by Imogen Plimp
MAIL—blackmail.
HAR—Not Harahan… Could it be a nickname for Henry?
I thought I’d throw caution to the wind. “Did James by any chance used to call you Harry?” I said it timidly.
Henry’s mouth fell open, then reformed into a tense little o. “How did you know that?”
I shrugged. “Just a hunch.”
He grinned meanly again.
I had to keep talking. It had kept me alive thus far. “But why did you frame Evelyn? What did she ever do to you?”
Henry held his wicked grin, which was growing even more evil-looking as the flames died down to a sorry underlit shimmer. “She’s just as nosy as you are. Always has been. About ten years ago, she almost figured out that James and I were together—but we fixed that right up. Nina helped us out. All three of us worked hard to spread a whole lot of rumors about James and some floozy. Or hoard of floozies. Though, to be fair, I planned to frame you first.”
“I assumed. And that didn’t work because…” I gestured with my still-raised hands—because why?
Henry exhaled, extraordinarily irritated. “When the sheriff didn’t show up at your house to arrest you after you’d discovered Nina’s body, I found out it was because he was up at Mrs. Buckminster’s. I can see most of the town from my porch, you know—including your house, and hers. She had seen me harvest more poison the night before and called him up.”
I gasped in horror. “You killer her too?”
“That old hag? No! Would be a waste of perfectly good poison. Not to mention time. But it seemed the sheriff obviously assumed you weren’t a suspect … and now he was on the trail of the nightshade … so I called in a tip about Evelyn to throw him off.”
“And the sheriff carted her off. And now … here we are.”
“Indeed.” His eyes narrowed as he pointed his gun at my chest. He looked at it and smiled. As if it were his nifty little toy. “You could have avoided this particular fate, did you know that? Has anyone ever told you that you put your nose a little too far into other peoples’ business?”
“Oh, all the time! My daughter, Al—you just met her—she says that I…”
He rolled his eyes and then cut me off in a rage. “And has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” He cocked his gun emphatically.
I snapped my mouth shut. Too far.
Keep stalling. Gently now… “Did you try to frame Ben Duke on purpose? Before? Early on in the case?”
He glared at me through narrowed slits, his gun still aimed at my chest. “What’s another dirty hippy in jail? Doesn’t matter one bit to me.”
I nodded slowly. “So you’re just going to keep killing people until … what? Until there’s no one left to frame or—or kill?”
There was that nasty sneer again. “I’ll make it look like it’s an angry local, fed up with gentrification. Nina and James were players in that game. And Leslie’s a newcomer from LA. You too, Ms. Brooklyn.” His eyes glinted as he continued to raise his voice, his inflection growing more urgent one reveal at a time. “Worse comes to worse, I’ll take a little poisonous nightshade—not enough to kill me, just enough to keep me clear of the list of suspects. Plus, Sheriff Sellers isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Hasn’t figured this out yet, the simplest of all crimes. Hasn’t even occurred to him two grown professional men can be lovers…” His mouth diminished into a thin straight line. The next part he uttered in a terrifying calculated calm through clenched teeth. “Turns out incompetence around here runs deep. And I’m. Sick. Of. It.”
Suddenly, a big lump of brown fur flew in front of my eyes and barged with a thud into Henry. And then there was the sound of the most horrific screech I’d ever heard—as a yowling Henry went down, Rupert on top of him—with a bloody arm lodged into his jaws. Rupert looked to clamp down harder and shook his head angrily, growling with ire.
“Get it off! Get it off!” Henry pleaded like a frightened little girl, his baritone morphed into a high-pitched squeal.
My heart racing, I searched the room for the gun—it had flown clear across the hallway. I kicked it down the stairway Rupert had charged up and into the basement. It’d be hard to find in a cinch down there. “Rupert!” I bellowed with authority.
Rupert dropped Henry’s arm, sat squarely in the center of Henry’s chest with an inelegant “hrmph,” looked up at me with those sad, guilty eyes, and wagged his tail.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sheriff Sellers and four other officers burst in through my front door in a valiant charge faster than you could say “9-1-1.”
Rupert remained protectively seated on top of Henry’s torso until Sheriff Sellers motioned for him to move, to which he responded with surprising deference.
“Oh thank God, ma’am,” the sheriff blurted with what seemed to be genuine relief the moment he saw me standing upright, safe and sound in my den. “We got a tip from Mrs. Buckminster up the hill. Claimed she saw what she swore was Mr. Castle this time—over there trampling through her weeds.”
“Her nightshade, you mean?” I asked.
“Don’t know much about plants,” he shrugged. “But anyway, we went over to Mr. Castle’s residence and found his stash of those weeds—and the potions he made from them. Got afraid he might’ve gotten impatient and come down here to tie up loose ends—meaning you.”
I nodded and smiled wryly. “I got it.”
“Is anyone going to help me with my arm?” Henry yelled, fuming like a petulant little kid put unjustly in an obligatory time-out. “You can’t have a dog like that biting people!”
Sheriff Sellers squinted doubtfully in Henry’s direction. “Considering the circumstances, we’ll give the dog a pass. Rupert, right?” he grinned at Rupert’s wrinkled visage and reached down to give him a congratulatory pat on the head.
Rupert barked.
“Looks to be just a minor flesh wound,” an officer volunteered as he knelt down to inspect Henry.
The sheriff nodded. “We’ll patch him up at the station.”
I was growing impatient. “Sheriff, does this mean Evelyn…”
He cut me off. “I radioed in from Mr. Castle’s residence. She was released a little while ago. I’m surprised she didn’t rush right over…”
Just then the front door slammed open and a flash of red puff with a white curly mane attached came barreling in through the hallway. “Claire!” Evelyn shouted, “Oh praise everything! They got here in time! I was sure Henry would come straight for you!”
She enveloped me in a big old bear hug and wouldn’t let go until I started squirming. And Al and Ry weren’t far behind her. “Mom!” Al exclaimed, “You’re ok! We heard the sirens and sprinted!” She hugged me tight after Evelyn had finally let me go.
Ry was doubled over, their palms on their thighs, gulping for air. “Good – Okay – Higher – elevation here – Hard – to breathe.”
The sheriff was making the rounds of the house, accompanied by his entourage, checking for anything they might need to put Henry away, I assumed. An officer found Henry’s gun in the basement without my prompting and secured it in a ziplock baggie.
“Looks like we’re clear,” Sheriff Sellers called to his men. “Well, Mrs. Andersen, I gotta hand it to you. You were right,” he shook his head and smiled. “—it was in fact a jilted lover of Jimmy’s. It’s just I was barkin’ up the wrong tree, if ya know what I mean.” He winked.
I grinned at him and wrapped my arm around my daughter.
Outside, the snow was falling steadily. The officers paraded out my front door and into their squad cars, urging the small group of people that had gathered on the sidewalk to move along, “nothin’ to see here, folks.”
I closed—and locked—my front door and returned to my den, where Al was re-starting a fire and Evelyn was distributing cups of tea. Rupert was also making the rounds, touching everybody gently with his nose. When he reached me, he looked up at me expectantly.
“Well I guess we should go for a little wa
lk, huh Rupert?”
He wagged his tail excitedly and trotted to the front door to retrieve his leash.
* * *
“Okay okay, start from the beginning,” Emma said, pouring a dollop of crème into her English breakfast tea and settling into a stool at the kitchen island. She had hopped into her car the moment Al had called her to give her an update early in the morning. She must have floored it all the way from Queens, because she arrived on my doorstep with a bottle of red wine and a warm hug at noon on the dot.
“James was gay. He was seeing Henry for at least twenty years,” I said, sautéing beets into butter and curry powder. I was making more of Al’s favorites for dinner—shepherd’s pie with ground beef and curried beets, massaged kale with lemon and heirloom tomato slices, and a spicy chocolate cake. And there was, of course, the buffet of bakes goodies I had prepared throughout the previous two days. “They met in business school and must have gotten together a bit after that.”
“I think it might have actually been earlier—” Evelyn interjected, perched up on her barstool, as she reached across the island for another bite of tomato and pesto bruschetta (which were fashioned out of my homemade bread). “The two of them moved here about twenty-five years ago, at about the same time. Both of ‘em bought houses and fixed ‘em up together.”
I poured my beets into a casserole dish. “What I don’t understand is why they would have lied about their relationship all this time?”
“And in a town this small,” Al added, “how could nobody have figured it out in two and a half decades? Oh hey mom, where are the chocolate muffins?”
I turned to do an obligatory search around the kitchen, my wooden spoon paused in mid-air. “Fridge?” I guessed.
“I ate them.” Ry called guiltily from the sink where they were washing dishes with aplomb—and spilling water all over my cast iron overhang and wooden countertops. They reminded me of a Muppet in the bathtub.
Al guffawed. “All of them?” she asked accusatorily.
Ry shrugged. “They were freaking delish, and I was hungry.”
I grinned widely—and returned my attention to the conversation at hand. “The town had no idea about Henry and James—but Evelyn had a hunch,” I said, looking at her. “Henry told me so.” I added generous heaps of spiced ground beef and mashed potato into my casserole dish.
She nodded. “I did. But I got thrown off the scent when I started hearing about Jimmy and some of the younger ladies a few years back. Mostly though the rumors came from Henry and known associates, including Nina—must have been trying to mislead me.”
Emma served herself a scoop of bread pudding, licking some extras off her fingers while she settled back into her seat. “So James and Henry are a couple. They show up here and buy a building each. And then … out of the blue … James gets married to Nina?”
“Yup,” I said, bending down to slide Al’s shepherd’s pie into the oven. “And I gather that’s about the first time Henry wanted to kill James.” I stood up straight and wiped my greasy hands onto my apron, which, at this point, was in desperate need of a good washing.
“Nina was a beard,” Al mumbled, her mouth full of almond cake.
“We call it a fag-hag,” Ry called, twisting awkwardly toward us as they rinsed off a mixing bowl, discarding most of its water onto the floor by accident.
“Claire, darling, this bourbon bread pudding is extraordinarily good,” Emma said, wiping the corners of her mouth daintily with a cloth napkin.
“Try this cake,” Al nudged her after swallowing her bite.
“Why would James marry Nina, though?” Emma asked.
“I been thinkin’ about that,” Evelyn mused, stirring more honey into her tea cup. “Twenty-five years ago, this town wasn’t quite so…”
“Hip,” Al offered.
Evelyn nodded. “I don’t think the two of them coming out would have gone so great. It wouldn’t have been a huge problem, but I don’t think they would have felt so … welcomed.”
“So they did everything they could do to pretend they were straight—including marry a woman—and then they felt the needed to keep up the charade,” Emma suggested.
“Exactly,” I agreed.
“Ma, didn’t you say you made a pie too?” Al asked.
“Guess what?” Ry said, dutifully stacking their pile of still-sudsy dishes precariously on the drying rack.
Al rolled her eyes. “You ate it.”
Ry spun around dramatically—the spin looked suspiciously like a Michael Jackson turn-around. “It was apple pie. Girl, you know I can’t help myself!”
I returned to our murderous puzzle excitedly. “But, it turns out James didn’t tell Henry he was marrying Nina until the night before the wedding—which, understandably upset Henry.”
“I’d imagine,” Emma said, raising an eyebrow.
“And Henry said something about James having all kinds of other lovers too.”
“Sounds like Jimmy to me!” Evelyn exclaimed.
I set out another platter of bruschetta—beets with goat cheese, and prosciutto with manchego. Evelyn reached for a beet sampling hungrily.
Emma swallowed a sip of tea and folded her hands into her lap. “So James cheated on Henry multiple times. Married someone else without so much as a hint to his longtime partner. And finally, Henry decided to go through with it—kill James, I mean.”
I nodded.
“To be honest, can any of us blame him?” Emma asked, gazing over her spectacles and issuing a questioning search onto each one of us, pointedly.
No one had an answer for her.
“It’s where he started killing everybody else that the wicket gets real sticky.” Evelyn said, crumbs still stuck to her chin from her recent hardy bite of bruschetta.
“So, Henry poisons James, James dies.” Emma reached out to cut herself a slice of carrot cake, which had yet to be touched. “And then a young woman named Leslie decides to blackmail Henry, convinced that he was the killer.”
I took the last seat at the island, smoothing out my filthy apron and reaching for my cup of tea. “Evelyn’s right—that’s where it gets very complicated. And truly terrible. Apparently, Leslie was working up at the brew pub the night Henry decided he wanted to do the deed. Henry told the cops that she was restocking the ice chest when he slipped the poison into James’s drink at the bar. He didn’t realize she’d seen him do it from in the back.”
I lifted a side plate off the pile on the island and slid it over to Emma, motioning for her to cut me a slice of carrot cake. “When Leslie heard that James was dead, she put two and two together. Called up Henry and made a threat. She wanted money—a lot of money—or said she’d tell the cops about the murder and tell the whole town about Henry and James’s ‘sordid relationship’. Her words, not mine.”
“And Henry wasn’t having any of that,” Emma suggested carefully, her mouth full of cake.
“Nope!” Evelyn answered. “Not his style. Not his style at all.”
“Oh Claire, this carrot cake is absolutely to die for…” Emma gushed. Again she delicately wiped the corners of his mouth with her cloth napkin. “A triumph.”
I smiled at her warmly and nodded in thanks. “So Henry thought he’d kill Leslie and make it look like Ben did it, knowing full well Ben was already a suspect in James’s murder, since he owed James cash.”
“The only trouble at this point was that the two of you…” Ry weighed in, eyeing me and Evelyn “…started snooping around like a couple of naughty kids.” Ry reached across the island, eager to join in on the carrot cake party.
“Actually, it was Nina,” I retorted. “Although she was, as you say,” I nodded at Al and did air quotes “ ‘a beard’, she and James were actually good friends. She may have suspected Henry from the beginning. But she also suspected Leslie. My money’s on: Nina confronted Leslie about James’s murder, and Leslie told her all about Henry. And when Leslie was killed, Nina was fully-convinced.”
Evelyn shuf
fled on her stool excitedly. “I heard from Ellen Winoowki, who’s good friends with Arnie’s wife—”
“Arnie’s the sheriff,” I clarified for my other guests.
Evelyn continued, largely ignoring me “—that Henry told Arnie he knew Leslie had told Nina about the murder.” I had to admit, living in a small town wasn’t getting any less confusing. “Leslie confessed all, right before Henry shoved her down the stairs to her death. So he decided to try to smooth things over with Nina. Broker a deal. Told her if she kept her mouth shut—and they split what she inherited from James dying, 50/50—then he’d let her live. But she didn’t bite.”
Emma raised an eyebrow as she licked her fork clean. “So Cruella de Vil took the high road, after all…”
“An alternate ending,” Al chimed in.
“I feel guilty about not picking up the night Nina called me,” I said, defeated, gazing down into my now nearly empty tea cup—as if reading the remnants of my tea leaves would tell me something. I looked up at Evelyn. “Do you remember when she called when you were here—right before she was killed?” I asked her.
Evelyn nodded slowly. “But if you had picked up, Henry would have gotten to you much sooner. Might have even been you stuffed into that freezer, too.”
I sighed. “I know. But it still makes me feel bad.” Nina Delacroix hadn’t been my favorite person on earth, but the thought of her reaching out at the eleventh hour, even if it was in a boozy poison-fueled haze—and there being no there, there—made me sad.
“All you can do is take care of you, Claire,” Emma said self-assuredly, while helping herself to a slice of prosciutto bruschetta.
“And Ben?” Al asked, perking up with curiosity. “What happened to him?”
“Oh!” I had almost forgotten about poor, sweet, in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time Ben. “He was released when Henry called in the fake tip about Evelyn being the killer. Turns out when Henry told me he saw Ben getting drunk at the café the night Leslie was killed, he wasn’t lying. Ben had fallen off the wagon. And his uncle Dale knew about it, and he wasn’t keen on betraying Ben’s status of sobriety.” I cleaned my plate of carrot cake crumbs with the tip of my index finger and reached for a piece of beet bruschetta. “But Henry made a mistake in going public with Ben’s relapse—” I shook my head. “He had thought it would make it obvious Ben had gotten drunk and then shoved Leslie to her death. But Ben stayed at the café long after Henry did, and he was still there when she was killed. Ben found Leslie at the bottom of the stairs much later in the night. The nature of her injuries—and the likely time of her injuries—later proved Ben wasn’t the killer. Henry kind of screwed himself there.” I shrugged and took a bite of beet yumminess.
