Pick Your Poison Read Free

responding officer, but I’d like you to repeat everything you remember about today.”
    What I recalled most was Ben’s odd behavior this afternoon by the pool. He’d never approached me like that before. But I hadn’t mentioned this to the other policeman, maybe because Homicide wasn’t part of his job description and it had never crossed my mind that Ben died from anything but natural causes.
    But now, with this intense man whose rigid blue stare could knock a tank off course, the earlier conversation took on added significance. So after filling Kline in on my otherwise boring day, I said, “Out by the pool, Ben asked to talk to me about something, but wanted my sister present.”
    “What something?”
    I hesitated, and the room seemed so quiet I swore I could hear my hair growing. “I—I don’t know what something. He wouldn’t say.”
    “Repeat his words as best you recall.” He had his pen poised over the notebook, and his jaw was working the Big Red hard.
    But the details seemed to have left my brain like powdered sugar through a sifter. “I can’t remember. The feeling I got was that he was troubled.”
    Kline said, “Troubled? That’s it?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And this was the first time he’d ever seemed troubled?”
    “Well . . . maybe I just didn’t notice before today.”
    Another huge sigh. “Yeah, okay. What about access to the property? Any recent history of strangers hanging around? Or break-ins? Anything unusual?”
    “No.”
    He wrote this down, as if somehow my complete lack of knowledge was worth saving for posterity. If Ben had been murdered, I couldn’t offer a clue to help find his killer. And unless I turned up information in Daddy’s files, I couldn’t help find his relatives, either. I was beginning to feel about as useful as an outhouse on a submarine.
    Someone knocked on the door—a welcome interruption.
    An officer stuck his head inside and said, “The other Rose woman is here. And this one’s lawyer.” He nodded my way, his expression looking as if he’d just picked something green out of his teeth.
    Kline flushed, his hard stare turned back on me. “You called a lawyer?”
    “I didn’t call a lawyer,” I snapped back. I could do surly, too.
    Kate squeezed past the policeman into the cabana and rushed over to me. “Thank God you’re all right! You are all right, Abby?”
    I nodded. “I’m fine.”
    She fixed a strand of humidity-damp chocolate-brown hair behind her ear. “When I saw those police cars, I—I didn’t know what to think. But the policewoman at the gate said it was Ben. She said he collapsed.”
    “He’s dead, Kate,” I said quietly.
    “Dead?” She looked at Kline and then at me. “Oh, my gosh! Did he fall? Get cut with the lawn mower? Bleed to death? And do this many police always respond to accidents?”
    Kline addressed Kate. “Ms. Rose? Can I ask you to step outside for one second?”
    “Why?” She looked down at me again. “Abby? What’s going on?”
    “No problem, just routine,” Kline answered for me, sounding a whole lot gentler than I would have thought him capable of.
    “What about the lawyer?” the cop at the door said. “You want him in here, Sergeant?”
    “It’s just Willis,” Kate said.
    “Oh. Willis,” I replied. “Please keep him outside.” How the heck had he found out about Ben? Had Kate called him? Or was this just one of his routine drivebys so he could offer to run my life?
    The uniformed officer took Kate by the elbow and they left.
    “If you didn’t phone the lawyer, what’s he doing here?” Kline asked.
    “He shows up unannounced on a regular basis. More friend of the family than attorney,” I said.
    “But you have a gate and a security system, right? I mean, that’s standard equipment in this neighborhood,” Kline said.
    “With all the rent-a-cops hanging around, I rarely activate the alarm,” I said, trying to slip this past him like it made perfect sense.
    “So no alarm, and the