Arsenic and Old Cake

by Jacklyn Brady

  According to Pastor Rod, nobody had doubted Willie’s guilt until Monroe came back to town. That fact brought me back to Hyacinth over and over again. Her husband had gone to prison and died there for a crime he might not have committed. How had she reacted to that news forty years after the fact? Had she found out that Dontae let Willie take the fall for something he had done? Had that pushed her so far over the edge she’d laced Dontae’s pudding with poison to retaliate?

  I puttered around the house for a while and then called Sullivan’s cell phone again, still hoping to run my ideas past him. Once again my call went straight to voice mail so I left another message asking him to call and disconnected before I remembered our conversation the day before when he’d mentioned going back to the Love Nest this afternoon. Determined to help the police unmask the killer before he—or she—could find Monroe at Pastor Rod’s church, I left the house and drove to the Love Nest.

  Hyacinth was dusting in the parlor when I walked in the front door.

  She looked up with what for her passed as a smile, but it faded as soon as she saw me. “You’re back.”

  I glanced into the other rooms I could see from where I stood, hoping to see Sullivan interrogating one of the residents, but I couldn’t see anyone at all. Now that I was face-to-face with Hyacinth, I was a little nervous about admitting I was there to tell the police I thought she was a cold-blooded killer, so I decided to wing it and hope Sullivan would show up soon. “I think I left a ring in our suite,” I said. “Would you mind if I took a look?”

  “Tamarra and I cleaned that room yesterday. There wasn’t a ring.”

  “Could I look anyway? I know right where I left it.”

  Hyacinth glared at me. “There was no ring. What do you really want?”

  Clearly subterfuge wasn’t working, so I tried a little honesty. “To ask a couple of questions. Do you have a minute?”

  “You got a badge? Because if you don’t, I’m through talking to you.”

  Despite her fierce demeanor, I didn’t back down. “Who made the pudding Dontae ate the night he died?”

  Her eyes flashed to my face, and her expression turned to stone. “What on earth are you talking about? What pudding?”

  “Rice pudding. Did you make it?”

  Hyacinth looked at me as if I’d sprouted a second head. “I may have. What about it? Don’t tell me it’s a crime to serve dessert to my guests.”

  “It is if the dessert contained poison.”

  Her eyes narrowed a little further. “I didn’t poison nobody’s food.”

  “Well, somebody did.”

  She put down her dust rag and turned toward me slowly. “Are you crazy, girl? What you doin’, accusin’ me of murder?”

  This was not exactly the way I’d planned on our conversation going, but I knew it would be a big mistake to show fear now. “Should I be?”

  “Hell no! I didn’t do anything wrong. You have a lot of nerve poking your nose into things that aren’t any of your concern.”

  “But it is my concern,” I argued. “Dontae was killed while I was sleeping right upstairs. I could have eaten that pudding myself.”

  “I doubt that. It was only for the folks in the annex.”

  “For everyone, or just for Dontae?”

  Hyacinth just stared at me, so I tried a different tack. “It must have been quite a shock to find out that Willie may not have been the one who pulled the trigger that night at the warehouse. How angry were you when you realized that they’d let Willie take the fall for something he didn’t do?”

  Hyacinth moved to the table, sprayed and dusted with deliberation. Maybe she thought I’d grow tired of waiting for her to answer me. She was wrong.

  “I know Monroe was there,” I said. “I know that Pastor Rod was waiting outside in the car. That leaves Dontae, Grey, Cleveland, and your husband Willie inside, and all four of them were armed, isn’t that right?”

  She still didn’t answer.

  “Did someone other than Willie fire the shot that killed Tyrone? Which one let Willie die in prison?”

  Hyacinth sprayed a chair and dusted it.

  Okay, so she was more patient than I am. Point made. “Look, Hyacinth, it doesn’t matter whether you talk to me or not, I’m still going to tell the police what I’ve learned. In fact, I’ve already left messages about it, and I’m meeting the detective on the case here. The story is going to come out. You can’t stop it.”

  Hyacinth swore under her breath and tossed her dust rag onto the table. “Why are you doing this? What does any of this matter to you?”

  “I’m a friend of Monroe’s brother, and I’m not going to let him take the fall for something one of you did. If you didn’t kill Dontae, why are you trying to protect a killer?”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “You don’t understand anything.”

  “I understand that you’re all afraid that Cleveland, Grey, and Pastor Rod are too old to go to jail for something they did a lifetime ago.”

  She sighed and sank onto one of the chairs. “Okay. Fine. You’re right. Grey and Cleveland were in the warehouse with Dontae and Willie. That idiot Monroe set off an alarm, and Tyrone came to see what was going on.”

  “And Monroe called Willie by name.”

  She nodded. “Everything would have been fine if he hadn’t done that. Willie and the others would have gotten away. But Tyrone was a friend. He knew them, and when Monroe used Willie’s name, they knew it was all over.”

  “Willie must have believed that Tyrone would shoot him.”

  “Willie knew that Tyrone would turn them all in, but he couldn’t have that.”

  That was the part I still didn’t understand. “But why? I mean, the two of you were married and had a family. How could he just throw himself under the bus and spend the rest of his life in prison?”

  “Wasn’t like he had a choice about that, now was it? He was going to prison no matter what. But Dontae didn’t have to go. He was married, too, and they had a brand-new baby. She left him shortly after the robbery, but by that time it was all decided. Cleveland’s mother needed him. We didn’t know what it was called back then, but we found out later she had Alzheimer’s. She couldn’t be left alone. And Grey? He’s . . . fragile, in a way that I can’t explain. You see how he is. Dressing up like a damn fool so he can teach those kids nobody else cares about. You can’t put a man like that in a cell with some thug. Prison would have killed him. And besides, Willie felt responsible. The whole plan had been his idea in the first place, and he’s the one who’d convinced the others to bring Monroe into it. And he thought he’d killed Tyrone.”

  “So he sacrificed himself?”

  “They had him for the robbery. They could prove he was there. Had his gun, dropped in the confusion after the shooting. The bullets matched the one they found in Tyrone. Ratting out the others wouldn’t have made any difference, I guess.

  “By the time the police found Tyrone’s body at the warehouse, Monroe had already disappeared. For a while we thought he might resurface, but we worried about what he’d tell the police if he did. In the end, him disappearing that way was the best thing for everybody.”

  “Didn’t you feel betrayed and angry with Willie?”

  Hyacinth snorted a soft laugh. “Oh, baby, you don’t know the half of it. I didn’t even speak to the man for nearly ten years. I wouldn’t go see him in prison. Wouldn’t let Pearl see him. Wouldn’t have a damned thing to do with him. I thought that if he could just turn his back on me that way, I’d turn my back on him, too. Seemed fair.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. “What about Lula Belle? How did she feel?”

  Hyacinth actually laughed. “She was mad at everybody for a while, but she found herself a sugar daddy and moved on.”

  “She wasn’t angry about what happened to her brother?”

  “Have you met the woman, baby? Oh, sure, she was angry for a time, but it’s been forty years. Besides, Lula Belle’s only concerned about Lula
Belle. As long as somebody is taking care of her, she’s fine.”

  “So eventually you forgave Willie?”

  “Pastor Rod helped me to understand. He said it was for me, not for him. All that anger . . . it wasn’t doing me any good. I guess he was right. I did feel some better once I let it go.”

  I was really trying to believe her. Or maybe I was trying not to. Because if Hyacinth wasn’t angry with Dontae, my whole theory fell apart. And that meant that I’d been focused on the wrong person. Hyacinth put both hands on her ample hips and glared at me. “Now I got a question for you. Do you feel better now that you’ve stirred up all this trouble and made us think about things we’d buried in the past?”

  “You can’t blame me for that. I’m not the one who stirred things up.”

  “No? Well, have it your way. But I think you’ve done enough. You’re no longer welcome here, Mrs. Broussard. It’s time for you to make yourself scarce.”

  I wanted to hang around and wait for Sullivan, but maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after all. Hyacinth might not be a murderer, but she was still a force to be reckoned with. I decided to be smart and take her advice.

  Thirty-three

  I left Hyacinth glowering after me and hurried back to the Mercedes I’d recklessly left parked on the street. I sat there for a few minutes, trying to make myself inconspicuous—as inconspicuous as a woman in a Mercedes could be in that neighborhood—and thinking about what Hyacinth had just told me, reconciling it with what I already knew. And I came to the obvious conclusion: if Hyacinth hadn’t put the poison in Dontae’s pudding, maybe Primrose had. Or Lula Belle.

  They both had the means and the opportunity. And Pastor Rod had told me that Primrose was intensely protective of the people she loved. How far would she go to protect them? Hyacinth was fierce but Primrose was unsettled, and I found that far more frightening.

  I thought about calling Gabriel to bring him up to speed, but there was still the awkwardness of our last morning here at the Love Nest between us, and I wasn’t sure how to get past it. Deciding that avoidance was the most sensible course of action—at least for today—I looked around for a police presence, hoping to spot Sullivan somewhere.

  No such luck.

  I really had stirred the pot this time. If Hyacinth told the others about our conversation, the killer would probably get nervous. I wasn’t brave enough or foolish enough to walk back inside and incur her wrath. Nor did I want to confront any of the others alone. Right now, I had a whole lot of nothing. Even if I was right, Sullivan couldn’t do anything based on what I merely thought might have happened. I needed to find physical evidence that would actually help him make a case. Like maybe an empty bottle of poison with Primrose’s fingerprints on it.

  While I tried to figure out what to do, Primrose herself rounded the back of the inn and onto the driveway, carrying a bulging white trash bag. Immediately, I sank down in my seat and hoped she wouldn’t spot me. Primrose walked slowly, hauling the garbage toward a hulking metal Dumpster a little way beyond the garage. It seemed to take her forever, but she finally got there. She put the trash bag down and paused for a moment to catch her breath. Then, with a guilty glance around, she lifted the lid a few inches with one hand and pushed the bag inside with the other.

  I didn’t know what was in that bag, but the furtive way she’d acted convinced me it contained something important. I stayed where I was until she went back inside the inn, then I got out of the car and moved stealthily up the driveway. My heart was pounding, and my senses were ultra-alert. Every sound felt ominous, every shadow threatening.

  Was garbage considered private property? Or did it become public property once it was thrown into the trash receptacle? I was pretty sure it was safe for me to check, but could I base such an important decision on reruns of Monk? It was a risk, but I didn’t have time to do the research.

  My own breath sounded like thunder in my ears. I skirted along the fence, past the locked gate to the garden, and finally reached the Dumpster. Working as quietly as possible, I lifted its giant metal lid. The hinges groaned and squealed, and my heart worked like a jackhammer inside my chest.

  Once I had the lid open, I stood on tiptoe to look inside. The bag Primrose had just tossed lay among at least ten other identical bags, several of which had split open. Wet garbage, coffee grounds, fruit peelings, and eggshells covered almost everything in sight, making it impossible to tell which bag had been added most recently.

  I frowned at the mess in front of me for way too long. I was out in the open, exposed to anyone who might glance out one of the inn’s windows. Like, oh say, the killer. Watching me look for evidence.

  I needed to do something. Fast!

  Holding my breath, I stepped up onto a piece of metal and leaned into the container, snatching the first bag my hand brushed against. I clutched it as if it contained the Hope Diamond, and scurried from the Dumpster, heading for the garage several feet away.

  The bag chunked against my leg as I walked, and the sound of tin cans and glass banging together sounded so loud to me I was sure someone would come to see what all the noise was. Finally, as I leaned against the garage’s rear exterior wall, out of the inn’s line of vision, I put the bag on the ground.

  And stared at it.

  Now what?

  Wet coffee grounds dripped from the side of the bag like grains of damp sand. As a particularly large blob plopped onto the ground, I realized that maybe I hadn’t thoroughly thought through this move. I couldn’t hide out in the garden and paw through the rubbish without being caught. I couldn’t very well haul the trash bag all the way back to my car. And what if this wasn’t even the right bag? Running back and forth between the Dumpster and the garage half a dozen times hauling trash to and fro just wasn’t going to work.

  I was standing there chewing a thumbnail and considering my options when I heard the scuff of shoe leather on pavement and my heart stopped beating completely. An instant later, my pulse exploded, making the previous jackhammer rhythm seem cool, calm, and collected in comparison.

  A shadow fell across my hiding place. Frantic, I looked around for someplace to hide, but there was literally nowhere for me to go. A crumbling fence enclosed two sides of the area where I now cowered behind the garage, and the garage itself backed onto the third. That left only the direction the noise was coming from.

  The shadow grew longer, and then I found myself looking up at a doughboy from World War I, his wool service coat buttoned up to the neck, his riding-style breeches bloused at the hip and laced below the knee. He wore a wool cap and leather boots—and he seemed almost surprised to see me crouching there with my back against the garage.

  “Mrs. Broussard? What are you doing? I thought you and your husband had checked out of the Love Nest.”

  I laughed, embarrassed by my reaction, and stood slowly. I brushed dirt and coffee grounds from my hands onto the seat of my jeans. “We did. I . . . uh . . . left something in our room.”

  Grey Washington—or whoever he was this afternoon—ran a look over me and then moved on down to the trash bag. “And you think you’ll find it in there?”

  Another nervous laugh bubbled up to my lips. “Funny story—” I moved away from the trash bag as if distance might keep me safe. “Primrose thought it was garbage, but it was actually some important work papers.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask her for it?”

  That was a good question. “I got here too late,” I improvised. “She’d already thrown it out.”

  I don’t think Grey believed me. Imagine. It was such a great story. “Did you find . . . whatever it was?”

  I glanced down at my empty hands and shook my head. “Not yet. But I haven’t had a chance to look in the bag yet.” Maybe I’d get lucky and find some generic documents I could claim as my own.

  Grey tilted his head and looked again at the trash bag. “Do you need some help?”

  “No. Thanks. You’re all dressed up. I wouldn’t want you to
ruin your uniform.” I kept my tone chatty and friendly as I bent over the bag. The smell of something rotten wafted up to greet me, and I barely contained my gag reflex. “Are you on your way to the library?”

  Grey glanced down at his uniform as if he’d forgotten he was wearing it. “Yes. At least I was.”

  “Well, then, don’t let me keep you.”

  “Mrs. Broussard—” His voice sounded strange, and a look of regret tugged at his face. “I really wish you hadn’t come back.”

  And for the first time I started getting a bad feeling about being out there alone with him.

  “Oh?” I chirped. “Why?” I was still trying for friendly and chatty, but I’m pretty sure I sounded like a wind-up toy. If ever there was an inappropriate moment for my cell phone to ring, this was it. So, naturally, that’s exactly what it did.

  Grey’s eyes narrowed, his hand moved, and before I could blink I was looking down the barrel of a handgun. It was the only thing about him that wasn’t in costume, though I’m pretty sure it was vintage. I guessed it to have been a popular model of handgun back in the seventies. The kind of gun someone might use if he wanted to steal a hot load of eight-track players.

  Sweat rolled down my spine. “Grey?”

  “Take out your phone,” he ordered.

  I did what he said, keeping one hand in the air and using two fingers to pull the phone from my pocket. I tried to glance at the screen, but Grey yanked the phone from my hand and smashed it beneath his boot before I could see who was calling.

  My spirits sank.

  “What are you really doing here, Mrs. Broussard?”