The Connecticut Corpse Caper

5 Done . . . Like Dinner

5

Done . . . Like Dinner“The man hasn’t moved since we sat down in here.” Salmon-pink lips pursed, Prunella stared over her sherry at Thomas Saturne. “I thought he was being aloof or meditative. You’re sure he’s dead? How can you tell?”

The lawyer was slumped along an armrest on the drawing room sofa, flaccid lips slightly parted, unseeing eyes very open. Drool trickled down a pointy chin.

Once again Poe came to mind and the rumbling words “besprinkled with the scarlet horror” pushed through a developing headache. The red marks had grown darker, more intense and defined since dinner. It seemed like an unskilled or inebriated hand had used a permanent red marker to convert him into a connect-the-dot picture. Or maybe it was that he’d grown paler and the marks merely seemed more pronounced. Either way, he appeared pained, and more bloated than ever with that blubber around his middle section. He resembled Tinky Winky, Adwin’s favorite Teletubby (there was something about the frolicsome “tubbies” that had never ceased to entertain my little vanilla-oat scone).

“Very dead, I’d say,” Percival murmured, warily pressing the man’s wrist and neck.

“Dang.” Sitting before a huge hissing and spitting fire, Linda continued sucking on a bottle of Harpoon Belgian Pale Ale.

“Dang,” Cousin Reynalda agreed, pouring a rye and ginger and moving alongside a side table that sported two large egg-white ceramic vases with two-dozen dahlias each -- black ones. (Aunt Mat had to be beyond the walls.) Drink in hand, she stood there watching with narrowed eyes; a fledgling forensic scientist ready and willing to take on the required responsibilities of the job, or an actress ready to throw herself into the role of a lifetime.

Rain thrummed the roof as if it were a stringed instrument. Monotonous and endless, the performance was as flat as a freshly cleaned nopal leaf. We’d been in the room about an hour, listening to distant thunder, getting drunker than we’d been by end of dinner, nibbling on homemade pralines shaped like zaftig buttocks or breasts, depending on your perspective. Made of bittersweet chocolate and containing a crunchy center of nougat and nuts, it was hard not to want to devour them by the handful. Even Thomas had sucked on a sweet when we’d first sat, making an odd mmm-yumm-numm sound so very out of character. Then he’d withdrawn, and grown quiet and solemn.

Rey, Percival and I had chatted amiably over nothing in particular while Adwin had listened with a sunny smile and perpetually topped glass of Pinot Noir. May-Lee had made notes in a leather-bound journal and the rest had retreated into ebooks and magazines. The next thing we knew, there was a shocked gasp, like someone who knew he was about to collide with a locomotive and he wasn’t going to be the one choo-chooing into the vibrant horizon. Then . . . he was done like dinner.

“We’d better call a doctor.” Prunella’s lips disappeared altogether as she continued to stare at the dead lawyer.

“It’s kind of late for that,” Adwin declared, leaning into the chaise longue as he sat on the floor. He looked paler than usual, and that was pretty damn pale.

Fred the Cat, as opposed to Fred the Ghost, meandered in. He looked around, focused on Thomas and evidently decided the deceased lawyer would make the best resting place. Up he leaped, curled and purred.

“I’ll ring the police,” Jensen volunteered, looking around the room and frowning. “By jove, where’s the blasted phone?”

I swallowed a chuckle. Apparently Cousin Rey wasn’t the only one for melodrama and mediocre acting. “I saw one in the blasted kitchen.”

“I’ll go!” Percival spun from sight like a dust devil swirling across ploughland.

“Man, can you believe this?” Rey laughed, spilling her drink on her slip-dress and not caring.

Adwin glanced over the top of his glasses, an eyebrow arched impossibly high.

“Isn’t it great? I mean, this is like so-o Aunt Matty!”

Linda eyed her friend as if she wasn’t sure whether she was screaming drunk or having a nervous breakdown. “Maybe we should have coffee.”

My cousin eyed her with similar concern. Are you demented, her inner voice clearly demanded.

“What do you suppose killed him?” Prunella picked at a pink lace handkerchief she’d tucked into the sleeve of a cashmere sweater she’d been carrying with her like Charlie Brown’s Linus did his security blanket.

Adwin suggested a heart attack; Jensen an aneurism. Linda said it may have been an allergic reaction to something, which Rey pooh-poohed -- with a snort.

“What do you think it was?” Linda asked her best friend flatly.

Posing like Caesar about to launch into a longwinded speech, she announced dramatically, “I think the man was poisoned. Most likely by a slow-acting, undetectable substance.”

Which resulted in another snort -- from me. Adwin bit his lip and Linda spewed forth the beer she was about to swallow.

Prunella’s wren-brown eyes widened and she looked from Rey to the deceased lawyer in wonderment.

“Let’s wait for the authorities to determine the cause,” May-Lee suggested matter-of-factly, her handsome Montblanc pen poised. A calm and gauging woman, her former business analyst persona shone through.

“The police will be here as soon as they can,” Percival announced as he tramped back in, looking like a sergeant about to descend on a platoon. “There’s a nasty multi-vehicle accident two miles from here, thanks to the rain, and everyone and their mothers have been called to the scene. Porter’s preparing a huge urn of coffee. Hubert fainted. Beatrice is helping him revive. I think we’re on our own for the interim.”

Weren’t we before? I took a deep breath and grabbed a praline, was about to bite into it when I recalled my cousin’s suggestion about poison. I eyed the sweet treat for several seconds before placing it on a napkin on the mantelpiece. What if she was right about the toxic substance? The now full-blown headache gave way to queasiness and I asked Adwin for a glass of water. Which he ended up getting for everyone in the room, save for poor, very dead Thomas Saturne.

Then another telepathic thing happened: we all toasted him at the same second. You’d have thought you were looking at a family reunion portrait, with Uncle Thomas presenting a man-that-punch-I-spiked-was-a-hit grin.