by Vicki Delany
“Oh yes.” Constance smiled around her wineglass. “We’re very close. Then again, I worked hard at being a good mother to him.”
Karla let out a small moan, and I turned slightly to face Barbara, not wanting to hear Karla’s retort. “I lived in Manhattan for a number of years,” I said.
Karla coughed.
“It’s not for everyone,” Barbara said, “but for those who want to be where the action is, nothing beats it.”
“That’s what I found. I loved my time there, but I knew when it was time to come back to Rudolph.”
“Are you okay, Karla?” Ruth asked.
“I . . . I . . .”
I turned to see Karla clutching her throat. Her eyes were wide and frightened, her face red. Chairs were shoved back as the women jumped to their feet.
“Get her a glass of water,” someone yelled.
Mom pounded Karla’s back as she gasped for air.
“That won’t help,” Ruth said. “She has severe allergies. She’s having a reaction. Did someone put peanuts in their dish?”
“No!” the women said.
Vicky pulled her phone out of her skirt pocket, pushed buttons, and asked for an ambulance. Mattie leapt to his feet and let out a single bark.
“Does she keep an EpiPen?” I shouted. “Does anyone know?”
“She never said,” Ruth said.
I ran around the table and crouched in front of Karla. “Can you hear me, Karla? Do you have an EpiPen?” Her eyes were wide with fear, and she gripped her throat as though she were trying to force air into it. She didn’t reply.
I patted Karla’s hips, hoping to find the medicine in her pockets, but my fingers felt nothing bulkier than a tissue. “It’s not here.”
“She’s in Merry’s old room,” Mom said. “First bedroom on the right.”
“I’ll get it.” Barbara ran for the stairs.
Mom blew out the candles and turned up the lights.
“Stay with us, Karla,” I said. “Help’s coming.”
Vicky shouted into the phone, “Tell them to hurry.”
Ruth fell to her knees beside me. “Karla! Karla!”
I got to my feet to give her space, feeling totally helpless. I glanced at the women in the room. Some of them were weeping; they all appeared to be in shock. Constance held Karla’s hand, and Ruth rubbed her back. Genevieve had gone to stand at the window, where she stared out into the night, her back rigid.
I had no doubt Karla was suffering an anaphylactic shock, and that it had to have been caused by something she ate.
Everyone here knew Karla was severely allergic to peanuts. Could one of them possibly have been so careless as to forget?
Barbara ran into the dining room. “I can’t find it! I looked in her purse, in her toiletries bag, under the clothes in the drawer. Nothing.”
“She must have one,” Mom said. “She knows how allergic she is. Did any of you see it?”
Heads shook and voices said, “No.”
“Where is that ambulance?” Barbara shouted.
“It’s delayed,” Vicky said in a low voice. “Accident on the highway outside of town.”
“Did you tell them it’s an emergency?”
“Of course I did. She says at least ten to fifteen minutes.”
“She might not have that long,” Mom said. “I’m going to keep looking for that EpiPen. It has to be in her room somewhere.”
“I’ll help.” Genevieve turned away from the window and followed Mom upstairs.
Curious as to what was going on, Mattie was trying to force his big body between Karla and Ruth. Ruth pushed him away roughly. I grabbed his collar and pulled him into the kitchen. I shouted, “Stay!” and shut the door on him.
Ruth and Constance crouched beside Karla, murmuring to her to hold on, help was on the way.
“Is there anything we can do while we’re waiting?” Vicky asked into the phone. She listened to the answer, caught my eye, and shook her head. “Great, thanks.” She spoke to the room. “The ambulance is clear of the accident scene and on its way.”
“Thank heavens,” Ruth said.
I glanced at Karla’s place at the table. The remains of her meal showed traces of everything. Like the rest of us, she’d dug in with gusto and had taken a portion of each dish. Meat pie, chicken casserole, potatoes, quinoa and beans, curried egg salad, bread and cheese, kale salad, my green salad. Before serving ourselves, each of the women had proudly told us what they’d made or bought.
I looked at the food again. No one had laid claim to the curried egg salad. It was light brown in color, strongly flavored with curry powder and what I suspected was a touch of mango chutney.
Was it possible the dish contained peanuts ground so finely they could be concealed in the spices? And were the spices so overpowering that Karla would keep eating?
Karla let out one long gasp and fell off her chair.
Constance screamed, and Ruth burst into tears. Barbara moaned.
I whispered to Vicky, frozen in shock, still clutching her phone, “Tell the dispatcher to send the police as well.”
Chapter 6
Detective Diane Simmonds of the Rudolph police department and I are well acquainted because of my job and hers—she shops at Mrs. Claus’s, and I’ve been involved in murder cases before.
I had no doubt this was an attempted murder. It might have been an accident—someone playing a mean joke—but that didn’t matter. Not if the end result put a woman’s life in danger.
Karla had not recovered consciousness. The ambulance arrived first, closely followed by two uniformed officers in a patrol car. We seven women stood against the walls, watching the paramedics work. The faces of the others reflected varying degrees of shock, and I’m sure mine did also. A wineglass had tipped over, and red wine was leaking into the heritage walnut table. Mom made no move to wipe it up, so I picked up a discarded napkin and did so. The napkin could be thrown away—the table couldn’t. The serving dishes were mostly empty, and the plates almost scraped clean. Napkins and cutlery had been tossed in a jumble on the table.
The paramedics administered the contents of an EpiPen into Karla’s limp arm. One of them said, “This needs to be a fast trip,” and they quickly and efficiently loaded her onto their stretcher. A uniformed officer said, “I’ll come with you. Officer Reynolds, you stay here.”
“I’m coming, too,” Mom said. “She’s my houseguest. Merry, make sure the police have everything they need. Perhaps everyone would like coffee or tea.”
“I think we should stay out of the kitchen,” I said.
“Why?” Ruth asked.
I didn’t answer. “You go, Mom. I’ll stay here until you get back.”
She grabbed her coat out of the closet as she hurried away. I went to the front window and looked out. Two patrol cars were there now, and blue and red lights washed the bare trees in our yard. A few lamps came on in the houses on the street, and heads popped out of doors. The ambulance sped past, siren breaking the quiet of the night. As I watched, a BMW pulled up to the curb and Detective Diane Simmonds got out. Officer Candice Campbell, whom I knew from high school, was standing on the sidewalk. She spoke to Simmonds briefly and then they marched up the sidewalk side by side.
Candy lifted her hand to knock, but I opened the door before her hand could fall, and the two police officers came into the house.
“Merry,” Simmonds said. “What’s happening here?”
She wore no uniform, badge, or other insignia, but despite the mop of curly red hair, wide green eyes, and trim figure, no one could be of any doubt that Diane Simmonds was now in charge here. She wore a black leather jacket, cropped at the waist, and slim jeans tucked into knee-high leather boots with two-inch heels.
Six faces had turned to watch her come in. She studied everyone in turn. Barbara, Ruth, and C
onstance had dropped into chairs at the dining room table. Genevieve paced up and down across the living room floor. Vicky stood beside me.
The uniformed officer who’d been the first to arrive, so young I wondered if he was shaving yet, had been shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other, and now appeared relieved to have someone in authority take over.
“My mother has weekend guests,” I said. “Old college friends. She—Karla—had an allergic reaction to something in the food. She collapsed, and we called 911.”
“I’m sure she’s going to be all right,” Genevieve said. “They’ll treat her at the hospital, right?”
Barbara and Ruth nodded in agreement.
I lowered my voice so only Detective Simmonds could hear. “I don’t think this was an accident or carelessness.”
She studied my face. “Is that so? I’ll talk to you first. Was the meal prepared here or brought in?”
“Here.”
“Let’s go into the kitchen.”
We walked through the living room and into the dining room. As we passed the table, Constance reached for the cheese knife.
“Don’t touch anything,” Simmonds snapped. Constance’s hand leapt back as though she’d touched an open flame. “Officer Campbell, please keep these women company until I get back. No one is to disturb a thing. Officer Reynolds, we seem to be attracting a crowd. Please go outside and tell folks to mind their own business.”
“Karla had an allergic reaction,” Ruth said. “That’s all. She’ll be okay once they get her to the hospital.”
“Until I have determined that,” Simmonds said, “you will do as I said.”
“I’d like to go upstairs and lie down,” Genevieve said.
“May I ask your name?”
“Genevieve Richmond.”
“Please wait here, Ms. Richmond.” Simmonds’s voice was low, her tone polite, but there could be no doubt that it was not a suggestion.
Barbara stood up. She was about my height, considerably shorter than Simmonds, but she did her best to stretch an inch or two. She put her hands on her hips. “And you are?” she asked.
“Detective Diane Simmonds. Rudolph PD.”
“I’m Barbara Shaughnessy, and you can’t detain us. We’re guests here, in this house. We’ll keep ourselves available for when we’re needed, but in the meantime, I would also like to go to my room.”
“Do you really want to get into a fight with me?” Simmonds asked. “Or do you want me to find out, as quickly and easily as possible, what happened to your friend?”
“I’m not talking about fighting,” Barbara said. “Simply making sure we all know our rights.”
“You do that, Counselor.” Simmonds turned and continued on her way.
“How do you know Barbara’s a lawyer?” I asked as I followed her into the kitchen.
“I can smell them a mile off,” she growled.
I’d temporarily forgotten about Mattie. He must have been highly agitated or at least very curious when the new arrivals began streaming through the front door, but he’d settled back down to enjoy a snooze on the warm floor beside the oven. He leapt to his feet the moment the kitchen door opened. He took one look at Diane Simmonds and dropped into a sit. If he could have grinned from ear to ear, he would have—instead, his big wet tongue lolled to one side.
“Matterhorn,” she said. “Nice to see you.” She walked over to him and held out a hand. He lifted his paw, and they shook.
Simmonds had told me her parents trained animals for TV and movies. She’d obviously learned a lot from them. She and Mattie seemed to have an almost mental bond. Sometimes I felt a twinge of unreasonable jealousy. All she had to do was cock an eyebrow and my dog immediately fell into sync with whatever she wanted.
She let go of his paw and glanced around the kitchen, taking in the empty pots, the chocolate cake and mince tarts sitting in the center of the island, waiting to be served. “If you think the food had been tampered with, Merry . . . And if the food was prepared in here . . .”
“I’ll take Mattie outside,” I said. If something had been in the food, the police would want to examine everything in the kitchen, and they didn’t need the assistance of a slobbering, excessively friendly, eager-to-help Saint Bernard. “I can put him in the garage.”
“I’ll wait here.”
I went to the back door and slapped my thigh. “Come on, boy. Let’s go. Outside. Come on, Mattie. Mattie! I said, come here.”
Simmonds was studying the contents of the trash bin under the sink. She didn’t so much as turn around or raise her voice as she said, “Matterhorn, you will do what Merry tells you.”
He jumped to his feet and ran toward me. He dashed past me, and then turned to look back over his shoulder as if saying, What’s taking you so long?
I followed him outside. I pulled up one of the rolling doors of the converted carriage house that served as the garage. Mom had driven Dad to the airport for his flight to Fort Lauderdale, so both their cars were in the garage. The rest of the space was taken by the lawnmower, garden equipment, bags of mulch and potting soil, Eve’s and Chris’s hockey equipment, Carole’s and my skates, boxes of Christmas decorations awaiting the official start of the season, a couple of broken lamps that for some reason had never been thrown away, the trash bins, and neatly stacked logs waiting their turn in the fireplace. All of which meant there wasn’t much room left for a giant dog.
“Sorry about this,” I said. “I’ll try not to be too long.” Fortunately, the night wasn’t too cold, and he was a Saint Bernard, after all, bred to the icy mountain passes of Switzerland.
I tried to ignore his look of pained disappointment when he realized the garage door was shutting, leaving him alone inside, and went back into the house.
Chapter 7
While I’d been seeing to Mattie, Simmonds had pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves, and she was sorting through my mom’s trash. She straightened as I came in. “I want to talk to everyone who was here, but first, tell me why you think someone poisoned that woman deliberately. What’s her name?”
“Karla. I don’t know her last name, but the others will. She’s from Minnesota, here for the weekend. She’s highly allergic to peanuts, and that was no secret. She told everyone, several times. She told me she went through the shopping bags to make sure no one had forgotten.”
“Accidents happen,” Simmonds said.
“So they do. All I’m saying is I have my suspicions. You might want to examine the curried egg salad in particular. This was a potluck dinner, and everyone contributed something, even Vicky and me. At the beginning of the meal, we went around the table and each of the guests told us what she’d made or bought.”
“Everything was prepared here? In this kitchen?”
“The guests are all from out of town, and they’re staying here, so if they cooked, they did it here. Vicky brought the cheese and bread from her bakery as well as the mince tarts. The chocolate cake came from the bakery also, but no one ate the desserts yet, as you can see. I bought the salad ingredients at the supermarket and tossed it with the dressing, also store-bought, after I got here. But no one, I realized later, laid claim to the curried egg salad. It was delicious, so there should have been no reason the cook wouldn’t tell us she’d made it.”
“This dish was strongly seasoned?”
“Very strongly. Curry, mango chutney, maybe some paprika sprinkled on the top for extra color.”
“Did you recognize the bowl in which it was served?”
“Yes, it’s one of Mom’s, as were all the other serving dishes.” I felt a small shudder and glanced around me. We were in Mom and Dad’s kitchen, the warm friendly place in which my three siblings and I had laughed and fought and grown up as good food was prepared and enjoyed. I shook my head, chasing the feeling of menace away.
Simmonds, of course, notice
d. “Are you okay, Merry?”
“I’m fine. Terrible thing to have happen here. If it did happen, and I’m not simply imagining things.”
“I don’t think you are,” she said. “You have good instincts. Did you see people preparing their contributions or adding the finishing touches?”
I shook my head. “No. It was ready when I arrived, and everyone had gathered in the living room. I was the last one here. We had cheese and bread and crackers in the living room for appetizers, and when the guests took seats at the table, Vicky and I volunteered to serve. Everything was ready to be brought out: either resting on the island or keeping warm in the oven. All we did was carry the bowls and dishes out.”
“Anything else I should know?” she asked.
“After Karla collapsed, we tried to find her EpiPen. Her room and her purse were searched, but it couldn’t be found. Karla must carry one, being as allergic as she is.”
“That is interesting. Thank you, Merry. Let me talk to the women, see what they have to say. I’ll save you for last.”
“Okay.”
My phone rang. At the same time Simmonds reached into her pocket and pulled her own out. We threw each other a glance before answering.
I turned away. “Mom? What’s happening?”
A sob came down the line. My mother cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, dear. Karla has died.”
“Oh my gosh, Mom. I am so sorry.”
“Where are you, dear?”
“I’m still here. At the house. I’ll stay until you get back. Do you want me to call Dad?”
“I’ll do that. I have the number for Karla’s house, so I’ll call her husband also.” She hung up.
Simmonds’s face was grim. “That was the officer who went to the hospital with the ambulance. In light of what you told me, this is now a potential murder investigation.” She punched buttons on her phone. “I’m calling in a forensic team.”