“ELEANORA WAS MURDERED?” Helen repeated, walking up to Jean and taking her arm. Her friend looked like she might faint. Helen didn’t feel very steady on her feet either. “So it’s for certain then? It wasn’t natural causes?”
“No, ma’am, it was poison,” Biddle told them. He spun his hat round and round in his hands. He didn’t seem any more at ease with the answer than she or Jean. “Doc said it was sodium tetraborate.”
“Oh, no,” Jean breathed and swayed against Helen, who kept an arm around her waist to steady her. “Oh, no, this can’t be happening.”
“Sodium tetra . . . what?” Helen asked the sheriff. Her chest tightened at the thought of such violence in River Bend, of all places.
“Sodium tetraborate,” Frank Biddle repeated, enunciating each syllable. “It’s a form of boric acid.” He glanced at Helen then Jean and back again. “It’s mostly used in insecticides.”
“Are you sure it was intentional?” Helen asked, wondering if the sheriff and Jean could hear the overloud beat of her heart. Her ears pounded with the noise of it. “Maybe it was an accident.” At Biddle’s lift of eyebrows, she added, “It has been known to happen.”
“The evidence is pretty forthright, ma’am.” The sheriff cleared his throat and inclined his head toward Jean, who stared at the floor, eyes unblinking, as though in shock. “Forensics tested what remained of the goose liver old Mrs. Duncan had been eating, and, from the concentration in what was left, they figured there was probably at least a teaspoon mixed in. It was more than enough to kill someone. It’s relatively odorless, you know. Doc said that since our senses dull with age, she probably didn’t even taste it.”
Helen nodded. Her mouth was too dry to form words. She found herself thinking of the car that had nearly hit Eleanora yesterday morning and wondered if the person behind the wheel had been the one to put poison in the goose liver. Suddenly she didn’t feel at all well.
Oh, boy.
She wet her lips and forced herself to ask, “This goose liver that had poison, was it something that . . .”
That Jean had delivered earlier that same day, she left unfinished.
“It was in a plastic deli-type dish with a lid that had The Catery printed on it,” the sheriff answered. “It had Mrs. Duncan’s phone number and website, too. This Mrs. Duncan,” he added, nodding at Jean. “As I explained to her a moment ago, that’s the reason I’m here. I need to ask her some questions.”
“But, Sheriff, I had nothing to do with it.” Jean eyes were as wide as a child’s. “I-I didn’t put p-poison in the pâté,” she stammered and gestured helplessly. “You can’t believe it was me? But you must, or you wouldn’t have shown up on my doorstep.”
“Ma’am, I just . . . “
“Really, Sheriff, you can’t honestly think Jean killed her own mother-in-law,” Helen butted in, still digesting the fact that Eleanora had been murdered and it was Jean’s goose liver that had done her in. She stared at Frank Biddle in his tan uniform, his brown tie stained with ketchup. Through the open door beyond his shoulder, she saw his black-and-white parked at the curb. “For heaven’s sake, you haven’t come to arrest her?” she asked, the severity of the whole situation sinking in.
“Oh, no,” Jean murmured again, and Helen felt her sway.
The sheriff tucked his hat under his arm and shifted on his feet. “Look, I didn’t come to arrest anyone. I just need to ask Mrs. Duncan some questions. So if you don’t mind, Mrs. Evans, I’d like to talk to Jean,” he said.
“Of course,” Helen said and tightened her arm around Jean. “Come on, dear,” she said, leading her out of the foyer.
“Um, where do you think you’re going?” Biddle called after her.
Without missing a step, Helen tossed over her shoulder, “To the den, Sheriff. Are you coming or not?”
She heard the door as he closed—or, rather, slammed—it and the clomp of his boots as he crossed the tiled floor.
Helen had Jean settled beside her on the chintz-covered sofa by the time he walked into the den and dropped his hat onto the glass-topped coffee table. He plunked down with a grunt into a nearby overstuffed chair.
“Would you like a glass of water?” Helen asked Jean, but her friend shook her head, telling Helen in a voice so soft that Helen had to strain to hear, “Don’t leave me alone with him, please.”
Helen patted her arm. “As long as you need me, I’ll be here.”
The sheriff loudly cleared his throat. “Do you mind, ma’am?” he said, and Helen glanced up to find his eyes on her. He pulled a small notepad from his shirt pocket, slipped a pencil from its spine, and flipped the cover back to reveal a blank page. “Okay if I start?”
Helen turned to Jean. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”
Her friend answered with a quick jerk of her chin. She clasped her hands in her lap and held her jaw square. She seemed over the shock of hearing about Eleanora and more pulled together than Helen would have been.
“All right, Sheriff,” Jean said, her voice remarkably steady. “What is it you want to know? Did I get along with my mother-in-law?” she started in before Biddle could speak up. “Well, the answer is no, though I’m sure I don’t have to convince you. The whole town knows how Eleanora treated me since the accident.” She hesitated, drawing in a sharp breath, though she didn’t drop her guard, not an inch. “She was horrible to me, really horrible. But did I hate her enough to kill her?” Her chin fell, as did her voice. “Maybe I thought about it, maybe I wished her dead a few times, but”—she raised her eyes—“I didn’t do it. I pitied her more than anything. She had lost all that was dear to her. I couldn’t blame her for hardening her heart.”
“The goose liver,” Biddle said after scribbling furiously on his notepad, “how’d it end up with old Mrs. Duncan? When you didn’t like her, I mean.”
“Well, I can tell you that much, Sheriff,” Helen interjected, leaning forward in her seat, but the sheriff waved his pencil in the air.
“I’d like to hear it from Mrs. Duncan, please.”
Helen settled back against the cushion, frowning, feeling a bit like a child who’d been told to wait her turn.
Jean sighed. “I was whipping up some appetizers yesterday morning. Samples of hors d’oeuvres and dips that I could drop off around town with some of the women’s groups and committees. Helen came around while I was making up the pâté.”
“It’s true, I did,” Helen said and nodded, adding with unfettered sarcasm, “and I certainly never saw her add even a teaspoon of poison to anything.”
Sheriff Biddle stopped writing. His mouth turned down. “That’s all very interesting, Mrs. Evans, but if you could just keep quiet until I finish with Mrs. Duncan, I might have a few questions for you as well.”
“I’m only trying to help—“
The sheriff cut her off. “Well, if you wouldn’t mind not helping for another few minutes, I’d appreciate it, ma’am.”
Helen didn’t respond. She merely pressed her mouth tightly shut, though it wouldn’t be easy to sit quietly through this, not when his questions all seemed to intimate that Jean was involved in Eleanora’s death.
“Go on, Mrs. Duncan,” Biddle coaxed. “You were saying you’d made some hors d’oeuvres.”
Jean pursed her lips before explaining, “Helen mentioned that Eleanora felt shaken after nearly being hit by a car, and I felt guilty, thinking she might’ve been killed and with all this garbage between us. I don’t know why exactly, but I wanted to see her. I figured I’d take some of my samples over as a gesture of goodwill.” She toyed with her wedding band and sat in silence for a moment. “They say that a brush with death makes people appreciate life. I thought maybe she’d realize how silly she’d been, I don’t know.” She sighed before continuing. “Anyway, I went to the house yesterday afternoon.”
Biddle had his tongue caught in the corner of his mouth as he jotted down Jean’s remarks, flipping to an empty page as soon as he’d filled one. When he realized she’d stopped talking, he looked up. “And what happened then, ma’am? Once you saw old Mrs. Duncan?”
“Oh, I didn’t actually see her, Sheriff.”
The lines at Biddle’s wide forehead deepened. “She wasn’t home?”
“Yes, she was home,” Jean told him. “That’s why I never got past the kitchen.” Her voice tight, she went on, “I guess when Zelma tracked down Eleanora and told her I was there, she received orders to send me packing.”
“So you were in the kitchen alone, ma’am?”
Jean was slow to answer. “Yes, I was alone. But only for a minute or two.”
“And after that?”
Jean shrugged. “When Zelma came back and asked me to leave on Eleanora’s orders, I took off. I had a few other errands to run, and I met Helen at the diner at dusk. You were there, weren’t you, Sheriff?”
Biddle glanced up from his notes. “Yes, ma’am, I was.”
“I went into St. Louis afterward, and I didn’t return until this morning,” she said, keeping her tone level. “So I didn’t even find out that Eleanora had passed until Helen came over a half hour ago.”
“She was taken by surprise,” Helen said, figuring she’d held still for long enough. She glanced at Jean, who avoided her eyes. “She didn’t know a thing about how Eleanora died, and she didn’t ask.”
As he scribbled, the sheriff murmured, “Maybe that’s because she already knew.”
“Please,” Helen sputtered.
Jean stood, her face flushed, the set of her mouth grim. “I think I’ve answered all your questions, Sheriff. So if you wouldn’t mind showing yourself out, I have a business to run. Now if you’ll excuse me,” she said and escaped through the back hallway leading to the kitchen.
Helen didn’t say a word till the click-clack of Jean’s footsteps died away.
Then she slid over to the edge of the sofa, fixed her eyes on Frank Biddle, and scolded, “That was uncalled for, and you know it.”
The sheriff didn’t respond. He merely returned the tiny pencil to the notepad, flipped it closed, and tucked it into his pocket. He put his hands on his knees and gave Helen a stern look. “If you haven’t realized it already, ma’am, this is a murder investigation, not a tea party.”
“You practically accused her of Eleanora’s murder!”
He picked up his hat from the table. “If she’s guilty, Mrs. Evans, I’ll find out. And even though you’re her friend, you won’t be able to protect her.”
Helen felt her blood pressure rise. This so-called investigation wasn’t going to be good for her health, she could tell that much already. “Jean didn’t kill anyone,” she told him, wondering why her voice didn’t sound as convincing as it should. For goodness’ sake, she didn’t believe it for a moment.
“No,” she said, for her own sake as much as Biddle’s. “Jean wouldn’t do such a thing. She couldn’t.” Something came to mind then, and she nearly laughed aloud. “Why, just yesterday as I was leaving here, after Jean had made up her mind to go to Eleanora’s, she made a comment about hoping Eleanora wouldn’t accuse her of trying to poison her.” She smiled at the irony. “If that doesn’t prove she’s innocent, then I don’t know what does. Why on earth would she say such a thing and then go poison her mother-in-law? That would be like pointing the finger at herself, wouldn’t it?” She shook her head. “No, Sheriff. That would be way too foolish. And Jean’s not a foolish woman.”
“You’re right, ma’am. She’s not,” he said dryly as he rose to his feet.
Helen got up, too.
He tugged on his hat. “Tell Mrs. Duncan I might need to talk to her again.”
“I don’t know why,” Helen scoffed.
“Oh, and Mrs. Evans?” he asked from the doorway. “Don’t let yourself get dragged into this one. It’s not your concern.” Then he tipped his head at her and left.
The heck it wasn’t, Helen thought, feeling suddenly weak in the knees.