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“No idea,” Pauline said. “But you might want to ask her. See, when she came into the hospital after drinking the Xylitol-spiked punch, they were worried her kidneys might suffer. Xylitol’s mostly excreted by the liver, but it’s also hard on the kidneys, so who knows what a big dose of the artificial sweetener might’ve done if she hadn’t come in right away. But she did. We gave her fluids and dextrose, of course, and kept her a few nights for observation. The ER probably would’ve just run some labs, then discharged her, and they told her that. But after her boyfriend was seen by the doctor, he hurried to her side, and she announced that kidney function had worsened. The ER nurse told me that. After he heard about her supposed prognosis, Dr. Brightmore insisted she be admitted. No one argues with Dr. Brightmore.”
“Because he was a pharmacist and is well-known in town?” Elrik asked.
Pauline shook her head. “Because he’s on the hospital board. No one messes with board members, not if they want to keep their jobs.”
“You’re saying she didn’t need to be admitted?” Elrik asked. “I thought her kidney function had worsened, that she’ll soon need dialysis.”
Pauline shrugged. “Not right now. I’m not saying her kidney won’t get worse, but she’s nowhere close to needing dialysis and certainly not from the Xylitol poisoning.” She glanced around again. “But I didn’t tell you that. I did not discuss a patient, certainly not the health of the girlfriend of a board member. I was just casually educating you about kidney disease and using a hypothetical patient while I did it.”
“Why tell us this at all?” I asked.
“You were crying, and I felt bad. To me, the whole situation sounded manipulative. I saw you here, and I’m spontaneous. I thought you’d want to know.”
With that, she scooted around us and raced down the sidewalk. When she reached the crosswalk, she bolted toward the parking lot on the opposite side.
“Well,” I said, leaning against the window. “What do we make of this?”
Elrik leaned close. “It sounds like Sue has been lying about her health. The big question is, why?”
“Do you think Alfred knows? It didn’t sound like he does. He was concerned about her and was urging her to consider dialysis.”
“Which she isn’t because she doesn’t need it.”
“Not yet. You heard Pauline. Her condition could worsen, and she might one day need it. She’ll still refuse, I suspect.”
“Maybe she said her condition had worsened to get sympathy. People do odd things for all sorts of reasons.”
“How does this relate to Grannie, if at all?”
“No idea. I’ll think about it and see if I can come up with some reasons.”
“Sympathy’s the only reason I can think of right now. Sue has always been someone who likes to talk about this or that joint aching, even her bowels, and what she takes to stay regular. Her knee that needs replacement. The pink spot on her face that may or may not be early skin cancer. Grannie talks about her health sometimes too. It might be an older person thing and not anything specific to Sue.”
“Let me text her and see if I can stop by later today. I want to get to the bottom of this right away.”
Did Sue have a reason to put the Xylitol in the punch? If she was looking for sympathy, that would be one way to do it, especially if she knew she’d be treated so well at the hospital. People had done worse things for attention.
He sent the text. After putting his phone away, he frowned at me. We needed to go see Hazel, but we still had a few minutes before she expected us to arrive.
“Let’s run through this,” I said. “Who are our primary suspects?”
We sat on the iron chairs, and he filled me in on his conversation with Ginny and Bob. Then he pulled out his phone to go through his list.
“Alfred could’ve done it to harm Sue,” I said. “Hoping she’d go into full kidney failure, refuse dialysis and die, and he’d inherit her life insurance payout. He doesn’t appear to know she’s perfectly fine.” That really was a sucky thing to do to someone who cared for you, and Iwasn’t sure what I thought about it. We’d all been worried about her.
“Sue also has a motive,” Elrik said.
I couldn’t think of why she’d do something like that to her best friend.
“Jealousy,” Elrik offered. “She was winning the local awards until Grannie started knitting mittens.”
“There’s no way the committee will give the award to Grannie this year if she’s on trial for poisoning her friends, let alone in jail.”
“And Sue may know that the Xylitol wouldn’t cause much harm if she was treated right away. She might’ve been willing to risk it.”
I shook my head. “I still can’t believe she’d do something like that. And why lie about her kidney disease?”
“Sympathy could sway the committee into giving the award to her instead of your grandmother.”
