25. Black Pepper and Yogurt

Breakfast arrived. Sandy picked up the black pepper and shook it onto his omelet and hash browns. Through a mouthful of her egg white omelet Kathy asked, “How do you know it needs pepper before you taste it?”

He gave the pepper another deliberate shake before answering. “In all the years I’ve eaten here I find the omelet bland, it’s salty but not as spicy as I like. A touch of pepper jazzes it up.” He gave two more defiant shakes and hoped he wouldn’t regret it.    

“I’ve got some other news. I have a friend at the hospital where Madeline works and I asked her to get me Madeline’s fingerprints.”

Kathy looked surprised. “Can you do that? Don’t you need a warrant or something?”

He raised a forkful of egg to his mouth, peered at the layer of black pepper, shrugged and popped it in. It was perfect. He blotted his lips with the linen napkin and said reasonably, “If she was a suspect and I was thinking of charging her then, yes, I’d get a warrant. For now I just wanted to identify any of her prints at the scene.”

Brampton did things by the book. He was ethical and methodical. Of the two of them, she was the wild card who bent the rules. If he had obtained Madeline’s fingerprints, off the record, and was telling her about it, there must be something worth telling.

    “Go on then, what’s the news?”

“I knew the hospital would have her fingerprints on file, they keep drugs in a secure area that requires a hand scan to unlock it. As a surgical nurse, she’d have access to the drugs, and we haven’t ruled out drugs being part of Shaye’s death. We compared her prints to all the prints we got at Shaye’s house.” Kathy was about to tell him that Madeline had freely admitted visiting the house, but he swept on. “Are you ready for this? Her prints are on the dagger.”

Kathy’s hand went limp, she’d been holding a spoon heaped with yogurt which splatted onto the tabletop. She reflexively pushed it away from the edge to stop it dripping onto her lap, then used her napkin to clean her hand. “Geeze,” she groaned. “That is news.” She hadn’t thought to ask Madeline about the dagger. Why would she?

Brampton watched her clean-up efforts. She looked flustered, but he knew she was thinking hard. He could almost hear the wheels turning.

He blew out a breath. “We’ve got to get her in for questioning, but maybe you can talk to her again informally?”

Kathy nodded. “I’ll talk to her some more. She’s got a lot of stress, dealing with some hard stuff. If she’s innocent, I don’t want to add to her pain, but we got on okay, she seemed agreeable to another conversation. She’s not a flight risk, because she can’t leave her husband. Let me try.”

She thought again of the coldness in Madeline’s voice on the phone, then the helpless tears. Was it truly stress, or was she being scammed?