Book Club Killer (2 page)

Chapter 3

Late the next morning, as I
scurried around the house with a feather duster and vacuum, I heard a knock on
the front door.

“Can somebody get that?” I called.

When there was no response, I
glanced into the backyard where I saw Ben and our two boys working in the
garden.

Another earsplitting knock echoed
through the empty house, so I put down the cleaning supplies and hurried to the
foyer. A quick look through the peephole revealed a man wearing sunglasses and
a bright red cap emblazoned with the logo for the Olive Street Café.

“Morning, ma’am,” he said after I
opened the door. “I have something for your dinner party tonight.”

He was holding an unmarked brown
paper bag, a stack of carryout menus from the restaurant and a bouquet of fresh
flowers in a sleek glass vase.

“Are you from the café?” I asked.

The man nodded. “The rest of the
things you ordered are coming later on the delivery van,” he explained. “When
our chef realized they’d forgotten the spinach dip, I volunteered to drive it
over separately.”

I was so distracted by preparations
for the book club that I didn’t think twice about the man’s reason for
appearing at our door. I’d never seen him before, but that didn’t seem unusual.
Ben and I had ordered from Olive Street two or three times since they opened,
and a different person always delivered the food.

“Thank you so much,” I said,
holding the door open wide. “Do you mind bringing those inside for me?”

He smiled, stepped into the house
and then followed me wordlessly to the kitchen.

“The counter by the sink is
perfect,” I said, gesturing across the room. “When will the rest of the things
be delivered?”

The man put the bag, menus and
flowers on the counter. “I really don’t know,” he said. “When I get back to the
restaurant, I can ask someone to call you.”

I started to reach for my purse so
I could give him a tip, but then remembered that I’d left it in the bedroom.

“Can you give me a sec?” I asked.

He smiled and I went down the
hallway toward our bedroom. But when I returned a minute later, he was gone and
the front door was closed.

“That’s strange,” I whispered to
myself. “A delivery guy who doesn’t expect a tip.”

I brushed off the odd episode and
went back to dusting. An hour later, when the house passed inspection and my
husband had taken the boys to a movie, I arranged the snacks and sweets on the
kitchen table and headed for the shower.

As I stood beneath the torrent of
hot water, I ran through the checklist in my mind.
Beverages? Check! Snacks
and sweets? Check! Extra bottle of pinot grigio for Eve and Dora? Check! Small
plates for the—

The doorbell rang before I could
finish. Baxter, our Golden Retriever, greeted the chime with a chorus of
deafening barks.

“Somebody’s early!” I said, turning
off the shower and reaching for my robe. “I’ll bet it’s Rosemary. She always
arrives before anyone else to stakeout the most comfortable place to sit.”

After slipping into the robe and
twisting a towel around my hair, I raced into the hallway and toward the front of
the house. When I reached the foyer, Baxter was wagging his tail and staring at
the door.

“Good boy,” I said, patting his
head and opening the door. “It’s our friend Rosemary!”

“Hi, gorgeous!” she said, leaning
down and cheerfully tousling Baxter’s floppy ears. “And hello to you, too, Jana!”
She giggled lightly and gave me a quick hug. “Am I the first one here?”

I smiled and motioned for her to
come inside. “Yes, but it’s fine,” I said. “There’s another half hour before we
start, so I was in the final stages of getting ready.”

“Well, run along then,” she
suggested. “Mind if I help myself to a glass of water?”

“Of course,” I said, pointing down
the hall. “There’s a pitcher of chilled water with lemons in the refrigerator. I’ll
be back in a flash.”

I spun around and hurried back to
the bedroom. Luckily, my outfit was arranged on the bed, so I quickly checked
my makeup, dried my hair and slipped into the sweater, slacks and sandals that
I’d picked out for the afternoon.

“Okay, sorry about that!” I called,
hurrying toward the kitchen about ten minutes later. “I promised myself that
I’d be ready before anyone arrived, but you know how it goes, right?”

I saw Rosemary’s purse on the
counter beside a half-filled glass of water.

“Rosemary?”

Thinking that she’d gone back to
the living room, I went down the hallway and peeked around the corner. Baxter was
lounging contentedly in the middle of the room. When he saw me, his tail
started its trademark counterclockwise sweep before he jumped to his feet.

“Hey, boy! Have you seen Mrs. Swanson?”

Baxter’s mouth opened and his
tongue drooped out. He crossed the room and looked up at me through the two
most adorable brown eyes on the planet.

“Well, I love you, too!” I said,
scratching his ears. “But I’m looking for my friend Rosemary.”

Baxter licked my hand, barked once
and headed for the kitchen. When he suddenly began barking and whining, I
walked down the hallway again and through the door.

“Where are you, Bax?”

His head popped out from behind the
island in the middle of the room. He ran over, pawed at my hand and then
hurried back to the other side of the island. As I headed to join him, I
noticed the paper bag from Olive Street Café on the counter by the
refrigerator. The container of spinach dip was open and a few crackers that’d
I’d arranged on a platter were piled beside it.

“That’s odd,” I muttered, following
Baxter around the island. “Rosemary must’ve helped herself to—”

My heart thudded to a stop when I
saw Rosemary sprawled on the floor beside the kitchen table. She was on her
back, both arms and legs extended and rigid. Her eyes were unblinking and her entire
body was convulsing uncontrollably. Her back and neck seemed to be arching and
she was gasping for air.

“Oh my God!” I screamed and quickly
knelt beside her. “Rosemary!”

Her unblinking eyes were fixed on
the ceiling. I carefully pressed my fingers to the inside of her left wrist. A
weak pulse quivered beneath her clammy skin, so I gently lowered her arm and jumped
to my feet. With Baxter barking and whining at my heels, I raced into the
bedroom to grab my phone and dial 911.

“Hurry up!” I gasped and pressed
the phone to my ear. “Oh, please hurry—!”

A woman’s voice came on the line.

“It’s my friend!” I screamed after
she asked me to describe the emergency. “She collapsed in the kitchen!”

The woman asked me a few questions
and assured me that an ambulance was on the way. As I walked back through the
house to the kitchen, she told me to take a deep breath and stay calm.

But when I knelt next to Rosemary,
I didn’t have any idea how that was possible. Her head had rolled to one side
and her entire body was still and lifeless.

“Our EMTs will be there in less
than two minutes,” said the 911 operator. “Can someone meet them at the front
door?”

“Yes,” I said, as my heart
skittered wildly in my chest. “Just hurry, please!

Chapter 4

The hour that followed seemed
airless and frozen. It was like I’d been plucked from my real life and dropped
into the middle of a slow-motion movie sequence. I crouched on the kitchen
floor, holding Rosemary’s hand and listening as her breathing became more
labored. At some point, one of the EMTs asked me to move so they could check
for her vital signs and assess the situation.

While they carefully moved her from
the floor to a gurney, I heard my name drifting through the air. It was Vanessa
and Susie, two book club members, huddled in the kitchen door with drawn faces
and furrowed brows. They’d guided me to the living room, where I sat in shock
as Eve and Dora came in the front door. Two uniformed officers arrived, a tall
man with buzzed brown hair and a short woman wearing glasses. They took me
aside and asked a few preliminary questions, but I couldn’t tell them anything
more than the basic facts: Rosemary arrived; I went to get dressed; Rosemary
collapsed after tasting the spinach dip that she found in the refrigerator.

As the EMTs wheeled our friend out
of my house and loaded her into the ambulance, I sat slumped on the living room
sofa. Susie came in from the kitchen with a bottle of wine, the pitcher of
lemon water and a few plastic tumblers. She offered something to me first, but
I wasn’t thirsty.

“Are you sure you don’t want a
glass of water?” asked Vanessa.

I nodded.

“How about something stronger?”
Miriam said. “Just to calm your nerves.”

“No, I’m fine,” I said. “I don’t
think anything can calm my nerves at this point.”

We sat quietly and contemplated the
dreadful turn of events. One minute Rosemary was asking for something to drink;
the next thing I knew she was unconscious on the kitchen floor. It had been a
couple of days since we talked, but I remembered an email she sent last week
about her most recent checkup with the doctor. “He said I have the body of a
teenager for someone in her 40s,” she’d boasted in the note. “All of the vitals
were normal and my cholesterol was down in the healthy range again!”

Listening to the other girls
speculate about what might have happened, I couldn’t shake the sound of Sonja’s
voice in my head.
“Have you ever thought about killing anyone? If you could
actually get away with it?”

“Jana?”

I pushed the memory out of my mind.

“Where’s Sonja?” Vanessa asked.

I glanced around the room. In the
chaos that ensued after I discovered Rosemary on the kitchen floor, I hadn’t
realized that all of the book club members had arrived except Sonja.

“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug.
“Maybe something came up unexpectedly. I ran into her at the store last night,
and it seemed like she was planning on being here.”

Susie sipped her wine. “Can you
tell us what happened, Jana?” she asked. “I mean, did Rosemary say anything
about not feeling well when she arrived?”

I’d been dreading the questions,
but I knew it would be best to provide at least a brief account of the
afternoon’s inexplicable events. When I finished describing as much as I could
recall, the other women nodded silently and traded puzzled glances.

“I hate to gossip,” Susie said.
“But do you think Sonja was involved?”

The question hit me like a
roundhouse punch. I hadn’t mentioned a word to anyone about Sonja’s teasing
comments the night before. “Why on earth would you say that?” I demanded.
“Sonja’s one of our closest friends. How could you suspect her of…” I didn’t
want to say the word, so I let the sentence fade.

“Murder?” Susie offered, clearly
comfortable accusing Sonja of the despicable act.

Vanessa cleared her throat and sat
forward in her chair. “It kind of makes sense,” she said slowly. “I was talking
to Sonja last week at a school function. She kept going on and on about how
much she detested Rosemary. She even went so far as to say the book club would
be a better place without her. I figured she just meant if Rosemary left the
group. I didn’t realize she was thinking about doing something terrible so
she’d leave!”

“That’s nonsense!” I blurted. “Do
you really think that someone who works in the medical field could commit
murder?”

Susie frowned. “She’s a dental
hygienist, Jana. Not a neurosurgeon.”

“You know what I mean,” I said.
“She’s kind and thoughtful. And she helps people.”

Vanessa sighed. “Well, I remember
one time when she helped herself—to Erica Jordan’s husband.”

Susie and Vanessa giggled
derisively. “That’s right,” Susie sneered. “Sonja broke up that marriage and
stole Brian right out from under Erica’s nose.”

“That’s not true,” I offered. “Erica
and Brian had been having trouble for over a year before they separated. The
fact that he and Sonja hit it off so well has nothing to do with—”

“What about changing the subject?”
Dora suggested. “We could talk about the book. Or the weather. But I don’t
think guessing about what just happened to our friend is appropriate.”

“I don’t really feel like having
book group,” Vanessa said. “This whole thing with Rosemary has put a damper on
my mood.”

“I agree,” Susie said. “Maybe we
could have a glass of wine and chill?”

After everyone agreed with Susie’s
suggestion, I went to the kitchen for another bottle of pinot. A million
thoughts and questions were zinging through my mind. Maybe if I stayed busy
refilling glasses and serving snacks, the afternoon would pass quickly. I was
just about ready to return to the living room when the doorbell chimed.

“Do you want me to get that?” Susie
called from the front of the house.

I scurried to the living room with
the wine, a selection of cheeses and some crackers on a tray. “I’ve got it, but
thanks, Susie!”

I put the tray on the coffee table
and rushed to the entry hall. A man wearing a dark suit and mirrored aviator
sunglasses was standing on the porch when I opened the door.

“Mrs. Sullivan?”

I nodded.

“I’m Detective Max Ford.” He
removed the sunglasses and revealed a gold badge pinned to his belt. “With the
Metropolitan Police.”

“You’re here about Rosemary?”

He nodded slightly. “Yes, ma’am,” he
answered. “Do you mind if I come in and ask you a few questions?”

I’d already given a statement to
the two uniformed officers who arrived along with the ambulance. But I’d
watched enough crime shows and movies to know that official investigations
generally involved detectives and ongoing sleuthing following an event as
baffling as the apparent attempt to take Rosemary’s life.

“Please come right in, Detective
Ford.” I opened the door and stood to one side. “Our book club group is still
here. We were getting together for our monthly meeting until…” My voice cracked
and tears suddenly tumbled down my cheeks. “I’m so sorry,” I said, wiping my
face with one hand. “It’s just been a really difficult day.”

“I understand, ma’am. And I’m sorry
about what you’re going through.”

Before I could say another word,
Susie appeared in the entryway.

“Are you from the police?” she
asked.

“Yes, I’m Detective Ford,” the man
answered. “I’m investigating the situation involving Rosemary Swanson.”

Susie lifted her chin and raised
one eyebrow. “Well, come right in and have a seat,” she said. “Because we know
who tried to kill her.”