And then he smiled. (eBook)

Beverly Ann Flynn (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
164 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
9798350991826 (ISBN)

Infos

Readers are invited to solve the case of Electra's poisoning in this entertaining murder mystery. Sort through half-truths, alibis, and theories to solve the crime of 'And Then He Smiled.'

b044>

---

"e;And Then He Smiled"e; is a story about murder. It's also a story of love, romance, and compassion sprinkled with a heavy dose of selfishness, greed, tragedy, and death. The story begins when Electra, a young woman named after one of the stars in the Pleiades, is poisoned. The detectives trying to find her killer must determine what is real and what is not. You, as the reader, go along with them on their journey towards the truth, sometimes puzzled and sometimes enlightened, but thoroughly entertained every step of the way.

Textauszug

Chapter One

Suspicions and Conundrums

Grandma (Darla to her friends) had spent two days cooking all of Aunt Electra’s favorites: cheesecake, her famous spaghetti sauce, and her special gravy for the roasted turkey she had cooked and basted the night before. She had also fried up a lot of chicken legs, and brought along the barbecue sauce for dipping. So, on that Tuesday morning, she loaded all the food in the trunk of the car, then along with me, my brother Will, and Grandpa, we all headed off for Aunt Electra’s.

The drive to Aunt Electra’s house took about ten minutes. She and Uncle Theo lived in a very old but very well-maintained neighborhood. It was one of those houses that Grandma said real estate agents call a starter home. I don’t know what that means because to me it looks like a finished house, so how could it be just a starter? But something about that house always seemed to upset Grandma. Every time we headed over there to visit Aunt Electra, Grandma would immediately begin complaining about the house. She didn’t like the color or the landscaping, or the fact that the fence needed to be repaired. But mostly it was the color. The house was bright yellow with white trim. To me, it looked okay but Grandma always said the same thing. She always said that she was going to tell Aunt Electra to tell Uncle Theo to have the house painted a more sensible color.

I never understood that because I always thought that yellow was a very sensible color. Lots of flowers are yellow, and my mom’s car had been yellow, and most importantly, yellow was the color of my skateboard. So to me, yellow was not only a very sensible color, but also a very useful color. I have not seen any other houses in Privetan painted bright yellow like that, but I suspected that a lot of Privetan residents liked it. I asked Grandma once about why she didn’t like the color of Aunt Electra’s house, but she didn’t answer. Will told me later that it wasn’t really the color she didn’t like. It was really that she just didn’t like Uncle Theo or anything about him. So because it was his house, she just didn’t like it. That sort of made sense to me.

When we got to the house, Uncle Theo was standing on the front porch. He greeted us with a nonchalant wave, then walked back into the house.

“What an asshole!” Grandma said under her breath, thinking that Will and I did not hear. But we did. Then Grandpa, Will and I helped Grandma bring in the food. We placed everything on the kitchen table initially, as ordered, so that Grandma could plan how best to load the refrigerator. Then, she opened the refrigerator door and made her expected comment.

“No food in the fridge. As usual. And the house is a pigsty.”

Uncle Theo had been standing silently in the kitchen doorway this entire time, watching us bring in the food, not offering to help. I think he was expecting some sort of negative comment from his mother-in-law, and so there it was. Then she glanced at Uncle Theo with the look that says “you are such a pathetic provider.” Uncle Theo quickly recognized “the look” and tried to offer an explanation.

“I’ve been working late a lot. I haven’t had much time for cleaning. I’m going to bring someone in to help me with that. But don’t worry, we eat just fine.”

“Yeah, junk food, I’m sure. Not the kind of food she needs to get well.”

Uncle Theo sighed. He didn’t respond because I suspected he didn’t want to get into another pointless fight with his mother-in-law. I could tell that he was just not in the mood today. Every time she visited, Grandma always started some kind of fight with him. The last time, it was about why he hadn’t taken Aunt Electra to the doctor she had recommended. Uncle Theo had tried to explain.

“We have been to so many doctors already and no one knows what she has, and Electra is just tired of it all and said she didn’t want to see any more doctors.” It was obvious that Grandma did not believe him. So today, I guess he had decided that he was just not going to fight with her, as he had once said to her that she was going to believe what she was going to believe. So he just walked out of the room.

“What a rude person,” Grandma said under her breath. “I don’t understand why Electra ever married him. She’s so pretty, she could have married anyone she wanted. Why did she choose him?”

Grandpa just shook his head. “Darla, I don’t know either. But I do know that Electra has always been strong willed, and so if her mind was made up, she would have married him regardless of anything we could have said.”

I never really understood why Grandma and Grandpa didn’t like Uncle Theo. I always thought he was okay. He was kind of quiet, but he was always nice to me and Will. He liked to play games with us. He’s the one who taught us how to play chess. And he would always give us his change. So as far as we were concerned, Uncle Theo was fine. But Grandma and Grandpa had a different view of him, and I guess if Aunt Electra had been my daughter, I might have felt differently about him as well.

Grandma loved to tell the story of why she had named her second daughter Electra. Electra, as she had often told us, was not really a common name. The first time Grandma had heard it was when she was a young school girl, around ten or eleven years old. Her class had been studying Greek mythology, and she had learned that Electra in Greek mythology was the daughter of King Agamemnon, who had commanded the Greeks during the Trojan War. Her teacher went on to explain that Electra is also the name of one of the stars in the Pleiades. The Pleiades is a constellation which can be seen from Earth with the naked eye six or seven months out of the year. So Grandma had been fascinated with that name for a long time. It was always in the back of her mind, that one day she would have a daughter and name her Electra.

Aunt Electra had been ill for a long time, at least a year, which seems like a really long time to me because after all, I’m only nine years old. No one really knew what it was that was making Aunt Electra so sick. Grandma had taken her to several doctors, and they had never been able to come up with a credible diagnosis. The doctors initially suggested depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, or an eating disorder due to the vague symptoms.

“She’s always tired. She sleeps all the time. And look at her. She’s so thin. She just looks like something isn’t right. Can’t you figure out what’s wrong?” Grandma would always ask the doctors those same questions, and they would always give her the same answers. They could not discern anything visible and so they would have to perform tests. Then the doctors would perform test after test, but they never came up with anything.

Grandma had reached her own conclusion though. She was firmly convinced that Uncle Theo was slowly poisoning Aunt Electra. She couldn’t prove it, but she was absolutely certain that that was the cause of Aunt Electra’s illness. So every time we visited Aunt Electra, at some point during the visit, Grandma would find a way to go outside and look in their trash. Being the diligent detective she was, and having watched numerous detective shows on television, she knew the routine. She was a particular fan of Columbo, the sleuth who always tormented his main suspect. She had hoped that she would one day be able to do the Columbo thing to Uncle Theo, to confront him with the evidence that would prove that he had been slowly poisoning Aunt Electra, watch him squirm, and then the police would have to arrest him immediately.

So true to her mission as a detective, whenever she visited Aunt Electra, she always had her plastic gloves, and carried plastic bags which she used to place remnants of food in from Aunt Electra’s trash. Then she would put all the plastic bags in a special box she kept in the trunk of the car. The following day, she would take the box to her friend Eleanor’s house. Eleanor’s husband Leonard was a retired pharmacist, and the three of them would analyze the food to see if any of it looked like it contained any type of poison. Then she would have Eleanor’s husband test the food. So far, they had not found any poison, but Grandma was convinced that they eventually would and so was not giving up. Her belief that Theo was poisoning her daughter was a strongly held one, and was, she believed, the only answer to her daughter’s condition. Her lifelong friend, Eleanor, always agreed with anything she said, and Eleanor’s husband Leonard, who had once said that he just wanted peace in his relationship with Eleanor, had learned long ago that the only way to achieve that peace was to give in to Grandma’s wishes. So, he dutifully tested all of the food substances that Grandma brought over.

Once, they did discover something. They found some evidence of salmonella in the chicken scraps, which caused Grandma to do a lot of research on the effects of salmonella poisoning. She found out that people with weak immune systems are more likely to be infected, and so this was definitely something that could apply to Aunt Electra. But Eleanor’s husband Leonard didn’t think that was the cause of Electra’s illness because with salmonella, people usually get diarrhea and stomach problems and this was not what Electra seemed to be suffering from.

“Darla, salmonella is not usually debilitating,” Leonard had tried to explain to her. “It can cause discomfort for a week or so, but then most people get over it.”

“But it does...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 12.4.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-13: 9798350991826 / 9798350991826