FOXGLOVE TEA

Sheila was having a hard time coping. Her boyfriend and her best friend were dead. She'd just lost her job due to budget cuts and now she lived at home with her mother and stepfather, a man she hated. He never had a kind thing to say. What her mother saw in the bloated, overconfident blowhard she didn't know and honestly didn't care.

Foxglove/Digitalis - Wikipedia      

One night she overheard a discussion and she was the subject.

"Why don't we help set her up in her own apartment?" George asked.

"No, not yet. She's still too fragile. She just lost the love of her life, and before that her closest friend. She needs family George, at least until we get back from Australia."

Sheila was pleased. Her mother wouldn't be bullied, and while she hated living in a house with two oversexed middle-aged roommates, she wasn't ready to leave, yet.

"I don't know Darla, but it's been a year, she needs to bite the bullet and make a life for herself."

"Please Georgie, just a few more months. She and I have never been closer. Pretty please, I'll do that special thing you like."

Her mother came to her rescue, as always, and Sheila had to admit she did love their weekly shopping and spa excursions. Shopping therapy her mother called it, besides, George was loaded. After Sheila had moved in, he'd paid off her car loan and all her credit cards. She was debt free. Still, she couldn't stand the man.

George's money was all Sheila's mom talked about, that and the next vacation they were planning. Sheila's eavesdropping paid off. She heard her mother ask about the new will, had George made the changes he'd promised. Sheila moved closer to hear the answer.

"Of course, Darla, just as agreed. A sizable sum for each kid upon my passing, but for you, all the rest. Now come on over here and give me some sugar, you know what Daddy likes."

Darla giggled and Sheila almost gagged at the sounds she heard coming from her parents.

*****

Several months later, just weeks before their trip to Australia, George had a heart attack. They cancelled the trip and Sheila became nursemaid to a very cranky man. Darla took over the management of George's holdings, restaurants, bowling alleys, and movie theaters and relied on her daughter to keep George happy at home. Sheila hated the job, but pretended otherwise, and waited on George as a doting daughter should.

Just one week after George got home from the hospital, he was dead.

"Myocardial Infarction, not unusual," the coroner said, "even after a mild heart attack."

The statistics bore him out. No autopsy needed.

Sheila was thrilled. But just in case, she'd made sure all evidence of the foxglove she'd used to prepare George's tea with had been cleared, cleaned, and burned. She cried at George's funeral, but later she drank a champagne toast to her ingenuity.

Now $100,000 dollars richer, she took her mother to Paris to cheer her up.

Yolanda Renée © 2015

*****

Digitalis is a genus of a flower commonly called foxgloves. It is also the term used for the drugs used in cardiac care.

Sheila has done her homework and so far she's managed three murders. Can she continue? Will someone notice the bodies piling up around her? Or is she going to get away with murder, again?

*****

Read about Sheila's first murder in Killer Flowers.
Read about Sheila's second murder in Killer Spice.