Dickce poured coffee and added a couple of spoons of sugar, then enough half-and-half to turn the brew light brown. “Here, Benjy, you should drink this.” She held the cup out to the young man, and he stared up at her.
An’gel wondered whether he had taken in what Dickce said. He nodded and accepted the cup. Diesel stuck his nose near the coffee, and Benjy smiled briefly. “I don’t think this would be good for you, kitty.” He sipped while the cat watched closely.
An’gel and Dickce took their own cups and stepped away from the window toward the inside corner of the front wall.
“Has anyone been talking?” An’gel asked.
Dickce shook her head. “Not at all. It seems strange to me, but maybe having the deputy in here with them has put them off.” She nodded in the direction of the young man at the door.
“Clementine is making another pot of coffee,” An’gel said. “I’ll go back in a moment to see if it’s ready.” She drained her cup.
Kanesha Berry strode into the room. All heads swung in her direction, and An’gel tensed as the deputy prepared to speak.
“Folks, my name is Kanesha Berry, and I’m the chief deputy in the Athena County Sheriff’s Department. I’ll be in charge of the investigation, and I’m going to need to ask you all some questions. I hope you’ll bear with me, because this is going to take some time. I know you are all distressed by what has happened, and I’m sorry for your loss.” She paused a moment to glance around the room. “I must inform you, also, that we are treating this as a suspicious death.”
Wade rose from his chair behind the desk, the shock evident on his face. An’gel feared that he would faint, the way he was swaying on his feet. “Suspicious? Do you mean you think this was deliberate and not an accident?”
“That’s what we have to determine, sir,” Kanesha replied.
“If it wasn’t an accident,” Junior said, his expression thoughtful, “then that means one of us is a murderer.”
An’gel was startled by a shriek. She turned in time to see Maudine topple off the sofa in a dead faint.
CHAPTER 10
Junior scrambled out of his chair to kneel by his mother. Maudine lay on her right side, moaning.
An’gel noted with relief that Maudine somehow managed to miss the low table with the Sèvres vase in front of the sofa. The vase was a souvenir of her grandmother’s honeymoon in Europe in 1900. Then she felt a bit ashamed of herself for worrying more about the vase than about Maudine—although she suspected Maudine of deliberately staging the incident. She was Rosabelle’s daughter, after all.
“Mother, are you okay?” Junior grabbed his mother’s left arm and began chafing her wrist.
As An’gel watched, Maudine’s eyelids fluttered, and she moaned yet again. Her eyes opened and focused on her son’s face. “What happened?”
Juanita appeared beside Maudine’s head. “You fainted, Aunt Maud. Come now, Junior and I will help you up, and you can sit on the sofa while someone brings you water.”
Kanesha’s young subordinate, whose name An’gel still didn’t know, responded to a signal from the chief deputy and came forward to assist. Juanita smiled and stood back. The deputy slipped his hands under Maudine’s right shoulder while Junior pulled his mother into a sitting position on the floor.
Taking the hint about the water, An’gel started toward the door, but Dickce darted out ahead of her. An’gel turned back in time to see Junior and the deputy lift Maudine and set her on the sofa.
Junior muttered “thank you” to the deputy, who stepped back. Junior continued to pat his mother’s hands and stare at her face. “Come on, Mother, everything will be okay. I didn’t mean to frighten you with what I said. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Do you think I should call a doctor?” An’gel asked Kanesha. She thought she spoke quietly enough that no one else could hear, but Juanita came over, evidently in response to her question.
“My aunt has these little spells occasionally. There’s no need to call a doctor. She’ll be right as rain in a few minutes.” Juanita winked. “I’ll keep an eye on her, of course.”
“Thank you, my dear,” An’gel said, relieved. “Deputy Berry, this is Rosabelle’s granddaughter, Juanita Cameron. Miss Cameron is a registered nurse.”
“It’s fortunate you’re here, then,” Kanesha said. “If you need any more medical assistance, though, just ask the deputy there to call.”
“Thank you, Deputy Berry. I’m sure it won’t be necessary, though,” Juanita said. She returned to stand by her mother. An’gel thought Bernice looked a bit peaky herself, but evidently she wasn’t the fainting type, unlike her sister.
“As I was saying earlier,” Kanesha said, claiming the attention of the group, “I’m going to need to meet with each one of you in turn. Please remain in this room until that time.”
An’gel was surprised there were no objections. She fully expected Rosabelle’s family to make a fuss, but perhaps they were all still subdued by the tragedy of the occasion.
Dickce returned with a glass of water and a wet cloth. She handed them over to Juanita, who began ministering to her aunt. Dickce went back to the window seat, where Benjy and Diesel sat. An’gel could tell from her sister’s actions that Dickce was concerned about the young man. She was pleased that someone was paying attention to the poor boy.
“Miss An’gel, I’d like to start with you, if you don’t mind,” Kanesha said.
“Certainly,” An’gel replied and preceded the deputy from the room.
Kanesha didn’t speak again until she and An’gel were alone in the front parlor. “I asked Mrs. Sultan to move to your study. One of my deputies is with her.”
“That’s fine.” An’gel went to the sofa and sat. Kanesha took a chair opposite.
“Two deputies are upstairs right now, searching for the source of the Vaseline. That’s why I want to keep everyone downstairs for a while.” Kanesha shook her head. “I sure am sorry to put you and Miss Dickce through all this, but it has to be done.”
“You’re not the reason behind what’s happened here,” An’gel said with a slight smile. “Rosabelle is. Of course you have to search. I expected it. I think you’ll find that the Vaseline came from either my bathroom or my sister’s. Unless the perpetrator is not too bright.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised either way. You wouldn’t believe some of the stupid things criminals do that make it easy to catch them.” Kanesha pulled out a notebook and pen. “Now, if you don’t mind, can you give me a rundown on what happened since Mrs. Sultan arrived this afternoon?”
Heavens, was it only this afternoon that they all descended upon us? An’gel took a moment to organize her thoughts before she launched into her summary of events. “Dickce and I were sitting here in the front parlor, enjoying the quiet, until I heard a car pull up out front . . .”
Kanesha occasionally jotted something down as An’gel talked but did not interrupt the narrative with questions. When An’gel finished, Kanesha thanked her and glanced over her notes.
“After Mrs. Sultan and her family members began arriving, neither you nor your sister went upstairs, except to show them to their rooms. Is that correct?”
An’gel thought for a moment. “Yes, that’s correct.”
“That means that Mrs. Sultan, her two daughters, her granddaughter, and her son and daughter-in-law were all upstairs for a period of time without you or Miss Dickce.” When An’gel nodded, Kanesha continued, “How long do you estimate they were upstairs on their own, so to speak?”
“Let me see.” An’gel frowned. “Fifteen or twenty minutes, I reckon. Rosabelle was up there longer, more like thirty to forty minutes.”