by Lynn Bohart
“By mistake!” Angela chimed in.
“Really?” Detective Abrams said. “How does one throw a burrito at someone by mistake?”
I sat back, my adrenaline pumping.
“We were at a library meeting arguing about tearing down the old library,” I said, containing my anger. “He was for it. I was against it. That was an historical building and meant a lot to people here. You haven’t been here long enough to know that, I suppose. The menu that night was Mexican food, and I was holding a burrito wrapped in tin foil, like this…”
I have spent my entire life wishing I could turn back the clock on certain moments. Like when I offered to show a bunch of elementary school girls how to make pot stickers and set off the school’s fire alarm with my electric wok, forcing everyone to leave the building. I was about to do it again. I picked up Detective Abram’s pen.
“I was trying to make an important point to the Mayor and gestured at him with the burrito like this…”
I snapped the pen at Detective Abrams, just like I had with the burrito. And just like the burrito, the pen flew out of its casing and hit him in the face, just under his left eye. Angela’s hand went to her mouth. Detective Franks flinched to the side. And there was a long moment of silence as Detective Abrams reached up to touch the spot where the pen had nicked him.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, starting to get up. “I…I really am sort of accident prone.”
“Mother, shut up!” Angela pushed me back into my seat. “Just put your hands in your lap.”
She said this as if she were talking to a four-year old.
I put the rest of the pen down and put my hands in my lap as she instructed. I thought perhaps this wasn’t going as well as it could.
“Detective, where are you going with this?” Angela asked, clearly enjoying his discomfort.
“I thought it was obvious,” Detective Abrams replied, rubbing his cheek where a red spot had appeared. “Your mother has a reputation for accosting people. Especially those she disagrees with.”
“I don’t accost people!”
“Really?” he said with raised eyebrows.
“Mrs. Applegate, you have a lawsuit filed against you by a…a Mrs. Dana Finkle,” Detective Franks said, referring to the file.
“She’s a putz!”
“Mother!” Angela warned.
“Well, she is.”
“It says here that you purposely threw a cup of scalding hot tea at her, giving her second-degree burns.”
“No. I tripped and spilled the tea all over her very broad back,” I said. “It was hard to miss under the circumstances, but I didn’t throw anything.”
“Mother, be careful.”
“Look, she owns an antique store downtown and can’t stand the fact that I not only own the St. Claire Inn, but I have a thriving antique business on top of it.”
“So?” Detective Abrams said.
“Look, you must know by now that there are pretty strict zoning laws here, and I had to get special permission to have both the bakery and the antique business on my property. Anyway, Dana Finkle doesn’t like it and keeps going to the City Council asking them to rescind my permit. Then, of course, there’s the fact that my peach cobbler beat her sour cream rhubarb pie at the Summer Celebration last year.”
“So, explain the hot tea,” Detective Franks said, getting back into the conversation.
“I had just been to Starbuck’s and Dana stopped me on my way out. She began arguing with me about computer access at the library—I’m on the library board. It was last summer, and I was wearing flats. I had stepped in some bubble gum on the sidewalk, and when she turned to walk away, I took a step and came right out of my shoe. It threw me off balance and the tea went flying. That’s it. I apologized, but she just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get back at me and filed a lawsuit.”
Both the detectives stared at me expressionless.
Count to three.
“Okay…well then, back to Senator Pesante,” Detective Franks said with a slight shake of his head. “Mrs. Applegate, do you know anyone who would want to harm Senator Pesante?”
“No.”
“Anyone who had a grudge against Mrs. Denton?”
“Martha? No.” Switching suddenly to Martha had taken me by surprise. “She was one of the sweetest, most… unassuming people I know.” My heart was thumping, and I began to pick up speed. “Martha was an introvert. Half the time you would forget she was even in the room. Why would someone want to kill someone you could so easily forget?” I inhaled. “Um…that didn’t come out right.”
“Mom, just slow down.” Angela put a reassuring hand on my arm.
I leaned into Detective Abrams, now feeling desperate to defend my friend.
“Martha was a wonderful woman, Detective,” I said, tears coming to my eyes. “She was kind and generous, and never asked for attention. No, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill her.”
“How did you get along with Mrs. Denton?”
It was Detective Franks this time, changing the subject.
“We were good friends.”
“You never argued?”
I had to think about that. “No. Actually, we never did.”
“Did she ever say anything that made you suspicious or concerned in any way?” he said.
I paused now, wondering if I should mention Martha’s comment about going to confession. Detective Abrams was watching me closely.
“What?” he said.
“It may not be important, but a couple of weeks ago Martha asked me if taking something that wasn’t yours was a sin if it was for the greater good. I don’t know what she was talking about, but then she asked me if I’d been to confession lately.”
Detective Abrams exchanged a look with Angela.
“I wondered at the time if she was thinking of going to see Father Bentley. That’s our priest. But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. To my knowledge, Martha didn’t lie, or cheat, and I certainly can’t picture her stealing anything. So I don’t know why she asked.”
Detective Franks took a note. “We’ll talk with Father Bentley. So you don’t know of anyone who might have had a problem with her? A neighbor, perhaps?”
I shook my head vehemently. “No. I’m telling you…Martha didn’t have enemies. But you know it was Martha who instructed her daughter to order that autopsy.”
Both detectives looked up at me.
“What?” Detective Abrams asked.
I told him what Emily had said about ordering an autopsy. When I’d finished, Detective Abrams looked thoughtful. In fact, he was chewing on the end of the broken pen.
“We’ll talk with her daughter again,” he said with a nod.
“Look, unless you’re going to charge my mother with something,” Angela said, “I think she’s told you all she knows.”
She started to get up. Detective Franks stood as well. Detective Abrams stayed where he was.
“Your mother isn’t under suspicion, Ms. Applegate.” He stretched the “Ms.” so that it became Mizzz. “We’re just trying to get to the facts.”
“Just the facts, ma’am. Is that it?” Angela eyes flashed. “Call me when you have some real information.”
This time, Detective Abrams got up, towering over everyone else in the room.
“I’ll do that. I still have your number,” he said to Angela.
Well, that raised all sorts of alarms in my head. But he wasn’t finished.
“And don’t go out of town, Mrs. Applegate,” he said, turning to me. “We may need to speak with you again. And please… do me a favor,” he said with a lift to his eyebrows. “Remind me never to go skeet shooting with you.”
÷
A frigid breeze met us when we left the building, and it looked like it could snow again at any moment. I pulled up the collar of my coat and then placed a gloved hand on Angela’s arm as she started for her car.
“Just a minute, young lady.”
“I’ve
got to get back, Mom. Can I drop you at the inn?”
“Not so fast.”
“What is it?” she said, drawing open her purse to look for something.
I have always known when Angela isn’t telling the truth. She averts her eyes and busies herself with something else. When she was little, she would begin looking for toys. As she searched through her purse, I suddenly knew the truth.
“Oh my God! You’re dating him!”
Angela blanched. “No,” she said firmly. “We are not dating.”
“So you slept with him. You can stop looking through your purse.”
“No…” she said, hesitating when she found her lip gloss. “We’re…look…after we finished that case last summer…you know, the young woman that was found out by Green Lake with her stomach ripped open… anyway, we’d spent so much time working together to build a case against the suspect, that when he was found dead we decided to have dinner together at my place to commiserate, and… well, one thing led to another, and…” She shrugged. “It was an accident,” she said sheepishly.
“Angela, I’ve been to your apartment. Your bed doesn’t sit anywhere near the kitchen, so it would be hard to have that sort of an accident before, during, or after dinner.”
“Look,” she said, forgetting the lip gloss. “I only saw him that one time. He’d been divorced for a year or so, but he was still really angry towards his ex-wife. I suspect that’s why he took a job over here. I think he needed to get away. Anyway, he’s an arrogant pig sometimes.” She grimaced to emphasize her opinion. “And, then, there’s Phil.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, get rid of Phil!”
Her eyes grew wide. Phil was her on-again, off-again boyfriend who really was an accountant.
“I can’t just get rid of Phil.”
“Sure you can. We get rid of all sorts of things in life we don’t need anymore,” I said. “Black and white TVs and single slice toasters! We just take them to Goodwill when we’re done with them.”
I didn’t like Phil much. He was as boring as…well, an accountant with a pocket protector.
“I am not taking Phil to the Goodwill. And I don’t need you telling me who to date. Now, do you need a ride home?”
I stuck out my lower lip. “No. I’ll go back in and wait for the others.”
When I suddenly remembered why we were even there, I crumpled onto a bench like a deflated balloon.
“God, I can’t believe this is happening, Angie. Who would want to kill Martha?”
Her face softened and she sat down next to me and put her hand on my arm. “It’s going to be okay, Mom. We’re going to figure this out.”
A tear welled in my eye. “But they think I did it, Angela.”
“No…well, yes they might think that right now. But you didn’t, and we’ll find out who did. Detective Abrams is very good, whatever I might think of him.”
She tried to give me a reassuring smile, but came up short.
“I’ve really got to go, Mom. Can you get home okay?”
I pulled out my cell phone. “Yes, I’ll call José to pick us up in the van when the others are done. You go along. And thanks, Honey.”
She gave me a kiss on the cheek and hurried off. I went back inside and waited for the others. An hour later, José was dropping us off at the St. Claire’s front door.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
We debriefed in the van on the way back to the inn, so the girls all left immediately for afternoon appointments, promising to come back that evening. A few guests were milling about and they asked about the police cars that morning. By the time I was done explaining things, I was tired and starving. April had arrived and was out in the bakery, but I needed time to refuel before I filled her in on the day’s events.
I had just heated up a polish sausage in the microwave and gotten out a bagel bun, when Sybil’s voice cut through the silence.
“Yoo, hoo, Julia!”
She waltzed into the kitchen wearing a sweatshirt embroidered with the head of a moose, wearing a big red nose and holiday lights caught in its antlers. As the swinging kitchen door opened, Ahab mimicked her from the breakfast room, “Yoo, hoo, Julia!”
“Stupid bird,” she said, glancing back at him with a frown. As the door closed, she said, “Anyway, what was that all about earlier? You simply muuust tell me. I wanted to come over this morning, but I was expecting the pest control people. And now I see that they have been here, again. What in the wuuurld is goin’ on?”
Since we all considered Sybil to be the biggest native pest to the island, it was all I could do to refrain from making a snide comment regarding the pest control company’s inability to rid the island of pests.
“Slow down, Sybil,” I said, putting my hand up like a crossing guard. “I’ve got to get something to eat. Do you want anything?”
I turned and opened the big double-door refrigerator to get some butter.
“Maybe just some coffee. I’ll help myself.”
She grabbed one of our wide-mouthed mugs and stepped back into the breakfast room where we kept a pot of coffee brewing all day. Meanwhile, I put butter on the bagel bun and got a pickle. Sybil was fifty-something and didn’t work. While we were friendly, I didn’t consider her a friend. She was just too much of an opinionated chatterbox. And after the day I’d had, I just wanted some peace and quiet.
As she returned with the coffee, Ahab sniped in his best Wicked Witch of the West imitation, “Going so soon? I wouldn’t hear of it.”
Sybil’s lip curled into a snarl as the door nearly bumped her from behind as it closed.
“Just ignore him,” I said.
I removed the sausage from the microwave and sat at the antique oak table under the window to assemble my sandwich. Sybil sat across from me, cradling the hot mug of coffee between her overly large hands.
“Well,” she began, “it must have been truly awful the other day, what with Martha dropping dead right in your own dining room.”
I shot her a severe look.
“I’m sorry, Julia. That was insensitive. What I meant was that…well, it must have been hard. We all loved Martha. She was such a dear. Do you know what happened, yet? Did they say it was her heart? She was sooo good about eating right and taking her medication. I saw her out walking almost every day and…”
“It wasn’t her heart,” I said.
I took a deep breath, wondering how much I should say. On second thought, it didn’t matter. Sybil was the neighborhood busybody and would find out anyway. I often thought she had every house bugged within a four mile radius.
“She was poisoned.”
Sybil has very round, blue eyes and right then they looked like large marbles stuck into her head.
“Poisoned? How could that be? Oh my God!” She threw a hand to her chest, momentarily covering the moose’s eyes. “How in the world could she be poisoned? People don’t just get poisoned. I mean, you never hear of people getting poisoned. How could something like that happen?”
I sighed, knowing I couldn’t avoid this. “They say it was arsenic, and they think she may have gotten it from my chocolate fudge.”
There I said it. Sybil inhaled deeply enough to suck up the universe.
“Oh my God, I just mailed that box I just bought from you to my mother!”
“Don’t panic,” I said. “They haven’t even tested it, yet. But Martha ate some just before she died. Just tell your mother not to eat any before we know for sure,” I said, fingering my sandwich.
The sausage kept sliding back and forth in the bun, making me press down to keep it in place.
“That’s why we were with the police,” I said, lifting the sandwich to my mouth. “They wanted to know what we knew, which wasn’t very much.”
I opened my mouth wide and bit down hard, anticipating a great burst of sausage flavor. Instead, the sausage flew out of the bun and across the table to hit the moose right between the eyes. It then fell into Sybil’s coffee mug with a splash.
For a moment, even Sybil was speechless. She glanced down at her sweatshirt, which now oozed sausage grease and butter, and then used a finger to wipe a blob off the moose’s big red nose.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I sputtered. “I must have used too much butter.” I put down the now empty bun.
I got up and grabbed some paper towels. I handed one to her and began to wipe up the spilled coffee. I eyed the sausage and scooped it up, tossing it into the trash. I was about to offer to get Sybil another cup of coffee, when one of the cupboard doors silently swung open. I deftly moved around the table and shut it and then removed the mug and put it into the sink. Now was not the time for Elizabeth or one of her dead children to play games.
“Let me get you another cup of coffee,” I said, starting out of the room.
“No! I’m fine,” Sybil said with restraint, wiping her hands on a paper towel. She stood up. “I just wanted to know how you were, Julia. I worry about you. You run this business all by yourself.”
She often dismissed April as if she didn’t exist. When I stiffened at her comment and opened my mouth to reply, she quickly corrected herself.
“Let’s just say that you carry the bulk of the load. Anyway, maybe it’s all too much. Maybe there was a mistake,” she said, tossing the paper towel into the trash. “I saw on one of those CSI programs that just about everyone has some form of arsenic at home. Not me, mind you. But I suppose it’s not such a stretch that either Martha picked it up somewhere around here,” she said, waving her hands around the room as if arsenic might be sitting out in the open, “or you inadvertently used it in your fudge recipe.”
“I did not use it in my fudge recipe,” I said, bristling. “The police think that someone may have poisoned the fudge after it was in the box, you know, the one I was going to give to Senator Pesante.”
She stopped, her eyes growing huge again. “It was meant for Senator Pesante? I’ve told you before that politicians are not honest people, Julia.”
I started to protest and she held up a hand.
“I know, Julia, I always exclude Graham when I say that. But that’s why people are always trying to kill politicians.”
“No,” I said, stopping her. “No, they’re not, Sybil. Where do you get stuff like that? People aren’t running around trying to kill politicians all the time. And we don’t know yet if Senator Pesante was even the target. We don’t really know what happened.”
