by Tyler Colins
Weather forecasting hadn't been my initial career choice. I'd studied film for two years, hence the interest in scriptwriting, but decided the egos that tended to congregate in that industry would be too much too endure for long. Thinking it might be better to save the world, protect endangered species, and contribute to the termination of global warming, I moved into environmental studies. It was a noble thought that had never materialized. Instead I got an admin job at a local cable station so student loans could be paid off. Two years later I stepped from behind a desk in front of a camera.
I watched Beatrice plunk a basket of crusty mushroom-shaped buns in front of Adwin. The perpetually sour expression (which did nothing to enhance a face that could not launch a thousand ships but could well sink them), suggested she had a lot to say if someone would listen. “I'd also go to the Galapagos Islands for a couple of months.”
“With two-hundred thou?” my cousin snorted. Evidently Beatrice wasn't the only graceless one.
Adwin grinned and grabbed a bun. “Jill loves those turtles –”
“Tortoises.”
“Whatever. She loves those green guys with the shells that move like they're on Diasepam.”
“That's so cool.” Linda.
“Actually, that's so hot – as in tropical hot and not Miley Cyrus hot.” He offered a seductive pose more feminine and credible than any model's pose I'd ever seen.
It was tempting to grab the butter knobs shaped like sleeping porcupines or sea urchins – round and spiky – and throw them at my beau, but he'd probably catch them between those thin yet sensual lips and offer a victory cheer. Maybe the silver butter dish shaped like an antique apothecary mortar would have a better effect. I grabbed it and mimicked a toss.
Adwin feigned a duck.
“What about you, Jilly's boyfriend?” Rey asked, her eyes twinkling and not necessarily from merriment. She spooned two tiny ice spheres from a teeny silver bucket into her glass.
“I'd go solo and start up my own restaurant, and ask Jill to move in with me,” he stated.
“With two-hundred thou?” my cousin snorted, sounding like a firing propane burner in a hot-air balloon.
I saw myself stuffing one of those ice spheres up a slim nostril any moment – whoa. Move in with me? Six blocks separated our homes, and with our crazy schedules, peculiar leanings and inclinations, living together had simply never been a topic of conversation before. Of course it was also highly likely we both boasted aversions to commitments and concessions.
“I'd buy a cottage for me, my brother and sister so that we could spend time together during summer and fall, and holidays,” Linda offered. “And I'd go back to school.”
“For what?” my cousin snorted.
Adwin grabbed my hand as it reached for the ice bucket and shot a dour look.
I sighed and chugged Chardonnay as if it were Gatorade and I was a boxer who had just done ten rounds. You hadda love that Beatrice. She had my glass refilled at the last gulp.
“Journalism. And some sort of forensic course.” She wasn't the least put off by her best friend's mocking. The poor thing was probably accustomed to it.
My cousin made a yeah-right-whatever face. “I'd have a total makeover and get a trainer. And buy a huge new wardrobe.”
I snorted. “What a –”
Playing peacekeeper, Adwin squeezed my thigh and gave a quick let's-play-nice look. Hey, what was wrong with a harmless little scrap between cousins?
“That might be fun,” Prunella said, looking thoughtful. “But I get enough exercise hiking and fencing. No, I couldn't waste money on extravagances like that. I'd have to support my bird sanctuaries and the like.”
“How charitable,” Rey cooed, crossing her eyes when Prunella turned away.
“And you, boyo, I wager you'd finally move to Ireland and buy a wee spot of land to raise sheep and grow some Campanula rotundifolia and Globeflower,” Prunella said with a bad Irish-English accent, giving her brother's lean shoulder a playful poke.
“Yes, and you'd be coming with me,” he grinned, grabbing her thin sun-burnished hand and squeezing it. He, too, sported an accent, but he'd had it since my arrival. Unlike the accent his sibling just used, Percival's was consistent – and fake – but it fit his affected air perfectly.
May-Lee let out some sort of grunt, or maybe the wine had traveled down the wrong passage. She offered a quick smile and pressed a napkin to Joan Crawford lips: full, well-defined, and primrose red.
Aunt Mat did favor odd people, as May-Lee had pointed out, and this brother and sister were about as odd as they got. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as if it had been veiled by an artic sea spray.
Thomas almost cracked a smile. That must have hurt.
“What about you, May-Lee darling-dear?” Prunella asked with a sugary smile. “You've been unusually quiet all evening.”
May-Lee imitated the smile. “I believe I'd partake of a grouse and/or partridge shooting expedition. I've always wanted to experience the thrill of a hunt under various cover types, with a flusher or a pointer at my side. What fun!”
The Sayers sister paled and took hasty sips of water.
“What about you, Jensen?” Rey asked, leaning forward to look at the barrister seated at the end of the table, hacking a huge chunk of ice-cold butter. Give her points for attempting to engage everyone in the group.
He lay the butter knife aside and smiled tightly. “I'd buy the helpmate a diamond bracelet and a three-month trip to Brazil, a country she's always wanted to visit.”
To get her out of my hair, I could imagine him adding if he were sitting at a table with intimate friends. Something in the way his kelp-green, jellybean-shaped eyes darkened, just for a blink, suggested it wasn't love he felt for the woman. His Queen's English accent was flawless, but then three-plus decades in England would lend itself to that; so would elocution lessons and a sincere desire to present a perfect image.
Thomas, seated on the opposite side from Jensen, nodded to Beatrice and Hubert, who had entered with silver salvers. Saved by dinner. You could almost hear the fleshy man's “phew” as he methodically chewed a sizeable piece of butter-slathered bun and fingered a cluster of tiny red splotches at the base of one ear. He'd acquired more marks since the late afternoon and served as the perfect ad for Poe's “Red Death”. Looking at him made me want to scratch and I asked Hubert if there was Calamine lotion to be had. There wasn't.
Flank steak, scalloped potatoes and sautéed mushrooms kept the mushroom theme constant. Dessert was a mushroom-shaped mousse that tasted vaguely of, well, yes, more 'shrooms. “Curious” was what Adwin's furrowed brow suggested as the thick chilled dessert slid along his discerning tongue.
Hopefully Porter had other motifs and ideas in mind for the week. Or was this part of the test – how long someone could eat fungi prepared five dozen ways before he or she screamed “enough!” and ran into a raven-black night?
5
Done … Like Dinner
“The man hasn't moved since we sat down in here.” Salmon-pink lips pursed, Prunella stared over her sherry at Thomas Saturne. “I thought he was being aloof or meditative. You're sure he's dead? How can you tell?”
The lawyer was slumped along an armrest on the drawing room sofa, flaccid lips slightly parted, unseeing eyes very open. Drool trickled down a pointy chin.
Once again Poe came to mind and the rumbling words “besprinkled with the scarlet horror” pushed through a developing headache. The red marks had grown darker, more intense and defined since dinner. It seemed like an unskilled or inebriated hand had used a permanent red marker to convert him into a connect-the-dot picture. Or maybe it was that he'd grown paler and the marks merely seemed more pronounced. Either way, he appeared pained, and more bloated than ever with that blubber around his middle section. He resembled Tinky Winky, Adwin's favorite Teletubby (there was something about the frolicsome “tubbies” that had never ceased to entertain my little vanilla-oat scone).
&
nbsp; “Very dead, I'd say,” Percival murmured, warily pressing the man's wrist and neck.
“Dang.” Sitting before a huge hissing and spitting fire, Linda continued sucking on a bottle of Harpoon Belgian Pale Ale.
“Dang,” Cousin Reynalda agreed, pouring a rye and ginger and moving alongside a side table that sported two large egg-white ceramic vases with two-dozen dahlias each – black ones. (Aunt Mat had to be beyond the walls.) Drink in hand, she stood there watching with narrowed eyes; a fledgling forensic scientist ready and willing to take on the required responsibilities of the job, or an actress ready to throw herself into the role of a lifetime.
Rain thrummed the roof as if it were a stringed instrument. Monotonous and endless, the performance was as flat as a freshly cleaned nopal leaf. We'd been in the room about an hour, listening to distant thunder, getting drunker than we'd been by end of dinner, nibbling on homemade pralines shaped like zaftig buttocks or breasts, depending on your perspective. Made of bittersweet chocolate and containing a crunchy center of nougat and nuts, it was hard not to want to devour them by the handful. Even Thomas had sucked on a sweet when we'd first sat, making an odd mmm-yumm-numm sound so very out of character. Then he'd withdrawn, and grown quiet and solemn.
Rey, Percival and I had chatted amiably over nothing in particular while Adwin had listened with a sunny smile and perpetually topped glass of Pinot Noir. May-Lee had made notes in a leather-bound journal and the rest had retreated into ebooks and magazines. The next thing we knew, there was a shocked gasp, like someone who knew he was about to collide with a locomotive and he wasn't going to be the one choo-chooing into the vibrant horizon. Then … he was done like dinner.
“We'd better call a doctor.” Prunella's lips disappeared altogether as she continued to stare at the dead lawyer.
“It's kind of late for that,” Adwin declared, leaning into the chaise longue as he sat on the floor. He looked paler than usual, and that was pretty damn pale.
Fred the Cat, as opposed to Fred the Ghost, meandered in. He looked around, focused on Thomas and evidently decided the deceased lawyer would make the best resting place. Up he leaped, curled and purred.
“I'll ring the police,” Jensen volunteered, looking around the room and frowning. “By jove, where's the blasted phone?”
I swallowed a chuckle. Apparently Cousin Rey wasn't the only one for melodrama and mediocre acting. “I saw one in the blasted kitchen.”
“I'll go!” Percival spun from sight like a dust devil swirling across ploughland.
“Man, can you believe this?” Rey laughed, spilling her drink on her slip-dress and not caring.
Adwin glanced over the top of his glasses, an eyebrow arched impossibly high.
“Isn't it great? I mean, this is like so-o Aunt Matty!”
Linda eyed her friend as if she wasn't sure whether she was screaming drunk or having a nervous breakdown. “Maybe we should have coffee.”
My cousin eyed her with similar concern. Are you demented, her inner voice clearly demanded.
“What do you suppose killed him?” Prunella picked at a pink lace handkerchief she'd tucked into the sleeve of a cashmere sweater she'd been carrying with her like Charlie Brown's Linus did his security blanket.
Adwin suggested a heart attack; Jensen an aneurism. Linda said it may have been an allergic reaction to something, which Rey pooh-poohed – with a snort.
“What do you think it was?” Linda asked her best friend flatly.
Posing like Caesar about to launch into a longwinded speech, she announced dramatically, “I think the man was poisoned. Most likely by a slow-acting, undetectable substance.”
Which resulted in another snort – from me. Adwin bit his lip and Linda spewed forth the beer she was about to swallow.
Prunella's wren-brown eyes widened and she looked from Rey to the deceased lawyer in wonderment.
“Let's wait for the authorities to determine the cause,” May-Lee suggested matter-of-factly, her handsome Montblanc pen poised. A calm and gauging woman, her former business analyst persona shone through.
“The police will be here as soon as they can,” Percival announced as he tramped back in, looking like a sergeant about to descend on a platoon. “There's a nasty multi-vehicle accident two miles from here, thanks to the rain, and everyone and their mothers have been called to the scene. Porter's preparing a huge urn of coffee. Hubert fainted. Beatrice is helping him revive. I think we're on our own for the interim.”
Weren't we before? I took a deep breath and grabbed a praline, was about to bite into it when I recalled my cousin's suggestion about poison. I eyed the sweet treat for several seconds before placing it on a napkin on the mantelpiece. What if she was right about the toxic substance? The now full-blown headache gave way to queasiness and I asked Adwin for a glass of water. Which he ended up getting for everyone in the room, save for poor, very dead Thomas Saturne.
Then another telepathic thing happened: we all toasted him at the same second. You'd have thought you were looking at a family reunion portrait, with Uncle Thomas presenting a man-that-punch-I-spiked-was-a-hit grin.
6
Deadly Desserts
It was one a.m. when the body was finally removed and everyone's statements had been taken by Sheriff Lewis and Deputy Gwynne. Porter had ended up making two urns of strong French roast coffee. Needless to say, with all the caffeine and commotion, it was unlikely anyone under Aunt Mat's roof would be sleeping any time soon. Hubert had returned to his former stiff self while Beatrice had clumped around, serving coffee and cherry strudel that the guys with the body bag grabbed to go and the police ate with great relish, and whipped cream.
A couple of local eager-beaver reporters had arrived and hung around by the tall wrought-iron gate in the warmish misty early morning, hoping to get details. None of us felt like making their lives easier, although Rey volunteered to personally inform them about our no-comment position. Linda's firm grip on my cousin's slim wrist and my threatening glare quickly nipped that bigheaded intention in the bud.
“What a night,” Adwin muttered, dropping his glasses onto a nightstand and flopping belly-first onto an oak-paneled half-tester bed.
“What a day,” I exclaimed as I began changing into a pair of baby-blue flannel pajamas with a kitty-cat pattern, a birthday gift from the pastry chef whose face was now buried in a cotton quilt with an elk-and-deer motif; a hunter's dream. “You know, I overheard the M.E. telling the sheriff that he'd never seen anything like it – what with the ugly rash and all that – and that at this juncture anything could have contributed to Thomas' death.”
“Anything as in murder maybe?” Eyes brown like crimini mushrooms squinted my way. “I was wondering what you'd overhear hanging on the old guy's shirttails. I'm surprised you didn't crush his feet. You were practically stepping on them.”
“You can't work at a news station and not want to gather facts,” I sniffed, sitting before an intricately carved mirror that graced a lovely empire-style marble-top chest.
In truth, I'd never much wanted to follow in the footsteps of Diane Sawyer, Gigi Stone or Soledad O'Brien. News and current events, power struggles and politics were either too depressing or too overwhelming. I did, though, have a passion for research and investigating fads, food, and fashion – anything fun. Nice, tame, interesting stuff that didn't want to make you question the egocentricity or stupidity of leaders and the fate of mankind. Thomas Saturne's death, however, did pique my curiosity, maybe because he died here, right in front of us, an old-school Murder She Wrote mystery screaming to be solved.
Adwin struggled upright. “You tell people the weather, and sometimes you discuss community or local events, but you never go beyond the happy-go-lucky stuff, even if I've told you I think you have it in you to be a brilliant investigative reporter.”
Someone was reading my mind. Scary.
He grabbed a pair of folded forest-green pajamas from the topmost corner of the bed. “Branch out, Jill. Move beyond de
monstrating the virtues of taffy-making and modeling rainslickers.”
I grabbed a brush resembling a misshapen turtle, tempted to use it on him rather than my hair. Sleep-deprived bitch mode was setting in, something he had to be aware of and, for some strange reason, wasn't avoiding. “Screw you,” I said, eyeing a tired reflection in the looking-glass mirror, feeling like Alice must have after being in the company of the Mad Hatter, March Hare and Dormouse.
“Now that you mention –”
“Forget it.”
I started to put fifty strokes through waves heavy with spray and gel needed to obtain a “natural” look, and walked to the window.
He shrugged and slipped into the sleepwear. “If it was poison, who do you suppose administered it? And why?”
“Good questions and ones we're going to find answers to, my little crostata.” I peered to into the darkness. The rain had passed and the moon was attempting to break through pitchy clouds. Slivers of light emanated from the cottage or shed or whatever it was that was situated four-hundred feet to the west of the mansion, and then it was gone. It was probably moonlight bouncing off a window or puddle. I turned and leaned into a wall.
Adwin's tired expression suggested he was merely making conversation; he cared less.
I shrugged. “It may have been something as simple as an insect bite that killed him.”
“Huh?”
I shrugged again. “I noticed a bite under his left ear. Maybe you saw it? It was beside a very noticeable bird-shaped blotch. It could be he had a reaction to a spider bite or some winged creature that thirsted his way.”
My beau smirked. “Have you been reading those old Agatha Christie books of your mom's again?”
That was neither here nor there. “Listen, butter boy, we're stuck here until next Thursday. We may as well have fun.”
“When did detecting and murder – or potential murder – become fun?”
I stared across the dimly lit guestroom and swallowed my irritability. “You enjoy challenges. Here's a mother of one.”
