Never Mess with Mistletoe

by Edie Claire

  “Of course you didn’t!” Mason said with a laugh. “You were only kids. Even adults don’t always think how fast fumes can build up in a situation like that. If your parents didn’t see what they were doing, and the kids threw the tarp off right after the first guy got sick, it wouldn’t be obvious to anybody what had happened!”

  “Oh, Mason,” Lydie exclaimed. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right! They were dizzy and weak and nauseous, but only a few of them actually threw up. And they did all get sick at once! Why, I’ve heard before that the symptoms of carbon monoxide can be mistaken for food poisoning!”

  “Exactly! So,” Mason said happily, turning back to Frances. “To hell with that doctor from way back when. I’d bet my bottom dollar it wasn’t your potato salad at all, Francie. What happened at the Holiday House Tour wasn’t your fault, and what happened at your sweet sixteen party never was your fault either! What do you think of that?”

  Frances’s color had returned. In fact, her complexion was glowing. She said nothing in response to Mason’s question, but, to Leigh’s utter amazement, she fell forward like a ton of bricks — then threw her arms around Mason’s neck and hugged him.

  Leigh stopped breathing. A quick glance at Lydie showed that her aunt wasn’t breathing either.

  The embrace lasted exactly three seconds. Then Frances stiffened, pulled back, and whacked Mason solidly on the shoulder. “Do not call me Francie, you reckless imp of a scallywag!”

  The silence that followed was deafening. Giant, fluffy chunks of snow began to fall from the sky. One fell directly on the top of Frances’s head. Another hit Leigh in the nose.

  A broad smile spread slowly across Mason’s face. Then he laughed out loud. “Why, Francie! I do believe that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me!”

  “Don’t flatter yourself!” Frances fired back, turning to start up her steps. “I have better things to do with my time than stand out here in the cold arguing with the likes of you, Mason Dublin!”

  The snow began to fall faster. It stuck in Frances’s hair like dandruff and attached itself to Mason’s half-grown beard.

  “I have a houseful of guests to see to and a fellow Floribunda to pull back from the jaws of death!” Frances continued to shout. She turned at the door, looked back at Leigh and Lydie, and moderated her tone. “Thank you for your assistance. I can manage perfectly well from here.”

  She looked at Mason again. Her lips pursed and her dark eyes narrowed menacingly. But not even Frances could conceal the glint of pure glee behind them. “Don’t you have second-rate knives to sell or something?” she asked caustically.

  The snow continued to fall, spoiling her hairdo with an uneven layer of fuzz, even as her frown was marred by lips that twitched involuntarily… unbelievably… toward a grin.

  Mason said nothing. He answered her with the twinkle in his eye.

  Epilogue

  “I made it!” Frances said proudly, slipping through the door Leigh held open for her and into the official “bride’s room” of the quaint stone Methodist church they’d attended all their lives.

  “With plenty of time to spare,” Leigh assured. “No one else is even here, yet.”

  Frances smiled with approval at Allison’s modest blue velveteen dress. “Oh, how lovely you look, my dear!”

  Allison smiled back, even though the dress, which she thought made her look childish, was a sore point. Her cousin Lenna’s equivalent emerald green was of a similar fabric and style, but the neckline was lower, making it look considerably more mature. Still, on this happy Christmas Eve afternoon, the girl was being an exceptionally good sport. Her Aunt Lydie loved the dress, and Allison was pretending to love it, too. “Thank you, Grandma,” she said cheerfully. “You look pretty, too.”

  Frances practically preened. Her own dress was a very dark forest green, notably less fitted and stuffy than the sort she normally wore. Lydie had picked it out for her twin herself, and Frances, after pitching the expected fit about how inappropriate such a gown was for a woman “of a certain age,” was clearly enamored of it. “You look nice too, dear,” she said to Leigh, albeit with noticeably less enthusiasm. “You might just want to stand up a little straighter.”

  Leigh let the advice roll right off her comfortably slouched shoulders. She liked her own dress, which was a simple affair in royal purple. But she would like it a whole lot better if it wasn’t styled so much like Cara’s, making it impossible for anyone seeing them together not to make the obvious comparison between willowy perfection and middle-aged spread.

  She planned to stand next to her mother.

  “What happened at the will reading, Grandma?” Allison asked eagerly.

  Frances’s dark eyes danced. “Oh, my,” she began. “You’ll never guess! Well, the Floribundas got our benevolent fund donation, as we were expecting. And it wasn’t very much, which we were also expecting. It was good of Bobby to invite us all — he didn’t have to, you know. But Olympia was asked to come as our representative, and I think she appreciated our support. Anyway, Bobby’s been in a rather generous mood these days!”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Leigh teased. “With the accidental death policy having to pay out after all.”

  “Well, they couldn’t prove anything against him, could they?” Frances said good-naturedly. “What he might have done if he’d found a willing accomplice was hardly relevant. Personally, I don’t believe he would have gone through with it. It was always just talk. Speculation and hearsay!”

  “I don’t know, Mom,” Leigh debated. “Maybe most of the women wouldn’t have had the guts, but I still think Delores would have gone for it if she didn’t have to hear Jennie Ruth yelling ‘mortal sin!’ for the rest of their lives.”

  Frances chuckled a bit, then sobered with a sigh. “You know… You may be right about that.”

  “But what happened at the will reading, Grandma?” Allison reminded.

  “Oh!” Frances replied. “Well, the most exciting thing was that Bobby felt bad that Lucille had so little of her own money left to give the garden club fund. So he made a donation of his own, right then and there, for four times as much!”

  “That was nice of him,” Leigh commented.

  “Well, he’s loaded now. He can afford it. But the real shocker was who else was mentioned in Lucille’s will. Besides Bobby and the fund.”

  Leigh and Allison waited.

  “Bridget!” Frances exclaimed. “Do you believe it?”

  “No,” Leigh replied. “I don’t. The same Bridget that Lucille constantly yelled at and called incompetent? Why on earth would she leave her money?”

  Frances smirked. “All part of the plan, dear. You know Bobby and Lucille hired her specifically because of her spotty reputation. Lucille was so miserable she was ready to go anytime, but she wanted her death to look like negligence. The best way to do that was for it to actually be negligence. She rattled poor Bridget constantly, hoping the woman would make some terrible mistake. A true accidental overdose would be the safest thing for Bobby, you see.”

  “That’s why they put Bridget in the will!” Allison exclaimed. “To make it look even worse for her!”

  Leigh shook her head with disgust. “That is diabolical on so many levels! Even if Bridget made an honest mistake, the bequest would give her a motive for murder, or at least a subconscious slip! They set the poor woman up coming and going!”

  Leigh stared into the bright leaves of the poinsettia that sat next to the bride’s vanity, and wondered again if she would ever uncover a positive attribute of the late Lucille Busby. It seemed unlikely, now that the woman was gone. But it was Christmas Eve, it was her Aunt Lydie’s wedding day, and Leigh was feeling good.

  She would give Lucille the benefit of the doubt.

  “Their intentions were hardly laudable,” Frances agreed. “But their actions had a good outcome, nevertheless. Bridget inherited a tidy little sum. I suppose Lucille figured that if the insurance scheme worked, Bobby wouldn
’t need that money anyway. Bridget was dumbstruck, as you might imagine. She practically floated out of the lawyer’s office.”

  Allison giggled. “I can picture that!”

  “How is Olympia?” Leigh asked. “Is she still staying with Virginia and Harry, or is she back in her own apartment?”

  “Neither,” Frances replied, straightening her hair in the mirror. “She had some, well, issues with Harry, so she only stayed with Virginia until she got the protective order against Melvin. Then she went back to her apartment. But she’s never been one to enjoy living alone. So she’s moved in with Delores and Jennie Ruth.”

  “Seriously?” Leigh asked with disbelief.

  “Oh, yes,” Frances replied. “They have plenty of space. And I do believe it’s helped Olympia with her… difficulty.”

  “You mean the lying?” Allison asked.

  Frances nodded.

  “How?” Leigh asked.

  “Well,” Frances answered, “from what I understand, every time Olympia tells a fib, Jennie Ruth shouts, ‘pants on fire!’”

  Leigh and Allison both laughed out loud.

  Frances laughed with them. Then her expression sobered. “She seems much happier now. Apparently, near the end with Melvin, things were pretty bad. She pretended everything was fine in public, and so did he, but he was a better actor. It drove her mad that he pretended to be so solicitous in front of us, when in private they barely spoke to each other.”

  Leigh lowered her eyes in embarrassment. Watching the couple at the house tour, she had never imagined that their hostility went both ways. She had been as bamboozled by Melvin as anyone, thinking it was Olympia’s aggression that was off base.

  “He did have reason to be angry,” Frances admitted. “Olympia did bankrupt the man, after all. She told him she knew how to handle his malpractice insurance, and he had no reason to doubt her, not at that point. She was a certified public accountant, and she’d been a doctor’s wife twice before.” Frances sighed. “But she exaggerates her accomplishments, and she can be a real goose sometimes, and she just didn’t realize that monkeying with his policy was going to leave him vulnerable like that. And after the first case, well — word gets out that you’re ‘bare’ and settling claims and people come out of the woodwork, you know? Particularly in New York. Poor Melvin didn’t have to do anything wrong to be ruined.”

  Leigh didn’t suppose Melvin was the type to make stupid mistakes. He had certainly planned out his inconvenient wife’s demise well enough. He could have taken his chances, pushed her into a heart attack or stroke with her own prescribed medications, and hoped for the best. Instead, he had carefully set up a scenario that would minimize the risk of an autopsy — at least one with additional toxicology screening. He knew that the anthrax prank call, however ludicrous, would shoot up her blood pressure and provide cover for her collapse. And her concerned husband could be seen there, hovering, trying to save her. And when he failed, there would be no reason whatsoever to suspect foul play.

  Leigh had to applaud the elegance of the scheme. The potassium supplement with which he’d laced Olympia’s drink came in the form of a grape-flavored liquid, which she was unlikely to detect amidst the multiple sweet and sour tastes already mixed in the punch. Fluctuating potassium levels were par for the course with her illness, as were swings in blood pressure. There would be no telltale signs of poisoning to raise red flags on an ordinary autopsy. The excess potassium would simply cause her heart to stop. Even better, he himself could sip the doctored drink without concern, as could almost any healthy person. It was an apple specifically formulated for Snow White.

  How could he know that it would also kill Lucille? Was Melvin banging his head on the bars of his cell right now, cursing the irony of the fact that Olympia had gifted her drink to the only other person in the house likely to be susceptible to it?

  Leigh stole a glance at her phone. Melvin probably wasn’t in a cell yet. But with luck, he would be soon. The final toxicology reports had only just come in, and they’d been needed to shore up the charges. Maura had promised to let Leigh know when the detective in charge of the case had served the official arrest warrant.

  No, Melvin had no way of knowing that Olympia would offer her drink to someone else. No one had any way of knowing that Lucille and Olympia, though they suffered from different conditions, were taking one medication in common — a medication intended to keep potassium levels high. Melvin might have constructed an effective poison for Olympia, but for the aged and feeble Lucille, he’d created an electrolytic perfect storm.

  “Of course, neither one of them had any business jumping into marriage so quickly in the first place,” Frances was still opining. “Olympia insisted she loved him — that they fell in love on a cruise in the Bahamas and that neither of them wanted to wait. But I think she was lonely and just wanted to be somebody’s wife again — preferably a doctor’s wife. She’s all about public perception, you know. As for Melvin, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s the first woman who ever said yes to him. He’s not terribly attractive, you know. And for all his good manners, he turned on her like a snake when she disappointed him.”

  Frances sighed again. “You know, Olympia believes now that he would have divorced her right then and there if they’d had a prenup. But he was so giddy in love at the beginning that they eloped without one. So instead of asking for a divorce, he went behind her back to tie up all the assets he had left. He convinced her they were flat broke, then made her move someplace where nobody knew them. Until he could… well, you know.”

  Leigh knew.

  “I don’t believe they ever really loved each other,” Allison said knowledgeably.

  Frances and Leigh both turned to look at her. “You don’t think?” Leigh asked with a grin.

  “Not just because he ended up trying to kill her!” Allison protested. “I mean, duh! But look at Aunt Lydie and Uncle Mason! They’ve loved each other for over forty years. The whole time they were divorced, they still loved each other. Even when they were fighting, they never remarried anyone else. And even if Aunt Lydie made a mistake that bad, Uncle Mason would forgive her. Just like Aunt Lydie forgave all his mistakes. Even if it did take her a while.”

  Frances favored her granddaughter with a smile. “It didn’t take your Aunt Lydie so long to forgive, dear,” she said quietly. “It was me who took too long.” Her eyes went moist. “Lydie would have welcomed Mason back into her life much earlier if it hadn’t been for me.”

  Leigh gulped. Her mother and Mason had been fighting like cats and dogs ever since he’d debunked the myth of the poisoned potato salad, which everyone now knew meant that they were getting along just fine. Frances and Lydie were both in the best of spirits, they were close again, and everyone was looking forward to the wedding. But Frances had never made an admission like that one.

  “I didn’t think he was a good person,” Frances continued, her voice barely a whisper. “I didn’t think he had a good heart. And I was so afraid.” She collected herself, then smiled a little. “But when he made me start talking about what happened at the party way back then, I saw something in his eyes. Something I hadn’t seen in so long, I… well, I didn’t even remember it, honestly. But I looked, and there it was again, and all at once I just knew that he wanted to make me feel better. And that was all he wanted. Such a simple thing. And entirely unnecessary. I’d been horrible to him. He owed me nothing. He could have been doing it to score points with Lydie, but I knew he wasn’t. He just… he just wanted to make me happy.”

  Her smile turned sheepish. “Not that wanting to please me is any requirement for a beau of Lydie’s, mind you. But I realized he wouldn’t have cared one fig about my feelings if he wasn’t a good man. An honestly good man. With a pure heart.”

  “Oh he is, Grandma!” Allison said happily, giving her grandmother a hug. “And they’re going to be so happy together!”

  Frances swiped a tear from her cheek. “Yes, love. I believe they are.”
>
  Leigh’s phone sounded with a siren tone. She looked briefly at the screen, then turned off the ringer for the duration. She would pass along Maura’s update after the wedding.

  We got him!

  Melvin would be enjoying a jail cell this evening after all.

  “We’re here!” Cara announced, practically floating through the doorway, her mother’s dress in hand. Lydie followed next, all smiles, but still wearing her jeans and sweatshirt. Lenna came next, followed by Leigh’s Aunt Bess. Cara and Lenna looked like mother and daughter royalty in their gowns, as expected. But Leigh’s darkly tanned Aunt Bess, who was wearing a simple deep blue, scoop-neck satin drape, looked almost scandalously conservative.

  “Lydie’s choice,” Bess whispered in Leigh’s ear. “But I’m not wearing any underwear.”

  “Come on, Mom,” Cara urged, pulling the dress she carried out of its bag. “I can’t wait to see you in this! We don’t have that much time!”

  “It won’t take five minutes,” Lydie said dismissively. “I just have to slip it over my head.”

  “But we still have to do your hair and makeup, Grandma!” Lenna insisted.

  “Yes, Mom,” Cara agreed. “We let you pick out all our dresses — you promised to let us give you the full treatment. Remember?”

  Lydie looked at the other women, her cheeks rosy with color. She didn’t have to move her lips to smile. Her whole face had been one giant smile for weeks now. “Yes, I do,” she agreed. “Let’s do it.”

  Exactly forty minutes later, Leigh joined her handsome husband and son at the front of the church’s sanctuary. Darkness had just fallen, and the candles were lit. Brass candlesticks of all sizes sat in every windowsill and upon the altar, and a giant Christmas tree covered with twinkling white lights filled the corner. Colorful poinsettias spilled across the chancel and out into the aisles, while green garlands with fragrant pine cones capped the ends of the pews. In a few hours, hundreds of people would gather to celebrate the church’s regular Christmas Eve service. But for now, the space’s quiet beauty was Lydie and Mason’s to enjoy.