Died in the Wool

by Rett MacPherson

  “Please?” she asked with her hands clasped together.

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  “We will?” Rudy asked. I tried to tell him to shut up with my eyes, but that never works with him.

  Mary slumped. “‘We’ll see’ always means no.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I said.

  “Although it probably does in this case,” Rudy said, glaring at me.

  “She just wants her hair black so she can be different,” Rachel said. “Nobody at her school has black hair. Well, except for Lexy, but hers is natural. Nobody has fake black hair.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  “You just need to shut up,” Mary said to Rachel.

  “Oh, and who is gonna make me?”

  “Stop,” Rudy said.

  “I’ll come right over there and make you,” Mary countered.

  “You and what army?” Rachel asked.

  “Oh, jeez,” I said. “Stop. Eat. Next person that says a word gets grounded from the computer.”

  Both girls just looked at each other and made faces.

  “That means talking with your face, too.”

  “I wanna be a spy when I grow up,” Matthew said.

  Just then Eleanore came bursting into Velasco’s—you know, I’ve noticed that Eleanore never really enters a room in any other way other than bursting. Something told me she was here to see me. Maybe it was the fact that she headed straight for my table. Maybe it was the way she barreled over two waitresses and three-year-old Tommy Burgermeister to get to my table.

  “Uh-oh,” Rudy said.

  “That woman is not right,” Mary said. “She looks like a giant strawberry.”

  Yes, she did have on her strawberry outfit today. She usually reserves that for the Strawberry Festival. Maybe everything else was dirty. “Torie!”

  “Yes, Eleanore,” I said.

  “Your stepfather told me to shut my face.”

  I couldn’t help it. I burst into laughter, as did Mary and Rachel. Rudy tried to remain stoic, and Matthew was too busy killing his napkin to notice anything. “I’m glad you think that’s funny.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “It’s the way you said it,” Rachel said.

  Eleanore’s icy gaze nearly wilted Rachel on the spot. My daughter went back to eating her pizza.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Start from the beginning.”

  Eleanore pulled a chair from the table next to us and straddled it like a horse. “We were at the garden club meeting, which he is not even a member of, but anyway, and all I did was give my opinion on the rose show—which by the way, I have over thirty-seven callers voting for Mister Lincoln—and Colin jumped up and said, ‘Eleanore, shut your face.’ Well, let me tell you, I was never so insulted in all my life. So I asked him what gave him the right to even be at the meeting and he said, and I quote, ‘I am acting within the official capacity of the office of mayor.’ What in Hades does that mean, exactly?”

  “It means Colin is bored stiff and wants his old job back,” I said.

  “Torie,” Rudy said.

  “Well, he does,” I said.

  “You tell your mother to keep a tighter leash on him,” Eleanore said. “I was never so embarrassed. In front of all of my garden friends!”

  “Colin is not on a leash,” I said.

  Although my mother had insisted that he go to the meeting in the first place. I smiled to myself to think that maybe my mother does keep Colin on a leash. Of course, I think there’s no place that Colin would rather be than on the end of a string held by my mother.

  “Then your mother better get one,” Eleanore said. She took a piece of pizza from our table. “Because I will not stand for this. People can’t just publicly humiliate somebody else and get by with it. They can’t just behave like that and think it’s okay.” She took a big bite out of the slice of pepperoni and mushroom pizza, put the chair back, and left the restaurant with her confiscated food.

  “I really hate that woman,” Mary said.

  “That’s not nice,” I said. Rudy’s eyes were smiling at me, because he knew Mary had said what I really wanted to say.

  After dinner was over, Rudy paid the bill and met us outside. “Can we stop by Maddie Fulton’s on the way home?” I said.

  “Sure, as long as it’s fast, because I’m meeting the guys to go bowling in half an hour. Why?”

  “She has some information for me. Plus, I want to hear her side of what happened at the garden club meeting. I think Eleanore and Colin’s stories are both going to be slightly one-sided,” I said. “Besides, it’ll only take a minute.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  We drove through town with the windows down, and a warm, moist spring breeze tickled our faces through the open windows. It would have been an exceptionally calm and serene moment if it hadn’t been for Mary in the backseat saying, “Stop touching me.”

  “Chill,” Rachel said.

  “He won’t stop touching me,” Mary said. “Tell him to stop touching me.”

  “Matthew, stop touching Mary,” I said.

  “Mom! Do something! He won’t stop touching me,” Mary cried in hysterics.

  “For the love of God, Matthew, stop touching your sister,” I said.

  “Is this the house?” Rudy asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll just be a minute.” I jumped out of the car—I couldn’t get out of there fast enough—and left Rudy to deal with the kids.

  The lights were on in Maddie’s house, but she didn’t answer the door when I knocked. I knocked again. I could hear Mary screaming from the car and Rudy yelling something about sleeping in the stables with the horses. I tried the doorknob, and it was unlocked.

  “Torie, do not go in that house,” Rudy called out from the car window.

  “I’ll just be a minute.” I was a bit worried about her, since she wasn’t answering the door. If I entered and she was indecent, I would apologize until the cows came home, but if there was something wrong, she’d be eternally grateful. I took the chance and entered the house. “Maddie? It’s me, Torie.”

  She wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen, so I headed down the hallway toward the bedrooms. In the first bedroom on the left, I found Maddie lying on the floor with the phone knocked off the hook. Her face was locked in a horrible grimace, and spittle ran from her mouth. Her back arched, she was in the throes of some sort of seizure. “Oh, Jesus,” I said. I flipped open my cell phone and called the sheriff’s office directly.

  “Mort, it’s Torie. Get an ambulance out to Maddie Fulton’s house right away, and I mean fast. Break the sound barrier if you have to.”

  Just then I heard Mary’s voice getting louder and louder. “I cannot live one more day with that freak you call a daughter,” she said, rounding the corner. “Oh, gross.”

  “Get out of here, Mary.”

  “Mom? What’s the matter with her?”

  “Get out!”

  “Mommy?” Then she burst into tears.

  * * *

  The ambulance was there within five minutes.

  Followed by Sheriff Mort.

  Followed by Colin.

  Colin entered the house as if he owned the place. “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  “I heard the call go out,” he said.

  “You heard— Colin, do you have a police radio on at home?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” he asked.

  I shook my head as he tried to see around me into the hallway. I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Look, this is Mort’s crime scene,” I said. “Don’t do anything to step on his toes.”

  “What?” he asked. He gazed at me with a faraway look in his eyes. Then reality set in. “Oh. Right. As mayor, I just thought I should be here. What do you think happened?”

  “I don’t know. It looks like some sort of seizure.”

  “Is Maddie an epileptic?” he asked.

  “I was just getting ready to ask the same thing,” Mort said as he walked t
oward us from the bedroom where I’d found Maddie.

  “Not that I know of. I don’t really know her that well,” I said. “She doesn’t wear a bracelet or anything, does she?”

  “Didn’t find one. I’ve found nothing in her medicine cabinets that indicates she was taking any medicine for epilepsy. Or any medicine at all. I found some Aleve and some Robitussin. That was it,” Sheriff Mort said.

  “Medicine cabinet, that’s good,” Colin said. “Good to check there.”

  Mort gave him a sideways glance and directed his conversation to me. “Tell me what you were doing here.”

  I told him about stopping by to get some information from her. “I just found her like that,” I said.

  Mort motioned me back to the bedroom, and Colin followed, nearly bumping into me. “Be careful where you step. What do you see here?” Mort asked.

  “Well, she obviously went for the phone,” I said.

  The bed was made, and on it, I assumed, was one of Glory Kendall’s quilts. It was an unfinished project, pin-basted to the batting but not yet quilted. Maddie had mentioned she was getting the quilts together to give to me for the display. There was a pile of dirty laundry in the corner of the room and a still-life painting on the wall; the nightstand held a glass of water, some straight pins, a hairbrush, and a telephone. “I don’t know what you want me to see,” I said.

  “If it was a real seizure, she wouldn’t have had time to react to get to the phone. Some epileptics, if they’ve been epileptics for a long time, can sometimes tell when a seizure is about to come on. But for a seizure to just hit a person who’s never had one—she honestly wouldn’t have been able to get to the phone.”

  “Maybe she knocked it off the hook accidentally,” Colin said. “In the violence of the seizure.”

  “I’m thinking that’s more plausible,” Mort said.

  “If it’s not epilepsy, what are you suggesting?” I asked.

  “Poison,” Colin said.

  “It’s too early to tell—and she could have had a seizure—but my gut instinct is with Colin on this one. Poison,” Mort said.

  “What?” I said. The creepiest feeling overcame me. “But who? And why?”

  Then my eyes grew wide. Mort and Colin both looked at me. “What?” Mort said.

  “Maddie told me that somebody was in her house last night,” I said. “Sheriff, you need to dust the sliding glass door in the kitchen for prints and … and … check the garden for shoe prints. Especially by the elephant ears and Graham Thomas.”

  “The what?” he asked.

  I went to Maddie’s bookshelf in the living room and chose a book on roses. I checked the glossary for Graham Thomas and then flipped to the page. “A rosebush that looks like this,” I said.

  “All right,” Mort said. “I’ve already called the hospital and the ambulance, telling them I suspect poison. Hopefully, you got here in time and they can give her an antidote.”

  “What kind of poison do you think it was?” I asked.

  “Strychnine,” Colin said.

  “Exactly,” Mort said. “It’s the only kind of poison I know of that makes the back arch like that. Which is why I think it was poison instead of a medical condition. She wasn’t having a seizure when I saw her. She was locked in this position.”

  “Strychnine?” I said. My voice sounded hollow, and my fingers tingled.

  “It’s a really nasty way to die,” Mort said.

  “Die? She’s gonna die?” I asked.

  “Not necessarily. I think you got here just as it happened,” Mort said. “Plus, I don’t know how big of a dose she got. It takes less than seven or eight drops to kill you, but there’s a chance … She might live.”

  “Might?” I asked.

  “Who would do such a thing?” Sheriff Mort said.

  Colin inclined his head as though willing me to read his thoughts. Evidently it worked. “No, not Eleanore,” I said.

  “Eleanore?” Mort asked.

  “Eleanore Murdoch,” I said. “She and Maddie have been arguing over this stupid rose show, but honestly, Eleanore wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Well, it wasn’t a fly that was poisoned,” Sheriff Mort said. “It was a woman.”

  Ten

  The next day, after lunch, I was at the Gaheimer House helping Geena with the Kendall quilts when the sheriff came by to see me. Mort entered the house with his hat in his hand. There wasn’t a line or a crease anywhere on his uniform. It was almost as if he hadn’t sat down since he’d gotten dressed. His violet eyes looked worried. “Torie, I, uh…”

  “What?” I asked. “How’s Maddie?”

  “She made it through the night. She’s unconscious right now. They’re keeping her that way. I’m pretty sure she’s going to make it. Evidently, she didn’t get enough of the poison to kill her. I’ve no idea when she’ll be able to speak and talk with me, though.”

  “Oh, thank God,” I said. “Was it strychnine?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Absorbed through the skin. Not ingested.”

  “Oh,” I said, because, well, I wasn’t sure what else to say to that.

  “The prints on the sliding glass door were Eleanore Murdoch’s,” he said. “We’re checking the shoe prints in the garden with all of the shoes in her closet.”

  I was speechless. I felt for the chair behind me as my mouth went dry. I never actually sat down, though. That would have taken far too much concentration.

  “She’s being arrested as we speak,” he said. “Deputy Miller is doing the deed.”

  “I don’t believe this,” I said. “Eleanore is arrogant, flighty, petty—and, yeah, sometimes she has a bit of a mean streak, but attempted murder? My God, Mort, I don’t think Eleanore could figure out how to get her hands on strychnine! She’s not the sharpest tack in the box.”

  “Well, she’s got motive and her prints are on the back door and you said yourself that Maddie had told you somebody had been in her house the night before,” he said.

  “Motive?” I shrieked. “What motive?”

  “The rose show,” he said. “Something about rose selections. The whole town is talking about it.”

  I laughed. “Oh, that is preposterous,” I said. “If Eleanore would try to kill Maddie over a rose, she would have killed me a long time ago. We’ve butted heads on so many issues, it’s not funny. It’s also no secret. I mean, honestly, Mort. She’d have more motivation to kill me than she would Maddie, and I’m still here.”

  Colin came in the door at that moment, gazed around the room, found Mort and me, and said, “You’re arresting Eleanore.”

  “Yes,” Mort said.

  “Damn,” Colin said. “I’ve always wanted to arrest that woman.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “If Eleanore broke into Maddie’s house to kill her, don’t you think she would have worn gloves?” I said.

  “Not necessarily. Maybe it didn’t occur to her to wear gloves because she never thought the death would be investigated as a homicide,” he said.

  “Well, if she’s stupid enough to leave prints everywhere, I don’t think she’d be smart enough to kill Maddie,” I said. I folded my arms as if there were nothing else to say.

  “Nevertheless, Torie, I’ve got to make the arrest,” he said.

  My cell phone rang then. It was my mother. “Eleanore Murdoch’s been arrested.”

  “I know,” I said. “Mort is here now telling me. Let me call you back.” I hung up. “There has to be something we’re not seeing,” I said to the guys. “You know, Maddie was supposed to give me information last night on the Kendall suicides.”

  “Uh-oh,” Colin said.

  Mort and I glared at him.

  “This is the way it always starts,” Colin said. “She finds some little connection, some little bitty thread to link today to back then, and then she won’t let you rest until she builds a whole damn bridge.”

  “Do you mind?” I said to Colin. “Who let you in, anyway?”

  “I don�
�t understand what the century-old Kendall suicides have to do with anything,” Mort said.

  “Maybe nothing. I just find it strange that she’d tell me to come see her, that she had information, and then she ends up poisoned. A big coincidence,” I said.

  “Coincidences do happen,” Mort said.

  “Try telling her that,” Colin said. “Just you try to tell her that.”

  “Colin, please go home. Or go chase a tiny ball around with a big stick,” I said.

  “Golf course is closed for some reason. A drainage issue,” he said.

  “That’s not my problem,” I said.

  Just then Helen Wickland came in the front door, out of breath and panting. “They’ve just arrested Eleanore Murdoch,” she said. I think she’d run all the way from the Murdoch Inn to the Gaheimer House to tell me the news.

  “We know,” all three of us said simultaneously.

  “She’s asking for you, Torie,” Helen said.

  I glanced at the sheriff. “Are you taking her to Wisteria?”

  He nodded.

  “All right. Helen, will you go with me?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “I’ll even drive. Maybe I’ll get to see Eleanore in a prison uniform. That would make my day.”

  Helen and I left Mort and Colin to twiddle their thumbs. Helen nodded to her car across the street and held up her keys. Helen loves to drive her little red Mini Cooper. In a town where you don’t really need to drive anywhere, Helen would drive from her garage to the mailbox just for the sake of driving. On the drive to Wisteria we broke most of the speed limits all the way there. Except for when we approached the stray cow in the middle of the Outer Road, I don’t think Helen braked at all.

  “You know there’s no love lost between me and Eleanore,” Helen said.

  “I know,” I said, gripping the oh-shit bar as she took a turn at fifty.

  “But there is no way that woman tried to kill Maddie,” she said. “Besides, if she had tried to kill her, it would have been big and messy and out there. Poison is too subtle for Eleanore.”

  “I agree.”

  Helen took another turn on two wheels. “Eleanore would have made a production out of it.”

  “Yes, I agree again.”

  “Who would have a reason to want Maddie dead?” Helen said, shifting gears. “I can’t think of anybody.”