Alex Harris 00 - Poisoned

extract.”
    “I put extra almonds in them, just the way Bradley liked!” Roberta slapped her tiny hands down on the arms of the chair causing me to jump. “Why did I make those cookies? If only....”
    “Mother, please. Don’t do this to yourself. You made them because Bradley loved them,” Kenneth said as tears sprang to his own eyes. “Detective Van der Burg, where on earth would someone get cyanide?”
    John gave a disgusted shrug. “I’m sorry to say, anywhere, if you know what you’re doing. Or if you have friends in the wrong places.” I thought about the Tylenol murders again and the Jonestown massacre and their group suicide. “There’s a bit more,” John continued.
    “More? No, please. I don’t think I can take any more,” Lillian said, as she walked to her husband’s side and took hold of his other hand. Her gray slacks hung on her body; the cream cardigan failed to conceal her sagging shoulders. Splotches covered her face from all her crying and her light brown hair, though nicely styled, hung limply to her shoulders. I guessed that Lillian, a woman who most probably always dressed immaculately, hadn’t slept or eaten for the past two days.
    Kenneth looked from his mother to his wife. “What else is there?”
    “We also found poison in the Cherry Heering liquor,” John said.
    “Dear God! Someone certainly wanted me dead,” cried Roberta.
    “Well, there’s something puzzling about the poison in the Cherry Heering. It’s something called a jequirity bean. Someone shoved the mashed pulp of the bean into the bottle. It looked very amateurish. Chances are you would see the stuff floating in the bottle before you drank it.”
    “Jequirity bean, what the hell is that?” Kenneth asked wiping his eyes with a lace handkerchief his wife handed him.
    John looked across the room at Jim. “Detective, could you explain for us?”
    Detective Maroni looked a little unsure of himself. He approached the small gathering and took out his notes. “From what the lab tells me, it comes off a vine that grows in tropical areas like Florida and the Caribbean. It is used for ground cover. The beans, which are bright red with a bit of black, are used in crafts and jewelry items. It’s an ideal poison in that the symptoms aren’t apparent for a while, so it’s a bit difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of the vomiting and diarrhea. And eventual death, if you eat enough.”
    He took a deep breath and continued in his soft-spoken, courteous manner. “A few days after ingestion, you develop these symptoms and gastroenteritis, and probably just think of the flu. From the looks of it, about twenty or so beans got mixed up in the liquor. The lab guys aren’t sure what would constitute a lethal dose, but probably twenty beans would do it.”
    “Where would someone get these beans, Detective?” asked a horrified Lillian.
    “I’m sorry to say they’re rather common. As Detective Maroni said, they’re used in jewelry because of their bright colors. If you couldn’t find any yourself, well, there are people out there willing to sell anything and show you how to use it for a price. The same as the cyanide. There are even books that give step-by-step instructions for poisoning your victim.”
    I gave a shudder at such thoughts. It must be like drugs. If you want it, you can find it.
    Lillian looked back to John. “What does this mean, Detective? The killer used two poisons. I don’t understand.”
    “I’m afraid neither do the police. Right now, we don’t know if we’re looking at one killer with two poisons or two killers or…well, I just don’t know what we’re looking at.” John shook his head in total bewilderment. “Someone wiped the Cherry Heering bottle clean of any fingerprints.”
    “There’s something I don’t understand. If there was poison in the cookies, why didn’t someone else get sick or die?” I asked.
    “A good question. About seven cookies remained. Three had small amounts of cyanide, though enough to kill someone. It only takes one.”
    “Why wasn’t there cyanide in all of them?” asked Roberta.
    “We don’t know. Maybe the killer didn’t have time to taint all the cookies. We’re assuming whoever did this came here at some point during the evening with the rest of you or came in after everyone left and took a chance when no one was looking.”
    “So you’re saying only a random selection of macaroons was tainted and, well, at the risk of sounding