Alex Harris 00 - Poisoned

but it’s not. Got it at some designer gallery in New York. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing missing is red velvet drapes and the whole thing could be a brothel.”
    Now I laughed. It all fit with what John told me about June getting a second mortgage on the place. She obviously couldn’t afford to change anything.
    “I get the impression June and Mrs. Brissart have some long-standing feud. Over a man, I think.” I took a sip of my tea and watched Trish over the rim.
    “I think I know what you’re talking about, though I don’t really know all the particulars. Living up in Massachusetts with my mother all those years, I missed out on a lot of the family gossip. My mother never liked my father’s side of the family so we didn’t talk about them a lot.”
    “But you heard some of it?” I asked hopefully.
    “Once, over at my grandmother’s this summer. Aunt June came by. She was very upset and crying and my grandmother asked me to go out so they could talk.”
    “So you didn’t hear anything.”
    “No. Not at first. I went outside. But then I came in through the back door and went into the kitchen to get something to drink. They’d been talking for quite some time, and to be totally honest, I wanted to get out of the sun. I stayed in the kitchen and made some lemonade, I think,” Trish continued, “and I heard Aunt June crying over some letter. Someone died, a man named Charles. I remember because Aunt June used to have a little dog she called Charles, and I remember wondering if the dog had been named after this person.”
    “Did you hear any more?” I asked.
    “Yeah. I did. I was intrigued. Okay, nosy,” Trish said, her light skin turning a flattering shade of rose. “So I took my glass and stood in the hallway. They couldn’t see me and never heard me.”
    “What did they say then?”
    “Just that this man died, and his sister wrote to Aunt June to let her know. And in the letter, the sister said that her brother, Charles, always loved June and hoped she had had a good life.”
    I settled back onto the sofa. “Wow!”
    “Is this the man Aunt Roberta and Aunt June argue about?”
    “You’ve heard them?”
    “Oh, once, maybe twice, I heard Aunt June accuse Aunt Roberta of ruining her life.”
    “If he always loved June then I wonder why he never contacted her?” I asked.
    “He knew she got married. I got the impression he didn’t live in Connecticut. Oh!” Trish said, startling me. “And I remember Aunt June cried over a passage in the letter that said, oh….” Trish tried to gather her thoughts. “Oh, something like, ‘I never wanted to ruin your life. I would never think of breaking up your marriage and family.’ Well, this last bit really had Aunt June wailing. What does all this mean, Alex? Do you think it has something to do with why Bradley was killed?”
    I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
    Trish took our cups to the kitchen for a refill. I thought the letter might have been the last straw and it was then June decided to get her final revenge. But this happened several months ago. Why did June wait? I thought about what I would do if I wanted to kill someone. I didn’t have a gun and didn’t have any idea about getting one that wasn’t traceable but I could see me lying in bed at night and plotting. And it would all build up in my mind. Is that what June did—let it fester for months and then couldn’t stand it anymore? I couldn’t see June waving a gun. Poison was definitely the way June would go.
    Trish came back into the room. June’s viability as a suspect rapidly rose in my mind, but I didn’t want to leave any stone unturned and decided to turn the conversation toward Steven.
    “What a lovely garden. Does your father do all the work himself?”
    “Thanks. It is nice, isn’t it?” Trish got up and walked to the glass doors and unlocked one. “Come, I’ll show you Daddy’s pride and joy.”
    I put my cup down and went to join Trish.
    “A young man comes to mow the lawn and clean the pool, but no one but no one touches Daddy’s roses! Even me. When I was a little girl, I fell into one of the bushes and broke it. I can tell you I never did that again.” We walked around a path past the pool and came to the roses. “Everyone has their hobbies and this is my father’s.”
    I wasn’t that fond of roses, and most of the time I just thought of them as something that amounted to a bunch of thorny twigs. But these were lovely.
    “Does your