The Babbling Brook Naked Poker Club - Book One

by Ann Warner

  “Suranna?”

  “Please, I’m used to Devi now.”

  “Yes, of course. Devi. About Eddie, there’s more.”

  As she outlined the “more,” I considered how scary it was that a person could find out so many details of another person’s life so quickly and easily. Shuddering at the thought of how much Josephine was going to be billed, I struggled to focus.

  “Is all this really necessary?”

  Abigail shrugged. “Maybe not. But I need a counter strategy in the event Colter’s attorney should happen to get hold of the information about William Garrison. And I now know that the only reason Eddie can afford to bring this suit is because his attorney is his cousin. Certainly no one else would take something like this on contingency. It’s likely Eddie’s suing you both for the nuisance value as well as in hopes of easing his disastrous financial situation.”

  If that was supposed to make me feel more confident of ultimate victory, it failed completely.

  Never underestimate the wile and viciousness of a cornered dog was one of my Indiana grandmother’s admonitions. Clearly, that’s what Eddie was, and Abigail was correct. We needed to take him very seriously.

  Along with Harry and the Chicago authorities.

  “What about . . . Did you find out if the Chicago police—”

  “Nothing yet. But don’t worry. I’m sure we can get that sorted out.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Edna

  My plan worked even better than I’d hoped.

  After a bit of debate, I did cut back to three Ambien tablets, which I crushed and mixed with a tiny bit of honey flavored with lemon. I planted most of that mix in the middle of the cream puff for Josephine and a smaller amount in Lillian’s puff, just enough to make her feel tired so she’d be ready to go back to her own apartment after dinner.

  Then I’d watched from my vantage point in the lobby as both Josephine and Lillian ate every bite of their puffs. When they walked out, I detained Lillian briefly, long enough to send Josephine on her way by herself.

  I then excused myself and followed Josephine back to her room. She was already tottering by the time she reached her door. I thought I was going to have to help her, but she finally managed to unlock the door and step inside.

  When the door didn’t close all the way behind her, I almost danced with glee. After waiting a minute, I stepped closer and pulled the door open. Slowly, I stuck my head in and looked around.

  Josephine wasn’t in the living room, but the painting was, hanging right there in plain sight, on the wall. Too bad it was too large for me to handle by myself.

  I must say, for forty million, the painting didn’t show me much. Neither did the rest of Josephine’s furnishings, all that modern Scandinavian stuff that I simply can’t abide. Give me a nice dark walnut or mahogany any day.

  The whole time I was halfway leaning through Josephine’s doorway, I heard no sounds of her moving around. Smiling to myself, I stepped back and carefully settled the door near the latch, but not too near. Then I went to tell Eddie there would be no need for him to get hold of a keycard. Josephine’s door being unlatched made our little painting caper even easier.

  I could tell Eddie was pleased when I told him that. It meant it wouldn’t be until we collected the ransom that we’d be on the hook for any sort of criminal charge. I hurried back to my apartment, smiling with anticipation of the next steps.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Josephine

  At Monday evening’s dinner, something very peculiar happened. At the end of the meal, Eddie came to our table and presented Lill and me each with a cream puff, and he thanked us for all our hard work putting together the inspiration book.

  I’ve never liked the man, and I was briefly tempted to mash the cream puff in his face. After all, he attacked Devi and now he’s suing her. And there is no Sara.

  I think Lill sensed my reaction. She gave me one of her looks and then thanked him for the treats.

  “I quite agree with you, Josephine,” she said after Eddie walked away. “That man is no good. But, oh my, I do love cream puffs.”

  She took a bite and moaned in pleasure. It was a very un-Lill-like thing for her to do.

  “If you don’t want to eat that, Josephine, you can give it to me.”

  “Oh no, you don’t.” I picked up the puff and took a large bite.

  Lill was right. It was delicious, with an unusual lemony tang to the filling, and my intention to take only a bite or two was quickly overcome. I ate the whole thing.

  Cream puffs duly dispatched, Lill and I left the dining room a few minutes later. I opened my mouth to invite Lill over, but a yawn prevented me from speaking.

  As we entered the lobby, Edna came over and asked Lill a question. Feeling sleepy, I said good night and left them visiting as I walked back to my apartment.

  The next thing I knew, I was opening my eyes to bright light, and Devi and Lill were bending over me with worried expressions.

  I struggled to sit up and discovered I was lying on my bed, although I had no memory of how I got there. I was fully dressed and even had shoes on, and I was on top of the covers. Exactly as if I had passed out. It was most disconcerting.

  “Thank goodness,” Lill said. “It’s one thing for you not to answer your phone, Josephine, but when you weren’t at lunch and then you ignored my knock, I was really worried.”

  “Lunch? What time . . . um . . . day is it?” I asked, trying to bring their faces into focus.

  “One thirty in the afternoon on Tuesday,” Devi said.

  That meant I’d been asleep . . . nineteen hours?

  “You didn’t have a stroke, did you?” Lill said. “Smile at me.”

  “No, I did not have a stroke.”

  But for sure, something had happened to me, and from the fuzziness in my head, it had to be something to do with a drug.

  “Is the painting still there?”

  “Let me check,” Lill said.

  She left the room but returned immediately. “It worked. It’s missing.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Good?” Devi said. “What are you two up to now?”

  “Nothing. We aren’t up to anything.”

  “But a painting is missing? That doesn’t sound like nothing.” She took a turn looking in the other room. “Do you know where it is?” She was giving us both the stink-eye.

  “We have no idea, do we, Lill?”

  “No,” Lill agreed.

  “But we have a pretty good idea who does know,” I told Devi.

  She narrowed her eyes. “You set a trap.”

  “Such a smart girl,” I said to Lill.

  “Much smarter than that Eddie creature,” she agreed.

  “Although that Eddie creature did manage to seduce me with a cream puff.” And I did feel just a bit annoyed about that, despite the long, rather lovely sleep.

  Since Jeff’s visit and the subsequent setting of our trap, I’d been propping a chair against my bedroom door and keeping an emergency cord handy. Although that had made me feel reasonably safe, my sleep had still been restless.

  “You think you’ve been drugged?” Devi said, sticking to the main point.

  “Highly likely.” I sat up, but that made black dots dance in front of my eyes. “Maybe I better just lie here for a while. Would you give Mac a call, Devi?”

  “If you’ve been drugged, don’t you think the nurse ought to take a look at you?” Devi said.

  “And what do you expect her to do? I’m fine now. Just a bit muzzy in the head. But it’s obviously wearing off, whatever it was.”

  “Please. Just let her take a look.”

  “I’m fine. But if it will make you feel better—”

  “It will.” She picked up my phone and spoke briefly with whoever answered. Then she dialed again. “Mac? It’s Devi. We have a bit of a situation. Can you come?”

  There was a pause. “Yes, as soon as possible. At Josephine’s. I’ll open the bac
k door for you.”

  “Maybe a glass of water?” I said.

  Devi went to get that, and then she left again, and I heard sounds that indicated she was making tea. Lill went to the window to watch for Mac. I lay back down after taking a drink of water, because that felt better than sitting up.

  The nurse arrived and took my blood pressure. Then she listened to my heart and shined a light in my eyes.

  While she was doing that, Mac arrived. He stood in the doorway, watching the nurse repack her bag, obviously waiting until the woman left to speak to me.

  “Okay. Let’s see if I have this right. You and Lillian put out the word about the painting in order to entice the thief to steal it. That about right?”

  When I tried to speak, he held up a hand to silence me.

  “And now your painting is missing, and you suspect you were drugged so you wouldn’t notice the thief breaking in. All that correct so far?”

  His expression was so stern, it made me feel even fainter.

  “Well,” I said, but again, he held up a hand.

  “Devi, would you take a look in the cupboard? We’ll need a clean glass jar with a tight lid.”

  “What for?” I said.

  “A urine sample.”

  “I think not.”

  He sighed. “Josephine, proving you’ve been drugged would go a long way toward accomplishing what you’re trying so hard to do here.”

  Devi showed up beside him with a jam jar.

  “Can you manage, or do you need my help?” Mac said.

  I could see there was no way I was getting out of it, so I might as well do it on my terms. “Devi can help me.”

  I sat up, but I had to wait until my head stopped spinning before I attempted to stand. Devi steadied me and walked me to the bathroom, but there I drew the line. This whole situation had taken a distinctly undignified turn.

  “I can manage.” I took the jar from her hands and closed the door in her face.

  For the first time since moving to Brookside, I used the grab bar by the toilet to steady myself. I did have to pee. It had been, after all, over nineteen hours.

  When I returned to the other room, Mac was ready with a paper bag and a marker pen that he used to label the jar and the bag. It was completely mortifying, and I was relieved when the jar disappeared out of sight into the bag.

  We sat at the table. Devi served the tea she’d made as Mac grilled Lill and me about every aspect of our plan to catch the thief.

  “We’re convinced it’s Edna in cahoots with Eddie,” I summarized. “And the drugged cream puff is just further proof.”

  Mac shook his head. “We can prove you were drugged and with what drug, but we won’t be able to prove the drug was in the cream puff. However, it is highly suggestive circumstantial evidence.”

  “Are you going to get a search warrant?”

  “I can probably get one for Eddie’s place, but it will be impossible to justify searching Edna’s apartment.”

  We’d just see about that. Edna never locked her door, at least, she didn’t used to. It meant Lill and I could easily find a time when she was out to take a look. The painting was large enough; there were only a few places it could be. I didn’t tell Mac what I was thinking, of course.

  “Do not even think about it, Josephine,” Mac said.

  “Think about what?” I said, trying not to look guilty.

  He narrowed his eyes. “You are thinking about it. Listen to me. You set one foot in Edna’s apartment and I find out about it, I’ll charge you with breaking and entering.”

  “No. Of course, I won’t,” I said. But I had a hard time meeting his gaze.

  “We should have the test results by tomorrow, and then we’ll see what comes next.” He was taking my urine to the hospital for testing, since the crime laboratory was notoriously slow.

  “Meanwhile, get something to eat and take it easy. And no more of your trying to catch the thief antics.”

  After he left, Lill cooked me an omelet, and then she and Devi watched me eat it.

  ~ ~ ~

  Mac called to tell me that zolpidem had been found in my urine.

  “What’s that?”

  “Same as Ambien. It’s a sleeping med.”

  “Yes, I know what that is. So Eddie drugged me. That means he must be involved in the theft of the painting.”

  “I don’t know if I can convince a judge of that, but I’ll try.”

  A few hours later, he called to say the judge had felt the evidence was too weak to justify her issuing a search warrant.

  So far, the only people who knew about the theft of my decoy painting and my being drugged were Lill, Devi, Mac, and the thief or thieves. The nurse had been told I’d had a dizzy spell.

  After Mac said he couldn’t get a search warrant for Eddie’s place, I tried to talk Lill into going with me to be a lookout while I searched Edna’s apartment, but once again she refused.

  “I don’t want Mac mad at me, Josephine. And you know he would be. You’ll just have to accept the fact our trap didn’t work.”

  I wasn’t ready to accept any such thing, but I was at a loss of how to proceed.

  ~ ~ ~

  When I returned from dinner the following day, I found a message from the thief on my phone. She, and I use the term advisedly, wasn’t going to sell the painting to some unsuspecting collector. She was demanding I pay to get it back. I was certain the caller was Edna, although she did disguise her voice.

  She demanded a payment of $100,000 in twenty- and fifty-dollar bills. It struck me as odd she didn’t ask for more, but perhaps she thought more than that would be too heavy for her to handle. However, when I checked currency weights on the Internet, I discovered the $100,000 would weigh only seven pounds.

  Listening to her instructions was like being transported on to the set of a television cop drama: random serial numbers, placed in a dark green backpack, no tracking devices, no dye markers. And all of it ready to go by Thanksgiving Day when I would receive my final instructions.

  I called Mac, and when he arrived at the end of his shift, I played the message for him.

  “But the missing painting is only worth two thousand, so you are—”

  “Not planning to pay the ransom. But I can pretend. After all, I would like the painting back. And I expect you want to catch the thief?”

  “Of course.”

  “This means you’ll have to spend Thanksgiving here.”

  “Yep.”

  “How about I invite Devi and Lill? We can have dinner together while we wait for the ransom call.”

  “My neighbor’s invited me to dinner. You know, Teddy’s mom? I’d hate to disappoint them.”

  “Invite them here. No reason why we can’t have a party while we’re waiting, is there?”

  Mac shook his head. It meant we had a plan.

  Chapter Forty

  Devi

  I arrived at Josephine’s on Thanksgiving morning to find her already cooking. She’d told Lillian and me she would be preparing the dinner from scratch since, as she put it, “the Brookside chef will no doubt serve pressed turkey breast. And if there’s one food that can be mistaken for cardboard, that’s the one. No. We’re having a real turkey with all the trimmings.”

  Lillian was in her own kitchen preparing her assigned dishes since Josephine’s kitchen could barely accommodate the two of us. But as soon as Lillian finished putting together her sweet potato casserole, her grandmother’s stuffing, and a chopped salad, she joined us.

  I knew Mac was coming to dinner in order to be present when the ransom call came through. I also knew his neighbor and her son were joining us, and that, originally, he’d planned to have dinner with that neighbor.

  I was nervous about seeing him with another woman, although Josephine insisted he wasn’t “with” her. But I very much doubted that when they arrived. The neighbor, Kate, was attractive, and the two were comfortable together. Something Mac and I no longer seemed to be. It was also clear Mac
was fond of Teddy.

  Kate’s assignment had been dessert, and she arrived with both pumpkin and cherry pies. Mac’s contribution was also stuffing because, according to Josephine, who was directing the meal preparation like an army general on campaign, “you can never have too much stuffing.”

  Along with assisting Josephine, I’d contributed a vegetable casserole that was a Subramanian traditional dish—a mix of vegetables in a tomato cream sauce seasoned with curry and a dozen spices I’d had to buy, since I rarely cook anything very complicated anymore.

  When we were seated in the places assigned by Josephine, she asked us to join hands. I was sitting between Mac and Lillian, and as Mac took my hand in his, I thought how lovely it was to touch him. I had only one of Mac’s hands, though, since Kate was holding the other one.

  Josephine suggested that we each think of something we were especially grateful for and to share that.

  Kate said, “good neighbors,” and smiled at Mac. Teddy, after prompting and an explanation from Kate, said, “taking walks with Mac and Bruno.” Josephine said, “finding new friends,” and smiled at Lillian, Mac, and me. Lillian echoed Josephine’s “finding new friends,” and then it was my turn.

  “I’m especially grateful, Josephine and Lillian, for the gift of your friendship. And, Mac, thank you for being there when I needed your help.”

  When I said that last bit, he squeezed my hand. It was a light squeeze, and I wondered if he’d done the same thing to Kate when she’d said she was thankful for him. Probably. It was the nice thing to do.

  Mac was the last to speak. “I’m thankful for everyone around this table and for what you add to my life. In no particular order: Erdradour Scotch, naked poker, a dog to walk, and Teddy.”

  Teddy gave Mac one of his incandescent grins. Then we let go of each other’s hands and started passing dishes around the table.

  Mac had seconds of my casserole, but that provided only a tiny measure of satisfaction in a day that should have been filled with gratitude but was instead shaded by an imminent sense of loss. For once Mac apprehended the thief, there’d be no reason for his continuing presence in our lives.