Doomed by Dessert

by CeCe Osgood

  Abby poured herself a third glass of wine and lifted the glass to her mouth. That was when she first felt an itch in the sole of her right foot as if she'd been stung by bees. Then the left started to itch just as bad. Kicking off her sandals, she reached down to scratch her feet.

  The itch suddenly vanished, but then she noticed her toes. All ten were curled upward, and they refused to go down into their natural position. Even when she'd tried to force them down with her hands, they stayed curled up.

  Then it suddenly occurred to her that her feet and the curled-up toes weren't on the floor. She was floating up, no longer anchored to the earth by gravity.

  Speechless, she watched the floor receding away from her, and it was only when her head bumped against the ceiling that her voice returned. "Help me."

  It was more of a whimper than a cry, but it was enough to jolt her, and put gravity back into play.

  She fell into the chair with a slight thud.

  A moment later, Jill returned to the kitchen and found her mother with her head thrown back staring wide-eyed up at the ceiling.

  "Momma?" Jill looked up too. "What is it?"

  Abby gave her a sidelong look and then tapped her feet on the floor. The nice solid floor. "Are you okay, Momma?"

  "I'm not, uh, sure." She kept tapping her feet on the floor. "I guess I-I'm fine now. I got a little light-headed." How could she tell her daughter she'd floated up to the ceiling?

  She looked down. The toes were no longer curled up. They were normal now.

  Jill reached for the bottle on the table. "Maybe you had too much wine."

  Abby's nose crinkled. Could it be the wine? She took the bottle from Jill and checked the label. Who knew? Maybe there was a pesticide used on the grapes that could trigger some kind of hallucination.

  Jill looked worried, so she joked, "Guess I'm never buying this brand again."

  That night was the first time she had the dream. Now the same dream came to her over and over, and she'd wake up in a cold sweat with those terrifying images of flying and then falling from the sky.

  What did these things mean? The curled-up toes. The floating up to the ceiling. And the recurring dreams, or more accurately put, nightmares. "Is there something about turning thirty-five that people don't tell you? Like your mind starts to go?"

  Abby let the bath water in the tub drain out as she toweled off. "Ageing is such fun," she grumbled, then swallowed a big dose of regret remembering that Alan no longer had that option.

  Chapter Eight

  She slipped into her nightgown and stretched out on the right side of her bed. She had piled so many more books on the left side again, it was like being in a bunker. Good. I can use some protection these days.

  She was reaching for something to read when her hand landed on a thin black book. It felt strangely warm. She picked it up. It wasn't hers. It must be Jill's.

  It was a velvety black cover with nothing on the back and no title on the spine. The front, however, was rather spirited with its exaggerated and dramatic golden swirls. For a moment, the swirls seemed to flicker, and Abby thought she saw the outline of a cat.

  She peered closer. No, it was an elaborate abstract froufrou design, not a cat.

  She was about to open the book when Jill came bouncing into the bedroom, fluttering with excitement.

  "Guess what I just did?" Jill's silky chestnut brown bangs flopped over her face as she hopped onto the bed by her mother's feet. "I talked to a reporter and he—"

  "Whoa, wait a minute." Abby gawked at her. "You talked to a reporter?"

  "Yeah, but I didn't say anything, well, not much. I thought he saw me peeking out from the curtains, and, I don't know, I got curious and I decided to take him some cheese sticks and a bowl of beans and rice. He was the only one out there and he looked so miserable in the cold and, well, he's an old guy, maybe forty—"

  Abby hissed. "Stop with the ageist talk, missy."

  Jill snickered. "So, this really old guy gobbled down the food like in two seconds. Then he started talking. I didn't say much of anything, but he did, and he told me something you need to hear."

  Abby gazed at her child. This was such a different side to her normally shy teen who barely spoke to her classmates, let alone a stranger. And now she was chatting with a reporter.

  The world she knew was changing. A chill prickled up her spine as she flashed to the weirdo guy with the graying ponytail and the wolf tattoo. His words came back to her: Things are way different than they appear.

  She pushed away the memory to focus on Jill. "Okay. Tell me what I need to hear."

  Her daughter's voice lowered, like she was a spy wary of being bugged. "Poison."

  Abby knew immediately what Jill meant. Alan was poisoned. Now, it made sense. That was why the cops were interested in the pink box. They must've found traces of poison in the box. The pink box from my shop.

  "What kind of poison?"

  Jill shrugged. "The reporter didn't know."

  Abby's green eyes met Jill's as a terrible image washed over her: Abby in prison, and Jill having to live with Charles and Larissa. With renewed determination, she silently vowed that would never happen. Never.

  Which meant one thing: she had to prove her innocence by finding the killer. Yeah, like that's easy. I don't even know the first thing about finding a killer.

  "You could Google it, Momma," Jill said hopping off the bed.

  Abby's eyes swiveled to Jill. The kid was reading her mind again. "Google what?"

  "How to solve a murder mystery."

  Chapter Nine

  The next morning, she woke up, grateful for not having had the recurring nightmare of flying and falling during the night.

  Instead, she'd had a different dream. In this one, there were flashes of colors, at first bright and shiny, which suddenly morphed into ominous soiled colors in the shape of sinister-looking chocolate truffles.

  After giving it some thought, she concluded the dream was a product of her subconscious making an attempt to deal with what she now knew: someone had poisoned Alan. Who was that someone? How could she—an out-of-work baker—figure out the killer's identity?

  Trekking downstairs, she located her laptop on the dining room table and decided to see if Jill was right by typing in the phrase how to solve a murder.

  To her surprise, the screen populated quickly. She clicked on a link offering tips from a former cop turned true crime novelist. Abby mulled over the first suggestion. Make a list of suspects. That took some thinking.

  Obviously, she was at the top of the detectives' list, which was ridiculous. "Stupid men," she declared.

  A familiar visage popped into her head. The first one on her list would be ... Fran.

  "Hmm. Why not? What do I really know about Fran?"

  Alan had told her they were good friends from the moment he'd established his practice six years ago. She had been the first person he hired, and their working relationship appeared to be extremely respectful and cordial.

  In fact, Alan had once told her how he admired Fran for leaving her love-dead marriage, even though it meant raising Kendra by herself.

  Abby recalled seeing photographs in his office of the clinic's opening day.

  In one, Fran and Alan were high-fiving, and Fran's smile was dazzling. One might even say flirtatious. Hm.

  Had Fran yearned for more than a working relationship with Alan? Had she harbored a secret crush on her boss all these years?

  "That's a lot of speculation, Abs," she muttered to herself. Speculation, however, was the first stage of the sleuthing process. She'd read that online too.

  If Fran did once have a crush on Alan, was she upset now because he had started dating me, a woman with a child?

  Some men refused to date women with children. Had Alan done that with Fran?

  Kendra would've been nine or ten when the clinic opened, a hellacious age for a kid, and a parent too.

  "So, she sees him with me, and she knows I have Jill," A
bby said, her mind moving toward the idea of jealousy as a motive. "Did that enrage Fran?"

  Abby gazed out her bedroom window. She'd raised the window halfway because the weather had slipped into higher temperatures. September often delivered an Indian Summer in this part of the Midwest.

  A warm breeze lifted the lacy curtains as her thoughts returned to Fran.

  Alan told her Fran used to be easy-going and liked to laugh, but these days she was grim and uptight.

  He had reasoned that the toll of being a single mother and raising a child alone had worn her down. "Kendra has a temper and doesn't hesitate to display it," he'd said. "Jill's been a good influence on her, but Kendra's dad rarely pays child support and he still blames Fran for everything that went wrong in their marriage. He's tainted Kendra's view of her mother."

  So that could be it. Fran didn't have a crush on him or become jealous because he was dating her. Fran wasn't so easy-going these days because of the emotional and financial stress of being a single mother and raising a rebellious teenager.

  Deciding that sounded logical, she drew a line through Fran's name. She couldn't possibly be a suspect.

  Abby stayed with that thought for a minute before a contrary one swept through her.

  Alan had once told her Fran had a vindictive side. "You don't cross Fran," he'd said, half-joking, after telling her how Fran had threatened to pour sugar into the gas tank of a former friend who had maligned her online.

  Abby added Fran's name to the suspect list again.

  Then she scribbled another name.

  Gina.

  "Definitely a possibility. Tiny, snappy, aggressive." Abby stared at the list. Only two names, so far.

  Who else might have wanted to get rid of Alan?

  Chapter Ten

  Abby consulted the website of the former cop turned true crime novelist. She had two suspects. Now what?

  A post on various poisons caught her attention. Some were chemical horrors like sarin and cyanide, others were plant based like nicotine, hemlock, oleander, arsenic—

  "Jill?" A voice boomed from outside accompanied by a loud bang on the front door.

  Abby jolted from her chair. She knew that voice. She poked her head out the front door. Charles, her ex, stood with his legs splayed out, his hands stuffed in his pockets, a glowering expression on his face.

  The toothpick, Larissa, stood behind him with her hand on her slim-to-none hip. "Will you calm down, Charles. It's bad for your blood pressure."

  Abby stifled a laugh. Once Charles lost his cool and allowed his hot-headed side to gain control, logic and reason were swept away like a tissue in a tornado. Didn't Larissa know that by now?

  "Where's my daughter?" he thundered.

  "Our daughter," Abby reminded him.

  With slow deliberation she moved aside and let him enter. Larissa slithered in a few steps behind Charles. Her gaze shifted to the floor. "Abigail, I can recommend an excellent cleaning service."

  Abby felt her stomach knotting and chided herself for being stupid for so long. There had been at least a half-dozen times when she knew, absolutely knew, Charles was seeing someone.

  Why didn't I pay attention to those flashes of intuition?

  "Hold on, Dad," Jill shouted from upstairs.

  The three of them—Charles, Larissa and Abby—all scowling, waited at the bottom of the stairs in silence.

  Finally, Charles cleared his throat. "Sorry to hear about this Alan guy you were dating."

  Larissa tilted her head. "There's a terrible rumor going around."

  Abby didn't have to ask. She figured Larissa would squirt it out soon enough in as snide a tone as possible.

  And she did. "They're saying you did it. You killed him."

  Abby lifted her chin, full of vinegary defiance. "Some people like to gossip, even when it's absolute crap."

  Charles said, "You should get a lawyer."

  "I've already been questioned. The police know I didn't do it."

  His expression darkened. "I wouldn't be too sure about that."

  Larissa couldn't resist. "Charles got a call from the chief of detectives. I introduced them when I was a publicist for the Policeman's Association. The chief asked Charles to share his insights into your character."

  "My character? He should ask about your—"

  Charles cut her off. "Let me make this crystal clear to you, Abigail."

  His nostrils flared in the distasteful way she despised. "I don't want my daughter around any of this. She needs to be with me. Me and Larissa. There's no way on earth Jillian should be touched by this hideous situation you've gotten yourself into."

  Abby bristled, her hands tightening into fists. But then her heart and mind told her he had a point.

  The upcoming weekend was his with Jill anyway, so it might be good to let it get started early. "If she wants to go with you, fine. Let's ask her."

  "Ask me what? I'm right here," Jill said, pulling her chestnut brown hair into a ponytail as she trundled downstairs.

  "Oh, you're looking so tanned these days," Larissa cooed. "We should go shopping and maybe get you a new hair style."

  The sugar-sweet stepmother act didn't work on Jill. She tossed her head. "Nah. I'm good."

  "You're sure you don't want to visit my stylist?"

  After a fleeting curl of her bottom lip, Jill murmured a polite, "no, thanks."

  Charles gave her ponytail a light tug. "If you want to, we can head out to the bridle club for a trail ride tomorrow and we can go Sunday too."

  A surge of irritation made Abby's mouth twitch. Charles always knew how to bribe her. The kid loved horses and was particularly fond of an Appaloosa named Cindy at the bridle club.

  With a gleeful smile, Jill hugged her father then suddenly backed away from him with a grimace.

  "What's wrong?"

  "The funeral. Kendra asked me to sit with her. It's Sunday at four."

  Charles glanced at Abby. "This is what I mean. She shouldn't be involved."

  "She's fourteen. It's her decision."

  Jill lifted her chin in a gesture of defiance. "If you don't promise to bring me back here Sunday, Dad, I won't go with you now."

  Charles gave Abby a hard look, then said to his daughter, “All right. I promise."

  Jill poked her mother's arm. "Off you go. You need to get dressed for your date."

  Larissa acted shocked. "You're dating already?"

  "No," Abby said, not hiding her exasperation. “My neighbor Twila invited me to dinner."

  Chapter Eleven

  While a slim, bespectacled pianist played Chopin in the beautifully ornate main room of Emile's, Abby looked up from the menu, her eyebrows rising to her hairline. There were no prices listed. "Um, Twila?"

  Twila murmured, "Order anything you want. As I said, everything is covered, including the wine we're drinking." She lifted the cut glass crystal. "I'm so glad you came."

  Abby raised her own sparkling glass in a toast. "To your lucky streak."

  "And yours," Twila said, sipping the Mystic Riverland Pinot Blanc.

  Mine? The only lucky thing that's happened to me is this dinner at Emile's.

  After they made their entrée selections, Abby surveyed Emile's dome-roofed main room with its opulent chandeliers, elaborate gold crown molding, cranberry silk damask wallpaper and crisply starched table linens.

  "I adore all of the detail," she said. "I'm thrilled the designer chose Old World elegance."

  Twila tittered, fingering the crystal and amber beads around her neck. "I know. I feel like Cinderella in here."

  Her pale green eyes sharpened. "Ooh. Look at that dress. Those sleeves are dreamy."

  Abby glanced behind her. A blonde in a teal dress with puffy, eye-catching Juliette sleeves sat with her back to Abby. Seated across from her was a short balding man with a receding chin.

  Twila gushed. "Teal is my favorite color."

  Abby bobbed her head. "Mine too."

  "If I ever marry," Twila sa
id, "I want a teal wedding gown."

  Abby considered the comment, realizing she knew next to nothing about her new friend.

  Twila had moved in next door six weeks ago, but she was gone so often for her work as a travel guide, they hadn't shared much girlfriend time. "You've never been married?"

  "Never, so far."

  "Where are you from, Twila? Omaha?"

  "No. I'm from,"—she pressed her thumb and forefinger together—"a teeny tiny town, more like a village really. When I was growing up, we didn't even have a good bookstore in town. There's one now."

  The waiter appeared at the table like a ghost manifesting right in front of them. He lowered a silver tray with the cilantro adorned crab cake appetizers and a bottle of Saint Pierre Louis chardonnay.

  When he left, Twila canted her head to the right and stared past Abby, scrunching up her nose. "She's wearing teal heels."

  A slight shake of her head indicated Twila's disapproval. "Kind of matchy-matchy for me."

  Twisting in her chair, Abby took a quick peek behind her. The blonde and the balding man were standing now, getting ready to leave. Her gaze landed on the shoes and then lingered on the teal dress before catching a glimpse of the blonde's face.

  Was that the same woman she'd seen on the staircase at the clinic? The one with the glittery sunglasses.

  Craning her head, she tried to get a better look, but the balding man blocked her view as he escorted his companion out of the restaurant.

  Twila took a sip of wine. "I believe I've seen her somewhere before."

  "She does look familiar, sort of."

  "Oh, I know. I saw her at Alan's clinic."

  Abby's brow furrowed. This was the first time Twila had ever mentioned seeing Alan on a professional basis. As far as she knew, Twila had only met him once, and that was briefly as they were walking out to his car one evening.

  "After you told me he was a good chiropractor, I mentioned him to my landlady who asked me to drive her there for a treatment. She has a neck problem. Twice, I took her there."