by J. L. Newton
“Was it your corn bread, for God’s sake?” Donna choked on her zinfandel. She and I had discussed my cooking in the past, and the police had finally released the detail about corn bread to the papers.
“Yes. You can imagine how I feel.” I filled her in on the details of the case.
“I don’t like the part about the phone calls, even though, God knows, I get plenty of loony letters and e-mails about my columns.”
“On the advice of the police, I’ve asked the phone company to direct late night calls to a religious hotline.”
“Oh damn, that’s good. I wish I could do that with some of the trolls who write me. Prayer as punishment. I like it.” Donna grinned, showing both of her dimples.
“I don’t envy your job.”
“You get used to it.”
I said I was sure I’d never get used to it. We chatted for a while and then I said I had to go. My trip to Summerton had produced some interesting information about Collin’s character, information that confirmed his interest in corporate profits and further suggested he had a violent streak. But I would have to process all that later. I had to see Isobel.
When we rose from the table, Donna gave me an assessing look.
“You don’t look so good. You could use some goddess power. There’s a celebration of Samhain up in the hills next Sunday. Some pagan women are getting together to mark the annual thinning of the veil between the world of spirits and our own.”
“Maybe I do need goddess power, but I don’t think I can make it to the hills.” Someday, I’d have to attend one of these events just to find out what went on.
“I’ll hold good thoughts for you.”
* * *
A little before 3:00 p.m., I climbed the stairs of Haven Hall, the light from the bright autumn sky pouring into the stairwell like a sign from the heavens, and walked down the third-floor hallway on which Native American Studies had their offices. I stopped at the main office, which was painted in pale turquoise and lavender with posters of Indian baskets on the wall. Someone had tacked up a reminder: “Our lives are bound the way baskets are bound together.” After exchanging greetings with the staff, I walked to Isobel’s office and knocked on her door. Isobel opened, her earrings glinting silver through her hair. Yvonne sat in a chair next to Isobel’s desk, her plump hands clasped tightly together. She looked tired, her mouth turned down at the corners.
The office wall behind Isobel had been recently decorated with a large abstract poster, half red, half yellow with native designs in blue and turquoise. Isobel, with her waterfall of dark hair, looked especially powerful against that backdrop. Isobel had often spoken about her grandmother, mother, and aunties, how they’d told her stories about standing tall and connecting with the energy of the earth. Stories, she said, were a form of power that made the past live again in the present. A line she’d recited from a Joy Harjo poem had stayed with me:
“‘Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. You are evidence of her life, and her mother’s, and hers.’”
I was ambivalent about my own mother’s power, but I hoped that Isobel’s would enliven Yvonne, whose face looked wan.
“Yvonne,” Isobel said, “please tell us what you wanted to say.”
“I know I’m going to get into trouble for this, but I have to tell someone. I saw and heard something before school started this fall that’s been on my mind. I didn’t want to share it with anyone else because it’s private and Professor Elliott would have been incredibly angry if I had. It would have been the end of my job.”
I nodded encouragingly, and then remembered Collin Morehead’s ominous words during the meeting in the Office of Research: “We can also propose a cut in staff.”
“My office is next to Professor Elliott’s, and the office walls are thin. Sounds travel.” Yvonne smoothed the edge of her gray jacket over its matching skirt. “I’d been to the ladies’ room and was just returning when I saw Vice Provost Vogle go into Professor Elliott’s office and shut the door. I went into my office to finish some work, and I heard them arguing. Dr. Vogle was very upset. I could hear her voice clearly, though not Professor Elliott’s. He must have been trying to calm her down.” Yvonne paused, her eyes wide. “And then I heard her shout, ‘You said you loved me!’ Professor Elliott said, ‘Lower your voice, for God’s sake.’ I was so upset that I returned to the ladies’ room until I thought it might be safe. I didn’t want Professor Elliott to know what I’d heard or he’d never have trusted me again.” Yvonne grasped her hands more tightly. “When I came back, he was shutting his office and leaving. I guess Dr. Vogle must have left too. I was so relieved because I thought he’d think I’d been out of the office for a while.”
I listened in astonishment. Lorna and Peter? They seemed to move in two entirely different spheres. She was administration, and he was faculty, not that the two never mixed, but what had brought them together as lovers?
“I’m glad you told us, Yvonne,” I said. “It was courageous of you, and I can’t tell you how important this is.”
“We’ll do whatever we can,” Isobel said, “to make sure you don’t get into trouble.” There was more than a bit of the woman warrior about Isobel.
Yvonne, eyes reddened, took her purse from the floor and opened it to get a tissue. She dotted her eyes and gently blew her nose.
“I should get back,” Yvonne said. “I’m on my lunch hour, and the work is piling up.” She left, quietly closing the door. Isobel and I looked at each other.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Isobel asked.
“Yes, but how did this come about? Did Lorna use my corn bread or did she bake her own? And why did she choose corn bread with goat cheese and caramelized onions?” Isobel shook her head as if to say the world held many mysteries.
* * *
I turned on my computer, began an Internet search for Lorna Vogle, found a copy of her curriculum vitae, and looked at her record of employment. She’d begun her career at Iowa State in Wildlife and Ecology. She’d studied birds, specifically migratory birds. How odd, I thought. Lorna had never struck me as someone much interested in ecology or community, yet she’d studied creatures that depended on each other to escape hard weather and to find new sources of food. Had Lorna been more communal in her thinking back then?
Next, she’d been a dean at Cornell and had moved up the administrative ladder. Then Arbor State University and vice provost. What had converted her from studying wild birds to wearing jaunty suits and acting like a corporate officer? I began searching references to Peter Elliott. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said out loud. He too had been at Iowa State in Plant Pathology. But he’d stayed on after Lorna left for Cornell and then had taken a job at Arbor State five years before she’d arrived. Had they known each other at Iowa? I wondered. And, if so, in what capacity? Had Lorna thought he’d loved her then too?
I entered the words “Furadan” and “migratory birds.” A page full of articles popped up. Before it had been banned in the early 1990s, granular Furadan had killed a million migratory birds each year. And liquid Furadan was still in use. Sometimes 92 percent of a flock would die after landing on a field treated with liquid Furadan. “Birds killed by Furadan,” I typed in. The list included blue birds, robins, and red-winged blackbirds. I settled in and stopped only when my desk was overflowing with downloaded articles on Furadan, migratory birds, and bird poisonings in Iowa cornfields. That Lorna was familiar with Furadan seemed obvious, but how was she connected to my corn bread? I knew whom to ask.
I stepped across the hall and knocked on my young colleague Callie’s door.
“Emily! Come in.”
“Do you have a minute?”
“Sure. Have a seat.”
Callie had erected a screen in her office, and entering was a bit like going through a labyrinth. One side of the screen was adorned with a poster of African masks. On the other side, an African cloth of black, white, and brown covered a narrow cot.
One wall was painted an earthy red.
“I’m trying to figure something out. Please don’t tell anyone what I’m about to share because if I’m wrong I’d be in trouble. I have reason to think that Lorna poisoned Peter.”
“You’re kidding.” Her large eyes widened.
“I’ve learned they had a relationship. I think she was angry because he was trying to break it off, but I can’t figure out how she could have managed the poisoning. She wasn’t at the Native American reception, and what evidence is there that she would make corn bread with goat cheese and caramelized onions?”
“Oh, Em.” Callie looked stricken. “You served that corn bread last spring at the Women’s Studies reception, remember? And I asked you for the recipe and you e-mailed it to me? Lorna dropped by that event.”
“I remember seeing her briefly. She wasn’t there long. I was surprised she came at all, given her lack of interest in the program.”
“She was there long enough to eat a piece of corn bread. We were standing at the table and she asked me who’d made it and I told her you, and she’d said she’d love to have the recipe. I told her that I’d ask you for it and e-mail her a copy, which I must have done. If so, she could have put poison in her own batch.”
“Furadan kills migratory birds. Perhaps she saw Peter as someone who’d poisoned her life. Do you still have that e-mail?”
Callie scrolled through her lists.
“Let’s see.” She typed Lorna Vogle into the search engine under recipients.
“Yes, I do. There’s an advantage to never cleaning out your files. Here, I’ll print it out.”
I took Callie’s printout and stepped back to my office to call Lorna’s secretary.
“I’d like an appointment with the vice provost,” I said to the staff person, a woman with whom I was friendly. “It won’t take long. Does she have anything available?”
“She’s had a cancellation. Ordinarily, I’d just leave the time open, but since it’s you, Dr. Addams—you’re always so cordial with the staff—I could squeeze you in for thirty minutes tomorrow morning at eleven. What shall I say this is about?”
“You can say it’s about the Haven Hall programs and our proposal to become a separate division. Thanks so much.” What if I were wrong about this? My mouth felt dry. I’d have to think about my approach carefully.
An e-mail from Alma appeared on my screen.
“Emily, we’re having a Dia de los Muertos party on Monday, November 1 at 4:00 p.m. Please come and bring something to share.”
“I’d love to,” I wrote. Well, it won’t be corn bread this time, I thought.
* * *
At home that evening Polly and I made candy corn cupcakes for the upcoming Halloween party in Polly’s class. I was glad to have this pleasurable escape. The cupcakes were made from a white cake batter, one half of which was tinted with orange food coloring and the other half with yellow. The idea was to layer the two colors in the cupcake pans, bake and frost them with white frosting, and then decorate them with candy corn. It was the kind of involved project that Polly loved. Like her mother, she had a passion for celebrating holidays with ritual foods.
Sadie sat on her red-gold haunches at the end of the kitchen counter, looking hopeful.
“No, Sadie, this isn’t good for you,” Polly said.
Sadie was a sweet dog, but I had been unsuccessful so far in training her not to steal food. The month before, I’d made a dozen lemon cupcakes for Polly’s class. I’d gone out of the kitchen for a few minutes, and when I’d returned, the cupcakes had disappeared. For a moment I thought I’d lost my mind. What’ve I done with the cupcakes? I’d asked myself. It had taken several minutes to realize that Sadie had scarfed down every one. Later that week the yard had been full of Sadie’s poop with pieces of paper cupcake holder mixed in.
“Sadie, we can go for a walk,” Polly said soothingly. Sadie thumped her heavy golden tail upon the floor. She understood the word “walk.”
Halloween, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, was Polly’s favorite holiday, even surpassing Christmas. There was something about the weather at Halloween—the increasing crispness of the air, the rustling of dead leaves on sycamore trees—that stirred Polly. She seemed to have inherited a special sensitivity to the idea of spirits as well. Where did that come from? At times I, myself, felt that Miriam’s spirit was with me. Why were Polly and I so easily moved by the idea of the unseen? Had it come from the tiny bit of Shoshone in my father’s family line? Since the relationship in question had not involved marriage and had involved a person who wasn’t white, that part of our heritage had been a family secret. My father had only divulged that history near the end of his life.
“What do you want to be for Halloween this year?” I asked.
“The Bride of Frankenstein.”
I sighed.
“Don’t you want to be something more cheerful?”
Three years ago Polly had dressed up as the Little Mermaid, but after that it had been a black cat and then a witch. Where was this progression going to end? Polly, with her mass of brown curls and azure eyes, looked more like a princess than a monster bride.
“I like to be scary. It makes me feel strong.”
I sighed again. Outwardly Polly had taken her parents’ divorce very well, maybe too well. I knew that the break had hurt my daughter deeply. Perhaps death-related costumes were a way of revisiting, and then controlling, the pain. Were they Polly’s way of expressing what, ordinarily, she kept to herself? My chest ached as I looked at the spray of freckles on Polly’s well-loved face.
“Okay, the Bride of Frankenstein it is. Your dad has you this Sunday, which is Halloween, so you’ll do the neighborhood trick-or-treating with him. But the downtown trick-or-treating is on Saturday, so we’ll do that together.” Halloween was a lot more fun when Polly was with me, and now, especially, I looked forward to her cheerful presence. I was sure to need it after my visit to Lorna Vogle.
Candy Corn Halloween Cupcakes
Vanilla Cupcakes
1¾ cups all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
¼ cup soybean oil or vegetable oil
⅓ cup sour cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
⅔ cup milk (whole, 2%, skim—any kind will work)
Yellow and red food coloring
Candy corn for decorating*
Vanilla Frosting
3½ tablespoons heavy whipping cream
2½ cups powdered sugar
6 tablespoons butter, softened
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Cupcakes
Preheat the oven to 350°F
Line cupcake pan with paper liners.
In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix together.
In another bowl, cream sugar and butter together with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
Add the creamed butter and sugar to the flour mixture and mix on medium-low speed for about a minute. You will end up with a crumb texture.
Add eggs, oil, sour cream, and vanilla to the flour mixture and beat on medium speed until just combined. Slowly add the milk on low speed.
Evenly divide the batter into 2 bowls. Add yellow food coloring to one bowl. For the second bowl add yellow and red food coloring to make orange. (The ratio for creating orange is 2 drops of yellow for each drop of red).
Fill cupcake liners ¼ full with the yellow batter, then fill to about ½ full with orange batter.
Bake for 14–16 minutes (if you are making mini cupcakes, bake for 12–14 minutes) until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Or gently tap the top of the cupcake with your finger. If it springs back, it’s done.
Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for a few minutes, then move to a wi
re rack to finish cooling.
Frosting
Combine ingredients and beat on medium speed with mixer until you have the consistency you want.
Add a little extra whipping cream if you want the frosting thinner or add more powdered sugar to thicken it. If you’re going to pipe the frosting, you want it fairly thick.
*Wait to place the candy corn on top of the cupcakes until you are about ready to serve them or store cupcakes in the refrigerator to prevent the candy corn from melting onto the frosting (trust me, if you leave them at room temperature overnight, the candy corn melts and the colors run onto the frosting).
Adapted by permission of Holly and Katie at The SemiSweet Sisters http://www.thesemisweetsisters.com/2014/09/19/candy-corn-halloween-cupcakes/.
Chapter 13
The rain came, a real rain at last. The wet winter for which Arborville was famous might finally have arrived. As I folded my umbrella and pushed through the doors of Murk Hall, my stomach tightened, as if I were going with a cup in my hand on behalf of Women’s Studies. But, for the first time, I wasn’t going to Lorna’s office to plead for something on behalf of the program. The purpose of my visit was far more risky and unsettling. What if I’d gotten it wrong? What if Lorna produced some story that sent my own intuited narrative crashing to the ground? I wondered what the consequence would be for that kind of insubordination. Maybe I could have gone to the police first, but there wasn’t enough evidence for that. And, at any rate, my visits with potential suspects and my hours of gleaning information had made me determined to understand things for myself. At this point, I needed to see Lorna. I had to know.
I thought briefly of Donna in her witch’s hat, of Isobel looking larger than life in front of the red poster, of Polly feeling powerful when she dressed as something frightening. Perhaps, I thought, I’ll just make myself look big and scary, the way you’re supposed to do when facing off with a mountain lion. I rode the elevator to the main administrative office, a warren of carpeted dividers, and made my way to Lorna’s office. I greeted Lorna’s secretary, an older woman with a halo of white hair.