Bring Your Own Poison

by Jimmie Ruth Evans

  “This is Lisa Pemberton, Officer,” Wanda Nell said. “She’s the one who needs to talk to you.”

  “Morning, ma’am,” Vance said. “Mind if I sit here?” He indicated a spot on the couch near Lisa.

  Lisa nodded. Before he sat down on the couch, though, Vance found a chair for Mayrene and made sure she was comfortable in it. Mayrene smiled up at him, and his gaze lingered on her for a long moment. Wanda Nell was delighted to see the rapport between the two of them.

  When Vance turned back to face Lisa, he was all business. He sat down on the couch, giving her plenty of space. “Why don’t you tell me about your problem, Miss Pemberton?”

  “I will,” Lisa said, “but first, won’t somebody tell me what happened last night?”

  Vance grimaced. “One of my fellow officers died last night during a bachelor party at the Kountry Kitchen.”

  “Oh, how awful,” Lisa said, appalled. She turned to Wanda Nell. “And you were there, weren’t you? I bet you saw everything.”

  Wanda Nell nodded. “Yes, I was. It was awful. The party was for him. He was supposed to be getting married in a few days.”

  “Who was he?” Lisa asked.

  “Travis Blakeley,” Vance said, his face darkening.

  Wanda Nell expected him to say something about his fellow officer, but he didn’t.

  “I didn’t know him,” Lisa said, “but how terrible.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Vance said.

  Vance proceeded to question Lisa, and Wanda Nell was gratified to observe how skillfully and gently he accomplished it. She hesitated over giving Vance the stalker’s name, for some reason, but Vance persisted without pressuring her too hard. Finally she gave in. Vance jotted down details in a notebook, and when he was done he put it away.

  “I promise you, Miss Pemberton, that we’re going to take this seriously. We’ll be on the lookout for this guy, and any time you think you see him in town, I want you to call us right away.” He pulled his notebook out again for a moment and consulted it. “When I get a chance, I’ll get in touch with the Meridian police and see what I can find out about this officer. Lester Biggs, right?”

  Lisa nodded. “Thank you, Officer. I feel a lot better now.”

  “Good,” Vance said. He stood up. “I’ve got to get going.”

  “Can you hold on just a few minutes?” Mayrene said as she stood up. “Let me take Lisa back over to my place so she can start getting ready for work, and I’ll be right back. Okay?”

  “Sure,” Vance said, smiling as he looked at her. “I can hang on for a few minutes more.”

  “Come on, honey,” Mayrene said, motioning for Lisa to get up and follow her. “You need to start getting ready for work.”

  Lisa got up and followed Mayrene to the door. Mayrene went out ahead of her, and Lisa paused in the doorway. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you both.”

  “Take care, Lisa,” Wanda Nell said. Vance simply nodded.

  Once Lisa was gone, Vance started moving toward the door. Wanda Nell called out his name, and he stopped and turned to face her.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Something I can do for you?”

  Wanda Nell knew she probably shouldn’t be asking him anything about the events of last night, but her curiosity was getting the better of her.

  “Well, you know I was there last night,” she began, and Vance nodded at her. “I just couldn’t help wondering, do they know what happened? I mean, did somebody really poison him?”

  Vance didn’t respond for a moment, and Wanda Nell was about to apologize, thinking he was annoyed, when he surprised her with an answer. “They’re pretty sure it was poison. They’re not saying what just yet, but Doc Crowell—the young one, I mean—said he was pretty sure it was poison.”

  “So it’s definitely a murder case,” Wanda Nell said.

  “I don’t think it was suicide,” Vance replied.

  The flippant answer stymied her for a moment. Maybe it was just cop humor, she reckoned, but it seemed like an odd response to her. Ignoring it, she said, “Any idea yet who did it?”

  Vance stared at her. “Why are you so interested?”

  Wanda Nell shrugged. “I saw it happen, and I guess I can’t help but be curious. I know some of the men who were at that party, and I’d sure hate to think one of them is a killer.”

  “You don’t have to worry about a killer being on the loose,” Vance said. “The state cop, Warren, arrested and charged someone with the murder just a little while ago.”

  Wanda Nell had a bad feeling about this. She was pretty sure who Bill Warren had arrested. Still, she had to ask. “Who was it? Can you say?”

  Vance shrugged. “Don’t see why not. It’ll be pretty public soon anyway. It was the victim’s brother, Gerald Blakeley.”

  Ten

  Vance didn’t give Wanda Nell any time to react to his news. He nodded, said, “Ma’am,” and left.

  Wanda Nell stared at the closed door for a moment. She had heard what she expected to hear, yet she still felt a bit surprised. Maybe she was just in a contrary mood, or maybe she just didn’t like the way Bill Warren had acted last night, but whatever the reason, she didn’t want to think of Gerald Blakeley as a murderer.

  He had looked so sad and lost last night, not to mention truly puzzled over the glass tube he had been holding. Wanda Nell had been around drunks enough in her life to know when somebody was just putting on. Gerald hadn’t been. He had been well and truly inebriated, and therefore Wanda Nell believed him when he said he had found the tube but wasn’t sure where.

  Everything seemed awfully convenient for Bill Warren all of a sudden, Wanda Nell realized. He obviously had it in for Gerald right away, and Gerald had a motive for getting rid of his brother. Often the most obvious answer was the correct one, Wanda Nell knew, but this time she just didn’t believe it. From everything she had heard about Travis Blakeley there was probably a long line of people who wanted him dead.

  The question was, had any of them besides Gerald Blakeley been at the bachelor party last night?

  Well, it really wasn’t up to her, and she knew that. Tuck was Gerald’s lawyer, and it would be up to him to cast enough doubt on Gerald’s alleged guilt to keep him from going to jail. If the police really believed they had the killer already, they certainly weren’t going to be looking at anyone else.

  Or were they?

  Wanda Nell went to the phone and punched in T.J.’s cell number. She thought about calling Tuck directly, but she figured he was too busy with Gerald to have time to talk. T.J. answered after a couple rings.

  “Hey, honey, it’s me,” she said. “Are you where you can talk?”

  “Hi, Mama. You caught me at home,” T.J. said. “Well, I’ve got some news for you.”

  “They’ve arrested Gerald,” she said.

  “Yeah, how did you know?” T.J. was surprised.

  “A policeman was just here talking to Lisa, Jack’s cousin, about her stalker, and he told me.”

  “Oh. Well, it happened about half an hour ago,” T.J. said. “Tuck had just gotten down to the jail and had about five minutes with Gerald before it went down. Tuck was pretty pissed about the whole thing, because he doesn’t think they really have enough evidence to charge Gerald. But obviously the judge thought different.”

  “Does Tuck think Gerald did it?”

  “We talked about it over breakfast this morning,” T.J. said, “and he’s inclined to think Gerald is innocent. Tuck wants to know where the poison came from, and he thinks that’s going to be a key point in the case.”

  “Do they know yet what kind of poison it was?”

  “They won’t know for sure until they do the autopsy,” T.J. said, “but Tuck thinks, based on what happened and a couple of things he picked up from talking to the EMTs who handled the case, that it might have been cyanide.”

  “Cyanide?” Wanda Nell asked. “Where on earth would Gerald get hold of cyanide?”

  “That’s what Tuck wants to know,
and he thinks the cops are going to have a tough time proving Gerald had access to it. We’re going to be investigating that ourselves, because Tuck doesn’t want to leave anything to chance.”

  “That’s why he’s so good at being a lawyer,” Wanda Nell said.

  “He sure is,” Tuck said, and Wanda Nell had to smile at the pride in his voice. She hadn’t known what to think about her son’s relationship with Tuck at first, but as time had passed, she had become more used to it. It wasn’t hard to see how they felt about each other, and having Tuck in his life had made a huge difference to T.J. in many ways. Though she worried about how others might treat them, Wanda Nell was happy for them. In the past there had been many nights when she was afraid T.J. would end up spending the rest of his life in jail, but her son had turned out to be a good man after all.

  “What do you think? About Gerald, I mean,” Wanda Nell asked.

  “He swore up and down to Tuck that he didn’t do it,” T.J. replied.

  “Do you believe him?”

  T.J. didn’t answer for a moment. “Yeah, I do. I knew Gerald pretty well back when we were in high school, and even though I haven’t been around him that much the last few years, I don’t think he’s changed, really. Back then he was one of those guys who was always hanging back, never really getting involved in anything. You know what I mean?”

  “I think so,” Wanda Nell said. “A follower, not a leader.”

  “Yeah,” T.J. replied. “It was always somebody else who had the ideas, and Gerald just kinda trailed along behind like a puppy dog.”

  “Did he get in trouble?”

  “Like me, you mean?” T.J. laughed. “Naw, he always stayed out of trouble. He never got in fights or anything like that, and he sure didn’t do drugs.”

  “It’s hard to imagine a guy like that killing somebody,” Wanda Nell said.

  “It was a pretty sneaky way to do it,” T.J. said, “and if Gerald was going to do it, I think he’d do it like that somehow. I mean, he’d never just bash somebody over the head. He’s too chicken to do that.”

  “But if you think he might poison someone, then couldn’t he have done it?”

  “Not really,” T.J. said. “I just don’t think he had the nerve.”

  “Even to protect that girl?”

  There was a pause before T.J. spoke again. “You know, there’s something kinda funny about that. Back in high school, Gerald was real stuck on Tiffany, and of course she wouldn’t give him the time of day. Tuck said when he asked Gerald about her, Gerald said she was just a friend. He’s not in love with her anymore.”

  “Maybe he was putting on so nobody would think he had a motive, like killing his brother to protect her.”

  “Tuck didn’t think so. He said Gerald just shook his head when he asked him about that. He said he got over Tiffany a long time ago. Gerald didn’t want her to marry Travis and tried to talk to her about it. But for some reason, Tiffany wouldn’t even go into it with him. And he kept on saying he didn’t kill his brother.” T.J. paused a moment. “Look, Mama, I hate to cut this short, but Tuck needs me to do some stuff for him. I’ve got to get on down to the office.”

  “Okay, honey,” Wanda Nell said. “Give Tuck my love, and y’all both be careful.”

  “We will, Mama,” T.J. said, his voice firm. “Now stop worrying about us.”

  Wanda Nell hung up the phone, shaking her head. T.J. telling her not to worry was like telling the pope not to be Catholic. Worrying about her children was something a mother never stopped doing, no matter how old they were.

  That reminded her she wanted to check in on Juliet. She walked down the hall and stepped into Juliet’s room. Her youngest child was sound asleep, tangled in the covers, one arm loosely wrapped around a worn teddy bear.

  Juliet was a bit warm and sweaty when Wanda Nell checked her forehead, but not enough for her to be alarmed. The best thing for her now was sleep. When she woke up, Wanda Nell would take her temperature.

  She headed back to the kitchen to get started on lunch. When she glanced out the window toward Mayrene’s trailer, she saw her friend and Lisa getting into Mayrene’s car. She checked the clock, and it was ten-thirty-five. Jack would be here around eleven, so she had better get a move on. She would get the potatoes ready for boiling before she started on the chicken.

  By the time Jack arrived, Wanda Nell had everything well in hand. She went to let Jack in, and he pulled her into his arms the moment the door shut behind him.

  The next few minutes passed in enjoyable fashion, and Wanda Nell had just stepped back when she heard Juliet calling her.

  “Go on in the kitchen and get yourself something to drink,” she told Jack. “Let me see what Juliet wants.”

  Jack nodded, and she went down the hall. “Honey, are you okay?” She walked into Juliet’s room and sat down on the bed beside her daughter. She checked her forehead again—still warm and sweaty.

  “I’m real thirsty, Mama, and my throat is scratchy,” Juliet said. “I was going to get up and get some water, but I felt a little dizzy.”

  “Probably that sinus medicine’s making you feel that way,” Wanda Nell said. She picked up a cup from Juliet’s bedside table. “I’ll be right back.” She went into the bathroom between her bedroom and Juliet’s and filled the cup with cold water.

  “Drink this, sweetie,” she said as she sat down on the bed again. “Can you sit up?”

  Juliet nodded, pushing herself nearly upright with her right arm. She took the cup in her left hand, raised it to her mouth, and drained it. “Thank you, Mama. That makes me feel better.”

  “Would you like some more?”

  “No, that’s enough for now,” Juliet said, lying down again.

  “I’m going to take your temperature,” Wanda Nell said. She went back to the bathroom for the thermometer.

  Juliet opened her mouth obediently for the thermometer and clamped her lips shut to hold it under her tongue. Wanda Nell sat on the bed and watched a minute tick by on Juliet’s bedside clock. She pulled the thermometer out of her daughter’s mouth and tilted it, trying to read it.

  “Looks like just a very slight fever, honey,” she told her daughter. “Not even up to a hundred.”

  Juliet smiled wanly.

  “Do you feel like eating anything?” Wanda Nell asked. “Jack’s here, and I’m getting lunch ready.”

  “I’m a little hungry,” Juliet said, “but not much.”

  “I’ll bring you some mashed potatoes with plenty of butter. How’s that?”

  Juliet nodded.

  “Okay, honey,” Wanda Nell said. “The potatoes won’t be ready for a little while, but I’m going to get you a pitcher of water, so when you get thirsty it’ll be right here.”

  Jack was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking some tea. “Is Juliet okay?” he asked, his face expressing his concern. He set his glass down and got up from the table.

  “I think she’s got a sinus infection,” Wanda Nell said. “She’s running a little fever, but it’s not too bad yet. I’m probably going to take her to the doctor in the morning. Usually it takes some antibiotics for her to get better.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “Keep an eye on the stove for me while I take Juliet some water,” Wanda Nell said. She retrieved a small plastic pitcher with a lid from the cabinet. She rinsed it out, filled it with water, and carried it back to Juliet’s room. The girl had fallen asleep. Wanda Nell set the pitcher down on her bedside table and tiptoed out.

  Jack was poking at the potatoes with a fork when she walked back into the kitchen. He turned his head at the sound of Wanda Nell’s footsteps. “They’re about done.”

  Wanda Nell nodded. “I’ll start the chicken frying, and you can mash the potatoes if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure,” Jack said. “What about rolls?”

  “I forgot about them,” Wanda Nell said, frowning.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jack said. “It won’t hurt us to do without them for once
.” He grinned.

  Wanda Nell patted her hip ruefully. “You’re not kidding. I don’t need any more padding than I’ve already got.”

  “You look just fine to me,” Jack said, an amorous glint in his eyes. “In fact, you look better than fine.”

  With a pang, Wanda Nell thought for a moment how nice it would be to forget about everything else except this wonderful man. She wanted him so badly she almost couldn’t stand it. But now wasn’t the time, nor was this the place.

  Though her pulse was racing, she spoke calmly. “You look better than fine to me, too, mister, but I’ve got some chicken to fry.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before turning her attention to her work.

  Jack just smiled, and they worked in companionable silence for a while. When the potatoes were mashed, Wanda Nell asked him to take over watching the chicken while she took a small bowl of potatoes to Juliet.

  Juliet was awake, propped up in bed with a book. She accepted the potatoes gratefully.

  “Are you sure you don’t want something else, honey?” Wanda Nell watched her daughter eat.

  “No, mama, this is fine,” Juliet said. “I don’t think I’ll want anything else for a while.”

  Wanda Nell bent to kiss her forehead. “Just holler if you need me.”

  Jack was taking the chicken out of the frying pan, placing it on paper towels, when Wanda Nell returned. He set the table for the two of them while she checked on the green beans. They were canned, and all she had done was add some fatback to them while they heated up. They were ready, and she turned the heat off under them. She retrieved some leftover salad from the fridge and set it on the table, found a large spoon from the silverware drawer and stuck it in the bowl.

  “Sure you don’t want some bread, honey?” she asked. “I’ve got some loaf bread, and I could toast it real quick if you like.”

  “No, I’m fine,” Jack said. “Let’s just sit down and enjoy this. That chicken is making my mouth water.”

  They filled their plates and sat down at the table. They ate in silence for a while.

  “Have you talked to Lisa today?” Wanda Nell asked. She put her fork down and stared at her empty plate. Had she really eaten it all already?