Why You Should Never Eat Peanut Blossoms that Require an Explanation
Unwanted relatives coming for the holidays? Some people considering poisoning them.
With the holiday season fast upon us, here’s one to get us in the mood for Christmas. Another detective story that takes place in Rhode Island, just different detectives this time.
And of course if you haven’t already, be sure to:
If you know anyone who likes stories of horror, scifi, fantasy and mystery be sure to:
I’ll admit it. Even knowing the cookies were poisoned, I couldn’t take my eyes off them. A china plate of little peanut cookies, each with a beautiful chocolate kiss in the center. You can always get your stomach pumped later a little part of my brain kept whispering. My tummy growled. That little voice sounded more and more reasonable with each passing second.
“Allison,” said my partner…superior really, crouching over the dead Santa on the floor. Detective Sergeant Dominique DeForest, a mass of both wild hair and wild ideas, I was still acclimatizing to working with her. She liked goth music and chaos; I preferred to-do lists that included making other lists and whatever was on the pop channel. She was brilliant and I was learning to be brilliant, so it worked somehow. But for the moment she stared at me the way one might a toddler who’d decided to streak from the bath into a room full of house guests. “If I could distract you from your culinary fantasies for just a moment to regard the actual body on the floor?”
I shook my head to clear it and ignored my stomach. Looked down. Dead dude with a real white beard and hair, portly gut and a pretty good quality furred red and white suit. Looked like the real thing to me. The kids were going to be disappointed.
“You know,” Dominique said, not letting go of my moment of weakness, “it was your turn to bring muffins. If you’d remembered, you wouldn’t be considering murder weapons for breakfast.”
“I know,” I said with a sigh. “It just seems a shame to let these cookies…”
“…murder weapons…”
“…beautiful cookies go to waste.” Nonetheless, I gave ‘Santa’ a better look. He was twisted on the floor, a pink froth around his mouth. His skin had a kind of cherry hue to it that didn’t look right at all. A glass of milk had fallen and smashed on the hardwood floor. He’d died fast but had suffered greatly.
Dominique sniffed at the man’s mouth then gave me a look. Rare as poisoning deaths were for Major Crimes investigators, this was our second one. We knew what cyanide death looked…and smelled like. Bitter almonds. That ruled out the milk as the likely source…it would have burned and tasted horrid. Easier to slip the cyanide into a capsule and hide it in a cookie.
I rubbed my hands, the fingers cold in their latex gloves. The front door to the house stood open…too many cops and crime scene techs coming and going. Outside, Mother Nature continued to dump thick flakes of snow onto this Rhode Island suburb. The neighborhood blinked with a variety of colored and white lights…I preferred the classic white myself. Without needing to ask, I knew Dominque would prefer the multicolor ones.
The house itself was nice. Two-story, old-school without the open concept stuff that had come into vogue. Decorated with Christmas lights, cards on the fireplace mantle, real tree giving off that nice pine scent. Family were sequestered upstairs, victim support officers tending to them. Mother, Father, three kids of varying ages from kindergarten to teen.
“So, who’s Santa?” I asked, looking at the side table with the cookies. There was a folded note by the plate.
“You don’t think he came in down the chimney?” Dominque quipped. “Grandpa apparently,” Dominque stood. I’d never asked her age, but guessed she was forty, just the kind of good-shape forty that made it hard to pin down. Her athletic frame was showing a few curves, and she left a fair number of gray tangles in her hair undyed. “Flew in from Los Angeles to spend time with the family.”
“Huh. Apparently, that didn’t go well.” Nobody broke into a random house and laid down a plate of poison cookies. The family went right to the top of the suspect list. Well, maybe not the kindergartner. I picked up the folded computer-typed note and read it aloud for Dominique.
Dear Santa:
We have all been very good this year. We hope you enjoy the cookies and milk! We mixed a bit of amaretto into the batch so they may have a bit of kick to keep you warm.
Love
The Pusekats
I pronounced it “Pussycats” and Dominque only shook her head, leaving me to wonder if I’d gotten it wrong or she just thought it was a dumb last name.
“So,” Dominique explained, “presumably whoever typed that note blamed the bitter taste on putting alcohol in the cookies. Perhaps Santa was a bit of a lush.”
I shook my head. “Remind me never to eat cookies that require an explanation.” Still there was part of my brain telling me that not all the peanut blossoms could possibly be poisoned. How did a dead man on the floor not turn off my appetite?
“We’ll need confirmation from the lab,” Dominique said, “but I don’t think how is the mystery here. Time to interview the family.”
Cyanide didn’t exactly sit on store shelves. Figuring out who had access to it would be key. Perhaps we’d be done in time for Christmas lunch.
We interviewed the parents first. They were a power couple, mid-forties, the wife blonde, husband sporting salt-and-pepper hair like he was out of some commercial. My impression was he aged better than she and immediately wondered about affairs. Nonetheless, they sat on the edge of a bed when we interviewed them, close together, holding hands. No obvious signs of major stress in the relationship.
“Why don’t you walk us through…how you realized something was wrong?” Dominique suggested.
The couple looked at each other. Mrs. Pusekat…they pronounced it PUZE-kat, but I kept thinking pussycat and had to pinch myself so as not to smile…looked at her husband for a moment. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out other than sobs. The decedent had been her father.
Mr. Pusekat spoke instead. “My father-in-law came to visit for the holidays. We hadn’t always been close but were working our way through some things. Our youngest son, Connor, he still believes in Santa, and he’s pretty good about staying up late so we figured we could have a bit of fun. If Bill…my father-in-law, dressed up, came in around midnight, put some presents around the tree…”
“Your son Connor can stay up until midnight?” Dominque interrupted.
“He managed it the last two years,” Mr. Pusekat confirmed. “We ended up falling asleep,” he said indicating himself and his wife. “I think Bill might have gone out for a few drinks,” he looked apologetically at his wife, sobbing on his shoulder, “and got back a bit later than we expected. Anyway, it was around 2am when we heard something in the living room. That’s when we found him.”
“Was he still alive when you found him?” I asked.
“Sort of? Barely. He was convulsing. I don’t think he knew we were there. It looked like he was having trouble breathing, maybe?” His eyebrows scrunched up, “If the police are involved, does that mean…”
“We’re just being diligent until we fully understand what happened,” I explained. “We will have to ask a few delicate questions though. At this point they’re just routine, okay?” In our partnership, I was the empathic one with suspects. I wasn’t lying though; until the death was officially ruled a homicide, we were just making inquiries. For now, we had our suspicions about cyanide, but the lab would need to confirm or at least the coroner rule the death a homicide. Always the chance we were wrong. “Did Mr…” I looked at my notes, “…Smith. Could you tell me if Mr. Smith…were there any difficulties in his personal or professional life?”
Mrs. Pusekat, pussycat my brain kept telling me, looked up from her husband’s shoulder. “We’d been estranged for many years. But we’d been patching things up. He could be a difficult man sometimes…our relationship wasn’t good. But he was trying. We were even thinking of moving back to LA to be closer to him in his retirement years.” She looked to her husband for confirmation. He nodded, supportive.
“That’s quite a move from Rhode Island to California,” Dominique observed. “Would that be difficult for your professionally?”
“I’d have to restart my practice…,” Mrs. Pussycat…Pusekat, gah…replied. “I’m a general practitioner.”
“I’m an industrial engineer,” her husband added. “I’ve had a few interviews out there and was expecting an offer soon. Once that came through, we’d probably put the house up for sale.” I exchanged a glance with Dominique. Physician and industrial engineer…either of them could potentially have accessed cyanide.
‘What did your kids think about that?” asked Dominque, pushing harder as she tended to do. “Upending their lives here for a grandfather I’m guessing they hardly knew? That’s the whole point of him playing Santa, right? The younger child would see him in the suit, but not know his face well enough to recognize him under the disguise?”
The couple looked awkwardly at one another. “We were doing it for them,” Mrs. Pusekat said, unconvincingly.
Mr. Pusekat added, “Our oldest kids weren’t really thrilled, it’s true. Our daughter Delilah is seventeen, and our son Matt is fifteen…Connor came along a bit later. They both have friends…Delilah has a boyfriend. We were working it out though. I’m not sure what this has to do with Bill…my father-in-law’s death?”
“We’re just trying to get a picture of the family, that’s all. Was he staying here with you?” I asked.
Mr. Puskat shook his head. “No, he had a hotel in Newport. Not too far of a drive.”
“And the cookies,” Dominque asked, “did you make them, Mrs. Pusekat?” It was a sexist assumption to make and Dominque knew it would rankle me.
Mrs. Pusekat nodded though, which rankled me even more. “The kids pitched in. Peanut Blossoms are easy to make.” She wiped a tear off her cheek.
“One last thing,” Dominque asked, “you implied that Mr. Smith was supposed to put on his Santa show for your son Connor around midnight, assuming your son could stay up that late. Yet, you said you heard a commotion around 2am, Mr. Pusekat. Can you explain that 2-hour delay?”
Mr. Pusekat’s cheeks got a bit red. “Bill was late. We were all in bed by the time he came in, Connor included.” His lips pursed as he thought. “I’d assumed he’d found a bar open on Christmas Eve.”
The lab would check his blood for alcohol as a routine matter, so we’d see soon enough if that were true.
Dominque stood. “Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Pusekat. I think that’s all the questions we have for you. We’d just like to check in on your older son and daughter as well, if that’s okay?”
The parents, probably too in shock to realize they were consenting to us interrogating their kids without them being present, nodded.
“Again,” I added, “we’re sorry for your loss.”
With that we left them in the bedroom.
The coroner had Mr. Smith’s body on a stretcher by the time we peeked back downstairs. The techs would be here for a while longer, collecting a little bit of everything. The coroner on the scene looked up at us as we stood at the banister and nodded. Initial determination was homicide. That would need to be checked with lab work, but the family would be asked to leave the home…possibly for weeks while evidence was collected. It would be returned to them a mess with it being their responsibility to clean. At least there was no blood or bits of tissue. Probably, that would be the least of their problems.
We’d let the parents know in just a bit. We weren’t going to be able to allow them to pack. Dominique made sure a victim services officer returned to babysit the parents. It would be under the guise of humanitarian assistance but, in truth, we wanted an officer with them at all times.
We found the older brother next, sitting on the edge of his bed, shaking.
“Matt, right?” Dominque asked, standing in his doorway. “Your parents said we could ask you some questions. Is that alright?”
He nodded, not looking at her. His skin looked grey, like he’s been drained. He was a thin kid, the kind of teen who looked a bit like a baby bird, all bones and skin.
“I’m Detective Sergeant Dominique DeForest and this is my partner Detective Allison Jenks. We won’t take up a lot of time.” She found a seat, some strange bright green faux-leather thing and plopped down into it. I closed the door behind me and leaned against it. “We’re sorry about what happened with your grandfather.”
He shook his head, still not looking at either of us really. “We didn’t really know him. I mean, I didn’t.”
“He just came back into your mother’s life after quite a bit of time out of it, we understand. Is that right?”
He nodded his head.
“Did you like him very much?” I asked, “Now that you’d met him?”
He shrugged, “He was alright, I guess.”
“He must have meant something to you,” I pressed. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”
Once again, he shrugged and drew his arms around himself as if he were cold, though he could have used a blanket from his bed. He was still in pajamas, good thick wool ones that looked cozy enough. Of course, cold air was streaming into the house downstairs, though it was warm enough up here in the bedrooms.
“What about the rest of your family?” Dominque asked. “Did they get on with him?”
“I guess,” he replied giving the now-trademark shrug.
Dominique met my eyes for a moment. “We heard you were going to move to LA. Were you excited about that?”
“Not really.”
“But your parents were?”
“My mom mostly. My dad was just going along with it, I think. Most of us didn’t want to go. I mean me and Delilah, we’ve got friends here and stuff. There’s nothing for us in LA. And besides, it’s all smoggy.”
I wondered if that were still true. Reputations die hard if not. I’d never been, myself. “It must be pretty upsetting to have your grandfather die in your house.”
He nodded, his neck motion almost like a spasm.
“Do you know if anyone wanted to harm him?” He met my gaze then, his eyes zeroing in on my own. His mouth hung open, his breath like a panting dog.
“Can I talk to my parents?” He asked. “I don’t feel good. I don’t want to answer any more questions.”
I looked at Dominque and she nodded. I opened his bedroom door and stepped aside. “Sure, Matt, go ahead.”
He looked at us, one to the other. Dominque still sat in his chair and I hadn’t left my perch by his door. After a moment, he stood and hurried past me like a cat rushing past a half-awake bulldog. We heard his footsteps move down the hall. A bedroom door opened and closed.
“Think he did it?” I asked Dominique.
Dominque pursed her lips. “I think there are wheels turning in his head and their driving his thoughts down a road he doesn’t want to travel.”
“We’ve got one more to talk to,” I suggested.
“Let’s be off then!” she agreed.
Just across the hall was the sister’s dwelling. Dominique knocked on the door, then entered without waiting for a reply. I followed, looking around taking in the scene. The bedroom was…well…a typical bedroom, extraordinary in its ordinariness. Delilah kept her room clean and neat, perhaps defying stereotypes of teens and it wasn’t festooned with various posters, baubles, or other personal touches I might have expected. It seemed that, for her age, Delilah was a serious person with serious habits.
Unlike her brother, she seemed reasonably collected, fiddling with her phone as we entered. Soon we’d likely have to seize that, but the time hadn’t quite come yet. She was thin, dark haired and dark eyed. Looked nothing like her father which immediately set my mind to wondering about that, not that it had any clear relevance. She looked at us with big, doe eyes that took up much of her face. She might have been an anime character. “It wasn’t just a heart attack, was it?” she asked.
“We’re just covering all possibilities at the moment,” Dominque said, then introduced herself, then me in turn. “We’re sorry for your loss.” Dominque found a chair to sit in, her specialty. I leaned against the doorframe once again. My back was going to ache by the time this morning was done.
“I didn’t really know him,” she said. “I guess my parents told you that already. I mean, I’m sorry he’s dead of course, but we weren’t close.”
“Did you like him alright?” I asked.
“He was okay, I guess. A little intense maybe? I had nothing against him, but it wasn’t like we bonded at first sight either.” She wrinkled her brow. “My mom and he, they hadn’t spoke for years, all my life really, I guess you know that. It’s like they were kind of patching that up but…I dunno, it was kind of weird.” She wrinkled her nose like she’d smelled something.
“You didn’t approve?” I probed.
She gave me a sidelong glance. “It didn’t really matter whether I approved. I think maybe fixing things with him was really important to her.”
“So important,” Dominque pointed out, “that she was moving the whole family out to LA to be with him.”
Delilah nodded. “Yeah, that was stupid.” An understandable attitude for a teen with a life in Rhode Island.
“That must have been hard,” Dominque said. “You’re halfway through your…what…senior year in high school? We heard you have a boyfriend?”
She nodded, “Yeah it sucked. I hoped maybe she’d let me finish out my year here. Stay with a friend if they had to move.”
“Did you ever go to either of your parents’ workplaces? Like, bring your daughter to work day or something?” I asked. It was an abrupt change in questioning, a skill I’d learned from Dominque herself.
She paused, looking at me like I’d just farted or something. “I gueeeess? Why?”
“Just curious. I noticed you keep your room pretty tidy. We don’t come across that with a lot of kids and when I see it, usually the kids are ambitious. Thinking of following in either of your parents’ footsteps?”
“What does that have to do with my grandfather?”
“Just making conversation.”
“Cops don’t just make conversation,” she observed. Zing! She was smart, I’d have to give her that. I nodded and closed my yap, a bit humbled to be shut down by a seventeen-year-old.
Dominque gave me a wry look. “Let’s get back on track, shall we? Things must have been tough between your mother and grandfather for them not to have spoken for so long. Did she ever tell you why?”
It took a moment for her to take her eyes off me. Then she looked at Dominque. “Not exactly. She just kinda said, I dunno…they didn’t get along, he was kind of a dick, I guess? I think she seemed pretty sad about it. I think reconnecting was important for her. But I’m not sure how it was going?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like I said…I had nothing against him, but he wasn’t the kind of guy you just loved right away either. I sometimes thought maybe he was still letting her down somehow. Her mood kind of went up and down.”
“I see,” Dominque said.
“The cookies you left out for Santa,” I said, “did you make a batch for yourselves?”
“Mmm hmm,” she replied, not looking weird at my mention of the cookies at all. “There’s some in the kitchen if you want some.”
I shook my head, “I’m trying to cut down.”
Dominque asked, “Did you help your mom make them?”
“We all helped,” she answered.
“Okay, thank you,” Dominque said, “you’ve been most helpful. We’ll be back in touch soon.”
We left, back out into the hall. We leaned against the banister, side by side.
“So?” I asked.
“Crime scene’s gonna be here for a while. We’ll let the victim services people let the family know they’re going to need to move to a hotel or make other arrangements.” Dominque tended to pass that sort of stuff off. Couldn’t blame her. “Let’s pass the scene off to Arthur and Jimmy.” These were our two colleagues on the Major Crimes unit with whom we tended to share cases.
We climbed down the stairs. On the first floor it was cold, the front door wide open. “What are we going to do now?” I asked. Outside the first embers of light were dawning on the horizon.
She pointed outside, toward that dawn. “It’s Christmas morning. Let’s go get breakfast.”
Finding breakfast on Christmas morning was not as difficult as I’d imagined. We found the kind of greasy place Dominque liked. She ordered herself a plate of dead animals and their young, along with a cola. She’d always been a weird caffeine fiend who didn’t like coffee. I got a fruit and yogurt plate with almond milk. Dominque looked on my choices with scorn and I sighed even as I felt my face blush. The waitress treated us about as well as you’d expect someone to at 7am on Christmas morning who wasn’t getting presents under a tree.
“So?” she said, eating hungrily. Dominque was by no means rail thin, but I admired she could maintain an attractive, curvy, yet athletic figure while eating like a wolverine.
“Let me guess,” I said, “you know what happened.”
She nodded. “The question, padawan, is whether you know what happened?”
“How long do you think the lab will take to confirm cyanide?”
She made a dismissive noise. “He ruled it a homicide already. Once the paperwork is inked, we can tear the house apart. But, come on, you’re stalling.”
She was right. I wished she’d just tell me, revel in her genius and all that. But she always had to torture my way through it. I supposed I was learning, but I spent a lot of moments feeling dumb. “I think we can rule out the toddler.”
She gave me a look.
“And Matt, the middle kid,” I added. “He’s scared though. He knows who did it.”
She looked up from her plate, interested but stayed silent.
I went on. “Mom and Dad both have access to cyanide, though Dad more than mom. Delilah too if she visited one of them at work. Would just take a tiny amount to kill, and I doubt any workplace tracks amounts that closely. Mom’s got potential motive…she had history with Grampa, was hoping to patch things up, but seems maybe he was disappointing her. She was moving her family out to LA, but maybe the reality of what she’d find there wasn’t living up to her fantasy.”
“Go on,” Dominique invited.
“Dad,” I found their family roles easier to use than trying not to say Pussycat every time I mentioned them, “doesn’t really have motive unless he’s got some serious beef with Grampa no one bothered to mention to us. Delilah seemed the most focused…honest about her lack of connection with Grampa, no obvious personal motive, but she was being moved away from her life, the boyfriend, etc. I think we can rule out Dad, I’m just not feeling it. So that brings us to Mom and Delilah.”
Dominque made a noncommittal motion with her fork. Fortunately, it was empty of eggs at the time, never a sure bet.
I continued. “Delilah basically confirmed the insinuations we’d gotten from Mom and Dad. Mom and Grampa had a bad relationship. Grampa wasn’t exactly pulling his weight in patching things up. Delilah supplied a bit more information about how sad Mom was…nothing definitive, no smoking gun or anything.” Gears clicked into place. “Damn, the girl is smart!”
Dominique watched me with interest.
I elaborated, “She gave us just enough to implicate her mother without overplaying her hand. She didn’t want to go to LA so she…what, took out Grandpa and framed her mom for it?” Now it was my turn to point my fork at Dominique. “I bet if we dig deep, we’ll find some long-simmering resentments between Delilah and Mom. Still, I’ll bet the parents never would have seen this coming…the girl doesn’t seem delinquent, just…psychopathic on a whole different level. Totally organized, calculating, smart…knows how to play it cool…” I’d hoped for a bit more from Dominque, “Well, am I right?”
She nodded, “I think so, yeah. What tipped you off?”
“She didn’t expect my question about bring your daughter to work day. She was irritated I caught her unprepared. I saw it in her look. And there was something about her room…I mean, I like organization, but that was calculated, impersonal, cold. And she did a decent job saying the right things a teen would, but she couldn’t summon up emotion. Even if she didn’t like Grampa, a guy dying in her house is kind of a big deal.”
“Very good.”
“Why aren’t you more excited?”
“Why do you think?”
I sat back, feeling a bit like the kid who brings a painting home to mom only for mom to shrug it off as no big deal…which it wouldn’t be, but mom shouldn’t be honest about that. After a moment, I sighed, “We can’t prove it.”
“Nope.”
“I’m right about Delilah, right? No prior history of trouble, probably all As in school?”
“Probably.”
“And when we get the labs back, maybe the cyanide can be traced back to Dad, maybe not, but if so, then he goes down for the murder. Maybe he realizes what Delilah did and takes the fall. She lets him.”
“Yup.”
“What about the brother? He knows something.”
Dominque went back to her food. “He’s probably afraid of his sister, but I doubt he has evidence. She’s probably never even said anything admissible, just…he knows she’s dangerous.”
“So…that’s it then? We solved the case, but we can’t prove it and the murderer goes free?”
“Merry Christmas, Allison.”
“We haven’t even really begun our interrogations,” I protested. But I had a feeling Dominque had sized up the situation well. Delilah was too calculating to crack and had likely left no evidence behind. What evidence we had would point to Dad. Even if that were a misfire if Delilah had meant to implicate her mother, both Delilah and her Dad would likely let the chips fall. Matt might suspect his sister but even if he told us that, it would be nothing but suspicion. When we went to Dad’s workplace, they’d say there was no way in hell they’d ever let a visiting teen anywhere near the cyanide. Deny that right up on the stand if they needed to. Probably believed it.
“We might get lucky,” Dominque said, by way of making me feel better, “Maybe we’re overestimating Delilah. Either way, we’ll give it our best shot.”
It was our duty to, at the end, give the evidence we had to the DA. She’d make the decision on whether to prosecute and whom. It wasn’t just the possibility we’d be letting a killer go free. It was the possibility that the evidence we did turn over would send an innocent man to prison. And there wasn’t much we could do. I stared at my food.
“Hey,” Dominique said. “I got you something.” She reached into her coat pocket, pulled out a little box wrapped in paper that had penguins with Santa hats and slid it across the table to me.
I opened it, pulling the tape away from the paper in a way that soon had Dominique’s eyes rolling so much I feared she’d strain them. Inside was a little cedar box filled with two rows of tea bags. I stared at them silently, fearing if I said anything, tears would fill my eyes. Not because this was the best present I’d ever gotten…just because.
“They’re some kind of gourmet, frou-frou set of teas made from nuts and berries that have no business being in tea. Seemed like you.”
It was me. Dominique could read people like no one else. It always impressed me and, at this moment, depressed me. “I left your present in my car,” I said softly. Which was back at the murder scene.
“No worries. You can give it to me later. We still have a long day.”
That we did. I drew in a deep breath and settled my emotions which had careened from victory to defeat in such a short time. We’d put in our shift and do our best to bring it to a good conclusion. Then I’d spend Christmas dinner with my parents. We celebrate the miracle, the generosity, the togetherness of Christmas, but there in the story itself is that hint of unfairness, the birth in the manger. Perhaps this year that was what I was meant to reflect on. Well, if I did at least it would be over some warm tea from a friend who knew me well.