Husbands And Lap Dogs Breathe Their Last (26 page)

“We all are,” Deuteronomy said. “John, perhaps we could talk about that poker game.”

“Excuse me,” Cummings said, rising and walking in the direction of the downstairs bathroom used by guests. John began to describe what he remembered about the poker game. Deuteronomy shot Cummings another look as he left the room.

The bathroom was on the other side of the house, near the kitchen and down the hall from what Cummings had always assumed was Elektra’s room. All three rooms were accessed from the same hallway.

Cummings stood and listened. He heard a sitcom laugh track coming from inside Elektra’s room. This suggested she had gone off duty or was at least taking a break.

Cummings walked into the kitchen and quietly closed the door behind him. He noticed several doors in one wall. He opened the first. It was a broom closet. He opened the next. It was a rather large pantry.

He turned on the light and went inside, quickly perusing the shelves. Soon he found what he was looking for: five jars of Harpwater Hives honey, identical to the one he’d seen Ernestine use. He turned off the light and returned to the living room.

“As I remember I lost about twenty dollars, and Chess won about twenty dollars,” John told Deuteronomy, winding up his account of the poker game. Cummings sat down. “I think the others broke even. We all had to work the next day, so we broke up early, about ten o’clock.”

“Where did you go after that?”

“Home, of course,” John responded, surprised by the question. “Where else would I go?”

Elektra appeared and checked on the coffee.

“Anyone want more coffee?” she asked.

“I certainly don’t,” John replied. “I’ll be up all right.”

“You do make strong coffee, Elektra,” Rebecca said with a smile.

“Is the Greek way,” Elektra said.

“You really ought to open up that restaurant in Portland,” Cummings said cheerfully. “Your pastries are excellent.”

Elektra smiled.

“It’s a real shame,” Rebecca said. “I know she’s tried everything. The banks won’t give her a loan because they say restaurants are too risky. Ernestine, bless her heart, said she’d put up some of the money, but Elektra couldn’t raise the rest. Isn’t that right?”

“Is right,” Elektra said, “but hope I never give up.”

“What about Chess? Did you ask him?” Cummings asked in a casual tone.

“No. I barely knows the Chess.”

“Elektra, I think you’ve forgotten,” Rebecca reminded her. “You did ask him. He wouldn’t give it to you. Remember? He said he talked to some adviser who told him restaurants mostly all lost money.”

“Yes. I forget,” Elektra nodded. She picked up the coffee pot and went back to the kitchen.

Cummings observed that Deuteronomy’s expression had changed from irritation to intrigue. He seemed like someone who wasn’t sure he wanted to go on a trip just then but was willing to wait and see if the weather was agreeable when he got off the plane.

Cummings turned to Rebecca and John.

“Tell me, do you sell gift baskets during the holidays?”

“Yes,” John said, “we started a few years ago. We put in our honey and maple candy and candles and beeswax hand lotion.”

“You do label the honey in your gift baskets?”

“Of course! It’s also on the cellophane wrapping around the basket. We don’t want people to forget where the goodies came from.”

“Who bought these gift baskets last year? Individuals? Businesses? About how many did you sell?”

“Oh, we made a lot of them, more than one hundred fifty.”

“Chess bought a lot, may he rest in peace,” Rebecca said.

“He did,” John said. “He said he wanted to support our business, so he ordered forty baskets. He gave them out to employees and friends as holiday gifts.”

“That was our biggest order,” Rebecca said. “We were very grateful.”

“We were. We made him a big thank you gift basket. Do you remember that, Mother?”

“I do,” Rebecca replied.

“And what was in Chess’s gift basket?”

“The same as everyone else’s but more of everything, and there was also a holiday card.”

“By any chance did Elektra help you make up these gift baskets?” Cummings asked.

“Elektra?” Deuteronomy repeated, surprised.

“Yes. Yes, she did. She was a big help to us,” Rebecca said.

“We were just overwhelmed last year,” John explained. “Elektra came to our home the day after Thanksgiving and stayed all weekend, helping us make up the baskets. Then she helped me deliver the local orders and get the others to the post office. We couldn’t have done it without her.”

“When you say Elektra helped you deliver the orders,” Cummings continued, “do you mean that you delivered some, and she delivered some?”

“Yes,” John replied.

“Do you remember who delivered Chess’s order?”

“Elektra did. I remember, because I knew there’d be guys at the factory to unload all those baskets. I sent her there while I did the run to the post office.”

“Oh, my,” Deuteronomy said suddenly. Cummings looked at him. Deuteronomy appeared to be quite glum.

“Are you feeling poorly?” Rebecca asked.

“How very disturbing!” Deuteronomy said. “It seems I correctly understood that I was going against the wind, but I continued to move the rudder in another wrong direction. Would you please excuse me for a moment?”

He rose and went up the stairs.

“Do you need anything?” Rebecca called after him, but he didn’t respond. She turned to Cummings. “I hope he’s all right. Elektra says he’s been acting odd all day.”

Elektra reappeared.

“Anyone want more glyka?” she said, indicating the dessert tray.

“I’m stuffed!” Rebecca said. “They were delicious, Elektra.”

“Wicked tasty,” John agreed.

Deuteronomy reappeared on the stairs, heading back to the parlor. He was carrying a red plastic canister.

“I found this in the attic earlier today. I thought perhaps it was John’s and that Elektra was hiding it,” Deuteronomy announced.

“No. It’s not mine,” John said.

“I realize that now,” Deuteronomy continued. “It appears this canister has been rinsed carefully but it still has a vague odor of gasoline.”

“Why is that important?” John asked.

“This from the boat,” Elektra said. “We use this on boat if we are out of the gas.”

“The canister we keep for the boat is blue, and we store it on the boat,” Deuteronomy replied. “I’m afraid, Elektra, this held the accelerant you used to burn down the Ephemera Museum.”

“You think I do this?” Elektra scoffed. “Why I does this? I quiet Greek housekeeper, not Medea!”

“I think I can explain your motive. It was a diversion,” Cummings explained. He glanced at Rebecca and John. They both looked shocked.

“Yes,” Deuteronomy agreed. “I concocted the absurd notion that Chess was assassinated to tie up a loose end from the Cold War, and you took it up as a way to divert attention from what was really going on. What a fool I was! No wonder I can’t write books that anyone wants to read anymore. Worse, I thought that John here ... well, it doesn’t matter now. John, you must accept my apologies.”

“You think I killed Chess?” John asked, startled.

“No. No, I don’t. I was mistaken,” Deuteronomy confessed.

“Don’t be hard on yourself,” Cummings said to Deuteronomy. “Your suppositions were clever; they just weren’t correct. The truth is Elektra killed Chess because he wouldn’t finance her restaurant.”

“You must be mistaken,” Rebecca stammered.

“I do no such thing!” Elektra insisted.

“Revenge is important to you. You told me so. I don’t think you meant to kill him, just to make him sick. You made a toxic botanical extract, perhaps from rhubarb leaves, and put it into Chess’s thank you gift basket,” Cummings continued. “What you didn’t know was that Chess was allergic to honey.”

“How did you learn that?” Deuteronomy marveled.

“Because you told me that Chess was allergic to many things, and he gave Ernestine a bottle of honey as a hostess gift.” Cummings turned to Elektra. “You may not have known he was allergic to honey, but you were at that party, and you saw him give Ernestine the jar. You realized he might give away all the honey you’d poisoned.”

“You think I carry bottles of the poison in the handbag of me?” Elektra demanded.

“No. I think you’re very selective. You did your best to retrieve as many bottles of that poisoned honey as you could from the people Chess gave it to. That’s likely why there are five jars of honey in your pantry now. But I guess you weren’t able to get the bottle back from Ernestine,” Cummings replied.

“Anyway, you changed your plan. You made another batch of poison, probably delivered in something you cooked, which Chess ate when he visited Deuteronomy.

“At this point I don’t know exactly what happened. Did you inadvertently make the poison too strong? Did Chess go into anaphylactic shock due to an allergy to a compound you used? My guess is that Chess collapsed immediately after leaving from a visit with Deuteronomy and fell somewhere between the door and his car. Deuteronomy likely retreated to his room immediately after Chess’s departure, so he didn’t notice. In any case Chess died, and somehow you moved him, probably in that large wheelbarrow you keep in the garden. It was dark. You wheeled Chess to the boat, which was parked far enough from Ernestine’s house that she didn’t see or hear you.

“Ernestine was having septic work done. The workmen had left a small excavator for the duration. You used it to load Chess into the boat and push his body into the front cabin. That explains the scratches on the side of the boat.

“The next day you had the guys from the shipyard come by and shrink-wrap the boat. You had to hurry in case the body started to smell before it froze. Once the boat was wrapped, you knew there was almost no chance the body would be discovered until late spring, and by then it would likely have eroded to such an extent that the murder couldn’t be traced back to you.”

“This is nonsense! How I know do this?”

“Because you’re an avid reader, and you’ve read all of my books,” Deuteronomy proposed. “I used poisoned honey as a plot device in
Martinis Are My Business,
although my character only became ill from it. The body in the boat came from
Cat and Spouse
.”

“This is lies, all this lies!” Elektra shrieked.

“There’s more,” Cummings said. “I suspected there was a connection between Chess’s death and that of his ex-wife, Therese Hickok.”

“That’s right. I’d forgotten Chess and Therese were married,” Rebecca said.

“Yes,” Cummings said, “but they remained friends. In fact, Chess used to ask Therese for business advice. Therese was the person who told Chess not to invest in your restaurant, Elektra, which he must have told you. You were furious. You found out that Therese was living in Chicago. You phoned someone you knew there, someone you’d met working in an occult store in Boston. At this point there was some serendipity. It turned out Tom knew Therese. They were both members of the same occult society.”

“You think I kill Therese? How I do this?” Elektra protested.

“I don’t think you killed Therese. What you did do was encourage Tom Daniels to scare her but good. Tom’s very ill and in a terrible mental state. He mentioned the Craddock Brooch. You probably had never heard of it, but it didn’t matter. You knew amulets and talismans fascinated him because you used to sell them to him. You encouraged his belief in the brooch’s healing properties. You suggested he steal the brooch from Therese; it would be easy if he created a diversion. You suggested spontaneous combustion. Deuteronomy, I assume that’s also in one of your books?”

“Yes, it is. It’s in
Vodka Is My Passion
. That was the sequel to
Martinis Are My Business
. Sales were unexpectedly good for the first book, so my publisher asked for a sequel. The second book didn’t sell as well. Apparently my readership sobered up over the years.”

“And what was the result of the spontaneous combustion in your novel?”

“It was a diversion. The fire was put out before it caused any real harm.”

“So that’s it,” Cummings concluded. “The fire went out of control.”

“Bravo!” Deuteronomy said.

John and Rebecca looked horrified.

“I not mean to kill,” Elektra said, wailing pitifully as she sank to her knees. “Is
tragoidia! Tragoidia!
This the fates do! I play the pranks, but the fates make go all wrong! Is not my fault!” She beat the floor with her fists.

“I fear one of us should phone the police,” Deuteronomy suggested sadly.

Later, after Elektra had been led away in handcuffs and the Harpwaters retreated, with Rebecca in tears and John looking ashen, Deuteronomy offered Cummings a brandy. Cummings declined, but Deuteronomy poured himself one and sank into the sofa.

“How could she do such terrible things?” he asked plaintively.

“I can’t say,” Cummings answered. “Sadly, we can define what people do but I don’t think we can really understand it. Human behavior just doesn’t make sense. Amoebas behave rationally. People do not.”

Six weeks later a second article about Cummings appeared in the
Chicago Tribune,
this one lauding him for helping the police solve the murder of Therese Hickok. This resulted in another series of oddball calls from prospective clients, as well as a polite but firm email from a Chicago Police Department media outreach person. He informed Cummings that he was to receive a civilian commendation and politely suggested that Cummings would best serve the cause of justice by staying out of police business.

The Maine police did not acknowledge Cummings’s contribution, but curiously, Mandrake did. As best as Cummings could tell, Mandrake felt that Cummings had played a role in creating the conditions for his romance with Otto, and for this Mandrake was grateful. He stayed in touch.

Mandrake and Otto struck a deal with the District Attorney. They were granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying against Tom and Sebastian. Both were prepared to toss Sebastian to any available carnivores, but testifying against Tom was painful. Ultimately they felt the circumstances left them little choice, and so they agreed.