Death of a Second Wife (A Dotsy Lamb Travel Mystery) by Maria Hudgins Page A

her. “I do understand, Erin. You and Patrick have your hearts set on your Matterhorn wedding, and now this. It’s heart-breaking, but try to imagine how Patrick’s father feels. Think how Juergen feels.”
    Erin gathered up her too-big shoes and left the room. I replayed the whole conversation in my mind and came to a startling conclusion. Erin’s haste to marry Patrick was about something else. Something she couldn’t talk about. Erin wasn’t a whiner and she wasn’t excessively sentimental. There must be another problem. A threat of some sort that had nothing to do with the Matterhorn.
    * * * * *
    I found Patrick in the bedroom he shared with Brian. Stopping in the doorway, I chuckled to myself. As when they were kids, they’d already divided the room into Brian’s side and Patrick’s side. Brian’s side was a mess of clothes, paperbacks, shoes and boarding passes. A blue Oxford cloth shirt lay crumpled and wet on the floor beneath the boots he’d worn in the snow. On Patrick’s side, three pairs of shoes were lined up, toes against the wall, exactly three inches between pairs. Bed made, luggage stowed, loose change in a little bowl on the bedside table.
    “Dad and Brian went out somewhere together,” Patrick said.
    I recounted what Erin and I had talked about a few minutes earlier.
    Patrick scooted his chair back from the desk where he had been writing in his journal. “I told her I wanted to postpone the wedding until August. I can get a week off then and she can, too. We could have it at Sacred Heart and most of our friends could attend, but Erin doesn’t want to talk about it.”
    “Why do you think she’s so adamant?”
    Patrick stood up, laced his hands behind his head, and walked to the window. After a full minute, he said, “I don’t know. I really don’t. Erin isn’t normally like this.” He turned toward me, pulled his glasses off and rubbed the lenses with the tail of his sweater. “She’s always so easy to get along with. Sometimes I have to ask her, ‘What do you want?’ She always goes along with whatever I want.”
    “Aren’t there any alarms going off in your head, Patrick?”
    He didn’t answer me.
    “Might she be pregnant?”
    Patrick’s shoulders jerked. I think my question caught him off-guard. “No. She isn’t pregnant.” He coughed and stared at the floor. “I’m sure she isn’t.”
    Patrick’s discomfort was palpable. I gave him a break and changed the subject. “I’ve been trying to make sense of this note I found. It’s Stephanie’s writing and it may have been the last thing she ever wrote.” I pulled the note from my pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to my son. “I found it on the pad by the kitchen phone.”
    “Why did you take it?” He put his glasses back on.
    “I’m not sure. I suppose it’s the lack of a suicide note that’s bothering me.” I paused, wondering if that was really it, or if it was something else. Something about the scene in the bunker this morning? Something I’d heard? “Something’s not right. Don’t you feel it, too?”
    “Brian said Stephanie was the last person he’d expect to kill herself. I think he’s right, Mom. Yes. I agree with you. There’s something we don’t know, but what?”
    “Look at the note.” I pointed to the Au and the Ag.
    Patrick squinted at the page and muttered, “Ag, agriculture, agnostic, agent . . . Au, auto, Auburn University, awesome . . . no, that’s Aw.”
    “How about chemical symbols? Stephanie studied chemistry in college, didn’t she? And all the A’s are capitalized, the way chemical symbols are supposed to be written.”
    “Brilliant. Sure. Au is gold, isn’t it? What’s Ag?”
    “Silver. I looked it up.”
    “Silver and gold.” Patrick resumed his seat in the straight-back chair, crossed his skinny legs, and bent over the note in a Sherlockian manner. “You may be right, Mom, but that doesn’t tell us why. Or who she was talking to at the time, or what they