The Body in the Cast ff-5

by Katherine Hall Page

  “You're probably right," Faith agreed. "But why is it always a pile of oily rags? Do you keep oily rags around? I don't. What do you do to get them oily, anyway? If you were being terribly crafty and refinishing furniture or working on your car, why not throw the rags away? It's not as though you'd wash them and use them for oily things again. No, it all seems so--well, so convenient"

  “You've obviously put a great deal of thought into the problem of oily rags and I'm sure you'd prefer a straightforward fire of suspicious origin in this case, but if you'd ever looked in the hayloft of that barn, you'd have seen there are piles of all sorts of junk, including oily rags created by God knows who for what purpose.”

  Tucking the thoughts of what Niki was doing in the hayloft and why she, Faith, hadn't checked it out herself into a corner of her mind for later consideration, Faith got ready to serve the returning crew. "It looks like our purpose is coming in the door.”

  They were followed by the Aleford brigade about thirty minutes later. Which is why Police Chief MacIsaac, Fire Chief O'Halloran, and their cohorts eagerly slurping down Faith's soup and clamoring for seconds in amiable company with the director, cast, and crew of A were all there to witness Evelyn O'Clair's possibly last dramatic entrance.

  Clutching her stomach and moaning, she staggered into the tent. "I've been poisoned!" she cried. Then she vomited violently and collapsed.

  Three

  But who can see an inch into futurity beyond his nose?

  If one has indeed been poisoned, having a large number of trained rescue workers and an ambulance close at hand may be regarded as something more than a happy coincidence. Evelyn O'Clair had been damned lucky indeed.

  But not poisoned.

  Or rather, not poisoned in the classical, even conventional sense. It wasn't strychnine or arsenic. Not even digitalis—admittedly difficult to cull from t he abundant foxglove still slumbering under the earth surrounding the old house.

  It was Chocolax, a digestive aid, and it was in the black bean soup—a medium that unfortunately intensified the drug's effects. In addition, a substantial amount of a liquid laxative sold over the counter for use before certain X rays had been added.

  “Why didn't anyone say anything!" wailed Faith when Charley MacIsaac stopped by early the next day to bring her the ill tidings in person. He had had a bad night himself after yesterday's lunch and was not in a good mood.

  “We all thought it was some sort of new fool concoction of yours, that's why. And it wasn't bad. Just kind of unusual. Besides, there was so much smoke in the air, nobody could taste much of anything.”

  Tom and Ben had departed for their respective morning activities—sermon writing and Play-Doh—and at least one of them wanted to switch. Amy was asleep.

  Faith had offered the chief some breakfast, but he had declined with unaccustomed haste. He opted for the sofa instead of the large wing chair, his usual choice. His face was a study in contrasts: affection for the woman sitting next to him struggled with animosity. Faith watched in alarm.

  “Charley! You know I wouldn't have put a laxative in any soup I'd made, especially Chocolax, which must bear no more resemblance to real chocolate than Styrofoam to meringue. That means somebody else put it in. The question is, who and when?"

  “All right, let's start from the beginning." Affection triumphed and Charley managed a weak smile. He took a small, creased spiral notepad from his jacket pocket, along with a sharp number-two yellow Dixon pencil. Faith expected him to lick the tip before commencing to write, and he did.

  “When did you make the soup?"

  “Wednesday afternoon."

  “And it sat in your refrigerator until you brought it to the set yesterday?"

  “Yes, but ..."

  “Hold your horses, Faith. Now who besides you and probably the Reverend has keys to the place?”

  “Pix and Niki, but ..."

  “No spares hidden under the mat or in a flowerpot?" he asked doggedly.

  “Charley, I'm trying to tell you something! Nobody could have put anything into the soup at the kitchen. It was fine when we arrived at the set, because I tasted it to check the seasonings when we first heated it."

  “All right, now we're getting somewhere." The chief gave her a baleful look, suggesting that she had hitherto been throwing sand in the gas tank of justice. "When, as near as you can remember, did you do the tasting?"

  “It was before we heard the fire alarm, and that was about quarter after twelve. We normally serve lunch at twelve-thirty, and I was watching the time pretty closely."

  “So let me get this straight. The soup was fine before the fire broke out"

  “Yes, which could mean the fire was set to get us out of the way while the soup was doctored. Sorry, poor choice of words."

  “All the soup was in one big pot?"

  “No, there were two tureens. We serve from two stations so the lines go faster."

  “I'm sure they kept the samples separate, but, in any case, everyone who had the soup got the runs, so they both must have been tampered with.”

  Faith had not been ill, nor had the rest of the Have Faith staff, since they normally ate after everyone else. After Evelyn's pronouncement, nothing passed anybody's lips. No, it was only the cast and crew of A, the entire fire department, and both police and fire chiefs who had been felled.

  Something was nagging at Faith. Something was wrong, besides what was so obviously wrong—that person or persons unknown had deliberately set out to destroy her reputation and business.

  “Charley, wait. Whoever dumped the Chocolax in the soup had to have done it earlier, because it was in the portion on Evelyn's tray and we sent that to her trailer before the fire"

  “But after you tasted it?"

  “Yes. Just after. I remember thinking how good it was," Faith declared staunchly. It had been good—she'd used hickory-smoked ham hocks for flavor, plus two kinds of onions and a touch of dry sherry before pureeing it all into a smooth liquid.

  Charley looked tired. Up and down all night perhaps? "Then what we have here is a situation where someone comes into the tent in broad daylight and empties God only knows how many packages of the stuff into two soup pots in front of you, Niki, Pix, and the rest of the bunch."

  “Plus a dozen or so crew members who needed to eat early or were waiting for trays. I admit it is impossible."

  “Yet it must have happened that way."

  “We would have noticed, believe me. Even if someone palmed the stuff and dropped it in the soup while we weren't looking, he or she would have to have stirred it to mix it in and then have repeated the whole thing at the other table.”

  Charley looked glum. When more than a minute had passed, Faith tentatively asked the question that had been on her mind since he'd told her what had happened.

  “Are you going to have to close me down?"

  “I'm supposed to. You know the law as well as I do, probably better."

  “Yes, except this was not a result of the caterer in question's actions. I mean, we're not talking salmonella chicken or spoiled mayonnaise here."

  “Sort of what I said to the Department of Health”

  “And they said?"

  “They agreed—after a while. But whether the movie people still want you ..

  “It would be perfectly understandable if they didn't. I just don't want to be shut down. You can't imagine how grateful I am to you, Charley." Faith would have thrown her arms around the chief, but he wasn't the hugging kind.

  Charley still had the notebook out. He was thinking out loud. "A fire and food poisoning—all within the same hour. Could be one of those movie people is some sort of lunatic. You ever notice any of them behaving more strangely than the rest?" Charley took it for granted all of them were demented in some respect—otherwise, they wouldn't live in California. Faith had observed this regional chauvinism in Charley, and other Alefordians, on numerous occasions. New York City was the worst. Make no mistake about that, but L.A. was definite
ly in the running.

  “No, I can't say I've seen anyone wandering around talking to lampposts. The only slightly maniacal outburst was an eight-year-old girl's, and she's merely spoiled." Faith then gave Charley an account of Caresse's temper tantrum, which was accompanied by noises from Amy's room, indicating she was up and ready for company. The first soft babbles became increasingly puzzled syllables, then finally insistent crying as Faith ignored her—hoping to finish the story before tending to her child.

  “Get the baby, Faith, before she blows a gasket. I have to check in at the station and see what's going on there before I head over to the Marriott.”

  Amy's cries had become one long antiphony.

  “But I still have so many questions. At least tell me if the fire was set or an accident."

  “You have questions! Some things never change." Charley looked more cheerful than he had all morning. "All right. We don't know if the fire was set or not yet. We don't know why someone wanted to close down the set of A, B, or whatever the hell the name of this thing is. And we don't know why Evelyn O'Clair was so much sicker than anybody else. Okay?”

  She who must be obeyed would soon rocket right out of the crib. Faith called, "Coming, sweetie. Mommy's coming," and turned to start up the stairs. "Thanks, Charley. For everything. And let me know what's happening?'

  “Sure, Faith." Police Chief Maclsaac let himself out the front door and got into the cruiser—if you could call it that, he reflected dismally. He'd bring Patrolman Dale Warren along while he questioned everyone at the Marriott. The kid saw a lot of movies. And he hadn't eaten any soup.

  Amy stopped crying the moment her mother entered the room, and as Faith changed her diaper and put on a fresh set of clothes, she positively beamed. Faith's mood, however, did not match her easily placated daughter's. The business of who had put the Chocolax in the soup had to be cleared up, and cleared up quickly. Rumors in the catering business traveled faster than the tat( chili pepper craze, and if word got out that there hau been a food poisoning episode at Have Faith, she'd be lucky to be catering snacktime at Ben's nursery school. Certain food purveyors who would leap at the chance to stick a knife or even a fork in her back came to mind with frightening speed.

  She took the baby into the kitchen and packed some zwieback and other baby goodies into her gargantuan diaper bag. Faith was upset and had to talk to Tom—in person. After bundling Amy into her L. L. Bean Baby Bag, she grabbed her own jacket and headed across the yard and through the ancient cemetery that separated the church from the parsonage.

  At least no one had died in the incident, she reflected, looking at the slightly askew slate tombstones with their lugubrious messages from the glorious beyond—such as Daniel Noyes's pithy 1716 epitaph: "As you were, so was I/God did call and I did dy." The sun had not managed to pierce the gray cloud cover overhead and the ground was frozen. There hadn't been any snow, but the remnants of last summer's green carpet of grass, so very green in the burial ground, crunched underfoot.

  Tom was slightly surprised to see Faith, flushed and obviously agitated, at his office door. She rarely ventured into this part of the church; whether from lack of interest or fear of being added to a committee, he was still not quite sure.

  “Is everything all right, honey?" he asked anxiously.

  "No," she replied, peeling off Amy's layers and looking around for a place to deposit her. Tom was not the tidiest person in the world. His' office consisted of a large rolltop desk, several bookcases crammed with books, two wing chairs, one Hitchcock, and piles and piles of papers and more books on the floor, said chairs, and any available surface. A four-drawer file stood to the right of his desk and held church stationery, extra hymnals, and prayer books. "I know exactly where everything is," he'd protested to both his wife and the church secretary, earnestly imploring them not to touch a thing. "I have my own system.”

  Faith refrained from her usual comment. Before slumping into one of the wing chairs, she removed a stack of the yellow legal pads he favored when composing his sermons, written in longhand. "These are my computer," he often said, wiggling his fingers. Too precious for words, his wife had told him on more than one occasion, and an unlikely affectation for a man whose state-of-the-art high fidelity system required a degree from MIT to operate.

  “What's happened?" he said, reaching for the baby, who proceeded to treat his lap as a trampoline, delightedly bobbing up and down in his grip.

  “The reason everyone got sick yesterday was a superabundance of Chocolax and some other laxative in the black bean soup."

  “Faith, this is terrible! Are they going to suspend your license?" Tom knew the repercussions almost as well as Faith.

  “For the moment, no, and the rumors will die down, I hope," Faith said in a voice that belied her words. "But what's got me is, who would do such a thing and why? Was it directed at the film people or me?"

  “My guess would be the cast and crew, and perhaps Evelyn O'Clair in particular. You just provided a happy medium."

  “There's something else.... There's no way anyone could have put the stuff in the soup without being seen.”

  Faith recounted the timetable, and Tom had to admit he was stumped, too.

  “The only thing that makes sense is that the stuff was added to Evelyn's soup and the soup in the tent at different times. I'm convinced the fire was set to get everybody out of the way. But we're right back at who and why again."

  “So, what next? Are you going to get in touch with Alan Morris to see if you still have a job?"

  “I have to, although I'm not looking forward to it. Charley said Max wants to start shooting again tomorrow. They kept Evelyn at the Lahey Clinic for observation overnight, but she's all right now. That's another thing I don't understand. Why was she so much sicker than anyone else?"

  “Body weight, maybe. Or a greater concentration of the stuff in her particular serving. Nerves. Maybe all three.”

  Faith stood up. "I know you're busy, darling, and I'll be going. I just needed to be with you. I think I'll call my old friend Cornelia and see if I can find out which way the wind is blowing."

  “Apt choice of words." Tom grinned and folded his wife and daughter in a warm embrace. "Need me anytime you want"

  “I feel much better—and madder. Believe me, I'm going to find out who's responsible. You don't go fooling around with a woman's livelihood—not to mention the suffering all those people had to endure.”

  Tom knew his wife well enough to know which fueled her anger more at the moment. It wasn't that she had a hard heart—merely certain priorities, bordering on maybe a touch too much self-interest. "I may have been slightly spoiled as a child, you know," she hadtold him shortly after their wedding in a moment of early marital candor. "Oh, really?" He'd only just managed to keep a straight face.

  Faith trudged back home, her heart lighter but her chest heavier. It seemed Amy was getting larger by the hour. Her birth weight had doubled to fourteen pounds. When Faith strapped the baby in the Snugli now, she sensed the day would soon come when she'd fall face forward as gravity and the baby joined forces. And if she fell forward here in the yard, she noted ruefully, she'd be covered with the slippery, moldy leaves they hadn't managed to finish raking last fall.

  The message machine was blinking frantically. Both Niki and Pix had called to find out what was going on. There was nothing from Alan Morris or anyone else connected with A. Faith made brief calls to her two assistants to tell them what she knew—or rather, didn't know—and asked that they get in touch with the others. Then she called Cornelia and invited her to come over for lunch.

  “Well, I don't have much time. Max has asked me to work on part of the script with him, but I might be able to squeeze a quick bite in. It would be faster if you came here. There's a little restaurant not far from the hotel called The Dandy Lion. Do you know it?”

  Faith did. It was opposite the huge Burlington Mall and provided decent salad, soup, and sandwich-type fare amidst a forest of ferns
populated by the high-tech Route 128 computer crowd that favored it as a watering hole.

  Arlene Maclean and even Faith's old standby Pix were both out, so Faith was forced to take Amy along to the rendezvous. With luck, the baby would lapse comatose in the stroller, as this was close to her normal post- prandial naptime. A more probable scenario was alert wakefulness in a new and exciting place. Faith had packed a bushel basket of toys and various foodstuffs to keep the infant involved while her mom pumped Auntie Cornelia for information.

  After all, what were old friends for—especially old friends like Cornelia? Faith had no problem reassuring herself as she drove down Middlesex Turnpike onto Mall Road, where the restaurant was cozily tucked into a minimall with a panoramic view of vast parking lots.

  Cornelia was waiting at a table in the main dining room and looked slightly askance at the baby. She favored Faith with an air kiss and waved dismissively in Amy's direction, wafting away any thoughts Faith may have had of baby worship as a way of getting Corny to spill the beans, black or otherwise.

  “I've already ordered. I suppose you want to talk about yesterday." Cornelia was using her best head counselor's voice to come straight to the point, and it suddenly occurred to Faith that her friend thought she was to blame for the disaster.

  “Corny," she gasped, "you certainly don't think I or any of my staff had anything to do with everyone getting sick!"

  “You did prepare the food, Faith dear:' she said, fixing Faith with a stern eye that continued the thought. "But I didn't put Chocolax in the soup!”

  Now Cornelia appeared surprised. "Chocolax. Did you hear this from the police?”

  Obviously, the news had not reached the Marriott, or Cornelia, at any rate. Charley MacIsaac had not told Faith to keep it a secret, so she supposed the news was for public consumption.

  “Yes, from our chief. He said it was Chocolax, loads of it, and another liquid laxative." Since hearing the method, Faith assumed the police were asking around at such places as Aleford's own Patriot Drug to find out whether anyone had made suspiciously large purchases of it lately. She was so busy with this thought and with rooting around in the diaper bag for Amy's plastic keys that it was a moment before she realized Cornelia hadn't said anything. She looked up. Corny had a puzzled look on her face and was staring off toward the other dining room—the one Faith preferred because of its fireplace and smaller, more intimate size.