Third Degree

by Maggie Barbieri

  “So you poisoned him.”

  “So I poisoned him! I didn’t mean to kill him,” he protested. “I just wanted to make him sick. To keep him away.”

  “If that’s the case, Greg, he’d be writing about how Beans, Beans made him sick. And you’d still be out of business.” I thought it necessary to point that out. That turned out to be a giant miscalculation on my part. Greg exploded.

  “Do you know how long it took me to save up enough money to open that place? It might seem like a shit hole to you, but to me, it’s everything! And because of that bastard, I’ve lost everything! I can’t pay my rent, I can’t pay my vendors …” He looked at me closely, his face grim. “And now, dude, I can’t serve you coffee.”

  Which, to me, was code for “And now, dude, I have to kill you,” because the look of sadness on Greg’s face just barely masked the rage beneath. He stepped all the way down the stairs and in one deft, strong motion pulled the life preserver over my head, tossing it to the other end of the boat.

  “It all makes sense now. The nasty blog posts, the comments from Coffee Lover … Greg, you need to turn yourself in.”

  He stopped walking toward me, a few feet separating us. “You know, I’d heard things about you. That you were nosy. Even a little crazy. Too smart for your own good. But I didn’t believe them because I’ve always liked you, Alison.” He frowned. “But now I’m not so sure. I’m disappointed, dude.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” I said. “I never pegged you for someone who could kill.”

  “I’m not,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, what about the poisoning?” I asked. I swatted at a mosquito who was dining on my cheek.

  “I already told you. I never meant to kill him.”

  I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. He certainly seemed sincere but Lord knows I’ve been wrong before, reading a situation completely incorrectly and finding myself in a heap of trouble. I had known Greg in a casual capacity for several years and had never gotten the vibe that he was anything but an aging hippie who made terrible coffee and who didn’t have great business sense, based on some of his promotional activities. The Prostate Awareness Month promotion had been a huge disaster, what with its promise of providing men over fifty free blood tests and a free cup of coffee to make sure their PSA levels weren’t too high. Overzealous phlebotomists had lined the streets trying to entice older gentlemen into the store. I hope he had learned, like I did, that men didn’t want to think about their prostates when a cup of coffee was all they desired.

  “How many ways can a man die?” I asked. I was thinking out loud. “Carter Wilmott had a lot of strikes against him and he was going to die one way or the other. He had a terminal illness—”

  “He did?”

  I nodded. “And then there was the car that was destined to blow up, coupled with the fight,” I said, making my way closer to Greg as I began to exit the vessel. “And finally, the poisoning.”

  Even in the faded light, I saw Greg’s face change and it was then that I knew what was going to happen next.

  Thirty-Two

  Dying turned out to be not quite as dramatic as I would have thought.

  Greg, a lumbering six foot five—and, if I had to guess, a good two hundred and eighty pounds—would have been the perfect person to save me if my house was on fire. He threw me over his shoulder, obviously accustomed to executing this move in far more dangerous and desperate situations, situations that required immediate and courageous action. But in this case, his intent was not quite so courageous, and as he attempted to hoist me over the side of the boat, me screaming bloody murder the entire time, he was muttering what sounded like some kind of prayer of contrition. In Hebrew, no less. Either that, or he was counting the Hebrew alphabet until he could throw me overboard. I kicked him and clawed at his face, not really making any headway in harming him before he tossed me overboard. He finally released me and I only had about three seconds to hold my breath before I realized that this was the end and that I was powerless to stop it.

  I entered the water and now knew what it meant to hit something like “a ton of bricks.” My descent wasn’t pretty or especially graceful. I didn’t know what hurt worse: the feeling in my chest from doing a complete belly flop or the icy sting on my skin from water that should have been a lot warmer considering it was the end of the summer. Either way, it was damn uncomfortable, so uncomfortable, in fact, that I didn’t even register that I was drowning.

  I sank deep beneath the surface of the water, watching the twinkling lights of the village and the dock become less defined and take on a golden glow the lower I went in the brown water. As I sank, I became aware that we weren’t as far from shore as I would have thought and, for some reason, this gave me comfort. Would my lifeless body be found sooner as a result? The water was deeper than I had imagined it would be and I sank like a stone, trying not to flail too much and exert too much energy. My dress pants, which had felt like the appropriate weight for wear on a summer day, were now heavy and weighing me down, along with the light linen shirt that I had donned that morning. My shoes, lovely black pumps, were gone, having fallen off somewhere between being flung into the river and my rapid descent. They were lost to the watery depths of the Hudson, never to be seen again.

  The pictures of Ginny Miller and Carter Wilmott, in flagrante delicto, floated out from my waistband and away from me, lost forever to the dark depths of the Hudson River. In all probability, George Miller would never learn of Ginny’s infidelity. Too bad Ginny and I both had to die in order to protect her secret.

  As I continued to sink, I observed Greg’s blurry face looking down at me from above, obviously not concerned at all that I was going to drown. After a few seconds, he turned and walked away, and it was then that I began to panic. The flailing began as I tried to hold my breath, even as I knew my lungs were close to bursting.

  I thought about my mother, and if I hadn’t already been completely soaked, I would have begun to cry. A deep sadness welled up in me as I thought about how I had been manipulated by Ginny into helping her, not really knowing if she had attended to my mother during her illness or not. Maybe she had. Or maybe she had just used that information, easy enough to find out if one had access to hospital records and online obituaries, to make me feel sympathetic toward her. I had gone along with the whole thing, using my heart instead of my head, a sure recipe for disaster, particularly in this instance. My mother’s beautiful face appeared in front of me, the picture of health. I relaxed, filled with a kind of peace that I had never experienced in my life. The flailing stopped and I allowed myself to drift along in the dark waters of the river, not feeling the cold, not feeling the pain. I continued my slow descent to the bottom of the river.

  My happiest memories of my mother flooded my mind—the summers we spent in Baie Ste. Paul together visiting family; the day she let me drive the car by myself the first time; the time she brought home my puppy, Coco, and presented her to me on my birthday. How she used to say “je t’aime … je t’aime … je t’aime …” exactly three times as she kissed my forehead every night before I went to sleep. And how, at the end, she was more concerned about me than she was about herself. I wondered if this was how she felt when her time was short, wrapped in the warm embrace of a death that came too soon and not soon enough.

  She offered me her hand.

  “Just relax and stay still. I’ll help you,” I heard just before blacking out.

  Thirty-Three

  Throwing up river water is so incredibly vile that words cannot describe it.

  I awoke to find Queen practically kneeling on my chest, her hands crossed one over the other, pumping strenuously. I struggled to get up but only succeeded in retching all over the dock and myself.

  “Stay down,” she said, taking her hands off my chest and moving them to my shoulders.

  I did what she said and hoped that by remaining prone on the dock, I wouldn’t have to throw up any more water. In the distance, I heard sir
ens.

  “Where’s Greg?” I asked.

  Queen smiled and hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “He’s on the boat,” she said. She wiped a clump of hair away from my forehead. “Don’t worry about him.”

  In the distance, I could hear a low growl followed by a few short angry barks. I stayed flat on my back for a few minutes and listened to what was taking place around me. I closed my eyes and drifted off.

  When I came to again, I was in a darkened hospital room. The décor of the rooms hadn’t changed that much since my mother had taken her last breaths here. At the end of the bed, I could see Crawford’s lanky frame, outlined in the glow from the fluorescent night-light that was lit beneath the shelf that housed the television. I let out a little croak and got his attention.

  I grabbed my throat. “My throat hurts.”

  He came over and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over to kiss my head. “When were you going to tell me that you can’t swim?”

  “Never, if I could help it,” I said. I coughed, clearing whatever it was that was preventing me from speaking clearly.

  He gave me his patented “sad face,” the one that’s reserved for next of kin. “We’re going to have to fix that.”

  “Let me guess,” I said, my voice getting stronger. “You swam for your high school team in addition to being the star center of the basketball team.”

  “Not quite,” he said. “But I do know how to swim.”

  “Good for you.” I sat up a little straighter in the bed. “I can’t ice-skate, either.”

  “Me, neither.”

  “Good. Finally, something we have in common,” I said. I leaned forward to pick up a cup of ice water on the tray next to the bed and took a long sip. “What happened?”

  “Your friend Greg poisoned Carter Wilmott,” Crawford said. Alerted by Queen, the other members of the village boating association, or whatever they called themselves, had detained Greg until the police had arrived. He was already in custody, and judging from the information Crawford had, spilling his guts.

  “I got that impression when he confessed and subsequently threw me overboard.”

  “He was putting arsenic in his coffee, slowly poisoning him over time. Not sure how long this had been going on, but long enough to kill the poor bastard.” He rubbed his hands over his eyes.

  “So he didn’t want to blow him up?” I wondered aloud if the explosive device was an insurance policy that Greg had also masterminded to make sure the job was done thoroughly.

  He shook his head. “Nope. And he didn’t want to poison him to death, either. According to what I heard, he only wanted to make Carter sick, not kill him. Apparently he went a little overboard on the arsenic, which slowly built up in Carter’s system. I didn’t get much information from Detective Madden other than what I just told you.” He smiled. “I don’t know why but that lady just doesn’t like me.”

  “How did I get out of the water?”

  He let out a belly laugh. “You’re never going to believe this part.”

  “Try me.”

  “Queen.”

  “My Queen? Hooters waitress cum private investigator? My roommate, Queen?”

  Crawford explained that Queen had followed me while I was following Greg. Ostensibly, she had been walking Trixie. But she had been around me long enough and had gotten enough information about me from Kevin to know that I’m a giant nosey parker and that when I didn’t want to come home, something was up. Being a good private investigator, she wanted in on the action. She went home and got Trixie, then stayed just far enough behind me so that I didn’t know she was following me but close enough to know that I was in trouble when I hit the water.

  In addition to being a great waitress and a very astute sleuth, Queen Martinez had been captain of her swim team at Our Lady of Lourdes High School and had supplemented her high school income by working as a lifeguard at a tony hotel in New York City during her summers off. Queen Martinez, it would seem, had lousy taste in men but a varied and interesting résumé that was going to serve her well, I imagined, as her life progressed. One thing was for sure: she would always be able to support herself with that kind of skill set.

  She had commandeered a boat at the dock from a young guy who was cleaning the decks. They had followed us out, and when it appeared that my life was in danger and that I obviously couldn’t swim, she jumped in and saved me. I thought about the voice that I had heard right before I passed out and wondered whose it had been: my mother’s or Queen’s?

  “I don’t have to give her free room and board for the rest of her life because she saved mine, do I?” I asked.

  Crawford took my face in his hands and smiled. “I don’t think so.” He planted a kiss on my lips. “Yum. River water.”

  I took a deep breath and felt the pain of a classic belly flop. “Is my not being able to swim a deal breaker?” I finished the water in my cup and handed it back to him.

  “A deal breaker?”

  “Yeah. Are we still ‘on’?” I asked.

  “Yeah. We’re still on,” he said. “Is that a yes?”

  I smiled and closed my eyes, exhausted. “It’s a yes.”

  “Is that what you want?” he asked, just to be sure.

  I smiled and nodded. Yes, that’s what I wanted. I drifted off to sleep thinking that everything I’ve ever wanted, I already had.

  Thirty-Four

  Queen moved out of my house and into the guesthouse on the Wilmott property on the Saturday before the Labor Day weekend. Kevin moved in with his brother Jack, he of the spectacular teeth and most excellent kisses (not that I remembered). I still didn’t know what was going on with Kevin, specifically, and he wasn’t offering up any new information. So I just let it be. When the time was right, he would let me in on the big secret. Until then, we had an unspoken agreement that we would still be friends, but that I wouldn’t ask any questions.

  I was returning to school full-time on the Tuesday after the holiday weekend and was relieved to have my house back to myself, just me and Trixie and Crawford, when we could get him. People were getting murdered left and right in his precinct, and he was busy.

  Since my unfortunate dip in the Hudson, I had learned a few things. Greg was standing by his original assertion that he only wanted to make Carter sick, not kill him. But kill him he did. Carter, despite his rantings about Greg and Beans, Beans on his blog, was a regular at the coffee shop, ballsy bastard that he was, so it seemed that he was getting a steady diet of French roast with a healthy serving of arsenic every time he frequented the shop. Mac the Knife was sticking to his cause of death as poisoning, and Greg was going away for a long time. Mac had also called me to find out if Crawford and I could come over for dinner after the semester started. Reezie was making beef Stroganoff.

  There was a troubling aspect to the whole story, however, and that was that nobody really knew whether or not Greg was poisoning Carter’s coffee specifically or just poisoning the whole entire lot of us. I thought back to how sick I had felt and how my health had improved once I stopped frequenting Greg’s. Several other patrons reported feeling sick as well, but the district attorney couldn’t decide if it was a case of mass hysteria or the truth. Enough time had passed that there was no way to know from any blood tests or such whether or not we had started on a dark journey just by drinking Greg’s crappy, and poisonous, brew. I had watched Greg clean out the coffee urn the night that I had followed him to the river and he was pretty thorough so it was unlikely that we’d ever find out what the true story was.

  All I knew was that I was grinding my own beans from now on.

  As to who had wanted to blow Carter to smithereens, no one knew. I thought back to Tony and his Korean War exploits but decided that I would keep them to myself. The list of potential suspects was so extensive that I expected that Detective Madden would be busy for a long, long time.

  Kathy and Jane popped in on Saturday to check on me and to say good-bye to Kevin and Queen, who interestingly, and not
surprisingly, had become more a part of the neighborhood in the several days they had lived with me than I had in the many years I had resided there. They were disappointed to find out that both were gone, but they were glad they would see Queen in town, given the proximity of her new dwelling to our neighborhood.

  I was out back, playing tug-of-war with Trixie, when they came up the driveway. They wrapped their arms around me at the same time and Trixie joined in, the warmest group hug that I had ever experienced. When we separated, Jane held me at arm’s length.

  “You don’t look any worse for wear,” she said. “And listen, we’re going to teach you to swim.”

  Kathy did a dry-land American crawl. “Really. How do you get this far in life and not know how to swim?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t know. But I can fence. And I can make a wicked scrapbook.”

  Kathy snorted. “And that’s going to help you a lot. Seriously, sister, we’ve got to get you into the pool.”

  “Deal,” I said, starting for the house. “And I’ll teach you how to order off a French menu without sounding like a foreigner. That’ll come in handy if the two of you ever get to Paris.”

  “You’re on. Paris has always been a dream of mine,” Kathy said.

  We took seats around my patio table, Trixie resting at my feet, thankful that it was just the two of us again. Although she got walked more than she ever had while we had Queen and Kevin around, when it came down to it, she wanted to be with me and me alone. She wasn’t all that enthusiastic about house guests, with the exception of Crawford. And that’s only because he fed her steak when he thought I wasn’t looking. I knew what went on; I just pretended not to notice.