Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

residence.
    Unlike me, who gets all of her information through idle gossip or snooping, Queen does research. She went through her list of fellow Hooters waitresses until she came up with someone who had done a stint in Iraq and knew a thing or two about explosives. She told her coworker what she had found and her suspicions were confirmed. Just like eggs, flour, and butter sitting on a counter indicate that baking will commence, copper wiring, electronics, and fertilizer can mean only one thing. A bomb is in the works.
    Armed with that information, I headed up to Lydia’s, where I found her at the same counter at which I had originally encountered her, her hands deep in the sudsy water in the sink, washing out a wineglass. The sun setting over the Hudson cast a golden glow over the kitchen and I took a minute to admire the view.
    “He wasn’t healthy as a horse at his last physical,” I said. “That’s what your sister told me the first time I came here. I’ve been wondering why she offered up that information so readily and without provocation.”
    Lydia looked up and regarded me with her dark eyes. I was momentarily distracted by the hunk of diamonds around her neck. “What are you talking about? And how did you get in here?”
    “ALS. Lou Gehrig’s disease.” I pointed to the front door. “And I walked in through the front door.”
    Her usually impassive gaze turned sad. She didn’t ask me how I knew about Carter’s diagnosis. “What do you know about terminal illness, Alison?”
    “More than you’d think.”
    “Have you ever seen anyone die after a long illness?”
    I swallowed hard, forcing the emotion back down into my gut. My sadness about the loss of both my parents, but especially my mother, was like a wound in my heart that opened occasionally and brought with it great pain and suffering before it closed over again. It was always there and never healed completely or for very long. It just lay dormant until something reminded me of it and how much it hurt. “Sadly, yes.”
    “So then you know.” She placed the wineglass that she had been washing on the drain board next to the sink, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “It’s not pleasant.”
    “That’s an understatement.”
    “I would never want anyone to suffer like Carter’s father had.” She saw the look on my face. “Yes, Carter’s father died of ALS, as well. We know how it goes and it’s not pleasant,” she repeated.
    “So you were going to blow him up.”
    The blank expression returned.
    “The explosives,” I said, showing her a little piece of copper wiring. “This.” I thought back to the day at Beans, Beans, and how Lydia had asked for the car keys. And how she had started the car from a safe distance with the remote access feature.
    She glanced at the copper wiring briefly. “Interesting.” She put her hands together as if in prayer. “I hope Queen is comfortable.”
    I was silent. If she wanted my thanks, she wasn’t going to get it.
    “I’m not sure why, but I loved him more than you’ll ever know, Alison.”
    “Enough to kill him?”
    “Enough to know that I never wanted to see him suffer as much as that disease would have made him suffer.”
    And with that one statement, I had my answer. Lydia stared at me and I stared back at her, neither one of us really seeing the other. I didn’t know if she was telling me the truth; for all I knew, she wanted to blow him up to punish him for his various and numerous transgressions. Or she really did love him as much as she claimed. All I knew was that if I could have saved my mother the suffering that she had endured, I would have. The thought had crossed my mind on more than one excruciating night that it would take nothing to smother her and put her out of her misery and hasten the peace that she was due. I had always felt that I had failed her by letting her suffer all those many days and nights until she had reached her inevitable end.
    “He had a lot of enemies,” she stated flatly. “Any one of them could have set up that bomb and the timer to explode when Carter started the car.” She looked out at the river. “Any one of them. They would have wanted him to die violently.” She looked back at me. “Don’t you think?”
    I snapped out of my reverie and looked at Lydia, seeing her for what she was: a betrayed yet grief-stricken woman. Her story was certainly plausible because, yes, Carter had a lot of enemies. And most of them would have wanted him