The Killer Wore Cranberry

by J. Alan Hartman

  With stuffed mouth, Bullett added with a chuckle: “This reminds me of the great cons I pulled when I sold the Eiffel Tower to some Japanese tourists who thought it was an oil well, right after I peddled Fort Knox to the King of Saudi Arabia.”

  He wiped some creamy potatoes off his chin, and asked:

  “Is there any more cranberry sauce?”

  The Bells of Saint Marie

  By Randall DeWitt

  By the time I arrived at my mother’s for Thanksgiving, I’d already missed my brother and his four-marriage family aggregate descending upon the hors d’oeuvres like a plague of rats overrunning a crop field in New Zealand. Crackers, cheese, potato chips, pickle spears and black olives were reduced to little more than crumbs and brine within minutes of being served. But that wasn’t nearly as impressive as their assault on my mother’s deviled eggs. The little white ovals with their creamy yellow yolk centers, covered red with a ridiculous amount of paprika, were always decimated as soon as the protective Saran wrap came off. It was as if they didn’t have egg-laying hens where they lived or something.

  Over in the corner of the living room, my oldest nephews and their stepbrother were huddled around my mother’s computer. From the frequent nervous glances over their shoulders, either they were expecting a drive-by shooting or looking at porn. Since the three jerk-off amigos hadn’t bothered to delete the browser history the last time they were on her computer, I assumed they were ogling a bunch of skanks with big hoots. If I remembered correctly, and believe me, I’ve tried to forget, their taste in naked women was nasty. I could be a lot more specific, but just take my word for it—they did not possess the sexual innocence, or brains for that matter, of Forrest Gump. That’s all I really have to say about that.

  Behind them, Nicky, the youngest of my delinquent nephews, had abandoned scavenging for food bits on the barren hors d’oeuvres trays and bowls and was stealing maraschino cherries out of the bar fridge. Nicky was from my brother’s second? No, third marriage. I think.

  Once upon a time, I was able to keep the players in my brother’s families straight, mostly thanks to my wife Claire’s help. But she left months ago, leaving me to decipher which kids went with which mothers, and in what order. I miss Claire. To fully understand why she’s asking me for a divorce, I’d have to air so much dirty laundry that the Tide Mobile Laundry truck would need to be diverted away from its current natural disaster. More about her later. For now, I want to get back to my demonically possessed nephew.

  I’m not saying that Nicky’s head spins completely around or anything, but when he wasn’t pulling the wings off of butterflies and decapitating caterpillars, he was setting frogs on fire with charcoal lighter fluid. Once when I tried to tell the little bastard to behave, he just laughed and took a swing at my nards. It was all I could do to restrain myself and not put him through a wall. If ever a kid deserved corporal punishment, it was Nicky. I just wasn’t sure it was worth spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder every time the skies darkened, wondering what evil forces he’d summoned to pay me back.

  That does remind me, though; I do still owe my brother a beating. That’s another part of this story I need to tell. He’s the one out in the kitchen acting like a friggin’ Iron Chef just because he’s in charge of making the gravy every Thanksgiving. I think there’s a technical culinary expression to describe someone like him—the asshole that makes the gravy. I’ll get back to him in a minute. First, I have to point out the crazy lady standing in the threshold between the kitchen and family room, waving a wooden spoon in each hand, with a Newport Menthol hanging out of her mouth.

  I probably should’ve also mentioned the drink on the counter in front of her. After all, the highball glass, with a napkin wrapped around its base to sop up the condensation, had to be her fourth or fifth whisky on the rocks since throwing the bird in the oven that morning. Maybe I didn’t want to bring it up because I’m no stranger to an early-morning drink myself these days. I don’t know. Anyway, there she is—drunk and dropping cigarette ash on the carpet, waving those damn wooden spoons around like she’s the Pillsbury Doughboy’s memaw on crack. He-hew!

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Mom,” I said, sounding less enthusiastic than when she made me come over to clean her garage out a couple weeks ago.

  Her reply was not verbal. A primitive grunt, an insincere smile, then a drag from her cigarette, followed by blowing the smoke in my general direction was the best she could manage. I could see our relationship was finally improving after bringing her dinner last Easter, to which she gratefully replied, “What am I supposed to do with this?” It was all I could do that day to not tell her to stick it up her ass for all I cared. And if it weren’t for the fact that my wife’s amazing lasagna deserved a more dignified ending, I would have too. Had it been a square of my mother-in-law’s dried-out lasagna, with shards of noodles so sharp they put Ginsu knives to shame, a pasta suppository might have been the appropriate suggestion.

  Come to think of it, that had to be the last time Claire had anything to do with my dysfunctional side of the family. I don’t blame her one bit for wanting to put as much distance between herself and them as she could. Not after the way my mother treated her or the ordeal my brother put her through twenty years ago.

  Back then, my brother was a pathetic loser. No, that’s not right. That’s what he is now. Back then he was a pathetic loser cokehead whose first wife took off on him leaving him two toddlers to take care of. Damn! I forgot jobless. He was jobless too. Anyways, that’s where Claire comes in. She arranged to get him a night job, cleaning the bank she worked at. I know that doesn’t sound like much but hey, let’s be honest—the guy barely graduated from high school. So how did playing the caring sister-in-law work out for Claire? Well, he repaid her kindness by taking a cocaine-induced nosedive on the carpet in the branch manager’s office, of course.

  Once on the fast track for a bank management position, Claire never got another promotion or decent raise again, thanks to that asshole. Scarface had just been in the theaters and the bank got it into their head that she’d played some dubious role in her brother-in-law’s drug-dealing enterprise or something. Enterprise? The only similarity between Tony Montana and my brother was the amount of product going up his own nose. He was definitely no Scarface. His lesser-known moron half-brother Shartface maybe. Anyway, Claire lost her career prospects and my brother the addict took a plea deal that only cost him a month in rehab. I paid him a visit the day before he was set to leave for his court-ordered vacation spa.

  In those days, my brother lived in my parents’ attic, a corrugated box in their back yard or some other sweet living arrangement like that. I entered the house through the back door, just as I’d done today, to find him slumped and sobbing on the couch like a little boy whose scoop of vanilla ice cream had just fallen off his sugar cone. Apparently, the drug kingpin–wannabe never learned that cocaine dealers weren’t supposed to snivel about getting caught by the cops and having to go away for a while, especially when it’s only a short stint in rehab and not real jail time. Since the only reason I’d dropped by was to beat my brother until he cried for mercy, only to find the big pussy had taken all the sport out of it, I left without laying a hand on him. I’ve regretted it ever since. That’s why I still owe my brother a beating.

  Back to this Thanksgiving and my mother—Saint Marie. I refer to my mother as a saint with all the sincerity that a fat person is called “Tiny.” Sure, she’s caring and generous, mostly about herself and to her cronies at the local watering hole. I doubt that buying rounds for the entire bar qualifies her for sainthood though. Nor does, for that matter, how active she is in her church. Showing up for Sunday service once in a while or buying a used toaster oven for five bucks at the church’s annual bazaar doesn’t exactly personify the most devoted of worshipers. Then there’s her tryout with the church’s bell choir. I hope she wasn’t planning on her talent sealing the sainthood deal. She can’t ring a bell on cue to sav
e her life.

  No, I call my mother a saint because she’s anything but, having filled friends’ and family’s heads full of lies about being the victim of elderly abuse—by me. That’s right, by me. Apparently, she spun tales of my cruelty so convincing, everyone believes I spend my weekends volunteering at nursing homes, just so I have more seniors to inflict misery upon. That I take pleasure from lubing up the feet on walkers, cutting brake wires on electric mobility wheelchairs, stealing bedpans from bedridden residents with overactive bladders and filling up boxes of adult diapers with cat turds. And when I’m bored on weekdays, that I amuse myself by calling in bomb threats to the Senior Center on bingo night.

  In truth, the only thing I was ever guilty of was the cardinal sin of asking Saint Marie to stop dumping all her problems on Claire and me. If she wasn’t going to listen to our advice and just loan my brother money whenever he asked for it—we didn’t want to hear about it when he stiffed her on repayment.

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “I listen.”

  “Really? Take a look around. Every last eyesore in this house is something he promised to do instead of paying you back.”

  Clearly, her holiness was upset as I proceeded to list all the times he’d borrowed money, how we’d advised her against loaning it to him, and how miserable she was when he didn’t pay her back. Loans for a used station wagon, a computer, and more. The sagging gutters full of leaves, the unpainted siding, and other unfinished projects that he’d promised to do when he couldn’t make his payments.

  Somehow, she still insisted she’d listened to us.

  “You’re not listening now!” I shouted, ending the debate once and for all.

  I took her silence as a good thing. We were supposed to go to my brother’s fourth wife’s birthday party and it was time to leave anyway. We arrived at the party a half hour later. Other than a few hurt feelings, my mother was fine. She had no welts or bruises, or any other visible signs of abuse.

  Visible signs of abuse. How stupid could I’ve been?

  Had I realized she plotted to make more out of our disagreement than it was, I would’ve had her strip down in front of everyone at the party just to prove I hadn’t belt-whipped her where it wouldn’t show. My retinas would’ve burned and I would’ve been permanently blinded, but in retrospect, even if I melted like a Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Ark who watched as the sacred chest was opened, I would’ve been fine with that too. At least my reputation would’ve remained intact and my wife might not have left me. Instead, here I am at my mother’s house on Thanksgiving for the first time in over twenty years without Claire, watching Saint Marie ring her damn bells.

  Ah, yes, the bells. When Saint Marie tried out for the church bell choir, she was so horrible that the director literally took her bells away and gave her wooden spoons to practice with. I swore it had to be a practical joke he was playing on her, along the lines of giving a child a fake instrument that made no sound, just so they’d feel like they were taking part. All I know is, I benefitted too. When I show the police my cell phone video of her waving those damn things up and down, music or no music, they’ll have no choice but to question her state of mind.

  Just then, Nicky brushed past me on his way to the kitchen and, after complaining about not feeling well, did a spot-on impersonation of Linda Blair from The Exorcist. Instead of pea soup, however, he spewed pickles, now more like relish, with bits of deviled egg and maraschino cherries, all over my brother and the floor. Meanwhile, my other nephews and their stepbrother were looking hot and sweaty, but it wasn’t the porn that had their hearts racing.

  When I’d cleaned the garage two weeks ago, I came across a dust-caked Mason jar that, when brushed away, revealed the handwritten label, “Compound 1080 - Rat Poison.” In it was a teaspoon or so of whitish, odorless powder. I wasn’t sure what to do with it until I remembered that Thanksgiving was just around the corner. While Saint Marie slept off a morning of B&B—boozing and bells—I emptied the contents into my mother’s paprika container. Thankfully, the bright red spice easily maintained its color with the powder mixed in. Then, just as I’d hoped, she mustn’t have even noticed as she prepared her signature deviled eggs for the holiday get-together, lacing them with a lethal dose of rat poison.

  The smell of burning gravy drew my attention back to the kitchen. My brother was no longer at the stove, whisking away at his saucepan. He was slumped on the floor in a puddle of Nicky’s vomit. I’m not 100-percent certain, but I swear he mouthed the words “the lumps” before exhaling his last breath. If he did, I had no way of telling if he was still worried about his gravy or commenting on the consistency of the puke.

  Meanwhile, the trio of smut mongers at the computer had also expired. The two that had been standing were now sprawled out on the carpet. The lucky one who’d been sitting was hunched over the keyboard, his head virtually nestled between the breasts of a well-endowed woman.

  Saint Marie was the last to keel over. I watched as the wooden spoons fell from her hands and she collapsed across the threshold.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

  “I’m not sure, but you’d better get here quick,” I replied. “I just got to my mother’s house for Thanksgiving and there must be a carbon monoxide leak here or something…”

  What else was I going to say? There’s something wrong with the deviled eggs?

  You Say Potato

  By Sarafina Gravagno

  “Pass the yams,” I said.

  The detective looked up from his notepad. “What, Miss Hartigan?” His eyes were hazel; his thinning hair gray. As Gram would say, he had the map of Ireland written all over his face. He looked like a heavier version of Bing Crosby. If he hadn’t been a cop, he would have been a priest.

  “Pass the yams,” I restated, a bit more slowly.

  “So, your uncle asked for the yams and ended up dead?” The lack of sarcasm in his voice impressed me.

  “Well, not exactly. My Uncle Bob asked for the yams. My Uncle Jim ended up dead.” I looked down and shook my head for a moment. That sounded so terrible.

  “You’re going to have to explain this. Tell me everything from the beginning. What happened during Thanksgiving dinner?”

  We were standing in my gram’s living room. I gestured toward the sofa. The detective took off his worn raincoat and we both took a seat beside each other. He had a small old-fashioned brass nameplate on his lapel that read “Detective O’Donnell.” Yup, I thought. We were alone in the room; the rest of the family had been divided up and moved into other areas of my grandparents’ house. The kids were ushered to a movie with my cousin to get them out of the way.

  Detective O’Donnell glanced at his notepad then up to me. “Your cousin Matthew said your mom was trying to kill your uncle. Can you explain that?”

  “Yes, but she wasn’t trying to kill the uncle who died. She was trying to kill Bob, not Jim. My mom and Jim got along fine.”

  O’Donnell sighed and put his pen and pad on his lap. “Okay, why don’t you just tell me what happened.”

  He stared me square in my eyes. I felt like some perp on a TV crime show, except I was in the comfort of my gram and gramp’s home instead of some stark interview room. Their house was anything but minimalist. Little knickknacks and photos and framed paintings of flowers covered almost every surface. I took a deep breath and began to tell him the story.

  Strangely enough, up until the fateful yam request, Thanksgiving dinner had been going along quite nicely. The conversation flowed, thanks in part to the Bloody Marys we’d all been drinking that afternoon. The kids were settled at their own table in the family room and sat busily eating and talking about their latest video games.

  We all took our places at the long dining table in jovial moods, ready to begin a much-anticipated feast. Wooden dining chairs mixed with folding chairs and a piano bench were set up to accommodate us all, just like every year I can remember. We’re traditionalists. Just turkey and the classic fixings f
or us. Our dinner tradition has always been to pass all platters and bowls of Thanksgiving fare clockwise around the table until everyone has their first helping. The butter dish and gravy boat are floaters—no pun intended—they can go in any direction at any time. Once everyone has their plates satisfactorily full, and some poor sap gets guilted into saying an awkward prayer, second helpings become a free-for-all. We had made it to that point and then some.

  The primary topic of discussion during dinner was the existence of heaven and hell and what is required for redemption. My cousin Matthew is a staunch conservative and we often veer into hypothetical religious scenarios, especially since about half the people at the table are atheists. My cousin Tim was inquiring about whether asking God for forgiveness for our sins is enough to get into heaven. Matthew said it was as long as the person accepted the Lord into their heart and their apology was sincere.

  “Well, what about Hitler?” Tim probed. “If he had asked for forgiveness, would that mean he’s in heaven?”

  That one pretty much stumped Matthew. He was sitting silently, deep in thought as to how best to answer the question. His wife was eagerly watching him. We were all awaiting an answer that would satisfy both Matthew’s religious convictions as well as Hitler-haters, which pretty much consists of everyone in the entire world. Or at least at our dinner table.

  And then, from the other end of the table came those ominous words, “Please pass the yams.”

  The table fell into an uncomfortable silence save for the scraping of a chair leg on the wooden floor as someone shifted nervously in their seat. Discussions about politics and religion were fair game within my family, but the mere mention of yams forbidden. We waited for the inevitable.

  “Bob,” my mother said, barely containing her hostility, “I can’t believe you would have the nerve to even say that.”

  She was right. None of us could believe it. If Bob hadn’t been Bob, we might have chalked it up to just being an innocent, albeit unfortunate, question. But Bob knew better; the fact that he made the request with a smirk was even worse.