The Poisoned Pen

by E. Joan Sims

  Chapter Twelve

  “Bedroom slippers, Mom!” protested Cassie. “Don’t you think that’s a little eccentric even for you? What if someone sees us?”

  “They won’t,” I muttered, as I drove slightly above Horatio’s speed towards Beth’s dreary little abode.

  “And what’s the big hurry?” continued Cassie. “So what, if she has an attic. Everybody has an attic in Rowan Springs. Well…except maybe for those new fake European stucco monstrosities out on Country Club Drive, and even they have crawl spaces.”

  “I bet we’ll find that Beth Davis has a lot more than a crawl space!”

  Cassie braced herself against dashboard as I negotiated a particularly dicey turn. When I swerved coming out of it because one of my shaggy purple bedroom shoes caught on the gas pedal she gasped in alarm. “Where’s the fire, Mom!”

  “Here, apparently,” I told her as we pulled up to the curb. “And we’re too late,” I announced, my voice full of grim disappointment

  Thick, dark, smoke—fed by the flames feasting hungrily on the house below—billowed from the charred roof of the Davis cottage. The fire truck had arrived long before we got there, but the firemen were simply going through the motions. It was obvious that nothing they could do would make any difference.

  It was not my house, but just the same, I was almost moved to tears. Poor little house, I thought, sadly. With a little tender loving care: a new coat of paint—some shutters here, a porch there—it might have been attractive. Instead it was dying as it had lived—ugly and unkempt—and I was fairly positive—taking some pretty big secrets to the grave.

  “Damn!”

  Cassie had gotten out of the car and perched herself on the hood. She was quiet—watching intently as the hot, sweaty men drained the fire hoses and coiled them back on the truck. I got out and joined her.

  The wind—the one that had helped to fan the fire—now assisted in carrying the smoke up and away—across the trees and beyond, gradually clearing the air so that only the pungent smell of wet ashes remained.

  “You think Beth was in the attic, don’t you, Mom?”

  I heard the catch in her voice, and turned quickly to see tears streaking down her smooth cheeks.

  “No! ” I exclaimed, putting my arms around her. “That’s not what I think at all!” But as the words slipped past my lips, I began to doubt them. I bit my own lip to keep from saying anything to alarm Cassie, but I suddenly realized that she might be right.

  In my desire to comfort my daughter, I didn’t notice Andy Joiner until he was practically under my nose. “What’s going on, Paisley?” he asked, suspiciously. “You all mourning a house? That’s kind’a queer, don’t you think?” He looked down and laughed. “What’s with the hairy purple feet? You look like a Muppet.”

  “Andy, was…did you find…anything, anyone.…?” I stammered

  “Why no,” he answered, looking perplexed. “The house was vacant. Miss Davis lived alone, and she’s in the hospital.”

  “No, she’s not,” I told him, urgently. “Saijad Dhanvantari called about an hour ago. Beth disappeared from the hospital some time this morning.”

  “Excuse me,” he said brusquely, his smile vanishing into a grim, tight line. He hurried back over toward the tired firemen who were huddled around the rear end of the fire truck. The men were relaxing—drinking from a big water cooler and enjoying a hamper of sandwiches. Andy had them mobilized in less than a minute. Tuna fish, pimento cheese, and paper cups were trampled underfoot as the firemen hurriedly pulled their heavy jackets back over sweaty arms and wet undershirts. They grabbed their axes and ran back to the smoldering ruins of the house, thrusting aside smoking beams and kicking away fallen timbers—heedless of their own safety.

  The exhausted men searched for over an hour, but found nothing. When they finally piled back on the fire truck and pulled out of the driveway past us I turned away—embarrassed that I had caused so much trouble.

  “Never mind, Mom,” chirped Cassie, happily. “Thank God that Beth wasn’t in there, but you could have been right!” She shivered at the thought, completely overlooking the fact that it was she who had started unrolling this particular ball of yarn. “I’ll help Gran make some cookies next week. We can take them a bunch. You always love going to the station to see the fire truck.”

  “Not any more,” I mumbled glumly.

  I looked up to see Andy lumbering towards us. He was covered in soot from head to toe, and his uniform was ruined: one sleeve was completely torn away and his trouser cuffs were charred and smoking. It was obvious that he was not very happy with me.

  “The fellows said to thank you for that little exercise in futility, Paisley,” he grumbled.

  “Really? Those were their exact words?”

  “Of course not! I’m too much of a gentleman to tell you what they really said, but maybe someday if you push me….”

  “Okay, okay! I get the drift. I’m sorry, Andy. But if she had been in there….”

  He wiped his face with the back of his hand, smearing soot and sweat across his mouth, and started to say something—instead, he did the oddest thing. Andy Joiner licked the back of his hand and smacked his lips as if savoring the finest wine. “That’s strange,” he said. “I wouldn’t have ever suspected a fire like this….” He caught himself before finishing his sentence, and turned quickly on his heels to head for his car.

  “What’s going on, Andy?” I called after him. “What’s strange?” I yelled, as he backed rapidly out to the street without even a glance at me. “I could sue you for false arrest, you know! You’d better tell me!”

  Cassie pulled me gently towards Mother’s car and stuffed me inside. Maggie Lyons was standing in her doorway watching us—sour disapproval written all over her wrinkled old face.

  “I could sue you, too—you old witch!” I hollered in Spanish at the top of my voice.

  She shook a gnarled fist in the air, and shouted back, “Damn foreigners! Go back where you come from!” She slammed her front door, then opened it again to hurl one more insult. “And learn how to dress like decent folk!”

  Cassie was laughing so hard she had to pull into the First Fidelity parking lot to keep from wrecking the Lincoln. “Oh, Mom!” she gasped. “Don’t you see? Maggie Lyons is Gran’s alter ego! They must have been separated at birth.”

  While I didn’t fail to see the humor of the situation, I was too busy mulling over Andy’s behavior to join in the fun. It made my daughter mad.

  “Well, it was funny!” Cassie pouted, as she turned back into Main Street and headed for home.

  “Sorry, honey,” I apologized. “You’ll have to forgive me—too little sleep, and too many questions.” I stretched back in the comfort of the leather seat and propped my purple feet on the dashboard. “What do you suppose Andy tasted in that soot?” I wondered out loud.

  “Oh, great! Now I suppose you’ll want to go back there and eat ashes! Won’t Maggie Lyons just love that! And don’t count on Andy to be so forgiving this time around. Not to mention the fact that Gran will probably disown you, and I’ll have to sneak out of the house to visit you in the penitentiary.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” I asked no one in particular. “Everyone in my family is certain I’m going to end up in some sort of institution.”

  “Why did we race over to Beth’s house in the first place, Mom? You promised to tell me.”

  “Beth had to live somewhere,” I explained. “That fancy bedroom was nothing more than a movie set—a backdrop for her imagination, and the rest of the house hadn’t been touched for months.”

  “But why not a basement?”

  “ Just a hunch. Besides, the carpet in her bedroom was wet—not much, but enough to soak into my jeans that first night when I got down on the floor to look under the bed. And if that fancy canopy hadn’t been in the way I bet we would have seen stains on the ceiling. Remember, I heard water dripping.”

  “Maybe the roof leaked,” she suggested. “
It was an old house, and like you said, no one has tended to it in years.”

  “No doubt the roof did leak, but it hasn’t rained anywhere near here for weeks. Nope,” I insisted, “rain is out. My guess is there was a small bathroom or kitchenette in the attic with leaky plumbing.”

  “You’re making all this up!” she accused.

  “Maybe,” I admitted honestly. “We’ll just have to ask Beth when we find her.”

  “Here we go again!”

  The afternoon was beautiful—the air sweet and fresh, with a warmth that was just a hint of the long hot summer to come. I didn’t really want to go home and, I decided, neither did my daughter.

  “How about a cup of coffee from your shop?”

  “Coffee? You?”

  “Yes,” I insisted. “Some of that fancy blend with cinnamon and hazelnuts and raspberries—all of that artificial stuff—and lots of heavy cream and sugar.”

  “You just want dessert,” she accused, and rightly so.

  When Cassie came back to Rowan Springs after her graduation from Emory University, she surprised us all by announcing she was home to stay. I had expected her to go to work in some fancy glass tower in any one of the world’s major cities. After all, she spoke three languages and could have easily made her way anywhere; but she insisted that Kentucky was her spiritual home—there was no need to waste time and money by going elsewhere. I didn’t argue. Why bother when I had my heart’s desire.

  Cassie very independently made her own way. She took a job at the local coffee shop and saved enough to buy the business and add a bookstore when the owner left town. Originally her plan was to live in the apartment upstairs, but she decided to live with us instead. Mother took the rent Cassie paid each month to slowly upgrade her quarters, making them as private as possible. We fantasized that she would stay with us forever, but we knew our days with Cassie were numbered and we resolved to make the most of them.

  I loved her little bookstore-cum-coffee shop. So did a lot of people in town. It was the perfect spot for the business folk to meet every weekday morning for a cup of fresh hot coffee or tea and the latest news—either from the morning papers or the grapevine. Cassandra’s Book Nook was especially popular that first winter with logs burning merrily in the big old- fashioned stone fireplace, lots of comfy overstuffed chairs, and a bottomless pot of hot mulled cider to attract patrons. When business fell off in the spring as customers began to prefer the out-of-doors, Cassie knocked down the back wall and created a charming brick patio that featured a fountain like the one from her childhood. On pleasant days like today, the graceful wooden benches she had arranged to give the maximum of privacy to each customer were usually full, but I was in luck: there was one vacant in my favorite shady spot.

  Mindy, the petite blonde teenager who worked for Cassie, cornered her as soon as we crossed the threshold. The girl was positively quivering with excitement.

  “Cassie! Oh, my God!” she squealed like a little blonde mouse. “Thank goodness! I’ve been frantic!”

  Cassie was used to Mindy’s “the sky is falling” attitude. “Slow down, honey,” she urged calmly. “Take a deep breath—and then tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Wrong? Oh, my God! Nothing’s wrong!” the girl exclaimed with a huge grin. “It’s just all so exciting! Aliens have landed in Rowan Springs! The whole town is talking about it. Can you just imagine? Here in Rowan Springs, of all places! Aliens with huge purple feet!”

  I grabbed my cup of coffee from Cassie’s outstretched hand and headed for the patio. I managed to make it all the way to my bench before I started laughing.

  “Mindy told you about the aliens, I see.”

  I turned around and parted the leaves of a Japanese maple to see Bruce Hawkins sitting on the bench behind me. He was manfully plowing through the New York Times.

  “Why do I have the unsettling feeling that this whole implausible story has something to do with you?” he asked.

  “Little ole me?”

  He leaned over my bench and pointed at my hairy purple bedroom slippers. “Yes, Paisley, little ole you.”

  I laughed and took a sip of my coffee. “You’re sharp, but not that sharp. You’ve been talking to Andy Joiner, haven’t you?”

  “Guilty as charged,” he said with a sheepish grin.

  “Damn it! Andy swore he’d keep my little, er…difficulty to himself.”

  Bruce folded up his paper and walked around to sit beside me. He had been a good-looking boy when we were in high school, and he was even better looking now. His light brown hair had receded only a fraction, his waistline was still trim, and his forget-me-not blue eyes as soulful as ever.

  “Don’t be mad at Andy,” he said, shaking his head. “He figured you wouldn’t be able to keep your nose clean. He said you might have need of my services.” His smile faded, and he put on his courtroom face. “Andy says you’re holding out on him. He says you saw something last night—something that really scared you. What’s going on, Paisley?”

  “Speaking of keeping your nose clean, what are you doing hanging around my sweet baby girl all day long?”

  I watched in amusement as the area above his starched white collar and neat Windsor knot turned a dusky red. The color crawled up his face and settled on his cheeks before he was calm enough to answer.

  “For heaven’s sake, Paisley! What do you think I am?” he sputtered.

  “I asked you first. Are you a philandering, skirt-chasing, cradle-robbing jerk, or do you have some other excuse for being a bookstore groupie?”

  “I…I’m keeping an eye on someone. And for your information, it’s for Cassie’s own good. I happen to be very fond of that young lady.”

  I raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “In a fatherly kind of way, and you know it!” Bruce paused and stared at me intently for a moment. “You only said that to get me off the track, didn’t you?” he laughed, blotting his upper lip with a snowy white handkerchief. “Wow, you had me going there for a minute. Ever think of becoming a lawyer? I could use a partner.”

  “Who?”

  “Who, what?”

  “Who are you keeping an eye on?”

  “What threw you into such a panic last night that you practically begged to be arrested?” he countered.

  “Coffee’s good,” I observed, as if he hadn’t spoken.

  “Maybe that’s why I spend so much time here,” he suggested.

  “Yeah, right!”

  We called off the verbal fencing match by unspoken mutual agreement and enjoyed a pleasant conversation while finishing our coffee. Bruce confided that his wife was indeed expecting and they were looking for a bigger house.

  I laughed. “You and Mary have been looking for a bigger house since forever.”

  “Yes, but now she’s nesting and her determination scares even me. What did you see last night, Paisley?”

  “I thought we.…?”

  “Billy Martin said you practically climbed up his neck. By the way, he didn’t mean to zap you with his Taser.”

  “You could’a fooled me.”

  “He feels pretty lousy about it, and his wife is giving him fits. She’s a big fan of your books. Honestly, Paisley, I have my own reasons for thinking you’re holding out on Andy.”

  “You tell me yours and I tell you mine,” I suggested with a wicked leer.

  Bruce looked around and saw that we were alone on the patio; nevertheless, he leaned closer and lowered his voice to a whisper before he spoke.

  “A client of mine….”

  “Who must remain nameless,” I finished for him.

  “Exactly,” he added without so much as a smile. “My anonymous client received several—he called them ‘hints’ from Bethlehem Davis—hints that he come up with quite a tidy sum or she would present his wife with certain embarrassing details of a rather sordid little interlude in his life.”

  “Wow! Beth Davis is into blackmail?”

  A worried frown creased Bruce’s handsome face.
“Careful, Paisley!” he cautioned. “Keep your voice down.” He started to get up, spilling all ten sections of the newspaper on the patio. “This was a mistake,” he said, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t be sharing this with you—with anybody for that matter, but especially not with you.”

  I knelt down and hurriedly picked up the paper. I held it close to my chest like a ransom, hoping I could keep him from leaving.

  “I figured it was something like this,” I lied. “Everything pointed to it.”

  “Everything?” He sat back down on the bench, ignoring the newspaper. “What’s ‘everything’?”

  I searched my mind desperately for old movie plots, Leonard’s exploits—anything that might make Bruce think I already knew enough that it wouldn’t matter if he told me more.

  “Well, there’s her bedroom for starters,” I suggested mysteriously.

  Bruce sat back on the bench and stretched his long legs in front of him. The polished gleam of his immaculate loafers made me acutely aware that I was still wearing my bedroom slippers. I tucked them underneath my seat and faced Bruce with what I hoped was a confident smile.

  “Don’t you.…?” I started, but he held his hand up to stop me.

  “Lavender walls, a big bed with lots of red velvet and gold tassels?” he asked.

  I was stunned. “How did you know that?”

  “Photographs, and a particularly nauseating video tape.” He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed deeply, then turned to face me. His clear blue eyes were the window to a fine and honest soul. I felt like a louse for tricking him into talking.

  “Look, Bruce,” I began.

  “My client has reason to believe there are more,” he interrupted softly.

  “More tapes, or more photos?” I asked, my guilt forgotten.

  “More victims.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cassie and I had one of our rare arguments on the way home from her shop.

  “Beth isn’t that sinister, Mom. You said yourself that she reminds you of Petunia Pig.”

  “What about Baby Face Nelson, or Billy the Kid, hummm? They didn’t look all that sinister, either, did they!”