Authors: Jaqueline Girdner
“There, there,” Clara crooned softly, at Harmony’s side in an instant. She reached up to stroke the taller woman’s bush of blond hair. “You’ll be just fine. Just keep breathing—”
“But why do we need the police?” demanded a new female voice from my left.
I swiveled my head and saw Lori, dressed like a parrot today in shades of bright green, scarlet and turquoise. But her face wasn’t as cheerful as her clothing. She frowned and pointed a long, scarlet fingernail at Harmony. “What’s wrong with—”
“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Harmony wailed before I could answer Lori. It was just as well. I didn’t have any answers.
“Of course you didn’t do anything wrong,” Clara told Harmony.
“Clara…” I began. I was going to ask her if she could handle Harmony. Then I remembered that handling psychiatric patients was what Clara did for a living.
Clara nodded briskly in answer to my implied question, then put her arm around Harmony’s waist. “You’ve had a hard time, haven’t you, you poor little thing,” she murmured. And suddenly Harmony, probably a full foot taller than Clara, did seem like a little thing as she slumped over the smaller woman’s shoulder and began to cry.
“What in the world is going on here?” came a high-pitched voice from my right. I turned the other way and saw Dru. She tilted her head, her bright blue eyes looking more curious than concerned. This was probably more a function of her habitual smile than a real lack of concern, I told myself. “Has Vesta really passed away?” she prodded.
“Well, I—”
“An ambulance is coming,” Trent cut in, back from the kitchen.
I swung my head around in his direction, only then remembering that I’d never relayed Clara’s message not to send an ambulance.
“Oh, damn. I’m sorry,” I mumbled inadequately and then remembered the second part of Clara’s message. “Are the police coming too?” I whispered.
“I explained the situation quite carefully,” he assured me in a calm and steady voice. His wife, Ingrid, walked up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. He flinched and jerked his head around, then took a breath and turned slowly back to me.
“I’m certain they’ll send whoever and whatever they think necessary,” he finished quietly.
“Uh, thank you,” I muttered, reserving comment on the unnecessary ambulance. Hopefully, necessary police would follow the unnecessary ambulance. Or were the police necessary? Had it been the tea—?
“Is there anything we can do for poor Vesta?” asked Ingrid in her sonorous whisper. Her eyes were red and blurred with tears, and her skin was blotchy.
I shook my head slowly, not having any other answer to offer.
“Oh dear,” she moaned and pulled out a cotton handkerchief. “I’m so terribly, terribly sorry,” she gurgled through it.
Trent sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, then put his arm around Ingrid as the sound of her weeping grew.
“Are you okay, Grandma?” asked Mandy, the drawl gone from her voice. She sounded like a twelve-year-old now, a frightened twelve-year-old.
Ingrid drew in a sodden breath and reached out to her grandchild.
I turned away and looked for Wayne. He was alone now on the black leather couch, still staring blankly ahead. I trotted over and plopped down next to him before anyone else could ask me any more questions. I had done my duty. The authorities had been informed. The rest of the Skeritts were on their own as far as I was concerned. Except for Wayne.
I watched his profile as I took his limp hand in mine and squeezed. He didn’t even blink. My chest tightened all over again. Was he in a temporary state of shock? Or was his mind gone for good? Not for good, I told myself emphatically. That was just silly. I knew Wayne. He was rock-solid, sanity itself. Except, a shrill voice in my subconscious informed me, when it came to his mother.
“Wayne!” I whispered sharply.
He turned his head slowly in my direction, but his eyes looked through me. I felt a chill creep over me, tightening the skin on my arms and legs first, then prickling my back and scalp. The kind of chill that a nightmare brings when the dreamer suddenly sees demons blossom where a familiar form has been before. I wanted to scream myself awake.
“Please, sweetie,” I whispered instead, squeezing his hand harder. If my own hands hadn’t been so slippery with sweat, I might have crushed the bones of his fingers. At that point, I would have bitten him to get his attention.
“I—” The word came abruptly from somewhere deep in his throat. His eyes focused and grew moist at the same moment. “I can’t,” he rasped and jerked his head away to stare straight ahead once more.
“That’s all right,” I told him. I dropped his poor hand and kissed him on the neck. “That’s all right.” There was still someone in there. That was all I needed to know.
I took a big breath and turned my own moist eyes forward.
A few moments later, I noticed three pairs of eyes staring back.
Gail Norton was the most obvious. She studied Wayne and me through her aviator glasses as if we were laboratory rats. There was a hint of dissatisfaction evident in the flare of her nostrils and the asymmetry of her brows, as if we rats were not producing the results she had hypothesized. Suddenly, I wondered if she was actually a research psychologist, not a psychotherapist as her mother had told me. Somehow, I just couldn’t imagine anyone pouring out their problems to Gail Norton.
Dru stood between her daughter and her husband, watching us a little less obviously out of the corner of one eye. She turned her head and whispered into Gail’s ear. Gail’s eyes didn’t flicker. Dru turned back and reached out for Bill’s left hand. His left was the only one available. He held a glass tumbler in his right hand. He gazed in our general direction with his usual bland smile.
I raised my hand and wiggled my fingers in a little wave just to let them know I saw them. Maybe their looks were meant to be friendly. Dru giggled and waved back. Bill toasted me with his tumbler. Gail continued to stare unblinkingly. Maybe she and Wayne could have a contest, I thought. I certainly wasn’t interested. I looked away, over to the corner of the living room where Trent, Lori, Ingrid and Mandy had gathered.
At least they weren’t staring at us. Ingrid’s eyes were closed as she hugged her granddaughter to her. And all I could see of Mandy’s head was her neatly braided hair. Trent and Lori’s heads were thrust at each other, brows down. Were they arguing? A harsh whisper drifted my way.
“… your mother is far too emotional—”
“Of course, she’s emotional, Dad!” Lori whispered back fiercely. Her bracelets jangled as she thumped her hands onto her hips. “Anyone human would be emotional….”
I tuned them out quickly and let my gaze travel to Clara and Harmony, who had taken seats on the other black leather couch. While Harmony sobbed Clara was murmuring something to her that I couldn’t hear.
I closed my own eyes for a minute, suddenly very tired.
“It was totally gross, I mean really totally gross….” a high-pitched voice was insisting.
Eric. That had to be Eric. But where was he? And where was Ace? I pulled my eyes open with an effort. They weren’t in the living room.
“Why did she puke all over the place?” Eric asked. The kitchen. That’s where his voice was coming from.
I heard the low rumble of Ace’s answer but not his words.
“I never knew that people puked when they had heart attacks, Grampy,” said Eric. “I thought they just like grabbed their chests and, you know, keeled over or something. But this was totally gross….”
Eric was right as usual. The whole damn situation was “totally gross.” No doubt about it. And his questions were on point too. Did people throw up when they had heart attacks? I didn’t know the answer to that one. But I was pretty sure people sometimes threw up when they were poisoned. And Vesta had tried to tell Harmony about something, something New Age, herbal and organic. Could it have been anything but the tea? Then I thought of the teapot, lying inches from her hand. Ugh.
I felt a wave of nausea as I remembered the scene in Vesta’s bedroom. And with the nausea came an unpleasant thought, one I hadn’t wanted to consider before. If Vesta had been poisoned, the poisoner might well be someone in this room. But that was a big “If.” She could have had a heart attack. Or… Or… Or what?
I looked at Wayne’s unmoving profile. What was he thinking? Had he heard Clara say we needed the police? Was his mind jumping to the same conclusions as mine? Had he wondered yet if one of his family had killed his mother?
“And you know what else, Grampy?” came Eric’s voice again, closer this time. I saw him trailing after Ace through the kitchen doorway. “The police may want to interview us all. They do that when a sudden death looks like totally bogus—”
The sound of an approaching siren stopped his flow of words. It stopped everyone’s. The room was completely silent as we heard the siren grow louder. I took a deep breath and waited for the police.
But it wasn’t the police who knocked at the door. It was a couple of paramedics, one stocky and female, the other lanky and male. Clara left Harmony on the couch and opened the door for them. After a terse conversation, she directed them upstairs as the rest of us watched.
The instant Clara disappeared up the stairs, Harmony stood up and started pacing. Pacing and rubbing her amulets.
“Harmony, would you like a massage?” asked Lori, her genial voice sounding strange in the silence. Her bracelets jangled merrily as she strode over to Harmony’s side. “Massage can heal on an emotional, spiritual and—”
Harmony whirled to face her. “You!” she accused, pointing at Lori. “You’re the one. You tried to take Vesta away from me, right?”
Lori’s red nails flashed as she raised her hands and turned them palm out, as if to block a blow. “I never—” she began.
“It wasn’t me that hurt her. It was you!” Harmony shouted. Her pale eyes were round in her face, no longer blank but alive with a feeling I couldn’t identify. Malice? Realization? Hurt?
Mandy ran to her mother’s side. “My mom didn’t do any such thing, to you or to Aunt Vesta!” she shouted back, her high voice ringing out pure and clear.
“Thank you, Mandy my love,” Lori said quietly. “You see, Harmony is just a little confused—”
“You guys are all against me!” Harmony wailed. She swept accusing eyes over everyone in the living room, her fingers beginning the great amulet hunt on her jacket fringes once more. “They sent you, right? They told you—”
And suddenly Clara was back, her arm around Harmony’s waist. She murmured and soothed the younger woman into quiet as the two paramedics shuffled out the front door.
Then we heard the second siren.
When the doorbell rang, I jumped up to answer, hoping it was the police this time. After hearing Harmony’s random accusations, I wanted first crack at the representatives of law and order. It might be crucial. If I could give them my own clear explanation of the events surrounding Vesta’s death before they questioned anyone else, mine just might carry more weight. Now all I had to do was figure out what exactly my own explanation was. I opened the door. It was the police all right. The two uniformed men on the doorstep couldn’t have been anything else but.
“La Risa Police Department, ma’am,” announced the first one. He was a well-muscled man with a well-trimmed mustache and buzz-cut hair. He attempted a smile. It gave his face the look of a friendly Nazi.
“Hear you got a dead woman upstairs,” said the second officer. He was tall with blow-dried brown hair. He didn’t bother with a smile.
“I’ll show you,” I said briefly.
They introduced themselves on the way up the stairs. The one with the buzz cut was Officer Yoder. The blow-dried one was Officer Zappetini.
“Yuck!” said Zappetini when I pointed through the doorway in Vesta’s direction. I was taking care not to look myself. I remembered Vesta’s sprawling body all too well. Unfortunately, I could still smell the room without seeing it.
“Did you know the deceased, ma’am?” asked Officer Yoder.
“Uh-huh,” I answered. “Her name’s Vesta Caruso. She’s my boyfriend’s mother.”
“Can we get outa here?” asked Officer Zappetini nasally. He was holding his nose.
Yoder gave him a cool look and went on. “Did you find the body, ma’am?” he asked.
I nodded, then changed my mind. “Actually, Harmony found her first,” I amended.
“Who is Harmony, ma’am?”
“She was Vesta’s—that is, Mrs. Caruso’s—roommate,” I told him. “Well, not exactly a roommate—I don’t think she paid any money or anything, but she stayed in the guest room. Anyway, Harmony said Vesta was really sick last night. And Vesta was talking about the tea Harmony fixed her—at least I think that’s what she must have been talking about—Harmony said she mentioned ‘organic,’ and ‘herbal’ and ‘New Age,’ so it must have been the tea.”
I paused for a breath. So much for my clear explanation of the events surrounding Vesta’s death. Yoder stared at me, unsmiling. Zappetini was fanning the air in front of his face. My stomach felt funny all of a sudden. Maybe I should have let Harmony talk to them first.
I pointed into the room.
“See, there’s the teapot,” I whispered. “That’s the one.”
“That’s the one what?” asked Yoder.