by Edie Claire
Melvin had gone out to pay the pizza guy. Lenna and Jennie Ruth were still holding their abdomens and moaning. “I’ll go get Grandma’s pink stomach pills,” Allison announced as she headed up the stairs. Everyone else appeared to be either in the kitchen or standing just outside of it, where a general argument had erupted over whether the Flying Maples did or did not have access to deadly bacteria. Bridget was nowhere in sight.
“Oh, no!” Olympia cried. “Why did you do that?”
Leigh fought an urge to shove the unhelpful chapter president out of her way. Up to now, aside from the pesky pathological lying thing, Olympia had seemed more emotionally stable than your average Floribunda. Why was she going bonkers over a silly phone prank?
“Because there were no personal computers in the seventies, of course!” Leigh reminded as she hurried around Olympia and into the dining room. If Lucille fell over any further she was almost certainly going to slip out of her chair.
The toilet flushed in the half bath, explaining where Bridget had gone. Leigh reached Lucille, put a hand on her shoulder, and gently attempted to shake the older woman awake. If she was as ill as her assistant claimed, surely she’d “worked” long enough today and should be taken home. “No!” a returning Bridget called out from the doorway. “Don’t wake her up!”
Leigh froze. All the chaos in her mind was organizing and swirling down into one ominous black tornado. She looked back at Bridget, whose expression could only be described as peeved.
“She’s such a witch when she’s awake!” the assistant whispered as she rushed forward. “Just leave her be! She’ll sleep for another half hour if you let her!”
“Bridget,” Leigh said breathlessly, trying to guide the other woman’s gaze downward with a subtle flick of her eyes. Surely, dense as the assistant was, she could see the ashen pallor of her employer’s face, the unnatural angle at which the woman’s head now bobbed on her neck? The complete and utter stillness of the usually laboring chest?
“She’s gone,” Leigh whispered.
Chapter 10
Bridget stared down at Lucille for a full three seconds. Then her eyes rolled back in her head, her knees buckled beneath her, and she went down like a collapsing toy. “Help!” Leigh called to Olympia in a loud whisper. The last thing she wanted to do was to call everyone else’s attention to the dining room. The unexpected sight of Lucille had nearly given her a heart attack; giving the same jolt to a houseful of Floribundas risked mass casualties.
Leigh made a grab for Bridget. She managed only to snag the end of the assistant’s shirt, but it was enough to keep the unconscious woman’s head from slamming against either the china cabinet or the floor. Leigh dropped down and patted the woman’s cheek. “Bridget! Are you okay?”
Where the hell was Olympia? The dining room was only partially separated from the living room; most of the space in between was an open doorway, and Olympia had been standing in the middle of that space not two seconds ago.
Bridget began to stir. The front door opened and closed.
“Olympia!” Leigh heard Melvin cry.
Leigh looked over to discover why Olympia hadn’t responded. The Floribunda president had also passed out flat.
Bridget struggled up, and Leigh helped her into a chair. Melvin roused Olympia and got her to a sitting position on the floor. Out in the living room, Jennie Ruth and Lenna still lay on the couch, evidently oblivious. There was so much noise coming from the kitchen that both Leigh and Melvin’s cries of distress had apparently gone unnoticed.
“Dr. Pepper!” Leigh said none too patiently. “Could you come here, please?” She didn’t care if Olympia’s husband were a proctologist or a podiatrist. If he worked anywhere in the human medical field he was more qualified to handle this situation than she was. At least in the eyes of the law. Her real-world experience, she chose not to think about.
“Dr. Pepper!” Leigh called again, more firmly this time. Not until Olympia started shooing her husband away did the balding doctor finally look up in Leigh’s direction. But when he saw Lucille, his pale eyes widened instantly.
“Good Lord,” he murmured, scrambling to his feet. As soon as he reached Lucille, Leigh stepped over to grab her mother’s trifold screen. She stretched the seventies vintage wood and brass-mesh contraption across the doorway, blocking off sight of Lucille’s chair from anyone in the living room. Olympia, who was sitting on the floor just outside the dining room doorway looking woozy, barely noticed as Leigh erected the barrier right in front of her. Leigh then collapsed into a dining room chair herself.
If she were a normal person, she might expect the doctor to start CPR, or at least to call an ambulance. But Leigh Koslow Harmon was not a normal person. Leigh Koslow Harmon was an individual cosmically cursed to attract the no-longer-living like flies to honey. And there wasn’t a doubt in her layperson’s mind that Lucille Busby was no longer living.
Melvin finished his examination, then turned troubled eyes toward Leigh. He shook his head. “How long since…” he asked.
Leigh shrugged helplessly. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d seen Lucille awake, but she had felt no pulse beneath the papery skin of the woman’s neck, and the frail body was already cool to the touch.
“Ohhh…” Bridget moaned from her chair. She sniffed, then started to blubber. “This cannot be happening again. Not to me!”
Again?
Leigh filed the disturbing comment away in her brain. She already had too much to think about.
Melvin took hold of the blanket that was laid across Lucille’s lap and pulled it up and over her head. “There’s nothing I can do,” he said to Bridget. “I’m sorry.” His voice was calm and wholly professional, but to Leigh’s eyes, he looked quite shaken. “She’s been gone for some time now, I’m afraid.”
Bridget blubbered louder.
Melvin turned to Leigh again. “Ordinarily I would call emergency services, but under the circumstances… I suppose we should summon the officer in the kitchen?”
“I suppose we should,” Leigh said limply, having no desire to get up again. Her legs felt like jelly. Yes, Lucille was terminally ill and chronically unhappy and by Bridget’s account, at least, was ready to go. But for the woman to take her last breaths in the Koslows’ dining room, peacefully or otherwise, in the middle of the Holiday House Tour was bad.
It was very, very bad.
Frances was not going to take this well.
Leigh forced herself up and slipped around the screen. Olympia was still sitting on the floor with a dazed expression on her face. Leigh skirted around her, too. She had to elbow several people out of the way to get into the kitchen, since eavesdropping on the policeman’s interview with her mother had clearly become prime entertainment.
“It’s the garland with the fake snow on it, I’m telling you!” Virginia insisted stubbornly. “How do any of you know that isn’t powdered anthrax right out there on the railing? Hmm?”
“Excuse me,” Leigh said quietly, near to the officer’s ear. “Could I talk to you privately for a moment? It’s important.”
It was a strange request, and Leigh expected to meet some resistance. But the officer practically shot up out of his chair. “Of, course,” he said briskly. “Thank you very much, Ms. Koslow and uh… ladies. I’ll be in touch.”
Before anyone else could question the interruption, Leigh led him quickly out of the kitchen and into the dining room. She hoped no one would follow them immediately. But she knew it was only a matter of time. “Mrs. Busby passed away at some point, sleeping in her chair,” Leigh said in a whisper as the policeman moved around the screen. He caught sight of the covered figure and stopped short.
“I’m a medical doctor,” Melvin introduced, his voice equally hushed. “And I can assure you that Ms. Busby is indeed deceased. From what her personal aide tells me of her medical history, sudden death is probably not unexpected. But under the circumstances…” He looked awkwardly from the still-sobbing Br
idget to Leigh and then back to the policeman. “I thought you should be the first to know.”
The officer stepped forward, pulled down the blanket a moment, then put it in place again. “I’ll call backup,” he said, sounding very much like a man in physical pain. Leigh felt for him. He was a small-force, suburban rookie cop who thought he’d been dealing with a simple prank call. By the end of this evening with the Floribundas, he’d be wishing he’d drawn vice duty.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask everyone to stay put for the moment,” he said as he placed his call.
“We understand,” Leigh answered.
“Leigh?” Frances’s voice rang out suddenly. “What’s going on in there?”
Leigh hustled to block her mother from coming around the screen and found herself suddenly face to face with every other person in the house. Even Lenna and Jennie Ruth had gotten off the couch to join the semicircular throng of people who now stood staring at her.
“Yeah,” Harry pitched in. “What’s going on, cutie pie?”
Leigh bristled, but let the indignity pass, since Harry had been covertly chugging the Flying Maples’ gift of cognac all afternoon. It should be the policeman, not her, who was making this unpleasant announcement — or at the very least, the doctor. But the officer was talking on his phone, the doctor made no move to appear, and if she didn’t say something in the next three seconds her mother was going to plow right past her. However poorly Leigh explained the situation, her words had to be better for Frances’s blood pressure than that.
“I’m afraid that Lucille has passed away during a nap,” she said simply. “I’m sorry, everyone.”
The faces that looked back at her were dumbstruck. No one said anything. Seconds ticked by. Leigh watched in dismay as all remaining color drained from her mother’s face.
“She died of natural causes. Of course,” Leigh added, breaking the awkward silence.
She shouldn’t have to say that. It should be assumed. They all knew that Lucille was dying. So why did every single Floribunda look so… nervous?
The blaxe you brew for your adversary often burns you more than him.
STOP!
More tense silence.
Finally, a red-faced Virginia stepped toward Leigh, her eyes narrowed to a menacing look. “And how do you know that?”
Leigh’s face turned equally red as she stared down the older woman with annoyance. True, Leigh had no idea what had happened to Lucille. But she was certain that her mother had no reason to feel guilty about it, which was exactly what would happen if Virginia or anyone else so much as suggested that—
“It’s a cover-up!” Virginia shrieked. “Lucille was poisoned! I knew it!”
“It’s anthrax!” Olympia screamed.
Melvin came flying around the screen. “No, no, dear,” he said, fussing over his wife like a mother hen. “It wasn’t anything of the sort! You must calm down! Please, remember your—”
“Oh, hang my blood pressure!” Olympia snapped. “What does it matter if we’re all going to die?”
Anna Marie pushed her way to the front of the crowd. “Oh, hush up, Olympia!” she said fiercely, planting both hands on her bony hips. “I’ve got a great-grandchild on the way and it’s supposed to be a girl and after two sons and three grandsons I’ll be damned if I’m going anywhere until I get to buy little pink baby dresses!” She stamped her foot furiously. “And as much of a shame as it is for Lucille to go like this, we all know she’s been hailing that sweet chariot with both thumbs and a whistle for months now. What I want to know is what finally pushed her over the edge, because I’m telling you right now, I for one refuse to go with her!”
“Nobody’s going anywhere, because no one has been poisoned!” Leigh tried to say again, painfully aware that she had no credibility with any of the Floribundas, in whose eyes she still wore pigtails, jumped rope, and overwatered violets. But she had to give it a shot. “We all know that Lucille was terminally ill. The only thing that’s gotten everyone upset is that silly prank call, but we have no reason to think the two things are related!”
Delores stepped out in front of her. “My dear Leigh,” the tiny figure said melodiously. “I’m sure you’re right. You and your mother wouldn’t have any reason to try and hide any foul play that occurred here. Oh, no! Your homeowner’s insurance is up to date, I’m sure. Isn’t it? And besides, even if Lucille was poisoned in your house, we all know that it wasn’t intentional. It would have been entirely a matter of negligence, and my word, that could happen to anyone who wasn’t taking appropriate precautions in their kitchen.”
Frances moaned.
Stifling an urge to strangle the passive-aggressive Delores’s skinny little neck, Leigh deliberately ignored her instead. “I repeat,” she stated. “We have no reason to believe that anyone was poisoned.”
“But Aunt Leigh,” Lenna whined. “My stomach aches! And you know that mistletoe berry fell in the punch!”
Oh, crap.
The room erupted in gasps and cries of horror. “Mistletoe?”
“Mistletoe berries in the punch!”
“Good Lord, they’re deadly!”
“I had the punch!”
“So did I!”
Frances swayed slightly on her feet, and Leigh swooped in to steady her.
“Now just a minute!” Lydie said forcefully, coming forward from the back of the pack. “Lenna March, you said yourself that you didn’t serve a single person after that berry fell in the bowl. This man here,” — she threw a venomous look at Harry — “tacked some mistletoe up on the ceiling of the kitchen not an hour ago, and yes, a berry did drop off, but of course we saw it right away. We dumped that punch and scoured the bowl and refilled it with fresh punch and that was the end of it. And I’ll have no more nonsense about that!”
Lydie’s firm, rational voice and easy logic calmed the crowd for all of about ten seconds.
“But Jennie Ruth’s stomach hurts, too!” Virginia insisted. “And Olympia passed out!”
All eyes moved to Olympia, who was still sitting on the floor.
“That’s four people down!” Virginia continued. “Who knows how long it will be before the poison starts to take effect on the rest of us!”
“The room is spinning a bit,” Harry admitted, staggering to a chair.
“Oh, that’s just because you’re drunk as a skunk!” Virginia chastised her husband, undercutting her own argument. “You think we didn’t see you guzzling on the sly all evening, you fool?”
“But, wait…” Olympia muttered, rising to her feet at last. “I don’t understand. Anthrax doesn’t strike nearly so quickly. Why, even if you inhale the spores, you don’t get sick for days!”
Leigh had no idea if Olympia knew what she was talking about, but it sounded promising. “Of course not!” she echoed. “Anthrax is impossible. So can we all please forget that and calm down?”
“I’ve been so foolish,” Olympia continued, her voice sounding stronger. “Why, even the Ebola virus has a two-day incubation period!”
“Ebola!” Virginia cried.
Leigh gave up. The Floribundas were on their own. She was worried about her mother, but at the moment, Lydie seemed to have Frances in hand and was leading her away from the crowd. Leigh took the chance to make a beeline for the girls.
Lenna was sitting on the couch again, holding her stomach and looking miserable. Throughout the communal freakout that had just taken place, Allison had been sitting on the arm of the couch, scribbling furiously in her pocket notebook. “Are you girls okay?” Leigh asked, worried about both of them, but for entirely different reasons.
“My stomach really does hurt,” Lenna said tearfully. “But Allie says I just drank too much punch. And I did drink a lot. And apple cider does always give me a stomach ache.”
“Well, I’m sure that’s all it is, then,” Leigh said comfortingly. “Did you take a pink tablet?”
Lenna nodded. “I’m sure I’ll be better soon,” she sai
d bravely.
Allison was still scribbling. “Allie?” Leigh repeated. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Mom,” the girl answered. “I just want to write everything down before I forget it. In case it’s important later.”
Leigh’s heart thudded in her chest. This was exactly the kind of nonsense she’d been afraid of. A normal preteen girl would find the events of the day both saddening and scary. She would not focus on documenting them for investigative purposes. Leigh and the esteemed Detective Maura Polanski were going to have words later.
“Why would it be important?” Leigh asked. “Honey, Lucille was in very poor health. I don’t know if she got overexcited by all the craziness going on or if the timing was just coincidence, but I’m sure she died of natural causes.”
“Probably, Mom,” Allison answered tonelessly. “But it won’t hurt for me to write things down.”
“EMS and additional officers will be arriving any minute,” Leigh heard the policeman announce. “If everyone would make yourselves comfortable, please. It’s important that nobody leaves the house just yet. Thanks for your cooperation.”
His words were met with a cacophony of moans, groans, and wails. “We’ll be trapped here together for days!” Virginia lamented.
Leigh could not express how much she hoped not.
She looked around her. There were way too many people in the Koslow house, especially considering that no one wanted to be anywhere near the dining room. Lydie had quietly spirited Frances off up the stairs. Jennie Ruth and Anna Marie remained seated in the living room, while a smiling Delores informed her dearest friend Jennie Ruth of how well equipped emergency rooms were these days. A still-shaky Olympia had moved to the wingback chair by the window. Bridget had left the dining room also and was now pacing back and forth, rubbing her face in her hands and muttering. Virginia was running around holding a cloth over her nose and mouth. Harry idled by the turntable, where he made the brilliant decision to cue up the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Joy to the World.