Bernie didn’t know if that would help, but it was the only thing she could think of to do. As she draped the blanket over Peggy she noticed Peggy was still clutching a Christmas popper, her hand tightening and loosening around it as her body contracted and relaxed. On impulse, because it seemed the right thing to so, Bernie gently removed the tube and placed it on the coffee table. A sprinkling of confetti fell onto the floor.
“I hear sirens,” Henry announced.
Everyone nodded. The siren was audible to everyone now.
“Thank God,” Sheryl cried, pointing to Peggy. People looked and then looked away. They didn’t want to see. “Her eyes are beginning to roll back in her head. I don’t know much, but that can’t be good.”
Linda sent Rick to wait by the front door for the EMTs. Everyone else milled around not knowing what to do except listen to the sirens getting louder. A couple of minutes later, they could see an ambulance pull up in front of the house and stop. Two men jumped out and Ada’s brother opened the door and cried, “In here,” his voice carrying into the living room. A minute later, the EMTs burst into the room.
“Over here,” Bernie said, indicating Peggy as everyone moved back to give the EMTs room.
They knelt next to her and took her pulse and listened to her heart.
“Anyone know what happened?” one of the EMTs asked.
Vicky told the EMTs the same thing she’d told Bernie.
“How long has she been like this?” the second EMT inquired.
“Maybe ten minutes. At the most,” Sheryl answered.
“Does she have a history of seizures?” the same EMT asked.
“I think I remember her saying something to that effect a while ago,” Marty Grover said.
“Are you family?” the taller EMT asked Marty.
Linda answered instead. She shook her head. “She doesn’t have any. We’re the closest thing she has.”
The first EMT nodded. Then he and his coworker went out to get a stretcher. They came back a minute later, placed Peggy on it, and carried her out of Linda Sinclair’s house. Five minutes after that, they were speeding to the hospital.
“I hope she’s all right,” Sheryl said as everyone watched the ambulance disappear into the night.
“Me too,” Libby replied. “What’s that?” Libby asked Bernie, pointing to the green foil tube Bernie had taken off the coffee table and was holding in her hand.
“Peggy’s Christmas popper,” Bernie said.
“It looks sad,” Libby said, “all squished in like that.”
“That’s the way it’s supposed to look when you open it,” Bernie noted. “I wonder what was in it?” she mused.
“I don’t know,” Linda said. “Peggy did her own. She never shared.”
“Doesn’t it take two to make these things pop?” Bernie asked.
“It’s supposed to,” Henry replied. Then he shrugged.
“But Peggy was funny that way. After her divorce, she always wanted to do everything by herself.”
“What happened to her husband?” Bernie asked.
“He died a couple of years ago,” Henry replied. “Why do you ask?”
“No particular reason,” Bernie responded. “Just nosy I guess.” And Bernie leaned over and put the popper back on the table. As she did she saw a glint of something inside the tube. She held it up to the ceiling light to examine it better. She could see a tiny speck glinting in the center of the tube. What was it? Bernie wasn’t sure so she got up and took the popper over to one of the lamps.
“What are you doing?” Libby asked as she followed Bernie over.
“I thought I saw something.” And Bernie held the tube under the lamp shade so she could see better. But that didn’t help—the bulb was too dim—so she got her cell phone out and used the flashlight.
“What?” Libby asked, looking over her sister’s shoulder.
“That,” Bernie said, pointing to a small needle embedded in a round piece of cardboard that was placed an inch away from the tube’s closing. If you reached your hand in, it would be impossible not to get pricked by it. Bernie turned to Linda. “Quick question,” she said.
Linda turned toward her. Bernie thought she looked what? A mix of things. Exhausted. Relieved. Frightened.
“Yes?” Linda said.
“These poppers are filled with something, right?”
“That’s the whole point,” Linda answered. “Why?”
Bernie nodded to the one she was holding in her hand. “Because this one has some sort of pin stuck in it on the inside.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Linda replied, looking out the window at the falling snow. “It must be a manufacturer’s error.” She turned toward Bernie and Libby. “But I don’t see how that had anything to do with what just happened to Peggy.”
“I didn’t say it did,” Bernie pointed out.
“Of course it does,” Ada cried. Her eyes were wild and she’d run her fingers through her hair so it was standing on end.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Linda snapped.
Everyone in the room turned toward her.
“Someone put that pin in there,” Ada insisted.
“Yes, the manufacturer, like your mom just said,” Vicky replied.
“No,” Ada cried, her voice growing shrill. “It wasn’t the manufacturer. It wasn’t an accident. Someone did this on purpose. Someone poisoned her. Someone poisoned Peggy.”
Henry sucked in his cheeks then frowned. The gestures made his nose look even bigger than it was. “Jeez, Ada,” he said. “Come on. Not now.”
Ada pointed a trembling finger to the spot on the floor where Peggy had been lying. Everyone turned to look. “She’s going to die.”
“No she isn’t,” Linda said, talking to her daughter in the same tone of voice you’d talk to a child. “She’s going to be fine. The nice doctors at the hospital will find out what’s wrong and they’ll fix her up. She’ll be right as rain.”
“No. She won’t be,” Ada cried. “She’s been poisoned just like my dad was, only this time whoever did it used cyanide or ricin, just like that guy in Russia did.”
Sheryl blinked, swallowed, and put her hand up to her throat. “What guy? What are you talking about?” she demanded.
Ada licked her lips and swallowed. “The guy in Russia, the one that was killed in the U.K.”
“That was a heavy metal,” Sheryl told her.
“And how do you know that, Ada?” Vicky demanded as she pulled up her bra strap and put it back where it belonged.
“Because Peggy has the same signs!” Ada yelled. Her face was getting red. “That’s how I know.” Then she wrung her hands and started to sob again, louder this time.
“Oh, please,” Ada’s stepsister, Erin, said. “Enough is enough. The stuff that killed the guy in Russia was radioactive. . . whatever. I forget the name.”
“Thallium,” Sheryl said. “It was thallium.”
Erin turned to Linda. “Don’t you have something you can give her? Honestly, I don’t think I can take much more. She just makes everything worse.”
“You can’t take much more!” Ada screamed at Erin, taking a step toward her while she threw her words back at her. “That’s funny coming from you.”
Erin took a step back. She held out her hands. “Hey, you have to calm down.”
Ada stopped and gestured to everyone in the room. “I know what you’re doing, don’t think I don’t.”
“And what would that be?” Ada’s mother asked, shaking her head in dismay.
It must be hard watching your daughter come unglued, Bernie thought. Then as she was trying to decide what, if anything, to say, Ada ran over to her and grabbed her hands.
“Promise me you won’t let them get me,” she cried.
“Get you?” Bernie asked, at a loss.
“Yes,” Ada said. “Don’t you see? They—”
“‘They’?” Libby said, interrupting.
“Yes, they,” Ada replied, not explaining
who “they” were, “killed Peggy and now they’re going to try to blame her murder on me. Promise,” she cried, her voice getting louder. “You have to promise.”
“Libby and I promise,” Bernie said to calm Ada down even though she didn’t know what it was that Ada wanted her to promise, at which point Ada turned and ran out of the living room.
“Wow,” Vicky said as Bernie and Libby watched her leave. “That was intense.”
“We should go after her,” Bernie said to her sister.
“Definitely,” Libby replied as Vicky reached into her shirt pocket, came out with a couple of pills, and handed them to her.
“Here,” Vicky said. “Give her these.”
“What are they?” Libby asked.
“Something to help calm her down,” Vicky told her.
“Like what?” Bernie demanded.
“Xanax,” Vicky told her. “I always carry a couple around. I mean you never know when you’re going to need them, right?”
“Right.” Libby put the pills in her pants pocket and hurried to catch up with Bernie, who was halfway out of the room already. Libby didn’t know if Ada needed those, but if Ada didn’t she did.
Bernie had just reached the living room entrance when she heard a scraping noise and felt a blast of cold air eddying around her feet.
“Did Ada just go out?” Libby asked. She’d heard the noise and felt the cold air as well.
Bernie nodded. The front door was wide open and snow was blowing into the hallway.
“Come on,” Bernie muttered as Linda cried, “Oh my God, I bet Ada’s taking my car.”
A moment later, Bernie and Libby heard a car starting. “Stop her!” Linda screamed.
But it was too late. By the time Libby and Bernie got outside, Ada had vanished into the night.
“I hope she doesn’t get into an accident,” Libby said to Bernie as she looked at the snow coming down in horizontal sheets.
Linda’s mother was waiting for them when they got back inside. “This is your fault!” she screamed at them. Just like her daughter, Bernie thought as she watched Linda shake with rage. Put the blame on someone else. “This is on your head,” Linda continued. “None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for you. You’re just like your mother—bad luck. I should never have let you in this house.”
“Funny,” Bernie said, “but my mother said the same thing about you and your family.”
Chapter 10
Bernie and Libby had gotten the phone call at three in the afternoon but had put off informing their dad about it till eight that night. They’d been too busy they’d told themselves. They’d been baking the apple pies for Mrs. Schneider to pick up, making five pans of lasagna, getting the dough made for tomorrow’s cinnamon rolls, dealing with a leak in one of the sinks, as well as waiting on customers. But now the shop was closed and they’d run out of things to do.
Of course, they didn’t have to tell their dad—by mutual consent none of the three had mentioned the Sinclairs since the New Year’s Eve debacle—but neither daughter liked lying, even if it was lying by omission. Plus, their dad would find out they’d been in contact with Ada eventually anyway and then he’d be even more pissed that they hadn’t told him. And hurt. Which was worse.
But now Bernie wondered if she and Libby should have kept their mouths shut as Sean raised an eyebrow and said, “You’re actually going to meet with Ada Sinclair?” in a tone of voice that said, “How stupid can you get? ”—the same tone of voice he’d used when Bernie was ten and she’d tried to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night for the second time in as many days.
“Yup,” Bernie said, trying for nonchalance. She knew her dad was going to be pissed, but what else could she do, especially with Linda Sinclair’s words echoing in her head. “Obviously, you think we shouldn’t.”
Sean gave her his patented incredulous look. “After everything that’s happened? Of course, I think you shouldn’t.”
It had been a week since Ada had driven off into the night and her call to Bernie was the first contact anyone had had with her. Bernie knew this for a fact because Ada’s mother was calling twice a day to ask if they’d heard from her. Bernie just couldn’t decide whether Linda was more concerned about her daughter or her car.
“Think of it this way,” Bernie said. “What else could go wrong?”
Sean shook his head. “Sometimes, your logic baffles me.” He turned to Libby. “And you’re going along with this? You think this is okay?”
Libby straightened her shoulders in the face of her dad’s obvious disapproval. “Yes, as a matter of fact I do.” Sometimes, you had to back up your sister, right or wrong.
Sean scowled at his eldest daughter’s reply. “And I always thought you were the more sensible one of my children.”
“I am,” Libby said, maintaining her air of certitude.
“Not in this case,” Sean said. “The fact that you’re meeting with a possible murderer doesn’t bother you?”
“It’s not as if we haven’t dealt with those before,” Bernie replied. Which was true. Her dad couldn’t argue about that.
“And you don’t know that about Ada for a fact,” Libby objected.
“I know the police think she’s a suspect. I know that’s why they want to talk to her,” Sean pointed out.
“They talk to everyone,” Bernie countered. “That’s what they do.”
“Except for Ada,” Sean replied. “And they couldn’t do that because she ran away. That’s not a big red flag to you?”
Bernie bit her lip. “Well, I agree it doesn’t make her look good.”
Sean snorted. “Now, there’s an understatement if I ever heard one,” he told her.
“Anyway,” Bernie continued, “even if she did do what the police want to question her about—and I’m not saying she did—it’s not like she’s going to kill us.” Bernie pointed to herself and her sister. “The motive for this was strictly personal.”
“Well, there’s something we can both agree on,” Sean told his youngest daughter. “Which is why, if you remember, I told you nothing good would come of getting tangled up with Ada and her family.”
Libby waved her hands in front of her face. “I know. I know. And you were right for the twenty-fifth time.”
“Yes, I was. I told you something bad was going to happen,” Sean couldn’t stop himself from saying even though he knew he should be quiet.
“Yes, you did,” Bernie allowed as she shifted her weight from her right to her left foot to work out a cramp in the arch of her left foot. She wondered if she should stop wearing four-inch heels for a little while and give her feet a rest.
Sean opened his eyes wide in feigned astonishment. “And yet, you want to continue your involvement after what happened on New Year’s Eve. I gotta say you two are gluttons for punishment,” he said, hammering his point home.
Bernie sighed as she thought about what had transpired that evening. It turned out that Ada had been right. Peggy had been poisoned. She’d died in the hospital two days after she’d arrived. Now the police wanted to question Ada about some of the statements she’d made on New Year’s Eve as well as the fact that not only had she given the Christmas popper to Peggy, but she’d had a fight with Peggy at work three weeks before the party. No one knew what it was about—or if they did they weren’t saying—but the two hadn’t been speaking to each other since then. Ada had won the trifecta.
“Okay,” Bernie argued. “It’s true Ada has motive, means, and opportunity, but we don’t know that that doesn’t apply to the other people there as well.”
“Maybe it does, but they didn’t run off,” Sean observed.
“A negative doesn’t prove a positive,” Bernie replied.
“It doesn’t disprove it, either,” Sean noted.
“Her mother wasn’t pleased,” Bernie reflected, thinking of what Linda had said to her and Libby. Even though Bernie knew it wasn’t true, a part of her couldn’t help thinking that Ada�
��s mother was correct, that what had happened was her and Libby’s fault.
“I wouldn’t be happy either, if you had stolen my car and taken off,” Sean observed. “Not that you would,” he added hastily.
“The reason she took off is because she thinks she’s being framed for Peggy’s murder,” Bernie told her dad.
“So you said,” Sean reminded her. “Do you think she really believes that?”
“Yes, I do,” Bernie replied. “Whether it’s true or not is an entirely different matter, but she seemed genuinely terrified, didn’t she, Libby?”
Libby considered her reply for a moment before she said, “I don’t know about terrified, but she was definitely hysterical.”
“Anyway,” Bernie continued, “I promised her . . .”
“. . . that you’d look into it,” Sean said, finishing Bernie’s sentence for her.
“Yes, I did,” Bernie answered.
“And a promise is a promise,” Sean continued, giving his sentence a sarcastic twist.
Bernie crossed her arms over her chest. “It is to me.”
“Me too,” Libby said, choosing to ignore her dad’s tone.
“That’s what you taught us,” Bernie reminded Sean. She couldn’t help herself.
He grimaced. “That’s a low blow throwing my words back at me.”
“But it’s true,” Bernie answered. “It’s what you’ve always said to us.”
“The folly of good intentions,” Sean murmured, shaking his head.
Bernie and Libby didn’t respond because there was nothing to say. Their dad was correct. What was the more popular phrase? Bernie thought for a moment. Ah, yes. Something along the lines of “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Their father continued. “You shouldn’t have promised Ada, Bernie,” he said, turning his gaze from the window. It was snowing again, he reflected gloomily. He felt as if he was living inside one of those paperweights, the kind that you shake and watch white flakes coming down. “I told you that family was nothing but trouble and, yes, I know I’m repeating myself ad nauseum,” he added. “But I don’t care.”
“And you were right,” Bernie said yet again.
A Catered New Year's Eve Page 7