Death of an English Muffin

by Victoria Hamilton

  There, slumped over against the vanity that held the sink, staring blankly up at me was Cleta Sanson, her face ashen and sagging into wrinkles, her mouth slack and skin discolored with a bluish cast. She was quite dead. I started crying.

  Chapter Eight

  I DON’T KNOW why I cried; it surprised the hell out of me since I had disliked the woman. I grabbed backward and felt Gogi’s comforting presence.

  “Oh dear,” she said, looking past me and seeing Cleta.

  Hannah must have seen past us both because she cried out, “Can’t you help her? Should you be doing CPR or something?”

  Zeke crowded in and peered over our shoulders. “Nope, she’s a goner. Looks just like my uncle Silas when he died last Fourth of July after eating a hot dog too fast and having a heart attack.”

  His words made me shudder to life. I turned and pushed him back into the hall. “Hannah, will you and Zeke please go back into the kitchen for now?” They obeyed, and I stood with Gogi, looking around the bathroom from the door, trying to understand what had happened. It seemed impossible, and yet . . . she was dead. Her smeared glasses were in the sink, one of the arms bent oddly.

  Cleta’s pocketbook was on the floor; it looked like she had been trying to get some pills out. They were spilled all over the white ceramic sink and the tile floor, along with much of the contents of her purse: lipstick, antibacterial handwash in a plastic bottle, lighter, pens, and an odd little compact with a monogrammed lid. Gogi tilted her head and read the pill bottle, where it lay tipped over on the edge of the sink. “It’s hers. Nitro,” she said. “Poor woman. Probably tried to get the pills thinking she was having an angina episode, but it wasn’t, it was her heart.”

  “Is nitro only for angina?” I asked.

  “No, oh no. If she thought she was having a heart attack she’d reach for them, too.”

  Poor Cleta . . . her lipstick was smeared, as if she had tried to jam a pill in her mouth and failed. Other than the spilled pocketbook and the glasses in the sink, the bathroom was perfectly neat. I turned away from the door and held on to the doorframe. “I haven’t seen her for close to an hour,” I said, thinking of my search upstairs, the incident with the cream pitcher, and everything else. Hannah said she had been trying this door for over half an hour and the door was locked. “What should I do, Gogi?” I asked.

  “You must call Virgil,” she said.

  I sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.” Another death at Wynter Castle, another call to Virgil Grace.

  Shaking, I returned to the kitchen and grabbed the phone, as Zeke sat on a kitchen chair, quietly talking to Hannah and holding her hand. Poor kid looked white and afraid. I touched her shoulder as I got dispatch and told them what had happened and that Miss Sanson was most certainly dead. I was told to do nothing, but to wait for the sheriff or a deputy.

  Unless, the woman said, I thought there was any hope of revival. Then we should start CPR. I gabbled something inane into the phone, and Gogi grabbed the cordless. She identified herself then reassured the dispatcher that she had seen enough elderly patients expire to be able to hazard a guess that the poor woman was dead.

  I remembered that Hannah’s parents had arrived. “Hannah, why don’t you go? Your parents are here; there’s no point in your staying.” I gave her a hug, then guided my friend down the hall, past the washroom, and to the pantry hall door, where Zeke helped get her into the van. It seemed impossible that it was a glorious spring day, with white puffy clouds sailing open blue skies, but it was. I took Hannah’s mom aside and told her what had happened, and that I thought Hannah was upset by it. She expressed her sympathy and told me they’d have a talk and make sure she was all right.

  I blocked off the hallway and sent all of the townies back to Autumn Vale. Gordy had arrived to help clean up, so Gogi had him drive the Golden Acres bus with her folks back to the retirement home, where her assistant manager would look after getting everyone settled back in. Eleanor, Helen, Elwood, Isadore, and Janice went back to town with them, just as they had hitched a ride out to the castle on the Golden Acres bus. Stoddart decided to go back to his home, too, letting Pish concentrate on his aunt and the other ladies.

  I had already shooed Jack and Shilo away, telling them to go home. Shilo doesn’t deal well with death, so the events of the previous autumn had been traumatic for her in ways I don’t think she had dealt with yet. She’s stronger than she knows and has her own way of coping, but the world breaks her heart a dozen times a day.

  I think I’m made of sterner stuff. I’ve been through enough losses in my life to destroy a more sensitive soul, but I am confronted daily with the knowledge that I am still, in too many ways, not over my husband’s death eight years ago.

  Gogi offered to stay at the castle with me, and I appreciated it. I had Emerald, yes, but with Lizzie coming home from her woodland trek any moment, I didn’t want to take up her time dealing with everything that I would need to deal with. And Juniper . . . I still didn’t know where she was. Probably puffing away in the attic, poring over the Wynter family photo albums, in which she had displayed a strange interest.

  Pish was taking care of everything else, in particular the rest of the Legion, especially his aunt. Tender-hearted Lush was horrified when she heard of Cleta’s passing, and collapsed. Pish had helped her upstairs and Vanessa was watching over her, while Barbara and Patsy probably reveled in their least-favorite friend’s passing.

  Virgil arrived and posted one of his deputies at the scene, as he insisted on calling it, even though the death was natural. He then took me aside, asking if there was somewhere we could talk. I led him out the back door and around the corner to the little garden I was starting to create with Zeke’s help and Lush’s enthusiastic planning; it was an old one that had once thrived, but now only held a few stubborn, leggy perennial herbs. I leaned back against the stone wall, absorbing the warmth radiating from the mellow gold stone.

  “The medical examiner is on his way,” Virgil said, eyeing me, then looking away, squinting into the distance. “But I thought you could just tell me what went on, how you found her.”

  I explained everything, talking nonstop. Finally, I was done.

  He was silent for a moment, then asked, “So you had to unlock the door?”

  I nodded. “It was locked from the inside. I have the only key and it was buried in my purse, so no one else could have locked the door from the outside. That’s the only thing I’m sure of.”

  He nodded, lost in thought, then said, “Mom says it looks like a heart attack.”

  The medical examiner pulled up just then. I let Virgil guide him to the bathroom, while I squeezed past them to the kitchen. Life went on, and I had folks to cook for. I dithered, unsure of what to do. These were friends of Lush’s, long-term friends of over fifty years, regardless of how they spoke about Cleta behind her back. I was fortunate Pish was there, capable of taking care of their emotional needs.

  I would care for their bodily requirements: Comfort food. Hot tea. A decadent dessert. The death of one of their intimates must remind them of the hold death had on all of us, the truth that becomes more inescapable with each passing year. I wanted to help remind them that there was still much of life to enjoy, even with the passing of a friend.

  I started a ferocious round of cooking for dinner: baked macaroni with three cheeses, stuffed pork chops in mushroom gravy, homemade applesauce, and carrots that would be glazed in maple syrup. Dessert was going to be caramel apple pie with ice cream; I happened to have a few pies in the freezer, and I took one out to thaw. Trouble was, the kitchen is right around the corner from the hallway that holds the bathroom, so I could hear the medical examiner’s rumbling voice as he spoke to Virgil. The doctor finished a cursory exam of the deceased, as he called Cleta, right where she sat, and I could hear the snap of his latex gloves as he removed them.

  “Everything looks all right. I�
�ll know more when I get her on the table.”

  “Poor woman,” Gogi said, her voice echoing clearly in the hall. “What she must have suffered, alone and having a heart attack!”

  I felt bad then, for all the times I had wished Cleta harm. Why had she acted the way she had? Hannah had wondered that same thing, but now we’d never know.

  “We can pack her up now, boys!” the doctor said, likely to the crew ready to move the body to the morgue.

  I shuddered. I was too close and yet I felt I couldn’t . . . shouldn’t . . . go far.

  Finally I heard rather than saw someone coming into the kitchen. I looked up from chopping carrots with a crinkle cutter. Virgil stood by the entry to the hall and watched me, his eyes dark. “Smells good,” he said.

  “Smothered stuffed pork chops and homemade macaroni and cheese.”

  He edged forward and leaned against the kitchen counter. “Mac and cheese not out of a blue box?” he said with a smile. “Didn’t know there was any other kind. Mom’s never been much of a cook and neither was . . .” He trailed off, without naming his ex-wife. “I bet it’ll be great.”

  “It will be,” I said, my voice catching slightly.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “We’re taking her away now. The doctor thinks given everything it’s natural causes, but he’ll do an autopsy. Should we speak to the ladies? Or maybe her niece?”

  “Lauda is her next of kin, but I think the ladies would probably be able to give you pointers as to who to contact, so it makes sense to talk to them first. Shall I have Pish round them up?”

  “I’ll talk to them in the library. Would you join us?”

  It took a good fifteen minutes to get everyone downstairs and seated in the library, one of the two turret rooms on the ground floor. The ladies took the club chairs, as did Pish, and I perched on the arm of one. Gogi joined us and sat on a hassock by Pish’s chair.

  Virgil stood by the door. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to inform you that your friend Miss Cleta Sanson passed away sometime before three o’clock, we believe.”

  “On the john,” Barbara said, with a snort of laughter that ended on a cough, her bulk quivering in the chair. Lush gave her a reproachful look. Barbara snapped, “You don’t find that funny, Lush? With all the crap she started, it’s hilarious that she died in the john.”

  “Bad timing, Barbara,” Patsy said, with a reproachful look. “She has barely passed; let’s have some dignity.”

  “Well, hoity-toity, are we? And that coming from the toilet queen of Queens!”

  I looked in puzzlement toward Pish, and he mouthed, Later.

  “Barbara, enough,” Lush exclaimed, clasping her hands in front of her in a prayerful gesture. “Cleta was our friend, and she’s dead. Patsy’s right; we should be respectful.”

  Vanessa had been silent, but she finally spoke. “Can we just be quiet?” she asked. “I can’t believe one of us . . . one of us is gone.” Her voice quivered, but she took a deep breath and regained control.

  “Did she seem ill to anyone?” Virgil asked.

  Vanessa examined him. Virgil is a handsome man, and she seemed to appreciate that, straightening her back and meeting his gaze as she spoke. “It was hard to tell with Cleta,” she said. “She didn’t speak of it, unlike some people.” She shot a look at Barbara. “But she had a heart condition and angina.”

  “She took nitro,” Gogi said.

  “She did,” Lush said. “But she wouldn’t let anyone see. Vanessa’s right; she hated to appear weak. Stiff upper lip and all that.”

  Just then the medical examiner entered the room and nodded to Virgil. He was a handsome older man, one of the saner members of the Brotherhood of the Falcons, and he knew Gogi very well. He touched her shoulder before he cleared his throat. I wondered if there was a spark of romance there, from his fond gesture. He was also a local doctor, and I had witnessed before his care for her in times of trouble.

  “Why wasn’t Miss Sanson on a nitro patch if angina was a recurring problem?” he asked.

  “She was allergic to the adhesive,” Lush replied.

  Gogi nodded, and so did the ME. I was mystified, because I didn’t really know what angina was. It had something to do with the heart, but I certainly didn’t know there was a patch for it.

  “Did she typically take a nitro pill if she was suffering an attack of angina?” the ME asked. “And how often did that occur?”

  The Legion ladies exchanged glances.

  Vanessa, her face shadowed as the spring afternoon light began to die outside, hesitantly said, “As Lush said, Cleta didn’t really speak of her health problems often, but she had been complaining of angina more often in the last week. We thought Lauda showing up as she did upset her and brought on the attacks.”

  Virgil briefly explained the arrival of the unwanted niece.

  “Is that possible?” I asked. “That being upset could make it happen?”

  “Stress can bring on an attack,” the ME admitted.

  “I don’t even know what angina is. Is that heart disease?”

  “It’s a symptom of heart disease,” Gogi said, and explained that the disease itself was often characterized by plaque building up in the arteries, resulting in not enough oxygen-rich blood getting to the heart.

  “That’s the most common heart disease,” the medical examiner said, then explained another kind more common in women, but his explanation was so technical he lost me.

  “Would she have lived if she had gotten a nitro pill?” Pish asked.

  “There are too many variables to provide a meaningful answer at this point,” he answered. “First, I don’t yet know if she did or didn’t take a pill. Unfortunately, a nitroglycerin dose can itself exacerbate a patient’s condition if they’re suffering a myocardial infarction through hypotension.” He then said more, including such phrases as hemodynamic improvement, and ischemic injury. He had lost me again by then, but Gogi seemed to understand what he was saying.

  “When was the last time each of you saw Miss Sanson?” Virgil asked. He met my gaze. “Merry?”

  I thought, staring down at my hands, folded together on my lap. “It was after the desserts were served. She went back for a second helping of the clotted cream and scones. After that I lost track of her and didn’t notice anything else until quite a while later, when I realized how calm and happy everyone . . . uh . . . was.” It was not polite to say, but it was true.

  “She was eating heavily?” the doctor asked.

  “She ate a lot of the clotted cream, that’s for sure. Could that bring on a heart attack?”

  “There are many possible triggers; lack of sleep, strenuous exercise, heavy eating, stress. It sounds like a few triggers were clustered,” he said, his pouchy eyes squinted, two grooves like exclamation points between his thick gray brows. “That would be enough.”

  Death by clotted cream—sounded like a very English way to die.

  “Who was sitting with her at the table?” Virgil asked, glancing around at the others.

  Lush put up her hand.

  “And Mabel Thorpe, Doc English, and Hubert Dread,” I added. “Maybe Doc noticed something?” As old as he was, my great-uncle’s contemporary, he was still sharp as a tack, and as a medical doctor for many years, he may be able to help them, I thought.

  “Cleta was sitting with others at one point, because they had switched to faro and wanted a banker,” Lush said.

  Faro? I’d never even heard of such a thing. “Who did she sit with?”

  “Whoever was playing faro,” she replied.

  “How did you know?”

  “She complained about it as she passed my table,” she said.

  “What time was that?” the doctor asked.

  Her pretty, addled face went blank. She shook her head and shrugge
d. “I don’t know, Doctor.”

  “I heard her say that to Lushie,” Vanessa said. “That was probably around . . . I don’t know, two thirty? I had just come back from the washroom as Cleta was leaving the room, anyway.”

  The medical examiner got a call on his cell phone and left, giving Gogi a quick kiss on the cheek, which made her blush. I hope I still blush when I’m sixty-something. Virgil glanced at his mom but then focused back on the Legion of Horrible Ladies, now down by the Grande Dame of Horrible. He summed up by saying how sorry he was, and that if anyone knew what her wishes were, or if she had arrangements with a particular funeral home in New York, to let him know by the next day. “Merry can contact me anytime,” he finished.

  I walked him to the door in the great hall, where he lingered.

  “You okay?” he asked again.

  “I’m fine. I’m sorry about it happening, but it’s going to make my life easier. Isn’t that awful?”

  “Don’t feel bad. There are some people who are just like that. I see ’em all, in my job.” He paused, shifted from foot to foot, then said, “I guess I’d better get going.”

  The ladies went upstairs to have a nap, and Gogi gave me a hug and left, too. Pish had some work to do, so I rustled up Emerald and found Juniper—she was, as I figured, up in her attic lair smoking and reading—yelled at her about smoking up in the attic, and put them both to work. I wanted everything tidied before Lizzie got back from her photo jaunt, which could be in ten minutes or hours.

  We entered the dining room, bucket, vacuum cleaner, and polish at the ready, and took on our assigned tasks. The place was a mess, with dirty linen napkins scattered like drifting leaves on the tables, chairs, floor, everywhere. Some had lipstick stains; Juniper leaped on those with a glad cry when I pointed them out. The girl loves to work on a stain. How can someone who has a lip piercing and a strange tattoo of one of the Ramones, and who wears Goth clothes and makeup, be that much into cleaning? I try not to stereotype, but it still baffled me.