Allergic to Death

by Peg Cochran

  Sienna set to work. “How’s this?” She held up a skewer of alternating peppers, tomatoes and onions.

  “Perfect.” Gigi added one last tomato to the end of her skewer.

  “Did you notice Emilio and Adora this afternoon?” Sienna fished an onion wedge from the bowl.

  Gigi shook her head. “Frankly, I was too shaken up to notice much of anything. What were they doing?”

  “Let’s just say that Emilio seems quite taken with Adora, and vice versa.” Sienna stabbed the last piece of pepper and held the skewer up triumphantly. “There!”

  “Thanks.” Gigi took the skewers, placed them on a baking sheet and brushed them with the marinade. “Carlo said Emilio hasn’t been interested in much of anything since his wife died two years ago. Maybe Adora will bring him out of his shell.”

  “If she doesn’t break his heart instead.” Sienna wiped her hands on some paper towels. “I didn’t realize Martha and Adora were such good friends.”

  Gigi shrugged. “Neither did I. They certainly don’t seem like they’d have much in common.”

  A horn tooted just outside, and Sienna looked up. “That must be Oliver. Anything else I can do?”

  “Thanks, no. You’ve been a great help.”

  “Feeling better?” Sienna put a hand on Gigi’s arm.

  Gigi shook her head. “I’ll be okay. I’m going to get these meals finished and delivered, and then I’m going to spend some quality time with the television.” She grinned as she pulled open the front door to the cottage.

  Sienna waved from the driveway before hopping into Oliver’s station wagon.

  Gigi stood on the steps for a moment, admiring the pots of geraniums that flanked her front door. She pulled a few dead leaves off one and poked at the soil to see if they needed water. She rubbed at a spot on the shiny brass door knocker, which she polished weekly.

  She got a thrill every time she realized this house was hers. In a manner of speaking, of course—she was renting it, but saving every penny she could toward its eventual purchase. Martha Bernhardt had been her landlord. Gigi felt a frisson of panic. With Martha dead, what would happen to the cottage? Would a son or daughter or long-forgotten sister sweep in from some far-off place and demand the keys? She shivered. She didn’t want to think about that.

  Sienna had been the one who’d talked her into giving Woodstone a try, and together they had brainstormed the idea for Gigi’s business. Gigi had felt like a fish out of water at first, but now she complained as loudly as the rest of them over the annual summer and fall influx of tourists from the city who crowded their shops and sped down their country lanes in expensive sports cars.

  Her Italian grandmother on her mother’s side always said, “It’s all for the best.” Maybe she was right. It had all started with a forty-thousand-dollar Versace wedding gown—one that Gigi had lost track of during a photo shoot for Wedding Spectacular magazine. Some assistant to an assistant would probably be sporting it at her own wedding in Brooklyn any day now.

  Gigi still couldn’t believe she had been so careless! She’d always prided herself on her organization—her spices were alphabetized, her taxes done by the afternoon of January 1, her Christmas wrapping finished while the Thanksgiving turkeys were mere babes. How could she have let it happen?

  It had all been Ted’s fault. Gigi slammed the front door and felt the satisfying shudder the house gave. She had to stop blaming Ted for everything. But if he hadn’t devastated her by leaving, she certainly never would have messed up so badly and lost her job as food and entertainment editor of Wedding Spectacular. Ironically, he had left her for an older woman—just when she’d begun to fret about another birthday and being on the wrong side of thirty-five.

  But then if it hadn’t all happened, she wouldn’t be here now. Maybe she should thank Ted instead of blaming him. She loved her little cottage, her business was taking off and there was Carlo.

  But she didn’t want to admit that last bit even to herself.

  Gigi was taking the chicken and vegetable kebobs off the grill when she heard a car pull up outside, followed by the faint thump of the door knocker echoing from the front hall. She brought the platter in and set it on the counter. The chicken, grilled to a golden brown, continued to sizzle slightly, the bright red cherry tomatoes looked ready to burst and the green peppers were blistered and shiny.

  Gigi glanced at her watch as she hurried to the foyer. She could see the hazy outline of a man through the sheer curtains covering the windowpanes of the Dutch door. A salesman? she wondered. She didn’t have much time. She had to pack up the dinners and be on the road shortly. Her clients were usually too hungry to be kept waiting.

  “Yes?” Gigi opened the top half of the door and looked out.

  “Ms. Fitzgerald?”

  “Yes,” Gigi repeated.

  “Detective Bill Mertz. May I come in for a minute?”

  Gigi unlatched the bottom half of the door and opened it. She supposed he had come to talk about Martha’s accident. A policeman at the scene had taken down her name, phone number and address.

  “Do you mind terribly if we go into the kitchen? I was right in the middle of something.”

  He was tall, ramrod straight and looked as if he’d been chipped out of stone. Sharp blue eyes, light brown hair cut short and precisely parted and thick, and straight brows gave him an air of authority that came off him in waves and nearly vibrated in the small space of Gigi’s front hall.

  She felt herself bristling and was tempted to click her heels as she turned and led him down the hall and into the kitchen at the back of the house.

  He looked around without saying anything, legs slightly apart and hands clasped in front of him. Gigi moved to the tiny work island where she had Gourmet De-Lite containers lined up and ready. She grabbed the platter of kebobs, placed them on a wooden chopping block next to the open containers and added one skewer of grilled chicken and vegetables to each. She paused and entered a number on her calculator.

  She could sense Mertz watching her, and she felt her face getting flushed. She stole a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. He really was quite good looking. She continued to ignore him as she exchanged the pan of kebobs for a pot of brown rice pilaf. Carefully, she measured half a cup into each container and then punched another number into her calculator.

  Mertz cleared his throat. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  “Certainly, but I hope you don’t mind if I continue with what I’m doing.” Gigi knew she sounded waspish, but she couldn’t help it. He was making her uncomfortable. He reminded her of the guards at Buckingham Palace who never responded to what was going on around them. What would it take to make Detective Mertz lose his cool?

  “I believe you witnessed an accident this afternoon in front of Bone Appetit,” he said, mangling the pronunciation like so many of the denizens of Woodstone.

  Gigi nodded as she took a ripe, round cantaloupe from the counter and placed it on a clean cutting board.

  Mertz reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pad and pen. He clicked the pen and held it poised over the paper. “Did you witness the entire thing?”

  “Yes.” Gigi shuddered and closed her eyes for a moment as the accident played through her mind. She wondered how long it would be before she stopped seeing it over and over again.

  “Where were you standing?”

  “I wasn’t. I was in my car, right behind.”

  “Can you tell me, in your own words, what happened?”

  Who else’s words would she use? Gigi wondered. She selected a knife from her knife block—her biggest, sharpest chef’s knife. She thought she noticed Mertz flinch slightly, and she smiled to herself as the knife sliced through the cantaloupe as if it were butter.

  “I followed Martha out of the theater parking lot—”

  “You were acquainted with the deceased?”

  “Martha? Yes.” Gigi held half the melon over the sink and scooped out the
seeds. “Everything was fine, at first. We turned onto High Street and headed toward town. We were passing the bakery when Martha started driving strangely. She was weaving from one side of the road to the other, going back and forth across the yellow line. At one point she even hit the curb. I didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t anything I could do.” She turned toward Mertz, palms up.

  He nodded briskly. “Go on.”

  Gigi sighed. “That’s it, really. She went up over the curb and hit that tree outside of Bon Appétit.” Gigi shuddered. She scooped the seeds from the other half of the melon, then began to cut it up, putting a half moon slice in each of the containers.

  “Did you speak to Ms. Bernhardt before leaving the parking lot?” Mertz looked up from his notepad.

  “Yes. Yes, I did.”

  “Was she acting normally? Did she appear ill or agitated?”

  Gigi took a container of blueberries from the refrigerator, where they had been macerating in a couple of tablespoons of orange juice and some artificial sweetener. She put a spoonful on top of each melon slice. “Not ill, no, but she was upset. Someone had stolen her purse.”

  Mertz jerked as if startled. “Her purse was stolen?” He scribbled some notes on his pad.

  “Someone took it out of her car while she was in the theater. Apparently she’d left the doors unlocked.”

  “I wish the lovely people of Woodstone would realize it’s not nineteen forty anymore. They can’t go around leaving things unlocked.” Mertz sighed and ran a hand through his cropped hair. “Did you happen to notice if she ate anything while she was at the theater?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” Gigi began closing up the containers. “I’d just delivered her lunch—”

  “She was a client of yours?” Mertz’s eyebrows rose slightly as he gestured toward the containers on Gigi’s counter.

  Gigi nodded.

  “And she ate something you’d given her before getting in the car?”

  Gigi nodded again. “One of the melba toast appetizers I’d prepared for this afternoon’s lunch.”

  “Melba toast? Did you buy them—”

  “Of course not. I made them.”

  “That’s all they were? Just toast?”

  “No.” Gigi ran through the list of ingredients. She couldn’t imagine what Mertz was getting at. What could the melba toast possibly have to do with Martha having a heart attack?

  “Any peanuts?” Mertz asked.

  “Absolutely not.” Gigi said emphatically. “Martha was deathly allergic to peanuts. It’s one of the first things I ask a new client.”

  “So you knew Ms. Bernhardt was allergic?”

  “Yes.” Gigi closed the last container and paused with one hand on the lid. “But she had a heart attack, didn’t she?”

  Mertz shook his head. “The autopsy hasn’t been performed yet, but the doctor is fairly certain she was in anaphylactic shock when her car hit that tree. And her medical records indicate a severe allergy to peanuts.”

  Gigi’s hand flew to her mouth.

  “You’re certain that you did not use any peanuts, peanut oil or any other product containing peanuts in the preparation of the meal you delivered to Martha Bernhardt this afternoon?” he asked, sounding as if they were already in court.

  Gigi shook her head so vehemently, her hair lashed from side to side. “No. Absolutely not. I don’t even keep peanuts in the house.” She gestured toward the pantry as if inviting him to look for himself.

  “Thank you.” Mertz replaced his pen and pad in the inner pocket of his jacket.

  Gigi led him to the foyer and opened the front door. She watched as he walked down the path toward his car.

  She knew she hadn’t used any peanuts at all in Martha’s meal.

  But why did she have the feeling that Detective Mertz didn’t believe her?

  Chapter 3

  Gigi put the keys to the MINI on the hook she’d installed next to the wall phone in the kitchen specifically for that purpose. A place for everything, she thought as she surveyed the room. She’d just delivered a dozen Gourmet De-Lite lunches, and now it was time to clean up.

  She snapped on some rubber gloves and sprayed down the counters with cleaner. She enjoyed tidying. She liked seeing order slowly emerge from the chaos. Today she was tired, though. She’d tossed and turned most of the night listening to the rain lashing the windows and seeing Martha’s terrible accident play out in her mind over and over again.

  Then there’d been that very unsettling conversation with Detective Mertz. She rinsed her sponge and squeezed it out over the sink. She had the distinct feeling that he thought she’d been careless and had caused Martha to have an allergic reaction. Mertz himself had unsettled her, too. On the one hand, he rubbed her the wrong way. On the other hand, she found him impossibly attractive.

  She cleaned the tops of her flour and sugar canisters and pushed them back into position against the wall. Spices next. She carefully inserted the paprika into the empty space on the rack between the marjoram and the sage and the tin of thyme between the sage and the dark brown bottle of vanilla extract. Sienna sometimes laughed at her system, but it was the only way she could be efficient enough to prepare a dozen meals three times a day.

  She was hanging up the dish towel when the phone rang. Gigi grabbed the receiver and held it propped by her chin as she sprinkled cleanser into the sink. “Hello?”

  Gigi hung up the phone with trembling hands. She couldn’t believe the conversation she’d just had. She had to tell Sienna about it. She grabbed her coat and ran out to her car. The drive seemed to take forever, but finally Gigi was shaking out her umbrella and pushing open the door to the Book Nook. Sienna was behind the counter making notations on a computer printout.

  “You won’t believe what just happened,” Gigi burst out before even saying hello.

  “What?” Sienna pushed the stack of papers aside and leaned her elbows on the front counter.

  Gigi’s fingers itched to organize the papers, not to mention the entire counter, and, what the heck, do a little dusting while she was at it.

  Sienna gathered her long, strawberry blond hair into a knot at the back of her neck and secured it with a pencil. “Carlo has asked you out?”

  Gigi laughed. “No. Of course not. Don’t be silly.” The idea made her stomach do strange flip-flops, and she could feel her face getting as red as her hair.

  Sienna sighed. “I thought Italians were supposed to be so good with women. What’s wrong with that man? Anyone can see he’s crazy about you.”

  “He’s just a friend,” Gigi protested.

  Sienna snorted.

  The bell over the front door jangled, and Gigi turned gratefully in that direction.

  “It’s just me.” Alice came into the shop, her raincoat glistening with moisture. She pulled off her hat and shook it over the front mat. “Will this rain never end?” She began to unbutton her coat. “But just so it doesn’t rain on my Stacy’s wedding day, it can flood for all I care.”

  “Come on. Let’s have a cup of coffee.”

  They followed Sienna into the area known as the “coffee corner.” Two faded sofas sat at right angles to each other, along with a cracked brown leather arm chair and an orphaned red corduroy ottoman. Richly colored shawls were draped over the arms, and soft pillows were stuffed into every corner. Delicious-smelling coffee gurgled from a gleaming chrome machine. The result was warm and inviting. Patrons were known to spend whole afternoons in the coffee corner, reading and perusing books.

  Sienna often complained that that didn’t do much for the Book Nook’s profits, but so far she was making a go of it, selling new books as well as used. Not that Sienna really had to worry about money. Gigi sometimes envied Sienna her husband, Oliver, who worked on Wall Street and made more in a week than the Book Nook took in all year. Sienna herself had given up a six-figure income as a publicist when they’d moved to Woodstone in hopes of having a family. So far it was still just the two of them, with Sie
nna pouring all her energy into her bookstore. If she was disappointed, she didn’t let on.

  “Help yourself.” Sienna gestured toward the coffee machine, which was now humming quietly.

  Gigi grabbed two cream-colored mugs with The Book Nook written on them. She held one up to Alice.

  “Sure. No cream or sugar.” She shot a grin at Gigi.

  Gigi filled the mugs and handed one to Alice. “Let me tell you my news.”

  “What news?” Alice asked eagerly, taking a seat on the sofa.

  “Okay, shoot.” Sienna filled a mug with hot water and added a strangely colored tea bag.

  “Do you know Branston Foods?”

  “Sure. They’re that big place outside of town, right?” Sienna cradled her mug in her hands. “I’ve been caught in traffic out there a few times when the plant let out. It added twenty minutes to my trip.” She repositioned the pencil in her hair. “Why?”

  “I had a call from them today. Right before I got here.” Gigi paused dramatically. “They want to talk to me about producing a line of diet foods.” Her cup shook slightly, and she set it down carefully on the table. “Called Gigi’s Gourmet De-Lite.” Her voice cracked. “And they’re going to pay me for the name and for me to come up with the recipes and…everything!”

  Sienna whistled.

  “That’s fantastic!” Alice hooted.

  “This means I can save money to buy my cottage from Martha’s estate.” Gigi smiled at them, but then her face clouded over. “As long as nothing goes wrong. I won’t really believe it until the papers are signed and…and…everything.” She surreptitiously stuck out her pinky and index finger in case any jealous, evil spirits were hovering over Sienna’s shop.

  “What could go wrong?”

  Gigi thought of Detective Mertz, and she could feel the hot coffee sloshing around in her stomach. It made her feel like being sick.

  “What’s the matter?” Sienna leaned forward and put a hand on Gigi’s shoulder.

  “I had a visit yesterday from a Detective Mertz from the Woodstone Police Department. Apparently Martha didn’t have a heart attack like we thought. She was in anaphylactic shock when she hit that tree.”