Free Sugar Coated Sins by Jessica Beck Page B

for the next several months.   As the head of the board of elections, she
was the only person in her department who worked full time, so she had her own
little fiefdom during off-election times.
    “What brings you two by, not that
I’m not pleased to have the company?” she asked as Grace and I came into her
office.   “I was just about to shut down
for the day, but I’d be happy to help in any way that I can.”   She looked at me a moment before she added,
“Suzanne, are you thinking about running for mayor?”
    The question nearly shocked me
into silence.   After I took a minute to
catch my breath, I asked, “Me?   No.   Of course not.   I think George is doing a wonderful job.”
    “I agree, but since your mother
once considered running for the office, I thought you might be interested
yourself.   It’s not as outlandish an idea
as you make it seem.   You are very well
liked in April Springs.”
    “I’d vote for you,” Grace said
with a grin.
    “Let me make one thing perfectly
clear.   I’m not running for anything,” I
said.   “Hillary, have you heard about
what happened today?”
    “Yes, I got the good news not more
than an hour ago.”   She looked truly
pleased about learning that Benjamin Port had been murdered instead of dying by
accident.
    “How is murder in any way good
news?” Grace asked her.
    With her expression tempered, she
said, “I’m truly sorry that poor Benjamin is dead, but it happened fifteen
years ago, and until today, I thought that I’d been the one who’d killed him,
no matter how inadvertently.   Learning
that he was intentionally poisoned may not mean much to anyone else, but it’s
done wonders for me.”   She hesitated
before adding, “I understand that it might make me sound callous, but he’s been
gone so long.   You can’t imagine the
guilt I’ve felt over what I believed really happened to him.”
    “Just out of curiosity, why did
you give him canned chicken in the first place?” I asked.   “Were you two dating?”
    She looked a little sheepish as
she admitted, “We’d just started going out, and I planned to serve it for
dinner.   It was supposed to be a
surprise, but you can imagine my shock when I found him in his apartment with
Hilda.   Apparently Ben had been juggling
at least three of us at the same time.   Who knows how many other women he was seeing on the side.”
    “What did you do when you found Hilda
there?” I asked softly.
    “I wish I could say that I made a
scene, but I was so stunned that I left the chicken on the counter and crept
back out of his place before either one of them even knew that I was there.”
    “How did you happen to get inside
in the first place?” Grace asked.
    “Oh, everyone knew that Ben never
locked either front door of his apartment.   He found it to be a matter of pride that he could leave his place wide
open.   No doubt he did it so he wouldn’t
have to keep letting his lady friends in.   I was through with him from that moment on, but I still felt tremendous
guilt knowing that my gift had killed him.   I must say, discovering the truth has taken fifteen hard years of dread
off my shoulders.”
    It appeared that Hillary had been
guilty of nothing more than bad judgment when it came to men, something that
could be said of nearly every woman I’d ever met at one time or another in her
life, and that included myself.   There
was just one more question I had to ask her.   “By the way, where were you twenty minutes ago?”
    She looked puzzled by my
question.   “Why, I was right here at my
post, the same place I always am when I’m working.   I’ve been going over our voting records for
the county and culling the recently deceased from our lists to ensure that
there is no chance of fraud.   Why do you
ask?”
    “So, you weren’t anywhere near
Karen Harris’s home?” Grace asked her.
    “Karen?   No.   Why do you ask?”   She got a sudden
look of dread on her face.