by A W Hartoin
“Then say what isn’t for sure.”
“This hit them hard and fast. That combined with the lack of other cases in the kid’s vicinity…”
“You think they were infected on purpose,” I said.
Ameche put his face in his hands
“It’s just a feeling,” she said.
“I have a deep respect for feelings, so let’s go with it,” I said. “If you were going to infect someone with meningitis, how would you do it?”
“Well, I’d have to have access to the bacteria first of all.”
“Let’s say you do.”
“I’d inject it. That’d give me a fast infection.”
“Did you find any suspicious injection sites?”
Dr. Lydia shook her head. “By the time we started questioning where they got it, the injection site could’ve healed enough so as not to be detectable.”
“But you found nothing on either child? No bruising?”
“No. Both children were in excellent health at the time they got sick. Colton had bruising consistent with playing soccer, mainly on his legs. Abrielle had no bruising whatsoever.”
“What’s your second choice?”
“I’d have to get bacteria on their mucus membranes, nose or mouth.”
“So, like using a sick person’s fork.”
“Except there are no other sick people.”
“So it’s food.”
“Donatella didn’t get it at home. And like I said, there were no other cases at their school or the airport.”
“If their lunches were the only ones contaminated, Abrielle and Colton were specific targets,” I said.
“I remember lunch lines at school. It would be pretty hard to make sure Abrielle and Colton got the contaminated trays. You never know where a kid is going to be in a line. It’d have to be lunch personnel and they’d have to do it right in front of the kids and the other adults.”
“That’s true, but they got it somehow. Maybe it wasn’t the food. Maybe it was the forks. It’d be easy to pull a fork out of a pocket and put it on a specific tray,” I said.
“It could be done but keeping the bacteria live on a dry surface isn’t easy. I think it would have to be a good-sized amount, too. We’ll know more when we know the strain.”
“When will that be?”
“Four or five more days.”
“I take it you haven’t told Donatella you think someone did this on purpose,” I said.
Ameche’s head popped up. “No way. She couldn’t deal with it. She’s already lost Rob and rest of his family.”
“We’re not sure,” said Dr. Lydia. “There’s no reason she has to know.”
“I agree, so I think I’ll start at the other end.”
“What does that mean?” asked Ameche.
“Instead of worrying about how, I’m going to figure out who. If this wasn’t an accident, someone hates that family enough to kill the children. I just have to find out who.”
“I’d begin with the family that’s suing Donatella days after her husband was murdered,” said Dr. Lydia.
I rolled out of my comfy beanbag. “My thoughts exactly.”
Chapter Nine
THE SECURITY GUARD acted like I was a loon for wanting an escort out to my truck mid-morning. I didn’t care what Julio thought. Parking garages were gloomy at the best of times with plenty of places to hide. Plus, Dad and Chuck would ask if I got someone to walk me out and neither of them were above calling security to confirm my story.
Julio put me in my truck and I locked the door immediately. I saw him roll his eyes and mutter something as he walked away. Probably how I was a lunatic. Maybe so, but I wasn’t a kidnapped lunatic and that was all that mattered.
I pulled out of the garage, looking for the guy in the hoodie and dialing Uncle Morty.
“Shit! It’s you,” he snarled into the phone.
“I love you, too,” I said.
“Yeah. Yeah. What do you want?”
“It’s the Ameche case.”
“What of it?”
“I need the address of the Berrys that are suing Donatella,” I said.
“You’re gonna pay them a visit?” He chuckled like I was some kind of candy ass girl. I’d done stuff, survived stuff.
“Yes. Why is that funny?”
“‘Cause the last time you interviewed a family of suspects you missed the murderer.”
It was true, but how was I supposed to know. It was my first murder investigation, which also happened to be Dixie’s husband’s murder. I was upset. It was personal. The interview was short and it’s not like they were wearing ‘I ♡ murder’ hats.
“Can’t we forget about that?”
“Loser.”
“Are you going to tell me where they are or what?” I asked.
“You paying?” he asked, suddenly all business.
“The client will be paying.”
“Holy shit. You got a paying client. Tommy’ll throw a parade.”
I pulled onto the highway and longed to throw my Bluetooth out the window. “Whatever. How long will this take?”
“Got it now. Well, well, well. Somebody thinks they done hit the lottery,” he said.
“Why?”
“They’re staying at the downtown Westin at 350 a night. Two rooms.”
“So? Donatella didn’t blink at Dad’s rates. The Berrys must have money,” I said.
“Some Berrys have money. The ones that are dead.”
I yawned and asked, “How much money are we talking about?”
“It’s not Bled money, but they were comfortable.” Uncle Morty explained to me that there were two lines of Berrys. One brother, Rob Berry’s grandfather, invested in McDonalds in the mid-sixties. The other brother, grandfather of the surviving Berrys, headed a pyramid scheme that landed him in prison in 1972. That line never recovered and, for some reason, blamed the other side for their problems. Rob Berry, Donatella’s late husband, was a partner in a high-class real estate firm in New Orleans and she was a school administrator. Their children, Abrielle and Colton, would inherit several million dollars, since they were the surviving heirs to the successful Berrys. The other side would get nothing.
“Unless Donatella were sent to prison and they got custody of the kids and control,” I said.
“Yep,” said Uncle Morty.
“I don’t suppose—”
“Already checked. The other Berrys have never been to New Orleans and have had no contact with anyone in the city.”
“They still could’ve had the kids poisoned but if the whole family was supposed to be dead anyway, why bother?”
“Good question.” Uncle Morty hawked up a phlegm wad and made me involuntarily hork.
“Don’t do that. It’s too disgusting.” I shuddered. “Any connection between Blankenship and the other Berrys?”
“Not yet, but they all live out in Belleville. It could’ve been arranged face to face. You think Blankenship had someone in the mix, right?”
I pulled onto my street and got lucky with a space in front of my building. “I got that feeling. So the other Berrys aren’t connected, are they?”
Uncle Morty snorted. “They wish. The mafia wouldn’t have any use for them.” He gave rundown of their jobs, arrests, etc. They had some drug dealer connections, so we couldn’t cross them off. In the world of the internet, poison could be a website away. But did they have the brains for it?
I wasn’t hearing a lot of evidence of planning ability and poisoning the kids was a strategic plan to kill them in flight. I still had to interview the other Berrys. People can be a lot different on paper than in person. Google me and you’d see that I’m everything from a nurse to a drug-addled moron slut. Face to face is the only way to go when it comes to capabilities. Hopefully, when I talked to them, I’d be able to tell if they had two brain cells to rub together.
“I guess I’ll be paying a visit to the other Berrys.”
“Damn straight. The lazy bastards jus
t got up, so you can catch them,” said Uncle Morty.
I scanned the sidewalk and my building’s entrance. No lurking men in hoodies. Good. I got out and dashed through the icy air to unlock the door and slip inside.
“Hello?” bellowed Uncle Morty.
“I’m afraid to ask, but how do you know they just got up?” I asked.
“Ordered room service. You wanna know how the bastards like their eggs?”
“How do you—never mind. I’ll shower and get over there. Call my dad, will you?”
“Already texted him. He knows about the guy in the hospital garage, too.”
“Great.” I did an internal groan. “I’ve got to go.”
“Mercy, you gotta be careful with this crew. They’re trash, but they’re not stupid. Hit ‘em with what you got.”
“What do you suggest?” I asked.
“Full Marilyn.”
I sighed and hung up. It’d been a long night and an even longer morning. I wasn’t sure if I had a full Marilyn in me. I clomped up the stairs, went into my apartment, and my morning got longer.
“Skanky!”
My cat, Skanky, named as such because he was Skanky and never more so than that morning. He lay twisted up on my sofa, covered in vomit and surrounded by shredded paper.
“Yow.”
“What the hell did you do?” I needn’t have asked. It was obvious. Pete had been foiled again. My boyfriend, Pete, had taken to leaving me little gifts of chocolate when he stayed in my apartment. He was a surgical resident and I hardly ever saw him. He slept at my place sometimes because it was so close to the hospital, and I’ve been known to have food. I appreciated the specialty chocolates from around the world, but Skanky usually found them before I did with gross consequences. This time he must’ve tried my Tigger cookie jar, because it was lying smashed into a million bits next to my breakfast bar.
Skanky gave out a pathetic yow and attempted to clean. He failed miserably. Tongue didn’t even make it to fur.
“Don’t give me that,” I said. “Nana gave me that jar. It was a collectable.” I didn’t really care that it was a collectable as much as I cared that my grandmother had given it to me, and I had to clean up the mess.
“Yow.”
I snapped on a pair of examination gloves and carried the limp yowing Skanky into the bathroom and washed him in the sink. He hated it and there was a certain satisfaction in that.
“It’s your own fault,” I said.
“Yow.”
“I’m not even calling the vet this time.”
“Yow. Yow.”
“I should. Maybe there’s a shot she can give you.”
Hiss.
“Yeah, whatever. I’m so scared of the terribly sick four-pound cat.” I toweled Skanky off and put him on my bed. He tried to clean again, but fell over in a little fuzzy heap. “Yow.”
I rolled my eyes and got into the shower. Idiot cat. There was a tiny bit of guilt for not calling the vet, but, honestly, she didn’t want to hear from me anymore. After Skanky ate an entire pound of Belgian dark chocolate and survived, she declared him indestructible and quite possibly the stupidest cat she’d ever worked on. The vet claimed that cats learned what not to eat, but not my Skanky. Oh, no. He never learned anything. I was lucky he used the cat pan.
After my shower, I felt mostly human and rifled through my closet to find my best Bled funeral suit. It was a Valentino, purchased by Myrtle and Millicent, so I had something stunning to wear to their Cousin Dorothy’s funeral. They hated Dorothy and they wanted me in full Marilyn. I hardly ever had the chance to wear it. The suit was the height of funeral fashion, coal black in the style of the forties with shoulder pads and a nipped-in waist. The stand-up mink collar framed my face, making me paler and somehow more refined.
I curled my hair the way Marilyn Monroe did, waves off the face to emphasize my widow’s peak and I applied heavy makeup. I hardly ever did, unless I was pulling out all the stops with plenty of sooty mascara and a thick coat of Harlot Scarlet on my lips. I didn’t like to do it, but I had to admit the effect was startling. If I wanted them to be thrown off balance, full Marilyn was the way to go.
The suit slipped on like it should never have been taken off. A pair of seamed stockings and five-inch stilettos finished the look.
I twirled for Skanky. “How do I look?”
He barfed on my pillow. I guess I asked for that. I stripped off the pillow case and stuffed it in the washer on my way out. Pete had to stop giving me chocolate. It was sweet, but so not worth it.
I sat in the Westin St. Louis lobby for twenty minutes before the manager decided to move me to a small conference room. Apparently, I was distracting to the guests and staff and must be shut up in a wood-paneled room before I could cause any trouble. I had no intention of causing trouble, but it was nice to know I could.
The other Berrys finally came down to meet me ten minutes later. I decided to make them come to me, instead of the other way around, because it said something if they obeyed. They didn’t give orders. They took them.
The manager opened the conference room door with an appropriately solemn face. After all, half the Berry family had just been murdered, but I don’t know why he bothered. The other Berrys were anything but morose. They ambled into the room with pleasant, curious expressions. I’d chosen a seat behind the door so they’d have to look around for their visitor, giving me a few seconds to look them over. Mourning wasn’t the word for the other Berrys. They, all four of them, wore brand new athletic wear. The Rams were pretty big with them. They had the jerseys, sweat pants, hats, and wristbands. They were logoed up and that stuff wasn’t cheap, especially if your biggest earner was an assistant manager at a Walgreens.
It took them a good two minutes to spot me and the Westin manager raised an eyebrow at me before he closed the door. That eyebrow said a lot. I was, despite the whole Marilyn thing, his kind of people. The other Berrys weren’t.
“Oh, shit,” said the oldest, a man in his seventies with a narrow face and a large nose. “There you are.”
“Oh, shit is right. Holy fuck,” said the woman beside him, presumably his wife. “You look exactly like Marilyn Monroe.”
I uncrossed my legs and stood up slowly. They stared at me and I smiled. “I’m here about Abrielle and Colton.”
“Who?” asked a guy who was a forty-year-old version of his father.
“Abrielle and Colton Berry.”
“Oh, yeah. The kids,” said the woman on younger guy’s arm. She obviously wasn’t a Berry. Her face was round where the Berrys had a narrow pinched look about them.
“Yes,” I said. “The kids.”
“What about them?” she asked.
I walked over with plenty of swing in my hips and extended my hand. “I’m Mercy Watts and you are…”
“I’m Ken,” said the older man. “This is my wife Stacy and my son, Willy, and his wife, Gina. What exactly are you here about?”
I flashed them Dad’s card and said I was there on Abrielle and Colton’s behalf. It took them another second to remember once again who the kids were. I implied that the court had sent me to make sure they were fit to care for the kids and the Berrys were all over that. They had a nice house for the kids to live in, a good school district, and a dog named Trigger. Ken showed me pictures and the house was a nice split-level with a well-kept lawn. Trigger wasn’t mangy or gross, which was more than I could say for my cat.
“It’s a lucky thing, but why weren’t you all at the anniversary party at Tulio?” I asked.
“Weren’t invited,” spat out Gina. “They said we could come to the house after, if we wanted to. As if.”
I put on my sympathetic face. It wasn’t a good fit at that moment. “Didn’t you recommend Tulio?”
“Yeah,” said Willy. “I heard it was good, but I never been. It’s lucky they’re rude, or we’d be dead, too.”
“So you weren’t close?” I asked.
Stacy snorted and leaned back in her
chair. Her arms were crossed. “Why do you care?”
“I need to know how well you know Abrielle and Colton, if you’re going to be raising them.”
“Oh, well…we don’t know them. They live in New Orleans and they never invited us down to stay.”
“That’s a shame. New Orleans is a great town. I love it.”
Gina eyed me. “Who made that suit? It’s hot. Mink collar?”
Definitely not stupid.
“Yes, it is,” I said.
“You’ve got great taste. I need a suit like that,” said Gina.
Gee. I wonder how you plan on paying for it.
“It’s a great suit. Very comfortable. Do any of you have medical training?”
Ken shifted in his seat. He didn’t like that question. “I could’ve gone to medical school, but there wasn’t enough money.”
“It’s very expensive. Medical school. So do any of you have medical training?”
“Why?” asked Stacy.
“Because Abrielle and Colton may need special care.”
“Their mother, that Donatella, poisoned them,” said Willy. “I don’t care what the police say. She did it.”
I widened my eyes. “How do you know?”
“She’s the type. Have you met her? She’s one of those hot-tempered redheads. She wanted to get rid of our family so she could get all the money.”
“I met her this morning at the hospital. I don’t think she’s left their side,” I said.
“Well, she has to make it look good,” said Gina.
“If she’s going to get all the money for herself,” said Willy.
Ken broke in. “Not that we care about the money. We’ll keep it all for the kids for when they get older.”
Sure you will.
“I saw them this morning, too,” I said.
“Who?” asked Stacy.
“Abrielle and Colton.”
“Good. You got to keep an eye on that Donatella. She’s a slippery witch for sure. Did you know she got herself pregnant at eighteen, but the guy wouldn’t marry her? Just goes to show.”
I had no clue what that was supposed to show me.
“Andrew’s going to fix her wagon,” said Ken. “We aren’t dropping this by a long shot.”