His eyebrows shot up. “Hazel O’Brien? I’m off to see her at the hospital. They think she was poisoned, and she’s in bad shape.”
CHAPTER 15
I didn’t follow Rancourt to the hospital. Even if Hazel was conscious, I thought, he wasn’t about to let me question her. But Irene had given me her address, and on the off chance that her neighbors knew something, I drove to her house on the Bog Road. As it turned out, Hazel’s home was only a mile from mine.
Hazel’s was a small clapboard house, gray with brick red shutters. It sat close to the road, and her short driveway, which led to a detached garage, was at the side of the house. There was a squad car on the drive when I arrived, so I parked at the curb. Officer David Bouchard, the freckle-faced youngster of the Smithwell Police Department, was safeguarding the scene and refused to let me and Emily enter, but he seemed to be in a good mood—or perhaps an excited one—and was willing to talk as long as I stood outside Hazel’s open front door.
“Two aconite poisonings in forty-eight hours,” he said, leaning on the doorjamb, one foot on the threshold. “I never thought I’d see one in my whole lifetime.”
“Hazel was poisoned with aconite?”
“We don’t know for sure, but she was drinking tea when she called Rancourt.”
“She called Rancourt?”
“Yeah, she should have called 911, but I think she knew what was happening and figured it was over. There’s no cure for aconite poisoning, and it acts quickly. Mrs. O’Brien was barely conscious when the ambulance came. So anyway, Rancourt sent me out here and phoned the ambulance for her. With her symptoms and all, he told them he suspected aconite. He’s at the hospital now.”
It made little sense to me. I would have dial emergency services, not a police detective, if I felt I’d been poisoned. “Do you know what she said to Rancourt?”
Bouchard shrugged. “I was in his office, but it was a one-sided conversation. And extremely short. Just guessing, but I think all she got out was that she’d been poisoned.”
“Was the aconite in tea?” Emily asked.
“There’s half a cup on her kitchen table and a tin of tea on the counter, so that would be my guess. We won’t know until we test it. She’d also eaten part of a frosted muffin.”
“But there wasn’t any aconite in the tea from Birdie Thompson, right? The tea in the red foil bags the police confiscated?”
“Nope. We checked all those bags, and only Mrs. Bigelow’s had the aconite. Though Rancourt decided it was best to throw them all out. He never gave them back. Better safe than sorry.”
“Then one of those ladies is very determined. Did you search their yards and homes for the source of the aconite? Either someone grew monkshood or they knew where it grew in the wild.”
“Of course we searched—as much as we could, anyway. We need more evidence if we’re going to get a warrant and tear someone’s house apart.”
“I think you’ll get your warrant now,” I said. “You said there was a tea tin on Hazel’s counter, not a bag?”
“Yeah, and with a spoon in it. But it was an old tin with roses on it, and I found a blue bag in her trash. The bag smelled like tea, so that may have been the source.”
“What did the muffin look like?”
“Like a Christmas muffin. Green and red icing. Kind of disgusting. Whoops, Rancourt at one o’clock.” He straightened, took a small backward step, and put his hand to the doorknob. That was my and Emily’s cue to leave.
And it was another chance for me to talk to Rancourt.
He slowed his steps as he approached, and we met halfway up the drive. “Mrs. O’Brien just died,” he said, looking from me to Emily. “It wasn’t unexpected.”
“Was it aconite?” I asked.
“Looks like it because of her symptoms, but they don’t know yet.”
“So the two women who argued about fraud at the last Merry Knitters meeting are dead.”
Rancourt spread his hands. “That doesn’t prove cause and effect.”
I gave him my best oh-pulleeze expression.
“You said this happened about a week ago?” he asked
“That’s what Irene said.”
“Then before the Secret Santa ornaments were handed out.”
“That’s right.”
“So what precipitated the fraud talk? That’s the question. It wasn’t the ornaments.”
“Trouble is, Irene doesn’t remember any more about Phyllis and Hazel’s conversation than what I told you.”
Rancourt cut across the postage-stamp-sized lawn as he made for the door. “Someone knows,” he called back.
“Obviously,” I shouted.
The moment I got back in my Jeep, it hit me. “The library. That’s where.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Emily said, “and we only have a few hours. I’m serious when I say I want a happy ending before Christmas Eve day. And when Laurence and I are in Bangor, I don’t want to worry about someone forcing you to drink poison tea. If we don’t solve this, I’ll have aconite dreams.”
I threw my right arm over the back of my seat and shifted in my seat. “Irene told me that Phyllis had been to the library before the meeting a week ago. If she talked to a librarian, maybe we can find out what she was looking for.” I put the key in the ignition. “Oh, shoot. The library isn’t open on Sundays.”
“Yes it is. They opened it for the kids. They’re reading Christmas stories and serving cookies and cocoa—and I’m starving, by the way, so we have to go.”
I sat straight and pulled back my left pocket. “Are you all right, Minette?” I asked. You’re very quiet.”
“I’m suffocating,” came the response.
“Do you want to hide in the car?”
“No, no! I want to hear Christmas stories.”
When I reminded her that we were heading to the library so we could solve a murder, not listen to stories, she informed me that she was capable of doing both. Of that, I had no doubt.
I took a last look at Hazel’s house and scanned the neighborhood for neighbors out and about, but seeing no one, I drove for downtown and the Smithwell Public Library. Emily and I were running out of options. If the librarian couldn’t help us, who could?
I made a left on Falmouth and then swung onto Pleasant Street. Five blocks up, I turned into the library parking lot. “It’s packed,” I said.
“You didn’t know about the library’s events this weekend?”
“No, why would I?” I replied, sounding grumpier than I’d intended. I didn’t have kids and I didn’t have a husband. Why would I know about a storytelling event at some library? It irked me that Emily thought I would—or should. “I can’t find a parking space. Do you see one? This is ridiculous.”
“You need cocoa.”
“The librarian’s going to have kids hanging off her arms. I hope she can talk to us. They’re not going to sing carols, are they?”
“You need sugar.”
“I had cookies at Norma’s house.” I parked and shut off the car. I was focusing on a host of dissatisfactions to avoid the pain of my second Christmas without Michael. I knew that, and I knew better than to allow such thoughts to grab hold of me, but I couldn’t help myself.
“You know it’s Christmastime, right?” Emily said.
“Not for Phyllis or Hazel.” As we made our way to the front door, it began to snow. Emily cooed, but I envisioned slippery streets on our way home—or wherever we would decide to stop next.
There were a handful of adults in the stacks, but the center of activity was up ahead, in the children’s section, where a young woman was reading The Night before Christmas to a mob of enraptured children.
Spying the cocoa table, Emily took off. I followed her part way and then planted myself at the back of the crowd. My aim was to grab the storyteller the moment she finished, but I also started searching the crowd for anyone else who looked like a librarian. I didn’t know who Phyllis had talked to, or if in fact she’d t
alked to a librarian at all.
Standing there, listening to the classic children’s Christmas story, I almost chuckled. Emily and I, who fancied ourselves investigators, had been reduced to this. We weren’t anywhere close to Laurence’s league. As I continued to search the children’s section and nearby stacks, twisting this way and that, I heard a child say, “Mommy, that lady has a doll in her pocket.”
I froze and stared straight ahead.
“Shh,” came the response.
They were behind me and a little to my left, in perfect view of my left pocket.
“But mommy—”
“Shh.”
“But it moves. I want one.”
I glanced at the child, a little red-haired girl held fast by her mother’s hand, and smiled. Naturally, she took that as an invitation. She wrenched her hand away, and thus free of her mother’s grasp, she went for my pocket with one grubby, cookie-holding fist. I turned sharply and strode from the crowd, not stopping until I was safely between two stacks of books.
“Minette, you’re going to get me and yourself in a boatload of trouble if you don’t stay hidden,” I whispered. “I’ll read you a story myself, and we’ll be out of here in ten minutes.”
“Kate, I liked—”
“Quiet!” I tossed back my head and stared hopelessly at the ceiling. “I can’t be seen talking to myself like a crazy woman.”
“Too late,” Emily said. Grinning broadly, she was standing just outside the book stacks, two Styrofoam cups in her hands.
“Thank goodness it’s you. And thanks for this,” I said, taking my cup of cocoa. “I had to get away. One of the children saw Minette.”
“That’s no problem. No one believes what children see this time of year.” She took a sip of cocoa and grinned again, looking happy and contented.
“What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing. I just solved our Phyllis-in-the-library conundrum in sixty seconds flat.”
“What? How?”
“By talking to one of the librarians. She made chocolate chip cookies, and I ate one and complemented her on them. Anyway, it set the ball rolling.”
“And?”
“Follow me.”
Emily led me to the other side of the library, just past the children’s section and close to the cookie table. I snatched a sugar cookie on the way, broke off a piece, and stealthily inserted it into my pocket for Minette.
“The law books are here,” Emily said, pointing to a sparsely populated book stack. “There aren’t many of them, and the librarian isn’t sure Phyllis found what she wanted, but she remembers what she was looking for because it was an unusual request.”
“Mommy, there!”
I whipped around and was horrified to find the Minette-spotting red-haired child waving a half-eaten cookie at me and dragging her mother my way.
“Sorry,” the mother said, “but Rose was determined to find you and ask if she could see your doll.”
Grinning idiotically, I said, “I don’t have one.”
“Oh.” The woman’s face turned to granite. Why was I making her child out to be a liar? Worse, why was I suggesting her precious daughter was wrong? “But she did see one. She’s young, but she knows what she sees, and she’s very articulate for her age.”
“It was half a Barbie doll and I threw it away.”
The woman’s expression said preposterous, and I couldn’t blame her. Embellishing a simple lie—such as I don’t have a doll—was always a mistake. But half a Barbie doll? Where had that come from?
“Rose said it moved. She saw it move.”
Emily stepped forward. “We’re discussing a matter of life and death here. You can order a mechanical doll online.”
“Well, pardon us to pieces. Some people.” The woman marched off, taking her whimpering child with her, and I calculated how many more encounters of the sort I could have before word spread in Smithwell, population six thousand, that I was nuts.
“Tell me fast so we can get out of here,” I said. “What was Phyllis looking for?”
Emily paused a moment—for effect, no doubt—then said, “She wanted books that contain information on insurance fraud.”
CHAPTER 16
My mind raced. Whose insurance fraud? And fraud over what? I thought of Joan’s friend, of how she’d lost her house and dog in a fire, and wondered if the town of Smithwell had settled with her. Then there was Birdie and her father’s farm. Had there been an insurance settlement? But those incidents had happened twenty-three and almost seventy years ago. “Hence the statute of limitations,” I said aloud.
“Did one of them sue Phyllis over the eggnog?” Emily asked as she buckled herself in. “Or what about this. Do any of them have a lien on their house?”
I told Minette to leave my pocket and hide herself in the folds of a flannel blanket on the back seat. It was still snowing, and the air was properly frosty for December, but more often than not, Minette was hot, and spending hours in my pocket wasn’t good for her.
“Thank you for the cookie,” she said, slipping beneath one corner.
“Maple syrup when we get home,” I said. “Emily, Rancourt said something interesting at Hazel’s house. He asked me, ‘What precipitated the fraud talk?’ For too long we’ve assumed that the ornaments were connected to—if not the cause of—Phyllis’s murder. Now we know they weren’t the cause. But even if they’re one hundred percent coincidental, they might point us in the right direction.”
“Were Phyllis and Hazel involved in fraud?” Emily asked.
I answered her with a question of my own. “Was insurance money involved in any of the incidents? Or is there another incident we don’t know about? We need to know why Phyllis and Hazel’s conversation turned to fraud. Rancourt’s right. Something started this off, and one or more of the ladies knows what it is. They have to remember.”
“So who do we talk to?”
“All of them. We start over. Again.”
“What I mean is, who do we talk to first?”
I looked at my wristwatch. “Birdie Thompson. She falls asleep in the afternoon. But I think she’s more observant than she lets on. I’ll bring you back to your car when we’re done.” I started in the direction of her house, hoping I remembered street names and landmarks along the way. “Prepare to be steamed and roasted, Emily. Her house must be eighty degrees, and I’m sure she has a humidifier—which she never turns off.”
“Sounds like my parents.”
“And Minette, you can stay in the car. I don’t want you passing out.”
“No, Kate. I will listen.”
“Suit yourself. But stay in my pocket. Don’t scare Birdie.”
“Who do we talk to next?” Emily asked.
“Joan Simms. And then Carla Moretti. Now that I’ve had time to think, I’m not completely convinced Carla didn’t know what Marvin was up to with the ornaments.”
Though we drove in circles a few times, I managed to find Birdie’s house. By the looks of her empty driveway, no one else was home. I had a feeling we were about to rouse her from a deep sleep on her couch.
I rang the doorbell and waited. Then I rang it again. A few seconds later, Birdie opened the door. Standing up, she looked even frailer than she had sitting in her living room the day I met her. She wore a different turtleneck, gray this time, but was wrapped in the same brown cardigan.
“Kate Brewer?”
I apologized for disturbing her day. “This is my friend, Emily. Can the three of us talk? Have you heard what happened to Hazel?”
Birdie’s face fell. “What now?”
I waited until Birdie shuffled back to her couch. Wishing there was a way I could soften the blow, but knowing there wasn’t, I told her that Hazel had just died, probably of aconite poisoning.
“Hazel is dead? That’s not right.”
I sat next to Birdie on the couch, and Emily took a chair across from me.
“It just happened,” I said gently.
Birdie looked utt
erly confused. “But I talked to her this morning. I saw her.”
“Yes, at Norma’s house,” I said. “About ten o’clock.”
“That was hours ago. What time is it?”
“About four o’clock.”
“I understand. I think.” She glanced out her window. “It gets dark early this time of year. This is so sad. Hazel and Phyllis. Gone.”
Reaching over to her, I touched her arm to gain her wandering attention. “We need your help finding out what happened to them.”
“How can I help? I’m afraid, Kate. I’m so afraid.”
“Please don’t be afraid. Detective Rancourt is on the job, and he’s a wonderful policeman. He was at Hazel’s house not long ago, looking for clues.”
“All right, I’ll try to help.” Her voice trembled, and I felt such sympathy for her. She was nearly eighty years old and alone. I thought of how I felt at times, afraid at night in my lonely house, then I added thirty years to my fifty. The poor woman.
“Remember when Hazel drove you home from Norma’s house?”
“Irene brought me, but Hazel took me home. Of course I remember. We stopped at the grocery.”
“Did you talk on the way home?”
“We always talk, but Hazel does most of the talking, even when she knows I need a nap.”
Inside my pocket, Minette was in motion. I thought she was kicking me, probably with all her might, but between her dainty legs and my heavy coat, her kicks had all the power of a moth’s wings beating along the inside of a lampshade. “Do you remember her talking about the law? Or about fraud?”
Birdie squinted at me. “Do you mean a television show?”
“No, no.” This was not going to be easy. “I mean in real life. Or put it this way. Did she talk about your friends in the Merry Knitters?”
Birdie giggled. “We always talk about them. And not just Hazel and me, but we all do.”
Minette squeaked and I put a hand to my own lips.
Secret Santa Murder Page 10