Die Job (24 page)

I stood, then sat again, feeling foolish that I’d thought I could do something about Clarissa’s illness. She’d been dead of one cause or another—old age, I hoped—for well over a century. Still, it might be interesting to do some Internet research on household poisons of that era and see if I could match anything with Clarissa’s symptoms. I’d use the computer at the salon next time I was there and search the Internet.

Better yet . . . I dug through my purse for the card Stuart Varnet had given me. I didn’t know if he’d be back at work yet after his near drowning, but it was worth a phone call. I ran my finger over the embossed agency name as I dialed: “Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.”

“Varnet,” he answered the phone.

“Hi,” I said, feeling awkward. “This is Grace Terhune. I—”

I was spared the embarrassment of explaining who I was. “Grace!” He
sounded genuinely pleased to hear from me. “Are you in Atlanta? I’m clearing my schedule right now so I can take you to Bacchanalia. It’s my favorite restaurant in the city.”

“No.” I laughed. “I’m still in St. Elizabeth, waiting for the hurricane. But I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Does your job have anything to do with poisons directly? Do you know anything about them?”

“ ‘Poison’ is my middle name,” he said cheerily. “Shall I tell you about my organic chemistry degrees and my dissertation on industrial poisons?”

Dissertation. He must have a PhD. He didn’t trumpet his degree on his business card and that modesty made me more comfortable. “If you have a moment, I’d like to ask you something.” I told him about Clarissa’s letters, about her father’s death, and her illness. He didn’t interrupt and I finished with, “So, I was wondering if there might have been a poison in the eighteen hundreds that would have those effects.”

“Plenty,” Stuart said. “Mercury, lead, arsenic. And that’s just for starters. I don’t suppose your Clarissa and her father were metal workers?”

“No,” I said. “They owned a plantation.”

“Almost as good,” Stuart said. “Arsenic was widely used for rodent control and, of course, upper-class women used lead in their makeup. And arsenic was actually used as a medicine. Any chance this Cyril Rothmere had syphilis?”

I stored that thought away to ponder later. Hadn’t Lucy Mortimer said Cyril had a reputation as a philanderer?

“Doesn’t arsenic kill quickly?” I asked, vague memories of a high school production of
Arsenic and Old Lace
drifting through my mind. The old men had keeled over pretty
quickly after drinking the poisoned tea, if I remembered correctly.

“It depends on the dose,” he said. “Small doses can actually build up a tolerance, but they would produce the tummy problems you mentioned. It’s too bad you don’t have a hair sample.”

“Hair? Why?”

“In people exposed to arsenic over a long period, traces appear in the hair. Or fingernails would also work if you’ve got some nail clippings?”

“Afraid not.”

“Even a single strand would do it,” he said, clearly enthused by the subject. “A little synchrotron radiation based X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy or microparticle-induced X-ray emission and we could nail it. Without a sample, though, I can’t narrow it down much for you.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “At least you’ve been able to tell me they might have been poisoned.” Although that didn’t go a long way toward helping me figure out if it was accidental or deliberate.

“Sorry I couldn’t help more,” Stuart said. “Let me know if you come up with a sample.”

“Sure.” Fat chance of that, I thought, hanging up.

As I pulled the next letter from the box, my phone rang.

“Glad I caught you,” said a vaguely familiar voice on the other end of the line. “This is Merle.”

Merle? My mind raced, trying to place the caller. “Yes?” I said cautiously.

“I was wondering if it might be possible for you to come by the school this afternoon to shave the heads of the folks who ‘won’ the fund-raiser. I’m afraid I’m one of them.” He laughed.

Principal Kornhiser. Of course. I pictured him sitting cross-legged
on his orange pillow, the phone tucked between his chin and shoulder. He kept talking before I could jump in.

“The school board has decided to close the school tomorrow and Friday—they have to take snow days in New York and Minnesota; we have to factor in hurricane days here!—and so we’re moving up our pep rally to this afternoon. I know it’s an inconvenience—”

“It’s no problem,” I said. “I’m happy to do it.

“Good, good. Two o’clock?”

I agreed and hung up. It was actually kind of nice to have something on my schedule for today. I wasn’t used to being at loose ends. I looked at the stack of documents again, but I was feeling too antsy to sit and read any longer. I had the feeling that something more than the hurricane was coming to a head. The events of the past few days sifted through my brain, images of Rothmere, Cyril, the high schoolers—especially Rachel so upset about the vicious rumors that she’d pushed Braden—and the other people I’d talked to this week. My mind went back to the conversation with Rachel where she’d told me Braden was wrestling with a dilemma of some sort, wondering whether he should intervene. Somehow, that seemed like the crux of the matter to me, the motivation for his murder. He hadn’t told Rachel what his quandary was, and he hadn’t told his best friend Mark, so who else might know?

His therapist, assuming he had one. But no therapist would talk about a patient’s confidences. His family. I focused on the image of Mr. and Mrs. McCullers as I’d last seen them in the hospital waiting room, confused and worried. They’d gone out of town, someone had said, but maybe they were back? I headed for my bedroom. It would be appropriate to visit them to express my condolences, I told myself, shrugging
out of my tee shirt and reaching into my closet for a less casual white blouse with a small ruffle on the front. I could take them some flowers. Slipping on a dark green denim skirt that fell to mid calf, I wound my hair into a knot and secured it with an enameled chopstick Vonda had given me two birthdays ago. Satisfied that I looked suitably somber, I looked up their address in the phone book and headed for my car.

Stopping by the Piggly Wiggly to pick up some flowers—I decided on a potted African violet and a tray of cookies—I drove to the two-story stucco home on a street of similar houses where the McCullerses lived. Nothing about the home shouted “tragedy.” The lawn was neatly mowed and raked clean of leaves, begonias added a note of cheerful color in pots at the door, the cement driveway was free of pine needles and old newspapers, and a mixed flock of sparrows, mockingbirds, and finches squabbled over the seed in a house-shaped birdfeeder.

The birds gave me hope that someone was in residence. Birds could deplete a feeder in a matter of hours; the fact that this one was full told me someone had filled it recently, maybe even this morning. Holding the violet in one hand and the cookies in the other, I walked to the door, suddenly beset with qualms. Southern society put a premium on graciousness and manners, and what I was doing was pretty suspect. On the face of it, I was bringing food to a recently bereaved family—an approved, even encouraged gesture—but I was really hoping to grill them about their deceased son—an underhanded, insensitive thing no one with the least pretension to Southern good manners would consider. I had made it to the covered porch when conscience overcame me. I couldn’t do this. I bent to leave the cookies and flowerpot on the welcome mat.

As I straightened up, the door swung open. Startled, I stumbled back a step as a girl of maybe nineteen, wearing a long-sleeved coral tee, shorts, and high-end running shoes, flapped a dust cloth over me.

I sneezed.

“Ohmigod, I’m so sorry,” the girl said. “I didn’t see—Who are you?” She pulled ear buds out of her ears and let them dangle around her neck, merging with thick, taffy colored hair.

“Grace Terhune,” I said. I indicated the offerings on the mat. “I was just leaving these for the McCullerses.”

“They’re not here,” the girl said. She stooped to pick up the cookie tray, loosening the plastic wrap to examine the contents. “These look great. Come on in. I was due for a break, anyway. I told my folks it wasn’t fair to stick me with the cleaning, but they both went to the hardware store, anyway, since Mom finally convinced Dad that the hurricane is really coming. Won’t it be exciting?”

Without waiting for an answer, she started down a hallway, leaving the door open behind her. Hesitantly, I entered the foyer, a ceramic-tiled space with a coat closet on one side and a staircase marching upward six feet away. The girl called, “In the kitchen,” and I started down the hallway that led off to the right, wondering who she was. I’d originally thought she might be a cleaning lady, but her assault on the cookies suggested she was more than a hired worker.

I emerged into the kitchen, a large room with an eating nook decorated in the country style that made me claustrophobic: lots of natural oak, dusty blue and rose pink for colors, flat cushions tied to the chairs with perky bows, ruffled curtains, a toaster cover shaped like a rooster, and a tea cozy in the form of a hen. The girl—lean, athletic, and modern—seemed out of place in the fussy kitchen.

“Awful, isn’t it?” she said, glancing around the room. She wrinkled a slightly snub nose dusted with freckles. “But Aunt Darla just loves it. I gave her that for Christmas.” She nodded at a wreath of dried flowers and herbs hanging between the stove and a refrigerator plastered with photos. “You couldn’t pay me to hang that in my dorm room, but it’s so her.”

“So . . . you were Braden’s cousin?” I asked.

“Sorry!” She offered a hand. “I’m Catelyn Allen. My folks and I are staying here to help . . . to take care of the place while Aunt Darla and Uncle Ed are . . . away.”

“Oh.” I took a cookie from the tray when she pushed it at me. “So you’re not from around here?”

“Nah. We’re in Virginia. Actually, I’m a sophomore at UVA, but I got an okay from my professors to take a couple of weeks off after what happened to Braden. It was so awful. Why would anyone want to hurt a really nice kid like him? I mean, Braden’s just about the nicest person I know, even if he is my cousin.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” I said, noticing that she was still using the present tense when she talked about Braden. Poor girl. The past tense must seem so final.

“Thank you. It’s just awful.” Catelyn sniffed and fumbled with the tray, and I reached out to steady it.

“I should go,” I said. “I just stopped by to give the McCullerses my condolences.”

“You don’t need to go,” Catelyn said, clearly happy to have company. “At least finish your cookie. And I’ll go get the list of people who’ve come by so you can put your name on it. I’m trying to keep track for Aunt Darla and Uncle Ed. Everyone’s been so kind. One lady brought a coffee cake yesterday that was absolutely scrumptious. Cream cheese crumbles and cherries.”

Before I could say anything, she whisked out of the kitchen. Left alone, I nibbled on the cookie and examined the photos on the fridge. Braden’s senior portrait was front and center. Clad in his letter jacket, he smiled straight at me, making me want to smile back. I swallowed a lump in my throat and looked at photos of what I assumed were assorted relatives and friends. A young couple in wedding garb kissed in one photo, kids splashed in the surf in another—it didn’t look like the Georgia coastline—a baby posed in a Santa hat on a Christmas postcard, and a younger Braden, his arm around a buddy’s neck, stared from a snapshot. The boys looked to be twelve or thirteen and wore matching tee shirts with a name and a logo printed on them, like summer campers. I was peering at the last photo, wondering if the second kid could really be Mark Crenshaw—hadn’t his family only moved here two or three years ago?—when Catelyn came back with a clipboard.

“That’s my sister Jessica,” she said, wrongly assuming I was looking at the bride. “I was her maid of honor in August. I wore a strapless dress in a heavenly shade of blue and danced all night with the best man. Alexander. We really hit it off, but he’s a Husky, so we haven’t seen each other since, although we talk every night and text
all
the time. I’m trying to find a summer job in the Seattle area for next year, maybe at a camp or a resort.”

I let her words drift past me. “What about this photo?” I asked. “Isn’t that Mark Crenshaw with Braden?”

“Oh, yeah, they’ve been best friends ever since they met at whatever that place was called. It was in South Carolina.”

The camp’s name didn’t interest me and I arched my brows, inviting her to continue. “Braden was over the moon when it turned out Mark’s dad was getting stationed down here,
Aunt Darla said. Mark came with them when they visited us—well, they were really visiting historic sites in Virginia—last summer, and he seemed nice enough, even though all they talked about was football, football, football. Bor-ing.” She rolled her eyes.

Knitting my brows, I wondered if this bit of information changed anything. I couldn’t see how it made any difference. Catelyn thrust the clipboard at me and I wrote my name at the end of a long list of names, mostly women, who had dropped off meals, cards, and flowers for the bereaved family. “I’d really like to know when the funeral is,” I said, sliding the clipboard onto the counter.

Catelyn bit her lip. “I don’t know when . . . but, absolutely. A funeral . . . Isn’t it just awful?”

“Yes,” I agreed, starting for the door.

“You don’t have to go yet, do you?” she asked, trailing after me. Some of the bounce had gone from her voice and I wondered how uncomfortable it must feel to be alone in a relatively strange house when a cousin even younger than you had been murdered. He hadn’t died in the house, but still. His room was probably right down the hall, chock-f of books he’d never read and sports equipment he’d never use and clothes he’d never wear. I hoped her parents got back soon. “It was nice meeting you,” I said at the door.

“Likewise.” She peered over my shoulder. “Oh, here’s Mom and Dad now.” A blue SUV was slowing to make the turn into the driveway. The garage door rumbled up.