Murder at the Book Group

by Maggie King

  I asked, without even bothering to address Helen, “So, back to the dinners . . . How did they go? Did Evan think she”—here I glanced at Helen—“was interested in him, um, romantically?”

  “Oh, no.” Art looked at Helen. “She didn’t want Evan to get that idea—she definitely wanted him as a son. In fact, one time she had a woman join us, someone from the building. She thought they’d be a good match.”

  “And were they?”

  Art rolled his eyes. “No. Neither seemed interested in the other. The woman dominated the conversation, mostly complaining about her boss.

  “That’s when things backfired on Mom. Evan started to make excuses. More travel, more faculty meetings, more this, more that. And more obsession on her part. When he started seeing Kat she just about lost her mind.” I had a vision of Kat being invited for dinner and having a poisonous substance added to her plate. I shivered just thinking about the vengeance she could exact on Helen and Art.

  “Then Evan suddenly moved. Here one day, gone the next. Mom was in quite a state and it was Easter or spring break or something, so she couldn’t just ‘happen’ to run into him at school. When she finally did he said he’d married a wonderful woman named Carlene and had moved into her house. Mom cajoled him into giving her the address so she could send a wedding gift. She invited both of them to dinner and he accepted. I guess he felt that marriage shielded him from her matchmaking efforts.”

  Art continued. “They only came to dinner once. Mom kept on inviting them to dinner, but they turned her down every time. We did get invited to the turkey dinners and she lived from one dinner to the next so she could talk to her darling Evan. She crossed paths with him at Tanson but he was usually in a rush and just said hi. Probably trying to avoid her.” Art’s bitter look made me wonder if he’d spent his entire life longing for just a moment of the adulation his mother bestowed on his half brother. “She still wanted to reveal that they were mother and son but couldn’t work out how to do it.

  “Somewhere along the line Carlene mentioned a mystery book group she’d started and asked Mom to join it. Naturally Mom jumped at the chance, dragging me along with her. Not that I had a problem with that. I’d always liked mysteries, but they were new to Mom. She figured that ingratiating herself with Carlene would keep her in the loop about Evan. It didn’t work. You know how unforthcoming Carlene could be.”

  So that was why Helen belonged to a group that didn’t share her values—she hoped to keep tabs on Evan through Carlene.

  “When she found out about Carlene’s plans to write a mystery, she enrolled in a Web design course at Tanson and talked Carlene into letting her design a site for her as a class project. She thought collaborating with Carlene would create opportunities to visit at the house. But again her plans were thwarted—Carlene wanted to review Mom’s work online and communicate by e-mail.”

  I pointed toward the bedroom. “How did she collect all those photos of Evan in there?”

  “Did you ever see the ones on the bookcase in their family room?”

  When I nodded, Art explained. “She took them with her digital camera one time when Carlene was hosting book group. Since Carlene always had the group upstairs in her living room, it was pretty safe. Essentially, they’re photos of photos. And she cropped Carlene out of the wedding photos.” A notion of cropping being symbolic of killing occurred to me. I felt chilled.

  From her stricken look, I guessed that Lucy had a similar idea. After a pause, she addressed Helen. “Helen, I have a question and I hope you answer it yourself. How did you . . . do . . . ?”

  “I put cyanide in her tea.” Helen’s blasé response contrasted starkly with Lucy’s difficulty in even questioning Helen about how she killed Carlene.

  Art quipped, “Straight out of the pages of Agatha Christie.”

  I said, “Yes, but how—how did you manage it? How did you get the cyanide in the tea? Did you go in the kitchen while the tea was unattended? Remember, Carlene left the tea for a while to look for towels.”

  “Mom didn’t do it in the kitchen.” I wished we could muzzle Art and get Helen to say more than the occasional word.

  When Art didn’t elaborate, Lucy tried another tack. “Okay. Did she—” Now Lucy turned to Helen. “You go to the house earlier in the day and do, whatever it was you did, then?”

  “Nope. She did it right in the dining room when the tea was on the table.”

  “But how could that be?” I wailed. “We were all there, listening to Carlene, our eyes on her, and the tea was on the table in front of her. You must be awfully clever, Helen, because I didn’t see a thing.”

  Helen smiled through her tears. “It was magic.”

  CHAPTER 26

  “MAGIC?”

  “Magic.” Helen’s dreamy smile made me wonder if her grip on sanity was slipping away. If it hadn’t already.

  Art disclaimed, “Let me tell you this right now—I didn’t want any part of it.”

  “Hah!” Helen retorted.

  “So, you used magic,” I prompted Helen.

  “Yes, but—” Helen’s smile faded. “Art, you’re supposed to be telling the story.” I was surprised she didn’t want to do her own bragging.

  “Remember her stint as a magician’s assistant?” When we nodded, Art asked, “Ever hear of sleight of hand?”

  Lucy said, “Tricking the eye?”

  “Yes, tricking the eye with your hands. Hazel, remember when Mom pointed toward the living room and asked me to get a review that she’d brought? It was supposedly on the floor by her purse?”

  “I do.” I didn’t add that I also remembered Helen calling him an idiot for bringing an AARP magazine.

  Art shook his head. “There was no review. While you all looked toward the living room she used the diversion to pour the cyanide in Carlene’s tea.”

  “Right in front of Carlene?” In my amazement, I found myself sputtering. “But—but—it all happened so fast.”

  “Mom’s good at sleight of hand. And misdirection. She’s quick. The hand is quicker than the eye.”

  Lucy and I both stared first at Art, then at Helen, stunned at the cold-bloodedness of what we were hearing. And apparently the “idiot” comment was part of the act. The fact that Helen had branded her son an idiot on other occasions lulled us into thinking that this was just more of the same abusive behavior. Lucy asked, “So, Art, you said you didn’t want any part of it, but it sounds like you did have a part. What was it?”

  “Let me start by saying that I liked Carlene and didn’t want to do her any harm. At first I said no to Mom. ‘You’re on your own,’ I told her. But,” he spread his hands out, looking helpless. “I caved at the last minute.” I guessed the reason for the caving: he didn’t want to risk his mother’s cutting off his financial support. He’d even help her kill. His wanting to hold on to Helen’s purse strings also likely explained why he allowed her to dress him down in public the way she did. And there was his need for approval—I always thought Art was an obedient son, perhaps to get some of the love his mother bestowed on Evan. On the other hand, he wasn’t a respectful son. I chalked the whole thing up to inexplicable and dysfunctional mother-son dynamics. At least I now understood his role in this sorry situation.

  “Anyway, I knew about the bogus review. And I asked Carlene to tell us about her new book.” Art’s laugh came out like a strangled bark. “Mom knew that none of you liked her much and tried to avoid her, so she figured that once she started ranting about politics everyone would be itching for a change of subject.”

  “Liberals,” Helen spat.

  I thought to clarify my political position as being more moderate than liberal, but drawing fine lines in the political sand was off point.

  Art said, “She also knew that everyone loved hearing about Carlene’s writing. And she knew Carlene liked nothing better than to talk about her writing. So Mom started on stem cell research, even though she’d already gone on and on about it earlier, but it is her hot topic
these days—and that was my cue to interrupt and ask Carlene about her book.”

  So Helen knew how annoying she was. Being obnoxious and irritating as all get-out as a way of getting away with murder had never occurred to me. I recalled my own intention to stop Helen’s rant by asking Carlene about her book, not realizing that Art’s beating me to it was part of a premeditated plan.

  Lucy folded her arms and asked, “And you—she—wasn’t the least bit afraid of being caught?”

  “Not a bit. Like I said, she’s good. And she had those long, fluttery sleeves that covered her fingers.”

  So I was right about the insight I’d had in the bedroom. The periwinkle georgette blouse with the ruffled bell sleeves provided a perfect cover for sleight of hand. It was too lovely an item to be put to such nefarious use.

  But Lucy wasn’t satisfied. “Oh, come on, Art. I can’t believe she didn’t have a contingency plan just in case she slipped up. And what if there hadn’t been a window? What if, say, Carlene decided not to have tea that night? What if someone had phoned her earlier and she wasn’t there in the dining room?”

  Helen spoke up. “Well, it didn’t have to happen that night.”

  “But you were raring to go, Mom. You knew it would be easier to make it look like suicide at Carlene’s house.”

  I asked, “So, um, who wrote the suicide note?”

  Helen looked proud and defiant. “Why, I did.”

  “When? And where did you put it?”

  “I left it on the table next to her chair in the family room. The police and EMTs were all over the place. In all the commotion no one noticed.” A vague picture of people milling around took shape in my mind, Helen likely one of the millers. Amplifying her response, she said, “After all, I’m an artist as well as a magician. The two talents go very well together. I had a sample of Carlene’s handwriting and forged the note. Easy as pie.” Helen gave me a coy look. “When I called you the next day I wanted to play up the suicide idea, so I told you about Carlene being with that man in her car. But you seemed cagey and I wasn’t sure if you bought it.”

  Thinking back on that conversation, I could see that Helen was trying to manipulate me into thinking that Carlene’s guilt had driven her to kill herself.

  My mind lit on Sarah. “Sarah wasn’t in on this, was she?”

  “Oh, God, no. She and Mom spar about politics but I think they enjoy that. I bet you’re asking because of the towel thing. That was serendipitous for Mom because with Carlene out of the kitchen for a few minutes, anyone who was in there when the tea was unattended would fall under suspicion. If the suicide verdict was questioned and we needed to divert attention from ourselves we could say ‘well, so and so was in the kitchen’ or ‘Annabel got a phone call and walked through the kitchen to take it.’ ‘Hazel and Sarah were standing by the fridge, talking.’ That sort of thing. I got Kat to show me some exercises so that we—especially Kat—would be going through the kitchen. You know how she likes to show off her body.”

  Again, I envisioned Kat using her powerful body to exact revenge on Helen and Art. They’d better hope they landed in prison. The thought cheered me, or as much as I could be cheered under capture.

  Art continued outlining his grim tale. “I tried to get the woman with the striped hair to join us in the family room but she was too busy stuffing her face with pumpkin brownies.” I felt a pang of guilt thinking about how I’d suspected Linda. And Annabel. At the worst they were unpleasant, but not killers. At least not of Carlene.

  Lucy looked at Helen. “Weren’t you afraid of getting some of the cyanide on yourself?”

  “I sprayed an adhesive bandage on my hands.”

  The arrogance and sheer audacity of this plan was beyond anything in my experience. I felt grudging admiration for this mother-son duo who had figured all the angles—although Helen was the obvious mastermind and Art just followed instructions. Of course, much predictability had worked in their favor—the tea, Carlene’s willingness to talk about her book and the eagerness of the rest of us to hear about it. No one wanting to listen to Helen. And some unexpected events, like the towel outage. I shook my head in amazement when I realized how we’d all been unwitting participants in a play of sorts, part improvised, part scripted.

  I asked, “Why did you decide to use cyanide?”

  Helen said, “Oh . . . I did a lot of research—read everything I could get my hands on—and it seemed like a good choice.” Yes, Helen was a library hound. I recalled our car-side conversation after the memorial service when she’d lauded the public library. She’d even mentioned not wanting to see the printed word fall into oblivion. It made sense that she’d use the library for nefarious purposes. I thought of the Stella Nickell book I’d seen earlier in Helen’s room. If Helen read everything she could get her hands on . . . then she left fingerprints. Just like Stella Nickell. And, allegedly, Annabel.

  “Mom knew that Carlene was researching cyanide, reading a lot about it. Her dying from it would be the ultimate irony. She also banked on Carlene having her odious tea, thinking the tea would mask the taste of the cyanide—whatever cyanide tastes like.”

  “Yes, and cyanide figured so prominently in our earlier conversation that night.”

  “Yeah. Funny. Not planned on our part.”

  Lucy commented, “And I guess your research told you how to administer it, how much to use, all those pesky details.” Like how potent cyanide from World War II would be in the present day—I felt sure Helen researched those details.

  I asked. “Okay, so how did you get cyanide? Didn’t you say something about it going back to World War II?”

  “From Sam.” Helen looked at me like I was an idiot for not knowing Sam was the go-to person for cyanide.

  “Sam?”

  “Yes, Sam. Sam Smith.”

  “Oh, yes, we’ve met him. But why would he . . .” Lucy looked puzzled. “Are you and Sam in cahoots?”

  Helen looked affronted. “Heavens, no. The man’s a dimwit. And a liberal.” Apparently in Helen’s world liberal and dimwit were synonyms.

  “He sure was smitten with Mom.” Art started pacing back and forth behind Helen and she warned him to keep the gun pointed at us. He gave his mother a withering look and continued. “He seemed like one of those chumps, easy to manipulate.” Art had no business sounding so derisive about the chumps of the world. I thought of those shadowy film noirs of the forties. Typically they featured a femme fatale who hooked up with a man whose brains were in his, um, nether regions, and she had no trouble getting him to do her bidding. And her bidding usually involved killing one or more persons. Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity was my favorite case in point. But this was real life, not the silver screen, and Helen as femme fatale with Sam as her lapdog didn’t have the same appeal. Equally evil was her manipulation of her son to achieve her ends.

  “But how did she get the cyanide from Sam?”

  “Okay, you know Sam’s a military historian?”

  “Yes. In fact, much of his photography is military oriented. He gave me his card yesterday and I looked at his Tripod site. Lots of military stuff.”

  “Like Annabel said earlier, Sam Smith’s uncle was a midlevel Nazi officer. Like many of those guys, he carried a vial of cyanide in case he got captured. He never did. When he died, Sam got all his Nazi paraphernalia . . . including the vial.”

  Art looked at his mother and offered her the floor, but she demurred. “No, Art, you’re the historian.”

  He rolled his eyes and went on. “You see, Annabel introduced us to Sam at Carlene’s signing. Annabel tried to get Mom interested in doing a website to showcase Sam’s photography. He had a Tripod site—the one you saw—but Annabel wanted him to ditch that, get something professional. In the meantime, Sam and I discovered our mutual love of history, Sam being a military historian and retired professor whose specialty was World War II. He invited us to visit his farm in Scottsville anytime to look at his historical collection. He gave eac
h of us a card with the Tripod site.”

  Art pressed on. “When Mom and I looked at Sam’s photographs on the site I saw this metal item that could be mistaken for a bullet—but I’d seen it before and recognized it for what it was—a container for a glass vial of, get this, cyanide.

  “Mom didn’t like Sam’s pictures, thought them amateurish, so she told him she was too busy to do a site for him.”

  But after the parking lot episode she thought about the cyanide container and Sam became quite attractive. She didn’t know if the container even had cyanide, but it was worth a try. She called Sam and reminded him of the invitation to visit his farm and see his historical collection. They could talk about the website as well. She said that I was especially interested in the Nazi collection of pins and such and asked if he actually owned those items as part of his collection. Sam admitted that his uncle had been a Nazi officer and that he’d inherited the collection as his uncle knew of his interest in historical artifacts. Not that Sam approved of his uncle’s activities; he just had the historical interest. They set up a time and Mom embarked on a flurry of research about cyanide. I found a brass cyanide container online and had it sent express delivery.

  “We showed up at the farm at the planned time, with me feigning a sore foot, and viewed the collection. Mom put on quite a show of enthusiasm. First she wanted a tour of the farm and then they could discuss business matters. I stayed behind to peruse Sam’s extensive library—the sore foot let me skip the tour. It took me no time at all to switch the containers. Then I sat in the library with a book in my lap and my foot propped up, waiting for them to return.

  “When they did, I noticed that his ardor had cooled quite a bit. Apparently they’d had a series of arguments during the tour: politics, social issues, you name it.” Art snickered. “Of course I had the cyanide in my possession by that point, so it didn’t matter. I gave Mom the high sign, meaning that I had the goods. Having no more use for Sam, she quoted him a ridiculous price for the site. They argued some more, and he said he’d think about it. And so we left.”