The Secret Poison Garden (Rita Calabrese Book 1)

by Maureen Klovers

  She raced up the stairs to her bedroom, locked the door behind her, and sprawled out on the bed with her laptop. Where were Sean and Mike’s families now?

  She was startled out of her research by a knock at the door. “Rita? Are you there, cara?”

  Rita unlocked the door.

  “Is the top secret stuff over?”

  “For the time being.”

  Sal sat on the bed, slipped off one battered black Reebok, and massaged his bunion. “What was all that about at dinner? Is there something I should know about Vinnie?”

  Rita sighed. “I wish I could tell you, caro.”

  “But then what?” Sal grunted. “You’ll have to kill me? You’re a mother, Rita, not Mata Hari.”

  Rita planted a kiss on his forehead. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.”

  To Rita’s dismay, Coach Stiglitz was not Catholic. Unlike the funerals at St. Vincent’s, she could not perch up in the choir loft and enjoy a bird’s eye view of the proceedings. Instead, she was stuck in the ninth row of the Dutch Reformed Church, a creaky white clapboard relic from before the Revolution, craning her neck to see over the heads of the football team.

  Clad in a black sweater set, long black skirt, and some dowdy flats, Rita looked the part of a mourner. But she was also there in her capacity as a journalist, which meant that she had to balance the need to look somber with the need to surreptitiously take notes.

  Sal sat beside her in his one and only suit, fiddling with his tie. He looked anxious for the service to start. Rita could read his thoughts as clearly as if there were a blinking news banner flashing across his forehead. Let’s get this over with. That’s exactly what Sal was thinking.

  “Who’s in the first row?” she hissed in his ear. “I can’t see.”

  “Angelica—”

  “Does she look upset?”

  “All I can see is her hair, Rita.”

  “Who else?”

  “Angelica’s parents and sister, the coach’s brother, and Dr. and Mrs. Walker.”

  “What about the other side of the aisle?”

  “Julia Simms, Elizabeth Van Der Hooven, Sandra Parsons, some dark-haired woman, maybe a math teacher, I’m not sure.”

  “Is her hair short or long?”

  He turned towards her, exasperated. “Rita, this is a funeral, for goodness sake. We’re here to pay our respects.”

  “And,” she said, “faithfully and respectfully report what happened. My readers expect nothing less.”

  “Your readers are all here, Rita. They don’t need to read your article.” He sighed. “Couldn’t you just ask the minister for a copy of his remarks and print that?”

  Rita just shook her head and went back to scribbling notes.

  The service was perfunctory and short. Rita got the distinct impression that the coach had not been a regular attendee, since the preacher’s remarks were long on platitudes and short on personal anecdotes. The eulogy was delivered by the coach’s brother. It was chock-full of football analogies that Rita did not completely understand, but she supposed it was moving because his speech was punctuated by the occasional wail from Angelica.

  When the organist began pounding out an ominous funeral dirge—reminiscent, Rita thought, of the accompaniment to a silent horror film—six football players filed out of the pew in front of her, lifted the casket off its bier, and solemnly carried it out of the church. Flanked by her parents, in an elegant black dress and short black veil, Angelica walked behind the casket, solemn yet resolute, like a latter-day Jackie Kennedy.

  Rita followed the crowd out onto the church steps and watched as the football players heaved the casket into the idling hearse. Sal huddled with a few other members of the Athletic Boosters, while Rita circulated among the crowd, trying to get quotes from those who knew the coach best. She was just taking down a quote from Coach Stiglitz’s cousin—“He’s making a touchdown in heaven now, I bet”—when Julia Simms rushed up to her.

  “Oh, Rita,” she wailed, “it’s just too awful. When I suggested an article on my poison garden, I never thought this would happen.”

  “Now, Julia,” Rita said, “the coroner has not released his report yet. You don’t know—”

  “But I do.”

  Julia burst into tears and hurled herself into Rita’s embrace.

  “There, there,” Rita murmured, patting the younger woman awkwardly on the back and waving away the coach’s cousin, who retreated with a look of horror on his face.

  After a few minutes, Julia straightened up and regarded Rita with red, swollen eyes. “There were footprints, you see.”

  “Footprints?”

  “In my garden. The morning the coach was poisoned.”

  Rita frowned. “Well, you and I were walking in your garden the day before, dear. For our interview—”

  “Yes, but there were three sets of footprints. Yours, mine, and someone else’s. A woman wearing athletic shoes, with feet a little bigger than mine. Maybe size eight.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Maybe five. I run, you see, before showering and getting ready for school. It was early—so early the paper wasn’t even on my porch yet.” Julia bit her lip. “I only noticed because the devil’s trumpets were trampled in one corner.”

  “Did you show the police?”

  Julia bit her lip and shook her head. “No. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. I just thought it was some teenager on a dare. Something like that. Then, later, when I heard he’d been”—she looked around and then lowered her voice—“murdered, I realized it was important.”

  Julia began to tremble. “But by that time, the rain had washed the footprints away.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  At two o’clock, after she had filed her story and walked Luciano and Cesare, Rita headed to Rhinebeck. The countryside had changed little since the days of Washington Irving: the fields rushed by, golden in the warm autumn sun, then a tiny hamlet dominated by a white-steepled church and a moldering graveyard, then more fields. Every now and then, Rita cruised onto a little rise and caught a glimpse of the wide, shimmering river, its thickly wooded hilly banks, and the hazy blue ridges of the Catskills beyond. Then the road would slip down into a copse of trees and the river would disappear, and Rita would be left with the sensation that it had all been a beautiful mirage.

  Today, though, Rita paid little attention to the scenery. Her thoughts kept wandering back to her conversation with Julia Simms. Had there really been footprints in her garden? Or had Julia invented the footprints to divert suspicion from herself or Miss Van Der Hooven?

  She was so distracted by this train of thought that she was in Rhinebeck before she knew it.

  Rhinebeck had started life as the old Dutch settlement of Kipsbergen; then served as a sanctuary for residents fleeing the burning of the old New York capital of Kingston during the Revolution; and later been home to both the Astors and Fat Tony Salerno, head of the Genovese crime family. In its current incarnation, it traded on its quaintness, as attested to by the hordes of New York bankers and lawyers who thronged its streets each weekend.

  All of this quaintness reached its apogee in the Beekman Arms Inn, a white colonial building fronted by an enormous two-story portico. The hotel and its adjoining tavern had hosted George Washington and Benedict Arnold. It was here that Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton began the feud that culminated in the most famous duel in American history.

  Rita pulled into the inn’s parking lot and felt a frisson of excitement as she heaved open the doors through which George Washington had once entered (although she surmised that he did not actually hold open the door himself). On the other side of the threshold, she passed into a cocoon of Gilded Age luxury—plush armchairs, soft lighting, potted palms, and marble columns. At any moment, she expected an Astor to come sauntering around the corner, dressed in a top hat and tails and murmuring something about his railroad holdings. The sight of tourists in sweat pants was jarring.

&nbs
p; Rita approached the front desk and studied the woman behind it. Her hair, long and dark in the grainy online photo, was now arranged in a severe bun. The lines around her eyes and mouth had grown. But the slightly pinched expression, the prominent cheekbones, the long, aquiline nose—these were all the same.

  “Teri Scalzo?”

  The woman looked up from her computer, her fingers frozen above the keyboard. She smoothed a stray hair back against her temple. “Teri Abernathy,” she said, with a slight shake of her head. “I went back to my maiden name after my divorce. And you are…?”

  “Rita. Rita Calabrese. We don’t know each other, but I sang at your son’s funeral.”

  The woman regarded Rita with a cold stare, a hand pressed against her throat. “Which one?”

  Rita had not considered the possibility that Teri might have lost more than one child. “Sean. I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’d lost another one.”

  “Sean,” Teri repeated softly. Her hand fluttered to her neck and touched a locket. She tapped it gently. For just a second, a veil of tears covered her eyes. Then she shook them away and said brusquely, “Well, let me be the first to welcome you to the Beekman Arms Inn, Mrs. Calabrese. Do you have a reservation with us this evening?”

  “Oh, no. I could never afford it. I’m here to see you, actually. I’m writing a story about traumatic brain injuries and high school football players—”

  “No,” Teri said, far too loudly, with a vehemence that seemed to surprise even herself. A well-dressed gentleman in a high-backed crimson armchair lowered his newspaper and glanced at them. Two women huddled by the fireplace suddenly stopped chatting.

  Teri beamed an apologetic little smile at the guests, although the angry little worry lines around her eyes stayed angry. “No,” she repeated, this time quietly but insistently, leaning towards Rita. “I have nothing to say to anyone about anything. Mark died of cancer; Sean died of a bullet through his brain. Did Sean kill himself because of a brain injury? Did Mark die of cancer because of the pesticides on the lawn, or the lead in the water, or because he was born under an unlucky star? I’ve learned not to ask why. Because there’s no end to the whys.” She stabbed a long, thin finger to her chest. “I must accept, I must endure. And that’s all I have to say.”

  Teri and Rita were now almost nose to nose. Rita could smell the Listerine on Teri’s breath and the cigarette smoke faintly wafting off her lapels. Shining with indignation, Teri’s eyes were black and hard, like two nuggets of coal.

  Rita reached out and squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry, dear. And I’m so sorry that I upset you.”

  Teri’s lower lip trembled. “I heard a rumor. That the coach is dead. Murdered.”

  “The coroner’s report hasn’t come back yet, but it looks like he was poisoned on Monday afternoon.”

  Teri let out a bitter little laugh. A tendril fell loose onto her forehead, but this time she didn’t smooth it back. “I can’t say that I’m sorry to hear that. But with my luck, I should be. Next thing you know, they’ll be saying I did it.”

  Which, of course, was exactly what Rita was wondering. As if reading her mind, Teri added, “Good thing I was working all day Monday. I’ve got every minute of the day accounted for.”

  “Good for you, dear,” Rita said weakly, patting her hand once more. “I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

  Assailed by a mix of guilt, pity, and suspicion, Rita walked slowly back to her car. She could not imagine what that woman had suffered. There was nothing Rita wouldn’t do for her children. And probably nothing she wouldn’t do to someone whom she held responsible for their deaths.

  Could she kill? The answer, regrettably, was yes.

  Could Teri?

  Rita wasn’t sure. But it bothered her that Teri was so adamant about her alibi.

  Rita turned the key in the ignition. It was three-fifteen. Just enough time, she thought with satisfaction, to enjoy a pain au chocolat at the Culinary Institute of America’s student bakery before heading to her next stop. If her interview with Teri was any indication, she was going to need it.

  The fact that Rita’s belly was pleasantly full of flaky, chocolatey pastry did not dissuade her from taking a culinary tour of Poughkeepsie’s Little Italy—all in the name of research, of course.

  “I’ll take a dozen of these,” she said, pointing at a display case piled high with brutti ma buoni—literally, cookies that were “ugly but good”—which were Sal’s favorite. “And a half dozen pignoli, and a dozen pizzelle.”

  She ordered a loaf of crusty Italian bread at the next bakery, and stocked up on mortadella, soppressata, polenta, and black Arborio rice at the Italian grocery.

  “Sa dove posso trovare Chiara Uccello?” she inquired politely at each location.

  The answers were varied and accompanied by much hand-waving and interruptions from scowling spouses adamant that no, Chiara was not teaching at Vassar today, she was watching her grandkids, or helping out at the church supper, or giving an art history talk at the Italian Community Center. Since majority opinion seemed to be that Chiara was at the Italian Community Center, Rita headed there.

  Fortunately, in this case, majority opinion turned out to be correct. Chiara was strutting across the stage of the auditorium, holding forth on the art of the Florentine Renaissance in flawless Italian to a group of rapt seniors. Tall and statuesque, with red-gold curls that fell past her shoulders, Chiara did not look like any Italian that Rita had ever seen, except in a Botticelli painting.

  When Chiara finished her presentation, the seniors applauded wildly, shouting “brava, brava,” as if she had just belted out an aria at La Scala. Rita waited patiently through half an hour of questions, then caught Chiara alone.

  To Rita’s surprise, Chiara appeared to be at complete peace with her son’s death. While the ravages of time and grief had been clearly etched on Teri’s face, Chiara’s face looked surprisingly youthful. The years had rounded her curves slightly, but her eyes still sparkled, and the lines around her eyes crinkled upwards; they seemed to be from laughing, not crying. She had been a whirlwind of activity in the two years since Mike’s death, birthing late-in-life twins, becoming an assistant professor at Vassar, and becoming, as far as Rita could tell, the best-known and perhaps best-loved woman in Poughkeepsie. She had founded an organization to increase awareness of the dangers of failing to treat concussions in student athletes and endowed a scholarship in her son’s memory, but other than that, she had moved on.

  When Rita brought up the coach’s death, Chiara sighed. “I have mixed feelings about that,” she confided. “I do hold the coach at least partly responsible for Mike’s death. He should have seen the signs, but it was Homecoming and so he put him right back in.” She shook her head ruefully. “But it’s always sad when a young person is taken before their time. I know what I suffered, and I know what his family will suffer. I’m sorry for them.”

  Rita said gently, “The police may ask you where you were on Monday.”

  Chiara’s jaw dropped and then she burst into laughter. “Ma é pazzesco,” she exclaimed. “Me? Murder someone? I was alone grading papers all day.”

  Which meant no one could verify her alibi.

  It was nearly nine o’clock by the time Rita reached her last destination that day. She sat at a small table in the back of a Starbucks a stone’s throw from the state Capitol, peering over her cappuccino at the tall, ruddy-faced girl who had once pranced around her kitchen, mooning over Vinnie. Not that her son had noticed.

  Rita took a sip and grimaced. She preferred Italian coffee.

  “I think Vinnie may be in trouble.” She poured three sugar packets into her cup without ever taking her eyes off the girl.

  Stephanie shifted uncomfortably in her seat and chewed her fingernails. “Trouble? How?”

  Rita chose her words carefully. “I think he may have played a prank on Coach Stiglitz, and now the coach is dead. And some people may think those two things are connected.”

&nbs
p; Stephanie just stared at Rita, her blue eyes as big as saucers.

  “I am under the impression,” Rita said as she stirred her coffee, “that he intended the prank as a way to, uh, avenge your honor. Do you know anything about that?”

  Stephanie wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the floor. “No.”

  “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, dear,” Rita said gently. “They are the ones who should be ashamed.”

  The girl still wouldn’t look at her.

  “Vinnie didn’t tell me that, by the way,” Rita added.

  “He wouldn’t. He’s loyal.” Stephanie looked up at Rita, her eyes filled with tears. “He’s a good friend. Maybe the best one I ever had. Maybe the only one I ever had.”

  A week ago, Rita would have been surprised. But that was before she knew that Vinnie was back in school and had the brains to pull off the stunt at the pool. There was a lot about her son that she didn’t know.

  Stephanie leaned towards Rita. “What can I do to help?”

  “I heard”—Rita hesitated for a moment—“I heard that there was at least one other girl, and I thought she might have had a reason to kill the coach—”

  “I can’t give you her name. What we shared, we shared in confidence. Miss Simms said—”

  Rita blinked. “Miss Simms? What does she have to do with this?”

  “She served as our adviser. Well, sort of. It wasn’t a formal group, you know. Not recognized by the school anyway. Can you imagine petitioning Dr. Walker to start a club called ‘Girls Humiliated by Acorn Hollow’s Award-Winning Football Team’?” She snorted. “Not likely. He practically expelled me just for coming to his office and telling him about it.”

  “What?”

  “He said, ‘stop making up stories. We know all about your family and stories.’”

  “What was that supposed to mean?”