Alex Harris 00 - Poisoned

very belligerent and told the whole story.”
    “Which is?” I asked none too happily at having to prod the goods out of him.
    “Once the lab identified what was in the Cherry Heering, we knew it came from the tropics. Florida, the Caribbean.”
    “Of course! And my sister just came back from a trip to…oh, I’m not sure.”
    “Florida. She had a nice tan so we asked where she’d been. And she told us how she’d just spent some time in Florida with friends. Of course, a lot of people take vacations down there this time of year so that really didn’t mean much. But Detective Maroni,” John gestured over his shoulder to the young man, “had a hunch.”
    “You found the beans?” asked Mrs. Brissart incredulously.
    “No. But we found some residue inside her blender.” John tried very hard not to look at me, and I tried very hard not to say I told you so . “Some of the bean mash got caught between the rubber piece and the base. Detective Maroni went to see your sister late yesterday afternoon. After asking some questions, she broke down. She actually gave us the blender.”
    I wondered if my confrontation with May had caused the older woman to be more vulnerable to the police.
    Mrs. Brissart sat quietly for a few moments before she asked another question. “Did she put the beans in the liqueur on Monday evening?”
    “No. She said she came over on Saturday,” John answered. “You went to the grocery store, Mrs. Platz had gone to her sister’s, and May saw Mr. Kaminski leave. As soon as he left, she just came in and poured the stuff into the bottle.”
    “That’s right! She called me in the morning for some thing or another and I said I couldn’t talk because I had to go and buy the ingredients for the cookies. She knew Virginia was gone and Mr. Kaminski wanted to go to the garden shop to buy more mums for the front yard.”
    “So what happens to her now?” Chantal asked.
    “She’s in jail. June stayed with her for as long as allowed.”
    “Was June involved in any of this?” I asked.
    “No. May says no, and of course June agrees.”
    “June called me last night after she returned home. She wasn’t too friendly toward me, Detective Van der Burg. Acted as if I brought it all on myself.”
    “Well, Mrs. Brissart, they’re both blaming you.”
    “Blaming me. For what?”
    “For not selling. For being uncooperative. For just about anything wrong in their own lives at the moment.”
    “But my grandson is dead.” Mrs. Brissart paused for a moment to regain her composure. “Are they blaming me for that as well?”
    Now it was my turn to not look at John. I knew how he felt about Mrs. Brissart as a suspect, though I suspected he had cooled to the idea. With this new development, I felt sure he would drop it all together.
    “No, they don’t blame you for his death.” John shook his head. “I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but I really don’t believe your sister’s intention was to kill you. I think she truly thought it would just scare you. Maybe make you a bit ill.”
    “But how would making me ill make me change my mind about selling the land? That doesn’t make sense, Detective.”
    “She didn’t do her homework. She believed it would make Mrs. Brissart ill instantly and of course the illness would be connected to the Cherry Heering. And then, Mrs. Brissart you would realize someone tampered with the bottle and by association it would be connected to the land. For both of your sisters, the sale of that land is all they can think of so naturally they concluded it would be all you or anyone else involved could think of.”
    “It’s ironic because that probably would have never crossed my mind. If I saw something floating in the bottle and then became sick, I would just throw it out thinking it was old, which it is, and had gone bad. I would never have associated that with someone wanting to kill me.”
    “That just shows how different you are.”
    “I’ve always known that, Detective. So what happens now?”
    “Well, in all honesty, nothing. We’ll be releasing her today.”
    “Releasing her. Why?” I snapped.
    “Because no real crime was committed. Attempted murder is a very gray area.”
    “I say keep her there. Find something to hold her on. Maybe a parking ticket never paid,” Mrs. Brissart spat.
    “I agree,” I said. “If Mrs. Brissart drank any of that stuff, she might be dead right now as well.”
    John gave me a look, though I wasn’t sure