Free Family Vault by Charlotte MacLeod

borrowed time as you know. At least it was quick and peaceful. You might as well go ahead and call the undertaker. Tell whoever you get to call my office, and I’ll have my secretary send over the death certificate.”
    “What are you going to put on it?” Sarah asked.
    “Heart failure, what else?”
    The doctor turned around and gaped as though he had, in fact, been unaware there was somebody behind him. “Who are you?”
    “A friend,” she snapped, “and I must say I don’t think much of your examination. Mr. O’Ghee was perfectly hale and hearty yesterday afternoon.”
    “If you’re such a pal of his, miss, you ought to know better than that. Tim was in rough shape and had been for years. Mrs. Wandelowski, had he been taking his insulin on schedule?”
    “How’m I supposed to know? I gave him the vials regular out of the icebox like you told me to. I didn’t watch him take no shots. What do you think I am? Them needles turn my stomach.”
    “Um.”
    The doctor looked around the tiny, bare room. There was a wastebasket beside the dresser. He looked into it, finding nothing but the front section of the previous night’s newspaper. Sarah noticed with dismay that her own face appeared on the first page in a group shot with Dolph and some policemen. The caption read, “Stripper’s Body Found in Historic Tomb.”
    He held up the paper. “Anything in here to upset him, I wonder?”
    “Oh, God, yes,” cried Mrs. Wandelowski. “I should have thought of that in the first place. Tim was right there watching when they dug her up, can you believe it? Came home white as a sheet, shaking so hard he could barely get his coat off. I sat him down in the kitchen and gave him hot coffee with a little whiskey in it, not enough to hurt a fly. I know what he can have and what he can’t. Couldn’t, I mean. Poor old Tim, I’m going to miss him.”
    She sniffled, not very convincingly, Sarah thought. “He said he knew who it was the minute he laid eyes on her. Between you and me, I think they had something going for a while, ’way back when. Tim wasn’t a bad-looking guy when he was young. I seen pictures. You know how old people are always dragging out snapshots they want you to look at. Same old lies over and over about how great they used to be.”
    She touched her eyes very carefully with a tissue. “So last night he sat there at the kitchen table talking my ear off about this broad with the rubies in her teeth till I couldn’t take no more. Made me sick to think of her laying there all this time. Anyhow, I had a date with my friend from over the Avenue, so I made him a cup of soup and told him he better go to bed.”
    “You never saw him after that?”
    “Nope. I was kind of late getting in and I figured he must be asleep. His door was shut.”
    “Anybody else in the house?”
    “Not last night. My husband’s away. On business,” she added with a glare at Sarah.
    “I see.”
    The doctor put down the paper and knelt to peer under the bed. “Ah, here we are.”
    He reached in and scooped out a handful of dust fluffs and a stray sock. With the debris came two small plastic vials and some scraps of paper.
    “Here’s the insulin he didn’t take, and here, I’d say, is what finished him off.” He spread out the scraps so the printing on them was visible. They were all alike.
    “He’s been into my candy! Tim knows better than that. It could kill him.” Mrs. Wandelowski began to laugh hysterically. “What a way to go.”
    “But those are all Milky Way wrappers,” Sarah protested.
    “So what? They been having a special.”
    “I know, we bought some too. I offered one to Mr. O’Ghee yesterday, and he refused. He said he couldn’t eat them.”
    “Look, Miss whoever-the-hell-you-are,” said the doctor wearily, “if a despondent old man decides to kill himself, he’ll take any means that comes handy. You ought to be able to figure out what happened as well as I can. It must have been one hell of a