Smoked (The Alex Harris Mystery Series) (11 page)

Nena gave a disgusted grunt. “Only that Sergei had to pull weeds or something, to keep her from getting in contact with the stuff. And I guess she couldn’t eat certain foods, too. A real pain.” Nena started to run a hand through her hair but it got tangled in hairspray and too much teased strands. She patted it back in place and looked at me. “I gotta go. My break is just about over and I need to pee.”

We watched Nena walk back into the truck stop and then I helped Meme up.

“Things don’t look too good for the butcher,” Meme said, “but you know, that Nena sounds like she was fed up with him and her threats weren’t working. Maybe she decided it was time to take matters into her own hands.”

Of course Meme was right. Nena must have been sick and tired of Sergei dragging his feet and decided to give Maria a push to the afterlife. But where would she have gotten the poison ivy? She lived in an apartment, though granted, anyone could walk into the woods and collect the stuff. How long would it take to gather up enough to kill Maria Kravec? Maybe Nena had been stockpiling the stuff for a while. But why? She only gave Sergei the ultimatum a week ago. But even so, that didn’t mean the woman wasn’t fed up long before.

I pulled my car in front of my sister’s house and turned it off. “By the way, Meme, what did you get Henry?”

“I got him some toys for his new pet and a new board game for himself.”

I shook my head. “Don’t encourage him. We’re hoping he’ll get tired of
it
and Sam can give it away when he’s not looking.”

A minute later we walked into a pirate-themed house. My sister had pulled out all the stops and there was even one of those bouncing things in the back yard shaped kind of like a pirate ship.

Henry came running over as soon as he saw me. He wrapped his arms around me and then I hoisted him up. How much longer would I be able to pick him up? And how much longer would he want me to?

“Auntie, you came!” he said into my neck and then gave me a big kiss on my cheek.

“Of course I came. I’ve been looking forward to it all week.”

“Do you want to go up to my room and meet Scopes?”

“Hey, little man,” John said, as he came to my side. “I’ll go up with you. Auntie is a bit nervous about rodents. How about if I take a picture of Scopes with my phone and we can show her.”

I mouthed a thank you to John and then went into the kitchen where the grownups held reign. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table and after I got a glass of sparkling water for both myself and Meme, I took a seat.

“Everything sure looks good,” Meme said. “Samantha did a good job and the kids are sure having a swell time.” We all glanced out the window at a backyard filled with children. I caught a glimpse of my niece, Kendall, and blew her a kiss.

“Forget about the party,” my mother said with annoyance. “What are you two up to?” she asked looking first at me and then at Meme. “I know for a fact, Alex, you picked up your grandmother quite a while ago. Where have you been?”

I started to answer but Meme place her hand on mine. “Are you spying on me, Mable?”

My mother sat up straight and clasped her hands together in front of her, looking very prim and proper. “I stopped by to pick up another card table just in case we needed it and I saw you and Alex driving down the street.”

“I gave you my card table two days ago, Mable. Why are you checking up on me? Is this about Sloth? You listen here, kiddo. Sloth is a good guy and I’m helping him no matter what. You’ll get your share when I die but I got a bit I keep aside to help these young kids get a second chance. And if you don’t like it, well, you can stop coming over.”

Yikes. I never heard Meme go off on my mom like that. I glanced at my mother. She looked properly chastised and it was odd to see her that way. Usually she acted like Meme and I was on the receiving end.

“I just worry about you Mother, that’s all. And don’t think for a minute I care about your money. I just don’t want you to lose it on bad investments.”

Meme reached over and patted Mom’s hand. “Don’t be so stuffy, Mable. Why don’t you tease your hair a bit and put on more makeup. Maybe go out and treat yourself to a red lipstick.”

I tried my hardest, but I couldn’t help myself and I burst out laughing. And then Meme joined in.

“What’s going on in here?” Sam asked. She held a platter of little baked pizzas and I happily took it from her and placed in on the table.

After we all settled down and my mother’s coloring turned back to something resembling a normal human instead of a lobster, I told them what I was up to and about everyone I had talked with already and luckily my mother didn’t have a fit. Maybe Meme’s words to lighten up were taking hold.

“I guess it doesn’t hurt to ask questions,” my mother said, “especially if that poor man is innocent but John thinks he did it.”

“I’m not sure what John thinks. I’m trying to keep a low profile on this case.” Geesh. I sounded like some TV detective.

“If Mrs. Kravec fired her assistant twice, I’d be putting the screws to the assistant, what’s her name again?” Sam asked.

“Nadine Davis. And she definitely lied to me. And Frank Corliss is pretty upset about closing his business. There are lots of suspects out there. It may turn out Sergei killed her but I owe it to Ellery to at least explore all possibilities,” I said.

“Okay. I think it’s time for cake.” My sister went into the pantry and took out the cake my mother had made. It was a beautiful sheet cake with a pirate ship on one side and then a beach on the other end with a tiny treasure chest with jewels spilling out. It looked like my mother had used brown sugar to make the sand and lots of blue and green food coloring for the ocean. It was a really cool cake.

My mom and Sam went out to gather the kids and Meme went to get a good seat in the dining room. I put the kettle on and took out some mugs for tea. While I was waiting for the water to boil, I thought I’d get started putting the candles on the cake. I walked over to the table and as I neared the cake it looked like the treasure chest had fallen over. As I reached over to right it, the darned thing started to move and then I realized what it was and I let out a scream.

Pandemonium reigned for the next fifteen minutes while John, my sister’s husband, Michael, and my father tried to catch Scopes. Samantha and I jumped onto the kitchen counter, though why we bothered was anyone’s guess. The darned thing clearly could climb. Millie, who had just arrived with her mother, went outside to keep the kids entertained. Henry and Kendall clung to Meme, both children crying and afraid for Scopes.

John and Michael spotted the rodent at the same time and lunged for it. Scopes got away but Michael banged his head on John’s elbow and the two of them landed in a heap on the floor. In the end my father was the hero who caught a frightened Scopes and put her in a small burlap bag for delivery back up to Henry’s room. Sam and Michael sat Henry down and gently told him that this is what happens when he forgets to close the cage properly and leaves the door to his bedroom opened. After a tearful promise that it would never happen again, we all congregated in the dining room for pirate cupcakes, which were suppose to be parting gifts for the children but had to become the main course. As Meme pointed out, Scopes may have pooped or peed on the cake and we couldn’t risk getting all the kids sick.

As for me, I couldn’t believe I had almost touched a rodent thinking it was part of the cake decorations. Yuk! I just wasn’t in the mood to eat but we all gathered and sang Happy Birthday to Henry and then watched while he opened his gifts. Once all the kids departed, we settled once again in the kitchen.

“You really know how to throw a party, Samantha,” Meme cackled. “Of course, Kendall’s First Holy Communion takes the cake.”

“Geesh! Don’t remind me,” I said thinking back to Kendall, in her beautiful white dress and veil, walking in on her great-grandfather feeling up his girlfriend.

My grandfather, Lawrence Harris, lived at a retirement home and had been dating Lucy McDermott since he arrived. He had always been a proper kind of a guy and then all hell broke loose the minute he turned ninety. He and Lucy just could not keep their hands off of each other and it had been pretty traumatic for Kendall walking in on them in the powder room. She screamed and when Sam and I arrived she pointed to Lucy’s breasts with a horrified look on her face. It really was quite a sight. Lucy, very thin and shriveled, had breasts resembling two long deflated balloons. It took Sam quite a while to convince the child that hers would not be looking like that, at least for a very, very long time.

“Are you sure the bedroom door is closed and the cage is locked?” I asked, returning my thoughts to the current troublesome party guest. John just shook his head and patted my hand.

“It was inevitable this would happen,” my dad reasoned, “but I think Henry learned his lesson.”

My mom and Sam put the remainder of the appetizers on the table and pulled out the makings for sandwiches from the refrigerator. Who knew what Scopes had managed to land on before I spotted her so, with my hunger returning, I ate only things that hadn’t been out while Scopes had terrorized the family.

“I have some exciting news,” Millie said while we ate our lunch. “Rueben and I are moving in together.”

“Wow! Congratulations,” Sam said and got up and gave Millie a hug.

My mother, always the worrier, looked at Judith. “It must be difficult for you. It was very hard when Samantha first moved out.”

Sam beamed. “Really? You missed me when I first moved out?”

“Quiet. Judith and I are talking.”

Judith took a deep breath. “We’re a close group, the three of us, but we love Rueben and Millie’s just moving a couple miles away. I’ll see her all the time.”

“You bet,” Millie said and winked at me.

John’s cell phone rang and he excused himself and went out into the hall. A minute later he came back.

“Is anything wrong,” I asked noticing the frown on his face.

“That was Jim Maroni,” John said, referring to his partner. “Seems there’s no doubt anymore that Maria Kravec was murdered.”

“How do you know? Did someone confess?” I asked hoping Sergei wasn’t behind bars.

John shook his head. He put his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers, something he did when in deep thought. “Mrs. Kravec kept a couple of injectors in the kitchen drawer.”

I cringed thinking how close help was if I had only known.

“And how does that tell you she was murdered?” Judith asked.

“It looks like someone emptied them.”

I thought back to the night Mrs. Kravec died and how I watched her stagger toward the kitchen. Even if she had made it, it would have done no good with the injectors emptied.

“Maybe they were just used up,” my mother said.

“No. The orange sheath at the end would have been deployed to cover the exposed needle if they had been used properly. Plus, there were no prints on them at all. Mrs. Kravec’s prints should have been on them or whoever put them in the drawer to begin with would have left prints.”

I thought about this for a moment. “If someone didn’t want them to be available in case Mrs. Kravec needed them, why wouldn’t they just take them and toss them out?”

“I can’t be sure, but if she always kept them there and noticed they were missing, she would have replaced them.”

“So this way,” I said, picking up on John’s thought, “she thinks she’s protected but in the event she did need one, it wouldn’t have worked.”

“It sounds like this was all planned out,” Sam said.

“Yes, it does,” John agreed. “Someone wanted Mrs. Kravec dead. They placed the poison ivy in the pile of leaves knowing she would burn them and emptied the pens so there would be no help readily available. Premeditated.”

My mother shivered and pulled her cardigan tightly around her. “Another murder in our small town. How awful.”

I looked over at Meme and saw a tiny smile on her lips. She noticed me and gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. She was ecstatic someone had died and we could continue to work the case. God help me, I really had created a monster. And then I noticed John watching the two of us and I had a feeling
Alex Harris, PI
was about to go out of business.

They say never go to bed angry. So I didn’t. I didn’t go to bed at all. I turned on the TV and caught up on several episodes of
Doc Martin
I had recorded and never had time to watch. I’m a true Anglophile. My entire family is, actually. We’re glued to the TV during
Downton
season and then Sam and I dissect every episode with Millie on Monday mornings. And now I had discovered another British gem in
Doc Martin
, a country doctor who has a phobia about blood. Who thinks this stuff up?

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning I must have fallen asleep on the sofa, but not for long. I was vaguely aware of John puttering around in the kitchen getting breakfast and making much too much noise, but he never came over and kissed me good-bye. With the death of Mrs. Kravec officially ruled a murder, he would be working all hours. That was fine with me and not just because we were having a bit of a row as the Brits would say. No, I needed him out of my way so I could solve this thing before Sergei Kravec had to trade in his butcher apron for an orange jumpsuit.

It was still dark outside but I knew I wouldn’t fall back to sleep. I tidied up the den, took a shower and had a cup of lemon yogurt with granola. I love mornings. Always have. I love the peacefulness of this time of day, especially in autumn when the morning light is diffused instead of the harsh glare of summer. I made a big pot of tea and poured myself a cup. I opened up my iPad and logged on to Facebook. My mother had posted a short video of Riley rolling over and sitting up on command. Meme and her posse of women friends were discussing whose butt looked better in jeans—Generic Viagra Fred or Walter Hofstader, a man who had recently moved into the community of senior homes where Meme lived. Fred’s butt was deemed too flat; a back with a crack as my sister would say. Walter seemed to be winning the best butt contest. I couldn’t wait to meet him. Next I logged on to a news site to see what the day had to offer. Anthony Weiner was at it again, sexting his way to another scandal. If your name was Weiner and you were running for office, wouldn’t you try to keep as low a profile as possible? Geesh.