Those Who Mourn: A Wolf Creek Mystery (Wolf Creek Mysteries Book 1)

by Barbara Bartholomew

  They were at the house, pulling into the garage before he’d thought how to introduce the subject of a possible poison attempt. It all seemed so unlikely in this familiar setting. People didn’t kill people in Wolf Creek, well not in his experience at least. Certainly they didn’t try to kill his grandfather.

  They entered the house through the back door, moving through the generous utility room where washer, dryer, huge sink and an ironing board looked much as they had in the old days, though the ironing board hadn’t come in for much use back when he was a kid. Grandpa had seen to it that most of their clothing was of the wash and wear variety.

  Even with David’s help Grandpa couldn’t make it any further than the big family room where he collapsed, pale and shaking, into his favorite recliner.

  “You okay, Grandpa?”

  Grandpa bristled. “Of course, I’m fine. What did you think that I’d be heading straight to bed?”

  This was exactly what he’d thought, but he wasn’t about to say so. He’d leave it to his grandfather to decide when to retire since any suggestion otherwise would probably lead to him sitting up past midnight. All you had to do was say to Harry Johnson that he might take it easy to drive him into furious action.

  The ringing of the doorbell caused Harry to wriggle in his chair in an attempt to get up. David, who wasn’t much better at getting up from a seated position these days than was his grandfather, was just grateful that he was still standing. “I’ll get it,” he said and went down the front hall to open the front door to an attractive older woman with well coifed hair, a smiling face and holding a foil-covered dish in both hands.

  “David Johnson,” she said with a welcoming smile. “I’d heard you were back. Now your granddad is certain to get well.”

  Once he’d known this woman really well, but now he had to fumble for her name. She was one of Grandpa’s dearest friends. “Marian,” he lost only a few beats before he could pull it out. “Marian Ellers.”

  He remembered how Mrs. Ellers and her husband had liked to play the domino game ‘forty two’ with Granddad and his friends. He stepped aside so she could enter.

  “Welcome home, Harry,” she called breezing down the hall to the kitchen, where she went directly to the refrigerator where she inserted the dish into what he now saw was a crowded shelf. He shook his head, not remembered it being that full when he left.

  “Get right in here and say hello, Marian,” Grandpa called, his voice filled with new energy.

  The two greeted each other enthusiastically while David’s brain did the kind of sorting that seemed too frequently to be required since his head injury. Her husband—a jolly rounded little man named Paul—was he still around or had Grandpa said something about a fatal heart attack. Better not to say anything, but let events reveal themselves.

  “I put a chicken dressing casserole in the refrigerator,” Marian told him. “Just have David warm it up when you’re hungry.” Wise eyes looked past him to his grandson. “Looks like you could use a few calories yourself, son, and full as that refrigerator is, you’ll have plenty to choose from.”

  He recalled that this was how the community expressed its sympathy when someone was ill or in case of a death in the family. Food. Lots of it.

  But Jon and Heck thought Grandpa had been poisoned. How could he let him eat food brought in by the neighbors. He felt something almost like a sense of panic rising within him. How could he keep Grandpa safe?

  “’Course June will get her nose out of joint,” she said to her old friend, “at the idea of anybody but her feeding you.”

  “June is a good cook,” Grandpa offered in defense.

  “Sure, if you can stand her sour face and sourer attitude. I don’t know why you keep her around, Harry.”

  “She needs the work. You know she fairly well supports that family of hers.”

  Marian sniffed disdainfully. “You’re just too kind for your own good, Harrison Johnson. People take advantage of you.”

  “Come on, Marian, you can’t make a saint of an old rascal like me. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about me any longer now that my boy is back to look after things.”

  Her cynical gaze went back to David, then softened as it lingered. “Yes,” she agreed, “things will be different now that you have each other. People around here are proud of you, David, you’re a real hero.”

  David felt distinctly uncomfortable. He couldn’t help feeling that no more than Grandpa was a saint was he a hero. He’d just done what he had to and somehow failed to save his best friend. Heroics weren’t something he had a right to brag about.

  It wasn’t until Marian had left and he’d looked around to make sure June Allie wasn’t in the vicinity that he felt up to talking to Grandpa about what had happened.

  Chapter Seven

  She supposed she wouldn’t see him again. Not when he had chosen an e-reader and would have no reason to come back to the library. Still Susan found herself watching the entrance for sight of that chiseled face and form. She’d listened enough around the library to know a whole lot more about him.

  His last name was Johnson. David Johnson. And he’d been raised by his grandfather Harrison ‘Harry’ Johnson after the death of both parents in an accident. After his schooling, he’d gone in for a career in the military—army, she thought—been injured and nearly killed in Iraq. That was why he looked like a man who had been fined down from a once larger existence. He’d been patched together in ways that left him, people said, a different man.

  He’d once been jolly and outgoing, they said, but now he seemed withdrawn and bitter. No wonder, nobody ever came back from war quite the same.

  Still, others had been worse and now that his grandfather needed him, David Johnson needed to straighten himself up and take hold. Drugs, the gossips hinted darkly. Most likely he’d gotten addicted while under treatment. Poor Harry, he’d only gotten half of his grandson back.

  For Susan who only knew about battle from the books she’d read, found herself rallying to his defense. How did these people with their safe ordinary lives dare critique a man who had been through untold horrors. Contrarily taking the other side she decided if she’d had a voice with which to speak, she would have been eloquent in his defense.

  So she looked for him and hoped he would come back. She felt as though he would have offered friendship if he could, even as she would have given him her support as he grew back into himself.

  He didn’t come that afternoon and she supposed she would never see him again. There must be plenty of people in this town who never came into the library and most probably David Johnson would be one of them.

  That night after everybody was gone and the library lay in silence, Susan pulled the poison book from the shelves and, slowly and deliberately, tore it to bits and threw the pieces into the trash container. It was the most she could do to help David Johnson and his grandfather.

  David lay awake that night and thought about the way Grandpa had taken the news that he might have been poisoned. He’d laughed, his keen old eyes dancing with laughter and the wrinkles on his face deepening in joyful lines.

  David waited in dignified silence until the laughter faded. “You’ve got to take this seriously,” he said. “Jon and Heck are both worried.”

  “Stuff and nonsense, boy. I may not be the most popular gent in town, but nobody would wish me dead bad enough to try to kill me. It’s just some sort of mix-up. That’s all it is.”

  David argued for caution, refusing to serve any of the food left by sympathetic neighbors. Grandpa, growing increasingly irate, summoned June Allie and instructed her to prepare plates with samples of all the best dishes for both him and David.

  Several old friends dropped in and were encouraged to join in the meal. Mrs. Allie sat down with the rest and enjoyed the food.

  David ate a peanut butter sandwich and went to bed early, hoping there would be no deaths before morning.

  In spite of everything, he slept well enough and didn’t wake
n until after nine. Showered and dressed, he found Grandpa being looked after by the visiting nurse and looking considerably brighter this morning.

  “Just look at me, David, still alive and kicking,” he teased, driving his grandson from the house after only a single cup of very black coffee.

  He started out on one of the slow, careful walks that were the most he could manage these days, getting only so far as the library before his labored breathing told him it was time to take a break.

  Embarrassingly uncertain that he could manage the steep stairs in the front, he circled the building to enter at the first floor door on the side, moving past the children’s library to use the balky old elevator reserved for those unable to easily climb stairs.

  He was grateful when nobody seemed to notice that he’d been forced to enter the easy way as he stepped out onto the main floor and scented once again the fragrance of lilacs.

  Must be something they used to polish furniture or maybe an air freshener.

  He walked over to say good morning to Mrs. Kaye, who was, oddly enough, staring into a waste paper basket. “How’s my favorite librarian this morning,” he said, attempting to sound more cheerful than he actually felt.

  She glanced up, frowning distractedly. “Morning, David,” she said. “You’re looking chipper. “

  He nearly retorted that appearances could be deceiving, but decided that would sound whiny, as though he were feeling sorry for himself. Time to straighten up and deal with changed reality with more grace, he told himself, and felt as though the lilac smell grew even closer. Though he didn’t usually enjoy too-sweet scents, this was somehow comforting. As if, he thought fancifully, his guardian angel hovered over him.

  Mrs. Kaye stirred bits of paper in the trash container thoughtfully. “I just don’t get it,” she said, then looked appealingly at him.

  He shrugged, not sure what was troubling her.

  “Look at this,” she said, holding up a handful of paper pieces, “I found this mess when I opened this morning. Someone’s torn up a book.”

  “That’s awful,” he agreed. “Such pointless vandalism.”

  “But the odd part is that this wasn’t here when I left last night. I dumped this basket myself so I know it was empty. And I was the last to leave. Nobody could have gotten in here to do this.”

  He frowned. “Anything else damaged?”

  She shook her head.

  Guiltily aware she was the culprit and that under other conditions she would never destroy a book, Susan stood at David’s shoulder and tried to explain.

  ‘People were reading that book to find out how to poison someone. Maybe your grandfather. I had to do something.’

  Of course nobody heard her. They never did, but previously that hadn’t bothered her a whole lot. She stood alone across a great divide from the flesh and blood people, watching them with interest, but remaining uninvolved. But something about this man had bridged that gap. She wanted to talk to him. She wanted to help him.

  Few people were in the library this weekday morning, but when the front door opened and two men strode in both Mrs. Kaye and David turned to look. Susan knew the men. Both of them wore the uniforms of the city police. Leading the way was a grim-faced Jon Hartz. Behind him was a local boy who had only recently joined the police force, Jacob Connelly. He’s just graduated school a year or two ago, people said, and everybody had been surprised when such a mischievous boy chose a law enforcement career.

  They walked purposely forward, nodding to Mrs. Kaye, but directing their attention at David Johnson. “Grandpa doing all right?” Jon asked.

  David nodded. “When I saw him twenty minutes ago he was doing fine. What is it, Jon?”

  “Understand you all had kind of a welcome party last night. Friends dropping by to welcome Harry home. Lots of food and drink.”

  David nodded.

  “I even took a cake by,” Mrs. Kaye contributed, looking uneasily at David as though for guidance. “Though I had a meeting and couldn’t stay for a visit.”

  Susan crept a little closer to David, feeling instinctively that he needed her support.

  “Lilacs,” he said vaguely.

  The police chief, his face unwontedly stained, ignored the irrelevant comment. “Dave, I’ve got bad news. Marian Ellers’ neighbor went by to have coffee with her this morning the way they always do. She found her unconscious and in a bad way. She’s been taken to the hospital.”

  “A heart attack?” Mrs. Kaye asked, obviously shocked.

  “Too early to know,” Jon evaded. Then his gaze went back to David. “But symptoms are much like those the doctors saw in Harry. They’re thinking she’s been poisoned.”

  “She ate with the rest of them. I tried to persuade Grandpa and the others, but they laughed. They couldn’t believe . . .” David broke off.

  “And you ate the same stuff?”

  David shook his head. “I couldn’t. I thought maybe they’d know I was really worried if I passed all the homemade dishes for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Wait, is anybody else sick? “ He started to stride away. “Got to go see about Grandpa.”

  Susan wanted to give the policer chief a good shake as she watched his face as the other man departed in a hurry. ‘Don’t be a dope,’ she tried to say. ‘Anybody can see that David Johnson is a good man. He wouldn’t poison anyone.’

  She wanted to tell him about June Allie and the blonde girl and how they’d been secretly reading the book on poisons. But it wouldn’t do any good. Nobody could hear her.

  David hadn’t put his body to the stress of running in a long time, but he ran now, ignoring the pain. Three police cars were parked on the street in front of Grandpa’s house, increasing his anxiety, but when he plowed through the door and down the hall to the living room, he saw his grandfather.

  Seated in his recliner, he was allowing the housekeeper to serve him a hot drink. “Tea will be good for you, Harry,” June Allie scolded. “You just drink it right up and you’ll feel better.”

  Harry sputtered with anger, pushing the teacup away so that it slopped over on Mrs. Allie’s hands, causing her to exclaim that she was burned.

  “You okay, Grandpa?” David questioned anxiously, ignoring the housekeeper’s protests of injuries. She’d probably sue them claiming hot drink injuries.

  “Sure, son. I’m fine, just fine.” Harrison Johnson looked anything but fine. Instead of being pale, his skin tone looked gray and his face was drawn. The hand that reached apologetically toward Mrs. Allie shook visibly. “You’ve heard about Marian?”

  David reminded himself that Marian and her husband had been friends with his grandfather since they were all kids. And at his age, Grandpa didn’t have a whole lot of old friends still standing. “I heard.”

  “I’m praying she’ll be all right. They’re not telling me what happened. Heart attack or stroke most likely. That’s what gets most of us.”

  David blinked. From here he could clearly hear the sounds of people in the kitchen. They were probably bagging up the leftover food from last night for analysis. His grandfather must surely be in a state of shock if he didn’t comprehend what was going on.

  He went on into the kitchen where, as he’d supposed, food samples were being collected. He was only in the way there, so he went back to find Jon talking to Grandpa.

  “I understand Marian came over here last night,” he was saying. “Joined you for dinner.”

  “Yeah, several of the neighbors dropped by. No forty two, but lots of talking.”

  “You didn’t happen to notice what she ate?”

  Grandpa thought for a moment. “Sure I did cause we ate the same things. She fixed two plates, brought me one and she pulled up a chair to keep me company while we had supper.” He grinned. “Joan was real annoyed because she’d already brought me a plate.”

  “And do you remember what you ate?” Jon asked a little more insistently.

  Grandpa scowled. “Certainly I do. I’m not senile yet.”

&nbs
p; Jon still waited so he began to list the items: potato salad, Marian’s chicken and dressing casserole, green beans, some sliced tomatoes from a neighborhood garden, lemon pie and a couple of chocolate chip cookies.” He thought for a moment. “Now Marian she didn’t eat but a bite or two of the pie and none of the cookies. She doesn’t have as much of a sweet tooth as me.”

  He lapsed into silence and David guessed he was lost in thought of his friends. Marian and Paul, they’d been regular visitors to the house during his childhood, almost like an aunt and uncle.

  Jon, he observed, was making notes, no doubt writing down the foods Grandpa had listed as consumed by him and Marian.

  When word came later in the day that Marian had passed away and that preliminary tests showed a toxin had been added to the chicken dressing salad, David began to wish he’d eaten the same foods as everyone else.

  Heck speculated, based on the symptoms that the poison, was not digoxin but a common kind used for poisoning rodents. When he said as much to his friend, the police chief began looking for signs of that specific type of poison.

  “It wasn’t in the food in the refrigerator, we found it on the remains on paper plates in the garbage,” he said half a day later. “June says she cleared up afterwards and tossed the disposable plates and glasses into a trash bag which her granddaughter carried to the container outside. Luckily we were able to retrieve it and arranged for tests in hope Marian’s life could be saved. It was in Marian’s casserole which she made especially because it was a favorite of Harry’s.”

  David frowned. “But surely they would have tasted the poison in the casserole,” he protested.

  “Your granddad had already fed up on the food June had given him, but to please Marian he tried to eat some of her casserole. He said it tasted funny and he spat out his first bite without swallowing. That probably saved his life, but Marian said she knew it was good because she made it herself. She ate several bites before admitting the dish was off and giving up.”