been in the afternoon. He said he’d just gotten a box of chocolates in the mail and he wanted to know if I’d sent it. I said I hadn’t. When I found my father, there was a pile of mail on a table in the entryway next to the mail slot, but I never saw the box of chocolates.”
“I didn’t see any mention of a box of chocolates in the police reports.”
Paulson stared into space for a moment. Then her features hardened. “The back door was open,” she said.
“What?”
“Father always locked all the doors. But the back door was open. If there was poison in those chocolates, the person who sent them could have taken the box away after he died.”
“There was no mention of the back door being open in the police report.”
“I didn’t discover it until I came back to the house to get some clothes for the funeral, a few days after the police had left. It didn’t occur to me that it might be important until now. I don’t even know that Father wasn’t responsible. It’s also possible that one of the investigators forgot to lock the door when he left.”
“That’s a possibility. But the info about the door is helpful. Thank you.” Quinlan handed Paulson his card. “If you think of anything else, please call me.”
“Thank you for caring,” Paulson said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The office of the state medical examiner was in a tree-shaded, two-story, redbrick building that had once been a Scandinavian funeral home. The roof over the front porch was supported by white pillars, and the porch was partially hidden from view by arborvitae, split-leaf maples, and other shrubs.
Max Rothstein came out to greet Morris Quinlan as soon as the receptionist announced him. The state medical examiner was a Santa Claus look-alike with a beer belly and full white beard. His deep voice, sense of humor, and ability to make the most obscure medical facts understandable made him an excellent witness.
“What can you tell me about the cause of death in Sophie Randall’s case?” Quinlan asked when they were seated in Rothstein’s office.
“It was definitely cyanide poisoning. I found traces during the autopsy, and the chocolates were all doctored.”
“Was there anything special about the chocolates?”
“I had the lab look at them. It’s a national brand. The killer could have bought them in any state in the union. And there’s nothing distinctive about the box or the wrapping paper that would let us narrow down where it was purchased. The chocolates were mailed a day before Christmas so the odds on anyone remembering who mailed them is next to zero. There were no prints on the wrapping paper, the box, or anything else.”
“Did you get a chance to look at the autopsy report in Arthur Gentry’s case?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“Arthur Gentry had been dead for several days before Eileen Paulson discovered his body, which makes a conclusive diagnosis of cyanide poisoning difficult. Cyanide has a relatively short half-life, anywhere from minutes to hours. That means toxicological detection of cyanide to conclusively confirm cyanide poisoning is feasible only within the first few hours following exposure.
“However, there were some findings consistent with cyanide poisoning. Gentry vomited, and the vomit around his lips was black. The tissue of the liver, lungs, spleen, and heart was bright pink, and the stomach lining was badly damaged and blackened. This is consistent with cyanide poisoning. And there’s one other finding that may help you. Gentry ate chocolate before he died.”
“The same type that killed Randall?”
“No. I asked the lab to look into that, and they concluded that the chocolate that Gentry and Randall ate were different brands.”
* * *
The Justice Center was a sixteen-story building in downtown Portland that housed the Multnomah County jail, some circuit and district courts, state parole and probation, the state crime lab, and the central precinct of the Portland Police Bureau. The Detective Division was a wide-open space that stretched along one side of the thirteenth floor. Each detective had their own cubicle separated from the other cubicles by a chest-high divider. Morris Quinlan had just returned from talking to Dr. Rothstein when Roger Dillon walked into his cubicle.
Quinlan swiveled his chair and looked up at his partner’s smiling face. “What’s got you all excited?” Quinlan asked.
“I just got off the phone with Scott Bentley, my contact at Scotland Yard, and he had some interesting things to tell me.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“Robert Chesterfield is British. He called himself Lord Chesterfield when he performed in London as a stage