“I can if you want me to,” he replied. “Why? What’s up?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, just a weird feeling.”
“I’m coming by then,” he said instantly.
She chuckled. “Thank you.”
“I’ll be there in a little bit. Have you eaten?”
“I haven’t eaten dinner,” she noted, “but I did just have some croissants, almond croissants, down at Nan’s place.”
Mack whistled. “Wow. I think I’m jealous.”
“You should be. They were delicious.” She burst out laughing. “So I don’t really need dinner.”
“In that case, I’ll bring pizza just for me.”
“What?” she cried out. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“You just told me that you’re full.”
“No, I didn’t say that,” she argued. “I said I probably didn’t need to eat, but, if you’re bringing pizza …”
“Hah,” he said. “I’ll see.” Somebody in the background called out for Mack. And, with that, he hung up.
With her animals in tow, she headed up to the house and put on coffee. He hadn’t exactly given her a time frame, but she carefully pulled the sugar bowl from her pocket and sat it on the counter and phoned Xavier. It took a few minutes to get through to him, and then she had to explain who she was.
“Oh, right. Did you find out something already?”
“I just wanted to ask you a couple questions,” she explained. “Did Chrissy have a sugar bowl she used all the time?”
“Oh my yes, it was an antique,” he replied. “At least she thought it was. I wasn’t so sure.” He added, “A friend of hers recommended it as being a good investment, so she bought it. And she used it all the time.”
“Interesting. But what did she use it for?”
“She was a tea drinker, and she added sugar to her tea constantly.”
“Ah,” she replied. “And what kind of tea?”
“One of those fruity blends,” he noted. “I couldn’t stand it myself.”
“Any chance it had an almond flavor to it?”
He stopped and then said, “You know what? It did, kind of. Sometimes it was stronger than others, and I never really understood why, yet there was never really a strong flavor to it. I did have tea with her once, but it wasn’t anything that I liked. However, she loved it.”
“Right. And did somebody from the center get the tea for her?”
“Well, she had to order it through them. Everything was ordered through Rosemoor,” he noted, “so I don’t know if she got it specifically from one place or not.”
“Right.” Doreen looked at the sugar bowl distrustfully. “Thanks for that,” she said, and she quickly hung up.
She heard a vehicle drive up, raced to the front door to see Mack carrying a pizza box.
“Did you already have that in hand when I talked to you?” she asked suspiciously.
He grinned at her. “Hey, be nice, and I will share.”
“But you weren’t going to, if I didn’t ask you to come over, were you?”
“Technically you didn’t ask me to come over, did you?” he asked cagily.
She rolled her eyes. “We’re quite the pair.”
He nodded and dropped the box on the table. “You sounded odd on the phone.”
“Yeah, it’s always hard to understand what motivates people,” she murmured.
“Ah, yes,” he agreed. “Sometimes we find out things that we wish we hadn’t.”
“You’re not kidding,” she muttered.
He looked over at the table where he had the box of pizza, walked to the counter, grabbed a couple plates, came back, served her a piece and then himself two pieces. He handed her the plate and said, “Here you go.”
She picked up a piece and took a bite.
Mack asked, “So what’s going on that has you all in a funk?” She pointed at the bowl on the table. He stared at it. “Godawful ugly.”
She burst out laughing, feeling a sense of relief at that. “You know that’s one of the reasons I really like you,” she admitted. “You’re always honest.”
“Well, it is ugly. I mean, I don’t know what it is, but why would you want it?”
“It was Chrissy’s,” she noted quietly. “And when she and Nan were out shopping at a garage sale one time, Nan encouraged Chrissy to buy this, since it was an antique and a good investment.”
“I guess that makes sense, particularly if Chrissy liked things like that.”
“And, in your sense,” she added, “I was thinking the same thing. It’s really ugly. Yet everybody was oohing and aahing about it.”
“Even Nan?”
“Well, I don’t know. We had a bit of an audience when we were there,” she noted. “Peggy from the kitchen was there.”
“Don’t think I’ve met her,” Mack noted.
“Well, you should,” she said. “You really should.” And she took a deep breath. “You should take that sugar bowl, and you should get it tested for rat poison.”
He froze, his hand holding a slice of pizza in the air, and he slowly lowered it, looking at her first, then staring at the ugly sugar bowl. “What the …?”
“Yeah, that’s my reaction,” she replied. “Lean over and smell it.”
He leaned over and ever-so-gently sniffed it. And then he bolted upright and stared at her. “Smells almost like… a hint of garlic.”
“Yeah,” she agreed quietly. “Not sure what rat poison smells like, but I’m pretty sure somebody was putting the rat poison, into her sugar. Possibly a little bit at a time, over months. She was already on anticoagulants so that just exacerbated her problem possibly eventually killing her. Plus, and I don’t know this as the box is missing, but strychnine was used a lot in rat poison and it’s odorless and colorless and doesn’t take much to kill. And this was a very old box of rat poison and who knows what levels of poisons were used. It was certainly before the days of dyes and other additives now used to make it taste terrible to stop people from unknowingly ingesting. The old guy also said that his particular box was a mix of several that he’d just dumped into one so that explains several things.”
“Good God.” Mack stared at her. “But who? Why?”
“I think it’s Peggy, the woman who I saw today.” And she quickly explained the story about Xavier and Chrissy.
He sat back, munching away on his pizza, his gaze going from her to the sugar bowl and back again. “Did you touch it?”
“I did,” she admitted, “but I held it on the outside, and then I did wash my hands when I got home.” She sighed loudly. “I don’t know how long it would take to test it, and then, of course, you’d have to come up with a way to prove it. Because you know that a lot of people at Rosemoor had access.”
He put down the crust from the slice of pizza he had just eaten to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Crap!”
“Yeah, that’s how I felt,” she agreed. “Two other women were miserable about Xavier’s relationship with Chrissy too, but not everybody would have had access.”