Deadly Sweet Tooth

by Kaye George

  Tally studied her mother, thinking she looked pale. Did she look distressed? Was she ill? As she was watching, her mother hurried into the kitchen. Tally followed and saw her dash into the bathroom.

  “Are you okay?” she asked when her mother came out.

  “Just a little queasy,” she said. “Do you have any ginger ale? I don’t think I can do any more wine right now.” She looked flushed and perspiration dotted her forehead and upper lip.

  Tally got her a Sprite and she seemed to feel better after a few small sips.

  Soon after Tally followed her mother out of the kitchen, Mr. and Mrs. Bella, the parents of Yolanda and Violetta, came into the shop. Tally looked around to see where Violetta and Eden were. They were at the opposite corner of the room. Yolanda was chatting in a cluster of people near the front door. After stopping for them to greet both Bob and Nancy Holt, she stepped out of the group and steered her parents toward her sister for the planned confrontation.

  Tally was too far away and the buzz of the crowd too great to allow her to hear the conversation, but she could follow it. The older Bellas nodded to Eden as they were introduced. Violetta held her shoulders high and taut. She opened her mouth, closed it, pressed her lips together, then began to talk, a worried look on her soft, young face. Tally knew she was telling her parents the news. That their daughter—their paragon of virtue, the one they always compared Yolanda to unfavorably, the daughter who was following her father into the family’s real estate business, and their hope for future grandchildren—preferred women. That would be hard, Tally knew, for them to accept.

  Tally had to wonder if this had been the best way to tell them. Maybe the public-place idea wasn’t such a good one.

  Mr. Bella drew back two steps from the young women, his face blank. Mrs. Bella tilted her head, a puzzled look on her face. Then Mr. Bella lowered his thick eyebrows and sneered, overcome with a look of thunderous anger. He roughly grabbed his wife’s arm and hurried her through the people and out the front door.

  Yolanda, Violetta, and Eden looked at each other, deflated. Soon they were mingling with the townspeople and Tally relaxed. At least there hadn’t been a loud scene here. That would come later, she predicted.

  Lily collected the empty glasses of a couple Tally didn’t know and made her way through the crowd to get replacements or refill them. After a second or two, Tally recognized the man as the person she’d seen on television running for mayor. She assumed the woman was his wife. Molly wended her way from group to group, offering everyone more Clark Bars and Twinkies. Greer emerged from the kitchen with some Whoopie Pies on her tray and headed for Len. Both he and Shiny declined them, so she offered some to Fran. Bob had just walked away from her. Fran knocked back her new glass of wine and piled some Whoopie Pies onto her plate.

  Then Greer headed for the senior Holts, who were now standing close together. Bob looked like he was hovering over his pale wife. Greer paused on her way as Fran—Whoopie Pies and wine already quickly demolished—approached Nancy. Ionia saw her coming and turned her back to block Fran, but Fran barged ahead. Everyone knew that Fran should stay away from Nancy.

  “I heard about your latest performances,” Fran said to Nancy, her voice loud, drunk, and grating.

  “That’s nice.” Nancy swayed in place. She looked uncertain if that was a compliment or not. “We’ve had some good runs lately.”

  “No wonder.” Fran’s voice got even louder. “That’s my material you’re using. You know you stole everything you use from me.”

  Nancy gaped at the woman, holding Ionia’s arm for support. “You’re crazy. Bob and I have always written all of our acts. Our music, lyrics, choreography, everything.” Nancy’s voice was louder now and the woman knew how to project. Both of these women did. “I could ruin you professionally in this town, you know. You’d better not accuse me of anything like that ever again, or—”

  Tally squeezed her eyes shut. Now there was a scene.

  “Or what?” Fran shouted. “What will you do?”

  “Excuse me,” Nancy said, her voice weak. Bob had put his arm around her shoulder, protectively, when the confrontation started. Nancy turned to him and spoke for a moment. They both headed for Tally, leaving Fran sputtering in place.

  “You just wait until I tell everyone about what I know,” Fran screeched after them.

  “Tally,” her mom said. “I feel awful. My mouth is so dry and I’m—I’m—” She looked around in confusion, like she didn’t know where she was. “Can you take me to your place?”

  “I’ll take you, poppet,” her dad said. He felt his wife’s forehead with the back of his hand. “She’s burning up. Something’s very wrong.” He shot an angry glare at Fran, who returned it.

  “My car’s out back, Dad,” Tally said. “Go ahead and use that.” She got her car keys from her purse in the locked drawer of her office and gave them to him.

  Cole and their father took Nancy to Tally’s house and Cole returned in a few minutes without him. The party was still in full swing, honoring her parents—going on without them.

  “Is Dad coming back?” she asked her brother.

  “I don’t think so. Mom is getting sicker by the minute. She’s weak and clammy and confused.”

  “We should wind this up, then,” she said.

  Tally didn’t see Greer or Molly anywhere and went to the kitchen to find them. Molly was thumbing her phone in front of the sink.

  “What are you doing in here?” Tally asked. “And where’s Greer?”

  “She left. She said she was sick. I had some texts I needed to answer.”

  “She left and didn’t tell me?”

  “She was sick,” Molly repeated, as if that was a reasonable thing.

  “You do not need to answer texts while you’re working. The party is probably ending soon.”

  “Already? How come?”

  “My parents have both had to leave. You would know that if you’d been out there where you should be. Now put your phone away. Start gathering things and clean up.”

  She followed Molly through the kitchen door to see everyone gathered around someone on the floor. After she shoved her way through the knot of people, she saw Fran curled up on the floor, twitching and clutching her stomach, moaning piteously. Tally looked around for Fran’s husband and didn’t see him.

  “Len!” she called, panic tightening her vocal cords and making her voice high and squeaky. “Len Abraham!”

  “He’s out front,” someone said. One of the guests brought him inside, Shiny trailing behind them.

  Everyone started speaking at once.

  “You have to take her to the hospital.”

  “She was fine a minute ago.”

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  Kevin asked Tally what was wrong with her mother. “Do they have the same thing?”

  “I don’t know. Mom has a fever. I think we’ll have to take her to the emergency room, too.”

  Len got Fran to their car out front, with the help of a couple of other men, and headed for the hospital. Tally watched the taillights depart, sad that the party was ending so badly.

  Most of the people started to leave. After the Abrahams were gone, Tally, Cole, and Dorella shooed the last of them out, locked up, and drove back to Tally’s house. It didn’t take them more than a minute to decide to take Nancy to the hospital.

  Nancy was in such bad shape by the time they got to the emergency room that the nurses took her in to a cubicle right away, ahead of a couple of sick-looking children and a man who appeared to have a broken arm.

  It didn’t take the doctor long to figure out what Nancy had after Bob told him where they’d been, Thailand, Bali, and Morocco most recently.

  “It’s most likely that she has dengue fever,” he said. “I’ll test her, but the results will take several days. I’d like to keep her h
ere overnight on an IV to make sure she’s getting enough fluid. We’ll treat her with Tylenol and she’ll probably be able to leave in the morning. Mr. Holt, we’ll get a cot so you can spend the night with her if you’d like.”

  “Yes, please,” Tally’s dad said. “I’d very much like that.”

  Cole offered to bring some things to them from their luggage.

  Tally wasn’t sure what dengue fever was, but it sounded exotic. Leave it to her mother to get an exotic disease.

  * * * *

  Early the next morning, before Tally got out of bed, her phone rang. She groped for it on her nightstand and opened it to hear a familiar voice.

  “Tally,” Detective Jackson Rogers said, “can you come down to the station and talk to me about what happened at your place yesterday?”

  Her heart hammered and her neck hairs stood on end at the flat, cold, serious tone of his voice. He was speaking officially. She recognized that tone. “You mean Fran and Mom? Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Frances Abraham passed away at the hospital a short time ago and I need to talk to you about what she ate and drank.”

  Chapter 4

  Detective Rogers told Tally to let the crime-scene people into her shop and then come to the station. After the guests had left the night before, she had rushed to the hospital to see how her mother was doing, leaving the cleanup until morning. She had intended to go in early the next day, before anyone else got there, but not this early.

  Now, Sunday morning, after she unlocked her shop for them, the crime-scene team swept through the kitchen efficiently, photographing everything, then collecting the serving platters from the counter where they waited to be washed, even taking the trash bags full of scraps, disposable cups, napkins, and empty wine bottles.

  Tally felt queasy watching them. The detective called her again, asking her when she was coming in. She left the forensics people, still working, and drove through the coolish early morning to the police station at the edge of town. She hoped she wouldn’t have to spend too much time there, since she needed to open her shop. She had hoped to see her mother first, but that might not happen. Saturday had been a day of lost business and she couldn’t afford to lose Sunday, too.

  There were times when she enjoyed being with Detective Jackson Rogers, but being questioned at the police station was not one of them. When the misunderstanding about Yolanda had been cleared up a few weeks ago, Tally had hoped to see if a relationship would develop between her and the handsome gray-eyed detective. So far, nothing.

  Seated in an interrogation room and looking into those eyes, she realized this wasn’t an occasion to further their rapport. Those eyes, which could look soft and dreamy on occasion, were now gunmetal cold and the detective was all business.

  “Thanks for coming in,” he said, taking the chair across from her. Another policeman was sitting beside him. She recognized Officer Edwards, a large, beefy uniformed officer with a badly pockmarked face.

  Tally started in before Jackson could say anything else. “You think Fran was poisoned?”

  The detective narrowed his eyes at her. “What makes you say that?”

  “You said you needed to talk about what she ate and drank. And that she has died. It’s not a stretch to think you’re suspecting food poisoning.”

  “Did you see what she ate and drank?”

  All business today, of course. She liked it much better when they met for coffee and chatted. Would that happen again?

  “She drank a lot, but it was the same thing everyone else was drinking, bottled wine from Kevin’s Bear Mountain Vineyards.”

  Tally had written down as many names as she could remember, knowing from experience that he would ask her who had been there. “Here’s everyone I can remember.” She unfolded the paper and pushed it across the table to him.

  He looked at it briefly, nodded, and stuck it between the pages of his notebook. “How closely did you observe Mrs. Abraham during the party?”

  “I had a lot to do. I couldn’t watch her all night.”

  “Who did you see her with?”

  Tally cast her mind back and could only recall a few. “She came with her husband Lennie, of course. Then Shiny Peth joined them and Fran…went over to where my dad was. Then she went to my mom, who was with Ionia, and started yelling at her. Fran was very drunk, from what I could tell. Ionia tried to run interference, but Fran plowed her way in.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Probably, but I can’t recall any more. There were people there I didn’t know. We put a notice in the paper and the whole town was invited.”

  He scribbled something on his notepad so illegibly she couldn’t read it upside down.

  “How about what she ate?” he asked.

  “No one else was poisoned by anything, were they? All the food was made in my kitchen. You can’t tell people she got food poisoning from my treats.”

  “Do you know, specifically, what things she ate?”

  Tally closed her eyes to remember if she’d seen Fran eating anything in particular. She remembered that she had eaten a pile of Whoopie Pies just before she came over to confront her mother. “Whoopie Pies. Probably a lot of other things, too, but she definitely ate a pile of Whoopie Pies.”

  “I hear that your father was close to Fran for a lot of the night.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Who told you that? I don’t think he was near her for more than a few minutes.”

  “Who did you see her with last?”

  “I told you, she was arguing with my mother. That was just before she collapsed. Maybe Fran got dengue fever from Mom.”

  “Your mother has dengue fever? When did that happen?” He leaned back in his chair. It had a squeak that needed oil or something.

  “She started to feel sick at the reception and had to leave. She probably felt bad before that and thought she could get through it, but she ended up going to the hospital after the party.” Tally was beginning to feel sick from this interview, too. “She got it in Asia.”

  “No one mentioned that.”

  “How many people have you talked to? Everyone knows she was sick. It was her party and she had to leave it.”

  “We’re questioning everyone who was there.”

  “Who told you my dad was sticking close to Fran? Or that she had food poisoning? People don’t suddenly die of that.”

  “No, they don’t die of food poisoning suddenly. They can die of poisoned food, though.”

  “Poisoned food? Someone poisoned some of my food?” That didn’t make sense. “No one else got sick from it. Are you sure she didn’t have dengue fever?”

  Tally drummed her fingers on the edge of his desk, then made herself stop.

  The detective said, “I don’t think people suddenly die of that an hour after exposure, do you? I may be wrong, but I don’t think you can catch it from being with an infected person either. Don’t you get it from mosquitoes?”

  Tally could see she needed to do some research about what her mother had, and ask the doctor a lot of questions. “I can’t tell you much more. I was busy running around making sure everyone was having a good time and had enough to eat and drink.” And tracking down her hired helpers. “Can I go now?”

  The two law enforcement officers exchanged looks and the detective nodded. “For now. I might have more questions later. If you remember more about what Mrs. Abraham ate, let me know right away.”

  Tally promised to do that and sped back to her shop. The detective had told her the team was done collecting evidence and her premises were released. She needed to make sure everything was in order for business today.

  She would like to know who told Detective Rogers her dad had been hanging around Fran. He hadn’t. On the contrary, he’d been trying to get away from her. Fuming about her interrogation, she jerked her car to a stop behind her shop and
stomped into the kitchen. It didn’t look too bad. Until she looked more closely at the countertops. They would all have to be cleaned. Faint gray powder covered many of the surfaces, not just the countertops. She needed extra help today more than ever.

  As she dialed Lily Vale’s number, her hands shook from anger and adrenaline so that she could hardly press the keys. Fortunately, Lily answered immediately and said she could start work that morning, could be there in twenty minutes. Tally glanced at the clock. It was half an hour until she should open. That would be perfect.

  She slumped back in her desk chair, wondering if she should call the other two, Greer and Molly. They had all done good work at the reception, mostly. If Greer were sick, she wouldn’t be able to come in today, though. Maybe she could get Lily full-time and the other two could relieve each other working part-time. She opened her desk drawer and got out an employee agreement for Lily, then called Molly.

  * * * *

  Tally was beginning to relax. It was after 1:30 in the afternoon and things had gone smoothly all day. She and Lily had worked in the kitchen right after opening and Molly had handled sales. When it got busier and there were plenty of products on the shelves, all three of them started selling.

  Midmorning, the door chimed and Tally looked up to see who had come in. She had just finished waiting on a family from Colorado vacationing in the Hill Country, and was surprised to see Greer Tomson standing inside the door with a dour look on her face.

  “Greer,” Tally said. “Hi. Are you feeling better?”

  A look of confusion flitted across Greer’s face. “Yes, much better.” She frowned. “Why are they working here? You didn’t call me?”

  She was just checking up now? Tally looked for signs of illness. She didn’t look sick. Her color was good. “I wanted to give you time to get well. Sick people can’t work in a place selling edibles.”

  Greer nodded slowly, thinking about that. “Okay.”

  “Come back to my office and we can talk,” Tally said. Once there, she told Greer to have a seat and she sat behind her desk. “Do you want to work part-time? You and Molly can alternate days.” She had given Molly a part-time employee agreement, hoping to try both of them out for a week or so, maybe longer.