Jeanne Glidewell - Lexie Starr 05 - Just Ducky by Jeanne Glidewell

and, eventually, I too drifted off into a fitful slumber.
    Somewhere between dreaming that all my teeth were falling out one by one, while unsuccessfully trying to get a huge wad of bubble gum out of my mouth, and Stone giving me the Heimlich maneuver while I was participating in a hot dog eating contest against Pee Wee Hermann and Mean Joe Green, I dreamt I was being chased down a dark alley by a scary, wild-eyed man with a broken beer bottle in his hand. Even after the man morphed into a childhood friend of mine, and then finally into my late former mother-in-law, I kept running in sheer panic. I then stopped briefly at a café to purchase a cup of coffee before continuing my terrifying sprint down a dark, deserted highway. Apparently, even during my darkest hour, I had a caffeine addiction that couldn’t be denied.
    When Stone shook my shoulder an hour later, I was still damp with sweat and my heart was beating as if I’d just sprinted up the stairs to the top of the Empire State building. According to Stone, I’d been murmuring in my sleep, and tossing and turning in the lounge chair. Despite the nonsensical quality of my dreams, I was disturbed by the fear factor embedded in them. It was time to get up and go search through the inn for items I could justify washing, just to keep me busy while I tried to clear my mind.
    * * *
    I was deep in thought, while rinsing off the dishes after serving supper to the Spurleys from Nebraska, who had checked in about three o’clock. I was aware the tuna casserole I’d made tasted more like saturated sofa stuffing, with just a hint of lemon pepper, than anything a person would actually want to eat, but fortunately, our guests didn’t complain. I wondered for a moment if turmeric would have enhanced the flavor, had we had any on hand. The Senator and his wife seemed like a kind, laid-back couple, and knew from our dinner conversation that I’d had a traumatic morning. They were very sympathetic about my emotional distress.
    And Stone was too much of a gentleman to ever criticize my cooking, no matter how God-awful the new recipes I attempted turned out. He never failed to kiss me after every meal and thank me for preparing it. The closest he’d ever come to objecting to a dish I’d served, was when he referred to my seven-layer lasagna as a “valiant effort.” Even I couldn’t choke down that culinary catastrophe, and from years of eating my own cooking, I could force down some really offensive vittles.
    When the phone rang, it startled me. I dropped a wine glass into the porcelain sink, shattering it. I didn’t even hesitate to consider the mess. Instead, I dried my hands quickly with a dishtowel and rushed to answer the phone. As I’d hoped, it was Wendy calling in regard to the results of the autopsy.
    “Hi Mom,” she greeted me. “I told Nate about our conversation earlier, and he agreed that from your conversation with Ducky yesterday, she didn’t sound like someone on the verge of ending their life. And we did find multiple hematomas on her arms.”
    “Hematomas?”
    “Bruises, basically. But as you surely know, when a person ages their skin gets considerably thinner. Sometimes an insignificant bump against a doorframe can cause major discoloration in the skin of a person Ducky’s age or even yours. Because of the nature of these hematomas, they might be considered suspicious, but can’t be definitively considered defensive wounds. And other than that, there was really nothing of any significance to be found, other than the telltale ligature marks around her neck that had the characteristic inverted ‘V’ shape, which indicates suicide rather than homicide.”
    “How’s that?” I asked.
    “When a body is already deceased, as in the event of having been murdered before the hanging, the ligature mark is nearly always a straight-line bruise. However, in the event of a suicide, where the person is still alive when the hanging occurs, the bruise is typically