Diva Wraps It Up, The

by Davis, Krista

  In light of our invitation to tea at Edith’s house, Nina and I skipped dessert. Mars groused about Natasha’s unorthodox Christmas cookies. I packed him a bag of cookies from the swap to take with him.

  “Should we dress for this?” asked Nina. “Do you suppose she expects us in hats and white gloves?”

  “I don’t think Edith is quite that out of tune with the times. But she cares about appearances, so maybe we should gussy up a little bit.”

  At a quarter of two, Nina met me on the sidewalk. I recognized the dark purple walking coat she had left at Horace’s party. We walked over to Edith’s house, speculating about Gwen’s death. A couple of police officers still focused on something in the alley when we walked by.

  Edith’s housekeeper, Mabel, answered the door. “Please come in.” She whispered, “I thought you might be one of her guests. In all the time I’ve worked here, she’s never had company. Not a soul!”

  Mabel took our coats. Nina wore an azure dress that skimmed her figure nicely. Subtle folds fell from the shoulders before crisscrossing at the waist.

  I had opted for a shawl-collared dress in emerald green.

  Mabel showed us into the library, where Edith greeted us, not exactly with warmth but with the graciousness of a proper hostess.

  Much to my surprise, Officer Wong was there as well. She flashed me a questioning look when she said hello.

  Edith perched on a settee in front of a coffee table bearing a silver tray. A silver teapot and matching sugar bowl and creamer were all heavily chased with flowers. Next to the tray sat a small stack of dessert plates with silver rims.

  Wong eyed the lemon squares and Napoleons arranged on a platter. Beside it was a flat pink box about two inches high. A glitzy orange ribbon with a double bow lay next to it.

  Edith poured tea for each of us while Mabel served the pastries. I felt like we were in the company of royalty.

  When Mabel left the room, Edith said, “You must wonder why I called you here.” She sat up straight but appeared uncomfortable, as though she was telling us something that pained her. “I no longer believe that Horace is trying to harm me.”

  “That must be a relief!” I smiled at her, glad she had realized her folly.

  “I’m afraid it’s no comfort at all because it means someone else is after us. When Horace fell from the balcony, I had the locks changed on the doors to his office building. I received numerous complaints about that decision, some quite rude, but I did so out of caution. I couldn’t have anyone falling or injured.” She paused and clenched her free fist. “I know all too well how dangerous these old buildings can be. The railing has now been repaired, and the house thoroughly inspected. It has been declared to be safe. However, during the time it was closed to employees, I did a bit of snooping in Horace’s office.

  I felt Nina’s eyes on me. Brown-Eyed Girl! I’d almost forgotten about her in the commotion of Gwen’s death. I held my breath.

  “This box lay on Horace’s desk.” Edith lifted the box and opened it to show us the contents. “It contained peanut brittle. As you can see, the better part of the contents have been consumed.” She returned the box to the table and gazed at each of us in turn. “Horace has a sweet tooth. There is almost no candy he won’t eat. Given the odd goings-on in our house, I took it upon myself to have the peanut brittle tested. A small piece contains the equivalent of two of Horace’s doses of warfarin, which is a blood thinner that can kill you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Dear Sophie,

  I just attended my first cookie swap. It was loads of fun, but now I have to store eight dozen cookies. Help!

  Cookie Monster in Silver Bell, Arizona

  Dear Cookie Monster,

  Store moist cookies separately from dry cookies. The important thing is that they be in airtight containers in the refrigerator. If you don’t plan to eat them in the next week or so, store them in the freezer.

  Sophie

  “Warfarin?” asked Nina. “Isn’t that what they put in rat poison?”

  Liza! She bought rat poison the day we were shopping for wreaths and pine roping.

  “It’s an odd medicine,” said Edith. “In small doses it keeps you alive. Eat more and it kills you like vermin. The warfarin in the peanut brittle accounts for the problem the doctors discovered when Horace fell from the balcony,” Edith explained. “He might have died from an overdose had he not fallen and been brought to the hospital.”

  None of us said a word. I was having trouble reconciling everything Edith said with what we knew. Someone had murdered Gwen. Had the same person tried to murder Horace? Was there some connection between the two events or were they totally unrelated? And why did peanut brittle sound familiar? Where had I heard about peanut brittle recently? Had it been Liza?

  Wong spoke up first. “Have you reported this to the police?”

  Edith rose and handed Wong an envelope. “These are the results of the tests I requested. I trust you will know how to proceed.”

  “You said your medicine was moved to the shelf where Horace’s medicine was stored,” said Wong. “Would you know if warfarin was missing from his bottle?”

  “Yes. Or reasonably close at any rate. I found the receipt for the last refill, computed the number of pills he should have taken, and then counted those that remained. He is missing nearly two weeks’ supply.”

  I stared at the box. Gwen and Natasha were the only two people I knew who would have given someone candy in a pink box for Christmas. “Fingerprints,” I breathed. Edith had handled the box, probably numerous times. She had probably ruined any fingerprints.

  Wong knew exactly what I meant. Very politely, she said, “Mabel, would you bring me a fresh food storage bag?”

  Edith’s housekeeper must have been listening to everything from another room. She appeared in a moment with the requested bag.

  Turning the plastic bag over her wrist like an inside-out mitten, Wong picked up the box and the bow, and slid the bag over them.

  Edith spoke calmly. “How thoughtless of me. I hope I have not ruined evidence.”

  Nina blurted. “Are you kidding? You don’t need fingerprints. It had to be Natasha or Gwen! A quick look in their homes will tell you who this stuff belongs to. Did either of them have a beef with Horace?”

  Gwen! Of course. It was Gwen. She had made peanut brittle.

  Edith raised her eyebrows. “How can you know it was Gwen or Natasha?”

  Nina explained about their Christmas colors.

  “I’ve never heard of such a moronic thing,” said Edith. “Christmas colors are red and green, and everyone knows it.” She eyed the box in Wong’s hand. “Foolish, too. If I planned to kill someone, I hardly think I would use such distinctive colors to package the poisonous apple, so to speak.”

  “Unless you wanted to shift the attention to someone else,” observed Nina. “In which case, you might intentionally use a very obvious color, like pink.”

  Natasha had a stack of pink boxes in her workroom. I couldn’t help wondering if Gwen had pinched some to throw suspicion on Natasha. Was that the reason she copied Natasha’s color scheme?

  With shaking hands, Edith poured herself another cup of tea and drank it rapidly.

  “Edith,” Wong said gently, “is there anyone who might want to murder Horace?”

  Nina’s head turned toward me fast. I knew she was still thinking about Brown-Eyed Girl, but so far Edith had given no indication that she knew anything about her.

  For a long moment, I feared Edith would scream at us and throw us out of her house. But Edith leaned back against the sofa as though she was drained. “Unless Horace was up to some sort of business shenanigans that I know nothing about, I can’t imagine that anyone would harbor such hatred toward him.” Her gaze fell to the Oriental carpet on the floor. “Except perhaps for me. I . . . I have never forgiven h
im for the death of our son.” She inhaled deeply and released a long breath. “But killing him would not bring my little boy back. There would be no sense in that.”

  Wong shot me a quizzical look. I would have to fill her in on the tragedies of Edith’s life.

  But I now knew two things for sure. Edith hadn’t lost her senses. She knew right from wrong. She closed Horace’s real estate building in an abominable manner, but for the best of reasons. How would any of us react to a spouse who’d fallen from a broken balcony, especially after losing a child in a similar incident? It wasn’t mean or stubborn or unreasonable of her to have locked people out of the building until she knew it was safe for them to enter. She just hadn’t handled it well. And the sleuthing she had done with his medicine wouldn’t have occurred to someone who had gone senile. Edith might be bitter and caustic, but she was still sharp as a tack.

  And I knew Gwen was the one who had tried to kill Horace. “What about you?” I asked. “Is there any reason Gwen would have come into your home to move your items around?”

  “Of course not!” Edith spoke with indignation. “I keep to myself. I don’t butt into other people’s affairs.”

  It would have been easy for Gwen to slip out her back gate, cross the alley, and sneak into Edith’s back door. Unfortunately, I could imagine Natasha doing that, too. She would have changed the location of a mirror without giving it any thought. I bit back a smile. In my mind I could hear Natasha defending herself—It was in the wrong spot!

  But there was no doubt about the peanut brittle. “It was Gwen.”

  They all stared at me. “Natasha would never make anything as ordinary as peanut brittle. She would make macadamia brittle with chipotle and shallots, or some other weird combination that she thinks is haute cuisine. And there’s one other thing. The night that Patty arrived, she had dinner at the Babineauxs’ house. Gwen had gone missing by then. Patty said they ate peanut brittle that Gwen had made.”

  Edith gasped. “Why would Gwen want to hurt Horace? Or me, for that matter?”

  Wong jumped to her feet. “I’ll get this down to the lab right away and see if we can get any prints off it. In the meantime, Mrs. Scroggins, I recommend that you take great care. Don’t open your door to anyone. I’ll make sure we keep an eye on your street. If you notice anything out of the ordinary, I want you to call 911 right away.”

  Something was bothering me. Patty had said the kids had found a pink box of peanut brittle hidden behind pasta and they’d used most of the contents to refill an orange box. Why the two colors? Unless . . . they were Gwen’s own code. She could safely eat from the orange box but knew that the pink boxes contained the poison!

  “Wait, Wong. Shouldn’t we go to the Babineauxs’ first? Patty said there was another box, a gift for Luis and Liza, that contained peanut brittle, and they used the contents to refill the box they had emptied. If memory serves, she said the box for Luis and Liza was pink.”

  Edith blurted, “No! What if the children eat it?”

  Wong started for the door. “Don’t panic. We’ll check on their peanut brittle. I’m sure Gwen wouldn’t have harmed the children.”

  “You don’t understand. Gwen had a hidden stash and the kids were raiding it and refilling it from tainted boxes.”

  Edith rose and pointed. “Use the back door, it’s faster.” Wong, Nina, and I were out the door in a flash. No one bothered to stop for coats, we simply ran. Right past Wolf and a gaggle of police officers. We rushed up the back stairs to Gwen’s kitchen.

  Baxter opened the door. “What’s going on?”

  “The peanut brittle,” Wong wheezed. “Where is it?”

  Baxter’s brow wrinkled. He pointed at the cluttered island. “Right there, somewhere.”

  I spotted the corner of an orange box under a jumble of cupcake boxes, a loaf of bread, and something wrapped in aluminum foil. I reached for it but stopped myself in the nick of time. “I don’t want to mess up fingerprints.”

  Wolf had followed us into the kitchen. He handed Wong gloves. “What’s going on?”

  “Where’s the other box?” I asked Baxter. “The one for Liza and Luis?”

  Baxter opened a pantry door. “Behind the pasta.”

  Wong searched the shelf. “I don’t see it. Sophie, you have a look.”

  I searched the entire pantry. “It’s gone.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Dear Sophie,

  In the winter, my beautiful garden is dormant and gray, except for a few lovely red berries. When there’s no snow, it’s a pretty bleak view from the great room. How can I dress it up for the holiday?

  Avid Gardener in Swans Point, Maryland

  Dear Avid Gardener,

  Hang a wreath on the garden gate or a bench. Cluster pinecones and unbreakable ornaments on a table or in an empty birdbath. Pop a Santa hat on a little garden statue or place a couple of battery-operated lanterns where you can see them at night.

  Sophie

  “Baxter, you don’t think your children ate it?” I asked.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time they snitched a snack. What’s the problem? There’s nothing wrong with that candy.”

  We explained that it might contain blood-thinning medicine.

  “Good heavens! Bethany? Bradley?” He hurried up the stairs with more life in him than he’d had since Gwen died.

  Wong’s eyes met mine. “I’d bet anything Gwen gave it to Liza and Luis.”

  Wolf leaned against the kitchen counter. “Maybe you’d like to tell me what’s going on?”

  While Wong filled him in, I looked through the pantry again and discovered the box smashed behind big cereal boxes. “Found it! Wong, I’ll let you recover it.” I backed out of the pantry, my heart pounding.

  Baxter returned to the kitchen. “The kids deny any involvement. That’s a relief! What could have possessed Gwen to do such a thing?”

  I slipped out the back door by myself. Something must have happened between Gwen and the Scrogginses, and between Gwen and Liza and Luis. I couldn’t imagine why she wanted to kill any one of them. How could she have been so cheerful and happy at the cookie swap when she was waiting for Horace to die? I shuddered at the thought.

  I couldn’t prove that she had moved the mirror in Edith’s house or that she had taken the cash meant for the housekeeper, but unless she had thrown it out, which was a possibility, I might find the little garden statue that was taken from Edith.

  The Babineauxs had a concrete parking pad instead of a garage. But inside their back fence was a little storage shed, not unlike my own potting shed. The door creaked when I pulled it open. It was packed. Loaded to the very top with yard equipment, holiday items, beach gear, paint cans, rakes, snow shovels, buckets, and heaven knew what else.

  I was about to give up when it dawned on me that Gwen had taken the statuette recently. It had to be near the front. I stood back and searched visually from left to right.

  At the exact moment that I saw what might be a tiny head, someone behind me said, “You look pretty in green. Aren’t you cold?”

  I turned around to see Baxter. “Thank you.” What could I say to him? He’d caught me looking in their shed. I could feel the hot flush of embarrassment rising in my face.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  There was no avoiding it. I told him about the strange things going on at the Scroggins home. “Someone took a statuette from their garden. I think it’s a little boy. I’m sorry, Baxter, but I suspect that Gwen was the one pulling those stunts on Edith, though I can’t imagine why. I thought if I found the little statue here, it would confirm that Gwen was the culprit.”

  “A couple of days ago, I would have been offended. But I’m learning a lot that I never knew about Gwen. I think you’re in luck. Is that it?” Baxter pointed where I had been looking.

  It was too high for me
to reach without toppling other items, but Baxter was able to lift it out.

  Edith was right. It wasn’t anything valuable. Just a little boy with angel wings, and a bird perched on his hand. “Do you suppose they need this as evidence?”

  “It’s going to be pretty hard to prosecute Gwen. What do you say? Shall we return it to Edith?”

  While we walked across the alley and through Edith’s garden, I told Baxter about the son Edith and Horace lost.

  I knocked on her back door. She opened it, and for one moment she gazed at Baxter with horror. But when she saw what he held, she placed her hands on her cheeks.

  “Gwen took it?” Edith asked.

  I nodded. “It appears that way.”

  “Where would you like me to place it?” asked Baxter.

  Edith hustled outside and pointed to a circle of dead grass. “Right there, please.”

  She thanked us. “I cannot imagine what we did to Gwen to induce such animus toward us. I had no idea Gwen harbored hatred toward Horace and me. Why would she try to poison Horace and trick me into thinking I’d lost my mind?”

  A small commotion in the alley caught our attention.

  Baxter and I hurried out to the alley and over to Liza and Luis’s backyard.

  Nina and Wolf stood by the ladder, looking down at it.

  Old and wooden, with years of paint drippings, it seemed like the same ladder. The second rung still hung on to it at a rakish angle. I bent to peer at it more closely. “I’m pretty sure it’s the same one. See how the end of this rung starts out smooth, like someone sawed it? But the bottom part of the rung splintered when Baxter put his weight on it.” I straightened up and stepped aside so Wolf could examine it.

  Luis came running toward us from his house, with Liza chugging behind him.

  “What’s going on?” asked Luis, breathless.

  Wolf faced him. “Your wife gave us permission to search your shed. We found this ladder. Do you know to whom it belongs?”

  Luis shrugged when he said, “Yeah. It’s mine.”