Friends till the End by Gloria Dank

everyone seems pretty much agreed that he can be a real tyrant. And Sam Abrams works with him. I’m going to have to check out their business arrangement more closely. I know that if Sloane dies, Abrams takes over.”
    “How about the others?”
    Voelker shrugged. “Freda Simms—Heather and Harry Crandall—this young fellow that the girl is seeing—I don’t know. I’ll have to find out more about them.”
    “So let’s see,” said West, leaning back in his chair. “There are several possibilities. Either someone murdered Laura Sloane deliberately and then someone else tried to capitalize on the situation by poisoning her husband. Or the same person deliberately poisoned both of them. Or the murder of Laura Sloane was an accident and someone has been after Walter Sloane all along. Which is what he’s been trying to tell you.”
    “Yes.”
    “In any case, the murderer may try again. He or she seems fairly determined.”
    “Yes.”
    “Motives,” said West. “Motives. You have to find out more about these people.”
    “I intend to,” replied Voelker.
    Heather Crandall was not in the best of moods when Detective Voelker knocked on her door that evening. She and her husband had just returned from the Woodcrest Elementary School, where Linus was in kindergarten. They had been to see Linus’s class play. It was Linus’s theatrical debut and he was tremendously excited about it.
    “Mommy, you
have
to come,” he had said for weeks beforehand.
    “Well, of course we’re going to come. Your father and I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Linus.”
    “You’ll be there, won’t you?” he would ask anxiously a few days later.
    “Of course, sweetheart. Don’t worry.”
    But when the time came, Heather had barely been able to drag herself there. It was only a week after their ill-fated party, and she was so depressed! To think that that terrible thing had happened in
her
house, at
her
party …!
    She and Harry had gotten dressed up, however, and had driven with Linus and the other two boys to Woodcrest School. They had sat in the center, near the front, like good parents, quarreling with the Thompkinsons over the seats (“I believe
we
were here first,” Heather said in icy tones), and applauding vigorously for all the skits. Charliehad been bored, but Little Harry was fascinated. Little Harry had not inherited his father’s brains, Heather thought, watching him anxiously. He loved the skits and watched “Leaves at Play” and “Mushrooms Dancing” with an intense absorption.
    They had waited eagerly for Linus’s class to perform its skit, but when the time came it was a big disappointment. His class had decided to enact an invasion from outer space. Linus was one of the Earth people and had been practicing his screams around the house for days. The aliens were fitted out in old Halloween outfits, pointed ears, football helmets and the like. One of the girls, determined to be fashionable even as an alien, had convinced her mother to let her borrow her mink coat. As the aliens rushed onstage the mink coat caught on a nail on the floor. There was a loud ripping sound, followed by an even louder shriek from the center of the audience.
    The aliens became confused and milled about. Several of them began to cry. Linus decided it was probably time to scream. The teacher decided the skit was over. Heather had applauded vigorously as the curtain came down, but her heart was heavy.
    To her surprise, however, Linus was cheerful.
    “Our play stunk, didn’t it?” he said.
    He had gotten a chance to scream, which was apparently all he had wanted. Heather cast him a nervous look. He was such a
quiet
boy … was he repressed in some way? Did he have unconscious hostility? Was he lonely? She had to admit that in spite of everything he looked the picture of emotional and physical health. He sat crammed in between his two brothers and discussed the events of the night with an unruffled calm.
    Little Harry announced that