Killer Crab Cakes

by Livia J. Washburn

  “You can ease your mind on that score … as long as you’re not the one who slipped the poison into the crab cakes.”

  Phyllis shuddered. “Don’t even joke about it.”

  “Oh,” Chief Clifton said, “I wasn’t.”

  When the chief was gone, Phyllis, Sam, Carolyn, and Eve gathered in the kitchen. All thoughts of the Just Desserts contest coming up in a few days had fled from Phyllis’s mind. She couldn’t believe that even here, hundreds of miles from home, murder had cropped up yet again.

  Maybe that reporter was right. Maybe she was some sort of jinx.

  The others were worried, too. As they sat around the kitchen table drinking coffee, Sam said, “You don’t reckon the chief meant what he said about considerin’ me a suspect in McKenna’s murder, do you?”

  Phyllis sighed. “He meant it, all right. He seems like a nice man, but I’m sure he considers all of us to be suspects until he finds some evidence indicating otherwise.”

  “You’d think that all he’d have to do is check our backgrounds,” Carolyn said with an indignant snort. “We’re retired schoolteachers, for goodness’ sake! We don’t go around poisoning people!”

  Phyllis’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “Not normally, maybe, but murder never occurs in normal circumstances, does it?”

  “So what are you going to do, dear?” Eve asked. “Are you going to investigate Mr. McKenna’s death?”

  “Chief Clifton pretty much gave her the go-ahead to do just that,” Sam said.

  Phyllis shook her head. “I don’t believe he meant that. He was just being nice. No chief of police is really going to want some civilian poking around in a murder investigation.”

  “You never know,” Sam mused. “Maybe this fella’s different.”

  “Well, someone had better solve it, and quickly, too,” Carolyn declared. “I don’t like the idea of spending even one more night under the same roof as a murderer.”

  Phyllis thought about the guests staying at the bed-and-breakfast. It seemed impossible to her that any of them could have committed this crime. The Blaines and the Forrests seemed like such nice, normal couples, and Nick and Kate Thompson obviously weren’t interested in anything except each other.

  That left Consuela, and who would have had a better opportunity to poison the leftover crab cakes? She was the one who wrapped them up and put them away, after all. She might have even served them to Ed McKenna that morning, although it was possible that McKenna had gotten them out of the refrigerator and helped himself.

  Something else occurred to Phyllis then. Usually, Theresa and Bianca weren’t at the house during the late afternoon and evening, but they had come by after supper the day before to pick up Consuela. Something about her car not starting at home, so they’d had to drop her off earlier, Phyllis recalled. So the girls had been here in the kitchen while the guests were eating supper. Either of them could have heard Mr. McKenna ask Consuela to save the crab cakes that hadn’t been eaten …

  Phyllis closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. Sam asked, “Are you all right?”

  She nodded as she opened her eyes again. She didn’t tell him that she had been trying to force those suspicions of Consuela and her daughters out of her mind. The Anselmo family had been working for Dorothy and Ben for years. It was beyond belief that any of them would have suddenly poisoned one of the guests.

  But Phyllis had been involved with other murder cases where she would have said that the identity of the killer was beyond belief. Even though she firmly believed that some people were utterly incapable of harming another human being, no matter what, she had learned that under the right circumstances some people could be driven to kill when they never would have otherwise.

  That thought didn’t make her feel any better, but in answer to Sam’s question she said, “I’m fine. Just shocked that such a thing could happen.”

  “Again,” Carolyn added, which Phyllis didn’t think was really necessary.

  She nodded anyway and agreed. “Again.”

  The four friends were still sitting there around the table, brooding, when the back door opened and Consuela came in. Phyllis glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that it was time for Consuela to start preparing supper. What with the chief’s visit and the unexpected and unwelcome news he had brought with him, Phyllis hadn’t paid much attention to the passage of time. She could barely remember eating lunch, because that had happened before they found out that Ed McKenna had been murdered.

  Consuela looked around at them and asked, “Why all the long faces? Are you still upset about poor Mr. McKenna?”

  “Poor Mr. McKenna is right,” Carolyn said. “The man was murdered.”

  Phyllis might have preferred that Carolyn not blurt out the news that way, but she supposed it didn’t matter. Consuela had to find out sooner or later, and there was no way to sugarcoat murder.

  Consuela’s eyes widened, and her face paled despite her skin’s normally dark tint. “Murdered?” she repeated. “But … but I thought he had a heart attack!”

  Phyllis said, “That’s what we all thought until Chief Clifton came by and told us that the autopsy found poison, along with those leftover crab cakes he ate for breakfast.”

  “Madre de Dios! My crab cakes never poisoned anyone! It’s impossible!”

  And then Consuela startled Phyllis even more by pulling out one of the empty chairs at the table, sitting down, covering her face with her hands, and bursting into tears.

  Chapter 6

  The other four people sitting at the table exchanged uncomfortable glances that said they were unsure what to do next. They had to do something, though, Phyllis thought. They couldn’t just sit there and let Consuela go on bawling. It was such a strange sight, because Consuela had always seemed so unflappable during the time Phyllis and her friends had been here.

  Finally, Phyllis stood up and moved around the table. Standing beside Consuela, she patted the woman on the shoulder and said, “There, there. It’s all right. Nobody thinks you had anything to do with Mr. McKenna being poisoned.”

  Two things occurred to Phyllis as she spoke. She wondered why people always said There, there in a situation like this. It was a meaningless phrase.

  And more important, the other thing was that what she had just said was a lie. She didn’t know that nobody suspected Consuela of being involved in McKenna’s murder. In fact, from the way Chief Clifton had acted, he considered everyone in this household a suspect.

  “Yes, don’t worry, dear,” Eve said. “It won’t be long before Phyllis has solved this murder, anyway.”

  Consuela looked up, wiping her eyes. “Señora Newsom? Why … why would you solve a murder?”

  “She does it at home all the time,” Carolyn said.

  Phyllis suppressed the feelings of exasperation that tried to well up inside her. “Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Wilbarger are exaggerating,” she told Consuela. “I’m not a detective or anything like that.” She paused. “But I am wondering why you’re so upset. No offense, but you didn’t seem all that fond of Mr. McKenna.”

  Consuela knuckled the rest of the tears from her eyes. “He was just one of the guests, that’s all. Less trouble than some, so I guess I liked that about him. But he never left tips, either, for me or my girls, and he wasn’t friendly to any of us. He acted like we weren’t even there unless he wanted something from us, like saving those crab cakes for him. No, I’m upset because of … because of what the police are going to think.”

  “Like I told you, no one is blaming you,” Phyllis said.

  “Begging your pardon, Mrs. Newsom, but I know how the law works. They always suspect the people who have been in trouble before.”

  Carolyn said, “But surely you haven’t been in trouble with the law, Consuela. I just can’t believe that, even though I’ve only known you for a few days.”

  Consuela shook her head. “Not me. My husband, Tom. He … he was in prison years ago, when he was young.”

  “Not for mu
rder, I hope.” Carolyn frowned, and Phyllis knew what she was thinking. Tom Anselmo did a considerable amount of work around the bed-and-breakfast—taking care of the yard, painting and repair, plumbing, and all the other handyman jobs that came up. The idea that a man who was around so much could be a killer was disconcerting. Phyllis felt the same way.

  Consuela was still shaking her head, though. “No, no, he never killed anybody,” she said. “He wouldn’t do that. He’s a good man. But he grew up in a rough neighborhood in Corpus Christi. Even then there were gangs and drugs, and people had to do things they normally wouldn’t to survive … He served five years in the penitentiary for selling heroin.”

  Phyllis noticed that Consuela didn’t claim Tom had been innocent. In fact, just the opposite, because the woman went on. “He wanted to do his time. Afterward he said getting sent to prison was the best thing that could have happened to him, because he’d either get strong or he would die in there.” A faint smile appeared on her face, and there was a note of pride in her voice as she continued. “He got strong. He came back and told me he’d never do anything to get sent to prison again. I was waiting for him. I’d promised to marry him. I did, and Tom’s been a law-abiding man, a good man, ever since.”

  “I believe you,” Phyllis said. “But does my cousin know about this?”

  “Dorothy and Ben know all about it. We wouldn’t lie to them, not after they’ve treated us so good.” Consuela sounded a little offended by the very idea.

  “Then why are you so upset?” Phyllis wanted to know.

  “I told you. The police will blame him, even though he didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Mr. McKenna.”

  “From what I saw of him, that doesn’t seem like something Chief Clifton would do. Anyway, he acted like he’s a friend of your family.”

  Consuela shrugged. “We’ve known him for a long time. He knows everybody around here, all the permanent residents, anyway. But it doesn’t matter. He’s still a policeman. He has to find somebody he can blame for what happened, and Tom’s got a felony conviction on his record.”

  Sam clasped his hands together on the table and leaned forward. “Was your husband even home last night or this mornin’?” he asked. “I thought he works on a drillin’ rig out in the Gulf.”

  She should have thought to ask that herself, Phyllis realized.

  Consuela nodded. “He does. But he came home last night, and he doesn’t have to go back until tomorrow night. He planned to come over here tomorrow during the day and do some yard work.”

  “But what possible motive for murder could he have?” Carolyn asked. “Did he and Mr. McKenna even know each other?”

  “I guess. I don’t know. Tom never had much to do with the guests. But Mr. McKenna has been coming here for several years. He and Tom probably talked a little now and then.”

  “It sounds to me like you don’t need to worry,” Phyllis told her. “Tom doesn’t have any motive, and it’s quite a stretch to even say that he had the opportunity to poison Mr. McKenna.”

  “Yeah, but it’s all gonna come out anyway, the part about him being a drug dealer and being in prison. And then the girls … the girls will find out …”

  “They don’t know?” Phyllis asked.

  Consuela shook her head. “That their papi is a jailbird? No.”

  It had been a long time since she had heard anybody use the expression “jailbird,” Phyllis thought. No matter what you called it, though, it wasn’t a good experience to have, especially when you’d been sent to prison for something as sordid as selling heroin. And it wasn’t something that would make your children look up to you, either.

  “Well, maybe it won’t come out,” Phyllis said. She knew it was a pretty weak thing to say, but those were the only words of consolation she could come up with.

  Consuela looked up at her and shook her head. “Unless they find the killer right away, it will. When it’s murder, everything comes out.”

  Thinking back to the other cases she’d been involved with, Phyllis knew just how true that was. Murder had a way of dragging everyone’s secrets out into the light, no matter how ugly they were.

  And she knew all too well that everyone had secrets …

  Consuela calmed down after a while. She had a meal to prepare, and her dedication to her job meant that she couldn’t neglect that duty, no matter how upset she was. She summoned up a smile, even though Phyllis could tell that it was false, and shooed everyone out of the kitchen.

  “We’re having seafood quesadillas tonight,” Consuela told them. “And I guarantee, no poison.”

  The weak attempt at levity fell flat, but after everything that had happened, no one paid much attention to the failed joke. Phyllis, Sam, Carolyn, and Eve went out into the parlor and left Consuela to her work.

  Carolyn leaned close to Phyllis and asked in a half whisper, “Do you think it really is safe to eat the food now?”

  “Of course it is,” Phyllis answered without hesitation. She didn’t believe for a second that Consuela was guilty, nor that her husband, Tom, or their daughters were involved with Ed McKenna’s death.

  But someone had poisoned those crab cakes, she reminded herself, and she had a hard time believing that anyone else who had been in the house could have done such a thing.

  That was one of the problems with murder, she reflected. Somebody had to be guilty.

  A short time later, the Blaines and the Forrests returned from wherever they had been all afternoon. The day had warmed up considerably, and they all looked a little heated. Even though it was autumn, the days could get quite warm, especially with the constant high levels of humidity factored in.

  The guests were laughing among themselves as they came into the house, which bothered Phyllis a little. It was true that the four of them hadn’t exactly been friends with Mr. McKenna, but they had sat down at the same table and shared meals with him. To Phyllis’s way of thinking, a little more decorum on their part would have been nice, as a way of showing respect for the deceased.

  She saw Sam frowning and asked quietly, “Does it bother you, too?”

  “ ‘ Any man’s death diminishes me,’ ” he quoted. “Hemingway, right?”

  “I think he got it from John Donne.”

  Sam shrugged. “Works either way. You’d think it’d bother ’em at least a little that a fella they knew keeled over dead this mornin’. Of course, they don’t know yet how come he died.”

  “That’s right,” Phyllis said as the unpleasant realization hit her.

  Somebody was going to have to tell the guests that Ed McKenna had been murdered … and that the killer might still be under this very roof.

  She called out to them as they started through the hall toward the stairs. “Excuse me… . I need to have a word with you folks.”

  Jessica Blaine and Raquel Forrest were each carrying several plastic bags. Loot from their day of shopping, Phyllis thought. They wore impatient looks as they turned toward her.

  “What is it, Mrs. Newsom?” Leo asked. “We’re all a little tired. Like to freshen up a bit before dinner.”

  “There’s some news about Mr. McKenna that I need to share with you.”

  “What happened?” Leo smiled. “He didn’t turn out to be alive after all, did he? A little resurrection?”

  “Leo, stop it!” Jessica scolded. “I swear, you try to make a joke out of everything.”

  “A man died,” Sheldon said. “It’s not funny.”

  It was even more “not funny” than they knew. Phyllis said, “The chief of police came by here a while ago. The autopsy on Mr. McKenna wasn’t complete at the time, but the medical examiner was already sure that he didn’t die from a heart attack or a stroke.”

  “What else is there that’d kill a guy so sudden like that?” Leo asked, frowning now instead of grinning. “Some sort of embolism or aneurysm or something like that?”

  “No,” Phyllis said. “He was poisoned.”

  Leo’s frown deepened.
“I don’t understand. How’d he get into poison around here?”

  “Wait a minute,” Sheldon said. “You don’t mean he was …” His voice trailed off, as if he were unable to bring himself to say it.

  Phyllis nodded. “That’s right. The police are treating it as a homicide investigation now. Chief Clifton believes that Mr. McKenna was murdered.”

  She watched them all closely as she said it, looking for any sign that one of them already knew about it.

  But instead, all four looked profoundly shocked, as if they couldn’t believe what they had just heard.

  Of course, one of them could have been acting. Phyllis had run into murderers before who had the ability to behave as if nothing had ever happened. It was a useful talent to have if you planned to go around killing people.

  Still, she had a hard time believing it of any of these four, who seemed as normal and innocent as they could be. After that initial moment of surprised silence, they began bubbling over with questions. Phyllis let them yammer on for a few seconds, then raised her hands to call for silence, like she would have in her classroom.

  “If you’ll go in the parlor and sit down, I’ll tell you what Chief Clifton told me.”

  Still carrying the packages from their shopping trip, the couples went into the parlor and sat down, the Blaines on the sofa, the Forrests in a couple of armchairs. Phyllis stood in the middle of the room, where she would be able to see all four of them.

  As concisely as she could, she covered the news that Chief Clifton had brought. The couples listened in silence, although Phyllis could tell that Leo, especially, was almost bursting with the desire to ask questions. He let her finish, though, before he said, “Is it possible that the crab cakes just … you know … went bad?”

  Beside him, Jessica nodded. “That’s right. I’ve heard of people dying from food poisoning before.”

  “If someone put the poison in the crab cakes,” Sheldon said, “you could call that food poisoning, couldn’t you?”

  Raquel reached over and punched him lightly on the upper arm. “You’re not funny,” she said.