A Wee Dose of Death

by Fran Stewart

  She gazed across her restaurant, and I could almost hear her calculating how many people were there, how many needed attention—not many from the look of it—and whether her staff was functioning at a high level of professionalism.

  “Dr. W wouldn’t tolerate dishonesty in any form. One year, some of the undergrads complained that somebody was taking quarters out of the washing machine in their dorm—for some reason, they were mostly biology students on that one floor. They pooled the money from the machines and used it to buy laundry soap and stuff like that. This went on for weeks, until Dr. W snuck into the dorm about four o’clock one morning. Wearing gloves, he spread silver nitrate on seven or eight quarters, put them in the machine, and went home.”

  “Silver what? What did that do?”

  “Silver nitrate. A few days later, they were complaining again. Dr. W made everyone stand up and hold out their hands. There was one student whose fingers had turned black. He was expelled from the biology program. Dr. Wantstring wouldn’t let him sign up for any more bio classes.”

  “Silver nitrate does that?”

  “Yep. Even the slightest exposure will stain the skin black, no matter how little of it gets on you.”

  Dolly interrupted. “Can you come back to the kitchen?”

  Karaline frowned.

  “Nothing bad, I hope.”

  Karaline rolled her eyes at me. “One never knows.”

  26

  Birthday Party #2

  Mac Campbell struggled to hang up the phone. This would have been a lot easier if he’d had his cell phone. Everything would have been easier if he’d had his cell phone. He would have gotten off the damn mountain a long time ago if he’d had his cell phone with him that day so he could have called for help.

  That damn Peggy Winn wouldn’t have abandoned him, wouldn’t have turned around and left. He already would have been out of there before she even showed up. He wouldn’t have had to drag himself to the cabin. Wouldn’t have had to search a dead man’s pockets. Wouldn’t have had to starve for four days. Wouldn’t have gotten so dehydrated. Wouldn’t have had to wallow in his own poo.

  Mac had never been inclined toward introspection, but even he got tired of TV news shows and talk shows after a while, and there wasn’t anything to do, strapped up like this. Strung up like a fish dangling from a fishing line, like a deer strapped across the hood of a car. Nothing to do except think. Think about how unlucky he’d been.

  He wondered if that Peggy Winn woman had retrieved his ski and ski pole yet. Well, of course she had. She owed him big-time after abandoning him like that, and he’d given her orders, hadn’t he? She’d probably been so scared, she must have left the hospital and gone directly to the Perth.

  He hadn’t told her where to put them, though. She couldn’t get into his house. He had enough locks on the doors and windows that nobody—nobody—could ever get in without keys. He didn’t think even Peggy Winn would be stupid enough to leave a ski unattended on his porch.

  Or maybe she would. There were plenty of people in the town—most of them, in fact—who put their skis out on their front porches and just trusted that nothing would happen to them. If Mac had been fair, he would have admitted—only to himself, of course—that nothing usually did happen. People around here didn’t steal skis. Everybody had them. Nobody needed to take any.

  He heard a knock. Or he thought he did. If it was a knock, it was so timid there was hardly any sound to it. There weren’t any visiting hours this early in the morning, even though Fairing had come in like she owned the place.

  Maybe it was that doctor who hadn’t done Mac much good as far as Mac could tell. All he’d done was wrap Mac’s leg in the heaviest cast he could concoct. And strap his fingers up like a Thanksgiving turkey leg.

  Mac was sure now that somebody was knocking, but that stupid doctor wouldn’t wait that long for an answer; he’d just barge in. Neither would the snooty nurse. She walked in all the time with hardly a second’s notice. Did Mac even want anybody seeing him like this? Yeah. Why not? He could tell them his story. It was getting better with each repetition. “Come on in if you have to.” He craned his neck to the right to see who it was. They could have put the bed in a better position so he could see without getting a crick in his neck. “Oh. Ma. Why haven’t you come before this?”

  She sidled up to the bed and laid a tentative peck on his cheek. “You didn’t call me until five o’clock this morning. I didn’t know anything had happened to you until you called. I got here as soon as I could.”

  Mac crossed his arms over his chest, his broken fingers on his right bicep. Might as well let her see what he’d been through. How badly he was injured. She hadn’t brought a birthday cake, but he’d be willing to bet she’d scurry home as soon as he was through talking to her and bake him something. She always did. He could count on that. Even if she hadn’t come to visit him right after it all happened. “Sit down over there where I can see you without hurting my neck. I’ll tell you what happened.” He’d told her already, on the phone this morning, but maybe he’d left out something. Wouldn’t hurt to go over it one more time.

  * * *

  As Mac’s mother got ready to leave two hours later, she pulled a package of homemade cookies and a soft stuffed turtle out of her handbag and placed them on her son’s chest. “Happy Birthday, dear.”

  Mac waited until she’d shut the door before he began to cry.

  * * *

  I finished my pancakes alone, while Karaline intervened in whatever flap was going on in the kitchen. Any business owner was used to problems. I hoped hers wasn’t anything serious. I polished off my coffee, paid the bill, and made it to the ScotShop a minute or two after eight thirty. Gilda trailed in almost on my heels, followed by Sam, with Scamp peeking his little head out of the end of the navy blue carrier. The dog looked kind of like Groucho Marx. His spiky eyebrows made me want to laugh. “Aren’t you worried he’ll fall out of that thing?” I pointed.

  They shook their heads in unison, left-right-left-right, looking like they’d been choreographed. “He can’t get out,” Gilda said. “There’s a zipper.”

  “Yes, I can see the zipper.” I couldn’t help the look of skepticism.

  She stepped back a pace to where she could see the carrier and squeaked in alarm. Scamp was already halfway out of it. “Scamp! What are you doing?”

  “Looks like he wants out,” I said. “And he’s obviously got your zipper figured out.”

  “But he’s not supposed to be able to do that.”

  “Maybe you’d like to tell Scamp that rule.” I headed for the safe in the back room to pull out the day’s beginning cash. I could hear Gilda’s diatribe even through the intervening door. I must not have closed the zipper all the way. I can’t believe I did that. . . .

  I’d already opened the safe before I remembered that I’d never closed out the cash register last night. It felt like a week had passed since then.

  Of course, a lot had happened yesterday. I’d seen Harper. We’d found out about Dr. Wantstring being dead. I’d tried to help Karaline through her grief. It was mostly just listening to her, but at least I was there. I’d talked with Harper at the Logg Cabin. I’d visited Mac at the hospital, and he hadn’t even appreciated it, damn his hide. And I’d unwrapped Dirk. And then rolled him up again this morning, but I wasn’t going to think about that.

  Long day Thursday. Check.

  Accomplishments Thursday. None.

  I left the safe open—there wasn’t anything in there anyway—just until I took the extra cash out of the register and locked it away.

  For the next hour or so Scamp investigated every corner of the shop. If I had a nose like that, I wondered what I’d be able to smell. He turned up a couple of dust bunnies we’d missed in our vacuuming, and I had to admit he was a natural at charming the customers.

  What Dirk had said, thoug
h, about Emily, kept haunting me. All ye need do is to sit wi’ her.

  Around eleven o’clock, Scamp pattered over and sat down in front of me. I bent to scratch his little head, but he scooted away, returned, and sat himself back down, his wide front feet perched on my toes. He was kind of hard to ignore. I looked into his twinkly dark chocolate eyes. They seemed accusatory, somehow.

  All right, already. I’d check on Emily but I absolutely refused to leave before the end of the day.

  * * *

  And it was a good thing I ignored both the dog and the memory of Dirk’s instructions and stayed at the ScotShop Friday until closing time. An unscheduled tour bus stopped, and we were inundated for almost an hour. Sales were healthy. Nobody complained. And I had enough stock on hand to replenish the shelves as they were depleted.

  At five, I turned the sign on the front door to Closed. It didn’t take long to close out the register, even with all the sales. For once everything tallied perfectly the first time around.

  I dropped off the deposit and pointed my brown Volvo toward Eco Estates. I’d sit wi’ the grieving widow for a little while this evening. Then maybe Dirk—and even the dog, for criminey sakes—would leave me alone. Dirk wouldn’t know I’d been there, though, unless I told him.

  Doggone him. He wouldn’t leave my mind. I could fold him up and get rid of him, but I couldn’t get rid of him, if you know what I mean. Even though he wasn’t close by my side, he was in my head, and I had a harder time trying to get him out of there than I’d had shooing him from my personal space. I should have listened to Emily without judging her. I had no idea what she was going through, to lose a husband like that, somebody on whom she must have depended for the thirty-seven years they’d been married. Well, I had a little bit of an idea from all she’d told me about him, but I still didn’t feel like I’d connected with her.

  I swung by my house on the way to Eco Estates, changed my clothes to something a little less Scottish, and picked up the shawl. I waited to unfold it until just before I got out of the car in front of her house.

  Dirk looked around in some surprise. The last time he’d seen me I’d been in my living room putting on my coat to go to breakfast at the Logg Cabin. Now the light was totally different. Early evening. I was wearing different clothes. And we were in my car.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I was angry.”

  “Why did ye no open the shawl before this? Am I right? Has it not been at least from morn till gloaming that I havena been here?”

  Gloaming. The darkening shades of evening. “Right. I didn’t want to startle you by opening it too soon.” I opened my door and he slipped out beside me. “I decided to visit Emily and thought you might like to join me.”

  As we walked toward her front door, I heard him mutter, “Ye didna wish to face her alone.”

  Once again, he was right, doggone him.

  27

  The Joy of a Simple Song

  Walking into Emily’s house was like stepping into a blast furnace. She wore her usual turtleneck with a heavy hand-knit cardigan. I’d always thought of her as being pudgy, but now I wondered if it was just that she always had so many layers of fabric on her.

  You know how you read about people being at a loss for words? That sort of thing usually didn’t happen to me, but as Emily closed the door behind me I realized I had no clue what to say to her. So how are you doing now that your husband’s been murdered did not seem like a viable conversational gambit. Neither did I rolled my ghost up in a shawl this morning, but he’s standing beside you right now.

  I kept my mouth shut.

  “I’ll make us some hot chocolate, Peggy. Hang up your coat and come on back.” Emily headed toward the kitchen. “You were right, you know,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Right? About what?” I stuffed my gloves in my pockets and snugged the shawl under the collar of my parka before I slipped out of it, wishing I had on a sundress instead of my usual heavy winter clothes. I started to head the way she’d gone, but at the last moment I remembered that Dirk would be stuck next to the coatrack if I didn’t take the shawl with me.

  “I thank ye,” he said as I slipped it over one shoulder. There was no way I was going to wrap the thing around me in this heat.

  “You told me hot chocolate would warm me up,” she said as Dirk and I stepped into the kitchen, “and it does in so many ways. I must have drunk a gallon of that stuff since Mark . . . Marcus . . . since I found out he was . . .” The sentence trailed away into a vacuum. “It’s not like being alone is a new experience. I’ve spent a lot of time by myself while Mark . . . Marcus is . . . was . . . off collecting all sorts of exotic bacteria.”

  All her self-correcting was beginning to wear on my nerves. Couldn’t she just pick one name and stick to it?

  “Even when he was teaching, he’d leave early so he could walk to work, no matter how rainy or cold the weather was. When we were first . . . together, I used to walk part of the way with him, but I haven’t done that in years.” She rotated the wooden spoon back and forth. “Yes. I’m used to being alone. He’s been going to South America for three or four weeks every summer for . . .” She reached for a pot on the back burner, then stopped and rested her hand against her chest. Her heart.

  Oh, dear. She wasn’t having a heart attack, was she?

  Apparently not. After a moment she resumed her broken sentence. “. . . for years. Those times, though, when he was gone, I always knew he’d be back eventually. I never doubted it for even a moment.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss.” It was trite; it was one of those standard comments, but it was the only thing I could think of to say.

  She pulled the pot to the front of the stove. “Sit while I get this put together.”

  “Can I help with anything?”

  “Of course not. You just park yourself on that chair.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Are you okay, Emily?”

  She nodded, but it didn’t look very convincing. “Mark used to say that very same thing when I’d come home and he’d be making dinner. If I offered to help, he’d say, Of course not. You just park yourself on that chair. Always those same words. It wasn’t that he didn’t want me working with him in the kitchen. It’s just that he loved to cook.” She drew herself up a little straighter. “So, now all I have left is the memory. Now, you go ahead and sit.”

  Her kitchen table was painted a stunning lemony yellow. The four wooden chairs ringing it were equally bright. One was Wizard of Oz green. One was an intense blue, the kind that, when I saw it in a picture of the Mediterranean, I always thought the color had been photoshopped. The other two were a deep neon red and jack-o’-lantern orange. It looked like a congregation of M&M’s. All she was missing was the brown.

  I chose the green chair and waited, since I didn’t know what to say. Emily’s kitchen was disturbingly silent. I usually hummed to myself—or talked to my ghost—when I was cooking, especially when I made hot chocolate, but Emily was silent. I wondered if it was always like this or if she was still stunned by her husband’s death.

  Eventually she set two delicate china cups on the table. Their muted vine-and-leaf pattern looked rather blah compared with the brilliance of the table and chairs. She sat in the orange chair across from me and poured frothy chocolate from a teapot that matched the cups.

  All her actions were deliberate, almost choreographed, as if she were restraining herself out of fear that she might explode.

  These cups didn’t hold enough for more than a couple of good slugs. We sipped in silence. Dirk must have known what to say, doggone it. Why wasn’t he helping me out here? Eventually I gestured to the chairs. “You must like bright colors.” Dirk ran a finger along the back of the Mediterranean blue one. I wondered if blue was his favorite color. I’d have to ask him sometime.

  “Bright colors.” She raised a hand to her throat, tugged at
her turtleneck, and trailed a finger along the front of her neck. I saw a faint scar I’d never noticed before. At least, I thought it might be a scar. I wondered if that was why she always seemed to wear turtlenecks. Well, not always. Not in the summer. But, thinking back, I realized that each time I’d seen her in warm weather, she’d had a pretty scarf wound around her neck.

  She was silent for so long I thought she might not have heard me ask about the colors. I was just about to make another inane comment when she spoke. “I’ve often wished I’d given Marcus a bright blue scarf instead of that light brown cashmere one. His favorite color was blue. He always sat in that blue chair. He used to hang his scarf over the back of it.” Her eyes became unfocused, like she was seeing something nobody else could. I wondered if I looked like that every time I glanced at Dirk. “I spilled some coffee on it once.”

  “Coffee? On what?”

  “On his scarf. It left a brown stain that even the cleaners couldn’t remove. But he refused to get rid of the scarf. I wish they could have found it. It wasn’t with his things.” She studied her cup. “All the color in my life used to come from music.”

  I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t say anything else. Did she not want to talk about it? Only one way to find out. “Music? What do you mean?”

  Instead of answering, she pushed her cup away, stood, and motioned me to follow her down a narrow hallway. We entered a room that must have been Dr. W’s private study. An old-fashioned record player stood on the far side of the room behind a tidy desk. Emily looked at the vinyl record already in place. It was one of those little ones, what my dad called a forty-five, but I wasn’t sure where the name came from. She turned a switch, setting the turntable spinning, and lifted the arm. She held it for several seconds. I could see that her hand shook.