Thursday, November 05, 2009

You Make the Call

The two boys were home to watch the game with their dad.  Junior and Frank were in the kitchen helping their mom, Marie, put together the snacks and drinks, when Junior noticed the bruises on his mother's arms. 

"Did Dad do that to you?", Junior asked.  But his mom didn't answer. 

"What are you going to do when he retires next month and he's hanging around all the time?"  But his mother just asked him to grab the bags of potato chips and pretzels from the pantry.

"Make mine a strong one!" came her husbands shout from the living room.  Marie made up the ice, ginger ale and rye together in tall glasses. 

"Oh dear, I forgot which was which.  Taste the highballs, would you dear?" 

Frank tasted all three, almost choking on the third.  "This one has to be twice as strong as the others."

"It had better be!" his father stated as he walked into the kitchen.  "... Make me walk all the way in here..." as he grabbed his drink out of Frank's hands. 

Frank, Junior and Marie followed their father into the living room and began watching the game.  All four watched through the first quarter, munching on the snacks and drinking.  At the end of the first quarter, Frank senior held up his empty glass, "Get me another."

Marie got up and went to work on the refill.  As she worked in the kitchen, she heard a gasp, then a moan.  By the time she got back into the living room, Frank senior was dead.

"Fast acting poison," the coroner determined.  "I'm certain of it." 

The detective was at a loss, however.  "They all claim they've been eating and drinking from the same bowls and drinks.  They must be lying, covering for each other."

"Not necessarily," the coroner quickly said.

How could Frank senior have been poisoned?  And who could have done it?


  1. Marie, the mom did it.

    She put fast acting poison in Frank Sr's drink.

    But she also put some kind of poison rememdy in the other two drinks so when Frank Jr tried the poison, he would also have the antidote in his system to counter the poison.

  2. The poison was in the ice. Marie, carefully added poisoned ice into her husbands highball.

    Since the poison was fast acting, Frank senior should have died much before the first quarter ended. But he died during the break because poisoned ice took some time to melt and release the entire poison in the drink.

    This also explain's why Frank was unharmed when he tasted the drink.

  3. USAF Pilot, I'd guess the antidote would work, but is kind of risky, especially when you're talking about her son. She would have had to make sure that her son went ahead and drank the antidote quickly.

    Sealing up the poison in the ice, then making sure that Frank Senior was the only one to get that ice would be the safest way. It also explains why it took so long for Senior to succumb.

    Nice work guessthelogo.

  4. The question says "All four of them watched".. Maybe the fourth person killed him?

  5. There are four people, right? "Frank, Junior and Marie followed their father"

    -- That isn't well written though. It's Marie's husband, not her father, but you get the point. There were two boys and the mother and father.





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