The Poisoned Pen

by E. Joan Sims

  Copyright Information

  Copyright © 2007 by E. Joan Sims.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  www.wildsidepress.com

  Chapter One

  I liked to think of myself as a product of the New South: an energetic, intelligent woman who has taken advantage of every opportunity to achieve a fairly comfortable degree of financial and personal freedom by her middle years—early middle years, that is. But surrounded, as I was, by graceful arabesques of white wrought iron and cushioned by needlepoint pillows with “Home Sweet Home,” “Forget Hell!” and “You might be a Yankee if…” worked into the design—and seated within spittin’ distance of a garden overflowing with blossoms of camellia, gardenia, and magnolia—I was enjoying much the same life as had my old fashioned southern grandmother. Perhaps the only difference between us would be that instead of sneaking sips of her husband’s Mint Julep when no one was looking, I was quite openly enjoying a delightful Merlot in no one’s company but my own.

  A cool evening breeze wafted from the direction of the meadow carrying with it the delicate fragrance of wild honeysuckle and Carolina jasmine that grew in abundance on the ence separating pasture and lawn. Even the family of rabbits nibbling on red clover underneath the pear trees seemed to notice the sweetness in the air—every so often they raised their fuzzy, long-eared little heads and sniffed appreciatively.

  Too bad, I thought as I poured another glass of wine, that I cannot relax and enjoy a quiet evening on my own patio. I had tried to shut my mind to the raucous shouts and screams coming from behind the carriage house and down the lane, but it was hopeless. No matter how delicious the wine, or how cute the bunnies, I was still annoyed.

  I took another sip and cursed my mother’s generosity for the umpteenth time since the soccer game began at four o’clock. When the Rowan Springs Wildkittens called two weeks ago and begged for a place to hold their matches, Mother’s first inclination had been to say no; but then the desperate mother in charge of the team had explained that it was for the sake of twelve adorable little girls—aged eight to eleven years old—and Mother didn’t have the heart to refuse.

  At first, I didn’t give it a second thought. Let the little darlings play their hearts out was my reaction. The field was going to be planted with soybeans in the fall. Surely whatever small amount of damage done by twenty-four girlish little feet would be of no consequence. I forgot about the superhuman strength of girlish vocal cords. Each child, I was positive, had the ability to break an eardrum at a hundred paces simply by screaming, “Goal!” at the top of her lungs. They had been at it now for about an hour, and I was ready to take Mother’s John Deere and manically mow them all down.

  And this was just the first game.

  “My! They do seem to be having fun!” observed Mother pleasantly, as she joined me on the patio. Her smile, as she offered a slice of roasted garlic crostini from a tray full of similar goodies, was almost as irritating as the noise. I told her so.

  “Paisley Sterling! You are becoming quite the grouch these days. What’s the matter, dear? Having trouble with your manuscript?”

  Like most mothers, mine always knew exactly what to say to alter the course of a conversation, change the target of my frustrations, and get my goat.

  “The latest Leonard Paisley is coming along just fine, thank you very much!” I answered with some asperity.

  Her response was a loud and disapproving sigh—a sigh obviously meant to convey her opinion of the hard-boiled detective hero of the mystery series I wrote for a considerably good living. Mother had been after me for months to forego Leonard’s dark and murky world of pimps and drug dealers and write about what she termed “more pleasant subjects.” She blamed my mental association with Leonard for my somewhat earthy turn of phrase and casual manner of dress. I had news for her: since my daughter, Cassie, and I returned to Meadowdale Farm three years ago, I had thrown away my pantyhose and high-heeled shoes—as well as my desire to impress anyone, including my own mother.

  Cassie and I had lived in Manhattan for too many years after we barely escaped the bloody coup that ravaged our home in San Romero. We left that beautiful South American country shortly after my husband, Raphael DeLeon, disappeared into the jungle on our wedding anniversary, an apparent victim of that same revolution.

  Cassie and I had sought refuge in the welcoming home of my college roommate. Already well established as a literary agent, Pamela Winslow was the one who suggested I take up writing as a means of supporting myself and my little girl.

  After several years as a successful author of children’s books, I changed direction and took the long dark path down the road to murder and mayhem with the fictitious Leonard Paisley. Leonard was an overnight sensation. The revenue from his wild adventures gave me the financial freedom to bid farewell to the big city and return to my roots.

  Cassie and I loved the small town of Rowan Springs, Kentucky. She even came back here after college to open a small and thriving bookstore. We were both as happy as clams. I saw no reason to change the status quo, and that included Leonard.

  “Tart, dear?”

  “Yes, you are, a bit,” I responded with a lazy smile, “but I don’t mind.” Mother’s delicious food was enough to calm any beast, and I was feeling a bit more mellow. I swallowed a flaky country ham and cheese pastry, and reached for more; but she had other ideas.

  “If you insist on wearing those plebeian clothes, Paisley, darling, then perhaps you might at least shop for some jeans that fit. The ones you have on are looking indecently tight in the derriere. Have you put on some weight, dear?”

  My appetite fled in the direction of my good humor and I sought once again to disengage myself from my surroundings by closing my eyes and pretending I was all alone.

  “Hallo, Miz Sterling,” interrupted an adenoidal little voice.

  I opened my eyes to see a skinny, disheveled little girl of about nine standing shyly at the edge of the patio. She was wearing a bright yellow shirt, blue satin shorts, scuffed shin guards, and the muddiest tennis shoes I had ever seen. Her face was freckled and tan from the summer sun, with pale blue eyes and thin lips which held the faintest promise of a smile in the corners.

  “I’m a Wildkitten—you know, the soccer team,” she explained unnecessarily as she held out a large envelope—its edges soiled and covered with enough dirty fingerprints to drive Sherlock Holmes insane. “Thank you for letting us use your field,” she said. “It’s real nice.” Then she turned and ran, scattering terrified bunnies in her wake.

  “What a dear little thing,” murmured Mother, holding the grimy card carefully by two dainty fingertips. “And what a sweet thought. Here,” she said tossing the envelope in my direction, “you read it to me, dear.”

  “Hummpf!” I muttered. “Looks like they could have washed their hands first.” The greeting card was handmade—with crude, but charming, crayon outlines of twelve girls standing around the edge of a green field filled with rabbits and soccer balls. Off in the distance was our own big rambling home with all four chimneys smoking.

  “I have to admit it’s cute. Somebody’s a real little artist. I wonder if it was the booger baby who brought this?”

  “Paisley! She did not have…well, what you said! Don’t be rude.”

  “Then you finally do need glasses, Mother, if you didn’t….”

  “Gran!” called Cassie from the big screened in porch on the back of the house. “Telephone. It’s Mavis Madden. Shall I tell her you’re busy, or do you feel up to talking to the old witch?”

  “Honestly, Paisley,” sputtered Mother. “I don’t know what’s come over you and Cassandra. I do believe you have both taken leave of all your good manners.
I thought when you came back here to live you would remember the way your father and I brought you up; but you both seem to have regressed even more into those dreadfully sarcastic Yankee ways.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Mother always chose to forget that she was just one little Mason-Dixon line removed from “those dreadful Yankees.” Kentucky was not known as a border state because of its proximity to Mexico, or Canada. Only a few hundred miles separated us from our northern neighbors—some of whom had even graced our esteemed family tree. I especially liked to recall the sad tale of one great, great, great uncle who had made that short journey out of family loyalty during the Civil War, and ended up swinging by his neck on a lonesome oak for his trouble.

  Ordinarily, Mother would have sought any excuse to avoid talking to Mavis Madden. She didn’t think any more highly of the old busybody than Cassie did; but to teach us a lesson in “southern lady manners” she hurried to the phone. Cassie took her seat on the patio and chuckled as she related Mavis’s latest bit of tattle.

  “According to Rowan Spring’s own unofficial town crier, William Budd is growing pot in his basement.”

  I sneaked a handful of Mother’s pastries and popped one in my mouth before I replied. “And just…mmmm, yum…how did Mavis figure this out?”

  Cassie poked around on the hors d’oeuvre tray, discarding capers and meticulously removing fresh dill sprigs from the open-faced smoked salmon sandwiches. “She saw him carrying sacks of manure and potting soil from his truck down through the cellar door.”

  Cassie licked her fingers and flicked a green peppercorn at a greedy Bluejay whose appetite had overcome his natural caution. The bird caught her gift in mid-air and flew off to a branch in the chestnut tree to savor his bounty.

  “Personally,” confided my daughter, “I think Mr. Budd could use few tokes of pot.”

  “Cassie!”

  “I know how you feel about drugs, Mom, but you have to admit there never was a more uptight soul in all the world than that poor little man. For goodness sakes,” she asked, changing the subject, “why does Gran have to mess up perfectly delicious food with all of these silly peppercorns and capers?”

  I smiled, remembering. “You’re so like your father, Cassie.”

  “Am I really, Mom?” she asked softly. “How? Tell me, please.”

  She uncurled her long slim legs and came to sit by me on the chaise lounge. Her dark hair hung like a shiny curtain around the porcelain oval of her face—her almost-black, brown eyes sparkling under soft, sooty, eyelashes. “Tell me about when I was a little girl,” she begged. For a fleeting moment I saw a much younger child in the arms of the handsome father whose memory she adored. Hot tears welled behind my eyelids, and I had to clear my throat before I spoke.

  “We lived in a garden,” I whispered. “Not so unlike this one—except that it was bigger, and yet smaller at the same time.” I always began the story the same way, and Cassie knew it well.

  “I know, I know,” she laughed. “Bigger outside and smaller in the middle.”

  “Yes, “ I nodded, smiling. “In the center of the house was an open area—a tiled courtyard—filled with flowers and a fountain.”

  “Which tinkled merrily all day and all night.”

  “Hey, who’s telling this story?”

  “You, Mom,” she laughed, snuggling down next to me. “But don’t forget the part about the parrots.”

  “Of course, not. That’s the best….”

  “Paisley!” shouted Mother in a shrill voice from the porch. “Paisley, come quick! Oh, dear! Something dreadful has happened!”

  Chapter Two

  Cassie and I raced side by side down the walk. She reached the porch door first, slamming it open for the both of us.

  “Gran! Are you all right?” she cried.

  Mother was holding the portable phone in a limp hand. Her face was almost as white as the pearls around her slender neck.

  “Mother,” I gasped. “What in the world?”

  “That charming little girl—Nell Jane Bradley—the one who brought us the thank you card—she has disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” I whispered in a hoarse voice. “Where?”

  “Don’t be a goose, Paisley!” answered Mother, her voice sharp with worry. “If we knew that, then the child wouldn’t be missing!”

  My stomach was doing flip-flops—ham and cheese pastries churned around and around in a sea of peppercorn acid. I had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting, and the sour aftertaste made me even more nauseous.

  “You okay, Mom? You look a little green around the gills.”

  “I…I’m fine. It’s just that….”

  I made it to the sink in the nick of time.

  “Cassandra, don’t stand there with your mouth open. Hand your mother a damp towel. I’ll make some tea.”

  “Tell me more, Mother,” I asked, after my second soothing sip of Earl Grey.

  “Very well. If you don’t ask any more silly questions.”

  I bit my tongue and let her continue in her own roundabout way.

  “I was talking to Mavis. Well, actually, I was trying to get out of talking to Mavis, when the phone made that annoying beeping sound.”

  “Call waiting,” I prompted.

  “Yes! Well, you know how I feel about that rude bit of business.”

  “Yes, Gran. We know you never answer ‘call waiting’,” sighed Cassie. “That’s why I never have a date.”

  “Yeah, right!” I laughed weakly, eager to throw off my sense of foreboding. We also knew that my daughter was so particular where men were concerned that even Prince Charming would have to submit a resume.

  “Well, it is rude,” insisted Mother. “But this time it was unrelenting and I had to answer to put a stop to it. One of the soccer mothers was on the other line. She said that Nell Jane never returned from delivering the card to us. The others waited for a few minutes, then went to look for her. When the search turned up nothing, they called for help. The woman wanted to warn us that the police and the emergency medical crew would be using our driveway to get back to the field where the children were playing.”

  At that moment we heard the swift crunch of gravel as Chief Andy Joiner’s police cruiser and two more like it raced up the drive and down pass the carriage house towards the lane. They were followed closely by the ambulance and the Lakeland County EMS.

  “Well, thanks for the warning, Mother,” I said, sarcastically. “It’s a good thing Watson wasn’t in the driveway!” Watson was my bilious green Jeep Cherokee—my pride and joy.

  “Or Aggie!” Cassie added. “She would have been squashed! By the way, where is Aggie? I haven’t seen her for hours.”

  Agatha Christie, Aggie for short, was Cassie’s ill-tempered Lhasa Apso. The dog was almost four years old now, but she hadn’t mellowed one little bit with age. In fact, she was even more evil than the benighted day Cassie when picked her out from the rest of her littermates and brought her to live with us. The dog was cute—of that there could be no doubt. She was white and soft, and as fuzzy as a cotton ball; but she didn’t like being touched, moved, nudged, or reprimanded. She had bitten me each and every time I had done any one of the above.

  Aggie could usually be found in the middle of my bed on my favorite down pillow. Cassie knew that, but I reminded her, anyway.

  “We all have to make sure our own little chicks are okay,” said Mother with a sad smile, as she watched Cassie rush off to my bedroom. “Maybe I’ll call your sister tonight. We haven’t talked for two weeks.”

  “Right!” I laughed—glad for the sound and feel of it. “She could have gotten married and divorced at least twice in two weeks.”

  “Paisley! Don’t be so unpleasant. You should rejoice that Velvet appears to have finally found happiness.”

  “Found it again, you mean! Let’s see—is Harry Mason Biddle III, Velvet’s number four, or number five? I can’t keep them straight. I hope she can.”

  Mother secretly a
greed with me, I was almost positive, but she never liked to show even a whit of favoritism. She changed the subject without batting an eyelash.

  “Are you going back in the field, dear?”

  “I was considering it, but I don’t want to get in the way of the police.”

  “I think you should, Paisley. Perhaps you could help with the children. Take them something to eat, or….”

  “Just a minute, Mother! The kids are still back there? Why in the blue-eyed world haven’t they gone home? Aren’t their parents worried sick?”

  “The woman who called me said Andy Joiner wanted everyone to stay exactly where they were until he got there.”

  I didn’t want to go. I didn’t even want to think about it. When Cassie was small I used to wake up in the wee small hours, sweating and terrified that she had gone missing like her father.

  “I’ll go,” I sighed. “Do you have some sweet tea or lemonade in the fridge? That might help. And maybe some cookies.”

  Mother smiled and patted my hand. “Yes, dear. I’ll have everything ready in a minute. Perhaps Cassie would like to keep you company. You two make a good team.”

  I found Cassie curled up on my bed with the nasty little puppy asleep in her arms. She was crying softly into the dog’s furry neck.

  “Oh, darling, don’t cry! They’ll find her.” I lay down next to her and stroked her hair. Aggie raised her sleepy head and bared her upper teeth. I got out of the way a second before she lunged and snapped—missing my fingers by barely an inch. Cassie stopped crying and began to laugh.

  “Oh, Mom!” she gasped. “You should have seen the look on your face!”

  “Damn, damn, and double damn! That rotten little beast!”

  “Mom!”

  “Okay,” I sighed. “If it makes you happy—the stinking little….”

  “Mom….”

  “Okay,” I smiled. “She can bite me anytime.” Nevertheless, I placed the other pillow carefully between me and Aggie before I sat back down. “Gran is fixing some tea and cookies for me to take to the soccer kiddies and their moms. Want to go with?”