Mysterical-E

He Said, She Says

The Perfect Poison

By Rosemary & Larry Mild

Kaliss Industries was a small, privately owned pharmaceutical firm, whose successful financial base included four pain medications. This profit center paid for the research facilities in the red brick building on Division Street. You’d think such success would create a gratifying work environment. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The firm’s current thrust was directed toward a revolutionary muscle relaxant, named Y1005 for now. The marketing department would give it an appealing brand name in due time. Its main ingredient was extracted from a rare poisonous plant root grown in southern China. It was a complicated process, depending on structural modifications accomplished at the molecular level. Of course, the toxic byproducts had to be managed safely during its manufacture.

Dotty Frettersome was the key research assistant assigned to Y1005. On this particular morning she was conveying Geraldine, a white lab rat with pink eyes and whiskered nose, back to its cage. En route, her cell phone erupted with an irritating ring tone; it blasted a second time. Dotty shifted Geraldine to her left hand and then into the pocket of her lab coat. With her right hand, she fetched the cell phone from the opposite pocket and flipped it open. Caller ID told her it was her sister, Hermiony. She pushed the talk button. “Hey Hermy, what’s going on?” Thus began a long, comfortable chat. The lanky lab assistant with boyish face but surprisingly large breasts, leaned up against the stainless steel counter, crowding Geraldine just enough to make the little one seek new space. The counter proved to be an easy hop—so easy that Dotty didn’t notice the animal’s desertion. Minutes later, she stuck her hand in her lab coat pocket to check on Geraldine and discovered the escape. “Gotta go now, Hermy. Pressing business.”

She scanned the room. At the far end of the adjacent countertop, she found the escapee just about to stick its nose into an open Petrie dish, half-filled with a clear liquid. Dotty dropped the cell phone into her pocket and raced to the rescue. Too late! Geraldine had already tasted the potion. Dotty picked up the little fuzz ball, wiped its tiny nose with a Q-tip, and gave it the once-over to check out its well-being. The rat seemed okay, so Dotty returned it to its cage.

Geraldine looked back at her through the bars, then tilted its head as though it were experiencing an internal change. Suddenly, the furry thing keeled over and died on the spot with its tiny feet straight up in the air. No wriggling, no gasping, no squeaking. Just dead.

Dotty opened the cage, removed Geraldine, and tested for its vital signs. She found none. The only apparent anomaly was that the wee body had experienced a sudden, phenomenal temperature loss. Dotty spent the rest of the day identifying the clear liquid and performing an autopsy on the departed rodent. Within ten minutes of death, the corpse had almost reached ambient temperature—the temperature of the environment—for a live lab rat. There were no signs of the errant liquid anywhere in the blood or body parts. All the organs were of expected size, shape, and consistency. So how had Geraldine died?

Dotty was baffled. Had she—and the hapless Geraldine—stumbled upon the perfect poison? Frantically trying to decide what to do next, she slid her hands under her lab hairnet and rearranged her single coiled braid. She hated the required hairnet; the elastic pressed against her temples, as if it were squeezing unwelcome thoughts in or out.

Dotty knew she had to report the disaster to her boss, Dr. Fritz Bendz, but feared his reaction. With good reason. She had her master’s degree and was only months away from her Ph.D., but Dr. Bendz still treated her like a glorified gofer, assigning her to transport lab animals and dispose of the unwanted byproducts. Occasionally, he allowed her to perform a rodent autopsy, which he found too distasteful for his lofty status as vice president of Research and Development. Early on in her employment, he scolded her for naming the rats. “Don’t get personal with the study subjects,” he warned. “You’ll lose your objectivity and skew the results.” Despite his patronizing attitude, he relied on her meticulous research and incorporated it into his professional articles.

Now she had to report Geraldine’s unfortunate demise. Dr. Benz stared at her with the humorless black eyes of a crow. “You let the animal get loose? This is not responsible conduct in my laboratory. But since the damage is done, you’d better perform a second and third experiment to confirm your findings.” Before turning to leave, he threw fat on the fire. “Don’t let it happen again. Escaped animals don’t exactly enhance this laboratory’s reputation. Or yours either.”

Dotty stood frozen to the spot, unable to come up with a credible response. After all, she’d been on a personal phone call. She wasn’t anxious to sacrifice more lab rats, but an order from the boss was non-negotiable. She stored most of the mystery solution in a glass bottle with a cork stopper and left a portion in the Petrie dish to examine potency over several days and weeks. She selected Alex as her next subject because it had bitten her the week before, and Calvin after that because of its defiant attitude, even after getting fed.

Dotty’s findings were identical. To her relief, no trace of the original toxin from the Y1005 plant source showed up. She kept exacting logs of all her work, including photographs of the unfortunate corpses. When she was done two weeks later, she filed the results and stored the original sealed bottle in a refrigerated glass cabinet.

Time passed under more pressing work and study. The dilemma of a perfect poison soon passed from her conscious memory because personal love life intervened. Sister Hermy wanted to fix her up with a bowling friend of her husband’s, one Brian Manik. Dotty’s reflexive reaction was “No, no, no!” She’d never had a successful blind date, and the very idea made her stomach churn. She always seemed to scare men away. When they found out she’d graduated from high school at fifteen and college at nineteen, majoring in organic chemistry, they fled—with an “I’ll call you” that never came. But when Hermy showed her a photo of her husband and Brian hoisting a bowling trophy, Dotty caved. Brian Manik looked like an agreeable hunk in his league T-shirt, with defined pecs and biceps and a wide, freckled smile. She had a sudden moment of panic. What would this cute hunk want with a lab denizen, a Plain Jane like her?

Not to worry. On their first date Brian found the combination he was looking for in a woman: breasts and brains. By the fifth date they had become intimate, and several dates later they moved in together in her apartment.

Their cozy conversations turned passionate, but not in a sensual way. “I hate my boss” became a mantra that appeared to bind them together. Dotty had just earned her Ph.D. and was now Dr. Frettersome, but her milestone degree didn’t improve her status in the lab. “I still get all the dirty work,” she complained, “and Dr. Bendz gets all the glory.”

Brian sympathized, but he really wanted to talk about his own job at Quality Antiques on Poplar Street. His boss was a rigid, unreasonable man, a tyrant by the alliterative name of E. Elders Everthane. No one, not even Brian, knew what the initial E stood for.

Brian Manik, his second in command, had bought a thirty-percent piece of the business when old Everthane had a cash-flow problem. The boss was now eighty-six years old, came to work every day, and still bullied all his employees, even Brian. But Brian had bought in and stayed this long for a solid-gold reason. He and Mr. Everthane had a written agreement that the lucrative business would become Brian’s when the old man died.

To Dotty, that contract meant her boyfriend had a promising financial future. Calling on her objectivity as a scientist, she assessed his potential as a husband and decided he was a keeper. He was more of a jock than a brain, but his sincerity and cuteness made a good impression in the antiques business. His sandy-red, neatly cut hair, sport coats, and earnest demeanor gave customers confidence. Nothing sly or oily about him; no image of hands rubbing together at the prospect of an authentic Chippendale chair sale.

But at home in their living room, his tone changed. “I’d like to shoot the old bastard,” Brian said, as he formed a gun with his hand and pulled the imaginary trigger. “Like this. Pow!”

“Wouldn’t poison be simpler?” Dotty asked, having no idea where those words came from. She had always considered herself a churchgoing, moral person.

“Sure,” he replied. “But what I say to you here stays here. I’m just venting, babe. No matter what the method, murder is murder. I don’t want to go to prison for life for something that will be mine legally a short while later anyway.”

“What if you could get away with it? That is, with no chance of being caught?” Dotty’s voice dripped with saccharine. “I’m being hypothetical, of course.”

“Sounds like pure fantasy to me,” Brian said, “and pretty grisly at that.”

“Not really, dear,” Dotty murmured. She looked glamorous, lounging on the sofa in a velvet pants outfit. Her light brown hair, unbraided for her lover, fell softly around her shoulders. “I happen to know of a perfect poison that leaves no trace.”

Brian jerked his head up. “What?”

It was now a matter of pride to show off her research expertise, so Dotty revealed the details of the mysterious potion: how it cryogenically swept through the victim’s system just long enough to inhibit the flow of oxygen to the body’s essentials and left no internal clues as to the primary cause of death. She also described her three autopsies.

“Wow!” Brian was flabbergasted. His green eyes turned from placid-sea to turbulent. “You’re only kidding, aren’t you? Surely, you’d never do anything that evil. Would you?”

“Of course not, silly,” Dotty chuckled. “I wasn’t suggesting that you actually commit murder.” She abruptly changed the subject.

Their relationship bloomed for more than a year, during which time the sweethearts married.

In the lab at Kaliss Industries, things weren’t so lovey-dovey. Dr. Bendz went out of his way to throw Dotty for a loop and keep her guessing. On Valentine’s Day, he brought her a two-pound box of Godiva chocolates. On her birthday, he gave her a bouquet of yellow roses. But when his new journal article came out, she discovered that he had deleted her name—even though she had done ninety percent of the research. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, she thought bitterly. What about the chocolates? The roses? Was he just trying to soften me up before the journal article came out? How should she handle a two-faced boss? She had no clue.

A few days after the Maniks’ first wedding anniversary, Dr. Bendz, like a thunderbolt out of the blue, turned on his researcher. “Your work has gotten sloppy!” he charged.

“Excuse me?” she said. “When? Show me! My logs are precise and accurate.”

The hawk-nosed Dr. Bendz glared at her, a predator nailing its prey. “Nothing specific. Just careless.”
Dotty stifled her natural reaction of “That’s a lie!” It would have buried her career for good. Instead, she spun about and fled the scene, swallowing tears of frustration and winding up in the room that housed the cold-storage cabinets. Pressing her palms against one of the doors, she rested her forehead on the frosty glass while she sobbed. Slowly, anger replaced tears, and her vision cleared. What’s his game? To get me fired! I’m a threat now that I have my doctorate. I’m accomplishing most of the research.

So what should she do about it? What could she do? A list of revenges flashed through her head. Sabotage his next research paper by stuffing it with false data? That could take a year or longer, and then he’d make her the scapegoat. Puncture the tires on his Jaguar? That would be childish; besides, she’d probably get caught. Suddenly, the cold air against her forehead brought her to her senses. Why was she thinking so far afield when the answer lay right in front of her?

Her glinting blue eyes focused on the bottle of poison she had placed in storage eighteen months earlier. A palpable aura surrounded this bottle of evil. She felt it physically—it seemed to beckon her, speak to her. “Dotty, Dotty, you can get even. You can get rid of him. Just a drop of me in his iced tea and then you can be in charge of this whole lab.”

She opened the glass door, reached in, and retrieved the bottle. Placing it on the counter, Dotty then shifted her attention to another glass cabinet, the one closest to the lab door. A black and red thermos bottle sat on the top shelf, tempting her to proceed. She brought the thermos to the counter, set it beside the poison bottle, and unscrewed both the outer cover and inner cap.

At this point, a powerful internal force seemed to propel her, as if it had been lying in wait inside her brain, bubbling, churning, itching to spring into action. Dotty fished an eye dropper out of an equipment drawer. Unsealing the poison bottle, she squeezed the eyedropper’s rubber bulb ever so lightly, and stuck it into the clear liquid. A minuscule amount oozed up into the snout. More than enough! She shifted the dropper to the top of the thermos and gently pressed the bulb once more. A single drop elongated, disgorged itself, and fell to its malevolent purpose. For good measure, a second drop joined the first.

Dotty’s fair complexion took on a deep flush from neck to forehead. Her lips pressed together, thinning into a crooked smile as she recapped the thermos and returned it to its original spot in the end cabinet. She did not feel evil, as she had expected. Instead, she rode a spectacular high. It felt good to lose all her angelic inhibitions. Then, without conscious reason, Dotty did a strange thing. Using a hypodermic needle, she filled two small glass ampoules with the poison and placed the two deadly ampoules in a blue pillbox. Next, she rinsed the dropper and needle in the sink and disposed of them in the toxic-waste bin.

Dotty was about to return the re-corked poison bottle to its proper shelf, when she thought, No one knows of my secret research into the poison. The only records of its existence are my own laboratory log books. She took the lone bottle to the sink. Turning on the hot water, she poured the contents down the drain, rinsed the glass bottle thoroughly, and sent it through two cycles of the sterilizer. When the cycles were done, she placed it on the shelf with the lineup of brand-new bottles. Dotty stuffed the incriminating log book into her briefcase for later incineration, took a fresh serialized log book from the bottom file drawer, and marked it with the same serial number as its predecessor.

Dotty darted out the back door of the cold-storage room and entered the area housing the rat cages. She spent the next half-hour feeding the little ones and caressing their soft white fur as she worked. Walking back through the cold-storage room to get to the main lab, she picked up her briefcase and made a shocking discovery. The red and black thermos had been removed from the cabinet. Dr. Bendz must have returned from his senior staff meeting. Casually striding past his open door, she saw him seated at his desk. He had the half-filled thermos cup in one hand and several pages of a typewritten report in the other.

Dr. Bendz lifted the cup to his lips and took a sip. Resuming his reading for an instant, a look of surprise reshaped his face and literally froze. His head dropped rigidly against the back of his leather chair. His crow eyes locked in a vacant stare. The papers slid to the desk; the fingers retained their clutched posture.
Dotty strode into his office as if she’d been summoned there. Slowly shutting the door, she inched around to his chair, reached out, and felt his brow: icy, blood-chilling cold. A shudder spasmed through her own body. She couldn’t call for help yet, not with the major symptom still prevalent. At last, Dr. Bendz’s hand relaxed and dropped to the desk.

She gasped for breath. Her lungs felt short of air. Her heart seemed to punch against her chest wall. Did she have time to complete her mission? What if someone knocked on the door? Ten minutes later, she felt his forehead once more. It was still cold, but she detected a slight warming. She repeated the procedure at two more ten-minute intervals. In between, she moved to the alcove housing Dr. Benz’s own lab equipment. She ran a spectral analysis of the iced tea remaining in the thermos cup to ensure that no trace remained. Thirty minutes later Dotty was perspiring. It was nothing short of a miracle that no phone calls had come and no colleagues had knocked on the door. She felt her boss’s forehead once more: almost normal, and the entire human corpse had relaxed. She had to act quickly now, before rigor mortis and lividity set in.
Dotty slipped out of his office to her own desk and set her briefcase down. Then she hurried into the hall and screamed. Her voice came out so loud and shrill and true that she inwardly congratulated herself. Doors flew open and employees flooded the hall. Her colleague Dr. Harold Winslow arrived first and Dotty fell into his arms, shaking and sobbing.

“What’s wrong, Dr. Frettersome?”

No response—calculated so.

“What’s wrong?” he repeated. “Dotty!” He put his hands on her shoulders and shook for a response. “Dotty!”

“He—I think he’s dead,” she slobbered, backing out of his grip.

“Who’s dead?”

“Dr. Bendz,” she gasped. “At his desk.”

“What’s going on here?” a new voice demanded. It was Dr. Armond Kaliss, the founder and CEO of Kaliss Industries, arriving from his plush corner office.

“It’s Fritz,” Dr. Winslow said. “Something’s happened to him.”

Kaliss’s secretary, Gaileen Plummer, was right behind him and immediately took charge of the sobbing Dr. Frettersome, while the two men hurried to check on Dr. Bendz. Thus began the long procession of curious employees, medical technicians, police, crime scene investigators, and the coroner’s cronies. The general consensus was that poor old Fritz’s heart gave out. The coroner would sort out the specifics during autopsy. The second consensus was that the old bastard was really a great guy, “a true professional, loved by many,” Dr. Kaliss said. “He’ll be missed by all who knew him.” The second consensus, was, of course, a corollary of the maxim “Remember the dead with saintliness and respect, even if there was none while they lived.”
Gaileen insisted on driving the distraught Dotty home. Before leaving the office, Dotty grabbed her briefcase and clutched it on her lap as if it were a lifeline. Gaileen guided her into the living room, and settled her on the couch before leaving. As soon as Gaileen had departed, Dotty ran to the window to make sure the secretary’s car had pulled away from the curb.

Now Dotty turned her attention to the incriminating log book she had brought home in her briefcase. First, she piled two pressed-wood logs into the fireplace. Next she balled up pages of yesterday’s newspaper and tucked them around the logs. With two wooden matches, she started a fire that soon burned hot and high. She pulled out her secret research documents. The notebook pages came apart easily, and she fed them one by one into the fire, where the flames licked them into oblivion. Afterward, taking no chances, she raked through the ashes with a fireplace poker to verify that no remnants remained.

Alone in the apartment, she could hardly wait for Brian to return home. She had to tell someone what she had done or burst. Brian was the only one she could trust. He’d understand. And when her husband came through the front door, she leaped into his arms and kissed him on the lips with great passion.

“To what do I owe this—” But without finishing his sentence, he cocked his head and sniffed. “Dotty, I smell smoke.”

“Yes, sweetheart, but not to worry. It’s been a busy day. I have so much to tell you.”

Brian stepped into the living room and walked straight to the fireplace. “Why do we need a fire? It’s June, for God’s sake, and it’s hot as hell in here.” He pulled off his jacket and threw it over the arm of a wing chair.

“I know, I know,” Dotty said, her voice soothing. “I had a few documents to get rid of.” She took his hand and pulled him toward her. “Come sit down. I have really big news.” She plopped herself on the couch and tried to pull him down next to her.

He shook her hand off and remained standing, his muscular body rigid.

“I did it,” she said. “I went ahead and did it. I finally got up the courage to do it.”

“Do what?” Brian demanded. A frown creased his forehead as his patience grew thin.

“I killed the bastard. Poisoned him from head to toe.”

“Who? What?” Brian’s voice squeaked. “Where would you get poison?”

“Remember months ago I told you about the toxic substance I discovered in the lab? How it instantly killed one of my white rats? I joked about it and said it was the perfect poison.” Dotty’s blue eyes glittered. “Well, I put two drops of it in Dr. Bendz’s iced tea. Darling, the lab will soon be mine, all mine.”

Brian sat down hard. “You’re kidding me!”

“No, I’m not.” Dotty then related the details: blow-by-blow, or rather, drop-by-drop, reveling in the re-telling of each moment.

He listened, shaking his head in disbelief. By the time she finished, panic had set into Brian’s brain. “Dotty, are you out of your mind? You could get caught. You could go to jail for this. For life!”

Dotty had thoroughly prepared herself for her husband’s reaction. “Sure I could, but I won’t get caught, because the poison doesn’t exist an hour later. It leaves no trace—there’s not a mark on his body. Everyone thinks he died of a heart attack. I was the one who discovered the body and reported the death. Why on earth would they suspect me?”

“Dear wife, how can you be so cocksure? Almost anything can go wrong; it’s Murphy’s Law.”

“Brian, don’t be so pessimistic. I know what I’m doing. Let’s wait three months and we’ll see what happens. If all goes well, we can have a go at Mr. E. Elders Everthane.” On the coffee table sat a small blue box. She flipped the lid open and showed him the two tiny ampoules nestled inside. “Nothing to it. See?”

“Nothing to it? You want me to knock off my boss?”

“Why not? You told me you wanted to shoot the man. This way is a lot neater all around. No gun to buy and get registered. No noisy gunshot. No blood.”

Brian’s breathing came fast now. He sprang to his feet. “What’s for dinner?”

#

In two weeks, the police concluded their investigation, determining that Dr. Fritz Bendz died of sudden heart failure. Dotty received the appointment she craved, as Acting Director of both the laboratory and the Y1005 project. But her exhilaration faded when she learned that the appointment was temporary. It would only last until Dr. Kaliss found a celebrity researcher to replace Dr. Bendz. In the interim, she decided she needed to enhance her reputation and prove Dr. Kaliss wrong. She deserved the permanent position. Dotty accomplished several technical breakthroughs and made a successful presentation to the corporation’s board of directors. Her work soon put her on a first-name basis with Armond Kaliss. He dropped the word “Acting” from her title. All her chips had fallen into place.

At home, she let months pass without further mention of doing away with Mr. Everthane. During her own calculated silence, a turmoil was brewing at Quality Antiques.

Brian arrived for work one Monday morning to discover carpenters swarming around his office, which was situated next to Everthane’s. On a closer look, Brian saw that the wall between their two offices was being torn down. Everthane himself materialized at his left shoulder, startling him.

“Good morning, Brian,” his boss began. “I’m making a few changes around here. I need a larger office, so if you don’t mind, I’ve expanded into yours. I’ve relocated you elsewhere.”

A cold sweat began under Brian’s armpits. Their offices were behind the retail floor, which occupied 1,500 square feet. Where could he possibly go?

“I’ve established a great corner for you in the Inventory Room. Very cozy and private. You’ll like it.” An unmistakable hint of irony lay behind the announcement.

The Inventory Room? It’s the storeroom in the damned basement! That S.O.B.! Brian descended the staircase to his new quarters. He hadn’t realized it before, but the only light in the entire storeroom filtered through narrow, dusty windows just below the ceiling. His mahogany desk, swivel chair, and tall file cabinet filled one dim corner. To get there, he had to weave his way around the shop’s inventory: a nineteenth-century English sideboard; a Louis XVI-style tub chair; a 1940s lacquered highboy; a Chinese eighteenth-century painted cabinet; a set of gilt rope-and-tassel nesting tables. And much more.

Brian thumped down into his chair and breathed deeply to collect his composure. Forcing him into the storeroom was humiliating, definitely a demotion. For the first time since Dotty’s shocking news in their living room, he began to stew and brood over the potential benefits of the perfect poison. By nature he was an amiable, low-key guy. He’d needed an impetus to commit an act of murder. Now he had one. The old man had no idea that he had broken the last straw on his trusted employee’s back.

The next morning, Brian—supposedly still second-in-command at Quality Antiques— left the house with the small blue box in a pocket of his sport coat.

He had spent hours the night before hashing over a viable plan. His boss drank neither coffee nor tea nor soda. Occasionally, he did sip directly from the spout at the water fountain. This benign habit presented a problem—until Brian remembered the bottle of Cutty Sark in the deep bottom drawer of Everthane’s desk. He’d seen it surface, with a Waterford crystal glass, whenever the old man made a major sale. That morning Everthane left the shop at 11:30 for a business lunch. Brian stole into the lavish new office, shut the door, and locked it. Removing the liquor bottle, he was pleased to find it only one-quarter full. He unscrewed the cap, and broke one of the two ampoules from the blue box over the bottle mouth. Recapping the bottle, he shook it vigorously and returned it to the bottom drawer, then slipped the pillbox back into his pocket.

Business dragged for the next two days, netting only a few sales: odd-lot gilded Dresden plates; a signed Czech figurine; and a period French end table. But on the third morning, the old man sold a seventeenth-century Italian armoire in only fair condition for $46,000—of which thirty-four percent was profit. Brian was certain the excellent sale would trigger a drink from the Cutty Sark stash, but Everthane seemed content to go without it.

The suspense was driving Brian crazy. All afternoon, hours after the old man usually left, he puttered around the shop in good humor, greeting patrons with enthusiasm. At six o’clock, Everthane told him, “You can go on home. I’ll close up for the evening.”

This is not normal, Brian thought. I’m always the one to turn off the lights, lock up, and set the alarm. With his nerves on edge, he entered the Manik apartment, headed straight for the bedroom, and slapped the pillbox—with only one ampoule left—down on the dresser top.

“Hey, grumpy!” Dotty said. “What’s with the sour puss?”

“I laced the old goat’s Cutty Sark three days ago like you told me to, but he hasn’t touched it yet.”

“Easy, Brian. I suppose he’s just waiting for something to celebrate. Didn’t you say he likes to take a nip after a big sale?”

“That’s just it. He had a humdinger of a sale this morning, but didn’t touch the bottle afterward. And he was exceptionally cheerful the rest of the day. It’s like he knows what I’m up to—and that’s freaking me out, Dotty. I can’t take another day of this.”

“Calm down, darling,” she said. “We have to be patient. Mr. Everthane isn’t going to neglect his bottle for long. Let’s have dinner. We’re having T-bone steak, and we’ll watch a few hours of television. You’ll forget the whole frustrating business.”

“Yeah, sure I will,” Brian said with a scowl. “What’ll we watch? Criminal Minds? Law and Order: Criminal Intent?” His fears followed him to bed. Bad dreams wove through brief snatches of sleep.

A weary Brian skipped breakfast. He was too tense to eat, so he returned to the shop an hour earlier than usual. He was surprised to find the front door still locked. Everthane always arrived at work first. Strange. The old man has never, ever, missed a day of work. Brian fumbled through his pocket for a key that he hadn’t used but twice in the last fifteen years. He unlocked the door and punched in the code to disarm the burglar alarm. Striding a few yards into the shop, he realized that Everthane’s door was shut tight. He rapped lightly on the cherry wood door. No response. Knocking harder yielded nothing, so he turned the knob and moved slowly into the office.

Brian stopped in his tracks. He found Everthane seated at his desk, facing the other way. Apparently, he was perusing the accounts ledger laid out on the credenza behind the desk.

“Good morning, sir. Sorry about barging in like this, but I had to open up this morning. Your—”
Everthane didn’t respond, didn’t turn around, didn’t even twitch a muscle. For a split second Brian wondered whether he was hallucinating from lack of sleep. Stepping to the side of the desk, he stared at his boss’s face. It had taken on a gray pallor unlikely even in a man of long years. The bottle of Cutty Sark, nearly empty now, stood opposite the ledger. The crystal glass lay on its side on the floor.

His boss appeared to be dead, but Brian felt no relief, even though he had waited four days for this very result. He slowly backed out of the office and trudged downstairs to his own desk, where he called 911. The Emergency Medical Technicians arrived and made it official. Because they could find no apparent cause of death, they brought in the police and crime scene team. Brian’s anxiety settled into his gut like painful gallstones.

Over the next several weeks, the investigators found nothing in the scotch bottle and even less on or in the autopsied body. Taking Everthane’s eighty-six years into account, they pronounced him dead of natural causes.

Brian and Dotty were thrilled with the outcome. That is, until an audit revealed that Quality Antiques was deeply in debt. Everthane had been tapping into the business equity for some time to feed his obsession with high living, including a recent purchase of a villa in France. Months later, when the accounts were settled and creditors paid off, the debt had consumed all of the recent sales. The business bank account contained a mere $1,300. Brian felt sick. Even the best pieces in their inventory would have to be heavily discounted. There wasn’t much left of Quality Antiques on Poplar Street.

And for fifteen years he’d thought he’d be inheriting a flourishing business.

Things were not going much better at Kaliss Industries. The Food and Drug Administration had rejected one of Dotty’s banner breakthroughs. Although her employment wasn’t in jeopardy, Armond turned personally cold. “Dr. Kaliss to you, Miss Frettersome.” She soon learned he had launched a nationwide search for a big name to head up her lab.

The once-solid Manik marriage soon turned south, with husband and wife in constant agitation over what they had done. Worse still, their evil deeds had reaped meager rewards. Each blamed the other for their ongoing regret. A wedge of mistrust turned into hate, insinuating its way into their daily routines. Separately, secretly, Dotty and Brian began checking the contents of the little blue pillbox, sometimes as often as twice a day.

On a Friday, when both the Maniks were at work, a calamity occurred, one they couldn’t possibly have predicted. It was the day their weekly cleaning service came to their home. Maizy Dubrow, from Immaculate World, was vigorously vacuuming the bedroom. Her elbow accidentally bumped the blue box off the dresser onto the floor. Curious, Maizy knelt down, opened the box, and fingered the strange-looking ampoule. It was so small and slippery that she dropped it on the carpet, where it rolled near a bed caster. After a cursory hands-on-knees search, Maizy merely shrugged. How important can a tiny thing like that be? She returned the empty pillbox to the dresser top. As she continuing to vacuum, the roar of the machine masked a slight clicking sound—as the wayward ampoule got sucked up into the vacuum cleaner’s entrails.

Maizy did not report the incident to her employers. She reasoned that it might cost her this much-needed job.
Dotty discovered the empty pillbox that night; Brian the next morning. Each suspected the other of nefarious intentions. Their last act of cooperation and togetherness as husband and wife was to spend the entire weekend tearing up the bedroom, and then every other room in the apartment, searching for the slippery little devil. At first, their mutual wrath drew boisterous accusations. As the burning ire stepped up, notch by notch, deafening silence and hurtful sneers became commonplace. Neither one accepted food or drink from the other, nor was the refrigerator a safe place to store food. They drank like animals, with their mouths gaping open at the kitchen faucet. They ate separately at fast-food joints on their way to and from work.
Two factors kept the Maniks from divorcing. One, financially they couldn’t afford to live apart. And two, they needed to keep a suspicious eye on each other.

One might say that the Maniks had created the perfect poison: a suitable life sentence for themselves, far worse than that imposed by any formal justice system.