Pinot Noir and Poison

by Sandra Woffington

  Max’s brows knit in anger, like a child wanting his way. He gripped the spoon in his loose fist and plowed it into the gelatin and out again. The pot tipped over, but a blob of green gelatin clung to the spoon. It wriggled and jiggled and danced to and fro on a precarious path to Max’s mouth. He shoved it in, smacking the spoon against his front teeth, and chomped down in delight, as if the pathetic spectacle proved his readiness to get the hell out of Dodge. The gelatin leaked out of his mouth like green goo. It dribbled down his chin and plopped onto his hospital gown.

  Steele shook his head. “Dude, you eat like Slimer from Ghostbusters.” He patted the blanket over Max’s leg. “Rest up, and we’ll break you out of here as soon as you can talk and walk. I’m not dealing with the toilet part of the equation. That’s your mission, should you decide to accept it. Walk. Talk. Poop.”

  Joy wiped the gelatin off of Max’s face.

  “Thhhhanks.” Max’s brows knit in furrows of appreciation.

  Joy squeezed his hand, and in that instant, she understood that he knew she’d held his hand and did not let go.

  Joy and Steele ate lunch in the hospital cafeteria. Its gold walls and colorful paintings disguised it as a café or bistro. Amber booths with wooden tables lined one wall, while tables and chairs filled the floor space. Joy and Steele opted for a booth.

  Awkward silence fell between them.

  “Did you get any sleep?” asked Steele.

  “A little.” Joy dug into her cranberry and walnut salad. After a minute passed between them, she asked, “Did we move too fast?”

  “No. Life is short.”

  “Right. So why is it easier to get naked with someone you care about than it is to talk?”

  Steele nearly choked on a bite of his steak sandwich, while Joy simply popped a mouthful of spring greens into her mouth. “That’s, uh, a good observation, Joy. I don’t think that’s true of everyone, though. Some people are more comfortable talking, but they can’t be physically intimate. Others can get naked, but it’s all physical—they can’t open up emotionally. And some have the whole package. Lucky bastards!”

  Joy contemplated as if solving a relationship-calculus problem. “I had trouble talking growing up. You need friends to talk. I didn’t have any. But I spoke to adults. Dad’s friends. A few teachers. I didn’t attempt a relationship until college.”

  “I didn’t talk, except to my brother, because we kept to ourselves.”

  “Fear of being judged?”

  “Fear of showing weakness. In my neighborhood, if you shared your fears—you became a target.”

  “Losing my father, moving here, finding Max, meeting you, I’ve spent a lifetime building walls. I didn’t expect that to change—but it has. You’ve cracked my wall.”

  “Got a few cracks of my own.” Steele raised his shirt and flashed his scar. “Jokes aside. This is new territory for me too. I use humor to deflect. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Joy swallowed. “Let’s establish some ground rules so we don’t drive each other crazy—or only crazy in the good, uninhibited ways.”

  Steele bit into his steak sandwich. “Shoot.”

  “We work together, and we’re involved. So work stays work—no personal contact. We do our jobs.”

  “And off-duty, we get to know one another.”

  Joy dug into her salad. “Agreed. Rules established.”

  “I’d reach over and grab your hand, but we’re on duty.”

  Joy laughed. “Right, no hand-holding, but we are on a lunch break, so dirty thoughts are perfectly acceptable.”

  Steele’s mouth hovered over his sandwich about to take a bite. He froze. “I really like your rules. But men and women aren’t alike there. I can’t think it and walk away. So I’m going to focus on this sandwich. On the other hand, you go there, and I’ll catch up later.”

  After lunch, Joy followed Steele to Kinsey Pharmaceuticals. She parked and grabbed her evidence collection satchel.

  The lobby shouted modern chic: dark and light gray seating areas, bright orange rugs, tall stainless steel planters, and Italian glass drop lights.

  Alice Worth walked over to greet them. “How’s the detective?”

  “Better,” said Joy.

  “Thanks for asking,” added Steele.

  “Your team arrived early, so I took them upstairs. Follow me.”

  Joy barely recognized the young woman she followed to the elevators. Last night, she had sported a gray pantsuit and had her hair pulled back, but now she wore a casual jeans skirt and a white tank top with red roses. Her chestnut hair flowed in waves over her shoulders, and black liner encircled her eyes, giving them depth, despite her glasses. She was beautiful in a fragile kind of way.

  The elevator doors closed; they opened again on the sixth floor. Alice led them to Sally’s office: a massive space with corner windows and a black-and-silver semicircular desk and matching bookcases. Colorful abstract paintings called attention to themselves in the otherwise cold room.

  Two evidence collection specialists worked around the coffee maker. Joy stepped over to them. “Find anything?”

  “We’re still bagging and tagging,” said the male, fortyish. “We found this tin of loose-leaf Comfrey tea and a few items in the mini-fridge.”

  Steele had put on gloves. He opened the drawers to Sally’s desk. “Alice, can we get a printout of Sally’s schedule for the last couple of days?”

  “I’ll get that right away. Be right back.”

  Joy stepped over to the credenza behind the desk and began to open file drawers. She paid particular attention to the file folders on each end. When people hid information, they usually hid it a few folders in: not right up front, which spelled “exposure” and not in the middle, where it was a pain to get to. She found a file marked S. Revol and grinned. “‘Lovers’ backwards.” She opened the file. “Steele.”

  Steele swiveled around and gaped at the pictures, some old polaroid pictures of a much younger and very naked Sally with an older man with a gray beard. Another of Sally with a woman. Joy picked one up from the pile. “Well, well. Looks like we have a few questions to ask Rio.”

  Steele picked up another. “And Jack Wolf.”

  “Lizzy? Did she know about Rio? A mother’s vengeance could be a motive.” Joy closed the file as Alice approached and handed her a schedule. “Who was at the luncheon yesterday at the Wolfs’ winery?”

  “Me, Todd, Sally, Elliot, Lizzy.”

  “Kate and Red?” asked Joy.

  “Well, yeah. They popped in and out. So did their sons.”

  Joy handed the schedule to Steele. “Alice? What poisonous chemicals are kept in the lab?”

  “The worst of them is botulism. That’s kept under security so tight, the Pentagon couldn’t break into it. I hear it’s really lethal.”

  Joy’s brows furrowed. “It’s one of the most deadly toxins on Earth. A single gram could kill millions. It paralyzes muscles, like the ones used for breathing, and people suffocate, like with hemlock. What about belladonna or other toxins? Do you use those?”

  “Not that I know of,” said Alice. “But you can find that one in the garden.”

  Steele and Joy locked eyes. Steele asked, “What garden?”

  “The poison garden. I thought you knew,” said Alice. “Come with me.”

  Alice led them back down the elevators to the lobby. She approached a door and used the card key hanging around her neck to gain access.

  Joy hadn’t noticed it before. A long window stretched nearly the length of one wall of the lobby, but since the room behind it had no lights illuminated, the glass appeared black. It was a window into a garden.

  Alice stepped through the door and approached a second door on her left. She used the card key to gain access. The moment the door opened, lights came on. “There are timers on the lights. They are lit up during the weekdays, but not that much over the weekends.”

  Joy and Steele stepped into a lush, deadly garden.

  S
teele noted, “Smells like chocolate.”

  Alice nodded. “Cocoa bean mulch. Cocoa hulls contain caffeine and…something else. I don’t remember. People probably wouldn’t eat it, but pets might.”

  Joy walked along a flagstone path past a glossy-leafed castor bean plant with spiny, egg-like pods; past foxglove, whose lavender tubular flowers decayed around its base; past orange opium poppies, fern-like monkshood nearly devoid of its deep purple flowers; past the fuzzy gray-green leaves of Datura or jimson weed, a hallucinogenic, with upturned white flowers that earned the name “Devil’s Trumpet”; past the pink blooms of oleander and green-stemmed Atropa belladonna; past the hemlock’s green stalks with blotchy red spots that resembled blood spatters. She noted that some stalks had been cut as she passed by a woody rhododendron; past a trellis of climbing vines denoted as rosary pea, and, in the corner, an apple tree, whose seeds contained a substance that, when chewed and swallowed, produced cyanide in the digestive tract, but it would take a couple hundred seeds to kill a human. Small plaques identified each: hellebore, white snake root, and the golden bell-like flowers hanging from a plant marked “Angel’s Trumpet.” A fence with a “Danger” sign, isolated hogweed, whose sap could blister the skin.

  “Apothecary gardens used to be quite common.” Joy reached the end of the path and turned. “The University of Padua in Italy—an institution so old that Galileo lectured there—still has its garden of medicinal and poisonous plants. It was the high point of a trip Sam and I made to Venice after I graduated from Yale. Before the FBI academy training. Alice, this is impressive. There must be thirty or forty species here.”

  “Fifty-three,” said Alice. “The day I interviewed, Lizzy stormed out of Sally’s office so fast she practically ran me over. To apologize, she hung around until after my interview with Sally, and she offered to show me around. She gave me an extensive tour of the garden. She knows every plant in here.”

  A dark box on a stand sat in the corner. “What’s in here?” asked Joy

  “Death cap mushrooms. The box is light and temperature-controlled. Elliot gave that to Sally for her birthday to add to her garden. Elliot forages for mushrooms—edible ones, I mean—when he travels to our office in San Francisco. The death caps evidently grow abundantly there. Some society posts warning signs, but last year over a dozen people were hospitalized and three needed liver transplants after eating them. And a dog ate one in a park and died.”

  Joy lifted the top from the box. The soil showed signs of disturbance, like mushrooms had been plucked from it. Maybe four or five.

  Steele stood over her shoulder. “It’s hard to believe they’re that deadly. They look edible.”

  “It’s really quite amazing, this place.” Joy marveled at the lush, exotic, and highly toxic, plants. “The nefarious use of these plants stretches back thousands of years in multiple countries, giving birth to the art of poison.”

  “Yeah, I’d hate to be a taster for the king,” quipped Steele.

  “Or for Sally, like Max was.” Joy turned to Alice. “Who has access to this room?”

  “There’s a gardener that comes in each week. Sally, of course, and Elliot. I think a couple of lab geeks…I’m sorry…lab personnel.”

  “Security cameras?” asked Steele.

  “Not in this location. But I can provide you a with a list of who accessed the garden with key-cards in the past few weeks, if that helps.”

  Joy sighed. “Doesn’t do much good if we can’t see who cut the hemlock or accessed the mushroom box. Could be the gardener culling the weeds or someone who had a plan to murder. But we’ll take the list.”

  “Lizzy told me that the majority of these species, except for the ones specially imported, grow wild, and people routinely plant them in gardens, like the oleander. So no one thought the garden needed video security.”

  Joy nodded. “That is true. The ones that have likely killed Sally are all too common, if someone knows what they’re looking for.”

  Joy, Steele, and Alice left the garden and sat on the gray sofas in the lobby to finish the interview.

  Steele asked, “What can you remember about who came and went from the kitchen last night?”

  Alice pushed her long hair back over her shoulder. “Lots of people came and went. I mean, it’s Kate and Red’s home, and their boys grew up there. It seemed like they were all in and out, snacking and chatting, especially before the guests arrived.”

  “Who put the flowers on the salads?” asked Joy.

  “I can’t remember, honestly. I think Maria or Rosa set them on the plates. I’d started serving. It was busy. I didn’t really pay attention.”

  “How did you like working for Sally?” asked Joy.

  Alice became visibly uncomfortable. “You heard Sally last night, so I think you can imagine.”

  Joy leaned in. “Were there any recent flare-ups?”

  Alice let out a nervous laugh. “Daily. Look, Sally was a bitch. The day I interviewed, I sat outside her office waiting while Lizzy, Elliot, and Sally were going at it behind the closed door. The temp sitting at the secretarial desk kept giving me a phony smile, like, ‘Yep, girl, this is perfectly normal around here.’”

  “What did they argue about?” asked Steele.

  Alice shook her head. “The gist is all I got. Lizzy wanted to tear Sally’s head off. Lizzy had been on leave to care for her sick husband, so she wasn’t even working then. I don’t know how Elliot has stayed married to Sally all these years, but that day, I heard him say that she’d gone too far and it was over. That’s all I got.”

  “Looks like Elliot changed his mind.” Steele jotted a note.

  “Sally laughed after he said it.” Alice picked at her cuticles. “She shouted that Elliot didn’t have the balls. From what I gleaned later, Sally had him sign a pre-nup that leaves him broke and out of the company if he left her.”

  Joy tilted her head. “We know Sally had lovers. Anyone you know of?”

  Again, Alice shifted in her seat and her eyes hit the floor before coming back up to meet Joy’s. “Sure. It was pretty well known the woman had an appetite. The younger the better. Personally, I think she did it to escape aging, to feel young. Anyway, she and Todd have history. Todd helped Sally take control of the company after her father died. Sally’s former secretary, Beth, told me that Sally even tried to buy Lizzy out, but Lizzy wouldn’t have it.”

  “Elliot knew then? About other men?” asked Steele.

  “Yeah, he knew.”

  Joy glared. “You know a lot about her for only a couple of months here.”

  Alice straightened up. “I’d heard rumors. Beth had already been fired when I interviewed. But I found her number and we met a couple of times. She blabbed like crazy. Told me to run for the hills.”

  “Why’d you take the job?” asked Steele.

  Alice ran her hand through her hair. “Money. This company pays Sally’s secretaries an ungodly amount. I figured, like many girls and probably boys before me, that I could handle it. Looks like I may be out of a job.”

  Joy said, “We’ll need Beth’s number.”

  “Sure, but she moved to Orange County a few weeks back,” said Alice.

  Steele handed Alice a card. “If you think of anything else, give us a call.”

  6

  Lizzy knocked on Todd’s door. He lived in a large Tudor-style home that sat near the eighteenth tee of the Wine Valley Golf Club, a private golf course in a gated community.

  Todd swung the door open. “Lizzy? I didn’t expect to see you until Monday morning. Come in.”

  Lizzy offered Todd a bottle of wine, which he took. “Elliot called me. Gave me the good news. Why wait for Monday to celebrate my new partner?”

  Lizzy followed Todd into the living room. Todd’s house was a bachelor pad with furniture of chrome, black leather, and expensive art. The floor and kitchen counter were black granite with crystals that lit up like a starry night as the light caught hold of it.

  “Shall I open
this?” asked Todd.

  “Too early for me.” Lizzy sat on the black leather sofa. “Save it for someone special. I pulled that from a deep, dark place in our wine cellar that holds our best reserve bottles. It’s to commemorate this significant moment in your life.”

  Todd set the bottle on the glass and chrome coffee table and sat down beside Lizzy. “So, you’re okay with Sally’s will leaving me her shares of the company? So much has happened. Danny died. Now Sally dies right in front of us. Poisoned. I can’t even imagine what all you’re going through.”

  “Thank you, Todd. It’s a surprise that Sally left you her shares, but an understandable one. You’ve been with us since my father died. You helped Sally take the helm. And we both know how much you meant to Sally.” Lizzy was referring to their long-term affair, and he knew it.

  Todd blushed. “She always promised she’d leave them to me. But you know Sally—she could change her mind. And the transfer still has to be approved by the board.”

  “I don’t think you’ll have a problem there, Todd. In fact, I’m glad you didn’t wait until Monday to break the news. I appreciate the courtesy call to give us a heads up. Do you have a copy of the will? Can I just peek at it?”

  Todd jumped up. “Of course, Lizzy. It’s in my office. I’ll be right back.”

  By the time Todd returned, Lizzy stood in the kitchen. She’d found a wine bottle opener, and she popped the cork out of the bottle.

  “On second thought, Todd. I don’t need to see it today. And it isn’t too early in the day to toast your achievement. What was I thinking? I’ve been a mess since Danny died.”

  Todd scrambled to the bar, withdrew two wine glasses, and returned. “Thanks, Lizzy. This means a lot. We’ll be a great team.”

  Lizzy poured the rich red liquid. It swirled in the glass, having waited years to be sipped. “To loyalty, and the rewards that go with it.” Lizzy tapped her glass against Todd’s. It rang like a small bell.

  Todd sipped, while Lizzy belted back the wine and set down the empty glass.