Crazybone by Bill Pronzini

attack.”
    “Lengel’s the resident physician here?” Redwood Village had a small clinic with a doctor and nurse on call twenty-four hours.
    “Yes. He signed the death certificate.”
    “So if Captain Archie had a bad heart and there’s no question of how he died...?”
    “Congestive heart failure can be induced by an overdose of digitoxin, the medication he was taking to regulate his heartbeat. His maintainence dose was 0.05 milligrams per day. His prescription — from his own physician, Dr. Johannsen — was for pills of exactly that dosage, to be taken one every evening at bedtime. But the night he died he was given or forced to swallow a larger dosage.”
    “How can you know that?”
    “Well, to begin with, I’m the one who found him.”
    Kerry blinked at her. “How did you—”
    “We were friends, good friends. Archie had been depressed and I went over early that morning to see if I could cheer him up.”
    “How did you get in? Was his door unlocked?”
    “I have a key. And it’s none of your business why.”
    “What about this digitoxin overdose?” I asked.
    “Archie’s pills, the prescribed 0.05 dosage, were orange. When I went back later, after his body was taken away, I found a pink pill that must have been dropped and accidentally kicked under the bed. I had a feeling something was amiss and the pink pill confirmed it.”
    “The pink pill did.”
    “That’s right. Pink is the color of a 0.10 dosage, twice what Archie was permitted to take each day.”
    “Are you sure it was digitoxin?”
    “Positive. Of that and of the dosage. I showed the pink pill to my own doctor.”
    “Maybe it was from an old prescription of Archie’s. Maybe it’d been under the bed a long time.”
    “Archie never took a dosage larger than 0.05,” Cybil said. “He told me so himself. And there was plenty of dust under his bed but none on the pill.”
    “He didn’t get the larger dosage from Dr. Lengel, by any chance?”
    “No. And there were no other pink digitoxin pills in his unit. I know because I looked.”
    “And that’s why you think he was murdered, the one pink pill you found?”
    “Essentially, yes.”
    “That’s pretty thin evidence, Cybil.”
    “Don’t you think I know that?”
    “You haven’t talked to the local police, have you?”
    She gave me an up-from-under look, the prototype of the one Kerry used on me from time to time. “Of course not.”
    “Told anyone else of your suspicion? Dr. Lengel? Dr. Johannsen? The Captain’s attorney?”
    “No. An autopsy would corroborate the overdose, I’m sure, but Dr. Lengel saw no reason to request one and no one else will either without evidence of foul play. Besides, I don’t care to be considered a foolish, fanciful old lady by anyone including my daughter and son-in-law.”
    “Did I say you were foolish and fanciful?”
    “It’s what you’re thinking.”
    “No, it isn’t,” I said. “I don’t doubt your good sense and neither does Kerry. I’m just trying to understand why you’re so sure it was murder. Why not suicide? You said Captain Archie was depressed and his health was poor. He could’ve gotten the larger dose of digitoxin himself, some way—”
    “He did not commit suicide,” Cybil said.
    “How can you be so sure?”
    “Archie Todd was a devout Catholic. He attended Mass regularly every Sunday.”
    “Oh,” I said.
    Kerry said, “Why exactly was he depressed?”
    “I don’t know. He wouldn’t talk about it. But it was more than just general melancholy — he was angry about something. Very angry the day before his death.”
    “You’ve no idea why?”
    “The only thing he ever said to me was that he’d made a terrible mistake, he should never have trusted the bastards. His exact words.”
    “Friends or business associates who deceived him in some way,” I said. “Or old enemies come back into his life.”
    “I can’t imagine who would want to do him any kind of harm. Archie Todd was a gentle, easygoing