Purple Crystals
by Fred Turner

They're going to say it was murder, but I think it might have been suicide.

People won't understand my relationship with the old man. Not that I can blame them. I don't really understand it myself. Even on the surface, things are confusing. Uncle John is, was, my stepfather. After my parents died in that awful crash, I was adopted by my father's older brother. They were coming back from a medical conference where my father was given an award. Humanitarian of the Year, the plaque said. Of course they didn't ask for my opinion.

They're going to say I stole those books, but they were really mine. He gave them to me in his will. So I took them before the will was read, before the old man's body was cold, so what? They were mine, or would have been mine, if things had gone they way they were supposed to.

Of course I didn't really know which books were valuable. I had to guess, and I could only take a few without leaving big gaps in the glassed in bookcase, and arousing suspicion. At least I got some of them right. Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn turned out to be first editions. Passing on Alcott's Little Women was a mistake, and I never heard of Sherwood Anderson. Who would have thought a first edition of something called Winesburg, Ohio could be worth close to $10,000? Too bad I can't sell them for anything near what they're worth. In fact, I'll be lucky to sell them at all.

Connie's not going to be of any help, and I can't blame her either. She graduated from high school just after I came to live with them. We only had the summer to get to know each other, then she was off to college.

I went off to college too, not that I had any choice. That's how the trust was set up. My parents had my life all planned out. They wanted me to go to college, so the trust only provided a meager monthly allowance, not really enough to get by on, unless I was enrolled in college. The restrictions didn't end there, oh no. I'm supposed to get started in a business related to my degree, the trust allows funding for that. And, I'm supposed to get married, buy a house, and have a child. As long as I follow the plan they laid out, the money flows.

Having Uncle John as my guardian and conservator didn't help loosen the trust's purse strings any. His approval, or disapproval, imposed further restrictions. He nixed bartending college and the correspondence school. He didn't approve of Jenny either.

Connie doesn't really understand the way males in the family interacted. They treated daughters differently, and she didn't have any brothers. Sure, the aloof, patriarchal attitude bothered her. She complained about her father being distant. But he treated her like a princess. Connie never saw the male dominance rituals being played out. The fact that her father always called our grandfather, Sir, didn't make an impression on her. To Connie, our grandfather was just a crusty old codger who stamped his cane and made demands on my parents until they finally hauled him off to a nursing home to die. The times she saw him, he was on his best behavior. He'd ask her for a kiss on the cheek and give her a dime, even after she'd bloomed into adolescence, even after a dime wasn't enough to buy a candy bar anymore. She thought he was "cute."

How are you supposed to understand people who don't talk to you? Of course the occasional snide and condescending comment gave me clues. They were all like that, the men in my family. It was about dominance and control. They'd talk just enough to give you a hint as to where the line was, then use disapproving glares to make you toe it.

When I told Uncle John I intended to marry Jenny, he gave me that disapproving look that had become all too familiar. No way was he going to let me collect trust fund money to marry the divorced mother of a ten-year-old son, even without knowing about her multiple sojourns into drug rehab.

I didn't bother telling him Jenny was pregnant. He would have used it as a bargaining chip. Money for the abortion would be offered in exchange for repudiative rehabilitation.

Getting expelled from City College wasn't something I could hide for long. I managed to collect one last monthly stipend from the trust before Uncle John found out and had my allowance cut. He was deaf to my pleas for mercy.

I didn't know Uncle John had terminal cancer, or I would have just waited. At the time, I didn't see a lot of options. As I feared, his conditions for allowing me to move back into my old room were more than I could agree to. Rather than give up Jenny and my dissolute ways, I moved in with her.

I learned about potassium permanganate while researching do-it-yourself abortion methods at the public library. It was mentioned in an obscure tome about the social implications of World War II. Women would insert the tablets into their vagina to induce a miscarriage.

That's how desperate I was. We'd been getting by on the trust money while I was enrolled in college, but now that my funds had been cut, things were looking pretty grim.

When I looked for it, the stuff was still available and inexpensive. I just had to pretend I was trying to treat a fungus infected Koi pond. The purple crystals came with a Material Safety Data Sheet that I read carefully. The stuff is amazingly toxic. A 1% solution, if ingested, can cause severe abdominal pain and vomiting. At 3%, it can make your throat swell shut.

Jenny and I talked it over, discussed our options, made our decision, and laid out our plan.

Last night, we put the plan into action.

Uncle John knew there was poison in his wine. He had to know. He drank it anyway. His no-good step-son shows up, unannounced, suddenly acting repentant and solicitous. Would you accept a bottle of wine from someone like that, under those conditions? That makes it suicide, doesn't it? How was I to know he was going to give me the books in his will? How was I to know what he meant by that look he gave me, as he gulped the wine in big swigs?

Connie called the ambulance for him. Just my bad luck, her calling her father just as he was starting to feel the nausea and the poison burning inside.

At the hospital he drank huge amounts of water, while the doctors prodded, poked, and tested, trying to discover the nature of his ailment. He died this morning.

I still might have gotten away with it. After all, Uncle John had terminal cancer. It's possible the doctors would have thought his illness and death were due to the cancer. If only Jenny's boy hadn't put some of the purple crystals on his cereal this morning. If only Jenny had taken him to a different hospital.

FRED TURNER is recovering from the internet business fallout by launching a new career in storytelling. This is his first published work. He lives a bit right of San Francisco with his loving wife, Julie, and their dog child, Sally. A mystery novel featuring a detective school is in the works.

Copyright (c) 2002 Fred Turner

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