Leann Sweeney - Pick Your Poison

I had to call someone. The police? Yes... No... God! Why couldn’t I string two coherent thoughts together? Maybe because I’d discovered two dead people in a few short months, first my daddy and now Ben.

I looked toward the house. Yes. Call. Tell someone.

I made myself move, slowly at first on those shaky legs, then faster and faster. But if I thought running like a scorched cat would make the horrible images of death disappear, I was wrong. Ben’s wide eyes still seemed to be boring into me even after I reached the phone in the kitchen. Drenched with sweat by then, I dialed those three numbers you never want to use, tasting the salt on my lips, grateful for that tiny affirmation of life.

An hour had passed since I called 911. An ambulance and a swarm of police had crowded onto my lawn ten minutes after I phoned. But even though I’d clearly told the dispatcher Ben was dead, the paramedics showed up anyway. How I wished they could have Heimliched or resuscitated him back to life. Six patrol cars were parked at awkward angles on the curving drive, doors ajar, their whirling lights calling the neighbors to assemble outside the fence and gawk.

I’d been told to stay put after I led the first officers to the body, and so I sat twenty feet from the greenhouse door under the shade of a crape myrtle. People with shiny gloved hands were rushing around carrying plastic bags, while other officers wrote in notebooks, used cell phones, or spoke into walkie-talkies. They had propped open the screen door, and my gaze kept wandering back to Ben’s body. He still lay between the roses, and I wondered why they didn’t cover him up with one of those white sheets I always saw on the six-o’clock news.

“You the homeowner?” came a voice from the vicinity of my right shoulder.

I looked up. A man, maybe late thirties, his short blond hair darkened by sweat, stood to my right. He looked maybe six feet, one-eighty, wearing a button-down off-white shirt, mocha tie, and a “Don’t Mess with Texas” expression. I got to my feet, brushing grass off the back of my legs. His police shield, attached to the chest pocket of his shirt, glinted in the late-afternoon sun, and from those shadows under his tired eyes, I pegged him as the president-elect of the Burned-out Cop Society.

I held out my hand. “Abby Rose, and yes, I’m the owner.”

He ignored my gesture of greeting and said, “I see a compressor over by that cabana. Place air-conditioned?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered, feeling like maybe I should salute with my useless, “out there” appendage.

“Good.” He was already on his way before I could blink.

Bet that man struts even when he’s sitting down, I thought, following on his heels.

He asked one of the uniformed officers if the cabana had been searched and dusted for prints, and was told the place was clean. We went inside.

I was scared, hot, and still in shock over my discovery, and the bathhouse-slash-refreshment center, with its cushioned wicker chairs and pastel walls, provided a cool, familiar atmosphere that calmed me almost immediately.

I grabbed a robe from one of the dressing rooms and a bottled water from the fridge behind the small bar, offering water to the policeman as well. He declined and took a pack of Big Red gum from his shirt pocket.

“My name is Sergeant Kline and I’m with Homicide,” he said. “Have a seat.”

Guzzling down half the water before I took a breath, I sat opposite him at the table in the center of the room.

He checked a palm-size notebook. “Ms. Rose, is it?”

“Yes. Abby Rose. But did you say Homicide? Because Ben looked like maybe he’d had a stroke or choked to death or—”

“We aren’t certain how he died. But there’re enough questions concerning the physical evidence in the greenhouse that—”

“What evidence?”

Sergeant Kline chewed his gum, tapping his pen on the glass tabletop. “Ms. Rose, let me ask the questions.”

He sounded irritated, just like those probate lawyers had when we went over Daddy’s will and I kept interrupting their droning legalese for clarification.

“Okay. Ask away.” I swigged down the rest of the water, thinking I might get frostbite if I took this guy’s pulse.

“You told the first policeman on the scene that you heard nothing in the greenhouse prior to investigating the barking dog?”

“I was asleep. The dog woke me.”

“And you live here with your sister, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you indicated she was not at home today? That you and Mr. Garrison were alone?”

“Mr. Garrison?” I said, confused. “Oh—you mean Ben. Sorry, yes. We were alone.” Shame heated my face. I didn’t even remember Ben’s last name. What the hell kind of employer was I?

Kline said, “We couldn’t locate a driver’s license or address book in Garrison’s garage apartment here on the property. The medical examiner’s officer found no ID in his pockets. No credit cards either. Were his quarters temporary? And if so, do you have a permanent address where we could find information to notify family?”

“The apartment wasn’t temporary. He lived there all the time. His days off were Sunday and Monday and—”

“Do you have an employment application? Something with a former address? Relatives hearing through the media about a loved one’s death... Well, we don’t like that.”

Did he think I’d get a rip-roaring kick out of such an awful thing happening? After taking a deep breath to keep myself from spouting off, I said, “My father hired Ben, and Daddy would have scanned the application, if there was one, then filed it on his computer. I’m sure if you give me time I could find—”

“So where’s your father?”

“He... passed on,” I answered.

Kline sighed, the release laden with fatigue. “Sorry to hear that. So how long did the victim work here? You know that much, right?”

“Maybe three months?”

The detective removed his pack of gum and folded another stick into his mouth. He tossed the balled-up wrapper into the wastebasket adjacent to the bar, and chewed for a second before continuing. “Tell me about today. I assume you spoke with the victim?”

“Yes, I did.”

“I know you went over this with the responding officer, but I’d like you to repeat everything you remember about today.”

What I recalled most was Ben’s odd behavior this afternoon by the pool. He’d never approached me like that before. But I hadn’t mentioned this to the other policeman, maybe because Homicide wasn’t part of his job description and it had never crossed my mind that Ben died from anything but natural causes.

But now, with this intense man whose rigid blue stare could knock a tank off course, the earlier conversation took on added significance. So after filling Kline in on my otherwise boring day, I said, “Out by the pool, Ben asked to talk to me about something, but wanted my sister present.”

“What something?”

I hesitated, and the room seemed so quiet I swore I could hear my hair growing. “I—I don’t know what something. He wouldn’t say.”

“Repeat his words as best you recall.” He had his pen poised over the notebook, and his jaw was working the Big Red hard.

But the details seemed to have left my brain like powdered sugar through a sifter. “I can’t remember. The feeling I got was that he was troubled.”

Kline said, “Troubled? That’s it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And this was the first time he’d ever seemed troubled?”

“Well... maybe I just didn’t notice before today.”

Another huge sigh. “Yeah, okay. What about access to the property? Any recent history of strangers hanging around? Or break-ins? Anything unusual?”