Oink

by J. L. Newton

  Teresa frowned slightly and crossed her arms.

  “I wanted to offer my best wishes for Peter and maybe talk to you about who might have had access to the corn bread. I served it the night of the Native American reception in Bauman Hall. I’m a suspect in the case, and so are some of my colleagues.” I was relieved to be getting through those initial mouthfuls. “I’m anxious to do what I can to figure out what happened that evening.”

  “I’ve been cleared by the police. I was at home all evening with my sister who’d come to visit. And there are no pesticides on the property. I’m a toxicologist, so I wouldn’t allow them.” She held her arms more tightly. Not exactly a good beginning.

  “Yes, I assumed you’d been cleared. I wouldn’t have come to accuse you. I just thought that, between us, we might be able to come up with some leads or clues. The corn bread was a special kind with caramelized onions and goat cheese. The police lab verified those ingredients.”

  Teresa looked a shade friendlier. “Okay, come in.”

  I entered the large foyer that looked out on the other end to the middle of the trees.

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “I’d love some.”

  Teresa led me through a large dining room containing a rustic dark brown table, large enough for twelve. It had a view of the pond, and a bronze vase on its surface held a mass of deep yellow roses.

  “What a wonderful dining room. I love the table.”

  “It’s Colombian. That’s where I’m from.” We entered the kitchen, which was open and light with Spanish-looking pavers on the floor and counters.

  “This is a beautiful kitchen. Do you do a lot of cooking?”

  “I used to. Peter likes to entertain, and when we first moved here and got this house, we gave a lot of large dinner parties.”

  “I write on food now, and cooking is one of my passions. What kind of cooking do you do?”

  Teresa stopped frowning.

  “Colombian. Empanadas, of course, patacones or twice-fried plantains; Ajiaco, a chicken, corn, and potato stew; and Bandeja Paisa with steak, chorizo, chicharon—do you know chicharon?”

  “Deep-fried bacon?”

  “Yes, and fried egg, fried plantain, a little salad, and some rice.”

  “Wow, the Bandeja is a lot of food.”

  Teresa’s full mouth curved slightly in something that could have passed for a smile.

  “It’s Peter’s favorite. Colombians make corn bread too. Arepas are little corn cakes made from masarepa flour. You cook them in a broiler or on a grill until they have a nice crust. Then you eat them with more butter and sometimes cream cheese. I wish I had some right now.”

  Teresa’s face relaxed even more as she poured coffee into two deep green mugs. “Sugar? Cream?”

  “Both, please. How is Peter?”

  “He’s stable. His signs are good, but he hasn’t come out of the coma. He had some heart trouble and the poison brought on a heart attack.” Teresa looked down at the emerald-green mugs. “It’s hard to be in this house alone. He took up a lot of space.”

  “Peter seems to have enjoyed good food,” I observed and then stopped. Perhaps, in the context of the poisoning, it was indelicate to be discussing Peter’s eating habits.

  “Peter would eat anything I put on his plate. He’d eat off my plate too and drink my wine at the dinner table. He had few boundaries where food was concerned.” Teresa handed me my mug. “His father was a poor pig farmer. I think Peter was deeply influenced by his childhood poverty—and by those hogs.”

  “Well, he made them a subject of his work, and, from what I can tell, he made it pay.”

  “Yes, Peter did far better with his swine than his father. Living on that pig farm was a hard life.” Teresa looked out the window to the street. “Let’s go into the living room to drink.”

  Teresa guided me back through the hall into the bright living room, which was furnished with leather couches and a large rustic coffee table. Some terra-cotta figurines in bright colors of red, white, and yellow lined the mantel of the fireplace.

  “Do you have children?” I asked, sipping my coffee. Now that we were both sitting on the couch I could smell Teresa’s perfume. Being allergic to scent, I never wore it myself, but Teresa’s fragrance reminded me of blackberries and plums, of roses and orchids, and of something earthy and wood-like all in one. It suited Teresa who was far more glamorous than a toxicologist ought to be. She reminded me of something. What was it? A harvest? A flower market? Fruits spilling from a horn? Did she remind me of Miriam?

  “Peter has three children from a former marriage, all grown. I met him when I was a graduate student. He was married then but left his wife, and when we married I was beginning a career, so stepchildren were enough.” Teresa gathered her thick hair in her hands and gave it a twist. What would it be like, I wondered, to have hair so full and luxurious?

  “You met in his lab?”

  “Yes, Peter was always well funded and he was already a rising star. Getting into his lab was very competitive. I admired him. We fell in love.”

  “Sounds romantic.” I took another sip of the coffee—sweet with a nutty undertone.

  “Yes, until he met the next woman in his life.” Teresa lowered her glance to the large wooden coffee table. “I’m sorry. But everyone knows about Peter’s infidelities. They’re legendary. I tried couples therapy with him, but nothing changed. He just assumes he has the right.”

  Like helping himself to Jenny’s egg, I thought, like drinking Teresa’s wine. And then to be poisoned by a piece of corn bread. Perhaps it, too, belonged to someone else? I took a long, thoughtful sip from my mug.

  We sat in silence for a moment. It was interesting how often people were inclined to tell me things. Women in Chicana/o Studies frequently came to me to discuss departmental conflicts. I was a neutral party, and they could count on my being empathetic. I was also a good listener. But Teresa had been especially frank, a characteristic, it would seem, of an expansive nature, and her openness had given her words an aura of authenticity. I felt emboldened to ask more questions.

  “Did any of his, ah, women friends bake?”

  “I’ve no idea. I stopped cooking for him long ago.” She looked into her mug and then set it on the coffee table. “I came up for tenure just last year and before that I’d had to put every minute into my research. It got so we hardly saw each other much, and he often stayed on the couch in his office when he was working late.”

  “So you went your own way?”

  “Yes, and he went his. I don’t agree with his lobbying for Syndicon, which makes pesticides. And do we know that Peter’s insect- and disease-resistant corn is safe? There’s no money for studying the effects of products like that.”

  “But you continue on with Peter,” I began but stopped. Was I pressing too far? Teresa’s cheeks flushed.

  “I had to work on tenure. There was no time to sort things out. When you’re in science, the work shapes your life. At certain periods it just takes over. I don’t know how women with young children do it at all.” She picked up her mug again and cradled it in her long, slender hand.

  “Do you think Peter was concerned about Save the Field’s threats?” I remembered Jenny’s comments about Peter’s uneasiness.

  “He was concerned about something, I know that. But it started well before they tore up the cornfield in September. This summer, he began to act funny. Sometimes I’d come into a room, and he’d close the cover of his laptop. At first I thought he was hiding e-mails from one of his amours, but then there would be times that we’d be driving somewhere together and he’d wonder if we were being followed.” She gazed into the large, stone fireplace.

  “Could one of his women friends have been jealous, do you think, or felt spurned?”

  “Maybe, but there was something about his work that he was hiding. Ordinarily, he talked about his results. Then he stopped.”

  “I know there are a lot of people who disagreed with Pe
ter, but it’s hard to believe that the official suspects in the case would poison him for his views. Was he on bad terms with anyone else you knew?”

  Teresa stared hard into the fireplace. I glanced at the picture over the mantel. It showed a lush valley with palm trees in the foreground and mountains half misted over in the back. I assumed it was Colombia. Did it smell like Teresa’s scent?

  “There was someone who saw himself as Peter’s competition, Collin Morehead, who also works on genetically engineered corn. Syndicon gave Peter a big contract. Collin had wanted one but didn’t manage to get it.”

  “Collin Morehead. I just attended a meeting with him. Do you know him?”

  “Not well, but someone in Plant Biology would. He lives in Summerton.”

  Tess, I thought, but Tess was away. I decided to get in touch with Donna DeLacey, the editor of the Summerton Post. Donna knew everyone in town.

  “Is that a picture of Colombia?” I asked, pointing at the painting.

  “Yes, it’s the Paisa district where I grew up. My father had a small coffee plantation in what’s called the coffee triangle, where most of Colombia’s coffee is grown. It’s where I learned to care about what’s on our food because coffee fields are thick with pesticide.” The frown was back.

  A phone rang in the hall. “Excuse me a minute,” Teresa said and disappeared. At a distance, I could hear her speaking in rapid Spanish.

  “Hola mi amor, no puedo hablar ahora. La mujer de quién me hablaste está aquí ahora. Te lo contare más tarde. ¿Okay? Realmente no puedo hablar.”

  When Teresa returned, I stood up to go. I thanked her for talking with me and said I hoped Peter got better. I liked her, a woman who spoke so openly, a woman with an appreciation for cooking, rustic tables, and yellow roses. Teresa walked me to the door and said goodbye. I descended the steps and turned back to the greenbelt. “My love, I can’t talk now. The woman you told me about is here. I’ll tell you about it later. Okay? Really I can’t talk.” Teresa had assumed that I didn’t understand the language, but raised in Southern California, I had been learning, and relearning, Spanish for most of my life. “The woman you told me about” could only be me—which meant that Teresa’s “amor” must be Juan Carlos Vega.

  Colombian Corn and Cheese Arepas

  3 cups (about 1 pound) precooked white corn flour, like harina P.A.N.

  2 tablespoons sugar

  5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

  1½ pounds soft fresh cheese like queso blanco or queso fresco (or mozzarella) coarsely grated (about 4 cups, well packed)

  8 ounces aged cow’s-milk cheese, preferably Mexican cotija (or Manchego or Parmesan), coarsely grated (about 2 cups)

  1½ teaspoons salt

  Mix flour and sugar in a bowl.

  Add 3 cups warm water slowly. Mix with fingers. Add 4 tablespoons butter and then knead until it forms a soft dough.

  Add the cheese one cup at a time and knead it into the dough. If the dough seems dry, add 1 to 2 tablespoons more water.

  Taste the dough. Then if it requires salt, knead the salt in ½ teaspoon at a time. Knead the dough until it is soft and smooth and not lumpy. Cover the dough with a damp cloth and let it rest for 15 minutes.

  Heat the broiler or grill over high heat.

  Pull the dough into 11 sections of about ½ cup each (about 5 ounces). Roll each section into a ball, put on a tray, and cover with a slightly damp kitchen towel.

  Then flatten the balls into thick circles, about 3½ inches in diameter. They should be flat on both sides. Return to tray and keep covered.

  Line a broiler or grill rack with aluminum foil. Brush the foil with 1 tablespoon butter. Place arepas on the foil and broil or grill 4 inches from the heat source. Turn them once and cook until both sides are golden brown and speckled. This will take about 10 minutes per side.

  Serve hot.

  Adapted by permission of Julia Moskin at http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015180-colombian-corn-and-cheese-arepas.

  Chapter 12

  Summerton, a town of six thousand, where men still wore cowboy hats and the population was almost half Latino, had the feel of a slowly gentrifying frontier. Trendy wine bars, artisanal cheese stores, boutiques, and a fancy steakhouse mixed with tiny stores, their windows covered in posters of voluptuous women, where workers could buy their liquor in some privacy. It was so small that everyone knew each other’s business, and Donna DeLacey, variously editor, reporter, and photographer with the Summerton Post for twenty years, knew most.

  I’d met Donna at a wine festival in Summerton, and we’d hit it off. She was tart-tongued but also warm and open to adventure, so after my meeting with Teresa, I’d felt no hesitation e-mailing her out of the blue to ask if she’d be in her office the next day at 1:00 p.m. She’d e-mailed back where else could she be on a Thursday afternoon given the paper’s schedule? If anyone would know about Collin Morehead, it was she, and since Summerton lay only fifteen miles from Arbor State, I would have plenty of time to get back for a meeting at 3:00 p.m. with Isobel, who’d e-mailed me early that morning to say that Yvonne had more to tell.

  The office of the Post was located on the town’s main street, but I would have missed it altogether if it were not for a small weather-beaten sign above the unprepossessing door. The large front office was crowded with empty desks, their tops strewn with papers and computers. The walls were a crazy quilt of posters, awards, and more sheets of paper, along with a framed collection of political buttons. I could see Donna’s back as she sat at her desk in a room that proved to be the size of a large closet. The wall behind her held shelves of bound volumes, which evidently contained past issues of the Post. The wall above her desk displayed a maze of cards, posters, pictures, and papers with curling edges. Open shelves to her left overflowed with random collections of boxes, tins, cups, aerosol cans, flashlights, and coils of black electronic cable. Things had settled in this office like mummified leavings, like detritus from the countless stories that had been filtered through the space.

  “Donna?” I said. Donna looked up and stood to greet me. She was dressed in black and wore an enormous witch’s hat. “You’re kind of early for Halloween.”

  “I feel witchy today, so I’ve dressed the part.” She was a robust, attractive woman with bleached blonde hair and a determined look. “Why have you come to Summerton on a Thursday afternoon?”

  “I’m looking for information.”

  Donna tilted her face. She had a very sharp chin.

  “Fire away. I get asked about stuff all the time.”

  “Do you know someone named Collin Morehead?”

  “Oh yeah. He’s a member of the City Council, and that’s been my beat for years. He’s one of those Arbor State types who come in with pie charts and graphs to argue about building an animal shelter. Folks around here don’t relate to pie charts. They’re more likely to say ‘Well, I like dogs.’ Want to get something to drink?”

  “Sure.”

  Donna removed her hat and sailed it onto the papers covering her desk. “I used to sit in those endless meetings and think about all the ways someone could commit suicide using the stuff at hand.”

  “Hanging from the ceiling fan?”

  “Yeah. And poking an artery with a sharp pen.”

  As we left the office, I caught a glimpse of printing presses in the next room.

  “Is this where you print?”

  “Naw, they’re too old. Someone printed on them once.”

  I looked in. The presses were ancient and covered with dust.

  “It’s kind of a museum,” Donna said. “But we haven’t done much with it.”

  We walked to the wine bar a few doors down, an open, airy place with miles of shiny wooden floor, a case devoted to gourmet cheeses, a long bar with wines displayed on a full wall of racks, and small mosaic-topped tables and chairs. Places like this were part of Summerton’s gentrification, but the wooden posts and rafters evoked a more rural history. At a table near a window, p
erfect for watching characters, suspicious or otherwise, we ordered two glasses of wine.

  “Why not?” Donna said. “It’s cocktail hour somewhere.” She leaned back in her chair.

  “So, Collin. I always thought it odd that he lives here. He strikes me as a corporate type, uptight, ambitious, not much interested in ordinary people. Most folks in this town are simple people—or want to appear simple.” She paused to observe a man walk by the window wearing cowboy boots. “Some Arbor State professors live here to get away from the competitive atmosphere of the university. They coach soccer teams or sit on the council, and their Arbor State connections kind of disappear. But Morehead has never managed to fit in. The top button on his shirt was always buttoned, if you know what I mean, and he’s a loner, divorced, and has a child living somewhere else, maybe Australia where he’s from.”

  A cheerful young server delivered our glasses.

  “I also know he’s supported a number of corporate proposals to build housing developments on the fields. The proposals didn’t go through, though. Most folks here don’t want that kind of thing. And there’ve been rumors about his being involved in some kind of scandal Down Under.” Donna raised her glass and I clinked mine.

  “Scandal?” I took a sip of my wine, fruity without too much mineral in it, just how I liked it.

  “Scandal … involving death … or possibly only wounding? Damn! I forget everything these days. He has a bad temper, evidently.” Donna raised her own glass, swirled the wine, and gave it an investigative sniff.

  “Do you think he’d be the type to poison a rival?”

  “Who knows what lies in the human heart? There’s a lot of darkness.” Donna took a sip of wine, rolling it in her mouth. “Wait, are you trying to connect him to the poisoning at Arbor State?”

  The small town news circuit knew all about the poisoning.

  “I’m trying to track down leads. I’m a suspect in the case and so are some of my colleagues.”