Deadly Diet

by Kodi Heart

  He agreed.

  Shaking my head at her answer, I shifted the car into third and accelerated toward Grandma’s house. Flicking on my blinker to turn into her drive, I nodded toward the house with a grin. “Don’t let them hear you say that. They’ll eat you alive.”

  She laughed and then pointed at the older gentleman standing on the lawn on the far side of the lot. “Look, Grandpa’s here!” Sidney opened the car door before we were even fully parked. “Grandpa!” She waved at him from across the meticulously maintained landscaping.

  He waved back, a smile broad across his face. I swear the creators at Pixar used him for their inspiration for the movie, Up. My grandpa was what many people would call a strapping man. He might have been in his low eighties, but he didn’t look a minute over sixty-two. His silvery-white hair was thicker than men a third his age and his eyes twinkled when he winked flirtatiously at my grandma. They’d been married almost sixty years and still flirted. I mean, Grandma giggled around him, for crying out loud – those were relationship goals.

  Grandpa’s gripped a spray nozzle connected to a long green hose. He twisted side to side, spraying water in a circular pattern over his grass and over the lilac bushes and hostas my grandma was adamant about having in her yard. Everyone in our family had hostas; silver edged, white veined, brilliant green, you name it. If you were a Fleming, you had hostas.

  A man with headphones on and a long purple leash connected to some kind of a dog with bangs covering its eyes wandered by. The man nodded his head in time with music no one else could hear and snapped his fingers while his dog sniffed side to side in a sweeping pattern, stopping here and there to lift his rear leg.

  Grandpa lowered the water and raised his voice. “Hey, get your mangy mongrel off my lawn. If I wanted spots, I’d water with a sprinkler system.” He lifted the hose and blasted a warning shot across the man. Pulling down an earphone, the man turned toward Grandpa, took one full look and decided not to say whatever he’d been prepared to say. He shuffled to the other side of the road.

  “Heh heh.” Grandpa wiggled his bushy eyebrows at me, his cranky-don’t-test-me expression gone as fast as he could summon it. He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet while going back to whistling.

  I grinned. You’d never know Grandpa had two amazing dogs in the acre-sized backyard that he doted on like his grandchildren. He just didn’t like other people’s dogs urinating or pooping on his lawn.

  Who could blame him? I felt the same way about my kids. Adored mine, but other people’s kids were just annoying.

  Ducking back into the car, I gathered my bag and a few books I needed to return to Aunt Rikki. I didn’t even remember getting out of the car, I was so caught up in the show Grandpa had put on for me.

  Sidney picked her way across the meticulous lawn, laughing and calling out to my grandpa, her great-grandpa. Thankfully, my family was very close and my kids were able to have the relationship with my grandparents that I had with them.

  I didn’t bother ringing the doorbell. Grandpa was outside and he was the only one who liked answering the door with a loud halloo.

  Pushing open the thick oak door with small glass panels for small windows, I cocked my head to the side. Rikki and Grandma stood in the center of the large living room, staring at the gray-blue leather couch.

  “I want it there.” Grandma spoke firmly. She was of a single mind and wasn’t easily swayed. I could tell in her tone that she was done repeating herself.

  “I think you’ll like it better over there.” Rikki pointed toward the wall where Grandma had once had her couch set up but where the fifty-three-inch screen TV now resided. Only Rikki would challenge Grandma the way she was.

  “Mom, I told you she wouldn’t stop.” My mom, I should probably call her Connie with so many Moms around, stepped down from the raised kitchen that overlooked the living room and dining room. She leaned over and hugged me, barely breaking stride. “Rikki, just leave it there. If you mess with things too much, Dad might get confused. Remember last time when Grandma tripped down the stairs because we moved the trunk and it was disorienting?”

  I set my bag on the table and shook my head. Everyone needed to just leave Grandma alone. At her age, she didn’t need people telling her what to do. “Here are your books, Aunt Rikki.” I held up the books but placed them beside my bag on the table. Maybe I could distract everyone and get them to leave Grandma alone.

  “Oh, Bon, you’re here.” Grandma turned, taking in Connie and I standing there almost side by side. “Are you two tracking in the journal? Are you sticking to your points?” She eyed us like we could somehow lose noticeable weight in less than a day. I mean, she just saw me yesterday at the meeting.

  I smiled and didn’t hesitate to lie through my teeth. “You bet, Grandma. I love the design on the new journals, too.” I had no qualms hiding my disappointing actions from my grandma.

  Connie elbowed me, narrowing her eyes before flicking her gaze back to Grandma. “You bet, Mom.” She lied through her teeth, too. I was definitely not going to let her live it down.

  Grandma raised her finger and pointed toward the ceiling, tilting it toward the side. “Good! I made some lemon meringue pie.” She stutter-stepped around Rikki and then back up the alternate steps past the TV to the kitchen. “I’ll cut some pieces and get some coffee.” She hummed as she walked. With each hip fully replaced a year or so ago and double knee replacements over the last twenty years, Grandma was as spry as a teenager. The doctors hated it because she was wearing through her joints and they had to keep replacing them.

  “Grandma, we can’t have the pie.” I stepped forward, ignoring the wide-eyed glares from Rikki and Connie.

  “Sure, you can. They’re only two-hundred-and-fifty calories a slice. Plus, they have lemon in them. That’s good for you. It’s fruit.” She paused in front of the counter and looked down at us with her hands hovering over the pie. “I went to all this trouble of juicing lemons and zesting them for you.”

  And there it was. The Fleming Guilt.

  I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t impervious to it. I responded just like a child did to Pavlovian training. “Yes, please, Grandma.” I would just have to cut out something from dinner since I’d already had six-hundred calories for breakfast and three hundred for lunch after church.

  There was about to go a huge chunk of my last three-hundred calories because my grandma didn’t know how else to love people. She cooked for them and that’s how she loved them. She also didn’t allow anyone to turn down her love.

  Shuffling slices of pie down to everyone, Grandma grabbed a glass of water and joined us at the table. She was decidedly missing a piece of pie.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but Grandpa and Sidney came through the front door right then. Plus, wasn’t that par for the course? I mean, when was the last time I’d actually seen Grandma eat anything fattening?

  “Pie? I love pie.” Grandpa rubbed his hands together and worked his way around the table, giving hugs and ruffling hair of women who didn’t want their hair touched. We all tolerated it anyway.

  Sidney jogged up the steps to the kitchen and served a slice of pie for her and Grandpa. She bounced down the steps and slid a piece in front of him at the table and claimed another seat.

  I picked at my pie, wishing I could eat with abandon the way Sidney was going for it. She really was fine and didn’t need to diet. I’m sure if I could lose some weight, I might feel the same way about myself.

  I snort laughed at that thought.

  Everyone at the table turned to look at me. “Are you okay, Bon?” Aunt Rikki arched an eyebrow under her shaggy blonde hair. She licked her fork and cut another bite as she studied me between glances at her plate.

  “Yeah, I was just thinking I might be happy with myself, if I could lose weight.” I arched an eyebrow at the sudden silence, then exhaled as everyone burst into laughter. They all understood and yet they didn’t. No one in my family was truly overweight �
�� at least, not the generation of my aunts and Mom. Even Grandma was a trim older lady.

  My cousins and myself were the ones with the weight issues. I just wasn’t sure how that was possible.

  “I’ve never been over-weight by normal standards and I’m still not happy with myself.” Aunt Rikki didn’t hesitate to eat the pie in front of her. Her slim waist and straight back suggested she’d never had a problem with her weight.

  Her words didn’t bring me comfort.

  “I just don’t understand how a woman Tanya’s size is so confident.” Grandma shook her head, sipping her water and ignoring the slices of pie sitting around the table. Her will power wasn’t as impressive as her ability to sit there with such an innocent expression on her face.

  “She was fighting with Debra that morning at the presidency meeting.” Grandma leaned over and grabbed a napkin from the lazy Susan and handed it over to her husband. “I wonder if she feels bad that Debra is dead now. I would, but I’m a different person.”

  “You saw her at the meeting?” I glanced at Connie. Thinking of her as her first name instead of Mom was getting confusing. We both had wondered how long Debra had sat there in the car. “She was there that morning? How did she look?” I leaned on my elbow and studied Grandma for more information, like the secrets would come off her skin or something.

  “Well, she looked normal, too thin and a little sickly. But she’s always pale and carrying that atrocious coffee cup. I wish she would just stop with that.” Grandma flicked her gaze from me to Rikki and Connie. “Well, I guess now she won’t be drinking it.” She smiled tremulously.

  How had our relaxed gathering turned tense?

  “You said she was fighting with Tanya, what about?” I had to get them back on track. If Nikki was even remotely in danger of losing her job or something, I couldn’t stand by and watch her lose it. I could poke around a bit to help her out and find out what happened.

  Arsenic should be something that was easy to figure out, right?

  “Is that the black woman? The curvy one with the great smile?” Grandpa looked up from his pie and I blinked, startled that he hadn’t taken out his hearing aid like he normally did and ignored most of the girls.

  With six kids – four of them girls – could you blame him? I had one girl and some days I wanted to unplug my hearing.

  “Dad.” Connie shook her head and rolled her eyes. Rikki laughed, shoving another bite of pie into her mouth before she said something.

  “What? Was that racist? Jeesh. Okay, how about is she the hefty woman I wouldn’t run my car over? The funny one? Is that better?” He huffed as he ate another big bite of the pie. He then pointed his fork in my general direction and spoke around the food in his mouth. “For the record, I think she’s attractive and part of that is because of her skin color, just like I like Rikki’s fair skin or Bonnie’s blue eyes.”

  I caught my mom’s eye and shook my head the tiniest amount. If it was anyone else, I would worry about racism or something else, but Grandpa and Tanya made jabs at each other face to face and his tone when he asked was anything but insulting. He always called her Tammie and she called him Jennifer when his name was Jonathan.

  They were digressing again. It was like trying to herd cats. “Okay, but what were they fighting about?” I leaned forward, redirecting back to the main topic at hand. If Tanya was fighting with Debra, was it enough to kill her?

  Grandma nudged Connie’s plate closer to her so she wouldn’t forget to eat every crumb. “They were fighting about Don being the only guy in the group.”

  Grandpa lifted his eyes to Grandma and scanned the group. He nudged his bifocals back up his nose. “A guy? He’s going to hit on you, Mary. I don’t like this.” He held his fork upward like a pitchfork and he tensed his jaw.

  My grandpa was an intimidating man but with all of us sitting around eating pie, I’m not sure we needed the threat that was present in his eye. He flexed his Popeye-like forearms and waited for the go-ahead to go find the man trying to steal his wife.

  Silence fell after his comment and we all stared between Grandma and Grandpa.

  Rikki shook her head. “Oh, good L-″

  Smacking her youngest daughter’s arm, Grandma scolded, “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, little girl. It won’t be tolerated. Dean.” She shook her head and sighed. “No one is going to hit on me.” She rolled her eyes, but smiled as she sipped from her glass.

  My family was weird. Just weird. “Do we need to go talk to Tanya?” I broke through the odd level of tension. I closed my eyes and shook my head as Grandpa opened his mouth to volunteer. “No, Grandpa, you can’t go.”

  Grandpa sputtered. “What? I should go and…” He was going to hurt someone with that fork being brandished about like a sword.

  “But, Grandpa, you promised you’d show me some of the treasures in your safe.” Sidney smiled beatifically at Grandpa. She was the apple of his eye and he couldn’t be mad when he got to spend time with her.

  Arching his eyebrows at me, he smugly narrowed his eyes. He poked his fork my direction. “You’re lucky. I can’t go. I have a date.” He smiled like he’d gotten his way and finished his pie. “Come on, Sidney, m’girl. We have treasures to dig through.”

  “Connie. Bonnie. I guess that means you two are going. We’ll watch Sidney. Then you can come back and get her and report what you found out.” Grandma pulled out her crochet. “Rikki, I need help with this stitch.”

  Aunt Rikki glanced our way as we gathered our things and put our plates in the sink. She studied the piece Grandma was working on and spoke with a distracted tone. “Tommy said they’re going to list it as an accident.” Tommy was Aunt Rikki’s husband. He also worked in law enforcement. She wasn’t saying more, probably because she wasn’t supposed to.

  I glanced at Connie but kept my mouth shut. Tommy was dealing with someone else running the investigation and Rikki was reporting heresy, but that would play into what Nikki had told me. Nikki had told me what she thought it was and why she was worried. I didn’t want to mention Nikki, just in case it would get her in trouble.

  If they’d already decided that she was wrong, were they already deciding that she was going to lose her job? I had to help her. Nikki and I had always been there for each other. I had to make sure I didn’t let her down.

  I wiggled my fingers at Sidney and smiled. “Thanks, come on, Mom. Let’s go.” We made our way to the car, both of us subdued. The pie felt like a lead weight sitting in my stomach. The sugar rush wasn’t much of a rush like I’d hoped.

  Heading to someone’s house to find out if they’d murdered another person in the group, wasn’t something that was high on my Sunday Fun List.

  I had better do it, though. I had to work off some of the calories I had eaten or I was never going to get to eat dinner. If I didn’t add the entry to the journal, maybe it wouldn’t count. I mean, it was only one small piece of pie. That couldn’t do enough damage to my diet, could it?

  6

  I shifted into second as I pulled onto Argonne Road and then again onto Park Avenue. I had to tell Mom what was going on. Nikki was just going to have to trust me. How else could I get Mom’s full help, if I didn’t give her some of the information I was working with? “I talked to Nikki yesterday afternoon and she told me she thinks it’s arsenic poisoning.”

  “But you heard what Tommy said. It’s being ruled an accident.” Mom clenched her purse on her lap and stared at the road. I’m not the most careful driver, but I don’t speed – much. “What will happen if Nikki is wrong?” Mom didn’t talk to Nikki, not many in the family did. She knew Nikki and I were close – closer than anyone else – and I don’t think she liked it as much as she let on.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. If we can prove it was something like arsenic instead of just an accidental death like Tommy is saying, Nikki’s credibility won’t be smudged.” I was worried more about her losing her job altogether. She was a single mom and the last thing she needed was a
loss of income. Nothing was more frustrating for her than having to split her kids with her ex and having no idea where her mom was. At least her dad was still in one place. He didn’t want anything to do with the family either. The last time Nikki spoke about him, she’d said he was more like his own dad than she’d thought possible.

  His dad was an alcoholic.

  Mom and I fell silent, taking in the Sunday traffic through Spokane Valley as we tore east down one-way Appleway to get to East Sprague.

  “Do we really think Tanya had anything to do with this?” I pressed my lips together. Tanya reminded me of Grandma more than anything. They were bold and brash but Grandma had a level of tact that Tanya didn’t care to have.

  “She’s pretty feisty. Remember when she destroyed her second husband’s car?” Mom glanced at me when I stopped at a red light. Mom had pulled her hair into a side braid that day and I loved the salt and pepper style she’d given to her shoulder length tresses. She’d stopped dying her hair a few years before and she’d sworn never to do it again.

  Glancing at her and then back out the windshield, I tilted my head to the side. “Okay, but I thought he cheated. Didn’t he? I mean, I always thought it was because of that song about getting even or something.”

  “Yes, he did cheat.” The way Mom said it made it sound like it was a huge clue.

  I mulled that over for a bit. How would I feel, if Aaron cheated on me? Not that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind on more than one occasion. Lately, I felt like it was more than possible – not because I doubted Aaron, but more because I doubted myself and my confidence and security. With a more somber tone, I continued, “Was it with Debra? Did he cheat on Tanya with Debra?” If that were true, then Tanya had a solid motivation to kill Debra. As a married woman, did I blame her?

  Mom snorted, shaking her head. “No. He didn’t cheat on her with Debra. He cheated on their diet. They were doing a Biggest Loser competition with a different group.” She tapped my arm. “They’d made some kind of a bet and they lost a lot of money.”