Chapter Forty-Five
After a second night with Jackson, in his bed, snuggling with him in his condo, talking about nonsense things and important things, I walked around in a daze. Every kiss dragged me further under his spell. Problems that used to stick out, like how different we were, started to fade in importance.
The hopeful, in-love side of me battled with the this could go really bad side. I didn’t know which side would win, but I feared I knew which one should.
Jackson headed for work later than usual and dropped me off at Gram’s. The scene had a homey feel to it. The only thing that could make the morning better was a scone. Warm with jam. I dreamed about the taste during the car ride over here.
One step into the kitchen and my scone fantasy vanished. Gram and Celia sat there, talking with Abigail Burns. The Abigail Burns. For the second time. The ladies had to know Abigail’s visiting should not become a habit. Not while she still was a murder suspect.
I inhaled, preparing for whatever storm was gathering strength on the horizon. “Good morning.”
Gram sipped her tea. “Kasey, you remember Abigail.”
All too well. “How are you, Mrs. Burns?”
“Abigail, please.”
We shook hands. Mine swallowed hers. She was so petite. So pretty and polite. It was the other p words that caused the problem—“poison”
and “prison.”
She looked like a lot of the women in town. Blond, and almost doll-like with how perfectly she sat and talked and walked. The type of woman that always wore the right clothes and knew the right people. She likely performed huge amounts of unpaid work for local charities and had once done the same in parent groups at Austin’s schools.
Abigail probably enjoyed a full life before marriage and certainly deserved one now. From all the whispers around town, Cash had viewed her as the perfect trophy wife for someone with his pedigree and credentials. A trophy he could put on the shelf and ignore. A trophy he could break.
Gram gestured for me to join them at the table. “Abigail was just telling us about the initial findings in her husband’s death investigation.”
No buildup. Gram dove right in.
I was afraid to move. Afraid I might say the wrong thing. “Good.”
Not my smoothest moment but how exactly did one handle a situation like this? We all knew the truth, or pieces of it, but were pretending we didn’t. I loved to make up stories but I’m not sure I could have created one like this.
Celia frowned at my word choice. “The police believe Cash was poisoned.”
Not new information. The fact the ladies tiptoed into this topic meant something. With my luck, something very bad.
“The police have narrowed down the contamination to his water bottle. It had traces of arsenic in it,”
Gram said.
Abigail twisted a napkin between her fingers. “He had this thing about staying hydrated. He used the bottle at work. No one else could touch it. It was a rule of his.”
Convenient and helpful for Abigail’s plan. There must have been two bottles and some big switch I couldn’t figure out, but I could imagine Gram coming up with this scenario.
“Apparently arsenic is odorless and can’t be detected by taste, so it’s easy to administer.”
Gram took another sip of tea. Then one more. “It often isn’t detected in the bloodstream after death because no one thinks to test for it.”
Look at Gram knowing all the arsenic facts.
“The dose must have been high enough to kill him. He called me that day and complained about stomach pain. He’d started vomiting.”
Abigail cleared her throat and her fingers kept clenching that napkin. “Naturally, I thought it was the flu or maybe food poison . . . poisoning.”
Sure, she did.
“The police were skeptical about the death being from natural causes from the start. Something about the way he was clutching the water bottle when his assistant found him tipped them off,”
Abigail continued. “That’s why they tested everything in his office, including the watercooler. And ran the appropriate tests on him.”
All three of them acted like they were sharing some shocking reveal, but their body language didn’t match their words. They held their bodies stiff to the point of snapping.
I tried to think of a question to ask. The kind of question someone who didn’t know anything would ask. “How would the arsenic get in the bottle?”
I really wanted to ask where one would get arsenic. You couldn’t just pick it up at the store or order it over the internet . . . unless you could. I was the only one at the table who was not an expert on arsenic. But since the answer to that hypothetical question would likely be Gram I skipped it.
“No one knows. The poison wasn’t found anywhere else in the office or in the water supply. There were security cameras in the lobby and outside the building, but there wasn’t anything unusual or unexpected on the video. The police checked at home, too, of course, and found nothing.”
Gram nodded. “The whole thing is so unfortunate.”
Oh, Gram.
After a bit of stammering, Abigail continued. “The water bottle was out in the open. On his desk. It only has Cash’s fingerprints on it. The police have no clue what happened or how.”
For a second, so short, the pain cleared from Abigail’s face. She looked relieved.
“Scary.”
And by that I meant it was scary how good these ladies were at this.
The three of them had the discussion down. They’d delivered the information without flinching and with only a few minor bobbles. Maybe they’d performed this same show many times, with other women. It’s also possible they’d rehearsed what to say and when to say it, to be safe. Except for the tension pulsing through the room, they’d completely sold this version of the story.
“So, now what?”
I asked, because the possibility of having to bail Gram and Celia out of jail still lingered.
“The police are waiting for more forensic findings, but they don’t have a suspect or a motive,”
Abigail said.
There was that flash of relief again. Abigail really needed to work on that.
“Well, thanks for listening and for the coffee. I wanted to deliver the news in person since you both have been so kind.”
Abigail smiled at Gram and Celia as she stood up. “As you suggested, I’m going to stay with my sister in Nashville for a while. There’s nothing much for me here, except good friends.”
Celia took the cup Abigail had been using and placed it in the sink. “When do you leave?”
“Due to the circumstances, we’re having a private memorial service for Cash. I need to help Austin figure out his next steps. He’s talked about returning to college, starting in the summer.”
I was going to need to know which college so I could stay away from it.
“The police said as long as I kept them informed of my location and was accessible, I didn’t have to stay in town. I’ll probably leave in a couple of weeks.”
Celia hugged Abigail. “We’ll talk before then.”
“Definitely.”
Abigail treated Gram and Celia to one final, small smile before turning to me. “It was nice seeing you again.”
I waited until Abigail left, even watched her slip out and get in her car, before saying anything. “Did I walk into the middle of some sort of session to make sure you all have your alibis straight?”
“We don’t deal in arsenic.”
It was the way Gram said things these days that put me on edge. “You’re telling me you didn’t give her the poison or show her how to use it?”
Gram nodded. “Correct.”
“We provide advice and an ear. We listen. What a woman does from there is her choice,”
Celia said.
A lovely speech. “So, if I break into the shed I won’t find arsenic?”
Gram frowned. “I told you to stay out of the shed. There’s nothing in there you need to worry about. Not now.”
“Let’s stop talking about the shed. It’s not relevant to Abigail’s situation.”
Celia picked up a plate piled with freshly baked scones. “Want one?”
I didn’t know what to do with all the questions floating through my head. I went with the most obvious and troublesome one. “There’s no way the arsenic can be traced back to you two, right? All I care about right now, which is a terrible thing to say because a man is dead, is if the arsenic connects to you in any way.”
“It won’t.”
Celia didn’t evade this time. “We don’t know anything about arsenic. I promise you Abigail did not get that from us.”
A scary but clear answer. My stomach started to unclench. For a few minutes, all the bad news and conflicting information bouncing around the kitchen made the muscles in my neck seize. I rubbed the sore spot.
“Abigail went rogue. We wouldn’t have told her to use arsenic.”
Gram drank the rest of her drink. “Not when there are much easier solutions out there.”
The tension crawled right back up my spine. “Meaning?”
Gram sighed. “Don’t ask questions when you don’t want to know the answers.”