by Susan Breen
It was project that had a teeny bit of religious significance, but it came with a wonderful story, and Maggie did love stories. Sometimes she thought she loved Jesus so much because he was always telling stories.
“Back in Medieval times,” she explained to the children, after Campbell had left and she was alone with the four of them, “people used to give up meat and fish for Lent. That meant they would eat a lot of bread, and it probably meant they were sort of hungry. One day a monk noticed some leftover pieces of dough in the kitchen and he decided to do something special with them.
“He took the leftovers and molded them into the shape of crossed arms, because that’s how the people prayed then.” She crossed her arms, to illustrate. Dear Edgar also crossed his arms and bowed. Shu Chin giggled at him. Ambrosia looked around wildly, as though a kidnapper was about to make his way through the door, and Jane nodded. Her father’s child, Maggie thought. No smiles, just nods. She wondered what dinner at the family table was like.
“These little pieces of dough were so popular, people began giving them to children as treats when they learned their lessons, and they called them ‘pretiola,’ which means little reward in Latin.”
Then she lined up the children, all four of them, and they marched from the classroom into the kitchen. Maggie buzzed with excitement but tried to contain herself because the last thing she wanted was to get Edgar worked up. He was being so good. Poor Ambrosia just kept asking where her mother was.
“She’s in church, dear,” Maggie whispered, holding the little girl’s hand.
Jane looked all about her, not speaking much, but observing. Her father’s daughter. And then they were in the kitchen and Maggie was pulling out the trays and finding the flour and other ingredients. She didn’t have a recipe with ingredients in front of her, but she felt fairly sure she remembered what was required. Sea salt, which she found in one of the upper cabinets, undoubtedly left over from the last time she’d done it. Sea salt didn’t go bad, surely. No yeast. Well, they would have to make do without, though that was going to be tricky. They would be flat pretzels. Flour. Then an egg. There were some in the refrigerator, marked Do not touch! These belong to Agnes Jorgenson. Well, tough tootsies, Maggie thought as she swiped one. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Everything seemed to go well. Edgar did not spill flour all over the floor. They did not shun Jane. In fact, they were quite nice to her and included her in their mixing and it turned out that Jane had quite a knack for doing a Scottish imitation. Either that or she was Scottish. Hard to tell because she didn’t speak that much, but they were all enjoying themselves and then they put the pretzels in the oven and waited for them to cook, and she sent the children to the sink to clean everything up, and as they were all washing and scrubbing she found her attention wandering back to the connections between Winifred and Bender.
She wondered if Doc Steinberg knew Bender. She must. Even if Bender didn’t go to her, she would certainly know him, or his children. She hadn’t said anything about it; but then, Maggie hadn’t asked. Was it possible that Doc Steinberg was the murderer?
She was an upright woman. Unflinchingly honest. But one thing Maggie remembered from her research on poisoners was that many of them were doctors. She recalled reading a textbook for police officers that said, when investigating a poisoning, pay special attention to the person who prepares the victim’s food and to their doctors. Encyclopedias of poisoners were full of doctors. Look at Robert Clements, who poisoned four wives and only happened to be discovered when a coroner noticed the tiny pupils of the last one, making him think that morphine was involved. Or Michael Swango, who poisoned 60 or so people with arsenic, many of them his patients. He had no particular reason for wanting to kill them; he just took joy in their deaths. He was evil. Could she imagine someone as upright as Doc Steinberg doing something like that? It was impossible to say. How could Maggie look at someone she’d known for decades and say they were a murderer? Easy enough to do in a book, but in real life, what sort of person took another’s life?
That was when Maggie felt someone tugging at her arm. Looking down she saw all four children smiling at her, pointing toward the glass window of the oven, at the pretzels, which looked absolutely beautiful. She took them out and set them each on a little paper plate and then they sat around the table, said a prayer and began to eat them, and they were doing that when Walter Campbell reappeared. The service was over.
Jane ran at him and showed him the pretzel. “I saved you some, Daddy. This is for you.”
He placed a small piece into his mouth, chewing it so slowly Maggie wondered if he thought she was the poisoner.
“So,” he said. “What did you learn today?”
“We learned how to make pretzels,” Jane said.
“But what about scripture? What scripture did you learn?”
Jane looked at Maggie, who looked at Walter, in his kilt. Why did he always make her so off balance, she thought. What was it about the man that had her acting like a foolish child? Her temper began to take hold of her. She could hear her mother. Margaret, that temper of yours is going to get you in trouble. But she couldn’t help herself and she stood in front of him. “There was no scripture today, but we learned about friendship and community and nourishment. That’s a good day’s lesson, I think.”
He shrugged. “I was hoping she would learn the essentials of her faith.”
“There’s plenty of time for that. But sometimes it’s good to think about Sunday School as a fun place to go. However,” she couldn’t resist adding, “if you don’t like the way I teach class, you’re more than welcome to sign up and take over for me.”
For just a moment she thought he smiled, which startled her. Then he looked at her closely, doing his wretched Sherlock Holmes imitation. She suspected she had a mark on her sleeve that would tell him she’d been out with Frank Bowman last night, or perhaps he could tell from the circles under her eyes. Though, what business was it of his if she should go to a museum with Frank Bowman, or if she should talk to Char Bender?
“Actually, I need to talk to you about something,” Maggie said. “Could I have a minute?”
“Not now,” he said, looking at Jane, poor girl standing rooted to the spot, not wanting to give offense.
“Edgar will take her up to coffee hour, won’t you? We’ll meet you there in a minute,” Maggie said.
They waited while Walter thought and then he nodded his head imperceptibly and they all tore off. Leaving Maggie alone with him, in the kitchen. She went over to the counter and sat in one of the tall chairs, to even up their height a little bit. She could not have an argument with a man’s knees and she suspected an argument was coming. He maneuvered himself onto the chair across from her and sat down.
“I spoke to Char Bender yesterday.”
He looked like steam would come out of his ears. “I told you—”
She cut him off. “Last time I looked you were not my father. I found out some information. Would you like to hear it?”
He crossed his arms. She could almost see him counting to ten. He still wore a wedding ring, she noticed. Boy, she would love to hear the details of that breakup. She wondered what his wife was like, she wondered what would propel a man as pompous as Campbell to abandon his family.
“This relates to the murders. Do you seriously not want to hear it just because I found it out and you didn’t?”
“What did you find out, Mrs. Dove?”
She told him about Char then, and what Bender’s first wife had told her about the arrangement with his second, and how Noelle might well be pregnant. If Bender had lived, he would have forced her to give up the baby. “That’s a pretty compelling reason for murder, I would say.”
“And what about Ms. Levy?” he asked.
“I don’t know why Noelle would have wanted to kill her, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason. I just haven’t found it yet. There’s also the consideration that she did prepare Bender’s
food. Who would be in a better position to kill him?”
“You’ve done a lot of research on the psychology of poisoners, have you?”
“I’ve read a book or two.”
“And written one or two.”
“Yes, it’s not a crime,” she said.
“So you fancy yourself Jessica Fletcher, do you?”
“I fancy myself a woman who does not want to see someone railroaded because the chief of police is so obsessed with one suspect that he will not consider any others.”
Walter Campbell snapped one of the pretzels in half. The damn noon whistle blew, startling Maggie.
“All right. I’ve listened to you. Now I’d like you to listen to me. I want to propose an alternative scenario. Do you think it’s possible that Ms. Levy took her own life?”
“Winifred?” she said. “No.”
Winifred a suicide? Maggie thought. Easier to see her as a killer.
“Is it so impossible to believe?” Walter said. “She had found out that her disease was getting worse. Perhaps she couldn’t bear to suffer anymore.”
He gazed at her with a surgeon’s implacable look. Had Winifred been getting worse? Maggie wondered. She didn’t really know and Winifred never complained about it. She prided herself on her toughness, or maybe, Maggie thought, Winifred didn’t tell her about her fears because she didn’t think Maggie wanted to know. Was that possible?
“What are you suggesting?” Maggie asked.
“She knew that Marcus Bender died of an overdose of Ecstasy. Maybe that showed her a way out. She couldn’t get her hands on a lot of other drugs, but she could get hold of Ecstasy.”
Immediately Maggie saw the connection he was making. “So now you’ve got Peter giving her poison?”
“He might not have known what she was going to do with it. Maybe she told him she was taking it to relieve her Parkinson’s. Like Char Bender. Maybe he thought he was helping her. He could have a perfectly innocent reason for giving her the Ecstasy.”
From the kitchen window, Maggie could see the Memorial Garden. The young Sunday School students were clambering all over it, jumping on the graves. Soon someone would come and pull them off, complain.
“Next you’ll be telling me Peter supplies Char Bender. Look, I’m not holding Peter up as a paragon of virtue, but I do think he’d draw the line at handing over Ecstasy, even to a sick person.”
“Do you?” Walter said.
She stopped. Did she? The truth was, she could see the whole thing with agonizing clarity. Winifred wheedling, Peter trying to say no, the two of them vowing to keep the information from her, as though she were a schoolmarm…or a Sunday School teacher.
“He has gotten in trouble in the past for selling Ecstasy.”
“When he was 16, and his records were sealed.” Foolishness, foolishness, Peter swept up with a bad crowd, getting into trouble. Oh, her husband was so mad about that, wanted her to force Juliet not to hang out with him anymore, but Maggie resisted. She knew he was good. He needed help, not condemnation, and she still believed that.
Campbell grimaced. There was something monumental about the man that made her want to pound on him and scream. He was too big, too implacable. He had a way of sucking the life out of everything. The kitchen—which had, only half an hour earlier, been a place of joy and happiness—was now as cold as a morgue.
“So then, what are you saying? Are you writing this whole thing off? You’re saying that Winifred Levy killed herself and that Peter got her the drugs, and so that’s the end of the story? One tawdry little episode in the Darby-on-Hudson history and that’s the end of it?”
“I’m not giving up, Mrs. Dove; I never said I was. I’m just trying to understand what happened.”
“Why don’t you try understanding this? My friend is dead. My courageous, irritating, wonderful friend Winifred is dead and I find it hard to believe that after fighting this disease for so many years, she would just give up. I believe someone killed her, and instead of looking at Peter, who seems to have been front and center in your giant radar vision since the moment you arrived in this town, I would advise considering other people, because I can tell you that there seem to me to be several people in town with motives.” How easy it would be for Doc Steinberg to get hold of Ecstasy, she thought. She didn’t want the murderer to be Doc Steinberg, but if she had to choose…
“May I give you some advice, Mrs. Dove?” Walter cleared his throat. “We are up against a man who has taken two lives, and maybe more. He’s ruthless. If you get in his way, he’ll kill, and there’s nothing I can do to protect you. Please, let the professionals deal with it. You are inhibited by your affections.”
“You mean because I love people I can’t see them clearly. Well, perhaps you’re right. Perhaps love does blind you. But the blind have a gift for seeing things that we sighted people can’t.”
She turned around ready to stalk away and ran smack into Agnes Jorgenson, standing on the outskirts with a cheese platter. “Would you like some?” she asked. “You could do with a bit of protein. You’re looking peaked.”
“Oh good Lord,” Maggie muttered, and she walked out of the room, leaving them both behind. But Walter’s words stung. She hoped they weren’t true.
Chapter 30
Maggie found Peter in the midst of a marathon viewing of Law & Order. He was up to the end of season 4. Poor Ben Stone was having a terrible time getting a woman to testify against a Russian mobster. Maggie’d always liked Ben Stone. He looked so tortured. She could imagine him as one of the monks making pretzels.
“Want to watch?” Peter asked. “It’s his last episode.”
“Sure.”
She sat down alongside him on the couch, jumping up when she felt something bite into her, which fortunately was just the tip of a Dorito. That would explain the cheesy smell in the room, which almost, but not quite, overpowered the smell of sweat. Peter looked like he hadn’t showered in a while and he certainly hadn’t cleaned his apartment. Maggie took off her sweater and sat down on it. The alternative was to clean, and she didn’t feel like doing that. She noticed he’d put most of the pictures of Juliet away, though his favorite one remained in the middle of the table, the one that showed the two of them at the prom.
She wasn’t a big TV watcher, but she’d loved watching TV with her daughter. They tried to watch the silliest shows possible, ones with people eating spiders and trying to survive on desert islands or attempting to lose 300 pounds in two weeks. Stuart had never understood how they could waste their minds on such things when all of Shakespeare’s sonnets were there to be pored over, but she thought it was fun. It was a form of communion.
“I did my pretzel thing today,” she told Peter.
“How’d it go?”
“Surprisingly well. Nothing burned.”
“Did you remember to bring eggs?”
“No, I stole one from Agnes.”
“Ha!” he said.
There was a Russian mobster on TV and you could see by his piggy little eyes that he was evil. He could be a poisoner. There was that poor woman, who had been in some other TV show surely. She was so scared and Ben Stone was pressing her and you could see the poor woman was going to die. He offered her witness protection and she didn’t want it and he was going to send her to jail and then he played on her guilt and she surrendered and took the stand and there was that beady-eyed man peering at her. Maggie looked into his eyes. Thought how afraid she’d be having them looking at her. Thought of what Walter Campbell had said. About someone evil being after her. In the presence of evil. She’d always wondered what she’d do if she were confronted by true evil. Would her faith give her strength or would it desert her? Would she be able to stand up to someone like that?
The jury found the mobster guilty, but it didn’t end there. They did kill the woman, who was the tall one from The West Wing, the one who was so scared, and Ben Stone repented and quit so that Sam Waterston could take his place.
Peter and Maggie
were both still after it was over.
“He shouldn’t have pressed her so hard,” Maggie said. “He knew she was going to get killed.”
“This was an evil guy. He had to put him away.”
“I hope I’m never asked to do something like that. Imagine if out of sheer innocence you wind up seeing something terrible. Would you speak up?”
“Yes.” He shrugged. “You’d have to.”
She believed him. Whatever his flaws, she’d never doubted his courage. He would always be the first one running in to a burning building, running toward trouble.
The day was still. Sundays. Maggie always found them the hardest day of the week, even with church to look forward to. There was always a pause on Sundays, a moment where it was impossible not to reflect.
“Peter,” she said. “What went on between you and Winifred?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“I know you had an argument with her, Peter. I know it was more serious than usual. She told me herself that things were bad between you.”
The sunlight made him look older. It wasn’t fair that the people you loved aged. She wished she could stop him in time. But then, her daughter had escaped aging and such foolishness, by dying. She was forever a young woman laughing in a picture.
“Peter, I will love you no matter what on earth you did, but I need to know. Things are getting really intense and I can’t help you if I don’t know what was going on, and everywhere I turn, it’s always something to do with you. I wish you would just trust me and tell me.”
He stared resolutely at the TV, which had moved on to season 5. A woman was brought to the hospital and the fumes from her were so bad that several of the nurses fell over. She’d been poisoned, they thought. Perhaps with radioactive material. She was dangerous. Maggie lowered the volume on the TV.
“Peter, I love you. I know you didn’t kill Winifred. I don’t have a moment’s hesitation. But something was going on and I have to know what it was.”
He slumped down, put his hand on hers. Just as they had sat at the hospital together, side by side, waiting for the results, waiting to see if Juliet could live.
