Smoked (The Alex Harris Mystery Series) Read online

  I started to answer but Meme place her hand on mine. “Are you spying on me, Mable?”

  My mother sat up straight and clasped her hands together in front of her, looking very prim and proper. “I stopped by to pick up another card table just in case we needed it and I saw you and Alex driving down the street.”

  “I gave you my card table two days ago, Mable. Why are you checking up on me? Is this about Sloth? You listen here, kiddo. Sloth is a good guy and I’m helping him no matter what. You’ll get your share when I die but I got a bit I keep aside to help these young kids get a second chance. And if you don’t like it, well, you can stop coming over.”

  Yikes. I never heard Meme go off on my mom like that. I glanced at my mother. She looked properly chastised and it was odd to see her that way. Usually she acted like Meme and I was on the receiving end.

  “I just worry about you Mother, that’s all. And don’t think for a minute I care about your money. I just don’t want you to lose it on bad investments.”

  Meme reached over and patted Mom’s hand. “Don’t be so stuffy, Mable. Why don’t you tease your hair a bit and put on more makeup. Maybe go out and treat yourself to a red lipstick.”

  I tried my hardest, but I couldn’t help myself and I burst out laughing. And then Meme joined in.

  “What’s going on in here?” Sam asked. She held a platter of little baked pizzas and I happily took it from her and placed in on the table.

  After we all settled down and my mother’s coloring turned back to something resembling a normal human instead of a lobster, I told them what I was up to and about everyone I had talked with already and luckily my mother didn’t have a fit. Maybe Meme’s words to lighten up were taking hold.

  “I guess it doesn’t hurt to ask questions,” my mother said, “especially if that poor man is innocent but John thinks he did it.”

  “I’m not sure what John thinks. I’m trying to keep a low profile on this case.” Geesh. I sounded like some TV detective.

  “If Mrs. Kravec fired her assistant twice, I’d be putting the screws to the assistant, what’s her name again?” Sam asked.

  “Nadine Davis. And she definitely lied to me. And Frank Corliss is pretty upset about closing his business. There are lots of suspects out there. It may turn out Sergei killed her but I owe it to Ellery to at least explore all possibilities,” I said.

  “Okay. I think it’s time for cake.” My sister went into the pantry and took out the cake my mother had made. It was a beautiful sheet cake with a pirate ship on one side and then a beach on the other end with a tiny treasure chest with jewels spilling out. It looked like my mother had used brown sugar to make the sand and lots of blue and green food coloring for the ocean. It was a really cool cake.

  My mom and Sam went out to gather the kids and Meme went to get a good seat in the dining room. I put the kettle on and took out some mugs for tea. While I was waiting for the water to boil, I thought I’d get started putting the candles on the cake. I walked over to the table and as I neared the cake it looked like the treasure chest had fallen over. As I reached over to right it, the darned thing started to move and then I realized what it was and I let out a scream.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Pandemonium reigned for the next fifteen minutes while John, my sister’s husband, Michael, and my father tried to catch Scopes. Samantha and I jumped onto the kitchen counter, though why we bothered was anyone’s guess. The darned thing clearly could climb. Millie, who had just arrived with her mother, went outside to keep the kids entertained. Henry and Kendall clung to Meme, both children crying and afraid for Scopes.

  John and Michael spotted the rodent at the same time and lunged for it. Scopes got away but Michael banged his head on John’s elbow and the two of them landed in a heap on the floor. In the end my father was the hero who caught a frightened Scopes and put her in a small burlap bag for delivery back up to Henry’s room. Sam and Michael sat Henry down and gently told him that this is what happens when he forgets to close the cage properly and leaves the door to his bedroom opened. After a tearful promise that it would never happen again, we all congregated in the dining room for pirate cupcakes, which were suppose to be parting gifts for the children but had to become the main course. As Meme pointed out, Scopes may have pooped or peed on the cake and we couldn’t risk getting all the kids sick.

  As for me, I couldn’t believe I had almost touched a rodent thinking it was part of the cake decorations. Yuk! I just wasn’t in the mood to eat but we all gathered and sang Happy Birthday to Henry and then watched while he opened his gifts. Once all the kids departed, we settled once again in the kitchen.

  “You really know how to throw a party, Samantha,” Meme cackled. “Of course, Kendall’s First Holy Communion takes the cake.”

  “Geesh! Don’t remind me,” I said thinking back to Kendall, in her beautiful white dress and veil, walking in on her great-grandfather feeling up his girlfriend.

  My grandfather, Lawrence Harris, lived at a retirement home and had been dating Lucy McDermott since he arrived. He had always been a proper kind of a guy and then all hell broke loose the minute he turned ninety. He and Lucy just could not keep their hands off of each other and it had been pretty traumatic for Kendall walking in on them in the powder room. She screamed and when Sam and I arrived she pointed to Lucy’s breasts with a horrified look on her face. It really was quite a sight. Lucy, very thin and shriveled, had breasts resembling two long deflated balloons. It took Sam quite a while to convince the child that hers would not be looking like that, at least for a very, very long time.

  “Are you sure the bedroom door is closed and the cage is locked?” I asked, returning my thoughts to the current troublesome party guest. John just shook his head and patted my hand.

  “It was inevitable this would happen,” my dad reasoned, “but I think Henry learned his lesson.”

  My mom and Sam put the remainder of the appetizers on the table and pulled out the makings for sandwiches from the refrigerator. Who knew what Scopes had managed to land on before I spotted her so, with my hunger returning, I ate only things that hadn’t been out while Scopes had terrorized the family.

  “I have some exciting news,” Millie said while we ate our lunch. “Rueben and I are moving in together.”

  “Wow! Congratulations,” Sam said and got up and gave Millie a hug.

  My mother, always the worrier, looked at Judith. “It must be difficult for you. It was very hard when Samantha first moved out.”

  Sam beamed. “Really? You missed me when I first moved out?”

  “Quiet. Judith and I are talking.”

  Judith took a deep breath. “We’re a close group, the three of us, but we love Rueben and Millie’s just moving a couple miles away. I’ll see her all the time.”

  “You bet,” Millie said and winked at me.

  John’s cell phone rang and he excused himself and went out into the hall. A minute later he came back.

  “Is anything wrong,” I asked noticing the frown on his face.

  “That was Jim Maroni,” John said, referring to his partner. “Seems there’s no doubt anymore that Maria Kravec was murdered.”

  “How do you know? Did someone confess?” I asked hoping Sergei wasn’t behind bars.

  John shook his head. He put his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers, something he did when in deep thought. “Mrs. Kravec kept a couple of injectors in the kitchen drawer.”

  I cringed thinking how close help was if I had only known.

  “And how does that tell you she was murdered?” Judith asked.

  “It looks like someone emptied them.”

  I thought back to the night Mrs. Kravec died and how I watched her stagger toward the kitchen. Even if she had made it, it would have done no good with the injectors emptied.

  “Maybe they were just used up,” my mother said.

  “No. The orange sheath at the end would have been deployed to cover the exposed needle if they had been
used properly. Plus, there were no prints on them at all. Mrs. Kravec’s prints should have been on them or whoever put them in the drawer to begin with would have left prints.”

  I thought about this for a moment. “If someone didn’t want them to be available in case Mrs. Kravec needed them, why wouldn’t they just take them and toss them out?”

  “I can’t be sure, but if she always kept them there and noticed they were missing, she would have replaced them.”

  “So this way,” I said, picking up on John’s thought, “she thinks she’s protected but in the event she did need one, it wouldn’t have worked.”

  “It sounds like this was all planned out,” Sam said.

  “Yes, it does,” John agreed. “Someone wanted Mrs. Kravec dead. They placed the poison ivy in the pile of leaves knowing she would burn them and emptied the pens so there would be no help readily available. Premeditated.”

  My mother shivered and pulled her cardigan tightly around her. “Another murder in our small town. How awful.”

  I looked over at Meme and saw a tiny smile on her lips. She noticed me and gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. She was ecstatic someone had died and we could continue to work the case. God help me, I really had created a monster. And then I noticed John watching the two of us and I had a feeling Alex Harris, PI was about to go out of business.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  They say never go to bed angry. So I didn’t. I didn’t go to bed at all. I turned on the TV and caught up on several episodes of Doc Martin I had recorded and never had time to watch. I’m a true Anglophile. My entire family is, actually. We’re glued to the TV during Downton season and then Sam and I dissect every episode with Millie on Monday mornings. And now I had discovered another British gem in Doc Martin, a country doctor who has a phobia about blood. Who thinks this stuff up?

  Sometime in the wee hours of the morning I must have fallen asleep on the sofa, but not for long. I was vaguely aware of John puttering around in the kitchen getting breakfast and making much too much noise, but he never came over and kissed me good-bye. With the death of Mrs. Kravec officially ruled a murder, he would be working all hours. That was fine with me and not just because we were having a bit of a row as the Brits would say. No, I needed him out of my way so I could solve this thing before Sergei Kravec had to trade in his butcher apron for an orange jumpsuit.

  It was still dark outside but I knew I wouldn’t fall back to sleep. I tidied up the den, took a shower and had a cup of lemon yogurt with granola. I love mornings. Always have. I love the peacefulness of this time of day, especially in autumn when the morning light is diffused instead of the harsh glare of summer. I made a big pot of tea and poured myself a cup. I opened up my iPad and logged on to Facebook. My mother had posted a short video of Riley rolling over and sitting up on command. Meme and her posse of women friends were discussing whose butt looked better in jeans—Generic Viagra Fred or Walter Hofstader, a man who had recently moved into the community of senior homes where Meme lived. Fred’s butt was deemed too flat; a back with a crack as my sister would say. Walter seemed to be winning the best butt contest. I couldn’t wait to meet him. Next I logged on to a news site to see what the day had to offer. Anthony Weiner was at it again, sexting his way to another scandal. If your name was Weiner and you were running for office, wouldn’t you try to keep as low a profile as possible? Geesh.

  Next I checked my email account. A few bills had come in that I would pay later. My best friend Mary-Beth Ramsey had emailed me her apologies for not being able to make Henry’s party and there were several emails offering me an array of products and services I had no use for. There was also one from Ellery and I opened it up. She had emailed me a link to her mother’s email accounts along with the passwords. She was at the police station again as they had taken her father in for further questioning. She sounded desperate and hoped I could find something, anything, in the emails that might help.

  I poured myself another cup of tea and clicked on the first link. It took me to Maria’s business account and I typed in the login and password. Maria had obviously been a very organized person. Like me she had created folders for storing her emails. I scanned the list of folders. She had one each for Ellery, Nadine and Ryan. There were folders for invoices, vegan recipes, vegan products and one for research. There was also a folder she had called miscellaneous and I opened that one now.

  Maria may have been organized but she was also a hoarder. The miscellaneous box was filled with over a hundred emails. I didn’t know where to start so I clicked instead on the folder for Nadine. Maybe I could find an email exchange that would give me some insight as to why Maria had fired the young woman and why she was now back. The folder opened up and to my surprise it was completely empty. That was odd. I worked in the same office with Sam but I sent her plenty of emails each day with attachments she needed to act on or just business-related questions if I didn’t feel like getting up and going to her office. I then clicked on the sent folder and searched for emails to Nadine. Again, nothing. Next, I checked the deleted folder with the same results. The only thing I could think of was once Nadine was fired, Maria deleted all the emails. Now that she was back, maybe they never had a chance to email before Maria died. I needed to find out when exactly Nadine came back to the Vegan View.

  I next checked the email folder for Ryan. There were quite a few and as I read through some of them they seemed to have a common theme of discussing products, packaging for their own line, etc. As far as I could tell, there didn’t seem to be anything negative going on there.

  I logged out and went over to Maria’s private account. She had it organized pretty much the same with various folders. There was one called GS and I clicked on it. There were about a dozen emails between Maria and her brother George over the course of several years. The last one had a date of three days before she died. I clicked on it and read the exchange that occurred over the last two weeks.

  George, can we get together and discuss the house. I’m thinking about selling it. Let me know a good time to stop by.

  Maria, how can you even think about selling this house? We grew up here. It’s our home. I don’t think there’s anything more to say.

  George, as you are well aware, Mother and Father left the house to me. You have been living in it, rent free, I might add, all these years due to my kindness. I need to sell and I want to put it up for sale before the holidays. I may already have a buyer. Is tonight a good time?

  Don’t bother, Maria, I won’t be home. There is nothing to discuss. I’m not going to let you sell this house. It may have been left to you but I’m the one who has taken care of it all this time. It’s my home, Maria. Where do you expect me to go? You know I don’t have the money to buy it from you, but give me some time and maybe I can figure something out.

  George, if you want to buy it, that would be wonderful, but don’t think I’m going to give you a better deal just because we’re related. You’ve got one week to figure something out and then I’ll be over to pound a sign into the front yard. Of course, maybe you’ll get lucky and I’ll die before then (ha ha) and it will be yours. Where exactly you go, I don’t care. Don’t forget, George. One week.

  Maria, don’t sell before you talk to me. I’m trying to get something together so I can buy. You know how much this house means to me. Please just give me a couple of weeks.

  “Wow!” I said out loud. So Maria planned to sell the house and kick her brother out on the street. But if she died first, according to what she wrote, the house would revert to George free and clear. I thought back to the house and what a lovely neighborhood it was. I felt certain Maria would have gotten quite a nice price for it given how George had kept it up. And now that Maria was dead, George could stay there forever.

  Was Maria’s untimely death a stroke of luck for George or had he methodically emptied her auto injectors and padded the pile of leaves with poison ivy?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  This was certai
nly a piece of information that required a further look. The brother and sister clearly had animosity toward one another so I had motive. Now I needed to find out whether George had the opportunity. Of course there was no way to tell when the ivy had been tossed in with the leaves and no way of knowing when the pens had been emptied. But I could at least find out if George had access to Maria and Sergei’s current home.

  I quickly emailed Ellery back and asked her if her uncle had come to the house recently and also if he had a key. The more I thought about it, this seemed farfetched. The brother and sister barely spoke, so why would Maria entrust him with a key to her home.

  Another thought crept into my mind; one that would pertain to just about anyone I deemed a potential suspect—who knew that Sergei was out of town? Anyone who knew could rig up this whole plan and make Sergei look guilty simply because it happened while he was gone. It was a stroke of genius, really. Empty the pens, hide the ivy and just wait. Considering the killer did not have to be present when the actual murder occurred, what better way to throw suspicion on the husband. Of course, who knew Maria would go out and burn leaves while Sergei was away? And then I remembered something Ellery had told me the first night we met. She said Maria loved to burn leaves and it was something she did with her father. George would certainly know about this chore his sister and father shared. But how could he guarantee she would burn the leaves while Sergei was gone? Why did there always have to be one small detail that didn’t fit. But the more I thought about it, George Shruder was looking good for this.

  My phone rang bringing me out of my thoughts. I hit the speaker phone and answered.

  “Alex, it’s Ellery. Just got your email. I doubt my uncle had a key.