Poison at the PTA by Laura Alden Read Free Book Online Page A

store ready to share the unwelcome news. “Say, did you hear about Cookie? She’s in the hospital.”
    Less than half an hour later, I was in Cookie’s room, accepting her thanks for the flowers I’d brought.
    “How sweet,” she said weakly, watching as I arranged the bouquet. “I’ve never been one for wasting money on fresh flowers, but carnations last a nice long time.”
    Since “You’re welcome” didn’t seem to fit, I smiled and drew the guest chair close to the bed. “Is there anything I can get you?” I asked. “Water? Ice?”
    “No, thank you.” She closed her eyes and laid her head back against the pillow. Her gray hair hung limply against her head, her skin was an odd shade of white, and the lines on her face were drawn long and deep. She looked . . . sick.
    I reached out to pat her arm and was surprised at how thin and frail she felt. “If you’re too tired to talk, I can come back later.”
    Her eyes fluttered open. “Momma? Is that you?”
    Oh, dear.
    I touched her hand and started to say something generically comforting, but her eyes closed, and stayed closed. When I saw that her chest was still rising and falling with reassuring regularity, I sat back in the chair. Out in the hallway, footsteps stepped past, some fast, some slow, some loud, some so soft they could barely be heard. Smells that weren’t of home or bookstore wafted in. Voices murmured. Faint beeps beeped.
    I hated hospitals.
    What felt like ten years later, Cookie spoke. “They’ve poisoned me.”
    In a rush it came to me why Cookie and I had never been, and would never be, good friends. Not only did she take life much too seriously, but she was prone to sincerely believing in the worst-case scenario. Sure, I worried about horrible things, but deep down I didn’t really believe the worst was going to happen. It was best to be prepared, was more my line of thinking.
    “What makes you think so?” I asked. Because, really, how would anyone know? There were a lot of poisons in the world and it was likely that they’d each have a different set of symptoms. Why would anyone slide from thinking plain old flu to the icky thought of being poisoned? Maybe this was just the illness talking. Her comments about the mysterious “they” certainly hinted of medication-induced nightmares.
    Cookie’s voice rasped out. “Evil walks among us. It’s our duty to make things right.”
    I waited. While I didn’t exactly think she was wrong, I also couldn’t give a blanket agreement. Finally, I thought of something to say. “Have you tried to make things right?”
    With her eyes still closed, she smiled. “Right and wrong,” she said in a singsong tone. “Good and evil. They want it all different colors of gray, but we know better, don’t we? It’s black-and-white, now as it always was.”
    I shifted in the chair, which had suddenly become uncomfortable. “I think I know what you mean,” I said cautiously. “Has someone done something wrong?”
    Her lips curved up in a smile. “Oh, yes. So very wrong.”
    I waited for her to continue. Watched her breaths move in and out. Waited some more. But she was sound asleep.
    •   •   •
     
    From the hospital parking lot, I called Gus and told him about Cookie’s hazy conviction that she’d been poisoned. “She’s very sick,” I finished. “I don’t know if it’s her medication or a fever or what, but she’s not exactly her normal self. It’s hard to say if this was a real conviction or an illness-induced one, but I thought you should know.”
    Gus grunted. “Did you tell her doctor?”
    “She said she’d run some tests.”
    “I’ll stop by and talk to the doctor and Cookie,” Gus said. “Thanks, Beth. You taking care of yourself?”
    I assured him I was and ended the call with the vague feeling that I should be doing more.
    •   •   •
     
    Over the next few days, I tried to find out how Cookie was doing. I knew the hospital wouldn’t tell me