A Stitch to Die For (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Book 5) (8 page)

I’m betting whatever kept Cloris up last night didn’t compare with the reason behind my insomnia, but I wasn’t about to play the one-upmanship card with my best friend. I hate when people do that. I took a swig of coffee before speaking. “Remember that cranky old lady who lived across the street from me?”

“How can I forget? She once threatened to slash my tires if I ever parked in front of her house again.”

“She’s dead.”

Cloris took a bite of her cupcake and shrugged. “So? She was really old, right?”

“In her eighties.”

“I’ll bet your neighbors are celebrating.”

“Not once they learned how she died.”

“Meaning?”

“She was executed.”

“What!”

I told her about Betty’s murder and my nocturnal research. “I think Betty was really Belita Acosta Bentworth.”

“Who’s Belita Acosta Bentworth?”

“A woman originally from California. She served twenty years for poisoning her children. Maybe it’s all coincidence, but the timeline fits perfectly.”

“You think one of her kids killed her?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” I filled Cloris in on what I’d learned about Belita. “When Belita was arrested in 1965, her three children ranged in age from nine months to three years. All had suffered from a variety of ailments since birth, often spending time in the hospital. Her husband, a salesman, traveled three out of five days a week. With no family in the area, care of the sickly children fell solely on Belita.”

“Sounds like Munchausen by proxy.”

I nodded. “Probably but no one had heard of the syndrome back then.”

“Did her children survive?”

“Barely. Luckily, an emergency room doctor became suspicious when Belita brought the kids in with severe flu-like symptoms and said they’d all gotten sick at exactly the same time.”

“I’m not a doctor,” said Cloris, “but that would certainly raise a few red flags with me. Flu generally strikes one family member first, then travels from person to person until everyone is sick.”

“The doctor thought the same thing. He ran some tests and immediately ruled out the flu. Further testing pinpointed the problem as hypernatremia.”

“What’s that?”

“Salt poisoning. All three kids had toxic levels of salt in their systems. When the doctor questioned Belita, she explained away the excessive levels of salt by saying she and her husband had taken the children to the beach the day before, and the kids had swallowed ocean water.”

“Is that possible? Getting salt poisoning from a few mouthfuls of sea water?”

“Not according to the experts who testified at her trial. They said such high levels of sodium wouldn’t even be present in near-drowning victims.”

“So she force-fed them salt? Wouldn’t little kids spit out or vomit up food that was too salty?”

“The district attorney claimed Belita withheld formula from the infant and fluids from the two older children. Eventually, the kids became so thirsty that they ingested the salt-laden beverages.”

Cloris took another bite of her cupcake and thought for a moment. “I wonder if she was trying to gain attention and sympathy or really wanted to kill her kids.”

“She certainly gained attention but no sympathy. The judge sentenced her to twenty years, speculating that her kids were probably perfectly healthy all along, that their previous ailments were also caused by their mother.”

“And the father never suspected anything?”

I shrugged. “It was 1965. How many men were all that involved in childcare back then? Her husband believed what Belita told him about the kids’ illnesses.”

“He must have felt huge guilt afterwards. What happened to him and the kids?”

“He divorced Belita and moved out of state.” I took another bite of cupcake and washed it down with a swig of coffee before continuing. “The children were probably too young to remember what their mother had done to them, but if one or more of them suffered permanent damage, at some point, they may have eventually learned the cause of their problems.”

“Or knew all along. The father may not have kept the wife’s crimes from their kids.”

“Another possibility.”

“But if your neighbor was Belita, and she was killed by one of her children, why would the kid wait so long to seek revenge?”

I had wondered the same thing and come up with a possible scenario. “Maybe they believed their mother had died when they were very young. Suppose the father recently died, and the kids first learned of their mother’s crimes while cleaning out his possessions? That’s how Ira wound up in my life.”

Ira tracked me down after seeing a television news clip of Lucille blocking traffic with one of her Daughters of the October Revolution protests. He recognized the name from some memorabilia his father had squirreled away in the attic. That’s when we discovered Ira and Dead Louse of a Spouse were half-brothers. And now I’m stuck with Ira and his brats in my life.

“You need to find out what happened to Belita’s children,” said Cloris.

“I know, but I ran out of time at home.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?” She removed a stack of craft supply catalogues piled on the seat of the only other chair in my cubicle and deposited them on top of my file cabinet. After wheeling the chair next to the one in front of my computer, she settled into it and said, “Let’s start surfing.”

First I created a spreadsheet on my computer and labeled each column with Belita’s name and those of her husband and children. Then I opened a browser and accessed the
Sacramento Bee
newspaper archives where I’d found all my information about the case up to this point. Under each name I jotted down everything we could find about the five family members.

John Bentworth and Belita Acosta met at the end of World War Two. Belita had worked for the International Red Cross; John was an army mechanic.

“Belita was a war bride?”

“In a manner of speaking. Her parents emigrated from Spain, but she was born in the States.”

“She probably gained the medical knowledge she needed to fool people about her children’s illnesses from working at the Red Cross,” said Cloris.

Little information existed in the newspaper articles about the children other than their names and ages: John Jr., three; Michael, two; and Mary, nine months of age at the time of Belita’s arrest.

“That would make John Jr. fifty-three, Michal fifty-two, and Mary around fifty-one,” I said.

“And their father probably somewhere in his eighties.”

“If he’s still alive.”

We uncovered one newspaper article by a reporter covering the trial that mentioned Mary experienced convulsions while in the hospital. “Convulsions can cause brain damage,” I said.

“I wonder if Belita somehow continued to force salt into the kids while they were hospitalized.”

“Maybe. I read up a bit on Munchausen by proxy last night. Nowadays if a hospital suspects a parent of having the syndrome, they set up surveillance cameras.”

“But that’s not something that would have occurred back then,” said Cloris.

“No, they didn’t even suspect Belita at first, even after she suggested the ocean water as a reason for the salt poisoning.”

“How did they finally catch on?”

“Her husband turned her in. After the hospital diagnosed the illnesses as salt poisoning and he heard Belita’s theory on how the kids got sick, he grew suspicious. He didn’t remember any of the kids swallowing sea water that day. He searched his home and discovered a dozen containers of salt hidden in various locations around the house.”

“Who hordes and hides salt?” asked Cloris.

“Only someone with something to hide.”

“We need to find out what happened to those kids,” she said. “We both have a computer. Why don’t we split up? Two of us surfing will take half the time.”

“Great idea. I’ll take John and Mary. You search for information on John Jr. and Michael.”

“Start with Facebook. Everyone is on Facebook these days.”

“Everyone except me.”

Cloris grinned sheepishly. “Well, actually, I’m not on Facebook, either. I hate the intrusive nature of social media. Hopefully, Belita’s children don’t share our sentiments.”

Even though neither Cloris nor I had personal Facebook accounts, we both were tasked with posting to the site through the
American Woman
Facebook page, which gave us the ability to search Facebook for Belita’s children. “We should check out the ancestry websites as well,” I said.

Cloris headed back to her cubicle. A few keystrokes later I came across an obituary for John Bentworth. By now everyone else had arrived at work, and our floor bustled with activity. Not wanting anyone to overhear me, I walked across the hall to Cloris’s cubicle. “John is dead.”

“When?”

“Two years ago in Florida. From lung cancer. The obit says he’s survived by Susan, his wife of nearly fifty years, their three children—John Jr., Michael, and Mary—and seven grandchildren. John Jr. was listed as a captain in the army. He’s stationed in Guam. Michael and Mary both live in Milwaukee, or at least that’s where they all were two years ago.”

Cloris knit her brows together and chewed on her lower lip. “If John and Susan were married nearly fifty years, that would mean he remarried almost immediately after his divorce.”

“Yeah. Makes you wonder if the traveling salesman had something going on the side.”

“Maybe Belita didn’t have Munchausen by proxy. If she found out John was cheating on her, she may have poisoned the kids to get back at him.”

I thought about how my husband had deceived me for so many years. “If I’d discovered Karl’s deceit before he died, I wouldn’t have tried to kill my kids out of revenge.”

Cloris laughed. “No, you would’ve killed Karl.”

“I certainly would have fantasized about it, but I never would have acted on it.”

“Because you’re sane and rational. Belita wasn’t. Whether she tried to kill her kids to hurt John or because she suffered from a mental disorder, she still poisoned them.”

“True. But we’re no closer to figuring out if Betty was really Belita. The obit states Susan was the mother of Belita’s three children. Those kids were so young, they may know nothing about Belita. Have you come across anything?”

“Not yet. I couldn’t find Facebook accounts for either of the boys. We might have better luck hunting down the grandchildren on social media. Do you know their names?”

“The obit didn’t list them, but I’ll keep digging later. I need something other than a hunch to present to Detective Spader. Right now, though, I have to prepare for a photo shoot downstairs.”

“I’m caught up on work enough that I can keep surfing for a bit,” said Cloris.

I headed down the hall to the closet where I stored supplies, props, and models. Our fashion and travel editors often jetted off to exotic locations for their photo shoots. My travels consisted of taking two flights downstairs to our ground floor photography studio where I also doubled as in-house stylist.

Today we were shooting the crafts for our February issue. Naomi had chosen red lace as the issue’s theme, tying in to both Valentine’s Day and the annual Go Red for Women heart health campaign.

For my crafts spread I had designed a series of three Victorian-inspired red monochrome crazy quilt pillows—one round, one square, and one heart-shaped. I grabbed the pillows and a cut glass vase from the closet and chose the stairs over the elevator, hoping to walk off a few of those cupcake calories. At the reception desk I stopped to pick up the roses that had been delivered for me.

“Secret admirer?” asked one of the new human resources employees as she handed over the flowers. She was younger than any of her predecessors by at least a couple of decades and decidedly better-looking. Her hair, makeup, designer outfit, and accessories suggested she spent most of her salary on her looks and wardrobe. Nonetheless, Trimedia had probably saved a bundle by hiring less experienced replacements for the four embezzlers.

Recently instituted cost-cutting initiatives had all human resources staff doubling as receptionists. The four women rotated two-hour shifts during the day. I figured it was only a matter of time before I wound up with janitorial duties added to my job description.

“I wish,” I said, glancing down at the roses cradled in the crook of my elbow. “These are for today’s photo shoot.” I extended my hand. “I’m Anastasia Pollack, by the way. I’m one of the
American Woman
editors.”

She shook my hand, offering me a friendly smile. “Ardith Callahan. Do you get to keep the flowers after the photo shoot?”

“By the time the photographer is through with them, they won’t be worth keeping. The hot lights wilt them very quickly.” I wasn’t the only editor using the roses today. Being a third-rate magazine, we stretched our budget as far as we could.

“Too bad,” she said, turning her attention back to her computer screen. I wondered if I’d interrupted a
Candy Crush
session.

Juggling pillows, vase, and roses, I continued on to the photography studio. One section of the massive room was set up to mimic a bedroom. After dumping my armload of props and pillows on a nearby table, I set about preparing for the shoot. I pulled appropriately colored linens and a comforter from the selection we kept in the studio and made the bed while the photographer set up his equipment. Then I filled the vase with water, placed the roses in the vase, set the vase on the nightstand, and arranged the pillows on the bed.