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“HI, UNCLE MAX, DARLENE,” Dana said as she walked into the study at Uncle Max’s house with warm tray of baked goods.
“Oh, they smell delicious,” Darlene said.
“Thank you,” Dana said.
“I’ll get us some drinks.”
“Oh, I’m not staying long,” Dana said.
“You’re not?” Uncle Max looked surprised.
“Oh, no. I...” Dana looked at Darlene and Uncle Max. Darlene seemed very cozy with Uncle Max. She could probably now have him all to herself now that his wife...or his wives were out of the way, right?
Dana drew in a deep breath. She hoped the confrontation wouldn’t backfire on her.
“I...I need to talk to Aunt Mary about something. Is she awake?”
“The last I checked on her. I just gave her a cup of...”
“Warm milk and honey,” Darlene finished uncle Max’s sentence with a roll of the eyes.
Dana gave her a stern look, her lips pressed together. She tried to ignore Darlene’s snarkiness. “Well, I’ll be right back.”
Dana headed upstairs to the top of the landing and made a right turn toward Aunt Mary’s room.
She knocked lightly on the door.
“Come in,” Aunt Mary’s friendly voice called out.
“Hi, Aunt Mary. Can I come in?”
“Sure, Dana. Anytime. What is it, dear? You don’t look too well.”
It was that obvious, huh?
Just then Dana heard the doorbell downstairs ring and heard Uncle Max open it.
“Um...well, Aunt Mary. The autopsy results showed a milk stain above Karla’s upper lip.”
“A milk stain?”
“Yes, Auntie,” Dana said softly. “She had milk and honey. Your favorite drink, the one you like to share with others. I asked my friend Troy if I could see the details of the report—the one that’s on public record and he shared that with me. Her drink had been laced with a toxic amount of Heparin.”
“Well, what does that have to do with me?”
“You take Heparin injections once daily for your inability to move around.”
“Not any more. Doc Cromwell took me off it.”
“Aunt Mary, tell me the truth. You were never on it. And Doc Cromwell never had you on it, did he?”
“Are you out of your mind? That’s crazy?”
“Not really, Auntie. Doc told me everything.” Dana found it hard to lie a little. Doc told her a lot but she needed Aunt Mary to confess the truth.
“What? That low down double crosser.” Aunt Mary sighed. Sorrow clouded her grey eyes. “What exactly did he say?”
“Well, that you were the woman that night when Karla came to his secluded office door.”
“What?”
“Karla saw Cromwell talking to a woman one night. She’d turned up at his office—his so called office unannounced. And she’d called him a liar and asked Cromwell what is she doing here? But what Karla meant was that you were a liar, not Doc Cromwell. She saw you up out of your wheelchair, smoking a cigarette and pacing around the room strongly. Fit as an ox.”
“Fit as an ox?”
“Yes, that was the secret Karla had been talking about, wasn’t it? She caught the secret that you and Cromwell cooked this up so that you can play the ailing widow who needs her son, because you are terrified of being left alone—again. The fake doc covered for you because you knew his real identity. You’d bumped into him at the market around the same time Dr. Samuels was no longer your doctor. You had a lot on your mind. You knew Cromwell was a defected spy from Russia and he was now hiding out in Berry Cove. He needed you to keep his secret and you needed a huge favor from him in return. I managed to piece together the puzzle after finding out his background and your background.”
“You figured it out, didn’t you?”
“You sort of gave me some clues. You said you used do some dangerous and adventurous work back in the day after the war and you could do a lot. I asked Uncle Merv recently what exactly was it that you did? Not everyone in the family knows, but he knows. And one of Cromwell’s spy covers used to be that of a doc, so he just carried on pretending when he moved to Berry Cove. Not opening to the public of course. But just so that no one questions him. He pretended to be a retired doc and you of course, asked him to pretend to come back to practice for you as a favor. That way no one would suspect a thing.”
“I should have known, my grand-niece, the mystery riddles solver of the Internet.”
“You’re perfectly fit and fine, aren’t you? Always have been, Aunt Mary, according to your previous doctor. But the trouble is not your physical health. It’s your emotional health.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You had developed a severe case of autophobia over the years after your injury from the war. Fear of being alone, don’t you?”
“I do not,” she protested.
“Yes, you do, Aunt Mary,” Dana said softly. “I realize something was amiss when I retrieved your pink reading glasses. They weren’t your usual pair. They were tinted. They were night vision glasses.”
“Night vision glasses.”
“Yes, Aunt Mary. You used to wear them when you were out driving. You had two pairs. That’s when it struck me. You were there that night when my power mysteriously cut off. It was you. You had to retrieve my computer, because Uncle Merv told you that I was looking into the Heparin situation and came across some other clues. You couldn’t risk me pinning it down to you now could you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about?”
“I was alone in the dark and couldn’t see a thing and bumped into an object. It was your walking stick you carry with you in case anyone catches you without it. But you only carried it with you to the house when you broke in to get my information from my laptop. Then you snuck back into Uncle Merv’s house. You drove the old car.”
Aunt Mary said nothing for a moment.
Dana continued, cautiously, “Just as you’d done when no one suspected you when you injected Heparin into your daughters-in-law’s drinks. Each time.”
Just then, Aunt Mary broke down and cried. She covered her face with her hands for a moment and Dana reached out to hug her. Aunt Mary then gently pushed her away and got up out of the wheelchair. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about all of this. I....It’s very hard for me, you know. After Chedrick died. I felt alone as a widow. Isolated. Max was always there for me. He cared for me and took care of me.”
“But Aunt Mary, you have to let him go. He’s a grown man, now. We can’t hold onto our kids forever. It’s not fair to them. They need to fly, just like a bird leaving the nest. So that’s why you killed them?”
“No. Karla told me that she killed Lucy to get her out of the way. I swear to you.”
“She did?”
“Yes. She did. I have faults and I’ll admit to them but murder’s not one of them.”
“So what happened next?”
“Well, she actually threatened to kill me! She told me that she’d do the same to me as she did to Lucy and get me out of her way permanently. I was terrified for my life! I watched one evening as she made milk and honey for the both of us. When I left the kitchen, she brought the tray with our cups on it. She put mine in the blue cup and planned to drink with me at the tea party that Max held so it would look natural. I had no idea that she’d poured heparin into my cup. I assumed she might have spit in my drink when I wasn’t looking or something like that, so that’s why when she wasn’t looking, I switched the cups. Never in a million years would I have thought I could have killed her.”
“You did what?”
“She killed herself with her own poison.” Aunt Mary’s lips were tightly pressed together, her hands folded together and her chin up.
“Oh, Aunt Mary.”
“Is that really what happened, mother?” Uncle Max was at the door.
“Yes, son.”
Troy also stood at the door and gave her a stern look and shook his head in dismay. “Very well, Ma’am. I will need to ask you a few questions.”
“But it was self-defence,” Uncle Max said.
“Withholding information is very serious, Ma’am,” Troy continued.
“I know.”
Dana’s heart squeezed in her chest. She felt her stomach twist into a knot. She still couldn’t believe the situation. Everything seemed so surreal. So unbelievable. So it really was Aunt Mary—sort of. Who would have thought? How was she going to explain this to the family?
Not to mention that Aunt Mary wasn’t really physical crippled, only emotionally crippled.
Oy, yoy, yoy!