Progressive Dinner Deadly

by Elizabeth Spann Craig

Chapter Thirteen

  Myrtle reached behind her for something, anything, as Willow gripped her shoulders and shook her back and forth in anger. “I kept trying to get rid of you. Nosy busybody,” Willow said. She put her hands around Myrtle’s throat right when Myrtle finally curled her fingers around the foil container. With one, desperate gesture, Myrtle pushed the container of vegetable casserole in Willow’s face.

  Willow howled like a hurt dog and spat furiously to get the casserole out of her mouth. God knows what poison she’s put in there, thought Myrtle as she anxiously hobbled to the door, her cane nowhere near her. She’d just reached the door when Willow’s hand jerked back on her shoulder and Myrtle stumbled backwards, just as Red pushed through Myrtle’s front door. With a wild cry, Willow launched herself at Red.

  Red strong-armed Willow’s hands behind her back and struggled to put the cuffs on as Willow twisted violently from side to side. “I never thought I’d say this,” said Red through gritted teeth, “but I’m glad you had your door unlocked, Mama.”

  Myrtle rubbed her neck where Willow’s hands had gripped. “An unlocked door was great when you were on my doorstep. But clearly I should have locked the door back right after Willow left.”

  Willow had given up her fight and stood, slumped, as Red read her rights to her and walked her out the door and across the street to his police car parked in his driveway. Myrtle watched through the window as Red talked on his phone and Willow sat in the back of the police car.

  The first call Red made must have been to Miles because he was at her door a few minutes later, looking sleepy and wearing a very un-Miles-like sweat suit. “Come on in,” said Myrtle. “I guess Red must have called you.” She walked towards the kitchen, “I’ll make us some coffee.” She stopped cold at her kitchen door when she saw the disaster her kitchen was. There was food all over the table, chairs and floor, tracked all the way into her living room. One of the chairs was turned over. Myrtle shivered.

  Miles looked over her shoulder and said, “I don’t know what happened here, Myrtle, but I think I should be the one making the coffee. Do I need to clean all the mess up first?”

  Myrtle sat down on her sofa and rubbed her eyes. “No, better not. It’s probably poisoned and might need to be used as evidence.” A wave of exhaustion hit her.

  “Well frankly, Myrtle, your place sounds like a lousy place for a coffee break right now. Let’s walk on over to my house.” Miles adopted a coaxing tone and Myrtle collected her cane and obediently followed him out the door. Red nodded at them as they passed. He was still on his phone as they left.

  It wasn’t long before Lieutenant Perkins and Red were at Miles’s house drinking coffee along with Myrtle. Perkins settled his tall, wiry frame on Miles’s leather chair.

  “This is starting to be a familiar scene,” remarked Perkins in a dry voice. “Didn’t we do this after the last Bradley murder case wrapped up?”

  “I think it was wine, then,” said Myrtle, looking at Miles with reproach.

  Miles rolled his eyes and walked to his kitchen.

  “What I actually meant,” said Perkins in his polite, measured way, “is that we’re replaying a particular scene. And it’s not a healthy one.”

  Red jumped in. “You’re going to get yourself killed, Mama. You’re playing a very dangerous game. You know that I’m supposed to be the detective around here.”

  “I can’t help it if I figure out the mystery before you do,” said Myrtle coldly. “Besides, I had nothing to do with what happened at my house. I solved the case while Willow was there. It wasn’t as if I lured her to my house.” She hesitated for a minute. “I don’t know if you need any additional charges against Willow, but I think this is the third time she’s tried to kill me. Or maybe the fourth.” At the loud exclamations of Red and Perkins, she hurried on, “Well, I think she probably intended to poison me instead of Maisy at the United Methodist Women luncheon. It was my iced tea. Then she tried to run me down in her car.” She waved her hands impatiently. “I didn’t know it was her at the time!”

  “You could have told us,” said Perkins, hushing the spluttering Red. “If you’d told us there’d been an attempt on your life then maybe we could have figured out who was behind it.”

  “But there wouldn’t have been any evidence. And I didn’t see anything.”

  “What,” asked Red in a carefully modulated voice, “were the third and fourth times?”

  “There’s a vegetable casserole in my kitchen. Actually, it’s all over my kitchen. I’m pretty sure that it’s poisoned, judging from Willow’s reaction when some of it got in her mouth. And the fourth time would have been this.” And Myrtle pulled on the collar of her robe to show the angry marks around her neck where Willow had squeezed her hands.

  “What I don’t really understand,” said Lieutenant Perkins slowly, “is why she was so determined to get rid of you. It’s not like you knew anything.” He raised his eyebrows questioningly at Myrtle and looked at her searchingly with his steady, gray eyes. “Is it? Did you know something?”

  Myrtle frowned indignantly at Perkins. “If I’d known anything, I certainly wouldn’t have let Willow into my house at nine o’clock at night. No, I think she just knew I was on the verge of knowing something. And she knew, of course, that I was nosing around. Erma Sherman was blabbing about how I was about to solve the case and Willow was right there. And then Sloan ran that piece in the paper about his octogenarian investigative reporter who was hot on the scent. I’m sure that didn’t exactly help.”

  “I’ll have to have a little talk with Sloan,” said Red. Miles came back in with a couple of wine glasses and a bottle of wine. He gave Myrtle a sympathetic look. Having Red cramp her style at the newspaper was not going to go over well.

  “Let’s talk about this detective work,” said Perkins, with a silencing look at Red. “What exactly did you find out? You say you didn’t know anything until tonight?”

  Myrtle sighed. “Well, I had all the pieces in front of me, but I didn’t put it together until Willow came over. Which is unfortunate. I guess she could tell that I’d had some sort of a revelation. After all, she’d been expecting one all along.” She remembered Willow’s strangely piercing eyes.

  “It was the vegetable casserole, you see. And we were talking about her organic vegetable and herb garden. She’s this healthy-living hippy. I remembered she brought her own food to the United Methodist Women luncheon because she didn’t want any vegetables that were cooked in chicken broth or pork. But then I remembered how she told me she was getting barbeque the day after Jill was killed.”

  “It didn’t make any sense,” said Myrtle. “It made a lot more sense that she went back there to get her casserole dish. The dish she said she never took there. Because if she’d taken her own food to Jill’s like she usually did, it would have placed her on the scene of the crime. And she didn’t want to risk that.”

  “Plus,” said Myrtle, “once I thought about her whole healthy living credo, I realized that it was very odd that she would have been buying cigarettes at the store. When Elaine told me that, I just chalked it up to Willow being unpredictable. Then I remembered how toxic nicotine in liquid form actually is. And Willow, as a former nurse, would have known that. Red, didn’t you tell me that Maisy was poisoned by nicotine?”

  Perkins and Red nodded. “But why,” asked Perkins, “wouldn’t Willow just have used something from her garden? She probably has all sorts of dangerous plants in her back yard.”

  “It would have pointed everybody in her direction, wouldn’t it? She’s the herb expert. No, it had to be something that she ordinarily wouldn’t have been associated with. Willow had already decided I knew who did it, because of Erma and Sloan. And tonight she could tell that I’d finished adding things up. She was going to have to finish me off before I pegged her as the killer.”

  “What I don’t understand,” said Red, “is why she murdered her sister at all. Sure, they had the odd argument, but nothing t
o commit murder over.”

  “All of the arguments had a common theme,” pointed out Myrtle. “Cullen. Willow thought Jill needed to leave him. She was sure that Cullen was abusing her sister, not to mention making her work two jobs while he did nothing.”

  Perkins nodded. “So you think she planned on killing Cullen that night.”

  “I don’t think she planned to do anything. I think she went over to Jill’s house to leave a vegetarian dish there that she could eat.”

  “So,” said Myrtle, “she entered the house. Jill and Cullen were there. They were probably arguing. Jill wasn’t happy that Cullen didn’t pick up the phone when she only wanted him to stir the barbeque and check on the food. Maybe Jill discovered that Cullen was having an affair with Sherry ... Sherry left Miles’s house early and Jill could have seen Cullen leaving Sherry’s house when she was on her way home. They argued. We know Cullen was drunk and in a bad temper. It could have gotten violent.”

  “But,” said Red, “everyone said that Cullen was passed out in the back of the house when they came over.”

  “True. He probably passed out at some point during the argument with Jill. Or maybe Jill clobbered him for a change. Either way, Willow heard a fight. And she decided, on the spur of the moment, to defend her sister. She picked up the cast iron skillet with my cute rooster oven mitts,” noted Myrtle with some lingering irritation, “and swung as soon as the kitchen door opened.”

  “But it wasn’t Cullen,” said Red.

  “No. And Willow must have been horrified at her mistake. But she had to act fast. She made sure that Cullen hadn’t seen or heard anything. Then she realized she couldn’t be gone too long from the party, so she hurried back to Miles’s house.”

  Miles said thoughtfully, “In sort of a wildly colored outfit.”

  “But maybe it wasn’t wildly colored,” said Myrtle. “Maybe it had blood splattered on it. With those print dresses she wears, it can be hard to tell.”

  “And she left pretty abruptly,” noted Miles.

  “She used the drink tray spilling as an excuse to go change. She was going to be the hostess at the next house. She needed to change her clothes and make sure no one suspected anything,” said Myrtle. She paused. “I actually noticed my rooster oven mitts when I was in her kitchen looking for iced tea. They looked out of place to me in her new age kitchen, but I never dreamed they actually were mine. But it clicked into place when I saw the mitts she wore when she brought me the casserole today. They were these 60s-inspired tie dye looking things. Not kitschy roosters.”

  “And she’s been trying to cover it all up since then,” said Perkins. “It’s a wonder she didn’t try to pin it all on Cullen.”

  “She did!” said Myrtle. “But of course no one took her really seriously. We all knew she couldn’t stand him. But Cullen was passed out, after all. He didn’t seem to be faking it. Which was actually a fairly good alibi.”

  Red stood up. “I’d better run—I need to go get Willow processed through the system.” He stooped and gave Myrtle an unexpected kiss on the cheek. “Good job, Mama.”

  Myrtle beamed. “And good job to you for wrestling that homicidal maniac.”

  “You were actually doing all right on your own. That was quick thinking with slinging the poisoned casserole.” Red turned to Miles. “Thanks again for providing us with a place to unwind. And the coffee.”

  Lieutenant Perkins followed Red out the door, talking with him about the case as they went. Miles, who had been looking uncomfortably underdressed in his sweat suit, cleared his throat and said, “You know, Myrtle, I think I’m ready to hit the sack. Actually, I was already in bed-mode when Red called.”

  “Sorry,” said Myrtle. She looked around for a clock and saw that it was eleven o’clock. “I guess time flies during life and death struggles.” She sighed. “I guess half the town will be out milling in the street to see all the action.”

  They peeked out the door with caution and saw a deserted street. “Where are all the spectators?” demanded Myrtle. “Doesn’t anyone realize what was going on here?”

  “Apparently not,” said Miles. “But think about it ... .there were no sirens or blue lights. Red just ran across the street and then walked back across with Willow to put her in the car. And Lieutenant Perkins probably drove in quietly. There’s no murder so there’s not a huge forensics team taking pictures or roping the place off. There are probably just a couple of people over there collecting evidence to use against Willow.”

  “I guess I’ll need to keep out of their way,” said Myrtle. “Which won’t be hard since I’m going directly to bed. Today is finally catching up with me.”

  Miles walked her home and inside her house. The two officers inside just motioned which area to keep away from and Myrtle headed off to bed. “Just lock the door behind you,” said Myrtle. “Although I guess it’s not so dangerous anymore.”