Home Strange Home

by CeeCee James

I hung up the phone, my mind swirling in surrealness. It wasn’t until I caught sight of the jewelry metal top on the counter that I realized my real reason in trying to get hold of Uncle Chris in the first place.

  I picked it up and examined it again. Should I just chuck it? I mean, who would care in the light of Ian being murdered? This whole thing was bananas.

  I dropped the jewelry piece into my purse, thinking I’d figure it out later.

  Were they able to test all the food? They couldn’t have tested Kari’s potato salad. Kari and taken it home and Joe had eaten it. Of course, that meant it must have been safe. But what if it was a fluke? I scrambled to call her.

  “Hello?” she answered, cheerily.

  “Kari, don’t let Joe eat any more of that potato salad! And for heaven’s sake, keep the kids out of it!” I yelled into the phone, probably blasting out her eardrum. Panic had me in a frenzy.

  “Stella? What’s the matter?”

  “It’s Ian. Uncle Chris just called to say his death has been ruled as murder. They think he was poisoned.”

  Kari gasped. “Are you serious!” I could practically hear the implication clink into place. She gave a low moan. “I ate that food!”

  “I know. It could have been any of us.”

  “My kids…” she whispered. The enormity of her statement hit like a ton of bricks. Her little boy and girl could have been left without a mother.

  I swallowed hard. “I know.”

  “Who do they think did it?” she demanded, angrily. “Because there won’t be a need to arrest them. I’m going to kill them, myself.”

  “Kari! Don’t let anyone else hear you say that. I don’t know who the police suspect. It could be any one of us.”

  “Any of us?” she squealed. “You mean I’m a suspect in a murder that almost knocked me off?”

  It didn’t make sense. Why would someone have done something that could have killed any one of us, including themselves? “Do you remember anyone avoiding any particular food item?” I asked.

  “Well, there was Jasmine who didn’t drink the wine.”

  I nodded, remembering that.

  “Of course, Jasmine didn’t seem to do much, other than push the food around on her plate,” Kari continued.

  “Celeste was the same way.”

  “Well, they are socialites. They might be on one diet or another. Everyone else seemed to enjoy their meal.”

  Everyone else had, including Ian.

  My phone buzzed with an incoming text. It was from Uncle Chris. —Call me ASAP

  7

  “Uh, Kari, I have to go. Uncle Chris wants to talk to me immediately.”

  “Oh, my gosh! What other horrible thing does he have to say? Go!” She hung up in a panic. I wasn’t feeling much better as I called Uncle Chris.

  “Stella, I forgot to tell you. You have a showing today,” he said in a grief-stricken monotone.

  I clutched the phone, my heart pounding. “What? That’s it? You scared me with your text!”

  “I’m sorry. The showing is in an hour. You need to get down to the Springfield Diner to meet them. It’s actually the old buyers for Ian’s place. Jennifer and Mark Clark. Jasmine has already stated she does not want to sell.”

  “Oh…”

  “Yeah, so this couple is feeling a little desperate. I told them we could line up a couple of showings today. I’ll send you the MLS numbers right now.”

  “Got it. I’m on my way.”

  A red notification in my email showed that the contact information for a Jennifer and Mark Clark, along with the house appointment that was scheduled had arrived. I shot them a text saying I was looking forward to meeting them and hurried to get dressed.

  A short time later, I parked in front of the Springfield Diner. The diner was built over fifty years ago and had been maintained to keep the same charm. White flower boxes filled with red geraniums—fake, I assume, considering it was winter—and a red-and-white awning completed the charm.

  The Clarks were standing under the awning, trying to avoid a slushy pile of snow. Somewhere in their thirties, they were both bundled up with boots, hats, and scarves against the cold. Crimson cheeks and watery eyes greeted me as I walked up. Mark stuck out his hand for me to shake, while his wife, Jennifer, snuffled a red nose into the top of a zipped winter jacket.

  “How are you two?” I asked, rubbing my hands briskly. My breath gusted in white clouds.

  “Cold,” chattered Jennifer. She appeared miserable. I knew I needed to get her out of the cold.

  “Disappointed,” added Mark.

  “Oh, dear. Cold and disappointed. You want to grab a cup of coffee? Or just head straight to the showing?”

  “If you don’t mind, I want to get back into my warm car,” Jennifer said. She turned and was already stiffly headed in that direction before I could respond.

  “Okay, straight to the showing.” I nodded to Mark. “You guys can follow me. I’m in that sedan over there.”

  With that, I hurried to my car. It was cold, so cold that the air burned the inside of my nose. Already, the temperature was lower than I’d usually seen it in Seattle. This was my first official winter out here, and the ol’ thermometer was making me a little scared.

  I climbed in and turned on the heat before plugging in the address to my phone’s GPS. After it routed, I gave them a wave to let them know I was ready. They shot me a thumbs up, and we were off.

  The bit of snow that had fallen the other day had mostly melted. Tall deciduous trees, their stark naked branches highlighted by the gray sky, flanked the road. Mingled around them were the evergreens. Along the fence lines, wild grass lay in wilted, rain-pounded waves.

  I was looking forward to spring.

  The map led across the valley into the next town, finally announcing we’d arrived at the front of a cute Colonial two-story. The driveway was empty.

  I parked and climbed out as they were parking behind me. The air was quiet, the chilly temperature silencing what non-migrating birds clung to the branches and hid in hollows. Jennifer was still bundled in her jacket, not looking all that much warmer from when I last saw her.

  “Beautiful place!” I puffed enthusiastically. She just looked longingly at the front door.

  I trotted up the steps and located the lock box. Quickly, I punched in my code and retrieved the ice-cold key. The lock didn’t give me any trouble, and we were soon inside.

  Whew! It was warm inside, but the smell that hit was both unusual and strong—menthol. Like someone had waxed the furniture with vapor rub. My hand automatically went to my nose, unprofessional I know, but my eyes were watering.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” I said, trying to cover.

  “Stinky,” said Mark, while Jennifer waved a hand in front of her face.

  I closed the door behind us, and we slipped booties over our shoes. The house had an open floor plan with the dining room straight ahead of us. We walked over there.

  “Oh, how nice. there’s a connecting sunroom,” I pointed out. At that moment, sunbeams cut through the many clouds and filtered through the sliding glass door, illuminating smear marks at the bottom as evidence to a very large dog.

  “A little splash of window cleaner will clear that right up,” I said, casually dismissing it. However, the marks put me on alert for more damage.

  “We have a dog too, so it’s okay. This house seems nice, Jennifer,” Mark said, wrapping his arm around her waist.

  Jennifer wrinkled her nose. “A bit dirty.”

  It was a tad more than ‘a bit dirty’, but that wasn’t what was so off-putting. There was a feeling in the air that made the house seemed slightly unwelcoming, for lack of a better description.

  We walked into the living room which practically pulsed from the sunlight bouncing off of lime green walls. Jennifer gasped, stopping dead in front of a wall of portraits laid out like a clock. It appeared really cute, and I couldn’t understand her shocked expression until I walked closer and realized th
e pictures were of different sandwiches.

  Uh… what kind of person has pictures of lunch meat on display?

  “So, how are you doing with the homeowner’s death?” I asked, trying to distract them. Too late, I realized I’d pulled out the big guns.

  “Fine. I mean as well as can be expected,” Jennifer said.

  “I know that it’s a shock for everybody, especially with an added blow for you guys because you thought you were buying the house.”

  “That house would've been perfect. But, of course, I understand why his wife is staying there.” Mark answered.

  “Well, I don’t understand it. It was always a strange home for them.” Jennifer flashed, crossing her arms. Her scowl set my teeth on edge.

  Mark glanced at her with a tip of his head. Was that a subtle warning? She moved away from him.

  He scratched the back of his neck. “You’ll have to excuse my wife. It’s kind of a sensitive subject.”

  Jennifer glared at her husband, obviously now feeling exposed and cornered at needing to explain herself.

  Her husband wilted under the look and tried to cover. “We showed up at the house last week, a little unexpected,” he said. “We were there to sign some papers, and I wanted to see about the possibility of building a dog run. We’d actually set up the time to meet the day before, but apparently, Ian and Jasmine had forgotten.”

  “So, you met them before?” I asked to clarify.

  Jennifer rubbed her hands together and nodded.

  “Yeah. We met them a few times.” Mark continued. “Anyway, when we showed up on their porch, we could hear a lot of yelling, and we heard something break.”

  Here Jennifer interrupted. “Glass breaking. We didn’t even have a chance to knock.”

  “Oh, my goodness!” I said. “What did you guys do?”

  Mark glanced at Jennifer again and, this time, she gave a slight, permissive nod. “Well,” he answered, “Ian was yelling that she needed to get with the program that he needed her support. Jasmine freaked out, saying that she could be pregnant, and this was a life sentence she was facing, and that it was up to him to fix this. Ian asked her how could she be pregnant. He’d gotten a vasectomy years ago. And she screamed at him that he was a liar.”

  My jaw dropped. Mark and Jennifer watched me, wide-eyed. They knew they had the goods.

  “Did you tell any of this to the police?” I asked.

  Mark shook his head as his wife answered. “Actually, we've never talked with the police. Do you think we should go to them?”

  Did I think they should go to them? Yeah! Then I thought about Jasmine. She might be young and a little flighty, but did I really think she could be a killer?

  My inner voice chided me. Of course. Wasn’t the other half of a couple usually the main suspect?

  I must have been frowning because Jennifer said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  I shook my head, hoping to relieve her and get her talking some more. “No, you haven’t at all. Other than the fact that the whole idea is upsetting.”

  Jennifer chewed on her thumbnail. “The reason why it upset me so much is that we’ve been trying so long. To have a baby.” Her husband watched her with soft eyes. “So to hear her talk about it like that, it was hard. And then to have our dream house yanked away….”

  My stomach plummeted. Oh, boy. I felt like the proverbial bull in a china shop, dragging this poor woman into such a sensitive conversation.

  I reached over and touched her elbow. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up such a hard topic.”

  “It’s okay. Everyone has their struggles.” She shrugged nonchalantly, but I saw her lip tremble.

  I nodded, wishing a hole would open up in the floor and swallow me up. We stood there for a moment. I really had no idea how to continue.

  Luckily, her husband saved the day. Standing with his hands on his hips, facing the wall, he blurted out, “This clock is a bunch of bologna.”

  We all laughed, mostly with relief. “Mark, you’re so corny!” Jennifer said, leaning into him. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in tight for a kiss on the head.

  We wandered through the bedrooms—six of them, all stuffed with odd furniture. One room was filled with big, round Papasan chairs. Another was a quilting room, set up with a permanent built-in table and quilt stretcher.

  The master bedroom was nice, with a window seat and a five-piece en-suite bathroom. It was here that I discovered where the dog slept. A giant cedar pillow lay on the floor, accompanied by black marks on the wall.

  As I followed the Clark’s, I thought about Jasmine possibly being pregnant. But the other shocker was that Jasmine insisted it was a life sentence they were facing. Was she talking metaphorically about how a child was a lifetime commitment?

  Or was she referring to actual jail time?

  Jennifer had paused outside a linen closet.

  “What’s that in there?” she asked, her voice tinged with concern.

  I glanced inside. There was another door in the back of the closet. I reached in and tried to open it but it was stuck fast.

  Grunting, I tried the door again, as well as casually trying to approach the conversation one more time. “You know, I think you should consider talking to the police about your experience. It might be nothing, but with it so close to Ian’s death, you never know.” I gave up on the door. It wasn’t going to budge. I hoped I had better luck convincing Jennifer.

  She blanched and licked her bottom lip nervously.

  I quickly reassured, “You aren’t accusing anyone. Jasmine and Ian could have been fighting over something that involved the real killer. Maybe it was a blackmail letter or something, and Jasmine hasn’t shared it out of her own fear.”

  That line of reasoning seemed to convince her. She glanced at her husband who gave a firm bob of his head. Her lips pressed together resolutely. “Right. We’ll stop at the station right after this.”

  I smiled and shut the linen closet door. “Good for you. So, are we done here, then?”

  Jennifer glanced up at the ceiling where a trail of cobwebs shivered in the draft. “Yes, we’re done.”

  Her husband laughed. “I swear we could just clean this all up.”

  “You can’t clean up a door that leads to nowhere.” She pointed to the closet. “Uncle Motes could live in there.”

  “Uncle Motes?” I asked.

  Her husband chuckled some more. “Her childhood boogyman that her cousins used to scare her with.”

  “Shut up!” she squealed. “I saw him, I swear. A big shadowy man with a hat. He used to lurk at my grandparent's house in the basement.”

  I joined their giggles as I walked them to the front door. Jennifer was still jabbering away about it as they headed to their car.

  But when I turned around to go back through the house to make sure everything was secure, the story didn’t seem as funny. The sun was back to hiding behind the clouds and a pallor of gray gloom filled the rooms. I hurried through them to check the back door, trying to ignore the squeaking boards and dark shadows. I was just testing the back door knob when a subtle gust of cold air drifted down my neck. Just like last time, I felt I was being watched.

  Slowly, I turned.

  The door to the linen closet had swung open. I reached to shut it when I realized the door in the back of the closet, the one that had been jammed shut, was open as well. Cobwebs drifted from around the frame with the cold air draft. I slammed the linen closet door shut and ran back to the front door. The owners could close the other one. I was out of there, like a pig being called to dinner.

  Once outside on the porch, I had to laugh at myself. I was being so ridiculous. Still, I couldn’t deny my hands were trembling. I hated unexplainable things.

  I didn’t have much more time to think about it. As I waved goodbye to Jennifer and Mark and hurried to my car, my phone rang.

  8

  The phone call was from Kari. As I started th
e car, her voice piped through the speakers, “Have you heard?”

  “Heard what?” I asked, pulling out onto the road.

  “The coroner said he found a bunch of undigested antacids in Ian’s stomach. He must have taken them just minutes before he was murdered.”

  I remember the bottle on the counter. I knew they somehow had been important!

  “Do you think there’s an explanation why? Maybe it was the stress from his phone call. Or all of us being there?”

  “I think it was the poison. It proves he must have eaten something that killed him,” Kari answered adamantly.

  I wasn’t sure it had been the food. I now suspected the wine the neighbor brought over. There was that glass that I’d dumped that had a sour scent. I remembered Ian had taken a huge swig just before he’d left the table. And it was as he swallowed that he’d grimaced. I didn’t think Gordon had shared it with anyone else. I remember Jasmine had covered her own glass.

  That theory just didn’t make sense though. Ian and Jasmine were moving, so Gordon wouldn’t be dealing with them much longer. Besides, why would you kill your neighbor over Christmas lights or leaving trash cans out?

  I was about to say something when Kari chimed in again. “By the way, I meant to tell you. Joe and I want to have you over for dinner.”

  Well, that came out of left field and immediately, I was suspicious. Not because she was inviting me, but people don’t go out of their way to bring up their spouse in the invitation to single friends unless something was afoot.

  “Really. And why is that?” I came straight to the point.

  “Stella! Honestly. Can’t we just be a couple of close friends who want to have a nice dinner together?”

  “Mmhmm,” I said, sarcasm-heavy.

  There was a pause, and then she gave in. “Fine. Joe has a friend we really want you to meet. He’s a nice guy and—”

  “I knew it!”

  “Stella! Seriously, you hardly ever leave the house. You’re practically a cave creature. It would be good to get out and make friends. Thomas is a nice guy. He just got out of a relationship and—”