Never Forgotten (17 page)

Bradley sat on the edge of the couch. “Yes, you’re right, I just…”

“You don’t want to get us sick,” Stanley interrupted, “Yeah, we got that. But, what happens if the curse
ain’t
a curse but a poison and someone’s trying to get rid of you and Mary. You ever thought of that?”

“A poison?”
Mary asked. “But why would anyone want to kill law enforcement officers?”

“You never know,” Stanley said. “There’re theories out there that would scare the pants off you. If you only knew what was going on behind our backs.”

“Well, I know one thing,” Rosie said. “You both need sleep. So, Mary you go on up to your room. Bradley, if you’re fine on the couch, I’ll stay in the spare room in case you need help in the middle of the night.”

“I’m fine here,” he said with a smile. “This couch and I go way back.”

Mary stood on slightly shaky knees. “Bradley, I would feel better knowing you’re here,” she said, “Thanks for staying.
Rosie,
thanks for all you’ve done tonight. And Stanley, why don’t you come by tomorrow so we can talk about your theories. I can’t think straight right now, but I feel you might have something there.”

Stanley grinned. “Well, of course I do,” he said. “And if you don’t mind, missy, I’ll drive your car over to my place and park it in the garage, just to keep it out of sight.”

“Thanks, Stanley, that’s a great idea. The keys are on the holder, next to the door.”

Mary walked slowly up the stairs to her room. Her muscles still ached from the violent cramping. This is crazy, she thought. What is happening to us?

She didn’t even jump when she walked into her room and found Jeannine hovering near her bed. “How are you feeling,” the ghost asked.

“A little rough,” Mary confessed. “But I’ll make it.”

“I’m so sorry; I didn’t think you’d get hurt. I just wanted you to help him.”

Mary walked over to her bed and sat down on the edge. “Jeannine is what happened to me tonight connected with Bradley’s illness?”

“Yes, it is,” she said tentatively, “but I can’t tell you more than that. I’m supposed to only observe in these things, I can’t help.”

“Well, I appreciate that much information,” Mary replied. “I’m going to figure this out, Jeannine. I promise.”

“I know you will, Mary,” she said. “And if I can help you any further, I will.”

Jeannine started to fade and Mary was too tired to call her back. “Good-night,” she murmured as she slipped to the top of her bed to get under the covers.

She turned when she heard the rattling. The empty cup and saucer she had left on her nightstand was jiggling. What in the world?

She reached over to stop them, but before she got there, they crashed to the ground and broke into pieces. Mary dropped her head into her pillow. “I’ll clean it up tomorrow,” she promised herself and then closed her eyes and fell asleep.

Something was wrong. Mary sat up in her bed, immediately alert. There were sounds coming from the kitchen, that wasn’t unusual, but there was something else. Food! Someone was cooking food. No ghost ever took the time to make Mary a meal. Then she remembered the events of the past day and felt a wave of relief. Bless her heart; Rosie was already taking care of them.

She swung around the bed and was about to step down when her foot grazed something sharp and pointy and she immediately pulled up. She looked down and saw the broken cup and saucer. That was the strangest thing; it was like an unseen hand…

An unseen hand! Mary recalled the last thing Jeannine had said before she faded away. “If I can help you any further, I will.”

“Okay, Jeannine, a clue. My cup and saucer are a clue,” she shook her head.
“Shards?
Broken Pieces? Shattered lives?”

The sounds below reminded her that Rosie was in the kitchen. She slipped out of bed, avoiding the breakage, and quickly washed up and got dressed before she went downstairs to greet Rosie.

“Good morning,” Mary said from the bottom of the stairs. “How is everyone this morning?”

She peeked around the corner to see Bradley still asleep on the couch.

“Yes, he’s still sleeping,” Rosie said. “I thought sleep would be the best thing for him. But, I made you some muffins and I brewed some of that special tea of yours. I really don’t like the smell of it, but I made some for you.”

“Tea!”
Mary exclaimed. “That’s it! Not broken anything, it’s the tea.”

“Mary, are you feeling okay?” Rosie asked.

Mary picked up the bag of tea Angela had given them when they left the hospital. “Is this the tea you gave me last night?” Mary asked.

“Yes, dear,” she said. “Why?”

“Did you give any more of it to Bradley?”

“No, when I asked him if he wanted some he told me he had had enough of that tea to last him a lifetime.”

Mary jumped up and hugged Rosie. “I’ve got a hunch. Do you know where Bradley’s keys are?”

“In the holder, next to the door,” she replied.

“I won’t be gone long,” Mary explained. “I just have to ask someone a few questions.”

Mary grabbed her coat and Bradley’s keys and quietly slipped out the door. His car had been driven over by one of his officers the day before and sat in front of her house, but it was covered in several inches of snow from the storm the night before. She opened the car, put the keys in the ignition and started the car, so it could warm up while she cleaned it off.

With the windows clear, she climbed into the driver’s seat and adjusted the mirrors. She looked down at the rest of the keys hanging from the chain, hoping that one of the extra ones would let her into City Hall so she wouldn’t have to break in.

It took her only a few minutes to reach Bradley’s parking spot outside City Hall. She dashed from the car to the side door on Walnut Street, the keys jingling in her hand. Before she had a chance to try them in the lock, the door opened for her. “Thanks Jeannine,” she said with a smile. “Oh, and thanks for the clue, very ingenious.”

She hurried up the stairs and down the hall to the old Chief’s Office. Opening the door, she called, “Sam, I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

Instantly the ghost of Sam Rogers appeared before her. “Good morning, Mary, what can I do for you?” he asked.

“Did you drink tea?”

He
hovered
a little closer. “You came to City Hall before seven in the morning to ask me if I drank
tea?
”

“Yes, I did,” she replied. “It’s important.”

“Yeah, I drank tea all the time,” he said. “Never could stand the taste of coffee.”

“Is the tea still around? Did someone keep it?”

“Yeah, I heard Dorothy say she kept it,” he said, “Probably in one of those cabinets where she kept all of my other stuff.”

Mary rushed down the hall to Dorothy’s area, with Sam hovering close behind. She went to the file cabinet Dorothy had opened when she gave Mary Sam’s old calendar. Pulling it open all the way, she looked in the back. Nothing was there. She looked around the room.

“It was quite a collection,” Sam said. “Maybe it’s in a box somewhere.”

They spent the next ten minutes searching through closets and cabinets for the tea, but nothing materialized. “You know, we should try Bradley’s office,” Sam suggested. “Dorothy was going to give it to him.”

Bradley’s door was locked, but with the help of his keychain, after a few unsuccessful tries, they were able to get in. In the corner of the room was a little refrigerator and on top was a coffee maker with an empty carafe. There was an assortment of boxes of teas on a tray next to the coffee maker. “Yeah, this is my collection,” Sam said, picking up an unusual box of tea and looking it over. “I got this one when I visited New Orleans.
Voodoo tea.”

He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively and Mary laughed. “Well, I don’t think voodoo did you in.”

He picked up another container, a small tin, and opened it. “This one doesn’t look familiar.”

“Do you smell?”
Mary asked.

“I beg your pardon?” Sam responded.

Mary laughed. “I mean, can you still smell things, as a ghost?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But it can’t hurt to try.”

He brought the container up to his nose, sniffed and grimaced. “Yes, I can smell and this is most certainly that awful tea Angela gave me,” he said. “But I know my tea was in a different container.”

“Angela? Angela Murray, the Coroner, gave you some tea?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding, “She knew I liked tea and so she made up…”

“An old family recipe?”
Mary interrupted.

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“Just a lucky guess,” Mary said. “Sam, how long after drinking her tea did you
start
having stomach issues?”

Sam looked astonished. “Wow.
Right away.
I mean, I was actually drinking the tea hoping it would help me. It was the tea, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know for sure, but it is starting to look that way,” Mary said. “You don’t know where the tin she gave you is?”

He sat back against Bradley’s desk and thought about it for a moment. Then his eyes widened in comprehension. “She was there,” he said. “The night I died. She came in and tried to seduce me. I turned her down. She was on her way out when she noticed the container was empty. She said she’d fill it for me again, as a friend, and she put it in her purse.”

“Would anyone else recognize the tin?” Mary asked.

Shaking his head, he sighed, “No, no one would know it from any of the other teas I had.”

“That’s okay, Sam, I’ve got plenty of tea to test and I know just the man to do it.”

When Mary arrived home, Bradley was awake and eating breakfast. “How are you feeling?” she asked as she slipped off her coat.

“Still about the same,” he said. “Where have you been?”

“At City Hall, talking to Sam.”

Bradley looked immediately concerned. “Oh, don’t worry, I didn’t break in,
Jea
…,” she froze mid-sentence. “Someone let me in.”

“Anyway, did you know that Angela also gave Sam some of her tea?” she asked. “And his stomach problems started happening soon after he started drinking it.”

“Angela’s tea?”

Mary nodded. “And last night, Rosie brought me some of Angela’s tea and then a couple hours later…”

“You got sick too,” he said. “Stanley was right? She’s been poisoning us?”

Rosie walked into the room, a dish towel in her hands. “Did I just overhear you correctly?” she asked. “That tea is what’s been making everyone sick?”

“Well, it seems like it is,” she said. “We have to give Angela the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she has some bad ingredients she doesn’t know about. But, to be sure, we need to have it analyzed to see what’s in it.”

She walked over to the phone, pressed the button for speaker and dialed a familiar number. “Cook County Coroner,
Wojchichowski
,” the voice on the other end answered.

“Hey, Bernie, it’s Mary O’Reilly,” she said.

“Hey, little O’Reilly, how was your Christmas?”

“It was great, Bernie, how was yours?”

“We had so much food I had to bring in a couple of carts from work, just to hold it all. But, hey, you throw a tablecloth over it; no one knows it held a body earlier in the week.”

“Remind me never to come to your place for dinner,” Mary said.

“Hey, you’ve never eaten until you’ve had a good Polish Christmas. You ever try
Rolmops
?”

“No, Bernie, I can’t say that I have.”

“They are de-li-
cious
, you take a pickle and then you take a pickled onion and then you roll them in a thin slice of pickled herring fillet and you pop it into your mouth,” he said. “Nothing says Christmas morning like
Rolmops
.”

“You eat pickled fish for breakfast?” Mary asked.

“Breakfast, lunch, dinner, it’s a delicacy.”

“I’ll stick to eggs and bacon,” Mary teased.

“Ah, Mary, you just need to experience it. I know that somewhere, deep inside, there’s some Polish blood in you.”

Mary laughed. “Don’t tell my dad that, because my mom will have a lot of explaining to do.”

“Now there’s a woman who has Polish in her blood,” he said.
“You still seeing that Police Chief?
My nephew’s still looking.”

“She’s still seeing that Police Chief,” Bradley said. “Your nephew is out of luck.”

Bernie chuckled.
“Hey there, Chief Alden.
Yeah, well I thought that might be the case a while back. So, little O’Reilly, what can I do you for?”

“Bernie, I have some tea I need to have analyzed, but I’m not sure it will get
an
…,” she paused, “unbiased analysis here.”

“This analysis pretty important?” he asked.

Mary turned and met Bradley’s gaze. “Life and death, Bernie,” she said. “It’s really important to me.”

“If you can get it to me tomorrow, I’ll have it done right away,” he promised. “That fast enough?”