by Libby Klein
“Nope. Hadn’t seen her for twenty-five years.”
“Why do they think you did it?”
“Because I had the misfortune of finding the body.”
“That’s it?”
“That, and the fact that we were enemies. But you can’t throw a rock in this town without hitting one of her enemies.”
She nodded and gave me a long look. “Tell me what happened at the reunion?”
I filled her in on the events up to the squad car. “Now I have to try to prove my innocence and figure out who the real killer is before I’m charged with the crime.”
“What was determined to be the cause of death?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I saw a puncture wound in the victim’s neck and I think it may have been some kind of poison. Other than that I’d say she died from pure meanness.”
“Okay, it sounds like you’ve had some traumas. Grief and anger may be a root cause for some of your physical problems. But—since the murder investigation is the most pressing—let’s go there first.”
I liked her. Okay, so she might be right about emotions affecting my health. But I wasn’t going to be mixing tofu and sprouts in my food anytime soon—I was sure she’d try to slip that in—but she did have my attention.
“There are a lot of poisons,” she was saying, “but not a lot of them are easy to get a hold of unless you work in a laboratory or travel to South America.”
“Most of the suspects I’ve come up with are local,” I chimed in. “Except maybe her ex-boyfriend and his new fiancée. I don’t know about foreign travel, but none of them work in a lab. Most of them work at the high school.”
Dr. Melinda’s eyebrows shot up. “Isn’t there a chemistry lab at the school?”
“I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“Someone with access to a chemical lab can easily create a deadly poison if they know what they’re doing.” She cocked one eyebrow and tilted her head. “How were you at chemistry?”
I met her look with a cocky one of my own. “I dropped out in the first quarter. I was more of a vo-tech kinda gal.”
“You seem very calm, considering the amount of chaos in your life. How do you usually deal with stress?” She went back to taking notes.
“Twinkies. Sometimes Ho-Hos.”
“Now, that stuff is poison.”
“Hmm, maybe someone injected Barbie with snack cakes.”
“Murder by cream-filling. That would be a first. I like it.”
We both laughed, and I relaxed. Maybe she wouldn’t be so bad after all.
“Tell me about the insomnia.”
About an hour later the exam was complete and she gave me an execution list. “Um, this may as well say don’t eat anything you like ever again.”
“I know. It seems difficult right now, but you’ll get used to it. Our bodies weren’t designed to live on the standard American diet. Stay away from the five fingers of death: sugar, soy, dairy, wheat, and corn. And of course, no artificial anything.”
“What will I put in my coffee?”
“Do you need coffee?”
“Do you need air?”
“Okay. Point taken. Try stevia. It’s a natural herb that you can use as a sugar replacement. From now on I only want you to eat real food. Think like a caveman. What did our ancestors eat? If it comes from a factory, you don’t eat it. If it doesn’t exist in nature, you don’t eat it.”
“Can’t I be a caveman who had a cow and made her own cheese?”
“Uh . . . No. Maybe later you can have some grass-fed dairy, but for now I want you to cut it out. We need to repair the damage to your immune system first. I want you to throw away all harsh cleansers in your home. Use only organic and natural cleaning supplies, beauty creams, shampoos. If you eat it, drink it, breathe it, or apply it to your body, it has to be chemical-free.”
She gave me some probiotics from a small refrigerator to “repopulate my gut bacteria”—whatever that meant—and a bottle of gluten-free digestive enzymes to help with the “leaky gut reaction,” which was one of the most disgusting things a doctor had ever said to me.
“One last thing,” she said, “we need to address the stress you’ve been under. I want to you start doing yoga for relaxation. And I want you to make sure you get at least eight hours of sleep a night. Not in the morning, when it’s daylight, but at night when you are supposed to be sleeping. Do you have any questions?”
“I don’t have to drink any more green tea, do I?” I mean even I have my limits.
She laughed. “It’s so good for you.”
“It tastes like grass.”
“Then just drink filtered water with lemon. No sweeteners. But one day it may become my personal challenge to change your mind about the green tea.” She gave me a big smile.
Then she wrote something on a little doctor’s pad and handed it to me. “Here’s a script for some lab work. I want to check your thyroid.”
She handed me a book on the Paleo diet. “Read this and try some of the recipes. The chicken enchiladas in coconut tortillas are one of my favorites.”
“That sounds good.”
“And as for your other problem, be careful. If the cause of death was poison, then the murder was carefully planned out and prepared for. A cold-blooded killer won’t think twice about coming after someone who gets too close to the truth.”
“Thanks, I’ll be careful.”
“Call me if you need anything.”
I made my follow-up appointment and went to the car with my new Nazi food regime, bag of supplements, diet book, and list of yoga positions and studios in the area.
This diet may as well say “no more happiness.” But I had made a vow to change my life, and that included taking better care of myself. So I was determined to put on my big-girl pants and just deal with it.
All the way home I entertained thoughts about how I was going to repay Aunt Ginny for sending me to a doctor who took away pasta. The best form of revenge, I decided, was to make her do it all with me.
Chapter 20
“Why do I have to be punished?” Aunt Ginny protested.
“Because it was your idea,” I countered. “And you conned me into going in the first place.”
“I didn’t know she was going to take away cheese. That’s like taking away oxygen. How are we supposed to live without ice cream? What are we, animals?”
I inhaled the cheeseburger and double onion rings I’d picked up on the way home, part of my “dead man walking” last meal. I would have to put on my big-girl pants—starting tomorrow.
“There are recipes in the book she gave me to make ice cream out of coconut and bananas.”
Aunt Ginny picked at her fries and harrumphed. I almost felt sorry enough to let her off the hook. Almost.
“If I have to do this Barbarian Diet with you . . .”
“Caveman Diet,” I corrected.
“Whatever. Caveman Diet. Then you’re going with me to my class at the senior center tonight.”
“Sure. What is it? Knitting? Water aerobics?”
Aunt Ginny gave me a look like I had lost my mind. “Water aerobics? That’s for old people. Tonight we’re taking salsa dancing lessons.”
I almost choked on my vanilla malt. “Salsa dancing! I don’t know how to do that.”
“That’s why we take the class.” She cleared our empty wrappers and paper bags and put them in the trash for Figaro to inspect later. “Now, go get your duds on. We’re leaving soon.”
I stomped upstairs to my room and threw open my closet. Aunt Ginny had conned me into something again. Unbelievable. On the other hand, maybe a little social interaction would keep her from prowling the neighborhood in her pajamas again.
I didn’t have anything that officially classified as “duds.” The only dress clothes I’d brought with me didn’t fit. My dress from the reunion was quarantined in the hamper, disgraced after its night in lockup. “I don’t have any duds!” I yelled to Aunt Ginny.
Figaro had come
in to watch, and I swore he was laughing at me. He sat on the bed watching me ransack the dresser, his whiskers twitching in amusement. The best I could come up with was a pair of black yoga pants, a white Empire waist blouse, and my silver flats. I dressed and tried to tame my hair flat. I presented myself to Fig and he gave me a judgmental cat look that said, So that’s what you’re wearing? I wouldn’t wear that to a neutering.
“You’re impossible, Fig.”
I waited for Aunt Ginny in the front parlor. When she emerged from her room, she was wearing a blood-red wrap dress and a pair of matching low-heeled dancing shoes. A square-cut black onyx surrounded by diamonds hung around her neck and she had a black fringed shawl draped across her shoulders. My eighty-something-year-old great-aunt was officially sexier than I was. I may have just hit rock bottom.
* * *
The salsa class—and I use that term loosely—had already started when we arrived. We could feel the thump thump thump of the beat from the parking lot, and Aunt Ginny was already rolling her shoulders and shimmying on the way up the sidewalk.
The seniors out on the dance floor were being led by a silver-haired man in tight black tuxedo pants and a crisp white ruffled shirt that was open to the waist showing a patch of gray chest hair. The very debonair Mr. “Shake-your-bum-bum” Ricardo was demonstrating a move he called “the Copa.”
When he saw Aunt Ginny enter the room, he lit up. “Ah, my favorite partner is here!”
I watched Aunt Ginny blush and give Mr. Ricardo a coy little wave. She caught my raised eyebrows and answered with a prim sniff. Mr. Ricardo shook his bum-bum all the way over to take Aunt Ginny by the hand and lead her back to the dance floor. I watched in amazement as she shook her bum-bum and followed him out there.
From what I could tell, everyone was pretty much doing their own thing. Mrs. Dodson was in the center of the room shuffling her feet side to side with a look of abject seriousness while pumping her cane in the air to the beat. Mr. and Mrs. Spisak were dancing what looked like a fast waltz. Thelma Davis was off to the side by herself, windmilling her arms and marching back and forth.
A hunched-over little man with a head full of white hair was hanging on to a walker that sported three tennis balls on its metal feet. He shuffled over to me and asked, “Wanna dance, Cookie?”
Before I could answer him, I was swept away by Mr. Glostner, who grabbed me by the hand and twirled me out to the dance floor. “You can thank me later,” he said, winking.
I looked around for Aunt Ginny to come rescue me, but she was shaking her hips with Mr. Ricardo and swinging her black fringed shawl around her head.
The little walker man shuffled past me and called out, “He won’t hold on to all his hair.”
Mr. Glostner tried to dip me, but halfway into the maneuver he cried out in pain and dropped me to the floor. “I’m so sorry, miss. Won’t be but a moment.” He groaned and stepped away gingerly. “Just let me go take my back pill and I’ll be ready in two shakes.”
He lumbered off, and the little walker man shuffled back again. “How do ya like me now?”
I picked myself up and looked for a corner to hide in, but Mother Gibson grabbed both my hands and started pedaling them up and down in time to the music.
Mr. Spisak lost control of Mrs. Spisak and twirled her into a potted palm. She didn’t seem to notice and kept dancing with the palm until Mr. Spisak retrieved her.
Much to my relief the song ended. “Mamma needs to go put another nail in the coffin. Be right back.” Mother Gibson snuck off to the bathroom to smoke, and I tried to make a break for it.
I had a moment of terror when I caught Mr. Ricardo trying to pick up Aunt Ginny for a lift. Thankfully, they abandoned the idea.
There was a tap on my shoulder, and when I spun around a little Indian man bowed to me. “I am Mr. Raj Patel. Would you do me the honor?”
“Oh, why the heck not.”
I let Mr. Patel lead me around to “Mambo Italiano.” He wasn’t bad. He twirled me past a couple of ladies pouring contents from a silver flask into the punch bowl, and I overheard something interesting.
“I heard she made a fool of herself over the Sommers boy again. He swore she would regret it someday. It looks like that day has arrived.”
“It took him years to get over the humiliation of it. He was so ashamed he had to leave town. But I don’t think he’s capable of murder, do you?”
I tried to get closer to hear more, but Mr. Patel swung me off in another direction and I lost them. I searched the crowd for the ladies but they had disappeared.
When the dance free-for-all was over, I was exhausted and ready for bed. Aunt Ginny and her friends decided, however, they were having too much fun to go home.
Ivey Spisak knocked on her hip with her fist. “I paid a lot of money for this titanium. Let’s go see what this baby can do.”
“I know a great little club in Wildwood called Caliente,” Mr. Ricardo offered. “Let’s move the party there.”
“I’ll be breaking curfew,” Mrs. Dodson said, looking at her watch fob pinned to her blouse. “But what is Charlotte going to do, ground me?”
“Aunt Ginny,” I asked. “What do you want to do?”
Aunt Ginny looked at Mr. Ricardo, then back to me. “It’s only eleven. It’s early yet. I remember when we used to go out dancing till breakfast.” Mr. Ricardo gave her a beaming smile.
“Maybe fifty years ago,” I muttered under my breath.
Aunt Ginny looked so excited that I agreed to go with them to Caliente. So much for Dr. Melinda’s instructions to go to bed early.
We all piled into two cars. Aunt Ginny and the Spisaks went with Mr. Ricardo. The widows, Mrs. Dodson, Mother Gibson, and Thelma Davis, went with me.
“Poppy, did you go to that doctor I told Ginny about?”
“Yes, Mrs. Dodson. Thank you for the referral.”
“Sure thing, honey. Nasty business that depression stuff. Did she give you anything disgusting to drink?”
“Just some green tea in her office.”
“She gave Charlotte a protein smoothie that could peel paint off the wall.”
“So what’s this about you being arrested?” Mother Gibson got right to the point.
“Lila!” Mrs. Dodson’s head snapped around in shock.
“What? We all know she was arrested Saturday night. It was all over the senior center by Sunday afternoon. Let’s get it out in the open.”
“I don’t mind,” I told them.
“Well in that case, give us the skinny.” Mrs. Davis ignored the reproving look from Mrs. Dodson.
I told them about the reunion and the history between “us” and “them.” Us being the B crowd and them being the popular kids who made our lives miserable for years. I described the crime scene, and finding the body, finishing with the story of my arrest and spending the night in jail.
Mother Gibson shook her head and said, “Oooh, child.” Mrs. Davis was clutching Mother Gibson’s arm and fanning herself out of overexcitement by the time we got our table at Caliente.
“I know Kristen Miller’s mother,” Mrs. Dodson said, “and I can’t believe that girl would have anything to do with this, even if she is having a change-of-life baby to save her marriage.”
“Save her marriage from what?”
“Well, I normally don’t tell tales out of school,” Mrs. Dodson said with practiced gravity.
Thelma snickered. “Since when?”
“Oh, yes you do,” Mother Gibson added.
Mrs. Dodson ignored both of them and went on. “Save it from divorce. Kristen suspected her husband had an affair about a year ago and it nearly did them in.”
“She just suspected it?” I asked. “She doesn’t know for sure?”
“She didn’t ask. Her mother said she had all the proof in the world, except catching him in the act. Phone records, florist receipts, hotel bills, e-mail, you name it. But she never questioned him. Just told him she wanted to work on their marriage and have a
baby.”
“Like that’s gonna help anything.” Mother Gibson rolled her eyes. “These young kids don’t know what they’re doing nowadays. Babies are hard work. Not accessories like those little dogs in purses.”
“I’d love to have a little purse dog to carry around with me.” Mrs. Davis cradled an imaginary dog in her arms.
“Thelma! You already have three cats. If you get any more animals I’ll call the health department on you myself!” Mrs. Dodson warned.
Trying to steer the conversation back to Kristen and Joel, I asked, “Does she know who he had an affair with?” I fully expected it was Barbie.
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Dodson said, nodding. “She knows. But if she told her mother, the woman wouldn’t tell me. And believe you me, I tried to get it out of her.”
“We believe you,” Mrs. Davis giggled.
“And this baby wasn’t easy to make, either. They didn’t do it the old-fashioned way. Nuh-uh.” Mrs. Dodson looked at the other ladies and they were all nodding in agreement. “She had the doctors do that in-vee-ter-o.”
Mother Gibson frowned. “Honey, that’s a lot of needles.”
“Needles?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. You have to give yourself shots. At home,” Mrs. Dodson answered sagely.
“Can you imagine doing something like that to yourself?” Mrs. Davis asked. “Things sure have changed from when we were young. If we couldn’t have a baby we just had to live with it.”
I thought about the two ladies I overheard at the senior center. “Did something happen between Barbie and another boy? Possibly Billy Sommers? Something humiliating?”
The ladies didn’t know of anything, but Mrs. Dodson said she would check with her contacts at the Christian Women’s League. “If anyone knows what happened, they will.”
Mr. Ricardo spun Aunt Ginny by the table. “What are you all doing just sitting there? Life is too short to sit in the corner when you could be dancing.”
Aunt Ginny looked at me and said, “Nobody puts baby in the corner,” then Mr. Ricardo cha-cha’d her away again.
The widows got up to dance, but I was preoccupied with rumors. Could Billy have killed Barbie? Was this revenge for some past humiliation? Or was Joel trying to cover up an affair? I would have to find a way to question Joel about Barbie when he came to the house in the morning.