Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

“In Eldon’s hand,” I quipped, a standard kitchen joke. Most of us had scarred, heat resistant hands, whereas Eldon’s were renowned for dainty softness.

  “Like that,” Buzz said. “I thought he’d changed his mind about the program.” He shrugged.

  I set the plate of cake crumbs on the rail and squeezed Buzz. “Do you have any idea why the station manager replaced you?”

  He flinched. “My alcohol problem.”

  I knew about this vaguely. Unlike Fortier, trained by the Culinary Academy, Buzz had learned the trade on the job, starting at the kitchen of a camp, an extension of a dry-out clinic.

  “You’ve been clean a long time, haven’t you?”

  “I got a D.U.I. last year, Carol.”

  “I didn’t know that.” I felt queasy. Maybe getting to the bottom of things wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  “Right after the party.”

  Last year’s party had featured a huge, crystal, never-empty punch bowl right where the shrimp were now. Chad and I had come by cab and I’d been somewhere between tipsy and inebriated, but even so I remembered the raucous knot of guys on the balcony. I’d had to restrain Chad from joining them. Big Red, the cook, had shouted, “Geronimo,” and leaped. Then there’d been the ambulance.

  Since Big Red had only broken his leg and seemed to enjoy being the center of attention, people laughed and joked about the party for weeks. The whole affair had been stupid, but fun. Now, I glimpsed a sadder side, the temptation the party offered to someone like Buzz.

  I shook off the guilt. Buzz could have called a cab. I knew why he hadn’t, though. He had fallen off the wagon. Buzz did not like to screw up. He had wanted to escape, unnoticed.

  “I had some counseling,” Buzz said.

  I’d been quiet too long.

  “I’m not drinking.” His voice sounded unsure, as though the habit were a capricious monkey, tamed and housebroken, but never controlled.

  I pinched up the last bits of the petit four and licked them from my fingertips. “If I didn’t know about your D.U.I., how did Fortier?”

  “I’m not sure he knew, Carol. After all, when did Fortier ever need facts?”

  “But you think he suggested to the station manager you might not be reliable, that you had an alcohol problem?”

  “That’s what I think. Then I think Fortier turned on his charm, pulled out his credentials, and said, ‘I’m your man,’ and it was a done deal.”

  “You don’t sound bitter.” In spite of the brisk night air, I felt clammy and nauseous. Saliva pooled in my mouth.

  “Oh, I’m bitter.” His body tensed. “I’ve never been any good at expressing stuff. But I feel it with a vengeance.” His right hand balled into a fist. His voice was steely. “I could have killed Fortier. Easily.”

  “But you didn’t,” I blurted, feeling uncomfortable. This was not the Buzz Fraser I knew. “Did you?”

  He pointed through the glass at the package in Eldon’s hand. “Come on. Let’s go in. That’s your present.”

  Instead, I twisted over the railing and heaved, grateful for the screen of fog.

  FOURTEEN

  When I crawled out of bed the next morning, Chad brought me a large mug of black French roast.

  “Aren’t you going to roof today?” I asked. Reinforced by a jolt of caffeine, I stumbled toward the bathroom.

  “I thought I’d do something special for you on your day off.” He’d been asleep when I had come home and had no way to know how weak I felt.

  I pressed a steaming washcloth to my face. Vomiting was a violent act and even after a night’s rest, I felt as wobbly as a colt. Buzz had been great, fetching my gift, a glass of water, and damp napkins. I contrasted Buzz’s care with Chad’s state of ignorance, and quite unfairly, found Chad lacking.

  But I couldn’t tell Chad what had happened. He might conclude, as I had, that someone had tried to poison me. Dealing with Chad’s protective reaction was more than I wanted to take on.

  “Why?” I asked him, but the cloth muffled my question.

  I pulled away the cloth. Chad and Buzz were about the same age, but Chad looked twenty-five rather than thirty-five. He had the exuberance of a teenager, although at the moment his face sagged with a crestfallen expression. Perhaps because I felt weary, I longed for the stolid, older presence of Buzz.

  “Why not?” Chad watched me brush my teeth. “Why not take the love of my life on a romantic getaway?”

  “That’s really thoughtful.” I tried to sound enthusiastic around a mouthful of toothpaste. It was hard to connect “love of my life” with the pallid face and Bozo-the-Clown hair in the mirror. And a “romantic getaway” could put a damper on my snooping.

  I continued brushing my teeth, stalling further discussion. Chad watched from the doorway as though my foaming mouth were sexy.

  My mind spun away from his proposal toward murder and suspects. Alexis had implied that Julieanne Fortier still loved Jean Alcee, but that only increased the likelihood she’d killed him. No wrath like that of a woman scorned. Good grief, I sounded like my mother. I spit and rinsed my mouth. Chad continued to stand there, waiting for a response. I couldn’t force my mind back to his topic. Instead I was thinking about Kris Kringle gifts.

  I did not believe Fortier had participated in the gift exchange, but Eldon insisted that Fortier had received a jar of honey decorated with a holiday ribbon. He’d told the detectives about it and they’d taken the information seriously.

  To forestall my talk with Chad, I examined my weary face in the mirror. Not bad. I looked okay with pale skin and even the bloodshot whites of my eyes threw the blue-green irises into high relief.

  The cops had spent an hour searching for the elusive jar of honey. Anyone could have given the gift to Jean Alcee Fortier, including Julieanne. Alexis could have delivered it for her. Maybe they’d both benefit from his death. That’s if the jar even existed. Maybe Eldon had invented it to divert attention from the kitchen’s food.

  Chad pushed away from the doorframe. “I could tell the CD player didn’t surprise you.”

  “I love it.” I slipped on my rose-colored, terry robe.

  “I know you like it, but it wasn’t a surprise.”

  We walked to the kitchen. “That’s okay, Chad. I don’t need to be surprised.”

  He put the cast iron skillet on a burner, slid down the cutting board from the top of the refrigerator, and chopped onion, garlic and green pepper.

  Our tiny maple table had two drop-leaves that we kept folded. The menorah sat in the table’s center, my present from Chad’s mom. I hadn’t gotten her anything, but Chad had bought her something and signed the card from both of us. I pulled out a caned chair from one end. In the event of company, we raised the leaves and hauled down two chairs from the attic.

  “Who gave you the book?” Chad asked.

  “My Kris Kringle.” Armed and Dangerous, the perfect gift, lay on the freestanding counter. It was a companion book of Deadly Doses. My mind drifted back to Buzz, the party, and the murder. I wanted to know for certain whether the honey was a legitimate Kringle gift or not. Especially since it had disappeared. I could figure out whether the honey was a Kringle gift by seeing who had participated, who had drawn whom, and whether everyone was matched when I finished.

  Chad cracked eggs into a bowl. “Who was your Kris Kringle?”

  “Just who you guessed.”

  He tossed the chopped vegetables into the skillet. They sizzled in hot oil. His back stayed to me.

  Chad was predictable. He was chewing on the way I’d discouraged his attendance of the party. I didn’t reassure him. Jealousy was a wild beast, not reined by logic. Any protestations about Buzz and me would only spur the ride.

  All week I’d innocently raved about my Kris Kringle gifts. I’d discovered them on my refrigerator shelf, in my locker, and taped to the antenna of my car. “Must be Suzanne,” I’d said.

  “It’s Buzz,” Chad had insisted with the intuition of a bared heart.
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  At the time, I’d shrugged, unsure, or not wanting to deal with it.

  The gifts had been intimate, like the large, tortoise shell hair clip. This was someone who knew I wouldn’t care for the popular, elasticized ruffles, who knew only a large clip would hold my heavy hair, who sensed I might like to clip my hair although I braided it for work.

  Chad added the eggs to the skillet, pressed wheat bread into the toaster, and shredded Monterey Jack cheese.

  “So where are we going on our romantic getaway?”

  He turned and beamed. “It’s a surprise.”

  ~*~

  Chad drove my car rather than his beat-up Ford Ranger, and we headed south on coastal Freeway 1. Out my window, wooded hills studded with houses fell away to the ocean. The overcast sky obscured the outline of Monterey Peninsula curving into the Pacific.

  I could have gotten out of the trip if I’d told Chad I’d been sick. I dismissed the idea again. He’d worry too much.

  I could count the times I’d thrown up (at least the times I remembered) on one hand. When I’d left for the party, I had felt fine. At the party, I hadn’t eaten anything but one petit four and there wasn’t much in sponge cake and sugar that could go bad. A case of food poisoning seemed out of the question.

  “Is something wrong?” Chad asked.

  “No, nothing, sweetheart.” In spite of the cold, morning fog, I’d rolled down the window. If Chad could intuit something was wrong from my back, I didn’t dare look at him.

  “You looked pale this morning.”

  “Tired,” I replied, as I concluded all over again that someone had tried to poison me. But why? And if he were going to bother, why not kill me? Whoever our murderer was, he certainly knew how to kill if that’s what he wanted.

  “That’s what I thought,” Chad said.

  For a moment I imagined Chad was agreeing with my conclusion. I’d lost track of our conversation.

  “A relaxing trip is just what you need. Get away from the house. The chores.”

  I barely comprehended what he was saying. I recalled Santa Claus, or Eldon as Santa Claus. He had been specific. The pink petit four had been made especially for Alexis. Not me. Alexis had swapped it for my chocolate one.

  “Enjoying the view?” Chad asked.

  “Oh yes, beautiful.”

  Why would Eldon want to poison Alexis? None of this made sense. If the petit four had been poisoned with whatever had killed Fortier, I should be dead. If the petit four had been doctored, it must have been with something different, like an emetic. Not lethal, but enough to make a person sick. But why would anyone want to make Alexis sick? Maybe Fortier’s murder had unleashed my imagination, that part of me that invented bad screenplays, and in reality, a weird flu had seized me.

  “What’s wrong?” Chad asked. “You’re acting like someone obsessed. Or possessed.”

  When I turned toward him, I didn’t see his face. There, dividing the north and south bound lanes, were rows of oleander bushes. Free, available, and very toxic. If I remembered correctly from my reference book, oleander poisoning produced the flu‑like symptoms Jean had experienced. I couldn’t wait to get home and double check this idea. If the symptoms were a match, I’d consider an anonymous phone call to the police. So what if it was farfetched. Pathologists could detect almost any poison, but it helped if they knew what to look for.

  I lay a hand on Chad’s thigh to reassure him. “I am obsessed.”

  Chad exited the freeway on 152 through downtown Watsonville, much recovered from the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. Main Street had preserved its turn-of-the-century, western flavor. The new Ford’s Department Store, a gray block with orange trim and too few windows, occupied a corner of a central intersection. It was the downtown’s anchor store. At a diagonal, across the intersection, a familiar figure lounged on a bench at the plaza.

  “Pull over!” I stuck my body far out the window like a rowdy teenager, and waved over the top of the car. “Abundio!” He looked around. “Over here, Abundio!”

  Chad drove across the intersection, but construction had torn up any possibility of parking on that section of Main Street. “Why do you want to stop?” he asked in frustration.

  “Talk to Abundio.” I looked back. The tall, young dishwasher gazed into the cloudy sky, as though contemplating whether he’d heard the voice of God.

  “Doesn’t he have an alibi?”

  Chad didn’t circle the block, and I didn’t protest.

  “Do you think that’s the only reason I’d want to talk to someone?”

  “Yeah,” Chad said. “Lately, that’s what I think.”

  I sighed. We crossed the too dry Pajaro River and continued down into Pajaro. Dilapidated wooden buildings hugged the ground and advertised pan dulce and cerveza, sweet bread and beer. I did wonder about Abundio. He’d slipped out the back at the sound of sirens, and had remained invisible that entire morning, with Victor scrambling to cover for him.

  Besides irritating my co‑workers and endangering myself, I realized my investigation might lead to marital discord. But that wouldn’t alter my course. I agonized over decisions, but once made, I seldom changed my mind. My mother called this obstinate. I called it persistent.

  The small town gave way to the fertile, low lying Pajaro Valley, nurseries and fields. At Prunedale, Chad took Freeway 101 south. Prunedale nestled in the hills to the west. It was a small community and I’d never been there, but it seemed to make local news an inordinate number of times with brush fires, marijuana fields, or substandard camps for migrant workers. In my mind, it was a place for renegades.

  After Salinas, 101 flattened into a warm, monotonous stretch to Soledad, where Chad exited and drove like he was looking for something.

  “Oh, goodie. A tour of the prison,” I joked. “Chad, how did you ever guess?”

  He didn’t smile. As a matter of fact, his mouth turned down, as though he thought I may have preferred the prison tour to whatever he had planned. He stopped at Burger King for lunch. Since he’d packed drinks and snacks, it seemed like a suspense-creating diversion. Or, maybe he couldn’t go any longer without nicotine. He grabbed a package of Vantage from his shirt pocket before the car door thunked.

  After I’d eaten a salad and he’d downed a Whopper and fries, he doubled back on the thoroughfare, turned on a two-lane highway and headed into the parched rolling hills. Scrub oaks dotted the chaparral country, my favorite kind.

  I’d deduced from an inconspicuous sign that we were on our way to Pinnacles National Monument. Since I’d never been there, my curiosity stirred. The land did not look like it could contain pinnacles. The narrow road through private pastures and over cattle guards certainly didn’t lead to any tourist mecca. It was eerily quiet. We didn’t pass another car.

  The pinnacles appeared suddenly, solid, rocky interruptions of a gentle landscape. Chad pulled into a parking lot. Besides restrooms, a ranger’s station and a few picnic tables, the place remained undeveloped.

  “Like it?” he asked.

  I climbed out, stretched, looked at the few cars in the lot, heard the ugly caw of a jay, distinct and separate in the quiet, and sniffed the sagey air heightened by the smell of much needed coming rain.

  “I love it!”

  “Better than Armed and Dangerous?”

  “Love trumps murder.”

  FIFTEEN

  Four o’clock in the morning was an obscene time to be at work. On autopilot, I climbed the steps to the loading dock, entered the hallway, punched in, and changed into my uniform. I dragged myself up the hallway and into the kitchen. My bakery was off to the side, but I didn’t stop there. I passed through the kitchen, turning left before the pastry department.

  I unlocked the first refrigerator, feeling gloomy that we’d had to resort to padlocks after the meat thefts last Christmas. Since I was first to arrive, Eldon trusted me with access to the key.

  Outside it poured, a great day to snuggle in bed with Chad. Instead, I irritably shove
d aside a half-gallon of black olives and a block of feta cheese parked on my shelf. They should have been on the chefs’ Use-First shelf, but a quick look up told me there wasn’t room. I’d bitch later to Eldon. Maybe, if the door weren’t always locked, someone would use the stuff, or, at least, clean the shelf.

  As I lugged my five-gallon bucket of dough and “borrowed” a scoop from the garde manger, I thought of the bed and breakfast in Carmel where Chad had taken me after our hike. We’d dined on our provisions and the fresh fruit and sherry in the room. And that night, in our haven, we’d listened to the promise and thrum of rain.

  I snapped chocolate chip balls on the cookie sheets in rapid-fire motion. Ching, ching, ching. I fantasized about myself with limpid eyes, Chad’s strong, warm hand on my soft belly. I should quit my job, overcome my silly obsession with crime, and have a couple of kids with this dreamy man before time ran out. I resented coming back to this place where someone was mean enough to put an emetic in a petit four. Where someone is deranged enough to murder, I corrected myself.

  On the other hand, I may not have been slamming cookies on the tray because of my return to work, but rather because I’d been seduced away from it. I had lost the momentum of my “investigation.” I wasn’t sure what the point of it was. I had even forgotten to look up oleander. My current situation brought up the age-old, annoying issue of how one held on to self in relationships. Quit my job and depend on someone else? Kids? This wasn’t for me. Holy moley.

  While it’d been enjoyable, no, more than that—supremely delicious—to have Buzz’s sweetness inspire Chad to such heights, I could see Chad’s jealousy developing into a real mess.

  I carried the empty bowl around the corner to Victor and Abundio.

  “Buenos dias, amigos.”

  “Such generosity,” Victor said, rinsing the huge, sticky, stainless steel bowl.

  Abundio held up a wet, soapy hand. He was tall and skinny, with lots of freckles, reddish-brown hair, and a big grin. He and Victor didn’t look like relatives, but whole strings of people at Archibald’s were. Nepotism ran rampant.