Authors: Shannon Hill
I sat, gingerly, on the edge of his desk. “Okay. What?”
“Got a preliminary call. There are signs that Vera Collier did not die of natural causes indeed. If our ME is correct—and I mean the gentleman at the district office, not our local bumbler—she was poisoned with mushrooms.”
“Injected or ingested?” I asked. The delivery method might help us narrow down the list of suspects.
“Ingestion is probable.”
That still left the needle mark to explain. “The ME’s sure?”
Harry nodded grimly. “He’s willing to guess it was genus
Amanita
.”
To which belong such illustrious poisoners as the death cap, destroying angels, and the fool’s mushroom. Typically, it can take up to a week or even ten days to die from the toxin, and it’s not a pretty death. But a woman of Vera’s age? It could certainly act more quickly. And it would depend on the amount ingested.
I’d seen this kind of death once before, though it had been accidental. Some damn fool had fancied himself a mushroom expert, and served them up at a family picnic. Three dead, and a lot of people with banged-up innards. It’s a hard death, made harder because symptoms don’t usually appear for up to a day. The first thing that hits is the stomach cramping and diarrhea, which fade on their own. By the time most people feel sick enough to see a doctor, the damage is already being done. People do survive
Amanita
poisoning if treated, but not always.
There are plenty of poisonous mushrooms around besides the
Amanita
genus. But I’d seen
Amanita
listed in wild food guides for our area under the heading of “Toxic”, so I had to assume some were around. Mushrooms like woods and damp, and we had plenty of both. But it was early in the year for mushrooms. Harry and I nodded at the same moment. Early, yes, but you could dry mushrooms. I didn’t know if the toxin would remain active; I’d have to check.
“We need to get an inventory of Vera’s house,” I said abruptly. “See if she’s got any homemade cream of mushroom soup in the fridge.”
“That too,” agreed Harry. “Who do you want to help?”
I could really only trust Tom Hutchins. The county police belonged to Chief Rucker; the state boys had their own agendas. Harry watched all this chase around my face a minute before he suggested, “You could deputize a few people.”
Tempting, but I shook my head. “Tom and I will do it. I’ll ask Lieutenant Breeden to have a car roll through town a few times while we’re at Vera’s.” Breeden was a state cop, and his mother and Aunt Marge were part of the web of older women who run things. “There goes the weekend.”
“The week, Lil,” said Harry.
I nodded, wishing my life would get easier sometime soon. “He’s sure about the mushrooms?”
“He’s sure enough,” Harry replied, and for a minute, he looked like some old Roman statue. “The appearance of the internal organs was apparently quite distinctive.” He picked up a notepad, and read, “Fatty degeneration and necrosis.”
I winced. Then I headed to Paint Hollow to talk to more Colliers.
***^***
I’d scheduled time with all of Vera’s children that day. Buck and Marilee I’d talk to on the telephone; neither intended to show up for Vera’s funeral. Somehow, I wasn’t shocked.
Eileen Collier Lynch, however, was “put out.” She took a long drag off a short cigarette and fumed at me, quite literally. “I spent half a day cleaning out the guest room!”
I found it hard to believe she’d had to do any cleaning. Her house was spotless enough to do Aunt Marge proud. It was also darn near empty. Boris, sniffing for dust and hiding places, was stuck with nothing. The furniture was hard wood with plain cushions; the walls were bare; there were no shelves of any kind. No vases, no books, not even a memo pad on the fridge. I had a feeling that this woman did not own so much as one pair of socks more than she felt was absolutely minimally required. If anti-hoarding is a disease, she had it. Bad.
Boris finally perched behind my legs. Eileen sat rigidly on the opposite chair.
I didn’t need to ask questions. Eileen, like Ken, had no problem speaking ill of her kin. Ken she dismissed as a “Mama’s boy”; Army as “weak”; Rob was “lazy”; Beau was “nasty”. Laura was “sweet,” while Davis was “a loser”. Honey was “mean,” Jeff “weird.” Marilee was “stuck up” and Buck was “not a factor.” As for herself, “I didn’t get along with Mama much, but nobody ever did.”
From there we went to Army’s place, where Boris stalked birds at the feeder while Army and I sipped sweet tea on the patio. He excused Ken and Eileen as bitter, Rob as gentle. On Beau, he had to toughen up. “Beau’s got a temper.” Davis he pitied as “out of place”. Buck he admired as “tough”, and Marilee as “honest”. Both Honey and Jeff he viewed as “unhappy”. But when I pressed him on Laura, he shrugged. “We-el. She and my wife Gloria don’t see eye to eye. Laura’s big on church and she holds it against Gloria that she doesn’t go.” On his mother, however, he was downright evasive. “Mama was hard to know.”
The next stop was Rob Collier’s. Like most of the Collier men, he worked for himself, and he was scowling at a pile of invoices in his workshop. It smelled of copper, and PVC, and whatever else it is that goes into plumbing. He spoke in small, reluctant sentences. “Mama did what she saw fit.” “Ken carries a grudge.” He thought Army was “too nice”, but otherwise, his assessments matched Army’s, with the addendum that Laura was “the only one got along with everyone”.
Beau Collier was lounging in a hammock, drinking beer and listening to WCZY, then broadcasting country music. He started to set his dogs on Boris, saw my face and changed his mind. “Woman with a gun,” he grunted. “Like tits on a bull.” I went hot, then gritted out my questions. Fortunately for my temper, Beau kept it short. His mother was “a bitch” and all his siblings were “snakes”.
Laura’s house, neat and full of country charm like little bonnet-wearing ducks, was a relief after Beau. She had two cats, both of whom fled before Boris as if he was a tornado, and she offered me lunch. I declined, for two reasons. One was that I had brought a lunch. The other was that she was heating up mushrooms and peppers in a skillet. I don’t like mushrooms anyway, but under the circumstances, it seemed idiotic to take a chance.
The strange thing was, I should’ve liked Laura. She was indeed nice. Sweet. She blessed Boris’s heart, declared Ken a hard worker, Eileen a martyr, Army a darling. Rob was “just the sweetest brother”, and she even managed to describe Beau as “troubled”. Davis was smart, Buck a hero, Marilee a saint, Jeff well-read. Only of Honey did she speak ill: “Uppity”. But I couldn’t like the woman. Every word she said sounded sincere, and her face matched, but there was something else, hard to define, under it all. Boris noticed, too. His tail shuddered and twitched the entire visit, though he did not lash it. When I shook Laura’s hand before leaving, it hit me. Her eyes were expressionless. Even when she smiled.
I’ve seen those eyes. They come in people who’ve been beat down so far they can’t remember
up
.
***^***
Honey was a housewife, and it’s fair to say she was married to that house. It was large, modern, impeccably decorated in the latest tasteful fashions, and it was all she talked about for half an hour. When I got her off furniture and on family, the change startled me. Good-bye pleasant smile, hello vicious scowl.
“Hill-billies,” she snapped, pausing to straighten a magazine on a mirror-polished table. “No taste, no…ambition. They’d live in shacks if you let them. Only books they read are westerns or trash romance.” She waved her manicured hand at the shelves of leather-clad books that looked like they’d never been touched. “If Rich could just get a job in Charlottesville…”
After she’d ranted, offered me wine, then set out smelly cheese on tiny crackers, she finally offered opinions on them as individuals. “Well, Ken’s just a hick,” she said with a sneer. “Eileen’s a bitch, I mean epic bitch. She told Mama all the time it was Mama’s fault that we all turned out ‘bad’.” She sniffed. She ate a cracker without realizing Boris had licked the cheese, then abandoned it as too nasty for his palate. “As if we did!”
I had to admit, her house was nice. Her clothes were from high-end mall stores. The diamonds in her ears were real. But that’s not the standard Aunt Marge raised me to value.
“And Laura is just as bad. What a hypocrite! All that Betty Crocker, and you know she wanted to be a lawyer, but now?” She rolled her eyes elaborately. “You’d think it was her dream to make peach cobbler!”
I pushed Boris gently aside. He was about to snatch a cracker. He mewed, and Honey glared at him. “That was rude!”
I didn’t point out that cats don’t believe in etiquette. “Let’s get back to your siblings. What do you think about Army?”
“That wimp?” She flicked two nails together.
“And Rob?”
“Rob is the laziest man alive. I swear he’d be meaner than the rest put together if it didn’t take energy. But he’s not a jerk like Beau at least.” Her laugh hit my ears like fingernails on a chalkboard. “I’ve seen Beau try to run down dogs just for fun.”
Not a plus in my book, either. “And Davis?”
“Oh, the homo,” she sighed. “Well, Laura says it’s a sin but the way Mama raised us, it’s no surprise. She didn’t leave a one of those boys a full set, except maybe Ken. And Buck, but that’s because he ran off to the service and didn’t come back. Daddy should’ve taken Mama in hand, but he never could.” She tittered. “Mama had her flaws but…” She rose, took down a lovely framed photograph in black and white. She handed it over, careful not to put her fingers on the glass. “That’s Mama when she was in her twenties.”
She was hatchet-faced, but it didn’t matter. She had a figure that’d put Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner to shame, and a smile that’d stop traffic. In her youth, Vera Collier was so hot she sizzled.
“She could get men to do what she wanted,” Honey smirked. She preened. I was supposed to say she had inherited the talent. She hadn’t.
“You said Laura thinks homosexuality is a sin?” I said as I handed back the photograph.
“Oh Laura’s an android. It’s all a tape recording of whatever that TV minister says.”
“Not your minister?”
“That’s just our cousin,” said Honey, amused. “Frank’s okay but he’s no Jerry Falwell.”
“Do you speak much to Marilee?”
“Marilee has the most smarts of us all. She got out just like Buck and she doesn’t even pretend she’s a Collier anymore. We barely even get Christmas cards.”
“Jeff?” I prompted.
She shrugged. “He’s what he is. I don’t think he’d hurt Mama, but he won’t be crying at the funeral.”
“Will you?”
I’d caught her out. Her lips thinned, and she suddenly did resemble Vera, but not in a good way. “Not much, no,” she admitted, and swept up the plate of cheese and crackers. “She was easier before Daddy died, but that’s not saying much. You can go now.”
I scooped up Boris and left. Whatever else Honey might be hiding, she hadn’t lied that Boris could tell, or me, either.
***^***
I drove up to Jeff’s cabin on schedule, and tired out. I was tempted to reschedule my appointment with Davis, and skip the phone calls, but duty called.
I didn’t have much hope of hospitality ahead. From what I’d heard, Jeff was the most cantankerous Collier yet. His cabin didn’t look promising, either. It was small, rough, hunkered under the trees high in the north narrow end of the hollow. Boris mewed to be picked up, and I smiled despite myself. In human surroundings, he’s a monster. In the woods, he’s a wimp.
Jeff Collier appeared out of nowhere. A split second later, I realized it was from out of the rhododendrons that I now saw masked a shed. I let my hand fall off my sidearm. “Mr. Collier.”
“Jeff,” he corrected, looking from me to Boris. He smiled. He looked much more like his father than any of the others did, less bony, darker-haired, taller. Hazel-eyed, not blue-eyed. More Collier, less Vera. His handshake was bruising. “Sorry. Sheriff. C’mon in.”
I carried Boris through a door painted dark brown with black hardware. There was a tiny mudroom hung with plaid jackets, a bench under which many boots lived. Then we were in the cabin itself.
When Laura said he was well-read, she wasn’t kidding. The whole cabin was a library. It was all smooth polished wood, floors to walls to ceiling, and all of it shelved to house books. A big foldout couch stood in the middle of the room under a ceiling fan that turned gently, and I heard the soft hum of a heat pump, saw a dehumidifier. This man treasured his books like Honey treasured her house.
The sofa-bed was neatly made. The linens were typical bachelor stuff, mismatched blues and browns. There was a gorgeous round table with a battery-operated camp lantern sitting on it. There was a single armchair, hiding under a bedspread, and he insisted I take it. I squirmed a moment, and gave up my pride. “Could I use the bathroom, please?”
He looked surprised, almost surly, then nodded tightly. “Sure. C’mon.”
He led me to the bathroom, which was in the basement. When I got back upstairs, Boris was on the chair. Jeff was sitting on the bed. I found that interesting. Most people try to pet Boris. Jeff either knew better or hated cats.
“You want to know about my mother dying?”
I nodded, as Boris crawled onto my lap. “And your siblings. Ken and a couple others have gone to Harry Rucker saying one of you must’ve killed her.”
He really was out of the loop. He startled. “Kill Mama? I thought she died of age.”
“No,” I said, and watched with interest as his face closed down. To distract him, I asked, “Did you make the table?”
“Yeah. Recovered wood. Got it in Richmond.” He shook himself, his head. “Mama got
killed
. I’ll be.”
I hid a sigh. “Why’d you think I was here?”
Jeff shrugged. He looked at his hands, which bore many small scars. Working hands, Aunt Marge would say. “I dunno. I guess I thought it was about some fight they were having. I stay out of things like that.” He shrugged again. “I shoulda left but…” He looked up briefly. “It’s home, y’know?”
I did know. When I asked him if one of his siblings could kill their mother, he laughed without emotion. “You ever meet Mama?”