Dos Equis (6 page)

up.”

“You decided,” Barb stated, keeping the lip of her coffee mug near tightly pursed lips.

I regarded the younger of the two as I sipped on my own coffee. It needed a little something…like maybe a scoop of coffee

grounds. “You didn’t think it was a good idea to call Jane?”

Barb looked at me, as if surprised that I’d heard her, or maybe surprised that I’d say something in response to it.

She put down her coffee cup and held up her wrinkled, work-worn hands as if in defence. “This is her story, not mine.” She

gave Millie a look. “Thanks for the coffee. I’m going to get back to that woodpile. Never know when another storm is going to hit.”

We watched in silence as Barb put on her coat and boots and left through the same door she’d entered.

“She’s not really very social,” Millie said by way of explanation. “She didn’t know Hilda very well. Didn’t think we should

get involved.”

Millie rose and ambled into the kitchen area. I thought she was getting the coffeepot to offer refills. Instead, she dug out a bottle of Kahlua from one of the cupboards.

“I think this coffee needs a little something, don’t you?” She held the lip of the bottle over my cup, waiting for my answer.

I smiled. “Oh thanks, that would be nice, except I have to drive back to the city right away. My mother is expecting me for

dinner.”

“Okay for you then. Don’t say I didn’t offer.” She poured herself a double portion, mine and hers. Millie had obviously

found a better way to keep warm. Why keep a fire going when there’s alcohol around?

“So you and Hilda were good friends?”

“Oh, I don’t know if I’d say that,” she answered when she’d returned the bottle to its hiding place and sat back down. “But

she was our nearest neighbour. Has been all my life. Her place is just over the hill to the north. Big place. She pretty much owns most of the land around here. Something like seventy quarters or more.

“We weren’t best friends or nothing like that. But we were friendly. Like neighbours are friendly. At least in the country. We look after one another out here. She’d buy eggs from us every now and then. Our hens have always been better layers than hers.

Don’t know why. They just are. So if she needed extra, for baking or company at Christmas or something like that, she’d call and ask if she could buy an extra dozen or so. I’d take them over there and we’d have coffee and talk sometimes.”

“What was it about her death that made you think you needed to hire a detective, Millie?”

“It’s what that doctor said. And the police. That she’d died from that food poisoning thing.”

“Botulism.”

“Another thing that country folk know about is that botulism. Used to be that people were afraid—city people, that is—they

were afraid to eat home-canned food, because they thought they’d die from it if the canning wasn’t done right. But that was

years and years and years ago. All you have to do is boil everything long enough and hot enough. It’s not hard. And let me tell you, if anyone knew how to preserve safely, it was Hilda Kraus. She would never make that kind of mistake. I’d stake my life on it. And besides, they say it was a jar of canned asparagus that did her in. There’s no way.”

“Why’s that?”

“Can’t grow asparagus around here. Comes up all reedy and woody. Must be the soil, I don’t know. But in all my days, I’ve

never known Hilda to grow asparagus. Never mind can it.”

“I suppose she might have bought it somewhere else. Like maybe at a Farmer’s Market or something like that.”

Millie swigged her coffee/cocktail. “I suppose, but I doubt it. Besides all that, I had another reason for calling in Jane.”

Excellent. “What was that?”

“I know who killed Hilda.”

Chapter 4

“I saw the car.”

“You saw the murderer’s car?” I asked, a little gobsmacked.

“You see, I have to pass right by Hilda’s yard on my way to town. I go into town at least once a day. It was strange, the first time I saw her car…”

“Her?”

“Lynette. Hilda’s daughter.”

Okay, wow. Millie was accusing Hilda’s own daughter of killing her. Matricide. Tsk tsk tsk. It was shocking. Unbelievable.

So much so, that I wasn’t sure I believed it. And I certainly couldn’t begin to connect how a daughter killing her mother in Muenster could lead to Jane Cross being shot to death in Regina.

“The first time I saw her car, it wasn’t even in the yard. She’d left it on the side of the road, just short of the driveway into the yard.”

“Like maybe it had broken down or had a flat tire?”

“Well, I suppose so. The next day, when I passed by, the car had been moved. It was in the yard, next to the house. Probably plugged in on account of how cold it was. The day after that it was gone. So I pretty much forgot about it. Until we heard about Hilda being found dead over there.”

“What did you do then?”

“Well, I told the police what I thought. But they couldn’t care less. They probably thought I was just another crazy old farm woman scared about her own imminent death from poisonous asparagus.” She chuffed at that and took a healthy swallow of

coffee-flavoured Kahlúa.

“What exactly did you tell the police, Millie?”

“I told them everything I just told you. And I told them about Lynette, and how she and her mother never got along much. I

know Lynette Kraus. Known her all her life. She was as spoiled as spoiled comes. They gave that child everything under the

sun. Especially Bill, Hilda’s husband. And guess what happened? When you give a child everything they want, the only thing

they want is MORE.

“Lynette grew up thinking everything should be handed to her on a silver platter. But then she moved to Saskatoon, and found out pretty quickly how the real world works. Then Bill died. Poor Lynette. That was the end of easy street for her. Hilda loved her child, but she knew they’d made a mistake with her. She decided the best way to teach Lynette the value of things was to make her work for them. Do you know they were still paying that full-grown woman an allowance? Shameful. Well, Hilda cut

that out pretty darn quick. Lynette finally had to get and keep a job if she wanted clothes on her back and food on her table. The only way Hilda would give Lynette any money was if she provided some sort of service for her. Like drive her into Humboldt

or Saskatoon for a doctor’s appointment, or to pick up groceries. You can imagine Lynette wasn’t very keen about any of this.”

“So their relationship was not a good one?”

Millie barked a laugh. The three dogs, none of which had cared to go outside with Barb, looked up from their various resting spots around the room. “Not good is an understatement. You see, even at that, Hilda didn’t really have all that much cash to hand out to the daughter. Like a lot of us out here, our fortune— such as it is—our savings, everything we have, is tied up in land, buildings, and machinery. The only way Lynette was going to get her hands on any real money was if Hilda sold some of

it. And she swore to me, she had no intentions of selling so much as a hayseed until her last will and testament was read over her dead body.”

Hilda Kraus had been a headstrong and willful woman. In my experience—and from watching episodes of
Murder, She

Wrote
—people like that seldom bulldozed their way to a natural death. Was that the case here?

“Did the police or RCMP investigate Lynette Kraus?” I asked.

“They didn’t seem very interested in my ‘theories.’ As far as they were concerned, they had an open and shut case. The

murderer was botulism.”

“But Hilda did die from the poisoning?”

“Yes. But how she got it into her system is another matter.”

Without knowing the details of the official investigation, I’d have to say that although Millie had some interesting points, I could see where the police would have had doubts.

“So I did the only thing left for me to do. I called on Jane. She was like a daughter to us, so I knew she’d help if she could.

Sweet thing drove all the way down here from Regina one Sunday, just to talk to us about it.”

Sweet? Jane? “And what did Jane say after you told her your story?”

“She didn’t say much, now that you ask. But she did tell us she would do some snooping around and let us know if she found

out anything. I was happy with that. It was the only hope I had left to find out how Hilda really died. Like I says, we were neighbours, and neighbours look after one another. Dead or alive.”

Minutes later, as I was leaving, I saw Barb watching me from around the corner of the house. I waved a goodbye. She didn’t

wave back, only stared, unsmiling.

Dead or alive, the one neighbour I knew I could rely on was Sereena Orion Smith. I’d spent a good part of my sojourn away

with Sereena, at some of the various ports of call around the globe which she treats like home. She knew I was going through a tough time. So she’d made herself, and wherever she happened to be at the time, fully available to me. It was her unobtrusive, yet strong, quiet support, not to mention her willingness to dive into a pitcher of anything at any time of the day or night, that got me through the worst of it.

That night, however, it was Sereena herself who was having her own resolve tested.

Having somehow sensed that I was finally home, and wanting to share gossip, a few bons mots, and some laughs, Sereena

had unwittingly found herself in my kitchen with her nemesis: my mother.

There can be no two women more different than Sereena Orion Smith and Kay Quant. My mother is as Ukrainian as Easter

eggs and borscht, with a thick accent to match. Just shy of five feet tall and leaning toward stocky, she has generally kept the same dress size since giving birth to her last child, which was me. She sports a tightly permed head of greying hair, horn-rimmed spectacles, and a face that can be sweet as cream or sour as…well, as sour cream. Mom goes to church. She gardens,

and cooks to excess. Her family is her life. And, according to her, the last true movie star of any note was Doris Day.

As for Sereena: if you could think of the last person in the world you’d imagine finding living on a quiet street in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada—or watching a Doris Day movie—well, that’s Sereena. Her past is elusive and fantastical, filled with

tales of madcap adventures across every continent. She’s bedded kings and dined with emirs. She’s danced at midnight under

the stars of foreign lands and lived in palaces and Bedouin tents. She’s enjoyed great loves and suffered deep tragedies. Her greatest feat is to have survived it all. Just barely. Now, somewhere north of middle age, Sereena still continues to trek into the worldly wilds of the rich and famous every now and again. But in between, this ravaged, damaged beauty is content to live a

quiet life in Saskatoon. Well, quiet in an indisputably Sereena fashion.

Returning home from Muenster, I left Annabelle in the garage and trudged up my back walk (which was badly in need of a

good shovelling). It was when I’d just reached the back door, which opens into my big, brightly lit kitchen, that I’d caught sight of the unlikely scene. It was a picture worth a million words not all of them nice. Sereena had obviously mistaken the lights in the kitchen for a sign that I was home and open for company. Instead, she’d walked in on my mother preparing “just a leetle

someting for
sonsyou.
” Although Sereena is not above rude behaviour if it suits her, bless her heart (it was in there somewhere), she wanted to see me and decided to wait until I arrived.

With both Mom and Sereena unaware of my presence, I caught the best sight of all. The look on Sereena’s face was

particularly priceless. She was watching, utterly horrified, as my mother poured cream, thick as molasses, into a stovetop pot, while, at the same time, squirting half a bottle of Heinz ketchup into the same pot.

I knew that Mom was preparing one of my favourite dishes: meatballs in red sauce (aka cream and ketchup). But to

Sereena’s eyes, it was some kind of Hallowe’en prank in a saucepan. Her body recoiled, her eyes grew wide,

incomprehension turned to disgust. Her dark red lips curled into a near snarl. Her hand tensed around her champagne glass as she threw back all that remained in the flute. It was as her eyes darted about the room, no doubt looking for something stronger to drink, that she noticed me peering through the window.

I smiled and waved. My only hope was that the cat scratches on my face would curry me some sympathy and forgiveness.

Sereena gave me one of her famed
I-curse-you-and-all-your-pets
looks, and motioned me inside with the crook of her middle finger. I knew that, if nothing else, it would be both an amusing and delicious evening.

By nine-thirty I was done in. It had been a long day. And the night before I’d had very little sleep, what with all the murder, attacks on my person, and police interrogation. So I sent Sereena home and Mom to her room, with instructions on how to use

the Blu-ray player. I thought she’d like to watch
Send Me No Flowers
(the last movie in which Doris Day, Rock Hudson, and Tony Randall all appeared together).

My bedroom is a large room, with ensuite bathroom and walk-in closet, that takes up the whole north end of the house.

French doors open onto a small, bricked pad surrounded, in summer, by flowerbeds. The latest re-do, supervised by Sereena,

had turned the space into a cozy, colourful room with a faintly Middle Eastern feel to it. It is my private kingdom, particularly when I have houseguests, as I did now. I can close the door and have everything I want.

Except, in this instance, for one thing.

Every night, when it’s time to turn in, the usual routine is that Barbra and Brutus follow me (and the doggie treat they know is in my pocket) down the hallway into the bedroom. Once the treat is hurriedly chomped up, they curl up amongst the piles of

fringed pillows artfully arranged throughout the room. Sometime during the night—only if I’m alone—one or both will