Leann Sweeney - Pick Your Poison

He grabbed his briefcase and I watched him walk to the elevators. Terry may be kind, intelligent, and good-looking, but he had a lot to learn about me before we penned his name into a slot on the family tree. I knew plenty of password tricks, and I couldn’t think of a better way to use them.

As soon as Terry disappeared into the elevator, I turned the computer back on. I’d already memorized his Windows log-on and the first password—he hadn’t really tried to hide them from me—and when the access-denied screen popped up, I sat back in the chair. Daddy’s password had been tough to crack. Were the police as smart as a lifelong computer nerd? I was about to find out.

When the first hacker code didn’t work, I prayed I wouldn’t have to go the alphanumeric route. That might take days. But most programmers build in an override feature, and I had a method or two more to get me past this barrier. With persistence, all things are possible.

Sure enough, after five minutes of creative finagling, I pulled up Ben Grayson’s file. I was so engrossed, I didn’t realize Terry was standing in the doorway until he said, “What in hell do you think you’re doing, Abby?”

I jerked around and glanced at my watch. “Gosh. If it only takes you a few minutes, I hope you’re never called upon to judge my sanity.” I stood, flipped off the monitor, and faced him, hoping my cheeks weren’t as crimson as they felt.

He stared at me, unsmiling.

“Can’t seem to keep my hands off a computer when I’m around one.”

“Right,” he said. “What’d you find out?”

“Quite a bit, actually.”

“Good. Glad to accommodate my future sister-in-law,” he said sarcastically. “You didn’t hear anything about Grayson from me, understand?”

I nodded vigorously. “Sure. No one will ever know.”

“Let’s get out of here. I need lunch.”

“Good idea, and I think salad will work for me. I ate a platter of nachos last night like I was skinny, so it’s time to atone.”

I steered away from any discussion of Ben during lunch, but once Kate and I were home, I filled her in on the little bit I’d learned about Ben, how his wife had been murdered and how he had been the one and only suspect, but was never tried, much less convicted. “And remember when I went to the rest room at the restaurant? Well, I called the sheriff of that small town where Ben lived... where he supposedly committed this murder.”

“And?” Kate was sitting near the fireplace brushing Webster while I hunted through the kitchen desk looking for the Texas map.

“Nothing—yet. He said he could see me today, and I agreed to drive up there.”

She stopped brushing and Webster scrambled to his feet and escaped, settling a safe ten feet away from her. “Terry thinks you should stay out of this, Abby. And I tend to agree.”

“Ah. Found it.” I took the map to the kitchen table. “I need to understand what happened in Ben’s past, and maybe then I’ll know why someone wanted him dead.”

Kate marched over to the pantry and began searching the shelves.

“What are you looking for?” I said. “We just ate.”

She turned and held up a canister. “Sounds to me like you need a good detoxification. This tea from Africa will—”

“The red stuff that makes my lips swell?” I asked. “That tea is scary.”

“No. Something different.” She filled a mug with water and set it in the microwave. “Trust me. This will clear your head.”

Webster sauntered to Kate’s side and sniffed the air when she removed a tea bag from the canister. If a dog could look disgusted, Webster looked disgusted. He made a beeline for his lamb’s-wool rug by the back door and feigned sleep.

“Kate, did you hear me say our police expert, Sergeant Kline, failed to mention Ben was never indicted for that murder he supposedly committed?”

“I heard.”

“That’s an omission that kind of ticks me off. What about ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and all that founding-father stuff?”

“If the police think Ben was guilty of his wife’s murder, I’m betting they had good reason to suspect him.”

“There has to be more to the story. You knew Ben, how kind he seemed. I need to hear what happened, judge for myself.” I unfolded the map on the kitchen table and found the town of Shade, situated sixty miles north of Houston.

The microwave dinged and Kate took the steaming mug and dunked the tea bag in the water several times. “Okay. Let me go with you. Not today, since I have a client later this afternoon, but—”

“The sheriff said he could spare a few minutes this afternoon; otherwise, I’d have to wait until next week. It’s not my fault you have a life that actually requires a Franklin Planner. I’m doing this.”

“Like Daddy used to say,” Kate said, “trying to talk you out of something you’ve set your mind to is like trying to take dew off the grass. But when you get back, I want to put all this aside. We have unfinished business.”

“You’re talking about the house, I take it?”

She nodded. “I know you don’t want to live here alone once I move out, so we have decisions to make. Big decisions.”

“You’re moving in with Terry for sure, then?”

“I need to live with him before jumping into marriage. I don’t want us to end up like you and Steven. Watching what you went through with him has spooked me, I guess.”

“Spooked you? Come on, Kate. I found it entertaining—kind of like a circus, really. Steven the juggler, balancing two and three women at once. Steven the magician, disappearing for days on end. Steven the lion tamer, handling Abby’s temper with deft and evasive—”

“Abby!” Kate cut in. “Did you forget I had a front-row seat for your so-called circus?”

“Well, I’m a born-again virgin... not even angry with Steven anymore. He and I do much better as friends.” I foraged around in the depths of my purse for the ever-elusive keys, avoiding eye contact.

“You still care about him.”

“We had chemistry. Strong stuff. But it’s fading.” I waved a hand in dismissal. “Believe me, I can control my feelings.”

Kate filled a travel tumbler with ice, poured the tea in, and brought the cup to me. “Drink this on the way. Obviously you need a good detox.”

Once out the back door, I lifted the plastic tumbler to my nose. Even with the lid on, I could smell something herbal enough to drive buzzards off roadkill. Some things I would miss about Kate when she moved out; some I would not.

I poured the tea out the window at the first stoplight I came to.

Heat radiated off the blacktop as I drove away from Houston. We needed rain. Thanks to a late-summer drought, the usually vibrant green medians were parched brown stripes stretching into the horizon. As I sped farther from the city, the traffic thinned and I savored the expansive landscape still undefiled by strip malls and Wal-Marts. With the cruise control set at seventy, I considered what I’d learned from hacking into Terry’s computer. Seems Ben had been the chief suspect in the death of his wife. She’d died at home fifteen years ago, after swallowing a cold medicine laced with cyanide. Was it coincidence husband and wife died from the same poison? I didn’t think so, and I had no doubt Sergeant Kline would agree with me—if he had an agreeable bone in his body.

The Shade police had taken Ben into custody right after Cloris’s death, but he’d been released the same day. Seems no direct evidence connected him to her murder. He was questioned several times in the months that followed, and from what I could discern from the brief reports I’d read, he was their only suspect, his apparent motive being a large insurance policy taken out on Cloris the year before.