“There, my baby. Sit now.” Cicely came back, eased Lissette into a chair. “Please, can’t you tell us something? Anything? It’s so hard not knowing why, or how.”
Eve looked into Lissette’s eyes. “Your husband was killed when he ingested a lethal amount of ricin.”
“Ingested? Ate? Ricin? What is it?”
“It’s poison,” Cicely murmured and her eyes were huge now, horrified now. “I know this. This is poison.”
“Poison? But why would he…how did he…”
“It was in the hot chocolate,” Eve told Lissette and watched the woman go gray.
“No. No. No. That’s not right. I made it for him. I made it myself. Every morning once the weather gets cold. And when it warms again, I make him sweet cold tea. Every day. You think I hurt Craig? You think I—”
“No, I don’t.” After more than eleven years on the job, Eve knew when to trust her gut. “But in order to clear you so that we can pursue other avenues, we’d like to look around the apartment. We’d like your permission to search it, to go through your husband’s computer, his work, his personal items.”
“Wait. Please.” Lissette gripped her mother’s hand. “You said poison. You said Craig was poisoned. How could he have taken poison by mistake?”
“They don’t think it was a mistake,” Cicely said. “Do you?”
“N
o.”
“But then…” Color came back into Lissette’s face, dull and red as she slowly rose to her feet. “Deliberately? Someone did this to him? For what? He hurt no one, ever. Not ever.”
“Mrs. Foster, we believe ricin was added to your husband’s drink at some point on the morning he died.”
“But I made the drink. I made it.” She rushed over to the little kitchen area. “Here, right here. Every morning I make his lunch because it pleases him so much. It takes only a few minutes, and it pleases him so much, I…”
Cicely murmured in French as she went to her daughter.
“No, no, no. I made it just like every morning. The sandwich, the fruit, the chips he likes. And I made the chocolate like you taught me, Maman. He loves it. Right here, right here.” She spread her hands. “I made the chocolate.”
“Lissy.” Cicely laid her hands on her daughter’s damp cheeks. “Don’t do this.”
“Lissette, did you make the drink in a black insulated thermos?”
“Yes, yes.” Lissette leaned against her mother. “The jumbo-sized go-cup. With his name on it. I gave it to him when he started at the school, a little gift, and the black lunch bag.”
“This is what he’d normally carry to school?”
“Every day, yes. Every day. What difference does it make?”
“It’s just details,” Eve said easily. “We’re investigating both how and why this was done, so details matter. We’d like to look through your apartment.”
“Why?” Lissette stared down at her hands. “Why would anyone hurt Craig?”
“I don’t have answers for you at this time.”
“You want to look through our things because it will help you find the answers?”
“Yes.”
“Look at anything, at everything. He has more at the school. On his computer there, in his desk there. Do whatever you need to do. I don’t want to watch. I don’t want to watch while you go through our things. Can we go out?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Maman, we’ll go out, and let them…Maman, someone killed Craig. Maman.”