Jill found Aunt Aggie looking like death warmed over, and she realized how difficult it must be for a woman of her age to endure an all-nighter in a folding chair. The woman sat straight up with her purse in her lap and her feet flat on the floor, her eyes closed, as if she was sound asleep.
Jill bent over and touched her arm gently, reluctant to wake her if she slept. “Aunt Aggie?”
The old woman’s eyes flew open, and she asked, “They done torturin’ her yet?”
Jill shook her head. “No, they’re not finished with her. We’re waiting for the report to come back from the lab. In the meantime, I thought maybe you could call Celia’s parents and tell them what’s happened.”
She gave Jill a bitterly disgusted look. “I ain’t spoke one word to my niece since she turned her back on Celia, and I ain’t startin’ now.”
“But Aunt Aggie, Celia said they were coming to visit her today, and she doesn’t want them to hear about this after they get here. Please, won’t you call them?”
“I’ll call T-David, Celia’s brother,” she said. “Him I can talk to. But Celia’s mama’s hardheaded as a ram. I could go the rest of my life without talkin’ to her, what she done to that poor girl.”
Aggie got to her feet, resisting Jill’s help, and started walking. “Which phone can we use?”
“Take that one,” Jill said, pointing to an empty desk. “We’ll use my credit card number.”
Jill punched in the preliminary code, then gave the phone to Aunt Aggie. She dialed the number, rattling on as she did. “David lives in that mausoleum of a house with ’em…disgraceful how big it is…on three hundred acres…and he gots a whole wing to hisself. But sometimes his mama answers his line, and when she does, I just hang up…”
“Don’t hang up this time, Aunt Aggie. Celia needs for you to do this.”
Jill watched the tension on the old woman’s face as she waited for the ring to be answered. When it was, she pulled her chin up and tightened her lips and said, “David, please. Well, where can I reach ’im? Yeah, Joanna, it’s me.” Her face was reddening, and she shot Jill a disgusted look. “No, that ain’t why I’m callin’. I was glad you finally got over your bullheadedness to make up with your daughter. But Celia can’t make it today, so don’t come.”
It was not how she would have handled it, Jill thought, irritated, but it was too late to do anything about it.
Aunt Aggie listened, her lips growing even thinner. “No, she ain’t backed out, Joanna. But Stan, he’s sick, in the hospital. Somebody tried to poison him.”
Again, Jill’s spirits sagged. There must be a better way to break the news, but delicacy had never been one of Aunt Aggie’s traits.
Aunt Aggie closed her eyes, as though bracing herself for what came next, and when she opened them again Jill could see pure rage in her eyes. “No, Celia didn’t do it, just like she didn’t do it last time, but you never believe that ’cause you don’t know your daughter. All you care about is yourself and your stupid, silly family name, which nobody cares nothin’ about!”
Incredulous at how badly this was going, Jill snatched the phone out of Aunt Aggie’s hand. The old woman surrendered it gladly.
“Uh…Mrs. Bradford? This is Jill Clark, a friend of Celia’s.”
“Where is my aunt?” the woman asked. Hers was a soft voice, very similar to Celia’s, and she didn’t sound like the shrew Aunt Aggie had made her out to be at all. “I need to talk to my aunt.”
“Uh…she doesn’t want to talk to you anymore, Mrs. Bradford. But I thought you should know that your daughter needs you now more than ever. Because of her first husband’s cause of death, the police have been questioning her.”
“Then they’ve arrested her again?”
“No. They’re only questioning her.” She could hear the muffled sob on the other end, something that surprised her. “I know it would help her tremendously if she had your moral support now, especially on her birthday. I’m an attorney and I’m doing everything I can to clear this up, but for now—”
“I should have known.”
Jill hesitated. “Mrs. Bradford, you should have known what?”
“That this reconciliation, this reunion…was too good to be true.” A moment of silence passed. “I had such hopes.”
“You can still have a reunion.”
“Is he dead?” The words seemed to come on a wave of emotion.
“No. He’s in a coma.”
“He was a nice man. I liked him very much. I could see why Celia loved him.”
She ignored her use of past tense. “Yes, it’s quite a tragedy. More so because of what Celia’s going through.”
“Thank you for calling, Miss Clark. I appreciate it.”
Jill sat there for a moment, holding the line. “Is that all? Aren’t you going to come?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“But your daughter needs you.”
“She has my aunt.”
“Mrs. Bradford—”
The phone clicked in her ear, and Jill froze, still holding it.
“Hanged up on you, didn’t she?” Aggie asked.
“Yes, she did.”
“If there was a hell, it would be for folks like her.”
“There is a hell, Aunt Aggie. And you don’t want to wish it on your niece.”
She watched as the old woman dug a handkerchief out of her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. Across the room, Sid got off of his own telephone and headed toward her.
“What did you find out?” she asked as he reached her.
He leaned over the desk, bracing himself with his hands. “There wasn’t a trace of arsenic in any of the evidence we collected from the house,” he said, “’cept for what Stan had…purged.”
“All right, now we’re getting somewhere,” Jill said, springing up with renewed energy. “Sid, you have to see that if Celia had done this, there would have been some evidence.”
“She didn’t have to do it at home, Jill. She’s experienced, remember? She knows how to cover her tracks.”
“Cover her tracks?” Jill asked in a whisper, to keep from giving the gossip mill more fodder. “Give me a break! She’d have to be pretty stupid to think she was covering her tracks by poisoning her husband someplace else, with the same poison she was accused of using on her first husband! Don’t you think she’d know that she would be the very first suspect?”
“Maybe that’s what she is, Jill. Stupid. Or maybe she’s just crazy. You ever thought of that? You’d better, because when I get through gatherin’ all the evidence in this case, the insanity defense might be her only hope.”
Before either of them knew what had happened, Aggie had leaped up and swung her purse across Sid’s head, knocking him over.
“Man!” he shouted. “Why’d you do that?”
“Don’t you talk ’bout my niece like that again!” the old woman shouted.
“That thing must weigh a ton!” Sid staggered back, holding the side of his head. “Whatcha got in there? Bricks? I could arrest you for assaultin’ a police officer.”
“You do it! Throw a eighty-one-year-old woman in jail, see what it gets you!”
He backed off, as if too exhausted to fight her anymore. “Guess this insanity thing runs in the blasted family.”
Then mumbling under his breath, he headed for Jim Shoemaker’s office.
Jill caught up with him and blocked his entrance. “Sid, is my client under arrest?”
“That’s what I’m goin’ in to talk to the chief about.”
“You don’t have probable cause. You don’t have a shred of evidence. All you have is an unsolved case from six years ago.” Sid ignored her and tried to get around her.
“Sid, think. Why would she tell you it was arsenic if she wanted him dead? It would have taken days to discover that, postmortem, if they hadn’t known to test him for it. Use your logic!”
“My logic tells me she could be a few bricks shy of a full load, Jill. That maybe she tried to kill him and got cold feet at the last minute. I’ll leave that to the psychiatrists. All’s I know is we got a police detective layin’ half dead in the hospital, and she’s the only suspect we got. I don’t care how blonde, how pretty, or how married she is. If she’s a killer, I’m gon’ lock her up.”
Jill wasn’t about to leave it at that. As he started into Jim’s office, she followed him in.
“Jim, since you’re finished questioning my client, I’m telling her she can leave,” she blurted before Sid could get anything out.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Sid said. “Jim, I’m gon’ book her.”
Jim sank back in his seat. “You can’t book her, Sid. We don’t have any compelling evidence or any probable cause.”
Jill shot him a satisfied look, but he didn’t give up.
“Jim, who else coulda done it?” Sid demanded. “Look, she’s my friend, too. I’ve always liked Celia. But the facts just stack up against her.”
“What if you’re wrong?” Jim asked. “And you have to explain to Stan why you locked up his wife when he needed her most? And on her birthday, to boot.”
Jill leaned over his desk. “Jim, all she wants to do is go back to the hospital and be with him. She’s scared to death. Let her go. You’ll know where she is.”
Jim nodded and looked up at Sid. “Tell her she can go home, but not to leave town.”
“What about Slidell?” Jill asked. “That’s where Stan is.”
“Tell her not to go farther than Slidell. And we may have to question her more later.”
Sid went to a filing cabinet and leaned his elbow on it. His anger was on simmer, working up to a low boil. Jim got up, rubbing his paunch. “Sid, the investigation continues. If you show me evidence that Celia did this, I won’t hesitate to lock her up.”
Sid nodded and started back out the door. “I got work to do.”
Jill shook Jim’s hand and thanked him, then went to tell Celia the good news.