One Taste Too Many

by Debra H. Goldstein

  “Em . . .”

  Emily smiled at her frowning twin. “Okay, boys.” She linked her arms through Harlan’s and Peter’s, making it appear they were three jovial friends exiting the Food Expo in style.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Sarah watched the three of them work their way through the crowd. Sarah wanted to follow them. Her sister was more important than some stupid food demonstration or some idiot’s restaurant. Speaking of the idiot, she strained to hear what Marcus was saying from the stage.

  His intermittent hold over her sister bothered her. Sarah couldn’t understand what kind of relationship they had. Unlike Sarah, who from the time she met Bill fit her actions to being part of a couple, Emily never had kowtowed to any man.

  It had disgusted Emily whenever Sarah made excuses for Bill’s behavior. When Sarah finally woke up to the reality of her relationship, Emily became Sarah’s nonstop cheerleader. Emily was the one who encouraged her to stand up for herself against Bill’s mental abuse. When Bill walked out, it was Emily who repeatedly assured Sarah she had self-worth and deserved to do things that made her happy.

  Marcus’s voice announcing the next demonstration would be by Emily Johnson interrupted her thoughts. When Emily didn’t bounce onto the stage, Sarah observed the anxious way Marcus scanned the crowd for her. For a moment, his darting eyes made her think of her own petrified reaction when Bill almost died on their honeymoon after eating something with nuts. But it was absurd to compare Marcus and Emily’s yin and yang business relationship to that of newlyweds.

  “Emily Johnson,” he called again.

  Against her better judgment, Sarah let her feet carry her up the stairs to the stage. Marcus stopped in midsentence. She gave him a half smile. Taking the microphone from his hand, she turned to the crowd. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  To steady herself, she thought back to the two tricks her high school speech teacher had taught the class to calm nerves. She could never sustain an image of one hundred people being naked. Instead, she looked around for a friendly face to pretend to be having a conversation with. Her eyes landed on Jacob. He smiled at her and she took that as a sign of encouragement.

  She started again. “Um, hi, everyone.”

  “We can’t hear you!”

  “Hold the microphone closer to your mouth,” someone else yelled from the audience.

  She glanced to Marcus, who pantomimed holding a mic directly in front of her mouth. “Sorry.” She moved the microphone. “Is that better?”

  Even before voices from the audience responded, she could hear the difference in her sound level. She tried to see who had shouted at her but couldn’t tell. She swallowed and started again. Her voice was louder, but quivery, in her ears.

  “My name is Sarah Blair.” She hung her head in shame. “I am a cook of convenience.”

  She raised her head, appreciating the few people who laughed. The laughter made her remember the other rule of public speaking: smile as if you’re having fun. She plastered a smile onto her face. “Emily Johnson is my twin sister. Unlike Emily, who is CIA-trained and a master chef, the kitchen, to me, is like a foreign country. I cook purely out of necessity.”

  Someone clapped. Sarah moved across the stage and pointed in the direction of the person who’d clapped. “My type of person.” Sarah warmed up to her topic. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? We’re the ones who time our cooking minutes to the length of songs and only make recipes with pictures. That way, we can take the picture to the store to make sure we buy the right ingredients.” There were a few more chuckles from the audience.

  “I know my sister, Emily, and most of those who’ve been on this stage, believe in gourmet cooking, but I bet a lot of you are more like me. Our cars instinctively know the way through drive-in windows. At the grocery, we buy prepared chickens and we personally keep our local pizzerias in business. That’s right, we only turn on our stoves when we need to warm something up. During this segment, I’m going to demonstrate a true recipe of convenience. If you like it, please feel free to drop a red chip in my sister’s bowl.”

  “This isn’t fair!” Jane ran up the steps to the stage. Ignoring Sarah and the audience, she went straight to Marcus. “She shouldn’t be up here, let alone sharing Emily’s basket. In fact, Emily should be disqualified for not presenting two recipes.”

  Marcus tried to guide her off the stage by her elbow. “Jane, this isn’t the competition. I don’t see a problem with Sarah demonstrating a recipe. After all, Emily already has presented one. Would you like a substitute for your second recipe? I’m sure Jacob could handle it.”

  “Definitely not.”

  She started to protest again but stopped when someone booed from the audience.

  “Get off the stage and let her make her presentation.”

  When others picked up the refrain, Marcus took advantage of the commotion to usher Jane from the stage.

  Sarah couldn’t hear what Marcus said to Jane as he eased her down the steps and she didn’t try. She turned away and fixed her gaze on Jacob. She could have sworn it was his voice that had started the distraction, but why?

  As she looked at Jacob, knowing he probably would have preferred to make this presentation himself, he pointed to his watch. She didn’t understand what he was trying to tell her. It made no more sense the second or third time he held his watch up and tapped it. Perplexed, she worked her way closer to where he stood. She pointed at him. “I’d like to introduce you to Jacob Hightower, one of the Southwind’s fine cooks. He’s trying to tell me something, but I can’t understand him. Jacob, why don’t you wave to everyone and share whatever it is with my other friends here.”

  Jacob waved as instructed. “Get to your ingredients before you run out of time!”

  “Good point.” Sarah walked over to the refrigerator /freezer and searched for where Grace had placed her ingredients on a shelf labeled with Emily’s name. Sarah held up a large metal can of Dole pineapple rings and a package of gelatin. “My recipe is Jell-O-in-a-Can.”

  Several members of the audience laughed until she hushed them with a hand. “It really is a 1955 recipe created by Dole Pineapple and Jell-O. All you need to make it is a can of pineapple rings, a package of gelatin, and some water.” She placed the ingredients on her workstation. “Believe me, if I can make this, y’all can, too.”

  She opened the can of pineapple and drained the liquid. “Center the remaining pineapple rings in the can.” She shook the can. “What you poured out of the can was about three-quarters cup of juice. Boil that much water and add gelatin to it. FYI, that’s about half of what you normally would use with gelatin. Pour the mixture back into the can so that it goes between and around the pineapple.”

  Sarah put the can with the mixture she had just prepared in the refrigerator and took out the one Grace made earlier in the day. She turned back to the audience. “As you can see, I’ve put our can into the refrigerator. Normally I’d keep it there for a minimum of four hours, removing it before it settled.” She held the cold can high enough for the crowd to see it. “Voila! With a little magical help from another Southwind chef, the hours have passed.”

  She wrapped a towel around the can. “We need to gently warm the sides by either putting warm water on them directly or using a towel, like I’m doing. Then we’ll open the bottom of the can and use the bottom lid to push the mold out from the top of the can.”

  With exaggerated fanfare that generated some pockets of laughter from the audience, she mouthed a semi-silent prayer before she tapped the can and eased the contents out of it. “Whew! Luck was with me today.”

  She picked up a long, sharp knife. “Now all I have to do is slice between the pineapple slices and . . .” She angled the plate toward the audience. “That’s all there is to making a perfect Jell-O-in-a-Can Jell-O mold.”

  Sarah put the plate on the table, took a small bow, and handed the microphone to Marcus. Waving to the applauding audience, she walked
off the stage and out of the Civic Center. She had more important things to do than stay around until the end of the afternoon session.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Sarah clicked the lock button on the key fob of her Honda. She pushed the fob and her hands into her pockets while she walked to the front of the building that co-housed the fire and police stations and the jail. Expansive glass doors and windows framed the main lobby, but upstairs, the windows narrowed to slits too narrow for a prisoner to slip through and below the main level was a small parking area with reserved spots and private office entrances for the fire and police chiefs.

  Before she reached the end of the parking lot, Harlan came through the double glass doors. He stood outside them, his head down and shoulders rounded, warding off a nonexistent blast of wind. Emily wasn’t with him. Sarah hoped Emily was already gone.

  She picked up her pace. Harlan spotted her when she was about a car length from him. He waited for her to reach him.

  “Where’s Emily?”

  Instead of answering, he took her hand and led her back into the building.

  “Harlan?”

  He put his finger to his lips and guided her to a cushioned bench on the side of the lobby.

  “You’re scaring me, Harlan. Did you bail her out?”

  “She’s upstairs.” He pressed forward, his words running together. “I’m working on it, but unless something works out, there won’t be a bail hearing until next week.”

  “You can’t leave her in a cell over the weekend. She didn’t do anything. Surely you can explain that to one of the judges and get some type of bail set today.”

  He shook his head. “Peter agreed to keep her in a cell by herself tonight, but not indefinitely. I’m doing the best I can to expedite things. Sarah, you have to understand, the forensic evidence is stacked up against her.”

  “I don’t believe it. Harlan, someone is framing her with this so-called evidence.”

  “If they are, she isn’t helping me prove it. She won’t talk to me.”

  “I’ll speak to Emily. I don’t know what’s going on in her head.”

  Harlan rubbed his hand against the back of his neck and shirt collar. “They won’t let you in to see her right now. Best thing you can do is go home and try to get some toiletries or other things she might need.”

  “Harlan, how can you say that? You’re her lawyer. Surely you can get me in to see her.”

  A pained expression crossed Harlan’s face, but he didn’t cut her tirade off.

  “You don’t seem to be doing much to help her!”

  He reached for her hands, but she pulled away from him. “Sarah, please, I know it may look like I’m not doing much, but believe me, I’m trying to find her away out of this mess. The problem is that the accusations keep mounting.” He shrugged halfheartedly. “A lawyer isn’t a mind reader. Without her cooperation, I’m pulling at straws.”

  Tears slipped from Sarah’s eyes. “But you got her out last time.”

  “That was easier. She wasn’t under arrest then. Plus, there were a lot of things available for me to use to poke holes in the theory of their case.” He raised a finger to underscore each argument: “One, Bill avoided recipes with nuts and he knew Emily’s recipe had nuts. Two, there was a believable explanation for how her fingerprints were on the knife, and three, Bill hated rhubarb.”

  Harlan took Sarah’s hand. This time, she didn’t take it away. “A jury can be convinced to give a person one bite of an apple, but it’s beginning to look like Emily has had one taste too many. Reasonable doubt doesn’t seem so reasonable. Peter’s simply got too much evidence and there are too many coincidences.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  With his free thumb, Harlan wiped away the tears staining her cheeks. Sarah flinched as he rested his finger a moment more than he needed. “Think back to the minutes before the Expo opened. When I got to the Southwind booth, you were under the table, but I could see it was crazy in the booth with all of you trying to get things set up.”

  Sarah nodded in agreement.

  “That close to the Expo starting, considering what she was responsible for, Emily should have been there.”

  “She’d . . .” Sarah stopped, remembering how Marcus commanded Emily to “go back to her own station,” but Emily left the booth.

  “Sarah, imagine how it will play to a jury. Most people will say she should have fired Richard on the spot for insubordination. From what I’ve heard, it wasn’t the first time he’d acted out, and he was the one who stomped out of the booth. They’ll also say, considering her management responsibilities, rather than look for him, she should have manned up and helped Jane. Instead, Peter has witnesses, including you, who will testify she got into it with Jane and Marcus ordered her out of Jane’s part of the booth.”

  “It was all Jane’s fault. Besides, Marcus sent Jane to wash her face. He stepped in to help her be ready in time.”

  “That’s the point. He stepped in. People will wonder why Emily didn’t assist Jane, for the good of Southwind, plus, it really was her job.”

  “You know all the things Jane has done to Emily and me.”

  He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “A jury doesn’t and probably won’t. More importantly, Jane came back to the booth. The next time anyone saw Emily, she was alone with Richard, her hands and clothing covered in his blood.”

  “I got his blood on me, too.”

  “True, but your fingerprints aren’t on the knife that killed him.”

  “Emily touched the knife when she tried to help Richard. You can explain that!”

  “Not if Emily doesn’t testify. Right now, she isn’t talking to me, let alone indicating she’d testify on the stand. Fingerprints on two different murder weapons won’t sit any better with a jury than being found allegedly giving CPR to both men killed by those weapons.” He put both hands on her shoulders and stared Sarah straight in the face. “Even for a good lawyer, like me, it’s hard to shift attention away from the coincidences and the fingerprints—especially if Emily won’t help me understand them.”

  “I’ll make her talk to us.”

  Harlan stood and looked at Sarah. “I hope you can shake some sense into your sister when Peter lets you see her, but, in the meantime, I’m going back to the office while they’re booking her. I have a client coming in at four and I need to be back here at four thirty.”

  “On a Saturday?”

  “It’s a special matter. Before then, though, I need to look up a few things I might be able to use on Emily’s behalf.”

  “Let me come with you. Maybe I can think of something you’re missing.”

  “Tell you what, go get your sister a few toiletries or other things she might need. Bring them to me at the office. Hopefully, we can think of something. If not, you can always catch up on your filing.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  With a farewell tip of his briefcase, Harlan left Sarah sitting in the lobby. She shut her eyes and tried to focus on what he’d told her, rather than the sinking feeling in her stomach. None of this made sense. Emily was the good twin who won all the Girl Scout merit badges and shared everything with their mom—or at least she always had.

  She took a deep breath and tried to think how Perry Mason might analyze what was happening. There was no question he’d have Paul Drake check the facts and then he’d pull back, think, and tie everything together. Maybe she could do the same thing.

  When had things changed? Were there changes in Emily’s behavior that Sarah had ignored? Sarah opened her eyes. San Francisco. Since Emily came back from San Francisco, things had been different. Unlike during the period of Sarah’s divorce, she and Emily no longer finished each other’s sentences or, for that matter, knew instinctively what the other was thinking.

  Even Emily’s eating habits had changed. In the past, the twins always narrowed restaurant menu choices to two they shared. Since San Francisco, Emily ordered her own dish, except for the few times Marcus wa
s with them. Then, he and Emily shared. Sarah had thought Emily was playing up to her boss, but now she wondered if there was more to it than that. The problem with her hypothesis was his obvious chumminess and involvement with Jane. Was it real or not? If she couldn’t get Emily to talk to her, Sarah decided she would confront Marcus. Maybe he could shed some light on what had really happened in San Francisco.

  In the meantime, Sarah was determined she wouldn’t leave the building without trying to see Emily. Every moment they delayed talking was a moment lost in finding the true murderer. It was unthinkable that the real killer was at large and no one cared. She shuddered at the thought of Emily being fingerprinted, photographed for a mug shot, and locked away in a cell.

  Remembering how Harlan bluffed them into the interrogation room earlier in the week, Sarah decided old-fashioned bluster might be the answer again. The only thing was whether to start with the desk sergeant or go straight to Peter. She ran through different possible scenarios in her mind. Unfortunately, they all ended with the same conclusion Harlan had voiced: “Not now.”

  The elevator across from where she sat chirped as its doors opened. Sarah didn’t pay attention to whether anyone she knew got on or off until she heard her name repeatedly called. It was Peter.

  “Kismet. I was just thinking about you.”

  “Oh?”

  “I need to talk to Emily.”

  He tilted his head away from her and ran his hand through his thick black hair. She waited. This was the body language she was beginning to associate with him just before he delivered bad news. Sarah wondered if he was conscious of it. She was certain of one thing, she had no plans to clue him in about his giveaway behavior.

  “She doesn’t want to see you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’m her sister.”

  He fingered the stitching over his holstered gun. “Sarah, I know this is difficult for you, but Emily couldn’t have been any clearer.”

  “Emily?” She craned her neck toward him and frowned. Harlan had told her it was Peter and the process preventing her from seeing Emily. “That doesn’t make any sense.”