The Secret Poison Garden

by Maureen Klovers

  She let that sink in for a moment.

  “Yes, of course,” he said slowly. “Is there any way I can help?”

  “Well, that’s just it. I was wondering if you could tell me about the dummy that was found in the pool that day. I couldn’t see it very clearly.”

  “Oh, that.” He sounded surprised. “If you want, you can come have a look at it yourself.”

  “You mean—you have it?” Rita sputtered. “Chief D’Agostino didn’t take it as evidence?”

  “No, he didn’t. At the time, he didn’t think it was more than a prank, you see. He took a photo and all, but Dr. Walker wanted everything cleaned up as soon as possible and Coach Stiglitz didn’t want to bother pressing charges. Dr. Walker just told me to get rid of it. But it was too beautiful to just throw out.” His voice turned sheepish. “So I kept it as a work of art. It’s in our family room.”

  Rita told him she’d be right over—and she meant it. In seven minutes flat, she was on the porch of the LaMarcas’ small white clapboard house, camera and notebook in hand.

  Dante led Rita through the pleasantly cluttered living room and into the little room in back. Bathed in the afternoon sunlight, the room was crammed with houseplants and comfortable old furniture. It was centered around the TV in one corner, and a shrine to the Virgin Mary stood in the other. The effigy of Coach Stiglitz, judged perhaps more profane than holy, was propped up in the corner by the TV.

  Dante was right. The figure was beautiful. Upon closer inspection, Rita saw that the blue and yellow swirls she had seen were reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. But other images had crept in—the man was not screaming on a bridge, but in the middle of a cemetery. Two of the tombstones were clearly inscribed; one, topped with an angel, read “R.I.P. Sean” and the other read “R.I.P. Mike.” Above the tombstones, the stars were arranged in an unusual pattern. For a moment, Rita struggled to make sense of it. But then the word “respect” finally emerged, followed by a female symbol.

  She frowned. Respect women. Was that some kind of warning or admonition? And who were Sean and Mike? Could Sean be the teen who had committed suicide last year? Rita had a sudden recollection of singing at Sean’s funeral last year—the mopey teenaged faces, the inconsolable mother’s sobs echoing down the aisle. It had been awful—truly, truly awful.

  Pulling the dummy towards her, Rita rotated it. On each bicep were a needle and syringe, around which curled the words “Roid Rage.” Perhaps, Rita thought, her sister wasn’t the only one who suspected the coach used steroids.

  “How did the coach react when he saw this?” Rita asked. “Did you notice?”

  “Like he’d seen a ghost. He wanted me to dispose of it as soon as possible.”

  “I can understand why.”

  “Whoever created this,” Dante said, “is a real artist, even if the message is a little troubling. But that’s what great art is—something that makes you think.”

  “I didn’t know you were such a connoisseur.”

  “Oh, I am. I go to art museums in Albany or New York every chance I get. I wish I knew who made this. He or she’s got some real talent, I tell you. I’d love to meet them.”

  “Mmmmm-hmmmm,” Rita murmured vaguely. She never liked to break the eighth commandment if she could help it, but she didn’t feel compelled to tell Dante the whole truth either.

  For the truth was that she knew who had painted the dummy. The style was unmistakable—and one that she had seen repeatedly over the course of a year.

  That person owed her a favor, and she was about to call it in.

  Rocco slid out from under the Buick, beaming up at Rita. His dark hair was matted, his face smudged with black grease. “What can I do for you, Mrs. C.?”

  He sprang up, and Rita blew two air kisses past his cheeks. “It’s good to see you, Rocco. I’m here to take you to lunch.”

  “It’s not my lunch break yet—”

  “I cleared it with Jimmy. Lord knows I spend enough on car repairs that he can do one little favor for me.”

  “Whatever you say, Mrs. C.”

  They walked the three blocks to the Sunshine Café, and Rita asked for the booth in the back corner. At eleven o’clock in the morning, it was surrounded by empty tables.

  Rocco ordered a chocolate shake, double-decker burger, and cheese fries, while Rita ordered her usual chicken salad sandwich. They reminisced about old times, especially Rocco’s senior year, when he had lived with the Calabreses while his mother, “was upstate,” as they euphemistically referred to it—as in, in prison upstate. Rocco’s father had been long gone by that time, and Rita and Sal had agreed to let him live with them while he finished high school. Rocco was Vinnie’s best friend.

  “You used to paint so beautifully,” Rita said as Rocco slurped up the last of his shake. “Do you still paint?”

  “Uh, not really. Jimmy keeps me really busy.”

  “I hope he’s paying you well.”

  Shrugging, Rocco said, “Well enough.”

  “I saw something this morning that reminded me of your artwork.”

  “Oh?” Rocco tried to look innocent, fiddling with his straw, but only managed to look as guilty as if he had been caught with his hand stuck in the cookie jar. Which he had a couple of times—by Rita.

  “At Dante LaMarca’s house. He kept the papier-mâché figure that was found floating in the pool, with the coach’s car suspended above it.”

  Rita could tell that Rocco was trying to come up with a lie. His ears were turning pink, his Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down, and his fingers were tapping a rapid tattoo on the cheap Formica tabletop. These were all the warning signs of a Rocco mega-whopper in the making—just like the time he had claimed that the reason he and Vinnie were drunk was because they’d gone to Communion too many times that day.

  Holding up one hand, Rita said, “Don’t, Rocco. Don’t even try to make something up. Just tell me why you did it, what role Vinnie played, and what all that symbolism means.”

  “If I tell you,” Rocco said, his shoulders slumping, “Vinnie will kill me.”

  “And if you don’t tell me, I’ll kill you. Besides, it will be much better for Vinnie if you tell me. So I can protect him—and you—from Chief D’Agostino.”

  Rocco’s lower lip trembled. The color drained from his face. “You mean he thinks—?”

  “I don’t know what he thinks, Rocco. Probably nothing yet. But at some point he’s going to connect the dots—”

  “—and think me and Vinnie had something to do with Coach Stiglitz’s death,” Rocco finished glumly, staring at the table.

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, we didn’t,” Rocco said fiercely. “We didn’t. I swear, Mrs. C. We just wanted to send him a little message.”

  “And what was that message exactly?”

  “Stop giving steroids to your players, stop making players with head injuries stay in the game, start respecting women.”

  It took Rita a moment to process this. When it clicked, she suddenly dropped her sandwich onto her plate with a thud. “So he doesn’t just take steroids, but he distributes them?”

  Rocco nodded.

  “Where does he get them?”

  “Mail order. That’s what I hear anyway.”

  “And Sean and Mike are two players who…?”

  Even through Rita suspected she knew the answer, she decided to let Rocco fill in the blanks.

  “Committed suicide,” he said flatly. “One minute they were happy and normal and the next” – he mimicked pulling the trigger of a gun against his temple—“they blew their brains out.”

  “I remember Sean’s funeral, but not Mike’s.”

  “The family kept it quiet. It was two years back. He was already at the U, so not many people here knew.”

  Rita thought back to a story she had heard on ESPN about traumatic brain injuries and suicides. She hadn’t really been listening at first—in fact, she had been trying to prod Sal off of the couch and outside t
o mow the lawn—but she had found herself listening in spite of herself. “And you hold him responsible for their suicides because they had concussions?” she asked.

  “Multiple concussions,” Rocco said. “Seven, eight, nine. Something like that. Coach made Mike play in the Homecoming game three years ago even after getting a concussion. Said he should take it like a man.” He picked at a French fry. “I used to date his sister.”

  Feeling slightly sick to her stomach, Rita pushed her plate to the side. “And the respect women part? What does that refer to specifically?”

  Leaning forward, Rocco lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “Remember Vinnie’s friend Stephanie?”

  An image of a tall, ruddy-faced blonde girl flitted through Rita’s head. “Vaguely.”

  “She was a cheerleader, went to all of the football parties that Coach Stiglitz used to host, that sort of thing.”

  “And?”

  “And she drank too much at one party and passed out. The football players lifted her skirt, took pictures, and emailed them to half the class.”

  “How did Stephanie take it?”

  “Not well. It was bad enough that it happened, but then everyone was talking about it and teasing her and—Mrs. C., it was terrible. She tried to kill herself a few months later, but her mom found her in time and had her stomach pumped.”

  “And then?”

  “And then she went to live with her dad in Brooklyn. To start over. Vinnie saw her a few weeks ago and she was a little better, but only a little. That’s when he decided to send the coach a message.”

  “But why not go to Chief D’Agostino? These are crimes,” Rita exclaimed, ticking them off on her fingers, “illegal drug distribution, plying minors with alcohol, sexual assault or whatever that is exactly—”

  “You don’t get it, Mrs. C. Neither of these girls—”

  “Girls? There is another one?”

  Vinnie shrugged. “Yeah, there were two of them that night.” He picked at his fries. “Neither of these girls wants a police investigation. They just want the story to die. If we’d turned in Stiglitz for peddling steroids, the players woulda been charged with drug possession. Everybody woulda lost.” Rocco sighed. “We thought we had the perfect solution. Until someone decided to kill him.” Rocco’s phone buzzed. “Sorry, Mrs. C. I gotta get back to work.”

  “You’ve done the right thing, caro.” She squeezed his hand and gave him two parting air kisses on the cheek. “I won’t betray your trust.”

  She got the feeling that Rocco didn’t believe her. His eyes were sad and his smile weak as he headed out the door.

  Rita leaned into the plastic seat and slowly drank her ice water. What was the world coming to? Drugs, cyberbullying, suicide, murder—it made her head spin.

  Could it get any worse?

  Rita tallied up the tip, placed four singles on the table, and snatched the check off the table. The Sunshine Café was old-fashioned—the bill had to be paid at the front register, directly to the owner’s eagle-eyed wife. If you were short a penny, she let you have it.

  She was halfway to the register when she heard two familiar voices. Not wishing to be seen, Rita ducked behind the frosted glass partition of their end booth.

  “I don’t want to wait much longer,” she heard her older son say in a low, conspiratorial voice, as he started to get up from the table. “You’ve got to tell him as soon as possible.”

  A feminine voice replied, “I will.”

  Rita had heard that voice all too recently. It was the voice that had urged her to go see the “installation art” for herself—a pleasant, confident voice, slightly seductive, a bit playful.

  It was the voice of Courtney D’Agostino.

  Now she heard Marco’s voice again, but softer this time. “Trust me, it’s better this way. It will be more of a scandal if we do nothing.”

  Rita felt her knees buckling beneath her. What scandal? What did Courtney need to say, and to whom? She tried to come up with some other reasonable explanation, but she kept coming back to only one—Courtney was going to leave her husband for Marco.

  A few years ago, Rita would have been ecstatic to see Marco and Courtney together. That’s what she’d always wanted, after all. But not now, not under these circumstances. Adultery was so tawdry, so…wrong. She hadn’t raised her children to be homewreckers.

  She waited for Marco and Courtney to leave. Then she stood up, massaged her back, and was shocked to experience a sensation she had never expected to have: sympathy for Susan.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rita could not remember the last time she had been so furious with her children. Furious, and disappointed. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she chopped a large yellow onion. Each time her enormous knife hit the butcher block surface with a satisfying sharp, quick chop, she remembered yet another time her children had infuriated her.

  Chop.

  There was the time that Vinnie and Gina had repurposed the wise men and animals in nonna’s presepe—the one that had been lovingly carved by nonna’s nonno—for a Jurassic Park tableau. She shuddered to think of the dinosaur scales they had drawn on the camels in green permanent marker.

  Chop.

  There was the time that Vinnie had built a skateboard ramp off of the roof of the garage while she was at bridge club—and broken his ankle right before what was supposed to have been Rita’s first trip to Italy. Instead of traipsing through the vineyards of Tuscany, she’d spent the next two weeks waiting on him hand and foot.

  Chop, chop, chop.

  The onions were now reduced to little slivers. Her eyes no longer stung with their potency, but the tears kept coming nonetheless.

  Rita scraped the onions into the frying pan, and the pan—a seething, searing-hot mixture of bacon fat and butter—crackled its angry response. “My thoughts exactly,” Rita murmured.

  No, this time was different. All of the previous times had involved just Vinnie, or occasionally Gina and Vinnie. But never, ever Marco. About the worst thing he had ever done was to ruin his dinner with a few extra cookies.

  Marco had never even cheated on a test, so it seemed completely out of character for him to cheat on Susan. Then again, the widow had warned her, hadn’t she? No one is ever who he or she seems.

  Rita had initially thought to make a simple penne with marinara sauce for dinner, but such a meal was no match for her mood. Tonight, she thought grimly, is a night for pasta all’arrabbiata. Arrabbiata literally meant “angry.” Her mother and nonna had made pasta all’arrabbiata for two reasons: either to signal that they were angry—and the angrier they were, the longer they left the red chili pepper in the sauce—or to make their husbands come un leone so that they could fare un maschio. Rita still blushed when she recalled their words; she thought of her father and nonno as sweet, harmless old men—hardly “lions.”

  Hopefully Sal would not misinterpret the meal, since she had no desire for a lion in her bed tonight. All she wanted was to make Vinnie sweat—literally. She dumped a palmful of blazing hot chili pepper flakes into the pan, and gave Marco a call.

  “I saw Courtney D’Agostino today,” she shouted over the roar of the food processor as she puréed the tomatoes.

  “Oh?”

  “Coming out of the Sunshine Café. She looked terrific. I wonder who she was meeting.”

  “Huh.”

  His nonchalance was maddening. If he was wracked by guilt, he certainly was hiding it well.

  “Ma, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a patient.”

  “Of course you do,” she huffed. “Say hello to Susan for me,” she added darkly. “She’s a sweet girl.”

  Marco sounded baffled. “Yes, she is. Later, ma.”

  Rita stabbed the “off” button and rooted around in the cupboard for some penne pasta, then changed her mind. She was more than arrabbiata today—she was arrabbiatissima.

  And the only way to make pasta all’arrabbiata even more arrabbiata was to make it not with the traditional penne but wit
h strozzapreti—“strangle the priest” pasta. Curly and slightly irregular, her nonna claimed that it was so dubbed because it was beloved by gluttonous priests who would eat so many that they would practically choke to death.

  When Sal and Vinnie trooped through the door half an hour later, Rita served them plates piled high with steaming strozzapreti pasta and some very hot arrabbiata sauce—so hot that Sal nearly choked after his bite.

  “Did you have a good day, cara?” he asked suspiciously as he reached for his water glass.

  “No,” she said, glaring at Vinnie.

  “Anything on your mind, ma?” he asked nervously, pushing the pasta around on his plate.

  Without answering, she countered, “Anything on yours?”

  “Uh, no. Just work, you know, the usual. Everything’s good.”

  “I’m your mother, Vinnie.”

  He shot a perplexed look at his father, who raised his eyes to the ceiling and shrugged.

  “Yeah, I know, ma.”

  “If you’re in trouble, Vin, I can help.”

  “Ain’t got no trouble, ma. I swear.”

  They ate the rest of the meal in silence.

  After dinner, Sal and Vinnie washed the dishes, while Rita went out back to the garden, a flashlight and a bowl in hand. The first frost of the season was forecast for that night, and Rita didn’t want to lose her tomatoes. She’d pick them green, then turn them into chicken and green tomato pot pies.

  Rita loved green tomatoes. They were unripe, unfinished—but still so sweet, at least when you cooked their firm, young flesh. They did not come easily, like vine-ripened tomatoes. She had to pull them insistently, but eventually they yielded, dropping into the bowl with a satisfying thud.

  Some thought flitted on the edge of her brain. What was it?

  Something about green tomatoes. Unripe, young—

  Young.

  Like Sean and Mike. She thought of the tombstones Rocco had painted on the papier-mâché figure. Rita yanked the tomatoes off the vine, faster and faster, then took the bowl in the house and set it on the kitchen countertop.