Brute Strength

by Susan Conant

  ‘I didn’t see any of them with a camera.’

  ‘You were judging. After Ulla passed her CGC test, Avery took her picture with Vanessa and the evaluator. But the camera could’ve belonged to someone else in the family. I don’t know. Something I do know, though, is that that’s a woman who doesn’t want her children far from home.’

  ‘What devoted parent does? Look at how happy all of us are that Leah’s going to Tufts. We’re elated! In a lot of ways, Steve and I are better parents to her than her parents are. All they’re doing right now is blaming us because she’s going to veterinary school instead of going to Oxford or Cambridge, the other one, so she’d end up as a professor of classics. They’re more interested in what she could become than in who she is. And it’s their loss. So, if Vanessa wants her children nearby?’ In spite of my heated defense, I thought back to the morning when Vanessa had told me of Fiona’s death. I clearly remembered that Vanessa had no sooner broken the news than she’d gone on to speak of rearrangements in Hatch’s plan to go to California. ‘Tom,’ I said. ‘If you’re looking for motives, he’s the one who’d just love having a doctor in the house. And you’d better believe that Tom’s endless griping about his ailments doesn’t get him far with his own doctors, so it would be convenient for him to have his grandson right there. Hatch couldn’t just tell him that the only thing wrong with him was hypochondria.’We were on Sparks Street, almost at Brattle. My mind’s eye had been on the people and the events we’d been discussing, but Gabrielle was in the here-and-now. ‘Don’t they look like a couple!’ she exclaimed. ‘Out walking the family dog.’

  Catching sight of Tom, Elizabeth, and Persimmon, I hastily said to Gabrielle, ‘Look, don’t mention any of your ideas to Steve, OK? You know how straightforward he is.’ He’d probably decide that Gabrielle was delusional.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think he’d say anything to her.’ Waving merrily, she called out, ‘Good morning!’

  Tom and Elizabeth waved back as they approached us. Elizabeth was wearing a navy woolen top embroidered with folk-art designs, and Tom had on a heavy tweed sport coat. No wonder they both worried about their health! I was comfortable in my short-sleeved T-shirt. In wool, I’d have felt feverish. The warm clothes or the exercise had made their cheeks pink and their eyes bright. As Gabrielle had remarked, they did look like a couple, and an especially healthy one.

  I greeted both of them, and Persimmon, too, and then Tom said to Gabrielle, ‘I must have misunderstood. I thought you were on your way home.’

  ‘Oh,’ said my stepmother in that confiding tone of hers, ‘I had a little change of plans.’ Patting her throat, she added, ‘My thyroid acts up now and then.’

  Tom and Elizabeth were, of course, as fascinated as if she’d just announced that she’d won a Nobel Prize. They all but congratulated her, and in response to their inquiries, she made little remarks about the trials of finding the ideal dose of medication. Happily, Tom, Elizabeth, and Persimmon then turned onto Sparks Street, while we continued down Brattle.

  When they were out of earshot, I asked, ‘What’s this with your thyroid?’

  ‘I was creating an opportunity,’ she said proudly.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For our opportunistic murderer to strike again.’ After a second, she added, ‘That sounds a little melodramatic, doesn’t it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said flatly. ‘And I do have to admit that I’m skeptical.’

  ‘Have you ever wondered what happened to Elizabeth’s husband? What was his name?’

  ‘Isaac. Isaac McNamara. And what happened to Isaac was that . . . I think that all systems failed. He’d had some ordinary GI illness, some kind of stomach virus, but he recovered. Then all of a sudden, a few days later, he developed . . . kidney failure, I think. His liver was involved, too. I’m not sure. I was concentrating on trying to help. Getting the house key, taking care of Persimmon, making sure that there was food in the house. And when Elizabeth called to say that Isaac was dead, I couldn’t ask for details. I’m not a ghoul, and it wasn’t as if—’

  ‘Of course not. And then there’s Tom’s wife.’

  ‘Vanessa’s mother? Gabrielle, you aren’t accusing Vanessa of murdering her mother!’

  ‘I’m not accusing anyone, Holly. All I’m doing is, uh, enumerating unexplained deaths.’

  ‘They aren’t unexplained. Well, Fiona’s is, I suppose. But the others? We don’t happen to know the explanations, but someone presumably does, and since most people die of natural causes, it’s a fair bet that these people did, too.’

  ‘Well, guesswork will get us nowhere. We’ll have to find out.’

  I almost never sense the age difference between my stepmother and me, but our thoughts about how to find out how these people had died revealed the generation gap: I’d have trusted the web to reveal everything, whereas Gabrielle’s plan called for asking subtle questions during what I persisted in thinking of as the imaginary Sunday supper. When we reached the Longfellow House and turned around, she began outlining the menu, and by the time we got home, she was ready to issue invitations and shop for food. Gabrielle’s scheme called for leaving her thyroid medication in plain sight in the kitchen, thus giving Vanessa, Tom, Avery, and Hatch the chance to tamper with it. Furthermore, Gabrielle and I were supposed to collect information on how Tom’s late wife and Vanessa’s late husband had died. While we were at it, we were also to make unobtrusive inquiries about the exact cause of Isaac McNamara’s death. I remained so doubtful about the enterprise that Gabrielle was forced to point out that her last plan, the consumer-satisfaction survey that she and Betty had cooked up, had succeeded, hadn’t it? As Gabrielle phrased it, we’d tracked Eldon Flood to his lair. Although Flood Farm didn’t seem to me to qualify as a lair, I had to admit that she was right. In the end, her faith in this Sunday-supper nonsense triumphed: I capitulated.

  THIRTY

  Because the plan hinged on the presence of Vanessa and her family, I naturally hoped that when I called to issue the invitation, she’d say that she, together with her father and her children, had a previous commitment. What she actually said was that they’d be delighted to come, but would I mind including Elizabeth? Not at all, I said. I’d intended to ask her, anyway. Coached by Gabrielle, I absolutely refused Vanessa’s offer to contribute food. Because Gabrielle had some loopy notion that we’d be re-enacting the events that had preceded Fiona’s death, she insisted on inviting Leah, who begged off once she heard that Hatch would be present. I didn’t press her. Seven o’clock found eight of us gathered in the dining room. That business about a little Sunday supper had made me worry that Gabrielle would insist on hot dogs and beans with canned brown bread, but she’d decided that the perfect food to set a tone of relaxed informality was spaghetti, a big platter of which I was now dishing out. Because of Elizabeth’s celiac disease, there were already rice noodles on her plate, and we’d bought gluten-free bread for her to have instead of the French bread that sat on a wooden cutting board. We’d made the sauce ourselves, so I knew that it was safe for her, and I’d checked its ingredients and those in the salad dressing with her to make sure that they were OK. At Steve’s insistence, we were also serving sausages, hot for him, and a choice of hot or sweet for the rest of us, and since he considered supposedly hot sausages to be bland, he’d put a bottle of hot sauce on the table and offered to share it with anyone who was interested. No one but Hatch had taken him up on the offer.

  Steve was at one end of the table, with Elizabeth on his right and Hatch on his left. At the opposite end, I had Avery on my left and Tom on my right. Vanessa sat between Avery and Elizabeth, Gabrielle between Hatch and Tom. Gabrielle, with a little input from Steve, had worried over the seating arrangement. Reasonably enough, Steve had asked us to avoid the topic of his hiring Avery, so Gabrielle had buffered him from both Avery and Vanessa. Since Gabrielle wisely trusted herself to draw Tom out on the details of fatal illnesses and death, she’d placed herself next to him. Steve, I should ment
ion, was not in on Gabrielle’s true intentions; she’d respected my request to say nothing to him about her suspicions. Consequently, he’d expressed puzzlement about why we were having these people to dinner, but he’d accepted my statement, which was true enough, that the whole thing was Gabrielle’s idea.

  ‘Spaghetti?’ I asked Tom.

  ‘With a minimum of sauce,’ he said, ‘if you can manage it.’

  ‘Of course. There’s butter for the bread. You could have that if you want. Is cheese OK? Vanessa, could you pass the cheese to your father?’

  ‘Sausage?’ Steve offered. ‘Hot or sweet.’

  ‘None for me, thank you,’ said Tom. ‘I’m forced to follow a restrictive diet, I’m afraid. Not as limiting as Elizabeth’s, of course. Wasn’t it thoughtful of you to get rice noodles for her!’

  ‘Very,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Holly, thank you.’

  By then, I was beginning to feel more than a little irritated at Gabrielle and irked at myself for having given in to her. Marooned as I was between the depressed, dull Avery and her tedious grandfather, I was in no position to learn anything about fatalities, unless, of course, I found myself dying of boredom. What did Gabrielle expect me to do? Suddenly blurt out the questions she wanted answered? So, Tom, what did your wife die of? Even the ordinary obligation to make conversation with those on either side of me at the table felt challenging. I could hardly ask Avery whether she’d seen Quinn Youngman after their dinner at Legal, could I? Tom would’ve been all too happy to blather on about infirmities, but I couldn’t even think of an excuse to ask him about one. Desperate, I thanked Avery for helping with the refreshments at the armory.

  ‘Everyone pitched in,’ she said.

  ‘But your mother always says that you’re the real cook in the family.’

  ‘Kind of.’

  Reluctantly, because of the association with the dinner preceding Fiona’s death, I said, ‘My father just loved your cherry crisp. That was yours, wasn’t it, Avery?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you share your recipe?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  In spite of my supposed expertise in using positive reinforcement to shape behavior, I wanted to grab her and give her a hard shake. If she didn’t want to make conversation, why had she come to dinner at all? Briefly turning my attention to the rest of the table, I noticed that Steve, Elizabeth, Vanessa, and Hatch were engaged in a lively discussion of the Red Sox while Gabrielle and Tom were speaking to each other in low tones. It seemed to me that I could make myself useful only by leaving Gabrielle free to continue her effort to pump Tom. Consequently, I plodded on.

  ‘Well, we’d love the recipe,’ I said.

  ‘Sure.’ Then, to my surprise, she added, ‘Men like it.’

  ‘It’s a favorite of Hatch’s, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah. And Isaac. He just loved it. I don’t know what it is about it, but men really like it.’ The wistful note in her voice suggested that the whole matter of pleasing men was a mystery to her.

  ‘I didn’t know that you cooked for Isaac.’

  ‘Well, yeah, we used to take him stuff. Sometimes I make too much, more than we can eat, and he must’ve gotten hungry for stuff that Elizabeth can’t have. There’s flour in it.’

  ‘In the cherry crisp.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s a good thing that Elizabeth didn’t eat it by mistake.’

  ‘She knew. I always put labels on their stuff, like we did yesterday. And she’s careful. She doesn’t take chances. But if she did, if she made a mistake, she’d just get sick. Nothing really bad would happen.’

  After that, the conversation became general. Steve repeated my thanks for everyone’s efforts on the previous day. Elizabeth said how happy Isaac would have been. We served seconds, and Gabrielle reminded all of us to save room for dessert, which would be ice cream with a variety of toppings.

  When dessert time came, I finally got to liberate myself from Avery. Although the idea was that each of us would carry our plates and silverware to the kitchen, where we’d then make our own sundaes, Avery insisted on doing more than her share by carrying the serving dishes, too. Prepped by Gabrielle, I tried to see whether anyone was even looking at the little prescription bottle of thyroid medication that she’d left on the counter next to the sink, but with eight of us in and out of the kitchen, I simply couldn’t tell, and I lost track of who was and wasn’t alone there. The one little incident that caught my attention occurred when Avery offered to make Hatch’s sundae for him. She said, ‘I always know what Hatch likes, don’t I?’ On this occasion at least, what she served her brother was an innocent hot fudge on vanilla with whipped cream and walnuts, but when we returned to the table, she got there before Gabrielle, took a seat next to Hatch, and all but snuggled up to him.

  Having been an investigative failure, or so I thought, the evening ended early. As I learned after our guests had left, Gabrielle had, however, managed to extract quite a lot of information from Tom. Because we’d agreed not to discuss her speculations in front of Steve, she waited until he was in the yard with the dogs before she passed along what she’d learned. As we cleaned up the kitchen, she said, ‘Well, Tom and I had a little talk about widowhood. I told him that I was a widow when I met Buck, as I was, of course, and I asked him whether he’d been widowed for long. And he has. His wife died fifteen years ago.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Cancer.’

  ‘Well, you can’t suspect anyone of causing that.’

  ‘But Vanessa’s husband is another matter. Jim, his name was. He died of a heart attack while she was alone in the house with him. It was a Sunday night. Hatch and Avery had been there for the weekend, and Hatch had left for Boston, and Avery had gone back to Bennington, and Tom was in his own little apartment in the house. By the time the ambulance got there, the husband was dead.’

  ‘Gabrielle, I admit that there’s a pattern of people dying or, in your case, feeling ill after they’ve eaten food that Vanessa or someone else in her family could’ve tampered with. But most of us eat three times a day, and we fairly often eat when there are other people around . . .’ I paused. ‘Not that I’m exactly eager to accept if Vanessa invites me to dinner.’

  ‘We did leave some of the food unwatched tonight. The toppings for the ice cream. The strawberries, the chocolate sauce. Do you feel all right?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘So do I.’ A few seconds later, she said, ‘Tom won’t take pills, you know. Or capsules.’

  ‘What does he do if needs a prescription?’

  ‘He gets children’s versions, or he uses a special pharmacy. He has things compounded. That’s what it’s called.’

  ‘Anyone can buy over-the-counter liquid medication. And Steve dispenses liquid medication all the time. I don’t like to use it, even for cats, because if an animal spits out some of it, I can’t tell how much, so I don’t know how much more to give. Besides, I have a knack for getting animals to like swallowing pills. And if I had trouble, I could always ask Steve to do it. But the point is that anyone can buy children’s liquid medicine. Anyone! Gabrielle, look. There’s no proof. There’s no proof of anything at all.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  As I’d never have admitted to Gabrielle, her departure on Monday morning came as something of a relief. Because she and Molly were house guests as well as family members, we’d been making accommodations. I’d felt obliged to serve lunch instead of wolfing down my writer’s substitute – a sandwich eaten while standing at the sink – and I’d had almost no time to write. Although our dogs did well with Molly, adding a sixth dog had inevitably meant short-changing the other five. Also, Steve and I had both felt guilty about concealing his forthcoming trip to Rangeley from Gabrielle, and we’d become increasingly apprehensive about accidentally letting his plans slip out. He was leaving on Friday, and with Gabrielle around, he’d been unable to assemble his fishing gear. Furthermore, he and I had both been worried that one of his buddi
es might carelessly leave a message on our machine that Gabrielle would overhear. To confess the full truth, I was looking forward to having the house to myself while Steve, India, and Lady were at Grant’s Camps, by which I mean, of course, having the house all to my true self: the unity that consists of the malamutes and me, since it’s impossible to determine where I end and they begin. It seemed to me that once Rowdy, Kimi, Sammy, and I were alone, I’d be able to ignore Gabrielle’s ideas about the deaths that she’d insisted were unexplained. Unless my father received another nasty photo or message, I’d forget that episode, too.

  Not that I intended to cultivate amnesia! I’d once taken a bad fall that had resulted in a brief experience of the real thing, and when it comes to amnesia, once is a lifetime’s worth. But in the absence of evidence, there was nothing to be done except to take basic precautions. I’d made sure that Gabrielle’s cell phone was charged, and she’d promised to call me every hour until she got home. I’d avoid consuming food prepared by any member of Vanessa’s family, especially if I intended to drive. But I’d never been targeted, except by Eldon Flood, and Gabrielle was now far away. Maybe she hadn’t actually been targeted, anyway, I told myself. For all I knew, she’d been suffering from the effects of overeating or exhaustion. It was almost impossible to believe that anyone would wish her harm. On the contrary, everyone loved her.

  My mood of self-confident denial lasted throughout Monday. As promised, Gabrielle called every hour, and she arrived home safely. I made ambitious to-do lists of tasks to accomplish in the next few weeks: I’d write articles, update my blog, screen applications for rescue dogs, finish painting the north side of the house, and hire someone to repair or replace the gutters and downspouts. Leah’s exams would begin on Thursday, and I wanted to give her some kind of special treat to compensate her for all the effort she was putting in. Although Rita was beginning to recover from Quinn Youngman, she deserved more sympathy and distraction than I’d been offering her. We’d spend time together, I vowed. We’d go out to dinner. I’d rake, brush, and blow every last bit of loose coat off the malamutes, and when I was done, I’d vacuum the entire house and every inch of the interior of my car.