Janice Bennett: Cold Turkey

“He didn’t? Was it an accident?” Gerda stared at me, aghast. “Oh, please, tell me it wasn’t an accident! That damned sister of his will sue me for everything I’ve got, as if she hasn’t managed to cheat me out of a good deal of it, already!”

A vision sprang into my mind, of Brody’s body lying across the desk with the letter opener protruding from his chest. “I suppose you’ll be delighted to hear it’s murder?”

“You’re sure? There’s no chance of it being an accident? No,” she added as she pulled away from my restraining hand. “I want to see for myself.”

She marched down the hall and shoved open the door into the study. For a long moment she stood just over the threshold, unmoving. I waited outside my own room, hugging myself, feeling the sort of chill that threatened never to let go.

“What a god-awful mess,” Gerda declared at last. “How…” A long moment of silence followed, then she turned to face me, her complexion unnaturally pale. “That’s my letter opener,” she managed to choke out.

I hurried to catch her arm. “You shouldn’t have looked at him.”

She shook herself free. “Annike, did you hear me? That’s my letter opener!” Her voice rose on a note of hysteria. “He was stabbed with my letter opener!”

“I noticed.”

She looked over her shoulder. “We’ve got to get rid of him. He can’t be found here, not like that. We’ll have to take him somewhere, leave him…”

“No we won’t.” I got a firm grip on her and led her resolutely back toward the living room. “He stays right there ‘til the sheriff arrives. I’ve already called him, remember?”

Gerda cast me a frantic, baleful glare. “How could you do such a thing to me! Well, we’ll just get rid of my letter opener, then.”

“We’ll do nothing of the sort. That’s tampering with the evidence. Now, come back in the kitchen. We both need a strong cup of tea.”

Gerda dug in her heels. “Annike, you don’t understand! If he’s found like this, I’ll be arrested! You don’t know what’s been going on. Unless we do something, right now, before it’s too late, I’m going to be convicted of murder!”

“Convicted…” My voice trailed off as I stared, bewildered, at Aunt Gerda. “What do you mean convicted? Why on earth should anyone even suspect you of murder? It’s ridiculous! You’re just upset, you should never have gone in there.”

“Stop patronizing me!” Gerda hugged herself. The color had drained from her cheeks, leaving her unnaturally pale beneath her dusting of powder. “I know what I’m saying. I told you, you don’t know what’s been going on.”

I drew a deep breath and guided my distraught aunt toward the kitchen. After shoving her into a chair, I poured a selection of chocolate chips from the tin container across the table. Gerda grabbed several and chewed them with frantic urgency.

I waited until she swallowed and reached for more. “Okay, tell me the worst. What have you been up to?”

“I-” Gerda broke off and gathered a handful of chips, then laid them out, one by one, in a straight line in front of her, as if giving herself time to think. When she at last looked up, it was through half-lidded eyes that revealed nothing. “No, you’re quite right, dear. I am overreacting. Talking utter nonsense, in fact. It…it’s just been a bit of a shock, that’s all. Now, help me get my mind off it ‘til the sheriff arrives. Tell me about the drive. Did it rain the whole way? How is Vilhelm? I don’t hear him chattering his little head off. Is it too late for his evening cheep session?”

“He’s fine. But you’re babbling. Why?” I stared her down, waiting.

Color tinged her cheekbones. “I’m not babbling. I’m just a bit upset right now, and I’ve got every right to be. I’ve got a murdered man in my study!”

“You were upset before that, when you first mentioned him. Come on, out with it. What are you trying to hide from me?”

Her flush deepened. “Nothing! I’m just upset because of all the uproar we’re having around here. Anyone would be.”

“Uproar? What uproar? What’s been going on?” My gaze narrowed on her. “Have you been fighting over something with Brody?”

“No! Of course not!” She didn’t meet my gaze. She glanced around, as if seeking a diversion, and found it in the three cats who sat around her feet. She detached Furface’s teeth from her ankle, then gathered up an armload of lavender point Siamese. “No, Olaf. No claws,” she informed him, and for a long minute busied herself settling the animal in her lap.

“Well?” I prodded.

“It has nothing to do with Brody,” Gerda averred with too much fervor. “But it’s typical of him that his dying act would be to make one last muddle for me. Why couldn’t he have had the decency to finish my accounts, then go and get himself killed somewhere else?”

“I doubt if anyone asked him his preferences.” There had been some major disagreement, if not an actual fight, between Aunt Gerda and Brody, of that I now felt certain. I wouldn’t push, though. I’d get it out of her eventually.

Gerda, having found a tangent, was up and running with it. “Now we’ll have the sheriff and his people tramping over the place all weekend, tracking mud through the house and nibbling all the Thanksgiving goodies.”

“I doubt the new sheriff will like it, either,” I stuck in dryly. “Videotaping the football game just isn’t the same as watching it live.”

“That’s Brody all over, making life as difficult as possible for everyone else. And now, of all times! Honestly, Annike, it couldn’t be worse timing. There’s so much work to do!” She handed over the sleepily blinking Olaf and rose, pacing with restless steps to fill her kettle, a blue and white enameled job made in the shape of a whistling bird. She turned a burner to high. “Get out the chamomile and peppermint, will you, dear? We need something soothing.”

I deposited the cat on a chair, then selected the dried herbs from among the sizable collection in the racks hung on the pantry cabinet door. “Why’s this a worse time than any other for him to be killed?” Was there any good time to be murdered? And just what was it my aunt was hiding?

She looked down her long nose at me. “The Thanksgiving weekend festivities, of course.”

“What on earth does he have to do with them? I mean, no one’s going to cancel anything because of this, are they? We’ve held the community dinner for what, thirty-something years, now?”

“It’s gotten a little more complicated this year.” Gerda brought down her antique blue onion pattern teapot and filled it with hot tap water. The familiar occupations of making tea and discussing town events seemed to calm her. “This afternoon our Event Coordinator quit on us.”

“Why so late in the proceedings? All the work must be done, by now.” I fished in the cupboard for the ever-present tin of shortbread cookies. Lemon, this time.

Aunt Gerda pulled a woven cozy from a drawer and set it beside the pot, then smoothed it with nervous fingers as it lay on the tiled counter. “But that’s why it’s all such a crisis. She didn’t do anything. And I was going to call her up tonight and give her a piece of my mind, and now I can’t.”

“Can’t spare a piece of it, you mean?”

That succeeded in diverting her, at least for the moment. She fixed me with a reproving eye. “Living on your own is doing nothing for your manners, young lady.”

“Thank you. I haven’t been called young in years.”

Aunt Gerda snorted. “You’re only thirty-nine.”

“And counting,” I agreed, pleased with the success of my tactic. “So why can’t you call her? Who is it?”