The Last Blue Plate Special

by Abigail Padgett

“Something’s come up. Not something I wanted to talk about on the phone. And I couldn’t reach you anyway. Rathbone, either. We’ve both been—”

  “Roxie, you drove all the way out here for a reason. And if you don’t tell me pretty soon I’m going to explode. Or implode. What is it?”

  I thought it was going to have something to do with Sword. Something she thought would upset me, like she’d figured out that Jennings Rainer had not only murdered his patients but thirty other people as well. And been a Communist double-agent, too.

  “Some folks in Philadelphia called today,” she began.

  Philadelphia?

  “Okay. What did they say?”

  “Wanted to talk about a research project. Good funding. Has to do with analyzing a possible relationship between brain trauma and the onset of major psychiatric disorders in people with the genetic history for it.”

  Oh, no.

  “So? People call you about this stuff all the time, don’t they? What did they want? For you to provide medical histories on head injuries for all the psych clients at Donovan? I suppose each prisoner would have to sign a release, right?”

  Nice try, McCarron, but who are you kidding?

  “They need a project director,” she said, looking at me as if from a gallows. “The job includes an impressive salary, a staff of fifteen, and extensive lecturing at universities both here and abroad. They want me.”

  Train wreck, atom bomb, end of life as we know it.

  She was wearing jeans, a black turtleneck, and tennis shoes. I noticed those things suddenly, as if my mind were taking snapshots of her sitting there on my couch. As if I would want to remember her someday. Click. Roxie sitting on my couch on an October night. Click. Roxie’s hair in a hundred braids, the wooden beads silent as she sat there. Click. Roxie the way she looked the last time I ever saw her.

  “Oh, God,” I said, and sat down beside her.

  For a while we just sat there. Soon, I knew, we’d say a lot of things. But for that moment we just sat inside the news and let it be. It was one of those moments when the barriers that always exist between people just dissolve. That sense of being drawn through an open window to someplace unknown. Airy, dizzying, scary because there are no lies there. I noticed that we’d grabbed each other’s hands, our fingers laced and holding tight.

  “Blue, I don’t know what to do,” she said. “That’s why I had to see you, had to come out here tonight. They want me to fly to Philadelphia next week for an interview. I said yes, but I’m not sure. They’re going to offer me the job. The interview’s just a formality. But I’m not sure I can live without you and I can’t ask you to—”

  “Shh,” I said against her braids as I held her and we both cried. My face hot and wet against hers, hands in each other’s hair now, a terrible anger beneath it all. Then words.

  “Oh, shit, Roxie. This is just shit !”

  Me up and pacing now, banging things around on my desk. Me feeling like I’m supposed to act like this, but what I really want to do is go back in time to the point before I met Roxie Bouchie and then not meet her.

  “I know. I can’t go. How can I? But …”

  I suspected Roxie was having feelings similar to mine. Her goals had been clear since she was a kid, and this career opportunity fit her goals. She hadn’t wanted me in her life; it just happened.

  “Of course you’ll go,” I said gamely. “You have to go. I’ll go with you. Where is it again?”

  “Philadelphia. Pennsylvania. You’d hate it. It’s a city.”

  “I don’t hate all cities. Isn’t that where the Liberty Bell is? Have you ever been there?”

  “You never told me you were dying to live near the Liberty Bell, and no. Have you?”

  “No. Oh, Roxie, why now?”

  After several repetitive cycles of this we were still crying but laughing at the same time. Two competent adults revealed to be dim-witted adolescents inside, unable either to cope with the bond between us or to place a major American city on a map.

  “There’s still a killer on the loose,” I said, sniffling and giggling. “Can we table this? I have to call Kate Van Der Elst. Pieter’s left her because she won’t drop out of the city council race. He’s moved into a hotel until he can run home to the Netherlands. Kate’s alone and scared.”

  At “alone and scared” we both burst into tears again, then laughter.

  “Call her,” Roxie said, standing and heading for the kitchen. “I’m going to make a sandwich.”

  As Brontë followed her I looked at Roxie’s braids tumbling over broad shoulders, the straight, strong line of her back. She hadn’t played games with me over her Philadelphia job offer, hadn’t ducked her own pain and confusion about what it might mean. But most importantly, she hadn’t left me alone with it. She’d come to me and told me and let the shock be absorbed in us, together. She didn’t hide. Roxie was no coward. I loved her, but in that moment I felt something more. I felt a deep respect for her. I could never be as rational and businesslike, but I knew I’d spend the rest of my life trying to be as brave as Roxie Bouchie was with me that night.

  “Rox,” I said as I picked up the phone to call Kate, “thanks.”

  She’d turned from pawing through my refrigerator and her head was backlit by its fifteen-watt bulb as she nodded. The nimbus of light behind her clattering braids made a sort of halo. She knew what I meant. There was nothing else to say.

  18

  The Roadkill Connection

  Oh, Blue, I’m so glad you called,” Kate Van Der Elst said when she heard my voice. “Pieter’s gone to the Marriott downtown, the big one next to the convention center. He won’t take my calls. Or else he’s swimming. You know, they’ve got all those beautiful pools and you can swim from one into another under bridges and down little waterfalls. Sometimes we’d spend a night there just to swim from pool to pool. That’s probably what he’s—”

  “Kate,” I interrupted, “is there anyone at your house with you? Are you alone there?”

  I didn’t like the way she sounded. Her voice was reedy and her remarks had a giddy tone that suggests panic.

  “There’s no one here,” she answered in the same strained, high voice. “Who would be here? Dixie Ross was my best friend, but someone killed her and her funeral is tomorrow. I can’t very well call her to come over and hold my hand, can I? She’s in a casket, Blue. And my husband has turned into a man I neither like nor even know, who walked out on me because he loves me, he says. I can call him and I have, but he won’t talk to me. Blue, I’m just undone by all this. Could you possibly come over?”

  “I’m sorry, Kate,” I said in quiet tones I hoped would help diminish her anxiety, “but I can’t drive into the city tonight. It would be best if you weren’t alone, though. Surely there’s someone else you could call. Maybe one of your campaign staff ?”

  “I don’t want anyone connected to the campaign to know … to know what’s going on between me and Pieter,” she said, making an obvious effort to calm herself. “I’m going to say he’s been called to Amsterdam due to illness in the family. Less than two weeks remain until the election. I can’t have it all over town that my husband has left me.”

  She was right. Not that being right ever got anybody through the night.

  “Kate, I just can’t believe Pieter would do this,” I said. “I know how much he wanted you to drop out of the race, but to leave you when there’s danger, leave you tomorrow to attend the funeral of your best friend alone? That’s not the Pieter I know.”

  “He hasn’t been himself since the day he found that threatening note pushed under the door of my campaign headquarters,” she said, sighing. “You know, the one on green paper that said I’d die? It did something to him, Blue. Since then he’s barely eaten and tosses all night. He looks terrible. Maybe I should just have done what he wanted.”

  “But you didn’t,” I pointed out. “And so you have to plan a course of action that deals with the way things are now. You need to g
et out of there, go someplace with lots of people around. The hotel where Pieter is will have a good security staff, since it services conventions. I want you to pack a few things and check in there. You’ll be near Pieter and you’ll feel safe. It may sound silly, but it’s not.”

  “Blue, I’m not going to chase after Pieter and I hate being away from home anyway, because the food thing is a problem,” she said. “You know I’m on this diet, and talk about sounding silly, but it’s almost impossible to get the right combinations of carbs, protein, and fat in a restaurant. They just load you with bread and pasta and there’s never enough protein.”

  “Kate!” I heard myself yelling. “Stop worrying about that stupid diet and get yourself somewhere with people around you. I can’t believe you—”

  Roxie had been listening to the conversation from the kitchen, but now hurried toward me.

  “Let me talk to Kate,” she said urgently.

  I couldn’t quite peg the look on her face as she took the phone, but it was serious.

  “Kate, this is Dr. Bouchie,” Rox said professionally, talking fast. “I want you to tell me exactly what you eat on this diet and what you don’t. It may be very important. Please leave nothing out.”

  For a while there was no sound but the scritching of Roxie’s pencil on a sheet of paper she’d pulled from my printer’s feed tray. From time to time she drew deep breaths, then nodded.

  “Mostly fruits and vegetables, then. Do you ever eat meat? Turkey breasts and fish that you buy fresh. Okay. Are you taking any antidepressants or cold and sinus medications? Good. Don’t take any.”

  I could almost hear Rox’s mind working, a sound like lock-pins dropping in cylinders. Hundreds of them, one after another.

  “Here’s what you must do,” she told Kate Van Der Elst. “Don’t eat anything but fresh fruits and vegetables until I get back to you. Nothing else. Especially nothing dried, pickled, or fermented. Do you understand? No, no raisins. They’re dried. I can’t explain right now. I have to check some things. I may be wrong. Meanwhile, these precautions won’t hurt you and may save your life. If I’m right it won’t matter whether you stay at home or in a hotel tonight, except that you’ll feel more comfortable if you’re not alone. Either way, I’ll want to talk to you tomorrow morning, so I’ll need to know where I can reach you.

  “And don’t worry, if what I suspect is true, you’re in no danger unless you eat certain things like fava beans, a lot of imported chocolate, salami, there’s a long list. Just eat nothing except what I told you. I need to make some calls right now, so I’m going to hang up without giving you back to Blue. But leave the number where you can be reached tomorrow morning both here and with Detective Rathbone. You’ll be hearing from me.”

  “Rox, what?” I asked the second she hung up, but she was already punching Rathbone’s number.

  “Wes,” she said seconds later, “it’s Roxie Bouchie. Do you know what Bettina Ashe had to eat today? Find out and call me back immediately. I’m at Blue’s.”

  He hadn’t asked why she wanted to know, merely understood that the question was important and agreed with her request. But I wasn’t Wes Rathbone.

  “Roxie, what is it?” I begged. “What’s the food connection? What have you figured out?” I can’t stand not knowing, being in the dark. Not knowing makes my ears ring.

  “It’s so obvious I should have seen it,” she muttered, moving back to the counter to take another bite of her sandwich. “Nobody else would be likely to, but I should have. A psychiatrist should have.”

  “You should have seen what ? What are you talking about?”

  “MAOIs,” she answered, pronouncing the letters slowly as she wandered back across my living room to look through the picture window at tumbleweeds blowing by. Deep in thought, she continued to munch on her sandwich, dropping crumbs on the carpet. Brontë hovered beside her happily, consuming the crumbs. I sat in my desk chair and bit my lower lip.

  “MAOI means ‘monoamine oxidase inhibitor,’” she finally explained. “It’s a drug used in the treatment of depression, although it’s not used much these days. Patients don’t like the dietary restrictions associated with it, and most doctors prescribe everything else available before trying MAOIs.”

  “Dietary restrictions,” I said, trying to find a thread. “Is Kate taking this stuff? Why did you tell her not to eat anything but fresh vegetables?”

  “It’s a long story, Blue.”

  I love long stories.

  “Tell me,” I said as she flung herself on the couch and looked longingly at the phone. “Wes will call you back as soon as he knows what Bettina Ashe ate today. There’s time.”

  “We’re omnivores,” she began. “We evolved eating anything we could find, and our distant ancestors couldn’t afford to be picky about freshness, to put it mildly. If it hadn’t turned to ooze, they ate it. Even if it had turned—”

  “I get the point, Rox,” I said. “But Bettina Ashe did not eat ooze today. I’m sure of it.”

  “No, but her stomach should have been ready if she had. We all produce a monoamine oxidase in our gut, an MAO. It’s there to oxidize a substance called tyramine, which is found in rotten foods and even some that aren’t spoiled, especially liver. We evolved, you might say, with a roadkill palate.”

  I thought of vultures feasting unspeakably in the desert. And crows. And us.

  “Then about forty years ago somebody discovered that inhibiting the chemical effect of MAOs helped reduce the symptoms of clinical depression by altering certain chemical patterns in the brain,” she went on. “For a while these MAO inhibitors, or MAOIs, were widely prescribed for people suffering from chronic depression, but patients taking them had to watch their diets very carefully.”

  “No roadkill?” I said, tracking the explanation although it still made no sense.

  “A number of foods are actually somewhat spoiled and meant to be,” Rox went on. “The process of spoilage gives them their distinctive flavors. Fermented drinks like red wine and beer are made from rotted grapes or hops. Miso is fermented soy mush. Pickled foods like herring or sauerkraut, same thing. Hard sausage, bologna, salami. They all contain substantial quantities of tyramine, which we can oxidize, or digest, because we’re producing MAOs.

  “But if we’re taking something that inhibits the MAOs, what happens?”

  “In extreme cases,” Rox said, her brown eyes bright, “a hypertensive crisis. Blood pressure shoots way up, the heart races at over a hundred beats per minute. The person experiences sweating, dizziness, nausea, a sudden, agonizing headache, and then blam! An artery bursts in the brain and death occurs.”

  “Rox, that’s what happened!” I cheered. “You’ve figured it out! Dixie Ross must have had this stuff in her somehow, this drug, and then she must have eaten pickled herring or one of those things, and it killed her. Same for Mary Harriet Grossinger. And Ruby Emerald. Somebody delivered a deli tray to Ruby the night it happened, Rox! A deli tray with caviar, liver pâté, European chocolate, and red wine. All the bad foods. Poisons, for her. Except her boyfriend threw the whole tray against the wall in a fit of jealousy before she could eat much of it.”

  “Probably saved her life,” Rox said thoughtfully.

  “And then he tried to shoot her the next day,” I finished the strange love story. “But what about Kate, Roxie? She’s been threatened, but nothing’s happened to her. She’s fine.”

  Rox stood up to pace beside the telephone.

  “That was the tip, Blue. When I heard you tell her to forget about this diet she’s on. She eats a lot of broccoli, vegetable salads, fresh meats she buys and cooks herself. This Zone diet is based on a strict balance of carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Every time she eats, her food is fresh and perfectly balanced, and she doesn’t eat anything that upsets the balance. She wouldn’t eat salami, for example, which is full of tyramine and could have killed her. Too much fat. Kate Van Der Elst is protected from the danger of inhibited monoamine oxidation by her diet
!”

  I remembered carrying Kate’s snack in my purse at the fundraiser. Half an apple, a stick of low-fat skim-milk string cheese, and two macadamia nuts. It had seemed ridiculous at the time. Who can eat only two macadamia nuts? But Kate Van Der Elst was alive.

  “How did Sword do it?” I began as the phone rang. Roxie grabbed it before the end of the first ring.

  “Wes?” she said. “Some liver pâté? Oh, God. What else? Grilled cheese sandwich her husband made for her himself. What kind of cheese, Wes? Aged sharp cheddar they order from Vermont, with a little strong Romano. Got it. Anything else? Miso soup. That’s enough to do it, Wes. Liver pâté, aged cheese, miso. That’s enough to kill her. And a couple of imported chocolates. Couldn’t be worse. She never had a chance even without the chocolates. Yeah, I’ll explain.”

  I listened as Roxie outlined the roadkill chemistry again to Rathbone, but I was already thinking. We’d need to chart what each of the victims had eaten immediately prior to death, I thought. In Ruby Emerald’s case, prior to a hypertensive crisis that could have killed her except that seventy-four-year-old Jerry Russell Jones had smashed the lethal delicacies against a wall in a fit of jealousy that saved her life. The irony of Jones’s behavior was stunning and reminded me of my personal philosophy. The grid. It just loves stuff like this. “Man Accidentally Saves Life of Woman He Will Try to Murder the Next Day.” Film at eleven.

  Rox was going into exhaustive detail with Rathbone about MAOIs, but I ignored her and booted up my computer, which has its own phone line. Research. Something I know how to do. It felt good to be useful.

  First I activated the word-finder program that’s in all word-processing software and told it to locate all variants of “eat,” “lunch,” “dinner,” “snack,” and “deli.” Then I went to the file containing my notes on Dixie Ross. Immediately the word “dinner” was highlighted within the phrase “bean-growers’ dinner.” Just before her death Dixie Ross had been at a dinner sponsored by the North San Diego County Organic Bean Growers’ Cooperative. She’d been driving from that dinner to Kate’s fundraiser at the Aphid Gallery at just after seven on Friday night when a cerebral hemorrhage took her life.