Sweet, Sweet Poison by Kate Wilhelm

Author:Kate Wilhelm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: InfinityBox Press LLC
Published: 2012-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

AS SOON AS THEY LEFT the lawn and walked behind enough trees to hide them from the Wollander house, Charlie stopped and caught Constance up in his arms. He nuzzled her hair, and kissed her, and then kissed her a second time.

“Well,” she said. “Well.”

“Touching base with reality,” he said, grinning, and took her arm, steered her toward the path back to the mill. “What happened?”

Dreamily she said, “I think that could catch on. Sharing reality. Your reality or mine, baby? What do you think?”

He pinched her bottom.

“Oh well,” she said. “Beautifully furnished room, lots of white and gold and pale green. If she sat still in that dressing gown she would melt right into it and be invisible. No books. A few magazines, some religious material, booklets. One on meditation, one titled Unwinding the Universe. Stanley was a hypochondriac, lots of prescription medications, more over-the-counter do-it-yourself nostrums. Stomach, bowels, muscle tone, hair loss, you name it, he was probably treating himself for it. Plus heavy-duty sleeping pills, chloral hydrate, a prescription. And high blood pressure medicine. And allergy medications, ointments, pills, Caladryl lotion and tablets, and a sting kit still sealed.”

“Good Lord,” Charlie said when she paused. “You were gone ten minutes.”

“I know,” she said regretfully. “If she hadn’t talked so much I probably would have had time to snoop around a little. Let’s see, what else did I intend to mention? Oh yes. A portrait of her mother. Remember that scene in Tales of Hoffmann where Beverly Sills plays the girl who sings a duet with her dead mother? I always forget the names of the various women, but you know the one I mean. The father either is or has been dealing with the devil, and it’s time to pay up. Anyway, it reminded me of that. Jill looks very much like her mother, and of course the mother is highly idealized in the portrait, great tragic eyes, honey silk hair, boneless hand draped beautifully over her pale arm. Dressed in a pale green satiny thing with lots of highlights. I guess it’s too late for me to have a portrait done, isn’t it?”

Charlie dug in his heels on the path and brought her to a stop for a second time. “The biggest mistake I ever made was in packing you off to learn self-defense. Otherwise I would threaten to toss you over the hill into the lake. What did she say?”

“I was just getting to that,” Constance explained. “It was all about her mother. That’s why I prefaced it with the portrait, you see, just so you would have a basis for underst…”

She broke it off to say warningly, “Now, Charlie. It seems that her father kept her mother on a very short leash for a very long time. He had her sign a prenuptial agreement, and if she insisted on it, Jill didn’t mention that. The agreement stated that if she left him, divorced him, she would take only what she had brought to the marriage, an inheritance of ten or fifteen thousand.

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