Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

irregular, to say the least,” he started. “But what the hell? I’m already in a pile of shit, thanks to you and your sleuthing skills.” He said it in the kindest way possible and I could picture the rueful smile on his face. “You can’t share this with anyone. Got it?”
    He sounded serious. “Got it.”
    “Here’s the thing. Your friend Carter?”
    “Not my friend.”
    “Just a figure of speech. Don’t get your panties in a wad.” He chuckled, presumably thinking about my panties and the uncomfortable wedgie that would result from them being in a wad. “Did you know that he had early-stage ALS?”
    “ALS?”
    “Lou Gehrig’s disease. It’s a degenerative disorder. Because we had missed the poisoning in the initial autopsy, I decided to go back and test the remaining tissue for every possible outcome. And I got ALS.”
    “I know what ALS is,” I said.
    “So you know that it is most probably fatal. And that before it is fatal, it’s an extremely debilitating disease.”
    I did know that. I didn’t know a lot about the disease, but I did know that it was one that caused much pain and discomfort before it took your life. “Why are you telling me this?”
    He laughed. “Why? Because it’s germane to the case. And nobody else who’s involved seems to give a good goddamn about this new development, certainly not the village police for one. You seem more interested in what happened to Carter Wilmott than anyone else. I wanted to test a theory on you. Do you think that Wilmott could have poisoned himself? You know, to avoid what was ahead?”
    I gave that some thought. I guessed it was possible, but probable? Not likely. I told Mac what I thought.
    “I guess you’re right. Although I wasn’t a huge fan of Ginny Miller, I just didn’t see ‘killer’ written on her face. Maybe I’m getting long in the tooth. Maybe I’m losing my edge,” he said sadly.
    “I don’t think you are, Mac. It’s just hard to imagine anyone who saves lives for a living taking someone else’s.”
    “True enough, Alison. When all was said and done, though, he was a goner, plain and simple. Despite everything that transpired. And that’s just sad to me.”
    I bid him good-bye and hung up the phone. Maybe that had been her motive all along: she just didn’t want Carter to suffer and had slowly poisoned him in the most humane way possible to spare him what lay ahead for him.
    It didn’t matter, ultimately. Two people were dead, and whether one of them had met his maker because the other had good, albeit twisted, intentions was no longer an issue.

Twenty-Nine
     
    Queen and Kevin had whipped up a delicious dinner of linguine with clam sauce and it was waiting for me when I arrived home. The entire way home I had thought about Ginny’s suicide and then Carter’s terminal illness. It made me wonder, though. Was Carter’s debilitating condition, as evidenced in the blog photos, from the poisoning or his disease? I eventually decided that I no longer cared, particularly if, like Mac said, no one else did. The case was closed and I could move on with things.
    Like deciding how, where, and when I would be married.
    I sat down at the dining room table with Kevin and Queen and dug into the linguine. “Hey, this is good! Who made this?”
    Kevin, whose head was bowed over his plate in a silent grace, looked up. “It was a joint effort.” He unfolded his napkin and put it on his plate. “And don’t so sound surprised.”
    “I’m not,” I said. “It’s just that it tastes way better than anything I could make.”
    Queen sat in silence, picking at her dinner. Although we hadn’t spent a lot of time together, even I was perceptive enough to discern that something was wrong. I asked her if there was something she wanted to talk about.
    Kevin gave her a meaningful look but continued eating his dinner.
    “What?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
    “I’m going to move back home,” she said.
    That didn’t seem like bad news to me but I played along. “Back to your parents’ home?” Without makeup, she looked young enough to still live at her childhood home so I assumed that she didn’t have her own place. I also knew that you would have to work a lot of Hooters shifts to pay for your own apartment in this area.
    “No, with my husband.”
    “You have a husband?” I blurted out, a piece of pasta leaving my mouth.
    “And a dog,” she added.
    “A husband and a dog?” I asked. “Then why are you