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LEA TASSIE

Seven spades.”

“Double.”

“Pass.”

“Pass.”

“Redouble!” A smug smile accompanied Laurene Jones’ triumphant bid. It was clear she thought making seven spades would be a snap.

A grand slam, doubled, redoubled and vulnerable. If Laurene made her contract, she and Marion would win the rubber and be up 3,140 points. That was as many points in one hand as I usually made in a whole afternoon of bridge.

My partner, Emily, stared at her cards as if wondering why she’d ever had the temerity to double Laurene’s bid, then gazed out my living room window at the log booms in the rain-lashed inlet and beyond to the Coast Range. The view of forested mountains apparently offered no inspiration, for she sighed and examined her cards again.

Laurene was always full of herself, but when she made a doubled contract, she crowed so much that I wanted to take a dull knife to her tongue. There can be grace in winning as well as losing, but Laurene’s grace was restricted to her perfectly coiffed blonde hair, her perfectly matched ensembles and her perfectly kept house. Oh yes, and her expertly brewed coffee and exquisitely baked brownies.

“It’s your lead, Emily,” I said. “And don’t worry. We’re not playing for money.”

Emily led the deuce of hearts. Marion laid out the dummy’s hand, shoved her chair back and rose.

“Where are you going?” Laurene demanded.

“Bathroom break.” Marion’s smile was strained. She hated listening to Laurene brag as much as Emily and I, but she usually managed to be gracious.

“Come and see what I have in my hand,” Laurene said, “and watch how I handle the play. You need to learn more about strategy.”

Marion, the youngest at forty, pushed her red hair back over her shoulders, smoothed her silk shirt over the hips of her Levis and went dutifully to stand behind her partner’s chair, too gracious even to thumb her nose at the back of Laurene’s head.

Laurene paused after each trick, whispering to Marion about the clever play she’d just made and the even cleverer play she intended to make next. Emily and I knew because she’d done the same thing to us, more times than we wanted to remember. The hand seemed to go on forever.

“If you’ve got all the tricks, why don’t you lay your hand down and claim?” I asked.

“That would be a waste of a good teaching hand, dear. I want to play it right through to the end, so Marion can see how to do a squeeze play.”

In fact, she simply wanted to torture us. We all knew how to do a squeeze play, a simple matter of playing all your winners and forcing the defence to discard until they could no longer protect their good cards and had to discard those as well.

Laurene made the grand slam, of course. Her bridge was impeccable, like her life. She wrote the 3,140 points on her score pad, beaming as though she’d won a lottery, and said to Emily, “What on earth possessed you to double me?”

“The bidding indicated that you could be missing an ace and I thought Barbara might have it.” Emily, at seventy-three, was the senior member of our foursome, her speech as precise as her tweed suit and severe chignon of grey hair. A true lady, my husband often said.

“And you had nothing in your own hand that could take a trick? Really, Emily! You must base your bids on logic, not wishful thinking.” Laurene rose. “Barbara, do you want help in the kitchen?”

“No, no,” I said hastily, “everything is ready.” The last place I wanted her was in my messy kitchen, finding out I’d purchased the dessert from a bakery. Emily is a lady, Marion is gracious, I am a slob.

I brought the tray of coffee and brownies, and we moved to easy chairs to nibble and rehash the three rubbers we’d played.

As usual, Laurene took centre stage. She swallowed a delicate bite of her brownie, wiped her mouth carefully so as not to smudge the rose pink lipstick that matched her pant suit and said, “Ladies, I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. To play bridge properly, you must keep your minds fit, just as you should exercise and diet to keep your bodies fit.” She glanced at me. “Barbara, have you started that diet I gave you?”

“No chance. We’ve had company all week.” To tell the truth, I’d ripped it up and tossed it in the fire as soon as I came home from our last bridge session.

“You’ll never reach your ideal weight if you allow yourself to be distracted, Barbara. It’s like playing bridge. You must concentrate on your goal.”

“I’ve always thought of bridge as a game,” Emily said. “A challenging game, to be sure, but fun to play. I’m afraid I don’t wish to regard it with the same seriousness as conducting a war.”

Laurene reached for another brownie. “Barbara, these are quite good, but they do need a little something. Perhaps each one topped with a maraschino cherry?”

I have always hated maraschino cherries, but not as much as I hated Laurene at that moment. “I’ll try that next time.”

Laurene demolished the rest of the brownie without dropping so much as a crumb. “The goal in bridge is to win the most points. If you don’t play to win, why bother playing?”

“I do play to win,” I said, “but I make mistakes, like everyone else.”

“You wouldn’t if you dismissed every thought from your mind except the hand being played.” Laurene returned her serviette to its original folds and put it on her plate. “Barbara, when I have time, I’ll show you how to fold serviettes into marvellous shapes. Such touches add so much elegance to formal dinners.”

“Thank you,” I said, gritting my teeth. Elegance in my house consists of using serviettes rather than paper towels. In Marion’s house it means sitting at the table to eat rather than in front of the television. In Emily’s, a three-course meal rather than a sandwich.

“You played that grand slam very well,” Emily said. Conversation about anything other than bridge, books or bird-watching usually bores her, but I was surprised at her giving Laurene another chance to show off.

“Thank you. By focusing on the hand, I realized I could make it by doing a squeeze play, thus avoiding the need to finesse for the diamond queen. All three of you would play so much better if you focussed properly.”

“Well, of course, we’re not perfect,” Marion said with a straight face, kicking her shoes off and curling her jeans-clad legs under her in the corner armchair.

“But you could be,” Laurene went on. “You could learn to bid and play as well as I do. Why don’t you come to my bridge classes at the church hall on Tuesday evenings?”

“My book club meets on Tuesdays.” Emily crumpled her serviette. “I couldn’t possibly miss that.”

“You could get the day changed if you learned to use psychology,” Laurene said. “That’s what is needed for bridge, too. With practice, you can train yourself to interpret facial expression, tone of voice and even hesitations in bidding and play.”

Laurene rose and paced the room as though she were lecturing her class. “Now, Emily, try to get your book club to change its meeting night. Next week I’ll be teaching strategy. Playing the right card at the right time is essential to winning.”

I was itching to toss my cold coffee in her face and wreck her flawless makeup, but Emily and Marion were being such exemplars of politeness and forbearance that I felt ashamed of my impulse.

Laurene glanced at her watch and gave a tidy little shriek. “Oh, dear, I must be going. I’m teaching a class on cake decorating at four.” She buttoned and belted her rain coat and added, “I just love living in little towns like this. There’s so much one can do to improve life in them.”

After the front door closed behind her, the three of us looked at each other. “I’ll go get the coffee pot,” Marion said. “We’ve all been out of school a long time and I, for one, don’t feel like going back. We have to do something about that woman.”

“But what can we do that won’t jeopardize our husbands’ jobs?” I trotted into the kitchen after her to fetch the pan of brownies.

“The unfortunate part of living in a company town in a remote logging area,” Emily said, when we were settled with fresh coffee, “is that one’s social life is so limited. I’m lucky my husband is retired. I can offend anyone I please.”

Marion and I couldn’t. Both our husbands were in shaky management positions, reporting directly to the new superintendent, Laurene’s husband. It was well known that Winston Jones intended to make drastic cuts to management. Winston and Laurene had been in town barely three months, and already Laurene haunted our nightmares as much as Winston haunted the men’s.

“Remember how much fun we had playing bridge when Sally was the fourth?” Marion bit into another brownie. Sally was the previous super’s wife, and Laurene had bulldozed her way into Sally’s social life right down the line.

“It was wonderful,” I said. “She never snickered or bragged when she trumped somebody’s ace.”

“Let’s not waste time with regrets,” Emily said, sitting up straighter than ever in her chair. “We must find a way to deal Laurene out of our bridge life so we can find a fourth who enjoys the game and doesn’t have to be right all the time. Is there any chance Winston will be transferred?”

“Harvey overheard Winston say he’d rather be in head office in Vancouver,” Marion said, “but that it probably wouldn’t happen.”

“Well, you know Laurene,” I said. “She wants to be a big toad in a small puddle, and she probably runs Winston’s life, too.”

Emily pursed her lips. “I’d suggest her as chairperson of the library committee and the PTA in order to keep her too busy for bridge, but I’d hate to subject my old friends to such a horrible fate.”

“It wouldn’t work anyway,” Marion said. “She’d never quit our foursome; every week she gets to win points against three imperfect victims. And I don’t mean just bridge points.” She picked up one shoe and hurled it across the room. It landed on a pile of newspapers and knocked them over. “When Laurene’s finished one of her lectures about how I should have played the hand, I want to say to her, ‘Laurene, please break wind again. I love the smell of roses.’”

“I want to do more than that,” I said. “When she leans over and pats me on the shoulder and smirks while she’s telling me what I did wrong, I’d like to kill her.”

Marion and Emily looked at each other, then at me. Marion got up and headed for the liquor cabinet. She pulled out a bottle and turned to hold it up. My best scotch. Emily went to the kitchen and brought back three glasses and a tray of ice cubes.

“All right, let’s focus on psychology.” Marion poured a generous splash of scotch into each glass. “And let’s not forget concentration and perfect strategy and perhaps even a squeeze play or two.”

The following week, Marion and I arrived at Emily’s house fifteen minutes early for our bridge session. We put our trays of brownies beside Emily’s on the kitchen counter. In each of the three pans, one brownie sported a maraschino cherry nestled in thick chocolate icing.

“Did you phone Laurene?” I asked.

“Yesterday.” Emily smiled as she prepared the coffee-maker. “She’s thrilled about the contest. She said she’d have no problem judging which brownie is best.”

“Thrilled to death, I hope,” Marion said. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through three rubbers of bridge with the state my mind’s in.”

“You must learn to concentrate on the game, my dear,” I said, mimicking Laurene’s tone and accidentally knocking a knife off the counter.

Emily took my hands in hers. “I would suggest you take a couple of aspirins, Barbara. That might stop your hands trembling.”

“Could I have a shot of scotch instead? And some fresh mint to chew afterwards?”

Before Emily could get the scotch, the doorbell rang. Laurene opened the door, ushered herself into the living room and sat at the bridge table. “Ready to play, girls?” she trilled, sweeping the cards into a perfect semi-circle so that we could cut for deal.

I was amazed at how smoothly we cut the cards and took seats opposite our partners. Mine was Emily for the first rubber, and it comforted me to see her calm face across the table. My nervousness receded, curling itself into a twitching, aching lump in my stomach.

Naturally, Laurene drew the highest card and dealt the first hand. “It’s a shame you all missed my Tuesday class,” she said, snapping the cards down with the precision of a drill sergeant. “I discussed strategy. For example, you may use any legal ploy to mislead your opponents, such as false discards, or looking worried when you know perfectly well how to play the hand.”

“I think I’ll practise looking worried today,” I said. Marion kicked my foot.

Marion, who was Laurene’s partner, opened the bidding with one heart. Laurene raised it to four hearts and promptly got up to lean over Marion’s shoulder and supervise her play after I led the ace of spades. Marion looked grim, but she made an overtrick.

“You should have led another spade for Emily to trump,” Laurene said to me. “Weren’t you counting the cards? You could have prevented us taking the overtrick.”

“I forgot to count anything but trumps.”

Laurene shook her head, a sorrowful look on her face.

It took less than two hours to stumble through our usual three rubbers and, to no one’s surprise, Laurene garnered the most points. “I was at the top of my form today,” she said. “I’m certainly ready for the brownie contest.”

Emily carried in the three maraschino-topped brownies on three delicate china plates of different design and put them on the end table beside Laurene’s chair. Marion served coffee. I sat twiddling with my cup and wishing I were somewhere else. Anywhere else.

“These look lovely,” Laurene said. “Did you all use the same recipe?”

“No,” Emily replied. “We thought it would be more interesting if we each tried something different.”

“Ah, but that will make them more difficult to judge. You should have thought of duplicate bridge, where all the partnerships play exactly the same hands. It’s an excellent approach because no luck is involved, only skill. Winston and I adored playing duplicate when we lived in Vancouver. I have almost a thousand master points, you know.”

We knew.

Laurene picked up the brownie from the plate with pink roses and took a bite. She chewed slowly, raising her gaze to the ceiling as if communing with her taste buds by long distance. I tried to go on breathing; it was my brownie she was eating.

“Hmm. Tasty, though perhaps a little dry.” She dabbed at her lips with a serviette and sipped coffee before attacking the brownie on the bluebell plate. Marion shifted restlessly in her chair.

When the second brownie had disappeared down Laurene’s throat, she said: “Acceptably moist, but the chocolate was rather overshadowed by peppermint. The use of artificial flavouring requires a light touch, girls.”

The third brownie was on a daffodil plate. Laurene tasted it, frowned, tasted it again. My palms were sweating. “At first I thought there was far too much sugar in this one, but there is an underlying bitter tang. Perhaps unsweetened chocolate? Interesting, though.” She finished the brownie and held out her cup as a hint she was ready for a refill.

“So give us the word,” Marion said. “Which brownie takes the prize?”

Laurene smiled. “Definitely the second one. It had the proper moist texture and the right chocolate smoothness. Go easy on the peppermint next time, though.”

“Congratulations, Marion,” Emily said, pouring second coffees for all of us.

Marion rose, gave a mock curtsey and took a brownie from the plate Emily had placed beside the cream and sugar on the coffee table.

“Oh, but girls,” Laurene said, “where are your maraschino cherries? Those brownies are plain.”

Emily’s face went pale. I said quickly, “No one likes them but you, Laurene. We put them on yours as a special treat. As a reward for judging, you might say.”

“Well, aren’t you sweet,” she said. “They do look delicious, even without the cherries. But I’ll pass. Winston and I are guests of honour at the Rotary Club dinner tonight. I mustn’t ruin my appetite.”

Twenty excruciating minutes later, Laurene finally put her coat on.

“I should leave, too,” Marion said. “Harvey and I are going to the movies tonight. American Beauty is on. The one that won all the Academy Awards, remember?”

Laurene stood in the open doorway, smiling. “You’ll love the movie. And you’ll never guess the ending. Kevin Spacey’s character gets shot.” She left, and Emily waved at her from the front window as she drove away.

Marion, face red, slammed her fist on the coffee table, bouncing the brownies on their plate. “Not only did she ruin the movie for me, but now I’ll have to sit through it while Harvey watches.” She shoved a brownie in her mouth and bit down as if it was Laurene’s neck. “And to think that for a moment there I was regretting this brownie caper.”

We retreated to the kitchen to help Emily wash cups and plates. “Barbara, what did you put in your brownie?” Marion asked, drying the same cup for the third time.

“Amanita mushroom. The death angel.”

“I used methanol and a lot of peppermint essence to cover the taste. What about you, Emily?”

“Mashed ripe privet berries. And a great deal of sugar to hide the bitterness.” Emily polished the sink. “I was so afraid she’d catch on when she asked about the cherries. Thank you for your quick thinking, Barbara.”

“I was terrified she’d eat a fourth piece and find out it tasted different yet again from the others,” Marion said. “For sure she’d have wanted to know why.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Emily said. “Now we just have to wait. Two of those poisons take several hours to work.”

“A grand slam,” I said, “doubled and redoubled, if all three work. Will you pour me a scotch, Emily? Waiting will be the worst of all. What if she finds out? What if the police find out?”

By ten the following morning, I was such a wreck that I invited myself to Emily’s for coffee and moral support. Marion arrived a few minutes later.

“I’d put some Drambuie in the coffee,” Emily said, “but if anyone comes asking questions, it won’t look good if we’re all drunk before noon.”

We settled into our usual soft chairs, drank the rocket fuel that Emily calls coffee and gazed out the window at the clear-cut scarred mountain. There seemed to be nothing to say. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang.

Marion and I listened as Emily murmured, “Oh, dear,” and “I’m so sorry,” not once, but several times. When she hung up, she said, “Our grand slam didn’t work.”

The blood drained from my face and the starch from my knees. “What do you mean, it didn’t work?”

Emily patted my hand. “It’s all right, Barbara. Laurene was killed on the way home from her cake decorating class yesterday afternoon. A logging truck rammed her car into that stone wall the other side of the bridge. The car was crushed almost flat and, fortunately, she died instantly. Then the car burst into flames, and the firemen had a terrible time putting it out. Laurene’s body was virtually destroyed.”

“Oh my God, we’re in the clear,” Marion said, a trace of hysteria in her voice.

“Yes,” said Emily thoughtfully. “Apparently Winston is going to lay criminal charges before he goes back to Vancouver.”

Marion’s face paled to ghastly grey, and her voice quavered. “Why? Who? Emily, what are you saying?”

Emily smiled. “Winston is going to charge the truck driver. The man said Laurene was weaving all over the road and driving on the wrong side.”

“That would be the privet berries.” I clutched my coffee mug in shaking fingers. “They’re supposed to take a couple of hours or less.”

Emily nodded. “Winston is sure the man is lying; he says Laurene was always in the right.”

LEA TASSIE grew up on a northern British Columbia homestead. One of her short stories, “Guardians”, won Storyteller’s 1999 Great Canadian Short Story contest. Tour Into Danger, a suspense novel, is due out in 2001. She’s working on two novels, one serious and one a romp with two crazy cats.