by Kate Bell
“Say trick or treat,” Mary coached.
The little girl turned and buried her face in Mary’s side.
“I’m sorry,” Mary said. “She’s a shy one.”
“That’s okay,” I said and picked up another handful of candy. “She gets candy just for being cute.”
“Thank you,” Mary said as I dropped it into the little girl’s bag. “Oh, is Diana here?” Mary asked, looking over at Diana’s booth.
“Um, no, she’s indisposed,” I said. It sounded lame, but I didn’t want to blurt out that she was dead, especially in front of the little girls.
“Oh, that’s a shame,” Mary said. “I know she worked so hard on setting up the bazaar. I wanted to congratulate her. Will she be here later?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Gosh, I haven’t spoken to her,” I said. Which was completely true. I hadn’t spoken to her, because she was already dead when I got here.
“Well, if you see her, tell her I said hello,” she said and took the girls by the hand and moved on to another booth.
“I sure will,” I said to myself. There was going to be a lot of surprise in the community when the news got out. I hoped Ellen Allen wasn’t posting it on Facebook. That would be awful, especially if her sons found out that way.
“How much for a piece of pie?” Charles Allen leaned over my booth to look at the assortment of pies. He must have just gotten off work from his job as a fry cook at Henry’s Home Cooking Restaurant, because he smelled like onions.
“Four dollars,” I said. He narrowed his eyes at me. Charles and I sort of had a history. We both had been suspects in Henry Hoffer’s murder. I knew I hadn’t done it, so I was convinced it was him that had done it. Then he had squealed on me and told Detective Blanchard that I had had an argument with Henry the night before his murder. Of course that put the spotlight on me. He also happened to be Ellen Allen’s cousin and I was suspicious of her, so now I was suspicious of him again.
“That’s a lot of money for one measly piece of pie,” he said, not taking his eyes off me.
“Well Charles, you can take it or leave it. It all goes to charity, you know,” I said. I wasn’t giving him anything for free. The squealer.
“How much for the candy apple?”
“Six dollars.”
His eyes just about popped out of his head.
“What? No way! I can get one for a dollar at Shaw’s Market!” he exclaimed.
“Yeah, and it will taste like one dollar, too!” I said. “Come on Charles, you know anything I make will be a hundred times better than what you can get at any grocery store, and you’ll get a warm fuzzy feeling when you help those who are less fortunate.”
He sighed. “I’ll have a piece of cherry pie,” he said and dug into his pocket.
I cut a piece of cherry pie for him and put it on a cute little Halloween paper plate. I gave him an orange napkin and a black plastic fork to eat it with. It was a darling little place setting, if you ask me.
He pulled out four crumpled dollar bills from his pocket and laid them beside the pie.
“Hold on,” I said when he reached for the plate. I picked up each dollar bill and un-crumpled them and straightened them out. When I had them all straight, I said, “Okay, go ahead.”
He grunted at me, took the pie, and left. I looked over to see Lucy with a big grin on her face and I winked at her.
Business was booming by 7:45 and I was certain we would have a big donation for the community dinner and coats for the kids. Every now and then someone would ask about the police and ambulance having been here earlier, but for the most part, people were distracted by the bazaar and forgot to ask.
--5--
I went home that night and picked up the house phone receiver. I was pretty sure the phone had been attached to the wall since 1992 and had been top of the line in its day. I dialed voicemail and hit saved messages.
“Allie, this is Diana.”
“Listen, I need to talk to you. I’d talk to Lucy, but I don’t want to upset her, you know how she can be. God love her, she can be a spaz,” she said and chuckled. “Anyway, if you could get to the bazaar a little early, that would be great.”
I played it again.
What was it that she thought would upset Lucy?
Her voice didn’t sound upset or scared. If she wanted to confess something, why would she call me? Maybe she wanted to talk about something having to do with the bazaar? But then, why would she bring up Lucy?
I played it again.
I ran and got a pad of paper and a pen, and I played it again, writing down as much of what I could remember as I could. Then I played it again and wrote some more. It took me playing it five times before I got it all.
I sat at the table and read it over and over. My mind turned with thoughts of what she could have possibly wanted to say to me. We had had a very casual relationship, discussing weather and shopping whenever I stopped in to her flower shop to say hi to Lucy.
I glanced at the clock. 12:47 AM. I yawned and headed to bed. There had to be something there, but for the life of me, I didn’t know what it was.
***
“So what do you think about Ellen?” Lucy asked, stirring the coffee in front of her. She took a sip and made a face and added another teaspoon of sugar.
“If it turns out not to be natural causes, then I think Ellen killed her. You saw how cold she was about the whole thing,” I said, topping my coffee off with cream. I inhaled the lovely aroma. I was a tiny bit of a coffee snob and always ground my own fresh beans. It made for a heady aroma and a richer flavor. We were sitting at my kitchen table, going over the events of the day before.
“I know, right?” Lucy said, still stirring. “I mean, I get it, Diana fired her. But really, there was a death here! How can you not feel at least a little sorrow, or at least empathy for the family? She needs to get over being fired.”
“You would think anyone would be at least a little sad, no matter who it was that had died. But we don’t even know if she was killed or if she died of natural causes,” I said, thinking. “I mean, she could have had a heart attack.”
“Allie, did you see her?” Lucy asked hesitantly.
Our eyes met. “Sort of. But not really. I mean, she was laying half under the table. I just saw enough to know who it was.”
I suddenly felt guilty about not telling her about Diana’s phone call. But since I had no answers on what she had wanted, it wouldn’t help to tell her about it. I certainly couldn’t tell her that Diana had called her a spaz. That would only hurt her.
“Do you think she suffered?” she asked, her voice cracking. “She was always so good to me. She gave me time off whenever I needed it. She never batted an eye when I was late to work.”
“I know you were close to her,” I said, reaching my hand across the table and putting it on hers. “I don’t think she suffered. She probably had a heart attack and went really fast.” I had no idea if that was true, but I wanted to help ease her pain. I stifled a yawn with my free hand. I had stayed up way too late the night before.
“Well, I hope at least that we made a lot of money last night,” she said, her voice cracking. “It would have made Diana happy.”
“I’m sure we did. I sold out of everything,” I said. The pies were gone so fast, I regretted not having made more.
“I’m glad,” she said. “She was so good at organizing events.”
We had decided to hand the money over to the mayor until a replacement for Diana could be found. I wasn’t sure how we would do that. Diana had endless energy for community events. I don’t know how she had done it. It wore me out, just watching her work. I hoped she really did die of natural causes.
--6--
I packed a surprise lunch for Alec. I wanted to find out if he had heard anything about Diana’s autopsy, and I thought food was the best way to go about getting him to talk. It had only been six days since the bazaar, but it was worth a try. I hadn’t heard a thing from him. I texted
him to make sure he was in his office, and asked him if I could stop by. When he said yes, my stomach did a little dance. I told myself to chill out.
I had packed two honey baked ham and Muenster cheese sandwiches on brioche bread, homemade potato salad, grapes and two generous slices of lemon chess pie. I also brought along chilled sparkling mineral water since I didn’t know him well enough to know what his favorite soft drink was.
I knocked on his office door and waited a moment. I could hear him moving around in his office and when he opened the door, he smiled really big. I hadn’t been sure if he was just being polite when he said it was okay that I stopped by.
“I brought a little something,” I said, holding up the basket I had packed our lunch in.
“Wow, what is that?” he asked, showing me to the seat across from his desk.
“Well, I hope it’s a tasty little lunch. Or rather, I know it’s lunch, but I hope you find it tasty,” I said, laughing nervously. I unpacked the food onto his desk, hoping I hadn’t forgotten anything.
“Well, it certainly looks good,” he said, moving a book and a pair of gloves off the top of his desk.
I laid out fall themed paper plates and plastic ware with napkins to match. “Wait until you see the sandwiches,” I said and opened up the individual plastic containers I had put them in. They were stacked thickly with ham and I had brought along all the fixin’s so he could add what he wanted. I secretly hoped he wasn’t one of those people that liked their food plain. What fun was that?
“Oh my,” he said as I handed one to him. “Now that is a sandwich.”
“The men in my family know how to eat. I hope you do, too,” I said and laid out the rest of the food. The men in my family could lay out this whole picnic in one fell swoop. “Help yourself,” I said motioning toward the sandwich fixin’s.
“Thank you so much. This is a nice surprise and I really appreciate it,” he said. “I was getting tired of fast food.”
He began spreading mayonnaise on his bread and I opened mine up. “So, have you heard anything back about Diana Bowen?” I asked. I thought I might as well be direct since I wasn’t a suspect of anything. And I hoped that wouldn’t change in the near future.
He glanced at me, and then squirted Dijon mustard on his sandwich before saying anything. “Yes. We did hear something back from the medical examiner about her.”
“And?” I asked when he didn’t continue. He had better not be coy about the details.
He looked me fully in the face. “It seems she was poisoned.”
“What?” I gasped. “What do you mean, poisoned?”
“They did an analysis of the contents of her stomach,” he said, laying a thick slice of tomato on his sandwich. “The only thing in there was some partially digested candy corn and part of a candy apple, and the poison. Ricin. It’s a flavorless and odorless poison. They couldn’t really tell if the poison had been in the apple or if the candy corn was coated with it, or if maybe she drank it somehow.”
“Ricin? I think I’ve heard of it, but I’m not sure. Where would the murderer get it?”
“Someone that’s motivated could find it,” he said.
I stared at him. Who on earth could have poisoned her? Then Ellen’s face flashed before my eyes. “It was Ellen Allen! I knew there was a reason she was so cold about Diana being dead!”
“Now, we don’t have any proof of anything just yet, but I’ll certainly interview her again,” he said and took a bite of his sandwich. “Mmm, this is good.”
“Thanks. Wait, Yancey put that candy apple in an evidence bag. Did they analyze it?”
“Well, it seems that in all the excitement of the bazaar, the apple went missing,” he said and took another bite.
“What? You police are supposed to be careful with evidence!” I said.
He gave me a half smile. “It seems that police are human too, and make mistakes. Yancey is searching for the apple.”
“Okay, so she had a poison apple and candy corn in her stomach. That means, we’re looking for a wicked witch!” I was pretty proud of my deductive reasoning skills on that one. “It’s flavorless and odorless? I bet the killer put it in the candy apple coating. Diana would never have noticed.”
He sighed. “Well, being that Halloween is only a few days away, I suppose it shouldn’t be too hard to find a wicked witch,” he said dryly. “The amount of ricin needed to kill a person would have to be more than what was in her stomach. It may have been administered over several days, but she would have been sick. It takes a few days for it to work.”
“It’s Ellen. I know it is.”
“Like I said, I’ll have to work on it. Oh, and by the way, I did notice that you had candy apples for sale at the bazaar.”
“What?” I said. And then it sank in that it didn’t look good because I was the one that found the body and it was just last month that I had been a suspect in another murder. “No, wait. You can’t suspect me. Right? I wouldn’t kill Diana for anything!”
He chuckled. “Well, I did have a hard time explaining to Sam Bailey why you had found another body. I didn’t mention the candy apples though. Otherwise you might be sitting on the wrong side of a set of bars right now and I wouldn’t be enjoying this delectable sandwich.”
I gasped. “I swear to you, I had nothing to do with this! I did not poison her! I am a good person and I do not murder people. Not even people that annoy me.”
Sam Bailey was the chief of police and I thought it might be a good idea to make him a nice lunch. Maybe I could persuade him to look at other suspects.
“I know that Allie. We’ll figure it out,” he said with a smirk.
I spent the rest of our lunch trying to figure out how to prove that Ellen had committed the murder. It looked like Lucy and I were going to have to do some more sleuthing.
***
Diana’s funeral was later that afternoon. Lucy and I sat in the back so we could see everyone that attended. I wondered who all would show up, and whether I could mark others down as possible suspects.
“This is so sad,” Lucy said, dabbing at her eye with a tissue.
“I know honey,” I said and put my arm around her shoulders. “She’s in a better place now.” I kept looking around to see if anyone was acting suspiciously. I thought the killer might be wracked with guilt and would show up to say their last goodbyes to Diana.
I had told Lucy about the murder as soon as I left Alec’s office. I would like to have waited for another day to tell her, but I didn’t want someone else to tell her. She was holding it together as best she could.
“Look at her boys up there, trying to be brave,” Lucy said, motioning toward the front pew.
The two boys sat shoulder to shoulder, bravely smiling as people stopped to pay their respects. It was heart breaking to watch. Diana’s husband sat beside them, now and then leaning over toward them, whispering something. It broke my heart. I didn’t know Dick well, but I was sure he had to be struggling to find closure with Diana being murdered. He looked like he had lost weight and his hair was now blond instead of the medium brown I remembered when Diana had introduced us two summers ago.
“I’ve got to pay my respects,” Lucy said and got up to speak to Dick and the boys.
I kept up my vigil, inspecting from a distance, everyone that walked through the door. If Ellen had the nerve to show up, I was going to ask her to leave. I looked up, and Alec walked through the door. On second thought, I decided I would let Alec handle Ellen if she showed up. I gave him a little half-wave. He gave me a little smile in return, but then sat on the other side of the room. That was disappointing. Maybe he was here on police business and didn’t want to put me at risk. Yeah, that was probably it.
Lucy was hugging the boys and crying. At least she was still in control. Somewhat. Lucy was a loud cryer at funerals. She had no shame when it came to grief. She came back and sat next to me and I handed her the box of tissues that was on the end of the pew.
“If Ellen
did this, I will kill her!” Lucy hissed, dabbing at her eyes again. “I cannot believe anyone would murder Diana. She was the sweetest person I knew. It’s just so unfair!” And with that, she began sobbing loudly.
“Stop that. If someone hears you and they happen to end up dead, you will be the first suspect,” I said. I was beginning to think more like a detective. Or at least I thought I was.
“Oh, I know you’re right. And I wouldn’t really do it. But I sure feel like doing it. I can’t imagine who would do this,” she said, and blew her nose.
I patted her hand and kept looking around. Mary Payne stopped by to speak to the boys. Mary had retired as high school principal at the end of the last school year, and Seth was a sophomore this year. It was nice of her to show up to support him. Small towns were like that. Lots of support from nearly everyone. The funeral home sanctuary was filling up quickly. I was glad that Diana’s husband and boys were being shown so much support.
I watched Diana’s husband, Dick Bowen. He was smiling and friendly, shaking hands or hugging people that paid their respects. He seemed strangely at ease, but then I realized that he was probably in shock. Sudden death would do that to a person. You put a smile on your face and force yourself to make small talk. You thank people for coming and for bringing a dish to the reception and everything goes by in a blur.
There would be a reception to follow at the local Baptist church. I almost didn’t want to attend. I was too sad to eat. But I knew Lucy would want me there for support. She had lost a dear friend.
I had baked six pies and dropped them off at the church earlier that morning. At least that had made me feel useful. Even though I had suffered my own loss, it was hard to know what to do for people when they had lost a loved one. The truth was, there wasn’t anything that anyone could do to make someone grieving the loss of a loved one feel better.
