Arsenic and Ole

by Jessa Archer

  Ouch. I’d been older than eighteen when I fell for Paige’s father. And Amundsen was a saint in comparison to Nic Carbone.

  “You’re right,” I admitted. “Maybe Bethany deserves a chance at redemption. My biggest concern was whether she’d make the atmosphere toxic for other cast members. I really do want the Coastal Playhouse to be an enjoyable experience for everyone.”

  “So do I. So it’s a good thing we have a bit of insurance to keep her in line.”

  “Uh, no. If you mean Amundsen’s files, I didn’t keep any of—”

  “No!” she said quickly. “Oh, no. I didn’t mean that. My point was that we can tell Bethany that I’m her understudy. She’ll not only be on her best behavior, but won’t miss a single rehearsal or performance if she thinks I’ll be taking her place onstage.”

  I had to laugh. That was an excellent point. I was pretty sure Bethany Tartt would drag herself onto the stage with a broken leg and raging case of pneumonia before she’d give her spotlight over to anyone, let alone Melinda Barry.

  “Okay, I’m convinced. Barring a miraculous performance by one of the other actors tomorrow, Bethany will be vamping her little heart out this summer.”

  I went over the list with Melinda one last time, then hung up and posted the twelve names on our website, along with three alternates who would be called in only if one of the twelve decided to drop out in the next few weeks. All shows at the Coastal Playhouse were written for six cast members, and the budget included salaries for Ben as stage manager, plus five others who would have non-performing roles—ticket booth, concessions, lighting, etc.—in addition to serving as understudies. The actors would all have full-length vocal audition pieces ready to perform tomorrow. We’d also do a full cold reading of the script, and some pair-ups to see who worked well with each other in terms of comedic timing, vocals, and so forth. Despite the fact that we’d winnowed the group down to eleven performers, it would be a long audition session.

  It wouldn’t start until afternoon, though, since the next day was Sunday, and for that I was glad. Tonight had been rough, and I needed some time for a long, quiet walk on the beach tomorrow. That was one tradition of my mother’s I was happy to continue. Maybe the girls would join me, if we could boot Nathan early enough for them to get a solid night’s sleep. Delaney had been here over a day, and so far she’d only seen the beach from the car.

  To my surprise, Nathan had already left when I got back to the living room. Normally, he’d have plopped down on the couch to watch Saturday Night Live or whatever series he and Paige were currently bingeing. Maybe he was just giving Paige and Delaney a bit of time together since she was visiting, but I thought I’d detected a slight chill between him and Paige before I headed upstairs.

  I toyed with the idea of not asking, but I’m not good at holding my tongue. So while I didn’t actually ask, I did make the obvious observation as I dropped into the recliner. “Nathan left early.”

  “He sure did,” Paige said. “Apparently he feels I overreacted to Emily’s comment. I think he was mostly just a little freaked about finding Mrs. Whitley. But then we all were.”

  “Well,” Delaney said, “if you’re looking for a silver lining to all of this, there actually is one, you know.”

  “Oh, really?” Paige said. “And exactly what is that?”

  “No one is ever going to forget your sweet sixteen party.”

  “True,” Paige said with a rueful smile as she unfolded herself from the sofa. “At the forty-year class reunion, everyone will say remember that party where we found the dead body? But that doesn’t really change the fact that tonight sucked.” She pressed a kiss onto my cheek. “Thanks for going to all this trouble, though. The cake is incredible. We’re going to have another slice, in fact, since I’m a firm believer in chocotherapy. You want some?”

  “No thanks, sweetie.”

  I leaned back into the chair and closed my eyes, trying to tamp down my anger. Paige was dealing with the whole thing better than I was, but I think it’s usually easier to deal with your own disappointments than those of your kid. And while it seemed wrong to be angry at a dead woman, I was nevertheless quite mad at Rebecca Whitley. She hadn’t called the police and wouldn’t be ratting us out to the HOA, although that could very well be because she was dead before the guests began to arrive. And even so, she’d still managed to wreck Paige’s party.

  Chapter Ten

  The next morning was overcast and quite windy, not all that unusual for spring. But the forecast called for the clouds to clear by late morning, and rain wasn’t expected until later in the week, so my morning meditation on the beach was still a go. It was a good thing, too. Sleep had not come easily the night before. Each time I managed to drifted off, Leo started whimpering again. And I kept seeing Rebecca Whitley’s body on the surface of the pool, one arm draped over that foam noodle.

  Paige and Delaney had either stayed awake talking or simply hadn’t slept well, neither of which would have been surprising given the events of the previous night. When I peeked in on them and asked if they were up for a morning walk on the beach, they made a few monosyllabic sounds that clearly meant no and pulled the covers up around their faces again. Attila remained in the patch of sunlight at the foot of Paige’s bed, not even deigning to look at me. Normally he’d have shot out the door the second I opened it, in search of breakfast. Apparently I was a traitor in his book for taking in our canine guest, and he’d decided to wait and let Paige feed him. Fine by me. One less smelly can for me to open.

  Before going to bed the night before, I’d taken an old blanket out to the garage for Leo and made him a bed in the corner near the steps. He’d yapped for a good half hour after that, clawing at the door, begging to come inside. I’d been very tempted to give in. The poor little guy had probably never slept alone in his entire life, and he was obviously scared. But Attila was barely tolerating the dog being in the garage. If I’d brought him in, none of the humans would have gotten any sleep. It had been hard enough to drown out Leo’s whimpers, and it would have been impossible if Attila’s screeching had been added to the racket.

  After I put on the pot of steel-cut oats I’d presoaked, I headed out to the garage to check on the dog. It was actually a good thing that I’d resisted the temptation to let him in. He’d gotten sick twice during the night. It was mostly liquid, with little specks of leaves. He’d also chewed up several cardboard boxes from the recycling bin, shredded most of the roll of shop towels that had been on one of the lower shelves at the back of the garage, and completely gnawed a finger out of one of my mom’s old gardening gloves.

  All of this destruction had apparently worn him out, however, because he didn’t move from the blanket-bed I’d made for him the night before. I looked around for several minutes, trying to find the orange finger from the glove, but it seemed to have vanished.

  “Did you eat this?” I asked, holding up the mangled glove.

  I hadn’t really expected an answer, but he gave a little yip that sounded very much like an affirmative to me.

  “That wasn’t very smart, you know. If you can’t digest leaves, how the heck do you expect to digest rubber?” He just stared at me, apparently out of witty comebacks, and I sat down on the steps to survey the mess this tiny creature had made of my garage. “I know these weren’t the accommodations you’re accustomed to, Leo, but they were better than the backyard. You’re really not a very considerate guest.”

  He made a noise halfway between a grunt and a sigh and ventured over to lie down next to my feet. When I reached out my hand this time, he didn’t snarl, but simply lay there, staring up at me with sad brown eyes as I stroked his back.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I told him. “Andrew should be home today.” His ears perked up slightly at the name. Maybe he wasn’t as dim as I’d thought. “That’s right. Andrew is coming home. He loves you, even if you are a royal pain in the butt.”

  I put him on the leash and took him outside, hoping tha
t someone would be at the Whitleys’ house so that I could hand the dog over before leaving for the day. The driveway was still empty, but there was now yellow police tape across the door. We walked toward the curb, and I grabbed the Sunday paper from the strip of grass next to my mailbox. The OBX Clarion is truly awful, with sensationalist stories and few redeeming qualities. Even though I’d gone online and canceled my subscription after the paper’s horrible coverage of Jerald Amundsen’s death, Caroline had paid through the end of the summer. Like it or not, a new copy landed on my lawn each morning. As usual, I debated tossing it into the trash unread, but I tucked it under my arm instead, since I was curious whether they’d have a story about Mrs. Whitley’s death.

  I’d thought Leo might be more likely to do his business, as Whitley had always put it, on his own lawn, so we wandered around there for a bit. After a few minutes, however, I realized the error of that assumption. This dog had almost never gone on his own lawn. And sure enough, as soon as I walked back over to my yard, he instantly hiked up his leg and watered one of my back tires.

  “Gee, thanks, Leo. I just had the car washed. But, hey, you do you, little guy.”

  As we headed back into the garage, he began pulling toward the bushes I’d caught him nibbling the day before. “Oh, no,” I told him. “No more leafy greens. They make you sick.” As I took a closer look at the row of shrubs, I noticed a barrier of thin wire fencing wrapped around the base of the azalea bushes in the back. It wasn’t visible unless you peered through the leaves of the slightly shorter plants in the front. Maybe that was to protect the azaleas from becoming Leo’s morning snack?

  Once we were back in the garage, I closed the door and placed the dog on the makeshift dog bed. “Stay,” I told him. “I’ll bring you something to eat in just a minute.”

  I tossed the paper onto the table and gave the oatmeal a stir, then microwaved a small bowl with some leftover chicken and rice I’d had in the fridge. When I carried the bowl out to the garage, however, I noticed a green Prius pulling into the driveway next door. I put the bowl on the steps, scooped Leo and his leash up, and hit the button to open the garage door.

  Audra stood in the driveway, staring at the police tape across the entrance of her mother’s house. She turned at the sound of my garage door going up. Her eyes were red, so I assumed she’d already heard the news.

  Leo let out a little whine and began wriggling as soon as he spotted Audra, and the squirming intensified when she said his name and held out her arms to take him. “Thank you so much for looking after him. I was worried that my mom had let him out when it…happened and he’d been wandering around the neighborhood all night.”

  “It was no trouble,” I told her. That wasn’t entirely true, considering the shredded boxes and other debris I still had to clean up in the garage, but given that the young woman had just lost her mother, I certainly wasn’t going to point something like that out. “Did the police call you? I didn’t have your number…”

  “I haven’t spoken with them yet. Andrew finally reached me this morning. He said he tried last night, but I went to bed early. Guess I didn’t hear the telephone. He’s on a flight back from Utah now, or at least, he will be in a couple of hours. You were the one who found her, weren’t you?”

  I nodded. “We were in the middle of my daughter’s birthday party, and one of the guests noticed Leo out here in the yard. I was afraid he might get hit with the cars coming in and out, so I carried him over to your mom’s house. When she didn’t answer the door, I took him around back. I was going to leave him inside the fence, but then I saw her in the pool. I’m so sorry, Audra.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m kind of at a loss for what to do next. I’ve never dealt with anything like this before. I don’t know who to call to make the funeral arrangements, or…” She shrugged helplessly.

  “You should probably contact the Caratoke police before you do anything else,” I told her. “They’re going to want to know when you last saw or spoke with your mother, and they might need you to identify the body officially…although maybe not, since it happened at home. You can work out the details about the funeral with Andrew and your stepfather later.”

  She frowned. “My step…? Oh. You mean Rick.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”

  “No.” Audra asked. “You’re right. I’m just not used to thinking of him that way. Was he here when it happened?”

  “I’m not really sure. All I know is that no one was home when I tried to take Leo back. That would have been around eight. I was busy with party prep before that, so I didn’t pay much attention to who was coming and going.” There was an awkward pause, where neither of us seemed to know what to say. “Did you…would you like to come in and have some coffee? Or oatmeal?”

  I realized as I made the offer that we’d have to leave Leo in the garage or else risk the wrath of Attila. Oatmeal was pretty lame as a condolence offering, though, so I wasn’t surprised when she turned me down.

  “Thanks, but I should probably go talk to the police. I don’t have Rick’s number. Neither does Andrew. If you see him, maybe you could contact one of us?”

  “Sure. Except I don’t have your number, either. Let me run in and get my phone.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “We can do this the old-fashioned way. Can you hold Leo?”

  The dog clearly wasn’t on board with this idea. He was probably afraid that he was going to get abandoned again, so he gave me one of his little snarls.

  “And here I was thinking we were friends now,” I told him as Audra grabbed her purse to search for pen and paper. The bag was unusual. It looked like something from the 1970s, with swatches attached to the outside, almost like scales or feathers. They were dyed dozens of shades of blue, ranging from navy to a blue so pale it was almost silver. I thought the feathers were cloth at first, but then I realized they were strips of leather.

  “That’s really pretty,” I told her.

  “Thanks,” she said, but the way she wrinkled her nose when she looked down at the purse made me think that she didn’t really like it. She jotted down her number on the back of a receipt and handed it to me, then took Leo back and pressed her face into the dog’s mane. “Do you think they’ll let me take him into the police station? I’d hate to leave him alone in the car. Or maybe you could watch him while—”

  “Oh, I’m sure it will be okay!” I said quickly, even though I had no idea whether they allowed dogs in the Municipal Building. “If not, a deputy can talk to you in the parking lot. I really do think Leo needs to be with you. The little guy has been distraught. I don’t know if he understands about your mom, or if he’s just nervous about my cat. And I’m worried that he’s allergic to some of the greenery around here. He’s been nibbling on my shrubs, and something seems to have made him sick last night. So…you might want to keep a close eye on him.”

  “You won’t have to worry about him wandering into your yard from now on. My mother’s medication tended to make her rather…forgetful at times. And irritable, but then you probably knew that.”

  “I didn’t realize she was ill.”

  “She had heart problems. I have no clue how serious they were because she changed her story on a fairly regular basis. Andrew seemed to think she was…exaggerating the severity of her condition. For years, she’s been telling us she had only a few months to live, but she still found the energy to golf a few times a week, so…” She shrugged. “Anyway, thanks again for keeping an eye on Leo last night.”

  After Audra left, I scooped up a bowl of the oatmeal that had just finished cooking and added a nice pat of butter. Paige insisted on doctoring hers with sugar and cinnamon, which isn’t awful, but I’ll take a bowl of chewy, buttery oats every time. As was often the case, my mother showed up on the window seat about the time I settled in with my breakfast and coffee.

  I hadn’t seen her since our chat the previous day while I was making Paige’s cake. Caroline had
noted in the past that she didn’t always pick up on things that happened when she wasn’t physically in the room, but I could tell from her expression that she’d been present enough to piece together the events of the night before.

  “Rebecca Whitley was a horrible person,” she said. “But even so, I wouldn’t have wished her dead. Gone, yes, but not dead. You don’t think it was foul play, do you?”

  “I don’t know what to think. Travis said they’d have to treat the death as suspicious for the time being.”

  “Well, I hope for his sake that it wasn’t murder. Can you imagine having to winnow down that list of suspects? He’d have to interview half the town. Including you, after your little spat yesterday.”

  “True. You heard about me sending them the food from La Costera?”

  “Yes. But surely that can’t be connected! I can’t imagine any of the Gonzalezes doing such an awful thing under any circumstances. And even if they’d be so inclined, how stupid would they have to be to put something in the food when Whitley had already publicly accused them of poisoning her dog? They’re going to have a hard enough time clearing their name as it is, without the added layer of suspicion if word gets out that they delivered food to her address last night.”