Poker Chips and Poison

by Rodney Strong

  Alice felt that a cup of tea was in order, but decided to just sit on the couch for a few minutes.

  She was woken by a loud thumping on the door. Alice checked the door camera to see Vanessa standing outside, and went to open it just as Vanessa’s arm was stretched backwards ready to bang on the wood panel again.

  ‘Why did it take you so long? I was about to break the door down. Or at least go get the override code from reception.’

  ‘You only knocked twice, you know how long it takes me to get to the door,’ Alice replied, stepping aside to let Vanessa enter.

  ‘I was knocking for five minutes!’

  ‘Oh. Well what did you forget?’

  ‘Nothing, Alice. I’ve been to Palmers. I’ve been gone for almost two hours.’

  Alice looked at her watch, which confirmed Vanessa’s story.

  ‘I must have drifted off.’

  Vanessa’s face went pale. ‘Can you not use that term? Especially after what I found out.’

  ‘Tell me all about it while I make us a cup of tea.’

  Vanessa perched on one of the kitchen stools while Alice put the kettle on to boil and pulled cups and teaspoons from the cupboard.

  ‘It turns out that what you found are spines from the Ongaonga plant. It’s a stinging nettle found all over New Zealand.’

  ‘Really? Then why did my finger go numb?’

  ‘Because it’s a highly poisonous plant.’

  Alice paused what she was doing and stared at Vanessa.

  ‘Deadly?’

  ‘The person I spoke to had to do some research as they don’t normally sell deadly plants, but they said not usually. There are some reports that people have died from being stung.’

  Vanessa tapped on her phone, then slid it across the countertop to Alice. It was a picture of a long thin green leaf edged by sharp white needle like hairs.

  ‘What are the symptoms?’ she asked.

  ‘It can be quite painful, and cause the area to go numb.’

  Alice rubbed her finger. ‘So why did it kill Betty and not me?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure, but according to the research I did one of the side effects from getting stung is a drop in blood pressure. Didn’t the doctor say your blood pressure was low?’

  ‘He did, but it’s always been a little on the low side.’

  ‘Maybe the effects aren’t as severe the second time around. If these had already poked Betty then maybe she got the worst of the toxin. Did she have low blood pressure?’

  Alice looked at Vanessa.

  ‘You want me to look at her records, don’t you? Are you trying to get me fired?’

  Alice laughed. ‘No, I’d miss you too much. Besides I know she had low blood pressure. She had to take pills for it every day. Used to drive her crazy, she hated having to remember taking them. She had one of those pill containers with the days of the week on them, but she would say to me that it only worked if she could remember what day of the week it was.’

  Vanessa took off her jacket and let her hair loose from her ponytail. She caught Alice watching her.

  ‘I actually prefer it loose,’ she smiled. ‘Only sometimes it gets in the way. So was Betty confused about the days of the week on Wednesday?’

  ‘Not in the way you’re implying.’ Alice snorted. ‘She was a farmer all her life, weekdays and weekends didn’t mean much on the farm. The cows still needed to be milked on a Sunday.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Alice finished making the tea and handed Vanessa hers. She blew the steam away from her cup, then set it down on the counter.

  ‘I never saw the point of blowing on drinks. Like your breath is magically going to cool the tea enough so you don’t burn your lip on the boiling water,’ Vanessa said.

  ‘It does seem a bit silly.’

  ‘It’s like when people give you food and tell you it’s hot, and you take a bite anyway and they look at you like you’re a little crazy for not listening to them and...’

  ‘What?’

  Vanessa sighed and drummed her fingers on the counter. ‘I’m trying not to consider what this all means, because there were no stinging nettles in the room when Betty died. In fact there are none on the property, at least none I’ve ever seen, which means her getting spiked wasn’t an accident, which means that someone killed her, which is crazy because who would want to kill Betty? And if someone did kill her then that means...’

  ‘That someone we know killed her,’ Alice finished. She looked at the miserable expression on Vanessa’ face. If you want to forget all this and go back to work—’

  ‘What! Of course not. It’s just. Shouldn’t we tell the police?’

  ‘Tell them what?’ Alice asked. ‘That we think our friend was poisoned by a leaf by someone unknown for some reason unknown?’

  ‘Okay, so not the police. Why don’t we ask Tracey’s niece? She just became a detective and we could talk to her off the record.’

  ‘I don’t think there is such a thing, despite what television would have you believe.’

  ‘Please?’

  Alice shrugged. ‘If you think it would help then sure, go ahead.’

  Vanessa looked at her watch, then gave Alice a rueful smile.

  ‘You already called her didn’t you?’ Alice said.

  ‘She’ll be here in five minutes.’

  ‘I don’t know whether to be annoyed or impressed.’

  ‘Hopefully more impressed than annoyed.’

  ‘We’ll see. But Vanessa, whether or not the police take this seriously, I’m not going to stop until I find out who killed my friend. And when I do they better pray that the police get there before me.’

  FOURTEEN

  ‘IT’S PRETTY THIN,’ Judith said.

  Alice shot a told you so look at Vanessa who seemed to be deliberately avoiding her gaze.

  ‘Like wafer thin,’ Judith continued. She was wearing a grey suit, and had made a point of telling them she was squeezing them in during a break in her work day.

  They’d explained what they’d learned, and what they suspected, and it was going about as well as Alice had expected.

  ‘You were the one who thought it might be suspicious earlier,’ Alice reminded her.

  Judith held up a hand. ‘Actually I asked the question and was reassured by my aunt that it was unlikely to be suspicious.’

  ‘And now we’re telling you differently,’ Vanessa said.

  ‘No, what you’re telling me is a bunch of ideas loosely connected by one giant leap.’ Judith’s expression softened as she looked at Alice. ‘Look, I get it. You’ve just lost a friend. It’s hard, but that doesn’t mean this was anything but natural causes. She was in her eighties with low blood pressure and who knows what else wrong with her. And to be honest, from what my aunt has said, no one had a motive to kill Betty.’

  ‘You checked!’ Vanessa said in triumph.

  ‘No,’ Judith replied gently. ‘I simply asked Aunt Tracey what sort of person Betty was. It was a polite conversation. She was upset by the death.’

  ‘Well, we won’t take up any more of your valuable time, detective,’ Alice said getting to her feet.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Will we, Vanessa?’

  Vanessa shut her mouth and glared in response.

  Judith paused at the door. ‘And I don’t want to hear about either of you harassing residents with your theories, understood?’

  ‘Of course, detective,’ Alice replied.

  They waited until the elevator doors closed on Judith before shutting Alice’s front door.

  ‘We’re going to harass some residents with our theories, aren’t we?’ Vanessa asked.

  ‘Of course. She didn’t tell us not to.’

  ‘She just did,’ said Vanessa as they walked back to the couch.

  ‘No, she said she didn’t want to hear about it. So we make sure she doesn’t hear about it,’ Alice replied.

  They stared at each other for a moment then laughed, which for Alice rapidly
turned into a coughing fit.

  ‘Stop it,’ she said to Vanessa when she had herself under control.

  ‘Stop what?’

  ‘Looking at me like I’m going to expire any second. It was just a cough.’

  ‘Sorry, can’t help caring,’ Vanessa told her.

  ‘And I appreciate it, but this is going to get tiresome very quickly if you call for a stretcher every time I sneeze. I promise to tell you if I’m not feeling well. Good enough?’

  ‘Depends. Do you mean it?’ Vanessa asked, tucking her hair behind her ears.

  ‘You’re catching on.’

  ‘You’re worse than my grandmother.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It wasn’t a... Never mind. Alright, so the police aren’t interested. What now?’ Vanessa asked.

  ‘Now we think we know how, so the next questions are who and why?’

  ‘According to all the shows on Netflix it’s either to do with money or sex and I don’t think it was...’ Vanessa stopped, her face red.

  ‘It’s alright Vanessa, you can say it. Betty didn’t have much of one and even less of the other.’

  ‘I didn’t mean...’

  ‘Yes you did, and that’s fine, because you’re mostly right. Mostly. But just to spare your poor cheeks from turning permanently into beetroots, let’s look at the possibility that money was the motive. Betty was comfortable, but not rich, as far as I know. Although she was pretty taciturn when it came to money, so she might have been loaded. I think we need to take a look around her apartment.’

  Vanessa sighed. ‘Why not? I’ve seen her dead body twice. Breaking into her apartment doesn’t seem like much of a violation.’

  ‘Excellent attitude. Although, as you can legally obtain the key and she’s dead, it’s not technically breaking in,’ Alice said.

  ‘Do you want me to call Judith back here and you can try that theory with her?’

  ‘Just go get the key and I’ll meet you at Betty’s.’

  When Alice opened the front door, Maddy, who had been sitting next to the elevator, stretched and walked slowly into Alice’s apartment.

  ‘How did she get up here?’ Vanessa asked.

  Alice shrugged. ‘That’s our next mystery.’ She watched the cat stroll over to the patch of sun by the window and flop down. ‘Now that’s retirement,’ she mumbled, closing the door behind her.

  In the lobby they split up, Vanessa heading behind the reception desk and through the door to the back offices, while Alice exited through the front door. She spotted Owen walking towards the rose garden and followed him.

  When Alice had first moved into the complex and heard there was a rose garden, she’d had visions of a couple of rose bushes tucked away in a corner. While it was tucked away beside the Olympic complex, that was about the only thing she had been right about. Surrounded by a waist-high hedge, the rose garden was home to dozens of rose bushes of different colours, sizes and (according to the small signs planted in front of each bush) species. Alice had made the mistake of saying out loud that she hadn’t realised there were multiple species of roses and had spent the next hour being lectured by Freda, the resident anthophile. She’d had to ask someone what that word meant and had decided it fit Freda exactly.

  In the middle of the rose garden were two wooden benches, back to back, both with small brass plaques advising who had donated them. Alice had heard that it was a tranquil place to sit, surrounded by colour and quiet, but stopping to smell the roses was never a saying she’d had much use for.

  Alice entered the garden through the gap in the hedge and saw Owen standing before a bright yellow rose bush. As she approached he reached out and broke off a flower.

  ‘I’m pretty sure they don’t like you doing that,’ Alice said.

  Owen turned with a sad smile. ‘The roses?’

  ‘They probably don’t like it either, but I was talking about management.’

  He stared at the flower in his hand, then shrugged. ‘Unless they’re keeping a tally I don’t think they’re going to miss one.’

  ‘Do you mind if we sit?’ Alice asked. ‘I’ve been doing far too much walking today and my legs are reminding my hips that they never liked exercise much.’

  They settled themselves onto one of the benches, the sun warming Alice’s back. She had to admit it was peaceful. The concrete and glass structure of the recreational building loomed over the tops of the rose bushes, and to their left past the edge of the small hedge was a bigger hedge that guaranteed the residents privacy from their neighbours and the rest of the world.

  ‘Owen, I think it’s time you tell me about Betty and the money,’ Alice said firmly.

  Owen raised his eyes from the rose and looked at her with a troubled expression. ‘There’s the matter of confidence.’

  ‘Betty is dead. And I’m not convinced it was by natural causes.’

  She’d been going for a gentle push, but by the look of shock and disbelief on his face, Alice had achieved that with all the subtlety of a freight train.

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  She quickly told him what she and Vanessa had discovered. By the end the shock had worn off but disbelief was still firmly in place.

  ‘You can’t possibly think someone killed Betty. I’m sorry but that is just..’

  ‘Preposterous? Ludicrous? Outrageous?’

  The corner of Owen’s mouth twitched.

  ‘I’ve gone through all the ous words Owen, but there’s no way that she got stung by Ongaonga nettles naturally.’

  ‘But why would anyone want Betty dead?’

  ‘Which brings us back to Betty’s secret. It could be a motive.’

  Owen nodded slowly. ‘I see. Well I guess telling you can’t hurt now. It was to do with money, in a manner of speaking, as you guessed earlier. I wasn’t really helping her myself, it was never my area of expertise, and it had been a long time since I’d worked directly with customers, so I just provided her with one of my old contacts.’

  ‘In the bank.’

  ‘Yes, at the bank.’

  ‘Contacts for what?’ Alice asked, finding it increasingly difficult to stifle her impatience.

  ‘Gold. Buying and selling, specifically.’

  ‘Gold,’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes, you know, that yellow stuff, worth a bit,’ Own replied with another twitch of his mouth.

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard of it. What specifically did Betty want help with? Buying or selling?’

  ‘Selling. She had recently come into a quantity of gold and wanted to know how to sell it. Banks don’t really handle that sort of thing, it’s usually done through gold dealers, but a man I had worked with had some experience in that area so I gave her his name and number.’

  Alice sat back in her seat and considered the implications. ‘So why did you want to talk to me about it? It seems a straightforward thing.’

  Owen nodded. ‘The transaction wasn’t the problem. I was just hoping that you could persuade Betty to put the gold into the safe in the main office here.’

  ‘She had the gold with her? In her apartment?’

  ‘Yes. She told me she’d had a lifetime of fighting with banks and other institutions and that she didn’t have the strength to do it now so she was keeping the gold with her.’

  ‘Where did it come from?’

  ‘She didn’t tell me. She just said that it arrived recently, and she was grumbling about how much the courier cost.’

  The skin on the back of Alice’s neck prickled and she rubbed it with her hand. ‘How much gold are we talking about?’

  ‘I’m not sure exactly. Roughly about ten kilograms, I think?’

  ‘Ten kilograms?’

  ‘Yes, roughly.’

  ‘Unless roughly means you’re nine and a half kilos out, that’s a lot of gold. What’s that worth?’

  ‘It depends on the day’s price of course.’

  ‘Roughly,’ Alice said, earning a proper smile this time.

 
‘Roughly... I would say about half a million dollars.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, you silly boy. Bloody hell, you’ve just described the perfect motive for murder.’

  ‘Oh...’ Owen responded as her words sunk in.

  ‘And bloody hell, where is it now?’

  FIFTEEN

  CONSIDERING SHE OUT-aged him by at least a decade, Alice should have been struggling to keep up with Owen as they hurried to Betty’s apartment, but it was Owen who was puffing to catch up.

  ‘You were walking two strides to every one of mine, how did you beat me?’ Owen said, wheezing as they reached the big front doors.

  ‘Because you’re old and slow and I’m just old.’

  When they approached Betty’s front door, Vanessa was leaning against the wall, tapping on her phone. She looked up as they got closer and Alice immediately saw that something was wrong.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Vanessa said, shoving her phone into her pants pocket.

  ‘Talk about what?’ Alice asked.

  ‘About.... Oh. Nice try. Hi, Owen.’

  ‘Good morning, Vanessa.’

  Vanessa looked at Alice.

  ‘I told him our suspicions and he told me something interesting. Let’s talk about it inside.’

  Vanessa unlocked Betty’s front door using her key and pushed it open, stepping aside to let Alice go in first.

  The room didn’t look like they did on crime shows, with furniture torn apart, pictures smashed and lamps overturned, but Alice could see that someone had definitely searched the apartment. Betty hadn’t been a neat freak, but she wasn’t a slob. Cupboard doors were ajar, the coffee table had been dragged to an odd angle as if someone had moved it so they could look under the couch.

  A quick check in the bedroom revealed similar disturbances. The wardrobe doors were wide open and several shoe boxes had been pulled out and opened.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Owen asked.

  ‘Someone’s searched the place,’ she replied.

  ‘I was here yesterday and it wasn’t like this,’ Vanessa said. ‘Tracey asked me to check the apartment was secure and I popped my head in. That coffee table was definitely straight and the kitchen cupboards were closed. What were they looking for?’