Alex Harris 00 - Poisoned

CHAPTER ONE

    “She’s trying to kill me!”
    I shushed my sister, reached over and took the mug containing the suspect liquid from her hand. “No she’s not. It’s just tea,” I said, through clenched teeth.
    Sam leaned closer and peered into the cup. “What are those bits floating around?”
    I grimaced. “I don’t think we need to know.” I took the mug to the small sink and dumped the contents down the drain.
    “I don’t know what gets into Millie sometimes,” Sam said, referring to our assistant at our temp agency, Always Prepared. “She eats and drinks some weird stuff. Said this tea would cure my cold. Yeah, by killing me.”
    I nudged Sam back into my office where we sat waiting for Millie to return with the weekly printout of our database. I grabbed a large jar off my desk and poured a handful of Halloween M&Ms into my hand. My name is Alex Harris and I’m an M&M-aholic. I love this time of year. I can buy M&Ms with no blue ones. I really hate the blue ones.
    I popped six of the little candies into my mouth and eyed Millie suspiciously as she came into the room and took a seat next to Sam. A pumpkin pin stuck on the lapel of her blazer hinted to the impending holiday along with a large pumpkin and some Indian corn on the small front porch of our office. When I arrived this morning I noticed the small faux fireplace in the reception area had mysteriously acquired some artfully placed cobwebs and spiders that hadn’t been there when I left on Friday night. But despite Millie’s penchant for frivolity, she possessed a wealth of administrative talents.
    “Where’s your tea? Do you want another cup?” Millie looked at Sam’s empty hands.
    “No!” Sam blurted.
    I looked at my sister and rolled my eyes. Sam’s tactful gene had never kicked in. “Well, I need another one.” I got up and walked by my sister, gently whacking her upside the head. “I’ll get us both one.”
    “Let me get this straight,” Sam began when I returned, getting back to a conversation we started earlier. “The woman you met with looked just like Mrs. Scott?”
    I took a sip of my tea. “The spitting image.”
    Sam narrowed her eyes at me. “Before she died or after?”
    “Before! Geesh! What’s wrong with you?” I shook my head wondering, not for the first time, if Sam and I were really related. “I know Mrs. Scott didn’t have any relatives, so Mrs. Sulpizio couldn’t be related, but I tell you, my heart almost stopped.”
    I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, silently berating myself for my lapse of professionalism on Friday. My appointment with the head administrator of a new suite of medical offices had been momentarily sidetracked the moment I laid eyes on the woman, who unfortunately resembled Elvira Scott, a woman who had been killed ten months before—and whose body I had found.
    “Maybe I’m just more worried about that other agency than I thought,” I said, thinking about a new temp agency that managed to snatch away several of our clients. “She couldn’t have looked that much like Mrs. Scott.”
    “It hasn’t even been a year, Alex,” Millie reminded me. “It takes time to get over something like that. You may never truly get over it.
    I sighed. “ It is a gaping wound, whenever one touches it and removes the bandages and plasters of daily life .”
    Sam and Millie exchanged glances.
    “Winnie, again. Right?” Sam asked, referring to my quirky habit of quoting Winston Churchill. “You have to hand it to him, the man had something to say about everything.”
    “Tease all you want. We’re New Englanders. We’re supposed to be eccentric.”
    After they left, I swiveled in my chair and looked out the window at the autumn colors brightening my view. I always thought it ironic that these magnificent hues resulted from something dying, though it didn’t look like any form of death I was familiar with. And I was. Up close and personal. I shook my head, trying to shake the images that had not diminished with the passage of time. But something else bothered me. Something I never admitted to my sister, and I told Sam everything. And what I didn’t tell her, Meme, our adorable grandmother, would. But the thing that I couldn’t admit to either one of them was that I had actually enjoyed the murder.
    No, I chided myself. Someone died a horrific death. But still. I liked the sleuthing, the gathering of information and trying to piece it all together. I liked working with the