Poison Pen
Douglas Pemberly was using a lint roller to remove cat hair from an upholstered mahogany Victorian sofa when Michael Whitby, his husband, entered Treasure Hunt Antiques carrying a large cardboard box.
"Uh oh!" Michael laughed. "I see Tiffany has been sleeping on the furniture again."
The couple's white Persian cat, who resembled a giant ball of fur, had a cat bed in the shop's office but liked to sneak out to the showroom and sleep on the antique chairs and sofas.
"What have you got there?" Douglas inquired.
"After I dropped my suit off at the cleaners, I stopped at the self-storage unit and got another box of your grandfather's old stock."
His husband could not hide his displeasure. Jonah Pemberly, his grandfather, had rented a stall at the Puritan Falls Drive-in Theater flea market for more than thirty years. When COVID restrictions forced the septuagenarian to temporarily close, he decided to retire to Florida. Douglas, who was teaching at Savannah's College of Art and Design at the time, decided to relocate to Massachusetts and fulfill a lifelong dream of opening an antique store. However, he had underestimated the extent of his grandfather's existing inventory.
"I don't think we'll ever clear out that storage unit," he complained.
"Yes, we will. We'll do it one box at a time."
"And how many do we have left after we empty that one?"
"Oh, about three or four ... dozen."
"Well, I might as well get started," he said and reached for the boxcutter beneath the counter.
"Let me give Tiffany some cat treats and then I'll give you a hand," Michael offered.
"Carnival glass," Douglas announced, taking an iridescent blue pitcher with four matching goblets. "I shouldn't have any difficulty selling this set."
"What's this?" Michael wondered when he found a smaller box inside the large carton. "These must be worth something!"
"What are they?"
"A complete set of the Jetsons and Flintstones Pez dispensers."
"My grandfather really liked pop culture items. Here's a Remco Beatles doll from the Sixties."
"Which one?"
"Paul," Douglas replied. "And his guitar is included."
Michael, believing the box was now empty, was surprised to hear something rolling around the cardboard carton beneath the discarded bubble wrap. He reached inside and pulled out a pen. Gold scales belonging to either a dragon or snake encircled the black cap and barrel of the fountain pen. The pen's most prominent feature was a skull being held by the scaley creature.
"I doubt this belonged to your grandfather," he laughed.
"He probably intended to sell it at the flea market."
"You want to add it to our inventory?"
"You must be kidding," Douglas laughed. "I wouldn't even know what to charge for it."
"Why don't you give it to Martha then. She loves all things macabre."
"Good idea. Leave it on the counter. She'll be coming in on Friday. I'll see if she wants it."
* * *
"You've got to stop moping and get out of the house," Marlee Dunbar advised her friend, Carol Torrence, who was wallowing in self-pity and post-divorce doldrums.
"I don't feel like going anywhere."
"Nonsense. You and I are going to go shopping."
"The last thing I want to do now is buy a Hermès handbag, and I certainly don't need another pair of Christian Louboutin or Jimmy Choo heels. My shoe rack is already filled with shoes I hardly wear now."
"That's not the kind of shopping trip I had in mind," Marlee explained. "I want to drive up the coast, have lunch and browse in those quaint little shops New England is so famous for."
"Are we talking about a liquid lunch?"
"I'm sure we can find someplace that sells alcohol as well as food. In fact, I've got just the place in mind."
Twenty minutes later, the two women were in Marlee's Mercedes heading north on the interstate.
"Where are you taking me?" Carol asked. "I hope not Salem! I'm not interested in all that witch stuff they sell up there."
"Why not? You might buy a voodoo doll to use on Bernard or April."
"Please! Did you have to bring up that little bitch's name?"
"Sorry. And don't worry. We're not going to Salem. I have a much better destination in mind."
Approximately half an hour north of Boston, the driver put on her turn signal and took the exit for Route 692. Soon the two women came upon a sign proclaiming WELCOME TO PURITAN FALLS.
"Here we are," Marlee announced and looked at the clock on her dashboard. "It's early yet. Do you want to do some shopping before we stop for lunch?"
"Where exactly are we?"
"Puritan Falls. It's such a picturesque little village, and because it's not nearly as well known as Salem, Plymouth or Cape Cod, it won't be crowded with tourists."
Marlee found a parking spot on Essex Street in front of The Quill and Dagger bookshop. Carol looked across the street at the sign above the Bell, Book and Candle and complained that the town seemed to have much in common with Salem.
"Look," her friend said. "There's an antique shop. I don't think it was there the last time I visited."
"Treasure Hunt Antiques," the dejected divorcee read. "What could you possibly want to buy in there?"
"Who said we were going to buy anything? I enjoy just browsing. Oh, and that's got to be a new business, too," Marlee declared upon seeing the Sweet Indulgence candy store. "This little town just keeps getting better and better. After we eat lunch, we can visit the teashop and then finish off our day with some gourmet chocolates."
"Tea? That wasn't what I had in mind when I said I wanted a liquid lunch."
"Don't worry. We're going to the Sons of Liberty Tavern. You can get a drink there."
Douglas Pemberly stopped thumbing through a value guide on baseball cards when he heard the two women enter his shop.
"Good morning," he greeted them. "Is there something specific I can help you with?"
"No," Marlee replied. "We're just looking."
"Be my guest. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask."
Carol, who preferred modern décor to antiques, dutifully followed behind her friend as she walked up and down the aisles, looking at the items for sale.
"That is nice," Marlee said, pointing to a Royal Doulton two-handle Toby Jug of Charles Dickens that featured six of the author's characters on the handles.
Before she made it to the cash register with her Toby Jug, the Remco Paul McCartney doll caught her friend's attention.
"My older sister had one of these back in the Sixties when the Beatles were still together," Carol said. "She had all four dolls, but I was partial to Paul. Even as young as I was, I thought he was so cute!"
"Why don't you get it?" her friend suggested.
"What would I do with a doll?"
"Women like us buy things not because we need them but because they make us feel good," Marlee laughed. "They take our minds off our troubles. That's why they refer to it as retail therapy."
Managing a smile for the first time that day, Carol took the vinyl Paul McCartney up to the register. She took her credit card out of her handbag and paid for both the Toby Jug and the Beatle doll. When Douglas handed her the charge slip to sign, she saw the skull pen on the counter and reached for it.
"Oh, here's a pen," Douglas said, producing a retractable ballpoint pen. "Use this."
She signed her name and then picked up the other pen.
"Is this for sale?"
"Um, not really. Honestly, we found it in our inventory, but I have no idea if it's worth anything."
"I'll give you twenty dollars for it," Carol offered.
"It's yours," the shopkeeper announced with surprise.
"What are you going to do with that dreadful-looking thing?" Marlee teased.
"Since I was housebound during the pandemic, I've been keeping a diary. I've been going through pen refills like crazy. Besides, it will serve as a kind of memento mori, a remembrance that death is inevitable."
* * *
Upon returning home to her Beacon Hill brownstone, Carol Torrence changed into comfortable loungewear, poured herself a glass of wine and took her latest journal out of her desk drawer. The book was not a traditional diary in that it did not have dates at the top of the pages. Instead, it was a Gucci leather-bound journal filled with two hundred lined white pages. The only writing it contained was Carol's own.
It was true that she first began making entries during the pandemic, but it was not boredom that led her to pick up her Montblanc pen and put words on paper. It was not long after she and her husband, Bernard, began their self-imposed confinement that she first suspected he was seeing another woman. She had never known him to be so secretive about his emails or to step outside the house when he spoke on his cell phone. Her suspicions were strengthened when he would get into his car and disappear for several hours at a time, claiming cabin fever had forced him to take long drives by himself.
Rather than confront Bernard, Carol kept track of her observations in a journal and recorded when he left the house and when he returned. Once people were vaccinated and the world began to return to normal, her husband finally admitted to the affair. He also asked for a divorce. At that point, the journal became the vehicle by which the jilted wife could unleash her anger against both Bernard and April Huxtable, his twenty-two-year-old mistress. Even now, sixteen months after the divorce was finalized, the bitter ex-wife still scribbled her incensed comments on the pages of a journal.
Recently, she began her seventh volume since the first six were filled from cover to cover with vituperations against the adulterous lovers who had wronged her. It differed from the previous journals in that she sometimes included snippets not related to Bernard or April. For instance, she wrote about her trip to New York and seeing Hamilton on Broadway. She also made reference to attending Marlee's birthday celebration at Rare, Boston's most expensive restaurant. However, the majority of her comments still centered on her hatred of her ex-husband and his current wife.
As she curled up on her couch, pen in hand, she wrote about her day in Puritan Falls. She enjoyed the lunch at the Sons of Liberty Tavern (she had limited her alcohol consumption to only two strawberry daiquiris), the cream tea at Victoria's English Tea Shoppe and the milk chocolate cookie butter truffles from Sweet Indulgence. Carol was writing about her purchase of the Paul McCartney doll from Treasure Hunt Antiques when the ink ran out of her pen. Rather than dig through her desk drawer for a refill, she took the skull pen she bought from Douglas Pemberly out of her handbag. She removed the cap and continued to write. Four words completed the description of her trip: "... go back there someday."
It had been a good day. One of the few she enjoyed since learning of her husband's infidelity. Sadly, the mood did not last. Her anger and resentment returned once she was back in the brownstone. The grip on the pen tightened, and she pressed the nib of the fountain pen down harder on the paper.
"He would probably think I was stupid for buying that doll," she wrote. "He would no doubt laugh and me and suggest I was going through a second childhood. He should talk! He's the one who married a woman young enough to be his daughter! Why did he have to have an affair, anyway? Why couldn't he stay in the house and bake bread or binge-watch Tiger King like everyone else did during the pandemic?"
Carol looked down at the red ink on the page, a sharp contrast with the blue ink of her Montblanc pen. Red was much more suitable to the emotion she felt. Red better expressed rage. People often describe an angry person as "seeing red." In her case, "writing red" would more be apropos.
"Damn him!" she continued to write despite the tears that were now brimming in her eyes and clouding her vision. "Damn, damn, damn, DAMN!!!!!!"
Her diatribe continued for two more pages. The words got progressively more vulgar, and her writing was punctuated with even more exclamation points. Finally, she filled up the last one-third of the current page by printing in letters six lines in height, "I HATE YOU BERNARD. I WISH YOU WERE DEAD!"
As Carol put the cap back on the skull fountain pen, she felt a strange tingling sensation in the fingers of her right hand. It was as though the hand had fallen asleep and was now reawakening. She curled and uncurled her fingers until normal feeling returned. Then she put the pen back in her handbag and returned the journal to her desk.
"In the words of Scarlett O'Hara, tomorrow is another day."
* * *
Since she had little interest in world or national affairs, Carol Torrence did not subscribe to any newspaper, either in print or online. She rarely watched TV news coverage. So, when Marlee Dunbar phoned her to offer condolences, she had no idea what her friend felt sorry about.
"Haven't you heard?" Marlee asked.
"Heard what?"
"Bernard had a heart attack last night. He's dead."
Carol received the news with mixed emotions. Part of her was saddened that the man she had been married to for more than twenty years had died, but another part of her, one that was mean and vindictive, rejoiced.
It serves him right! that latter part of her thought. He got just what he deserved.
"Would you like me to come over and keep you company?" Marlee offered. "You might not want to be alone at a time like this."
"For Christ's sake! It's not as though we were still married. We're divorced."
"That doesn't mean you still don't have feelings for the man."
Yeah, I've got feelings for him, the mean, vindictive part of Carol wanted to shout out. I hate the bastard!
"It's his own fault, you know," the kinder, more compassionate part replied. "He didn't take care of himself. He had hypertension and high blood pressure, and the stress of running such a huge company made matters worse."
Not to mention his running around after that little tramp, mean and vindictive added.
"Don't worry about me," kind and compassion declared. "I'll be fine. I'm going to start reading that Martha Grimes novel I picked up in that bookstore we visited yesterday, the one with the funny name."
"The Quill and Dagger."
"That's it. I'm going to relax, read my book, have a few glasses of wine and finish the chocolate we bought."
"Well, if you change your mind, just give me a call."
Before beginning her book, Carol took her journal out of her desk. She reached into the drawer and took out a refill for her Montblanc pen.
"Marlee phoned me this morning with incredible news," Carol wrote. "Bernard is dead! I couldn't believe it when I heard it!"
As though she were texting and inserting emojis, she drew a smiley face below that sentence.
"I wonder how his little slut is taking the news. I hope she's crying her eyes out. I'm only sorry that she'll walk away a rich widow—a very rich widow. Not bad for a girl from Dorchester."
Keeping her writing to a minimum, she filled the balance of the page with a crude drawing of a tombstone on which she wrote "Bernard. May you never rest in peace!" She then closed the journal and put the pen back in her drawer.
"Now, I'll go finish my chocolates while I read the latest adventures of Superintendent Richard Jury of Scotland Yard and his good friend, Melrose Plant."
* * *
"You must have a hot date," Janel, the stylist at Boston's most exclusive hair salon, remarked.
"What makes you think that?" Carol laughed—she was in an exceptionally chipper mood for once.
"A new hairdo, a facial, a complete makeover and a manicure. You're going through a lot of trouble to look your best. Do I know him?"
"It's not a man I want to impress."
"Oh," Janel said, taken by surprise. "I didn't know."
The stylist never suspected her client was a lesbian. She wondered if that was why Bernard had left her for another woman.
"It's not what you think," Carol said, correctly reading the expression on the stylist's face. "I'm going to attend my ex-husband's funeral, and I don't want his widow to see me as a frumpy ex-wife."
"Is it common practice for an ex-wife to attend a funeral if her husband remarried?"
"I don't care if it is or if it isn't. I want to go and see Bernard lying in his casket. I want to see April in her widow's weeds, crying over his dead body. But maybe she's not too broken up about his passing. After all, she probably married him for his money, and now she's got it all."
"Do you think she'll be all dolled up for the funeral, too?" Janel asked.
"I'd bet money on it. She'll no doubt be wearing a Chanel original—black, to be sure. Maybe even a hat with a small veil. And she'll dab her eyes with a lace hankie. All very dramatic, no doubt."
"And what are you going to wear?"
"A Bottega Veneta I picked up in Milan. It's elegant but not too sexy. After all, I'm going to a funeral, not a cocktail party."
Janel thought it was in bad taste for her client to take so much enjoyment from her ex-husband's death, but she held her tongue. It was a wise decision since the first Mrs. Torrence was a big tipper.
After leaving the salon, Carol took a taxi back to Beacon Hill. With her maid's help, she put on the black dress. Standing in front of the full-length, trifold mirror, she examined her reflection from all three angles.
I wish I had known Bernard was going to kick the bucket. I could have gone on a diet and lost a few pounds. Oh, well, that's why God invented Lycra, to make some of the tummy fat disappear.
"The viewing won't be for another two hours," the maid said. "Would you like me to make you dinner or will you and Mrs. Dunbar stop and get something to eat on the way?"
"I'll have a light supper after the viewing is over. I don't want to mess up my lipstick by eating or drinking anything before."
As she waited for Marlee to arrive, Carol went to her desk and retrieved the journal and the Montblanc pen.
"Today's the big day," she wrote and included another smiley face. "I get to see Bernard's dead body. I wonder what April thought of the flowers I sent! I made sure the florist sent a larger, more elaborate funeral spray than the one the widow selected. I picked the perfect banner to display across the flowers: Gone But Not Forgotten. How true! It will be a cold day in hell before I forget that Bernard left me for another woman. Speaking of hell, I wonder how he likes it there. I hope he brought along strong sunscreen! LOL!"
Planning on writing another entry when she returned home from the viewing, she left the journal on her bed and picked up her Martha Grimes novel. It was hard to keep her mind on what she was reading, though. The fictional murder in Long Piddleton paled in comparison to Bernard's death. After reading the same page three times and not remembering a single fact, she tossed the book next to the journal and began pacing around her room. Frequently glancing down at her diamond watch, she counted the minutes until her friend arrived. Finally, she heard the doorbell ring.
"You look fantastic!" Marlee exclaimed when Carol answered the door. "That outfit makes my old Chanel suit look like a hand-me-down."
"You look fine. Let's go."
"What's the rush?"
"I can't wait to see Bernard deader than the proverbial doornail."
Marlee had not seen her friend so cheerful and garrulous in years. Even before the divorce, Carol had not shown such happiness.
"Here we are," Marlee announced before getting out of the car and handing her keys to the valet parking attendant. "Try not to smile so much. It's in bad taste."
The warning proved to be unnecessary. When Carol stepped inside the funeral parlor, she encountered April in the lobby. The widow wore no makeup. Her blond hair was worn down around her shoulders. It had been washed but not styled. Her blue eyes were red from crying.
Of course, they are, Carol thought bitterly. She has to put on a good show.
The young widow wore no diamond earrings, no pearl necklace. There was no jewelry at all to accessorize the basic black sheath she wore. Unlike the ex-wife's outfit, the dress April wore was unremarkable. It had short sleeves, a modest neckline and no embellishments. As Carol's eyes traveled from the dress's neckline to the hem, her eyes widened in astonishment. There was a pronounced bump on her midsection.
She's pregnant! the previously jubilant woman realized with horror. How could that be? Bernard never wanted children!
At least that was what he had told Carol.
* * *
The Carol Torrence who returned to her Beacon Hill brownstone was not the same one who had left it earlier that day. Gone was the lightheartedness and satisfaction. They were replaced by antagonism and a feeling of injustice. She had always wanted a family, but Bernard vetoed the idea. Yet he obviously changed his mind about children once he married April.
"Damn him!" she screamed. "I could have been a mother. I would at least have had a partial family after he left me."
Rather than rant to an empty house, she went into her bedroom and picked the journal up off the bed.
"Where did that pen go?" she wondered, unaware that the Montblanc had been pushed beneath her pillow sham when she tossed the Martha Grimes novel on the bed.
She did not bother to search for it. Instead, she took the skull fountain pen out of her purse.
"She's pregnant!" she scribbled on the next blank page in large letters, writing with so much force that she nearly drove the nib of the pen through the paper. "How could he do this to me? Just when I was beginning to believe there might be some divine justice in the world, I have to deal with this!"
For four full pages, she continued spewing vitriol in the Gucci journal. On the fifth page, she stopped referring to the objects of her hate with the pronouns she and he and finally wrote their names.
"I hate you April Huxtable Torrence!!! The only person I hate more than you is Bernard!!!!!" she scrawled, the number of exclamation points increasing with her escalating fury.
Once she filled the rest of the page with scowling rather than smiling emoji faces, she closed the leather cover of her journal and threw it and the pen against her bedroom wall. The strange tingling sensation returned to her fingers. Perhaps she had held the pen too tightly.
Knowing she would never be able to fall asleep in her current state of mind, Carol took a hot bath and swallowed an Ambien tablet with a cup of warm milk. It was nearly nine hours later when her eyes opened. The sun was shining through her bedroom window, and she regretted not having closed the blinds before she got into bed the previous night. As she went downstairs to the dining room, she admitted that the world seemed a little brighter—but not much. She was still angry that her rival for Bernard's affection was pregnant.
"Well, she may be having a kid, but her husband is dead. I suppose I can take comfort in that."
However, April was young and pretty; and thanks to inheriting her husband's fortune, she was now a very wealthy woman. No doubt, she would have no trouble finding someone to take Bernard's place. Carol, although neither young nor pretty, was a rich woman herself. But entering into another marriage was out of the question. She would never be able to trust a man again.
"What would you like for breakfast?" the maid inquired.
"Just coffee and toast."
Carol was finishing her second piece of buttered rye toast when her cell phone rang.
"Who can that be? I haven't even finished my cup of coffee yet!"
Before answering, she looked at the caller ID.
"Marlee, how are you this morning?"
"I'm all right," her friend answered. "What about you?"
"Fine and dandy. Hunky-dory. A-OK. Super-duper. All those other stupid clichés. Take your pick."
"From your sarcastic tone, I take it you're not doing well."
"Why would you say that? Just become the woman I loathe is going to have the baby I was denied, why would I be upset about it?"
"Maybe we should get out of the city for a while," Marlee suggested. "We can have lunch. Do a little shopping."
Carol's first instinct was to decline the invitation, but then she remembered the day the two friends had shared in Puritan Falls and reconsidered.
"You know, I'd actually like to do that."
"Good. I'll pick you up in an hour and a half."
* * *
Although the village was less than an hour away from Boston, in many ways, visiting Puritan Falls seemed like traveling back in time. There were no big box stores, no fast-food chains, no high-rise buildings and very little traffic. Best of all, for the most part, the people were friendly and welcoming.
"You know," Carol said when her friend parked the Mercedes on Essex Street, "I wouldn't mind living here."
"You'd seriously consider leaving Boston!" Marlee exclaimed. "But you were born and raised in that brownstone on Beacon Hill."
"That was also where I lived with my husband when we were married. Maybe it's time I moved on—both literally and figuratively."
"Promise me you'll give the matter serious thought and not go rushing into anything you might later regret."
The two women walked down Essex to The Quill and Dagger bookstore.
"Have you finished that novel already?" Marlee asked.
"No, but I want to buy a latte at the coffee bar."
From The Quill and Dagger, they went to Hidden Treasures Antiques where Marlee bought a vintage Fabergé egg-shaped pendant. Their next stop was Sweet Indulgence. Desiree LeFleur, the chocolatier, gave them each a sample of her truffle of the day: raspberry cheesecake swirl in dark chocolate.
"Mmm! I'll take a pound of them," Carol declared.
Desiree glanced at the customer with narrowed eyes as she put the truffles into a box.
When she handed her the packaged chocolates, she said mysteriously, "You've suffered a loss recently."
"Yes," Carol admitted with surprise. "My ex-husband died a few days ago. How did you know?"
"I've been blessed—or cursed, depending on your point of view—with second sight," the African-American woman from New Orleans explained.
"And you knew someone near to me died recently?"
Desiree nodded her head. She had sensed death the moment Carol Torrence walked into her shop. However, it still clung to the woman when it should have faded given that her husband died several days ago. She sensed her customer had more bad news ahead of her.
"I don't know about you," Marlee announced when they left the candy store, "but I'm hungry for lunch."
"Me, too."
Rather than return to the Sons of Liberty Tavern, they decided to have lunch at the Green Man Pub.
"I'm in the mood for fish and chips," Marlee declared.
"I think I'll have a boxty. I had one in Dublin, but they're not very popular on this side of the Atlantic."
Liam Devlin, who was tending bar, had turned the large screen television on so that the pub's patrons could watch the Red Sox game while they ate lunch. Carol had no interest in baseball or any other sport, but her attention was drawn to the screen during the newsbreak.
"A tragic story out of Boston," the newscaster said. "The pregnant widow of multimillionaire Bernard Torrence was killed in a car accident this morning on the Massachusetts Turnpike."
Details followed but Carol paid no attention to them.
"I don't believe it!" Marlee exclaimed. "I know you blame her for breaking up your marriage, but you can't help feeling sorry for her and her unborn child."
Carol had several feelings about the unexpected death of her rival, but sorrow was not one of them.
* * *
No sooner did Carol kick off her shoes in the foyer of her home than she raced into her bedroom. Her maid had found the journal on the floor when she cleaned the room and returned it to her employer's desk. Beside it was the skull fountain pen. Carol opened the cover and began writing.
"Yes, there is a God!" she wrote, following the sentence with a huge smiley face. "They are both dead! Hallelujah! Hurray! Hurrah! Huzza! Whoopee! Goody, goody gumdrops! Etc. Etc."
More smiley faces.
She gave no thought to the unborn child that died in its mother's womb. Why should she? It wasn't her child. After venting her spleen with four pages of hate-filled comments about the deceased second Mrs. Bernard, she concluded her journal entry with the following sentence. "Despite Marlee Dunbar's misgivings, I think I will relocate to Puritan Falls—if not for its scenic beauty, then for the delicious chocolates at Sweet Indulgence and the boxties at the Green Man Pub."
For the first time since she discovered her husband's infidelity, Carol felt no trace of bitterness. It was as though the two recent deaths had soothed her heartache. Her fingers tingling, she put the pen and journal in her desk drawer and turned on her laptop. She visited Zillow and realtor.com to search for homes available in Puritan Falls.
"I'll still keep the brownstone," she decided. "I might need a place to stay when I'm in Boston."
A new home was not all she saw on the horizon. She wanted a new life. Plays, concerts, the opera, the symphony—none of which did they have in the small Massachusetts village she hoped to call home.
Despite having gone out to lunch, Carol was hungry for dinner. The cook made her chicken cordon bleu, which she washed down with two glasses of wine. Then she went to the living room where she continued reading the Martha Grimes novel.
"Once I move to Puritan Falls, I'll buy my books at that bookstore there rather than order them on Amazon. That way, I can have coffee there, too. And there's that charming little tea shop along the coast. I'm so glad Marlee took me to that town. I absolutely fell in love with it!"
Carol was about to find out the identity of the killer in her book when the telephone rang. Marlee Dunbar's name was not on the caller ID, but her husband's was.
"Are you calling to ask me what your wife wants for her birthday?" she asked in a lighthearted manner.
After a brief silence, Gareth Dunbar replied, "No. I'm afraid I have some bad news."
"What is it? What's wrong?"
"It's Marlee. She ... she died."
"How? I spent the afternoon with her, and she was fine."
"The doctor said it was probably an aneurysm, but he won't know for sure until he does an autopsy."
After offering some meaningless words of sympathy, Carol ended the call. She sat on her sofa, staring off into space, not believing what had happened. Three people close to her—two enemies and a dear friend—died within a period of roughly a week.
"Could all these deaths have been nothing more than a tragic coincidence? Or was I somehow to blame for them?"
She remembered that Desiree LeFleur had sensed her recent loss. Did the chocolatier know if she was somehow cursed?
"Tomorrow, after I pay a brief visit to Gareth, I'll head up to Puritan Falls and see the woman."
Before going to bed that night, she went to her desk and wrote her third journal entry of the day. Once again, she used the skull pen that was beside the leather-bound volume.
"I can't help feeling that all three deaths—four if you count the unborn baby—are somehow my fault. I know it's ridiculous. After all, I'm not a witch or anything like that. I'm just Carol Torrence ...."
No sooner did she write her name on the page than she felt the familiar tingling in her hand. It traveled up her arm and made its way to her chest. She lifted the skull pen off the paper. Red ink—no, not ink but blood—dripped down from the.
"What the ...?"
Carol never finished asking her question. The tingling sensation reached her heart. She slumped forward. Her maid found her dead at her desk the following morning. The antique poison pen that had claimed countless lives for more than a century and a half was still clutched in her hand.
The only sensation I feel when I use this pen is a craving for chocolate.
