Poisoned (The Alex Harris Mystery Series) (7 page)

I thought that was probably the understatement of the century given the surroundings in which I now sat.

“Mrs. Brissart,” John said, “the others should be arriving shortly. Can you give me a bit of a background on them?”

“Of course. First there are my two sisters. Both married and both widowed, though June and her husband had been separated for years before he died. They never bothered to divorce because June wouldn’t hear of such a thing. That would tarnish the family reputation. Family ties and reputation mean
everything
to June. Of course, the absence of a divorce never stopped her husband from continuing his various affairs. May fared better in her marriage. Both their husbands died of cancer, isn’t that odd?

“Then we have May’s two sons, Steven and Larry. Larry is married to April and they have two children who go to a private school out west. Steven is divorced and has a daughter, Trish Hollander. She’s divorced as well after only a year of marriage. Larry and April are okay, though April’s a little dingy and Larry’s pretty useless. Then we have—”

But Mrs. Brissart didn’t have a chance to continue. The doorbell rang and a few minutes later Mrs. Platz came in to announce that everyone had arrived.

Mrs. Brissart and I spent the afternoon in the study working on funeral arrangements and the death announcements the printer delivered that afternoon. John and Detective Maroni spent the afternoon interviewing the other parties.

Shortly after six they came into the study with some disturbing news. John took Mrs. Brissart’s small hand in his and looked into her eyes. This didn’t look good but I couldn’t figure out how it could get much worse.

“We’ve done a preliminary interview of everyone and need to talk again with certain people. We still haven’t received the lab results, but...”

“But what, Detective?” Mrs. Brissart asked with a trembling voice.

“It’s our opinion that your grandson was not the intended victim. You were.”

“Oh, dear God, oh, dear God.” Mrs. Brissart sobbed uncontrollably while I held her and John looked on helplessly. “If I had just agreed to sell that land this never would have happened! I killed him with my self-righteous principles. My dear, sweet Bradley, it’s all my fault. Which one of my
precious
relatives did it?” she demanded looking up at John and pleading for an answer.

“We don’t know that yet. But it seems everyone is harboring animosity towards you because of the land. So far no one has said anything that would lead us to believe Bradley was the intended victim. We will find out who is responsible, I promise you.”

“Then it
was
one of them?” Mrs. Brissart asked, as tears streaked her face.

“I’m afraid we don’t know that yet, either,” John admitted. “But we have to start somewhere and this is the direction we’re taking for the moment.”

The door to the study opened and a man in his early fifties walked in.

“Kenneth!” Mrs. Brissart jumped up and threw her thin arms around her son, both of them crying softly.

Leaving the family to grieve in private, John, Detective Maroni and I left the study.

“John, do you really think someone from her own family could have done this?”

“We’re contacting some of the local charities that Mrs. Brissart worked with, though I doubt we’ll find any connection there.”

“But it is possible that someone, a total stranger, could have come in. The door is always unlocked.”

“With a batch of poisoned macaroons? Highly unlikely.”

I blushed at the inanity of my statement. Of course there was no one walking around Indian Cove with contaminated cookies.

At least, I hoped not.

“Mom, how do you manage to wrap these samosas so tight? Mine always unravel in the deep fryer,” I asked half an hour later while I stood in my parents’ kitchen helping my mother with the final touches for game night.

My mother gave me a thoughtful look. “I don’t know, I just kind of fold it like a diaper and it stays.”

Well, that must be it. A diaper. What the heck did I know about diapers? Both my niece and nephew, Kendall and Henry, had their little bottoms encased in disposables. Who needed to fold? By the time I managed to put the plate with the samosas and mint yogurt sauce out in the living room, I managed to eat two, looking carefully at exactly how in the world my mother folded them.

In addition to the samosas, my mom had prepared an assortment of cut vegetables and a horseradish dip, her famous hot artichoke and jalapeño pepper dip with crackers, and some different kinds of cheese.

I eyed the chocolate cake sitting on the kitchen counter but knew it would do no good to ask for a slice now. The cake was for
later
. Later. Exactly when was later? It had always intrigued me from the time I was little and my mother would say we’re going
later
, or, we’ll have that
later
. How did mothers know when later had arrived?

“Boo! What were you thinking about? You’re always off somewhere on a cloud lately.”

“Sorry. I didn’t hear you arrive,” I said to my sister. “Where’s Michael?” I asked referring to Sam’s husband.

Sam took off her short denim jacket and hung it on the hook behind the kitchen door. “In the living room with John and Mom and Dad. What are you thinking about?”

“Just wondering if it would do any good to ask for a piece of this cake right now.”

“Later. Now come on, tell me what’s going on with the investigation?”

I walked to the door leading to the hall. “Good. Just checking on John. There’s not much to report yet except John thinks Mrs. Brissart might have been the intended victim.”

Sam leaned closer. “Really? Why?”

“I don’t know. We never got that far. Mrs. Brissart’s son and his wife, Bradley’s parents, arrived, and we didn’t get a chance to talk more about it.”

“Have you met any of the family yet?”

“No. Not to talk with anyway.”

“When do you think you’ll be starting your investigation?”

I looked aghast and had the decency to put my hand to my chest. “What makes you think I’ll be investigating?”

“Because you’re dying to get your nose in the middle of everything.”

I gave my sister a sly smile and grabbed onto the sleeve of Sam’s purple turtleneck sweater. “You’re right and if John thinks Mrs. Brissart was the intended victim then I better not waste any more time.”

“Why?”

“Because if someone wanted to kill her and didn’t do it right the first time, I’m sure they’ll try again.”

“Girls! Come, let’s get started,” Mom shouted from the other room. We would always be
girls
to our mother even when we hit our nineties.

“Just make sure you keep me up to date on any new developments,” Sam whispered as she followed me into the living room.

The Harris family had been brought up on games. Meme was a big card player, and even though my mom worked most of her life and had a family, she always made time for a game of cards or, better yet, Scrabble.

“This is what I thought we would do tonight,” Mom said, taking charge. “Instead of playing the actual game and trying to get the different color pie pieces, I thought we would pair up into two teams. We’ll have one minute to answer and each correct answer gets a point. Every time you miss a question, you lose one point. The first team to reach twenty points wins.”

“Wins what?” Michael asked.

“Nothing. Just
wins
. Isn’t that enough?” Mom asked in a totally bewildered tone.

“You all know what your mother’s like,” Dad said.

Mom did love to win.

We split into teams—the men against the women. This ought to be interesting.

We three women sat on the sofa with the three gentlemen seated on the other side of the coffee table; Dad and Michael on chairs and John sitting on the floor, his long legs stretched out. Sam sat very close to the samosas and I kept a good eye on my sister along with the dwindling number of little meat pastries on the plate. I reached past her and grabbed a couple.

The room was bathed in soft lights from the various lamps scattered about and the glow of the fireplace right behind the men. Several lovely well-framed watercolors from various trips my parents had taken hung on the walls along with an assortment of ink drawings. I loved this room. I used to like to get comfortable on the sofa with a good book and a cup of tea while snow fell outside. I still do that, but now I do it at my place.

My mom decided that being women, we would go first. Dad shook his head, John laughed, and Michael asked what that had to do with anything. Sam told him to hush and my father read the first question to us.

The game proceeded for another hour and then my mom served coffee and the chocolate cake. It must be
later
.

I put a forkful of cake in my mouth and looked at my father. “Dad, you ’andled all da insurance or Mrs. Brissart over the years, white?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Alex. I didn’t get a word you said.”

I swallowed, almost choking on the large piece of cake I shoved into my mouth. “Sorry. I asked about Mrs. Brissart. You handled all her insurance needs.”

“Yes, I did. Still do.”

“How about her sisters?”

“I tried to get their business, but they had their own agent. Though my company did have a life insurance policy on Mrs. Doliveck’s husband.”

“Did it pay a lot?”

“Alex, you know I can’t tell you that. It’s none of your business.”

“But he’s dead! Who’s going to know?” I said, looking at the others for agreement.

“What’s this all about?” John asked, not trying to hide his irritation.

“Just wondering how much money they have.”

“I’m afraid, Harry, your daughter is doing a bit of investigating again. I’ve warned her not to get involved, but my words fall on deaf ears.” John cut his eyes in my direction and I chose that exact moment to take a sip of tea.

“Now, Alex, you stop that!” Mom pleaded. “Let the police handle it. You remember what happened last time.”

“How could I forget?” I winced as I touched my shoulder remembering my confrontation with a murderer the year before.

“Alex’s working over at the Brissart home while Chantal is away,” Sam offered.

“I must get over to see her,” Mom said. “That poor woman, having her grandson killed. Are there any suspects, John?”

“A lot. We just have to sort through everything,” John said vaguely. I knew he wanted everyone to get off the subject of murder. I felt sorry for him being put on the spot and trying to be polite all at the same time.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of this,” Dad offered, in a tone meant to diffuse anyone else from asking more questions.

My mom, married to the man for too many years to count, took no notice of his tone. “Do they know what killed him?” she asked absently as she cut herself another thin slice of cake. Her second, if anyone felt like counting. As long as she cut thin slices, they still counted as part of the original piece. Mom invents her own logic.

John looked annoyed at the murder theme becoming the main topic of the evening. “Poison. Exactly what kind we don’t know yet. And I’m sorry but I really can’t talk about this now.”

“Well, let’s get back to the game. We were winning, if I remember correctly.” Dad winked, placing a hand on John’s shoulder.

Finally the score stood at nineteen for the women and eighteen for the men. If we got our next question correct we would be the winners.

Michael picked out the card that would either make us the victors or give the men another chance. He held the card up and kissed it for good luck—his, not ours.

“Okay. What country did Venetian blinds originate in?”

We put our heads together. “It can’t be Venice, Italy, that would be too easy,” Mom said.

“I haven’t a clue. Probably some place you would never associate with them,” I said.

“Yeah, but what country, Alex? Think. We’re almost out of time.”

“Times up.” The men looked smug. Sam designated me the spokeswoman, which meant the final answer came down to my decision.

I thought long and hard for the most obscure country I could that would be associated with Venetian blinds. “Okay, I say....Japan?”

Michael slapped the card down on the coffee table sloshing a bit of coffee over the side of his coffee cup. “I don’t believe it!”

“You mean I’m right? We won? We won!” I said turning to my mother and giving her a hug.

“Well, you know what this means, don’t you?” Dad asked of no one in particular. “It means there will be no living with any of them for at least a week. If we’re lucky.”

Everyone sat around for another half hour while Sam and I each took several more thin slices of cake.

The next morning, I pulled into the Brissart driveway for the fourth time this week. The sight of all the other cars made my heart race. None of them looked familiar and I wondered if something else had happened. Probably just suspects, I mused. And hoped. After John fell asleep last night, I tossed and turned for almost an hour thinking of the murder. I was loathe to admit this to anyone but myself, and even myself was a bit disgusted with the realization, but murder intrigued me. It always had. Back to when I would hear nursery rhymes like Humpty Dumpty having a great fall. I just always assumed he had been pushed. I mean really, how could he fall if he just sat there? Anxious to start my own investigation, I got out of the car and climbed the steps.

Chantal would be back tomorrow morning meaning I wouldn’t have much of a chance to come back to the house. I needed to talk with as many people as I could. Standing outside thinking about it wasn’t going to solve the murder. I purposely walked into the house and heard voices—a lot of voices. The vultures.

“Good morning, Alex. Come in, I’d like you to meet a few people,” Mrs. Brissart said, giving me a knowing look. Today Mrs. Brissart wore a burgundy colored dress with small pearl buttons down to the waist. A thin belt in the same fabric pinched in her delicate waist. Peeking out from under the dress, which landed mid-calf, I spied the high-tops.