by Lea Wait
“It’s that time of year. Without Josh the holidays won’t be the same, so Ob and I decided we’d volunteer to help serve Christmas dinner at the Baptist Church. It’ll get us out of the house, and not think about the past. Chicken soup’s about finished.” She gestured toward the woodstove, where a large pot was steaming. “Would you like a cup? You must be cold, and the soup’s good and warm.”
I was tempted. “No, thank you. I should get over to Aurora. I came to pick up the pillows.”
“Right,” she nodded. “Have to admit Ob helped me a little so we could make your deadline. My needlepointing’s still on a learning curve. Let me get them.”
She looked through several bags near their Christmas tree. No wrapped packages were under it.
“Your tree is lovely,” I said. It was covered with ornaments like the ones on my tree—the kind made by a child. Josh, I assumed, years ago.
“We couldn’t be without a tree,” Anna said, returning and handing me a bag. “Josh loved Christmas so much.” Her eyes filled and she looked away.
“Thank you for helping Patrick find a Christmas tree for Aurora, and for talking Seth into taking everyone on a wagon ride yesterday,” I added. “I’ll admit I was doubtful, but it turned out to be fun.”
“I’m glad. I’ll tell Ob. He’s not in right now. He had errands to run,” she said. “He said he’d get extra batteries and water before the storm. But we have plenty of batteries and water. I suspect he has some Christmas secrets. Although I can’t imagine what they are, since we don’t exchange gifts.”
“Maybe he’ll surprise you this year,” I suggested.
She shrugged. “I’ve been watching all the doings across the street. Heard that actor, Paul Carmichael, died the other night. Sad thing to happen at Christmas.”
Anna and Ob must not have heard he’d been murdered. “It’s an awful thing to have hanging over the holidays.”
“It is,” she agreed. “And let’s hope all those photographers and media trucks will disappear and leave Skye and her friends in peace.” She bent toward me. “Do you know, two of those people came here and asked to use our bathroom? I told them to find facilities somewhere else. Skye and Patrick are good, quiet people, even if they are famous. I told those people they were wicked rude to stay outside Aurora, just watching. Then those men started asking questions about the Wests. Thank goodness Ob was here. He told them both exactly where they could go.” Anna leaned toward me. “Let me tell you, he wasn’t telling them to go back to their truck.”
“I can imagine,” I said, grinning at the thought of Captain Ob telling off the media folks.
“One question, though. That young actor who died—that was a couple of days ago, right?”
“Right,” I agreed, heading for the back door.
“Then what was that ambulance doing over there about an hour ago?”
“What?” I asked, turning back to Anna. “What ambulance?”
“So you don’t know, either. Hope no one’s sick, or had an accident. That house’s had more than its share of problems over the years.”
“It has indeed,” I agreed. “Thank you for the pillows! I really appreciate you and Ob taking the time to make them.”
“Not a problem, dear,” said Anna. “But you check on what’s happening across the street. I hope nothing bad’s happened to Skye or Patrick. Their year has been trouble enough.”
Chapter 39
“One will find more pleasure in lunching out-of-doors if sandwiches, cream and sugar are covered. We suggest covers of rose-colored cotton with white beads suspended from each corner to prevent any chance breeze from playing pranks with them. Embroidered pink and blue flowers should be in the center of the cloth, and edges finished with white picot.”
—From The Modern Priscilla; Home Needlework and Everyday Housekeeping, a monthly magazine, May 1918.
I pulled into the driveway at Aurora, grabbed the bags holding the pillows and the two gingerbread cookies, and rang the doorbell.
Thomas O’Day opened the door. “Angie! Glad you’re here. Come on in.”
I didn’t waste any time asking my question. “I was across the street,” I said, “talking to one of the neighbors. She said an ambulance was here.”
“Afraid so,” he said. “May I take your coat? Or maybe you’ll want to go on to the hospital. The medic or EMT or whoever was in the ambulance didn’t seem to think it was serious, but Skye insisted.”
“What wasn’t serious? Insisted what?” I asked, glancing around as though whatever the answer was it would be right in front of me. I kept my coat on.
“Her son, Patrick. He ate some cookies and got dizzy and started throwing up.” Thomas wrinkled his nose. “Probably overindulged, with the holidays and all. Or he’s caught the flu. But he was having a lot of stomach pain, and Skye got worried.” Thomas didn’t look concerned. “You know how mothers are.”
Actually, I didn’t. My mother had disappeared when I was ten. “Is anyone else sick?” I asked.
“No, we’re all fine,” said Thomas. “The rest of us have been working on the screenplays. Marie came up with a great idea for the end of the script. All we’ll have to do is write the new ending and hire a stunt driver to play Paul in one scene. We got so excited about solving that problem, and we all loved seeing Haven Harbor so much yesterday, that we’ve been outlining another script to be set here. Skye explained about her friend’s death, and we promised not to use that, but Patrick told us about a local author and we’ve been checking her work. So many ideas!”
“So no one else is sick,” I said, trying to get back to what I was most interested in.
“No one. Skye went with Patrick in the ambulance, but everyone else is in there.” He pointed toward the living room. “We’re finally getting some work done.”
“What cookies did Patrick eat?” I asked. I saw Bev coming into the hall from the kitchen. “What kind of cookies did you make, Bev?”
“The ones made that man sick weren’t none of my baking,” Bev answered. “No one’s gotten sick from my cooking. Only cookies he ate so far as I know were the ones you made for him.”
“What? The cookies for my tree-trimming party were gone days ago. I haven’t baked any cookies since then.” The gingerbread cookies Gram had given me for Patrick were in my pocket. All I’d done was decorate those.
“Patrick found a tin box of cookies outside his door this morning,” said Bev. “Told me they must be from you. Had a note on them from his ‘secret admirer.’ He thought that was sweet. Wouldn’t let any of the rest of us eat a one. Just as well, considering.”
“Are the cookies still here?” I asked.
“Those EMT fellows took the ones left,” said Bev. “What did you put into those cookies? Maybe you added something you didn’t know the poor man was allergic to.”
I headed for the door. Then I remembered when Dave had suddenly become ill, back in October.
“Where did Patrick throw up?” I asked.
“Right on my clean kitchen floor,” said Bev.
“Did you clean up the vomit?”
“Certainly did.” She hesitated. “Funny thing. The EMT guy asked the same question. Can’t imagine why his mess wouldn’t have been cleaned up.”
I knew, but I didn’t stop to explain.
I was still holding the bag of needlepointed pillows as I jumped into my car and headed for the Haven Harbor Hospital emergency room.
Testing a sample of Patrick’s vomit could reveal what caused him to throw up.
But that was for the medics and doctors to figure out.
If I could figure out what “secret admirer” would have left cookies for Patrick, then maybe I could guess what was in them.
But I had no clue where to begin.
Chapter 40
“Then I will not be proud of my youth or my beauty,
Since both of them wither and fade.
But gain a good name by well doing my duty
That will scent like a ro
se when I am dead.”
—Worked by Betsey S. Nichols in Searsport, Maine, in 1830. Betsey was the youngest of ten siblings, all born in Searsport. Betsey was born in 1818. Her father was a shipbuilder. Betsey herself married three times and had five children.
The drive to the hospital took forever. I drove too fast on roads beginning to ice over, despite the sand and salt dumped on them in anticipation of the storm to come. When I almost didn’t make a curve, and envisioned my little red Honda in a ditch or wrapped around a snow-covered tree, I slowed down.
Last June I’d followed an ambulance from Aurora to Haven Harbor Hospital’s emergency room. That ambulance had also held both an injured Patrick and his concerned mother. That time he’d been sent by helicopter to Boston’s best burn unit. I hadn’t seen him again until August.
Where had those cookies come from? Not from me, for sure. From whom, then?
Sarah’d been interested in Patrick when he’d first arrived in Haven Harbor, but I’d eaten Sarah’s cookies, and they’d been fine. Plus, I couldn’t imagine Sarah leaving a box of cookies in the snow (they must have been in the snow) with a cryptic note.
Bev Clifford had seemed certain the cookies weren’t hers, and she would have known if anyone else at Aurora had been baking.
She’d mentioned allergies. Was Patrick allergic to anything?
He’d never told me he was, or refused to eat anything for medical reasons. I smiled to myself, despite my fears, as I remembered he’d once said he liked Maine oysters, but prairie oysters weren’t for him.
I hadn’t thought much about that until I’d Googled prairie oysters—and fought not to gag.
That was the only time I remembered him mentioning something he didn’t like to eat.
The hospital emergency department parking lot was full. Pete had once said holidays were the worst days of the year for crimes and accidents. People were excited, overeating, climbing ladders, lighting candles and fireplaces and fireworks, and worst of all, drinking too much and partying (and arguing) with friends and relatives they managed to avoid the rest of the year.
Not to mention driving on icy roads.
I found a place to park in the back of the lot and walked toward the emergency room entrance, doing my best to avoid snow-covered patches of ice, black ice, and any other treacherously dangerous spots. I didn’t need to become a patient.
Neither Patrick nor Skye were in the waiting room. Good. That meant Patrick was being cared for.
I waited my turn at the desk, after a mother with a six-year-old who’d been sledding and banged her head against a tree and an elderly woman whose hand was bleeding. “We have a bread slicer, but she insisted on using the knife. I should’ve told her I’d sharpened it,” explained her husband.
By the time I got to the front of the line I almost felt foolish. “I’m here to see Patrick West. He was brought in by ambulance.”
“Your name?” the clerk asked.
After I’d practically given her my entire life’s history, she handed a note to another clerk. “Have a seat in the waiting area,” she said. “We’ll let Mr. West know you’re here.”
I watched as three other patients told their stories, showed their insurance cards, and were admitted to the back. After a few minutes I couldn’t sit any longer. I got up and paced.
A television in the waiting room was tuned to CNN, with broadcast breaks every few minutes warning of a severe winter storm approaching the northeast. One shivering newswoman was reporting from the Boston Common in pelting snow falling heavily enough to blur the camera image. As I watched, her hat blew off.
I was more worried about Patrick than a storm. The Haven Harbor emergency room allowed each patient two visitors. Why hadn’t anyone come to get me? How seriously was he sick? Did he have food poisoning? An allergy I didn’t know about?
And who’d left cookies for him? Maybe he did have a secret admirer I didn’t know about.
My thoughts whirled, like the snow on the television screen.
“Miss Curtis?” A nurse’s aide stood in the doorway. “You may go in now. Mr. West is in room 7A.”
“Thank you.” Finally! I walked past her and into the busy room filled with doctors, nurses, and patients.
It was a busy afternoon. Two patients were lying on overflow stretchers in the hallway. Small rooms for patients surrounded the desk, where nurses hovered, calling specialists, scheduling laboratory tests, and entering patient information in their computers.
Room 7A was at the far end of the large room.
Patrick was asleep, lying on a bed, hooked up to an IV drip. His skin was pale, almost a pale blue.
“Angie!” Skye rose from her chair in the corner. “When the nurse said you were here, at first I didn’t believe it. How dare you come here? I never want you to see me or my son again. I don’t know what you put in those damned cookies, but they almost killed my son. One of the doctors said it might be arsenic. Arsenic! Thank goodness she recognized the smell of almonds and had the antidote in stock. I thought we were friends. That you and Patrick cared about each other. Thank goodness it looks as though he’ll be all right, no thanks to you.”
I didn’t . . . .” I began.
“Don’t lie to me. Patrick told me you’d left those cookies for him. ‘Sweet gesture,’ indeed. Cookies laced with poison! And, by the way, the doctors reported it to the police. Any poisoning must be reported. So don’t think you can get away with this.”
“But I didn’t leave him any cookies,” I managed to say, before someone grabbed my arm. I turned slightly. “Pete!”
“Sorry, Angie. We need to talk.” He looked over at Skye. “Thanks for letting the medical staff know what happened. I hope your son will be all right. If you or Mr. West think of anything else that would help us, please call me.” He handed Skye his card. She must have a collection of them by now. “Now, Angie, let’s leave the Wests in peace. They’ve had an extremely difficult week.”
“But . . .” I tried to explain as he guided me past the doctors and nurses (all of whom were, of course, watching) and headed me out of the emergency room.
We stopped outside the hospital entrance. “I didn’t do anything, Pete! You know me; you know Patrick. I wouldn’t hurt him!”
He looked at me. “Skye West’s convinced you tried to kill her son. The hospital would have notified me when they knew for sure Patrick had been poisoned, but she called me as soon as that possibility was mentioned. I had to respond. Skye’s influential. I’m surprised the press isn’t here already. Even before I got to the hospital she’d called again. Now she’s decided you also killed Paul Carmichael.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe what Pete was saying.
“I’ll admit, that caught me by surprise. But you have a Glock. Paul Carmichael was killed with a Glock, which I hadn’t even told her. And you were the one who found his body.”
“But Patrick and I were just taking a walk!”
“And then her son ate cookies you left for him, suddenly became very ill, and his doctor suspects he was poisoned.”
I took a deep breath. This situation was incredible. But Pete was serious. I needed to stay calm.
“I didn’t kill Paul Carmichael. I didn’t even know him. And Patrick and I are friends. Hell, Pete, we’re more than friends. I rushed to the hospital the minute I heard he was sick.”
“Maybe that was to cover your story,” said Pete. “I’ll admit, I can’t imagine a motive for you. Did you and Patrick have an argument? Were you upset with the Wests? Jealous of what they have that the rest of us don’t?”
I didn’t feel the cold or the wind. All I could think was that Skye, and maybe Patrick, believed I was a murderer.
I shook my head and tried to focus on the facts. “Patrick and I are fine. When he can talk, he’ll tell you that himself. I haven’t baked any cookies for anyone in the past few days, and I didn’t leave any for Patrick. If I had baked cookies for him, I would have given them to him, not left them in the sno
w outside his door.”
“They were in one of those tin boxes women put Christmas cookies in,” Pete said.
“Whoever put those cookies in the box probably also left their fingerprints,” I pointed out.
“The box was in the snow, maybe for hours. We won’t be able to find fingerprints on the outside of the box.” Pete hesitated. “Could be some on the inside, I suppose.”
“Where’s the box now?” I asked.
“Here at the hospital, I guess. Skye said the EMTs who responded to her call took it for testing.”
“Which means the EMTs, and people at the hospital, touched it. I hope no one ate any cookies left in it. You need to find that box, Pete.”
“You’re right. I do. I’m going to do that right now.” He turned to go back into the hospital and then turned again. “Do you have your gun with you?”
I reached into my bag and handed it to him. “It hasn’t been fired in months.”
He took it carefully. “We’ll check it. If it wasn’t the gun used in Paul Carmichael’s murder, we’ll get it back to you. But you’re now a person of interest in two investigations, Angie. I shouldn’t be saying this, but be careful who you talk to and what you say.”
The snow was beginning to pile up. I walked slowly back to my car, got in, turned on the heater, and started to cry. How could this happen? How could Skye believe I would hurt Patrick—or Paul Carmichael, a man I’d never met?
Paul’s murderer and Patrick’s poisoner were still out in the world. Probably somewhere in Haven Harbor. And although I hadn’t used my gun in months, I felt naked—unprotected—without it.
Cookies! I picked up the gingerbread people I’d planned to give to Patrick, broke the head off the boy, and then crumbled both cookies and threw them out the car window onto the snow. Maybe the birds would like them. They wouldn’t think they were poisoned.
I sat, crying, until the tears were gone, and I felt empty and numb.
