by Kaye George
Greer looked away and frowned. “I guess. Maybe I could get more hours? Later? I’m on my own and I need the job. My parents are both dead.”
“I’m so sorry, Greer. Maybe I can help you. Can you come to work tomorrow? You’ll have to be on time.” Tally assumed that Greer would come in late, since she had so far. But if she were working regularly, Tally could always hope.
Greer brightened. “Yes, I can do that. Tomorrow. Okay.” She got up to leave.
“Wait,” Tally said, catching her arm. “You need to be here at nine-thirty. We open at ten and you have to help get things ready.”
Her smile deepened. “Thanks so much. I really need this job.”
Chapter 5
Yolanda looked up from the large basket she was finishing for a neighborhood block party that evening, as something darkened the large display window of Bella’s Baskets. She saw one of Tally’s servers from the reception. The young woman was slumped against the front window of her shop. When she turned her head, Yolanda saw tears on her face. She pictured the résumés she’d seen, but couldn’t quite remember the young woman’s name. Grace? Gloria? Gina?
“I’ll be right back,” she said to Raul, her young, handsome part-time assistant, and went out to see if she could help the poor woman.
The young woman looked up when she came out and Yolanda saw the look of sadness on her face. “Can I help you? Grace, is it?”
Shaking her head, Greer answered, “Greer. I don’t think you can help me.”
Yolanda wondered if Tally had fired her already. Or had not hired her. “What’s the matter?”
“Everything.”
“Tell me. Maybe I know what you’re going through.”
“Has your dad ever gone to prison?” Greer looked at her directly for the first time, her eyes glistening with tears. Her words were a challenge. Belligerent.
“No.” Yolanda had to admit that, in spite of her father’s other faults, being in prison wasn’t one of them. “Come inside and I’ll get you a Coke.”
Greer followed her into the shop and accepted a chilled can from Yolanda’s flower cooler, which doubled as a soda refrigerator. “Thanks.” She gulped it down noisily.
“Did your father just get sent to…prison?”
“No, he’s been there for years.”
“What about your mother? Is she…in the picture?”
“I guess. She can’t work or anything.”
Greer told Yolanda that her mother had a stroke soon after her father was sentenced, about ten years ago, and that she and her three brothers had often gone hungry as children. As Greer drank the soda, her tears stopped and she perked up. Yolanda hesitated to ask her if she was going to be working for Tally, but Greer volunteered that she was starting on Monday.
“I’m glad,” Yolanda said, relieved that she wouldn’t have to feel she had to offer her a job. She couldn’t afford another helper. “You’ll love working for Tally. We’ve been good friends for years. We’d do anything for each other.”
“Thanks for this,” Greer said, handing back the empty can. She had emptied it so quickly, the metal was still cool. “I feel a lot better now. I’ll only be part-time, but I hope I can get full-time pretty soon.”
“Have you been working somewhere else?”
“I was cleaning motel rooms, but I didn’t like it.”
Greer left and Yolanda, still holding the empty can, thought about her last statement. How desperate was she if she had quit a job because she didn’t enjoy it? She would have to wish Tally luck with this one.
* * * *
Yolanda knocked on the back door of Tally’s shop after she delivered the basket to the block party. It was a perfect evening for the neighborhood night out, clear and warm, with a slight, ruffling breeze. The festivities were in full swing by the time she got there. She watched the happy revelers for only a moment before she collected her payment and left.
Tally opened the door and greeted her. Her shop, as well as Yolanda’s, was closed for the night. Yolanda could smell the lingering delicious scents of the day’s baking, sweet and chocolatey.
“How did it go with your new gals today?” Yolanda asked. “Are they working out?”
“I’m glad you came over. I’ve been dying to ask you. Where’s Vi and Eden? How did it go? Did they leave?”
“They had to get back to Dallas today and work tomorrow. They came by at about noon and said good-bye in the shop. I got the impression things were tense at home and they were glad to leave.”
“Poor kids. I hope your parents come around.” Tally returned to scrubbing the last of the baking dishes at the sinkful of suds.
“I know. Vi has always been his favorite daughter and now Papa is barely speaking to her. I hear you hired Greer for tomorrow.”
“How did you hear that?” Tally spotted a smudge of fingerprint powder behind the faucet that had been missed and swiped at it with a damp paper towel, then returned to the baking dishes.
“She was on the sidewalk in front of my shop, kind of weepy, and I had her in to try to cheer her up. We talked.” Yolanda opened the refrigerator and helped herself to a Mallomar.
“I’m hiring Lily full-time. She’s an excellent worker, connects well with the customers. I’m glad I found her. Molly is slow and doesn’t…well, when she bakes she doesn’t clean up very well. Twice today the customers told her she hadn’t made the right change. I’m hoping things improve with her.”
“Do you think Greer will be better?” She sat at Tally’s counter and munched the gooey goody.
Tally dried the cookie sheets and stuck them into the slots in the cupboard. “It would be nice, but I don’t have high hopes. Did I tell you she left without telling me on Saturday?”
“She did? Why?”
“She told Molly she felt sick, and then left without a word. She didn’t look sick when she showed up today.”
“Do you know her situation?”
Yolanda related what Greer had told her about her father being incarcerated and her mother having had a stroke, and the four children being hungry. Tally gave her a puzzled look.
“Get this, though,” Yolanda continued. “Do you know why she left her last job?”
“No. Employers aren’t allowed to tell if they’ve fired someone or not, so I don’t bother checking references. But the thing is—”
“Y’all might want to gather some more résumés,” Yolanda said. “Greer told me she left because she didn’t like the job.”
“Great. She shows up late, leaves without telling me, and will probably quit if I make her actually work. She also told me—”
“Do you know what’s going on with the thing about Fran Abraham? I had to go to the station and answer questions this morning.”
“What did they ask you? I gave them a list of everyone I could remember who was here, but I don’t even know who all of them were.”
“He asked me what I saw her eat and drink and who was near her. I didn’t notice much, since my mind was on my parents and my sister. After my parents stormed out, I drank a lot of wine.”
Tally put away the last of the utensils and hung the towel to dry. She got herself a Whoopie Pie and sat next to Yolanda. “Detective Rogers sounded like he thinks she was poisoned by something she got here. And someone told him that my dad was hanging around Fran. That’s just not true! I’d like to know who said that.”
“It’s a mess.” Yolanda rubbed her friend’s shoulder, then noticed she’d gotten chocolate on her. Luckily, it was on the strap of her apron. She decided not to mention it. “Do you want to go out and do something?”
“I’m beat and I still have to go see Mom at the hospital,” Tally said, her voice weary. “After that I’m going home to see my cat.”
* * * *
Tally arrived at her house much later, so tired she thought of not stumblin
g the few extra steps to her bedroom, but sleeping on the couch instead. After she sank into the soft cushions with Nigel eagerly greeting her and demanding to be pet, Allen called again.
“Oh, Allen,” she said, almost sobbing.
“What is it? What happened?”
“It’s…awful.” She heard highway noises. Allen must be in his truck, she thought.
“You sound like somebody died.”
“She did!” Tally started blubbering.
“Who did? Your mom died?”
“No, she’s in the hospital. Fran Abraham died.”
“What’s going on? Your mom, in the hospital? How could Fran Abraham be dead?”
Tally calmed herself with a deep breath, nuzzling her cat. “My mom has this dengue fever that she picked up on the road, in Asia, I guess.”
“Is she gonna be okay?”
“I think so. But Fran… well, Fran was maybe poisoned.”
“Food poisoning?”
“The detective thinks someone deliberately poisoned her. At the reception. With something that I served.”
“Tally, that’s crazy. You wouldn’t poison anybody.”
“I don’t think I’m a serious suspect, but someone at the party must have done it. She keeled over right there and died very soon after, in the hospital.”
“I wish I was there. I wish there was something I could do.”
“I wish you were here, too, but it’s helpful talking to you, Allen. I feel better than I did before you called.” She heard truck horns honking.
“I better go. I have to move my rig. I’ll call again to tell you when I’m coming home, as soon as I know.”
Tally picked up her weary self and somehow made it to bed, snuggling with warm, rumbling Nigel for comfort.
Chapter 6
When Greer walked into the store, Tally couldn’t keep the annoyance off her face. Greer came over to Tally, giving a big smile to Lily and the four customers already in the store as she passed them. Tally pulled Greer into the kitchen by her surprisingly sturdy arm.
“Do you see what time it is?”
Greer shrugged and said, still grinning, “I’m so happy to be here today.”
Tally kept after her. “Tell me what time it is.”
The smile finally left Greer’s face. She looked at the clock on the wall. “It’s a little after ten.”
“It’s ten minutes after ten. That makes you forty minutes late to work. On your first day.”
“But you open at ten, right?”
“There’s a lot to do before we open. I told you that. And I told you to be here at nine-thirty.”
Greer spoke rapidly, as if that would convince Tally of something. “I know and I was totally going to do that, but my alarm didn’t go off. I think something’s wrong with it. I think my mom was fiddling with it.”
“Your mom? You told me she’s dead.”
“No, I didn’t mean that. She lives with me. She can’t work, though.”
Tally handed her a smock. “Put this on and go help Lily out there. If you work out today, you can come back to work Wednesday. I’ll call you at home to wake you up.”
Tally didn’t miss the dirty look Greer gave her before she left the kitchen, tying the smock. No, Tally definitely wouldn’t be able to keep her on. Even if she did have a sad story. Make that several sad stories that didn’t match. Tally went into the office to call her dad’s cell phone. When she’d left the hospital last night, they had sounded like they might release her mother today.
Before she could press the numbers, the desk phone rang, startling her into almost dropping her cell.
“This is Detective Rogers. If you’re going to be there for a while longer, I need to come by and ask you something.”
He was Jackson sometimes, when they were on good terms. During an earlier investigation that involved someone close to Tally, he was Detective Rogers. She hoped his announcement using the latter name wasn’t a bad sign.
“I’m here. We’re open until seven.” It wasn’t 10:30 yet. Why would he think she wouldn’t be there? Probably just Jackson—that is, Detective Rogers—being official.
He didn’t arrive until almost 11:00, leaving Tally stewing until then. She went over everything in her mind. What could he possibly want to talk to her about? She dared to think he was going to tell her that her dad was in the clear. He wanted to officially announce that to her. She made herself believe that, or at least hope so.
When he came into the shop and she saw his face at its most serious, her wishful thinking evaporated and her heart dropped an inch in her chest.
“Come into my office,” she said, leading him and a uniformed policeman through the kitchen. There were only two chairs, hers and a guest chair, but the other policeman said he’d stand. He looked familiar and she took another look. It was Officer Edwards again, the large, burly man who had been at her interrogation at the station. She perched on the edge of her chair uneasily, waiting for Rogers to speak, afraid he had more evidence incriminating her father.
Rogers nodded at Officer Edwards and he set a recorder on the desk.
“Do I have your permission to record this conversation, Tally?”
“Yes, I guess so.” Just so she didn’t have to hear it played back. She hated the sound of her recorded voice.
“I have to get an official statement.” He switched it on with a click. “We found something strange in the evidence we took from here, Tally.”
At least he was calling her Tally and not Ms. Holt. That was good. Her spirits lifted half an inch. “Okay, what was it?”
“There was a serving platter in the trash.”
“Someone threw away one of my silver platters? Why would they do that? I was using brand-new help. One of them must have done that by mistake.” That wasn’t such a bad thing, though. Was it? It wasn’t criminal.
“We also found something even more odd,” Rogers went on. “Several pastries, or whatever you call them. They looked perfectly good, uneaten, like they could have been served or sold. Do you know why they were thrown away?”
Tally shook her head. “All the food we served that didn’t get eaten was thrown away. I told them to put it all in one bag so I could take it outside. I didn’t notice that some was put into another trash bag, I guess. Maybe that was a mistake, too. Someone must have dumped them in with the platter. Can I have my platter back?”
“Not quite yet. It did look like those things, the platter and the food items, had been put in the wastebasket together.”
Jackson’s statement that Fran may have been poisoned was running through her mind. She refused to follow the thought to the place it wanted to go. “Probably just a mistake. Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?” Her fingers wanted to drum on her desk, but she held them tight so they wouldn’t betray her nervousness.
“Mostly. The items were retrieved from the kitchen. Who had access to the kitchen during the event?”
“It’s not locked. Anybody could come into the kitchen.”
He heaved an impatient sigh. “I worded that badly, didn’t I? Who did you see coming in or out of the kitchen?”
“The women I hired to serve. Lily, Molly, Greer. The bathroom is back here, so others may have been in the kitchen that I didn’t see. Oh, my mother came back here. She was feeling sick. Maybe she shouldn’t even have been at the party.”
“I imagine she felt sick, since she went to the hospital, right?”
Tally gave a slight nod. Had she thrown suspicion on her mother? Surely the detective could see that she was too sick to do much. She sat on her hands to refrain from drumming her restless fingers on her desk.
“We’re analyzing the pastries that were thrown away and should have the results soon. There’s a rush on that and on the tox screen from Mrs. Abraham.”
She knew the detective was
implying that it would be a problem if the two screenings matched. “What pastries were they?” Yes, she had thrown away everything that had been on the platters and taken them to the dumpster in the alley. Why was it so suspicious that a few were put into the wastebasket in the kitchen?
“Some little round things with white filling,” he said.
Whoopie Pies. Fran had eaten a few Whoopie Pies just before she collapsed. Tally felt cold inside. She told him what they were. “I don’t see how Whoopie Pies could go bad. And how could anyone poison them?”
“You tell me.”
“What kind of poison do you think it is?”
“A very fast-acting one.”
“If it was the Whoopie Pies. Fran ate those just minutes before she fell down. Jackson, it can’t be the Whoopie Pies. I’ll never sell anything else again if people know someone got sick from them.”
“Got sick and died.”
Tally managed not to scream NO NO NO out loud, but the words reverberated inside her head.
He stood to go. “Look, I told you before. This isn’t a matter of spoiled food.”
The two men headed for the door.
“Are you going to tell me what the poison is when you find out?”
“That depends,” Detective Rogers said and left without telling her what it depended on.
She still didn’t know who had told Jackson that her father was near Fran Abraham all night. Next time she saw Jackson, she would try to get him to tell her who told him that. Who lied to him, that is.
Chapter 7
Yolanda walked toward her car in a good mood, feeling satisfied. It was hot, but beautiful. Light, fluffy clouds dotted the blue afternoon sky and a cardinal sang from one of the crape myrtles planted by the sidewalks.
The people at the real estate company loved the basket she had just delivered to them. They should, she thought. She’d gone to the trouble of buying a Monopoly game so she could use the little houses and hotels. They looked cute stuck on top of a few Mallomars from Tally’s Olde Tyme Sweets. She had also fashioned miniature For Sale signs out of toothpicks and construction paper. She’d found a hammered tin heart online and wrote on it with markers: Happy Tenth! It was the tenth anniversary for the company and they were taking an extra-long lunch break at the office to celebrate the progress they’d made over the last ten years. The two champagne bottles and plastic stemware in the basket should also help with that.