Pudding Up With Murder

by Julia Buckley

  Timothy Britton studied my face and looked thoughtful. “That’s very nice, thanks. It makes me think that you don’t expect him to make it.”

  “It’s not for me to surmise.”

  “But he didn’t look good?”

  “No.”

  He shook his head, as if to clear it of negative thoughts. “To whom are you related in this bizarre assemblage?” He had quite a way with words, which explained his eloquent children.

  “I am a friend of Ellie, the next-door neighbor. She and Marcus are friends, and he had asked her to bring me because of my dog. He wanted to meet Mick.”

  His laugh held a tinge of bitterness. “That’s Marcus for you. Inviting a dog to his party. If he had his way, it would be just dogs. He’s never been big on human interaction.” Perhaps he heard how ungracious that sounded, because he said, “Although I guess there were times that he managed to be a good dad.”

  “You certainly are one,” I said.

  He looked surprised, and so gratified that I felt embarrassed. “Thank you,” he said. “Lilah, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where’s your husband this afternoon?” He said it absently, apparently not realizing what a rude and presumptuous question it was.

  A wave of longing for the absent Jay Parker went through me. “He’s in New York for a training thing,” I said. “He’s a cop.”

  “Ah,” he said. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and we exchanged a fearful glance. “I don’t really want to look,” he said. He took it out with his free hand and scrolled with his thumb. He read a message for a minute, and his mouth became a thin, grim line.

  He looked up at me. “Is she still sleeping?” he asked.

  “Sound asleep.”

  He looked around, probably to make sure his other children were out of earshot. “Marcus is dead,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “He never regained consciousness.”

  “So terrible.” My eyes darted to Timothy and Carrie. They still looked fine; they were politely hugging and kissing people good-bye.

  Peach looked like a sleeping angel, her face pink with happiness and the exertions of the day. None of the children at the party looked sick in any way. The rice pudding, then, had not been the problem.

  And yet Marcus Cantwell was dead, and like Maria Grimaldi, I thought that his behavior had indicated that something was not quite right in House Cantwell.

  It was none of my business; I gave some quiet condolences to Tim Britton, touched Peach’s soft little hand, and took my dog to the entrance to Ellie’s yard. She appeared beside me. “Ellie, I would like to go. Can I talk to you in your yard?”

  She put her arm around me. “I’m leaving, too. I’ve helped clean up, and Barbara seems to have everything in hand.”

  “Barbara?”

  “Cash’s mother. The third wife.”

  “Ah.” Ellie, too, looked tired out, and her mascara was slightly smudged. “Let’s go in your house. Do you want me to make you some tea?”

  “No, no, I’m fine. But yes, let’s go in.” We climbed Ellie’s back stairs and sat down at her kitchen table.

  “Ellie, I have some news. And I want you to know you can come home with me if you want. We can—have a movie night.” It had sounded really fun when the Britton children talked about it.

  “Oh dear. Marcus has died?”

  “Yes. Tim Britton told me. Emma’s husband.”

  “Oh, Tim. Such a nice man. He’s a professor—did you know?”

  “No, but I’m not surprised. He’s very well-spoken.”

  “English literature. At some Chicago university. I forget which one.”

  “Wow. Are you okay?”

  “Yes. I’ll be fine. As I told you, we weren’t best friends; I was just fond of him. I don’t know why. There was something vulnerable about Marcus. People didn’t understand him, but there was much goodness there. This is quite sad. And on his birthday.” She wiped at her eyes.

  “You shouldn’t be alone, Ell. Let me call one of your sons.”

  “All right,” she said, surprising me. Jay had two brothers, Tom and Eric, who both lived in the area. I had met them at Christmastime, and we had become relatively friendly in a short time. I went in the next room and found their info on my cell phone. There was no answer at Tom’s house, so I tried Eric. His wife, Andrea, answered.

  I explained the situation in brief, and to my relief she understood at once. “Eric should go out there, sit with her for a while,” she said. “Thanks for telling us, Lilah. Any word from Jay?”

  “No,” I said, and a wave of sadness passed over me. It wasn’t just that I missed Jay Parker; Cantwell’s death was a grim reminder of mortality, and I’d had plenty of those reminders lately.

  I thanked Andrea and hung up. Then I returned to Ellie and sat with her until Eric arrived, about half an hour later.

  He gave me a quick hug, then hugged his mother. “You’ll want something to eat,” Ellie said to her tall, handsome son.

  Eric grinned at me. He looked a lot like Jay. “No, Ma, I will not. And if we get hungry, we can order pizza.”

  I waved at them both, lifted Mick’s leash, and made my way to my car. It seemed like a century since I had bounded up Ellie’s driveway with my clandestine casserole.

  • • •

  IN THE CAR I didn’t bother to turn on the radio, because Avril Lavigne’s melancholy voice was in my head, singing “I Miss You.” With a sigh, I pulled into my long driveway, past the giant house of my landlord, Terry Randall, and beyond it to the little caretaker’s cottage that was my home. Mick’s tail wagged, because he recognized our abode and seemed to be as fond of it as I was. I let him out, and he cavorted around while I fumbled for my key.

  I heard a car behind me and turned to see Jay Parker emerging from a cab, which meant he was coming directly from the airport. He looked thinner; Parker tended not to eat well while he was concentrating on work. He paid the driver and then looked up and locked eyes with me. Even from the distance of twenty feet I could appreciate how very blue his eyes were, and how sexy he was when he focused them on me with that intensity that was only Parker’s.

  He grabbed a large bag from the car and carried it until he reached me, at which point he dropped it on the ground. “I’m back,” he said with a crooked little smile.

  I launched myself at him and actually achieved air, confident that Parker would catch me, which he did, laughing, while I covered him with kisses. Something about Jay Parker made me as affectionate and energetic as a puppy. “You were gone too long,” I said into his neck.

  “Agreed. Can we go inside? Your nosy neighbors are watching us.”

  Surprised, I stopped kissing him long enough to look up at Terry’s kitchen window, which overlooked his backyard. He and his girlfriend, Britt, were both there, staring unabashedly at our reunion. Terry waved, grinning, and Britt gave me a thumbs-up. It was an awkward moment made more so when I waved back with an automatic gesture. “Yes, let’s get inside,” I said.

  I led Parker into my little living room, where he flopped into a chair and pulled me onto his lap. “God, I missed you,” he said, playing with my hair.

  “I don’t see why you needed to go on some training mission. It’s not like you’re in the FBI or something. You’re already the best cop in Pine Haven.”

  He smiled. “You’re pretty.”

  “I’ll bet you forgot what I looked like. I know I couldn’t picture your face anymore,” I lied.

  He took out his phone and clicked it on. “Luckily I have a whole gallery of Lilah photos that helped me get through each day.” He started scrolling through them. Me at Christmas, in front of his family’s tree, right after we had become an “official” couple. Me with Mick, playing in the snow. Me in my best black dress, sitting across from him at L’
amour Parfait, where he had given me a pair of diamond earrings. I had worn them ever since. I was wearing them now.

  He scrolled again, to a couples selfie that I had taken on his phone after Parker and I took a walk together after a couple weeks of dating. We looked happy. “That’s a nice one,” I said.

  “They’re all nice. I just kept thinking, how did I get such a beautiful girlfriend? I was actually asked that by a couple of people, too.”

  “You showed people my picture?”

  “When we had downtime.”

  “Wow, Parker. You have it bad,” I joked.

  He put the phone down on my curio table and slid his arms around me. “I really do,” he said, and he pulled me against him for a long, long kiss.

  “Mmm,” I murmured eventually against his mouth. I pulled slightly away. “I was just thinking about how much I missed you, because I saw Eric, and there is such a resemblance—”

  “Eric? My brother Eric?”

  I nodded.

  “How did you happen to see him?”

  “Oh—it’s kind of a long story. Your mom invited me to Marcus Cantwell’s birthday party—”

  “O-kay.”

  “I guess she told him about Mick, and his special talents.”

  Parker looked fondly at my dog. “I missed Mick, too.”

  “Anyway, I’m leading up to some bad news here, which I don’t really want to tell you right now. . . .”

  He sat up straight. “Is my mom okay?”

  “She’s fine, yes. Just sad. Which is why I called Eric to be with her, and he came out.”

  Parker had his alert face on now; it was unbearably sexy, but it meant that he was in another zone. “What’s going on?”

  I sighed. “Okay, here goes. Cantwell looked kind of weird when I met him. And I made some rice pudding casserole for your mom so she could say she made it for the children.”

  “Sounds like her.”

  “And then later Cantwell came in, saying he liked it and had eaten it as a kid, and then he collapsed right into the casserole.”

  “Not again,” Parker said in disbelief.

  “That’s what I said! But it wasn’t my food that made him sick, thank God, because children had already eaten it by then, and they were all fine. Maria Grimaldi was there, and—”

  Parker’s brows shot up. “Maria? Why?”

  “Because her niece used to go out with Cash Cantwell, and she was at the party, Maria was there to pick her up, but then she started to think it was fishy, Cantwell collapsing like that, because your mom and I told her that he’d been acting weird.”

  “He could have just been sick.”

  “Yeah. But Maria had a feeling, and frankly so did I. Something was weird. And your mom had joked about the fact that his kids might all want access to his money. I guess they have it now.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, because—he died, Jay. At the hospital. Emma Cantwell’s husband, Tim Britton, told me when she texted him.”

  “Oh no. Poor Marcus. He was a good old guy.”

  “Really? I mean, I feel bad for everyone, but he struck me as kind of . . . weird.”

  “Yeah, but he was a good guy. Wow. This is bad news. So my mom took it hard?”

  “Not too bad, but I didn’t want to leave her alone. But I wanted to come here, really badly, so I could send you more sexy text messages.”

  Parker brightened. “I enjoyed all of those immensely, by the way.”

  “Good.”

  Parker’s blue eyes studied mine. “So why were you with Tim Britton?”

  I laughed. “You are really the jealous type, aren’t you?”

  “As you already know.”

  “I was actually with Mr. Britton’s children, who are all delightful, and we were playing with Mick and telling jokes, and then he came up to take them home.”

  “That’s very sweet. You’re good with children. I’ve seen it with your little friend Henry.”

  “Oh, that little Peach is just adorable! Have you seen her?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t—I try not to ever run into Emma Cantwell-Britton.”

  “Why? Do you find her bitchy?”

  “Yes, but I avoid her for other reasons.”

  “Which are? You used to be next-door neighbors, right? And she must be right around your age. Maybe a year or two older? So what’s so awkward? Are you— Wait a minute! Did you go out with her?” I stood up and put my hands on my hips.

  “No, but even if I had it would have been more than a decade ago, so calm down. She went out with Tom, actually.”

  “Your brother Tom?”

  “Yeah. They went to school together. And they were exclusive during their senior year. Anyway, once I barged into his room to borrow something—I don’t know what—and Emma was in there waiting for him. With very little on. I don’t think I’ve made eye contact with her since that moment—and at that point her eyes were all I could safely look at.”

  I burst into disbelieving laughter. “Her? And Tom? And she was—passionate? She seems so straitlaced and bossy.”

  He smiled, rueful. “Not a memory I care to reflect upon.”

  I sat back down on his lap. “But if Maria is right, and someone tampered with Cantwell’s drink, then you might have to talk to her—to the whole family.”

  He shook his head. “It’s Maria’s case, if that’s true. I would expect her to be the lead investigator. It was her hunch, and those are usually good.”

  I put my head on his shoulder. “You look tired. And you’re probably hungry. What should I make for you?”

  His hands tightened around my waist. “Nothing. This is all I want. Exactly what I was picturing on the plane—me in your cozy little room, and you in my lap. Just—like—this.” He punctuated the last three words with little kisses on my face, and I giggled. Mick strolled up, figuring he should be in on the fun, and Parker laughed.

  His phone buzzed on the table, and he picked it up and looked at his text notification. Then he sat up straighter. “Hang on. I need to see this one.” He read his text message, then looked up at me. “I have to go,” he said.

  “You’re kidding me. You’ve been in town for about one minute, and they’re already calling you in to work?”

  “Not them, no.” He looked concerned as he read through the text again. “It’s from Maria. She’s in trouble.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Parker promised he would tell me everything when he returned, which ended up being later that evening. I had made him some spaghetti and meatballs, since he was clearly starving, and he told me what happened in between bites. The Cantwell family, he said, had complained about the way Maria had handled things, and they wanted her off the case.

  “What case?”

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin and scowled. “Maria had a friend in the crime lab rush those samples. Cantwell was poisoned, all right, via his drink. Someone took the liberty of grinding up a nut and mixing it in. Cantwell had a severe nut allergy, and his whole family knew about it.”

  “Oh God. But wouldn’t he have seen the ground nut in the drink?”

  Parker shook his head. “The family said that Owen, one of the sons, had made a batch of something called a Blueberry Thai Mojito. It’s a busy drink, with actual blueberries in it, along with some sort of Thai basil leaf and crushed ice. It would be hard to notice anything else floating in there. Owen had been handing them around; obviously someone took theirs into the house and offered it to Cantwell. No one saw this happen; no one has any memory of someone going into the house, because Cantwell said he needed a few minutes to nap in his chair. Then, minutes later, you and Mom arrived.”

  I thought about this; it had been a very narrow window of events. And yet Cantwell hadn’t died immediately. “If he had a reaction to nuts, he wouldn’t have been able to
breathe, or talk to us. His throat would have closed—isn’t that what happens?”

  Parker shook his head. “Apparently it differs, depending on the person, the nature of the allergy, the type of nut. I don’t know. The lab guy said that a nut allergy response can look similar to a heart attack. It can cause weakness, then cardiac arrest.”

  “The poor man.”

  “Yes.” Parker’s eyes narrowed, and his jaw tightened. For whatever reason, he had liked Marcus Cantwell, and this case was going to be a personal crusade.

  “What exactly bothered them about what Maria did? If it weren’t for her, they wouldn’t know their father was murdered.”

  He wound some more spaghetti onto his fork. “Apparently there’s some discord within the family over this. But a certain individual is threatening to sue the department—”

  I curled my lip. “Oh, let me guess who. Scott Cantwell?”

  “How did you know?” Parker lowered his fork, surprised.

  “Because I talked with Cash Cantwell at the party. He’s the only friendly family member, as far as I could tell, and he filled me in on the whole clan with surprising, uh, frankness. He said his brother was overly litigious.”

  “Hmm. Well, he’s probably just full of hot air, but our chief doesn’t want any bad press for the PHPD, so Maria is being put on something else.”

  “She must be angry about that.”

  “She is. She also thinks this makes Scott Cantwell suspect number one.”

  “Do you think they’ll be cooperative about an investigation?”

  “They have to be.” He scowled again. “They will be as forthcoming as I need them to be.”

  “Wow.” I looked at Mick. “Who’s going to take care of his dogs? Everyone said he loved them more than his family. I don’t think that was true, but it was clear he saw the dogs as part of his family.”

  Parker shrugged. “I would imagine Cash is going to remain in the house; he was the only one currently living there. I suppose they’re his responsibility right now.”

  “He likes the dogs. He told me he walks them and plays with them. He’ll be the best person to adopt them, I think. Plus this way the dogs don’t have to be relocated.”