by Cleo Coyle
The guard paused, clearly wondering whether he should allow the Mercedes entry. “Come on,” I coaxed. “I’ll vouch for Matt.”
Finally the man stepped aside and waved us forward.
Matt drove up and parked behind my Honda, which I’d left behind David’s little sports car. The guard followed us up to the house and let us in with a passkey. Inside the lights were dim, the foyer deserted. No one was in the living room, either.
“Maybe David already went to bed,” said Matt.
A moment later we found Alberta Gurt in the kitchen—in fact, we must have really startled her by entering because she dropped a crystal tumbler. An hour ago Alberta was fine; now she seemed agitated.
“Oh, my goodness! You gave me a scare!” she cried, grabbing a tea towel. She bent down to pick up the broken glass. “You really shouldn’t sneak up on people like that!”
“I’m sorry,” I said, although we really hadn’t been sneaking and she should have heard our approach. I could only assume she’d been terribly distracted. But I didn’t want to argue and make things worse. “Alberta, this is Matt Allegro, one of David’s business associates. He’s here to say hello. Has David retired?”
“He’s in bed, and in no condition to talk,” the woman said, dumping both the glass and the tea towel into the garbage. “Too many martinis, I thought. So I whipped him up one of my Fizzy Friendlies—”
“One of your what?” I asked.
“It’s an anti-hangover drink David asks me to prepare for him when he’s partied too hearty, as he calls it. Usually the Friendly eases David’s nausea and gets rid of his headache, and he goes right to sleep. But tonight it didn’t help at all. He’s moaning, in pain—David said he thinks he was poisoned—”
“Poisoned!” I cried.
“He’s very sick,” Alberta continued. “I don’t know what to do. David’s in a very bad mood. He says he wants to be left alone. I wanted to call Dr. Ramah, his physician, but—”
“Wait. I know Dr. Ramah. Isn’t he in Manhattan?” I’d met the good doctor at a charity event connected to St. Vincent’s Hospital in the Village. It was Madame’s friend Dr. MacTavish who’d introduced us.
Alberta shrugged. “I didn’t know who else to call. I don’t know any doctors out here in the Hamptons.”
“I’m going to look in on David right now.” I headed out of the kitchen, Matt on my heels.
Alberta hurried to catch up. “He’s in a very bad mood,” she warned, her voice strained.
I kept walking. “You said that already, Alberta. But don’t worry. I don’t care if he fires me in a fit of pique. I already have another job.”
When I reached the bedroom door, I could hear David moaning on the other side. I gently tapped on the wood, then opened the door a crack. Super air-conditioned air rolled over me.
“Why is it so cold in here?” I asked alarmed.
Alberta said she’d pumped up the temperature herself because David had always claimed that lying in a cold, dark room alleviated his migraine symptoms in the past. Still soaked under the robe, I shivered.
“David,” I called, barely above a whisper. “It’s me. Clare.”
“Go away,” David replied in a quivery voice. “I’m sick.”
With the limited light streaming through the partially open door, I could see David lying under a tangle of blankets. He lay on his side, his back facing me, pillow over his head.
“I know you’re sick, David…Alberta told us.”
“Us?”
“Matteo is here too. He came to say hello. But if you’re sick—”
David moaned. “God, Clare, I’m not up to socializing. I’m dying here…I think I’ve been poisoned.”
“Poisoned! By whom?”
He moaned again. “That bastard Felloes. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten anything at his party.”
“You think Bom Felloes tried to poison you?” Ohmygod, ohmygod, I thought. I was right. Felloes had the motive and the opportunity. He must have hired the contract killer that mistakenly shot Treat. “We have to call the police. O’Rourke needs to hear that your neighbor is the one trying to kill you—”
“Kill me! God, no. No, no, no! Please, Clare, don’t go off the deep end again! I’m not saying he poisoned me literally—or even intentionally. The man uses what I call ‘poison’ at that slop house he calls a gourmet restaurant, but I never would have believed Felloes had the nerve to feed his guests that vile stuff.”
“Stuff? What stuff?” I demanded.
“MSG. Monosodium glutamate…I think I must have CSR—”
“CSR? My god, what’s that?” Matteo asked. “It sounds lethal.”
“It’s Chinese restaurant syndrome,” David informed him, moaning again.
“Are you kidding?” asked Matt, shooting me a skeptical look. “That can’t be a real syndrome—”
“I assure you that’s the shorthand term doctors use, even though they acknowledge you can get it at any restaurant that uses the food additive, and in a lot of processed food, too. Cramps, headache—”
David gagged, flopped on the bed like a fish out of water. He settled in a moment, let out a painful sigh. “Just go away,” he wailed.
I pulled Matt and Alberta back into the hallway and closed the door. “Where’s the nearest hospital? I think David needs medical care.”
“The only emergency room I know of out here is Southampton Hospital, and that’s fifteen miles away,” said Alberta.
Though he wasn’t much bigger than me, it would be no easy feat getting David Mintzer out of bed and down to the car, and brother was I glad Matt was there to help. An ambulance would have made more sense, but David absolutely, positively refused to go along with that.
“We do this quietly, or not at all,” he said, face pale from the pain, dark circles beneath his eyes. “Either I go to the hospital on my own power or I’ll die in this bed.”
I closed my eyes. Again that ugly word…die.
“We’d better take the Mercedes,” I told Matt. “It’s faster and more reliable than my clunky old Honda, and the three of us will barely fit into David’s sports car.”
“Hold on, the Mercedes isn’t my car—”
“Don’t be petty, Matt. A man’s life may be at stake here. Now help me.”
But instead of moving to David’s bed, Matt took out his cell phone. “What are you doing?” I demanded.
“I’m calling Breanne. I’ll tell her what’s happened so she won’t get stuck at Bom’s bash.”
I reached out and closed the phone. “You can’t tell Breanne anything. Breanne will blab everything to her friends, to people at the party. David won’t like it.”
“Clare, don’t be absurd. Bree wouldn’t do that.”
“Matt, she’s a magazine editor. Her stock and trade is gossip. Gossip about the latest trends. Gossip about the rich and famous. She’d sell her best friend down the river for a ten-percent increase in circulation. Now put that phone away and help me!”
Matt rolled his eyes, slipped the phone into his jacket and helped me sit David up. Mintzer groaned and clutched his head, suddenly dizzy. He wore oversized red silk pajamas, which made him appear small, frail, and very pale. His skin felt clammy.
“We have to hurry,” I said.
Alberta led the way, opening doors and clearing obstacles as Matteo and I half-carried, half-dragged the limp man down the stairs and across the living room to the front door.
The guard came over to help, and I took the opportunity to race to my room. Inside of two minutes, I tore off Bom’s robe, stripped off my wet clothes, and threw on a fleecy jogging suit. My sneakers were on the beach, and I didn’t take any time to look for another pair, so I ran back to the front door still wearing Bom’s royal-blue slippers.
Outside, the guard had opened the car door for Matt, who was helping David into the back seat. Alberta brought a quilt and wrapped it around her shivering boss.
“I’ll call if anything happens,” I told the housekeeper.
Chewing her lip, Alberta nodded.
Matt started the engine and pulled away.
“Oh god, oh damn,” David moaned. “I think I’m gonna throw up!”
“Not on Bree’s leather upholstery!” Matt cried, hitting the brakes.
Unfortunately, his warning came too late.
FIFTEEN
DR. Richard De Prima, intense and thirtyish in a white lab coat, with prematurely graying hair and a golden golfer’s tan, leafed through papers on a clipboard. His eyes scanned the pages then stalled on a long block of text. Finally the doctor looked up.
“Good thing you brought him in.”
“How bad is it?” I asked. Matt and I were standing with the doctor just outside an ER examining room. David was still inside.
“Mr. Mintzer complained of a burning sensation in the chest, shoulders, abdomen, forearms, and back of the neck. He felt bouts of numbness in his face, along with fairly constant abdominal pains, which are still persisting. He’s experiencing heart palpitations, and when he first entered the hospital he was wheezing, which indicates difficulty in breathing—and that indicates to me that Mr. Mintzer was very close to anaphylactic shock.”
“Oh, god.” I looked at Matt.
He squeezed my shoulder. “Then we did the right thing, bringing him in? Right, doctor?”
“Yes, of course,” De Prima replied. “And the patient said he’d vomited on the way to the hospital?”
Matt sighed. “Repeatedly.”
“That’s actually good,” De Prima noted. “We would have had to pump his stomach if he hadn’t.”
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.
“I administered an antihistamine, a standard precaution with such a powerful and dangerous allergic reaction—”
Matt blinked. “He nearly died because of an allergy?”
“A rather common sensitivity to MSG. That’s monosodium glutamate—”
“Yes, yes, I know what it is,” I said. “And so does Matt. But we didn’t know until tonight that David had an adverse reaction to MSG. Apparently, he’s known for a long time. That’s why he’s tried to avoid the additive.”
Dr. De Prima offered me an indulgent smile. “Ms. Cosi, MSG is so prevalent in our modern diet that it is difficult to avoid completely. There are over forty different names to represent MSG found on food labels. It’s called everything from the euphemistic ‘hydrolized proteins’ to ‘natural flavorings’—perhaps the biggest lie of all.”
Matt cleared his throat. “Bottom line, please doctor. Will David be all right?”
The doctor nodded. “We’re keeping him here overnight, mostly for observation. The danger’s passed.”
“You’re sure?” Matt pressed.
“The effects last one to four hours, but in a dosage as high as Mr. Mintzer has ingested, it could last longer. The antihistamines should help. When the effects fade, Mr. Mintzer will feel weak and tired for another day or so—a feeling not unlike a hangover—but he should return to his old self in forty-eight to seventy-two hours.”
“Can we see him?” I asked.
“Sorry, I can’t allow that,” advised the doctor. “He needs his rest. The trip here took a lot out of him.”
“You can say that again,” quipped Matt.
“Doctor, you said that David consumed a large amount of MSG. How do you know?” I asked.
“It had to be a large amount to elicit such a powerful reaction. The intensity of the allergy attack is directly proportional to the amount of MSG absorbed.”
I shook my head. “But David said he just ate a little at the party he’d attended tonight.”
“From his reaction, he consumed quite a bit,” the doctor insisted. “In fact, it’s a good thing you brought him in. He had so much MSG in so short a time that with his personal sensitivity to the substance, he could have died.”
MATT and I said very little after we returned to the parking lot. I waited outside Breanne’s Mercedes while Matteo cleaned the back seat with clumps of paper towels he’d grabbed from the hospital’s men’s room.
I offered to help, but he waved me off. So, while he held his nose and wiped out the back seat, I watched moths flutter around the parking lot lights. It was close to three in the morning and the only sounds I heard were the constant cricket chirps and the wind rustling the trees.
Matt slipped his jacket over my shoulders to keep me warm while he took the convertible’s top down “to blow out the stink.” A moment later, we were heading back to David’s mansion, the wind in my salt-encrusted hair. As we drove in silence, I tried to process the events of this crazy night.
It was apparent to me that a second attempt had been made on David Mintzer’s life—nothing I could prove, of course, but apparent to me. It also seemed, at least at first glance, that the identity of the culprit was obvious.
There had been years of bad blood between David Mintzer and Bom Felloes, as much a battle of inflated egos as anything else, but real nonetheless. And while the elegant young restaurateur maintained publicly that he’d invited David to his party to “bury the hatchet,” Felloes may have also used the opportunity to slip David an MSG mickey large enough to induce anaphylactic shock.
In its white powder form, monosodium glutamate was practically tasteless. A large amount of the stuff could have been added to almost anything David was ingesting at Bom’s bash, from the martinis to the peanut sauce that dressed the seafood satay.
While my theory sounded good, there was one major hole. The killer had to know about David’s ultra sensitivity to MSG. How would Bom have known it?
I myself had known David for nearly a year. I considered him a good friend, but I didn’t know about his allergy. Sure, at Cuppa J, we never used MSG, but that was a matter of food and beverage policy, one I happened to agree with. I never knew it had anything to do with David’s sensitivity to it.
But Alberta…she probably knew. After all, she knew a lot about David, personal information gathered over the years. She knew his likes and dislikes, the details about his health and his frailties. And Alberta was one of the beneficiaries in David’s will. With David Mintzer dead, she stood to benefit. Even if David left her a fraction of his estate, the business interests owned by Mintzer were so vast that the value of the inheritance would still be immense.
But was a big cash payoff enough to motivate Alberta Gurt to murder her employer? Maybe.
While I found Alberta a pleasant and likeable individual, I also found the growing pile of circumstantial evidence against her very troubling. For instance, she’d mentioned a nephew named Thomas she was very fond of, a young man David had come to know and help. He’d even made Alberta’s nephew a beneficiary in his will. This “Tommy” was, by Alberta’s own admission, a troubled youth who’d paid his debt to society, straightened out his life, and entered the military, where he certainly would have learned how to handle a rifle. That would explain the rifle shells.
So…could Alberta and her nephew have plotted cold-blooded murder together? Could Alberta’s “Tommy” have been the shooter on the Fourth of July? And when the nephew made his mistake and killed Treat Mazzelli, did Alberta try again to kill David tonight? She could have easily slipped a little MSG cocktail into his “Fizzy Friendly” anti-hangover elixir.
Now that I thought about it, the woman had been surprised and agitated when Matt and I came upon her in the kitchen. In fact, she’d been at the sink, washing out a tumbler, which she’d subsequently dropped. Was she destroying the evidence, cleaning the very glass she’d used to serve the poison cocktail to David?
I thought back to the night of the shooting. About how David came down with a migraine before the fireworks display—yet he told Madame that he didn’t recall ingesting any of the foods that exclusively caused him to suffer migraines. Could someone have added MSG to something David had ingested? Maybe it was someone he trusted? Someone like Alberta Gurt?
And there was another thing that continued to bother me. Why had Albert
a been dressed so well last night? She’d had on makeup and jewelry too, but she hadn’t come to the party. She’d apparently just been spending the night alone in her room.
I played the scene back in my head. Now that I thought about it, the television had been off when she opened the door to her bedroom suite. Yet, before she’d opened it, I’d heard voices talking. Could those voices have been Alberta and her nephew? Could she have been hiding him when I knocked? Or had she simply turned the TV off before coming to the door?
Just when I thought I had everything tied up in a neat little package, I remembered the flipper prints in the sand. I didn’t yet have an explanation for those—or the mysterious trespasser. Who was the frogman I’d spotted on Bom’s beach and followed out to his boat? And what the hell had he been up to, swimming back and forth to a boat with its running lights turned off?
The whole business brought to mind one of my dear old dad’s adages: Cookie, anyone who’s got to operate in the dark is probably up to no good.
Then there was Jacques Papas and his suspicious ten percent deal. Did Papas know about David’s allergy? He’d been at the Fourth of July party. And he’d given David a ride home. And I couldn’t forget Marjorie Bright lurking in the trees and at Bom’s party. I still remembered her less than “neighborly” tone. If anyone had a death wish for David, it was the acid Ms. Bright. But how would she have known about David’s allergy? As my head began to spin, I realized Mike Quinn was right. Rich men definitely made more enemies than waiters.
I sighed. Well, I thought to myself, at least I know one thing for certain…“Someone tried to kill David tonight.”
“What!” said Matt.
I squeezed my eyes shut. It was late and I was tired. I’d let my guard down and muttered the last dregs of my thoughts. Or…maybe it was just Freudian. Maybe I was feeling tired and alone, and I wanted Matt to help me. Either way, I knew I was stuck now. Or so I told myself. I had to spill everything to Matteo, and I did, recounting the shooting of Treat Mazzelli, the frogman footprints, the sighting of an actual frogman outside Bom’s home earlier in the evening, my suspicions about Alberta Gurt and her nephew, Jacques Papas, and Marjorie Bright.