The two men stared at the body on the dining room floor while they waited for the police to arrive.
Simon shrugged his shoulders and said, “Not much to tell you, Doc. It happened quickly. She was eating her dinner and she just started convulsing, then she keeled over. That’s when I called you. Convenient having a doctor living next door. So, what killed her? How did she die?”
The doctor shook his head at the gruesome sight of the old woman’s bulging eyes. “Horribly, I’d say. Looks like she ingested some type of fast-acting poison, maybe for rats, which gave her massive internal hemorrhaging. Hence the bloating and discoloration.”
“She ate poison? Why on earth would she do that? And actually…it looks like she’s smiling, doesn’t it? Ain’t that a kicker.” Simon gave her a mocking grin in return.
The doctor looked curiously at Simon and remarked, “I must say, you don’t seem overly upset that your mother is dead. You’re standing there calmly finishing up your meal.”
“Actually, I’m relieved to see the bitch go to hell. Living together we fought all the time, about every damn thing. She threatened to kill me. I was in constant fear she’d poison me. As a matter-of-fact, I wouldn’t eat anything she cooked unless I saw her eating it first.”
“Oh, really?” inquired the doctor. “How badly did she want you dead? Bad enough to…?”
“To what?” asked Simon as a strange look came over his face. “Doc…did you say… she ate a spoonful of poison?”
“No, she’s got frosting on her lips. I’d say she baked the poison into that cake. And knowingly ate a slice.”
Simon dropped his dish. He felt the stomach cramps begin before the cake crumbs hit the floor.
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S.E.Greco grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs. After a career as a scientist/engineer at a major tech company, he turned to penning fiction. His short stories have appeared recently in Suspense Magazine, The Dark City Crime and Mystery Magazine, Literary Hatchet, Scarlet Leaf Review, CommuterLit, Bards and Sages Quarterly, Society of Misfit Stories, Suspense Unimagined, Strange Stories, and Going Down Swinging: Pigeonholed. His work has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize anthology and he was a runner-up for the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s 2020 Derringer Award for best mystery novelette. Visit him at segrecoauthor.com.
