1 Death Warmed Over

by Kent Holloway

  “If he didn’t kill her, who did?” James asked.

  Omo Sango placed the wine glass back on the table and leaned back on the couch with a sneer.

  “The better question is ‘how was she killed?’” Becca said. She was now pacing the floor, hands behind her back in classic movie detective fashion. “It puzzled us for quite a while actually and without knowing the precise mechanism of death, there was no way to identify the most likely suspect. That’s why we looked at each of you very closely.”

  “And?” Ceci asked.

  “And, what?”

  “How was she killed?” The redhead was now sitting on the edge of her seat, her hand gripping James Andrews’ tightly.

  “Well, actually, we thought it’d be interesting to let the killer fill us in on that one.” Becca looked at Ceci. “Care to tell us, Ms. Palmer?”

  42

  “Wait, me?” Ceci Palmer asked, rising to her feet. “You think I killed Andrea?”

  “It’s why I asked,” Becca replied, stopping her pacing and leaning against the bookcase.

  “Honey?” James said, looking up at the woman he loved. “What is she talking about?”

  “Go ahead and tell him,” Becca said. “Tell him how you started switching out Andrea’s medications with Eldepryl.” She looked at James. “We’re still waiting on a court order to get your son’s medical records, but we’re guessing that’s one of the medications he’s taking?”

  James nodded, his eyes still glued to Ceci.

  “Go on, Ms. Palmer. Tell him,” Becca pressed.

  The redhead looked from the chief to James. As Silas had predicted, tears were already streaming down her face.

  “She’s lying!” Ceci shouted. “I loved Andrea. I would never hurt her. You know that, honey.”

  “So, you’re denying exchanging her Ativan for Jamie’s Eldepryl?” Becca asked.

  “Yes! Yes!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. I didn’t do it.”

  Becca put a hand to her mouth. “Oh my,” she said. “Then we made a horrible mistake.”

  “Mistake? What mistake?” Ceci’s voice squeaked.

  The chief walked over to the cheese platter and made a show of counting the wedges. She looked back at Ceci and frowned.

  “Well, we were certain you were the killer,” she said. “Silas thought it would be fun to turn the tables around on you, so we put some Eldepryl in some of the cheese and used an old mentalist trick Silas knew to force the laced wedge to you.”

  “What?” Ceci’s eyes widened. “Are you crazy? Taking that stuff with cheese and wine can kill me!”

  “I know.” Becca shook her head sadly. “That’s why you are so careful over the foods you give Jamie, right? Elaine told us as much. She said Andrea called you little more than a cook. You spent your days scheduling Jamie’s meals. You were so thorough. So careful about what he could have to eat. Just because of those MAOIs he was taking.”

  “Exactly! That stuff is deadly when consumed with anything fermented. Alcohol. Cheese. And even some chocolate.” Ceci looked around the room, shaking her hands as she began to panic. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

  Becca looked over at Sergeant Tanner. “We’ve made a horrible miscalculation, Jeremy.” Her voice was calm. Unhurried. “Maybe you should call for EMS. Ms. Palmer is about to have a dangerous episode.”

  James Andrews stared at his girlfriend, confusion and anger alternating across his face. “Honey? Tell me what she’s saying isn’t true.”

  “What does it matter?” she screamed. “I’m dying! Help me!”

  “Ms. Palmer, you’re the only medical professional here right now,” Becca said. “Help us help you. What symptoms can we expect?”

  She wiped a stream of sweat from her brow. “It’s…it’s already happening,” she said, taking deep breaths. Now she was pacing the floor. Her eyes darted around the room. “My blood pressure is rising. I feel my heart fluttering. I’m going into a hypertensive crisis.”

  Becca rushed over to her, taking her by the arm and leading her back to couch. “Maybe you should sit down,” she said, helping her ease down onto the cushion.

  Then, Becca heard it. From the saucer-like size of Ceci’s eyes, she knew the redheaded tart had heard it too.

  “Ceci Palmer!” A deep booming voice echoed around the room.

  The woman’s head swiveled, trying to track where the voice had come from. Becca looked around, but no one other than Esperanza showed any sign of hearing it. Esperanza, however, grinned from ear to ear.

  “Ceci Palmer, your Time has come!” The voice boomed again.

  “Who’s there?” She rose from the couch, spinning three-hundred and sixty degrees. “Who is it?”

  James looked at Becca. “What’s happening to her?” he asked.

  “From what I understand, the Eldepryl causes hallucinations,” she told him. “I think she’s hearing things.”

  “Oh, my God!” Ceci shouted, trying to back away and tripping over the couch. She sprawled onto the floor, pointing toward the entrance of the living room. All eyes turned in the direction she was pointing, but no one—other than Becca and Esperanza—had any clue what she was seeing.

  Of course, Becca herself struggled not to react to the ghastly image now searing into her own brain. Hovering about a foot off the floor was an amorphous cloud of smoke and shadow, weaving in and out of itself like the raging waves of a tumultuous sea. The most brilliant display of blinding pure light swirled around from deep within the thing. It glided into the room, silent as the night, and then began to churn and swell as it took shape.

  “Help me!” Ceci said, now crabwalking backwards, away from the thing.

  “There is no help for you, Ceci Palmer,” the voice from the cloud said. “Death comes for you today!”

  She screamed, scrambling to her feet and running straight for the sliding glass door where Officer Robinson grabbed her, holding her struggling form.

  “What’s happening, Chief?” he asked Becca. His voice was wobbling a little, a sure sign he was freaking out a little bit.

  But she couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t even seeing what she and Ceci were seeing at that moment. The miasma of shadow and blazing light stretched and contorted until soon, it was the relative shape of a man, robed in a cloak and hood. A long instrument of some kind, with a three-foot black blade, was clutched in the thing’s hand.

  She had to admit, it was truly terrifying to behold.

  “Don’t let him get me!” Ceci pleaded with Officer Robinson. “Please! Don’t let Death get me!”

  “Death?” James Andrews said. “Isn’t that what Andrea was screaming in that restaurant two nights before she died?”

  “Must be guilt,” Becca said.

  “Ceci Palmer!” The shrouded figure of smoke drifted toward her, its scythe lowering to point its curve blade at her head. Ceci whimpered, sliding down on the floor with her back against Officer Robinson’s legs. “Confess! And if you do, you may still live!”

  Becca rolled her eyes. Geez, Silas. Ease up on the melodrama, will you?

  “Please don’t let him get me,” she cried, looking up into Robinson’s face. “Please don’t let him get me.”

  Becca stepped forward, crouching down to get eye to eye with her. “Ceci, honey…maybe if you tell us what happened, he’ll go away.”

  She shook her head, her eyes clinched tight. “No, no, no!”

  “Get it off your chest,” Becca pressed. “Look, we know it wasn’t your intention to kill Andrea. At least, at first. You switched her Ativan with the Eldepryl at first, just to elevate her serotonin, right? You were just trying to elicit the paranoia and hallucinations, hoping she’d think her schizophrenia was getting worse. You hoped it would get her to back off from fighting for custody of Jamie. Isn’t that right?”

  She was rocking back and forth, keening in terror. If Becca wasn’t dealing with a cold-blooded murderer, she would have felt bad for the woman. B
ut what she was experiencing now was nothing compared to the terrors that Andrea Alvarez had faced the weeks before her death.

  “Isn’t that right, Ms. Palmer?” she emphasized.

  “Yes!” Ceci shouted. “I didn’t want to kill her!”

  “Dear Lord, Ceci what did you do?” James asked.

  Silas, in the spectral form of the Grim Reaper, continued to drift nearer. His size had grown to the point where he almost filled the entire room. Esperanza chuckled, obviously amused by the audacity of the drama playing out before her.

  “I just wanted her to give up trying to get Jamie back,” Ceci cried. “Just wanted to make her think her treatments weren’t working anymore. I knew mixing Jamie’s medications with Andrea’s would trigger hallucinations.” Her eyes were glued to the growing miasma of smoke in front of her. Tears streaked her mascara into dark gashes down her cheeks. “Then, she went nuts and was forced to go to the hospital. They’d asked her what medications she was taking. That’s when she put two and two together.”

  “She figured out what you were doing,” Becca said.

  Ceci nodded. “That’s why she asked me to drive her home when they released her. She wanted to confront me about it. We argued on the car ride home. She threatened to go to the police. She was going to tell James what I had done.”

  “And what happened then?”

  “I asked her for a chance to talk about it. To explain my side of the story. We agreed to meet at her house and do what we’ve always done when we were at odds…drink our troubles away. I brought the wine and the cheese.”

  “Knowing full well that it would be deadly to anyone taking MAOIs.”

  She nodded. “I’d done something so terrible to her, I couldn’t imagine her ever forgiving me. And that meant she would tell James and my life would be over. He’d break up with me. I’d be taken away from Jamie too. I just couldn’t let that happen.”

  Becca noticed the room was getting a little less crowded. Silas’ specter was starting to diminish…to dissolve.

  “And so, you let her eat the cheese. You let her drink the wine. And all the time, you knew it would send her into a hypertensive crisis that would kill her without medical treatment.”

  Ceci sniffed. “She passed out on the couch,” she said. “She was such a little thing. It was no big deal to carry her upstairs and put her to bed before I left.”

  “Which is why you freaked out so much when you came here the next day and discovered her body wasn’t where you left it.”

  She nodded again. “I couldn’t understand it. The plan had been to come by that morning and discover the body.” She made air quotes with her finger at the word “discover”. “I was then going to call the police and figured it would either be blamed on the curse everyone in town was talking about or natural causes.”

  Ceci looked around the room and blinked.

  “Wait, where did he go?”

  Everyone in the room, except Esperanza, looked around as well, wondering who she was talking about.

  “Where did who go?” Becca asked.

  “Death. He’s not here anymore.”

  Silas had indeed removed himself from the gathering. Becca knew that even now he was busy reconstructing a new body in which to inhabit, though she wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. He’d told her it would take a while—between twenty to forty-five minutes or so—before he could appear as human again.

  “Maybe that’s because I lied to you, Ceci,” Becca said. “I’m sorry. But you were never given Eldepryl. I made that up to get you to talk.”

  “What? You mean…you mean, I’m not…”

  Becca shook her head. “You’re not dying. Whatever you were experiencing must have been psychosomatic. Or a product of guilt. Who knows?” She reached out a hand to help Ceci to her feet. “But whatever happened, I’m sorry to say, I’m placing you under arrest Cecilia Suzanne Palmer, for the murder of Andrea Alvarez.”

  Epilogue

  SAND DOLLAR OASIS

  SATURDAY, 12:32 PM

  Silas sat at the bar, enjoying the shade of the palm frond-roofed pagoda and the exquisite fruity alcoholic beverage with the colorful umbrella. It wasn’t as good as the concoction Courtney Abeling had made for him a few nights earlier, but the new bartender, Scott, had tried hard to recreate it—not knowing what it was called—and had done a pretty good job nonetheless.

  He took a sip from his straw and looked up at the cloudless blue sky. He breathed in deep, enjoying the salt air. The mournful cries of seagulls and the explosive crash of waves against the beach were the symphony he’d engrossed himself in while Becca Cole busied herself with the mundane task of booking and charging Ceci Palmer with the murder of Andrea Alvarez.

  Although Ms. Alvarez was still dead—taken long before her Time—there was, he had to admit, a certain amount of satisfaction he felt in finally solving the murder. He was still no closer to discovering the whereabouts of the Hand of Cain, but he now had a few ideas of where to look, and the inkling of a plan forming in his mind.

  He glanced over at the row of beach chairs a few yards away. Each chair was now shaded by large, round umbrellas. Elliot Newman was the only one occupying any of them. His pasty white legs were already turning all kinds of red in the beach sun as he too enjoyed the fruity concoction Silas had grown to love.

  I think I’ll call it ‘Death on a Beach’, he thought, taking another sip. Seems appropriate somehow.

  “Is this seat taken?” A velvety Hispanic voice asked from behind him.

  He swiveled his head to see Esperanza, decked out in a thin cotton pullover—her skimpy string-bikini evident under the garment—standing behind him with one hand on the adjacent chair.

  “Suit yourself,” he said.

  The two sat together in silence for a few uncomfortable minutes, enjoying the scenery.

  “That was quite a show you put on this morning,” she finally said after she’d ordered her own drink. Silas noticed that the bartender had practically undressed her with his eyes, which had tickled her to no end.

  “We needed a confession,” he said quietly. He kept his sight fixed on the rolling waves beyond the tiki bar. “She wasn’t about to admit she’d killed her best friend…especially knowing it would ruin her relationship with James Andrews. The drama just gave her the push she needed, that’s all.”

  “Oh, I’m not judging you,” she laughed. “You know me. I love a good show of theatrics.”

  Silas nodded while taking a deep pull on his straw.

  “Like you appearing to Spenser Blakely and laying that threatening kiss on him so soon before he dropped dead of a heart attack?” He finally said.

  Esperanza tilted her head back and laughed louder this time. “He told you that, did he?”

  “He did.”

  “What can I say? I didn’t want you to know.”

  “That your boy Omo Sango has the Hand?”

  “Oh, he doesn’t have it,” she said. She was scowling now. “Not anymore anyway. He did. His crew were some of the first scavengers of that wreck. They retrieved it, but then, it was stolen.”

  “Stolen? Was this before or after Andrea Alvarez overheard you talking about it?”

  “After. It was stolen about a week before she died, as a matter of fact.”

  Silas pondered this a bit.

  “Any idea who took it?”

  She tsked at the question. “You know me better than that. If I had a theory about who stole it from me, do you really think they’d still be alive to use it?”

  “It never hurts to ask.”

  She nodded at this, pushed her empty glass forward, and stood up. “Well, mi esposa, I suppose it’s time to catch some rays.”

  “Enjoy.” The sooner she was gone, the sooner Silas could get back to enjoying this glorious afternoon.

  She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Buenos dias, Love.” She turned to walk toward the beach when she came to an abrupt halt and gasped. “Ankou, what have you done?”

/>   Silas smiled, not bothering to look. He knew she’d just spotted Elliot Newman, alive and well, and taking a nice relaxing beach day instead of being dead and worm food in a big claustrophobic box.

  “Whatever do you mean, Essie?” he asked, grinning and taking another sip from his drink.

  He could feel her burning glare at the back of his head.

  “Don’t think for a minute I’m going to let this stand,” she said. “It’s bad enough when you take one of mine. Now, you’ve moved on to restoring souls I’ve taken as well. It’s an abuse of your station.”

  He chuckled and handed her a customer satisfaction card he’d taken from the motel lobby. “Feel free to fill this form out and send it to our boss, Chica.”

  With a grunt, she wheeled around and stormed down the steps to the beach without another word.

  Amused, Silas stood up and moved over to Elliot, taking the beach chair next to him.

  “Enjoying your day, buddy?” he asked.

  Elliot nodded. “Ya know, I never really ever took time off to go to the beach when I was alive. It’s much more relaxing than I ever imagined.”

  “Stick with me, kid, and you’ll be a relaxation king in no time.”

  Elliot smiled and took a drink from his coconut tiki mug.

  “So, tell me, Elliot. You’ve never mentioned it,” Silas said. “But with all this talk about that pirate ship wreck, I’ve never thought to ask. Do we have any idea what the ship was called when it sailed the seven seas?”

  “Oh, that’s actually quite fascinating,” the archaeologist said. “It’s why I’ve been so excited to excavate the ship, really. See, it doesn’t officially exist. I mean, not really. It was supposed to be as legendary as its captain within the scholarly world.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, yes. For centuries, scholars believed it was merely a superstitious myth. Something to scare pirates and sea dogs while they drank their profits in pubs in Caribbean harbors.”