Assault and Buttery

by Kristi Abbott

  “Rebecca, were you acquainted with Lloyd McLaughlin? Were there any bad feelings between the two of you?” He opened up his little notepad and picked up a pen.

  I blinked. Sprocket whined. “Dan, are you questioning me?”

  He squinted his eyes. “I’m doing my job.”

  Dan’s job was to be the sheriff. His job was to arrest criminals.

  “I’m not saying another word without my lawyer present.” I stood up to go to the door, but Dan stood, too, and held up his hand.

  “Then call him,” he said.

  I pulled my phone from my pocket and called Garrett.

  “Dan is questioning me regarding Lloyd McLaughlin’s murder,” I told him.

  He laughed. “Good one, Rebecca. Now, what do you want?”

  “No. Seriously. He’s questioning me and I said I wasn’t going to say another word without my lawyer. You’re still my lawyer, aren’t you?” I looked over at Dan, who had started working through paperwork on his desk.

  “Of course. I’ll be right there.”

  He came right away. He always did. It still felt like an eternity of sitting and not talking to Dan until he got there.

  Garrett skidded in, his shoes slipping on the tile floors. “Dan, you’ve got to be kidding me. Why on earth do you think Rebecca is involved with this?”

  “It was my popcorn,” I said. “He said Lloyd ate poisoned popcorn.”

  “You’re not the only person in the world who makes popcorn.” Garrett sat and leaned back in his chair and looked at Dan through squinted eyes.

  “No, but she’s pretty much the only person around here who makes Bacon Pecan Popcorn.” Dan mirrored Garrett’s pose.

  I wondered which one was going to draw on the other one first.

  “Is that the only reason you’re questioning my client?” Garrett asked, not moving.

  “At the moment,” Dan answered, equally still.

  Garrett was silent for a few seconds and then said, “Proceed.”

  “How did you know Lloyd McLaughlin?” Dan asked.

  “I don’t.” Even though it felt like I knew everyone in town, I didn’t. If I didn’t go to high school with a person and if that person didn’t eat popcorn, I didn’t know them. I didn’t know anything about Lloyd McLaughlin. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. I’d never even heard his name before he had the bad form to die after eating my Bacon Pecan Popcorn.

  “How did Mr. McLaughlin come to have your popcorn in his home?” Dan asked.

  “I have no idea.” I couldn’t come up with any scenario that had my popcorn in his house. “Maybe somebody else bought it and gave it to him.”

  “Have you had any dealings with Mr. McLaughlin? Business or social?” Dan asked.

  We’d been over this. I rolled my eyes. “Not that I know of and I definitely didn’t have any reason to poison him.”

  Garrett made a funny noise in his throat. I looked over and he shook his head. Right. Answer the question asked and nothing else.

  Dan made some notes on the papers in front of him. “When was the last time you saw Mr. McLaughlin?”

  “Never as far as I know.” As far as I knew, I also hadn’t had an opportunity to poison him.

  After a few minutes of this, Dan finally shrugged and said, “You’re free to go. Please contact me if you think of anything, though.”

  “You’ll be the first,” I said.

  We walked out of Dan’s office and Garrett suggested we have lunch.

  I agreed even though I knew what that meant.

  • • •

  “I don’t know why you hate the diner so much,” Garrett said as he held the door open for me.

  We’d dropped Sprocket off at his office to hang out with Pearl. Sprocket loved Pearl. I suspected Pearl shared more than a few snacks with my dog when I wasn’t looking. He got that dreamy-eyed look in his eye when he saw her that was usually reserved for sources of hamburger, turkey, or other forms of edible flesh.

  Megan, however, was not a big Sprocket fan. Well, that wasn’t true. She probably loved Sprocket. She was definitely not, however, a big Rebecca fan and was not above using my own dog against me. She’d laid down the law and told me that unless Sprocket was a service dog, he wasn’t allowed in her diner. As tempting as it was to get him some kind of fake service dog certification, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. There were people who actually needed their dogs with them. Faking the certification seemed like it might get in their way and I didn’t want to twist up my karma that much.

  “I don’t hate the diner. I just know how much better it could be if they made a few changes. It offends the restaurateur in me.” I had no intention of opening a restaurant of my own, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know how it should be done, and Bob’s Diner was not doing it how it should be done.

  “Fancy words coming from a woman who sells poisoned popcorn,” he said, signaling to Megan that we wanted a booth for two.

  “Rebecca,” she said as she ushered us to the corner booth. I knew we were getting the good spot in the corner because Garrett was there. If I’d come in on my own, I’d have gotten the table in the back where you could get smacked in the back by the door every time anyone went in and out of the bathroom. Well, I didn’t actually have proof of that since I pretty much never came in unless I was being dragged by Garrett or Dan, and Megan liked them both more than she hated me, but I still suspected.

  “Megan,” I said.

  “Hear you’re having some trouble.” She slapped menus down in front of us as we slid into the booth. A smile quirked at the corner of her mouth. Apparently my trouble was pleasing to her.

  “Nothing that I can’t handle. Carson’ll have POPS up and running again in short order,” I said with a confidence I didn’t actually have. We couldn’t put in the stove until we had the flooring and we couldn’t put in the flooring until we had the cabinets and the cabinets were on back order for at least another two weeks.

  “Oh, I wasn’t talking about your fire damage. Renovations are a pain, but they get done. Plus, Carson is doing the work. Everyone knows how good he is. I was talking about how your customers are dying.” She poured us each a cup of coffee while the mean little smile spread over her whole face. Schadenfreude much?

  My face went hot. “Customer. Singular. Just one.” It wasn’t like it was a trend. How did she know already, anyway? Then I remembered how close her sister’s office was to Dan’s. Trina. She must have overheard something somehow and already started spreading the word.

  She shrugged. “Whatever. I hope you’re okay. I can only imagine how you’re feeling. You know why I can only imagine it? It’s because I’ve never actually poisoned anyone here at the diner.” She stared at me with her piggy little eyes in her unformed baby face, a near duplicate of her sister’s. “Never. Not once.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but she turned on her heel and hustled off. I was half out of my seat to follow her and give her a piece of my mind along with exactly what I thought about the last piece of pie she’d served me, but Garrett caught hold of my wrist. “Sit,” he said. His voice was soft, but it didn’t sound like he wanted to be argued with.

  I glared at him. I’m not a big fan of being ordered around by anyone—except maybe Haley, and that was more force of habit than anything else.

  “Please,” he added, letting go of my arm.

  That was more like it. I sank down onto the bench. I didn’t really want to make a scene in the diner. Again. It didn’t tend to show me in a good light.

  “You’re absolutely sure you don’t recognize this Lloyd fellow?” he asked. “Not at all?”

  “One hundred percent, but that doesn’t mean he’s never been in the shop. I’m not always out front.” With Susanna and Dario serving customers, I could spend more time in my happy place: the kitchen. It’s what I liked best about owning POPS. I l
iked the bubble and boil, the simmer and sauté, the chop and chiffonade of cooking and creating a lot more than I liked endless conversations about the likelihood of rain or the Grand Lake High Otters winning their next game.

  Garrett nodded. “Okay. Let’s relax, then, and let Dan do his job.” He picked up his menu.

  “I never intended on doing anything else!” I did not pick up mine.

  Garrett set the menu back down and folded his arms over his chest and stared at me. “Sure you didn’t.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I leaned toward him.

  “You really have to ask that?” He matched my lean angle for angle.

  “This is nothing like what happened to Coco or to Melanie. Nothing. I keep telling you all that. I’ve nothing at stake here. I’m more than happy to let Dan take care of it.”

  I really thought that I meant that when I said it. I really, really did.

  • • •

  I went to see Marta Hansen in the afternoon after having lunch with Garrett and picking up Sprocket from his office. I made a batch of my special hull-less popcorn to bring to her. Lots of older people had digestive problems with those little seeds. I made sure not to make it too spicy so it wouldn’t upset anyone’s stomach or too sticky so it wouldn’t pull anyone’s dentures out of their head or too salty so it wouldn’t send anyone’s blood pressure soaring or too sweet so it wouldn’t send anyone into diabetic shock or too buttery so it wouldn’t raise anyone’s cholesterol. It was pretty much the most boring batch of popcorn I have ever made. Regardless, I packaged it up in one of my special POPS tins—they had to be good if even Trina liked them—and drove over to the Loving Arms.

  It had been years since I’d been to the Loving Arms. The last time was when I’d had to do community service because of skipping school. It was that or picking up trash on the side of the highway. I’d figured that feeding Jell-O to someone’s grandmother was probably preferable to needing a tetanus shot after cutting myself on a jagged beer can.

  I’d been mainly right.

  Most of the people living in the Loving Arms were pleasant and harmless, even if they were confused. There were a few who shouted a lot and cried, but most were happy to see a friendly face and be wheeled around the garden for a walk if the weather was nice.

  Then there was Gracie.

  Gracie roamed the halls, a crocheted cap covering her bald little head. She rarely spoke to anyone. She’d pointed at the book cart I’d wheeled in from the library and said, “You can’t have that in here. It’s against the rules.”

  “It’s okay, Gracie,” I’d said. “I have special permission.”

  She’d looked up at me, head cocked slightly to one side, and said, “Then I’ll have to kill you.”

  When I pushed the cart past her, she’d rammed me with her wheelchair, taking me out at the knees. She was backing up, trying, I assume, to get some momentum for her next pass, but I was faster than she was. I leapt to my feet, abandoned my book cart, and raced for the nurses’ station.

  They were unable to help me due to being doubled over with laughter.

  I’d started picking up trash on the side of Highway 10 the following Tuesday.

  That had been close to twenty years ago. Surely Gracie couldn’t still be around. Just in case, I brought Sprocket with me for protection. I stopped at the front desk to sign in. “I’m here to see Marta Hansen,” I said, glancing up at the clock to note the time I’d walked in.

  “Oh, wonderful. You brought the therapy dog,” the older woman behind the desk said. She was one of those ladies whose faces looked like they’d been made from biscuit dough, all soft and pouchy with a fine dusting of powder over the top.

  I froze. Sprocket was no more a therapy dog than I was a circus performer, and I’ve been afraid of heights since I fell of a fence and broke my arm in fourth grade. I was about to explain that Sprocket was just a dog, when he sat up and begged, waving one paw at the woman.

  “Oh, how cute!” she exclaimed. “The residents are going to love him!”

  “Great,” I said. Who was I to argue? For all I knew, Sprocket had a calling as a therapy dog that I didn’t know about until now.

  “What room is Marta in?” I asked.

  The woman glanced up at the clock. “Oh, she won’t be in her room right now. She’ll be in the dayroom for music therapy.”

  She gave me directions, and Sprocket and I made our way into the building. We could hear the music therapy before we turned the corner. A very loud electric keyboard played “When the Saints Go Marching In,” accompanied by what sounded like dozens of rattlesnakes but turned out to be little egg-shaped rattles. The quavery voices of a dozen seniors rose to belt out the chorus.

  Sprocket sat down and howled. Some therapy dog.

  The young man leading the song laughed. “Everybody’s a critic!”

  The group finished the song. I leaned over to the nursing assistant standing next to me and whispered, “Which one is Marta Hansen?”

  He pointed to three women and one man grouped around a round table. “She’s the one in the blue shirt.”

  “The one shaking her rattles with both hands?” I asked.

  “Yep.” He smiled. “She’s got spunk.”

  I won’t lie. There was something sweet about it. Everyone smiled, looking congratulatory for having finished the song with a rousing chorus. Their faces were pink from the exertion of it all. Sprocket and I made our way across the room to Marta’s table. “Hi, Marta. My name is Rebecca Anderson. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions.”

  “After the music,” she said, waving me to the side so she could see the keyboardist.

  The man behind the piano started up “Those Were the Days.” Marta started shaking her rattles. She gestured to the empty chair next to her with one of the purple egg-shaped items. I sat. And waited. I waited through “Those Were the Days” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” I waited through “This Land Is Your Land” and “House of the Rising Sun.” Finally we wrapped up with “This Little Light of Mine,” which for some reason always makes me tear up. Sprocket whined and put a paw on my leg. He hates it when I cry.

  Marta swiveled in her wheelchair and said, “So what can I do for you, young lady?”

  I quickly blew my nose and said, “I was hoping to talk to you about the house you owned on Main Street.”

  “The house on Main Street? I sold that years ago to that nice young man. Allen something. Very handsome. Single, too. Are you single?” She peered at me as if you could discern my marital status from my face.

  I shook my head. “Not really.”

  “I’m not sure what that means, but fine. You young people with all your crazy arrangements. Wouldn’t have flown in my day. I can tell you that. A girl was single, going steady, engaged, and then married. There was an order to things.” She coughed. “You shouldn’t wait around too long. You’re not getting any younger.”

  Ah, that was what she was seeing on my face. “Before you sold the house to Allen, did you live there?”

  “Where, dear?” She looked perplexed.

  I smiled to hide the fact that I was gritting my teeth. “In the house on Main Street?”

  “Goodness, no! That house was a rental. It’s always been a rental. Papa bought it and then he left it to me. He said a woman who owned property would always be a woman in control of her own destiny.” She nodded for emphasis.

  I was starting to like her papa.

  “He was so right, too. Gave me a nice revenue stream for years. His one rule was no renting to Italians or Jews. They made too much trouble.” She pronounced Italian as if it was spelled Eye-talian.

  I no longer felt kindly to her papa.

  “So would you happen to know who lived in the house during the 1950s?” I asked.

  “The 1950s? Why would you want to know that?” A fu
nny look came over her face, as if she was listening to something I couldn’t hear. “Who did you say you were again?”

  “My name is Rebecca Anderson. I have the shop that’s in that house now,” I explained.

  “But that house belongs to that Allen fellow.” Her look had gone from benign to suspicious.

  “Yes. He rents it to me,” I said.

  “Oh.” Again she seemed to be listening to something else.

  Sprocket put his chin on her spindly little thigh.

  “And who are you?” she asked, looking down at him.

  “That’s my dog, Sprocket.” I bit my lip, hoping she actually liked dogs.

  “Silly name, Sprocket, but you’re a beautiful fellow.” She patted his head. He leaned his head into her hands.

  “The 1950s, Ms. Hansen. Do you remember who lived in that house in the 1950s?” I pressed.

  She scratched behind Sprocket’s ears. He looked up at her adoringly. “That’s when Papa still rented to Italians and Jews. That’s when there were problems.”

  My heart did a little skipping beat. Maybe my diary writer had had good reason to be frightened. “What kind of problems?”

  She stopped petting Sprocket. “You know how those people are.”

  “No. No, I don’t. Please tell me.” I felt so uncomfortable. There didn’t seem to be any reason to explain bigotry to her except that it would make me feel less slimy.

  She waved her hand in the air. “It’s all so long ago. Why would you possibly want to know?”

  “I found an old diary. Something written by a young girl. I think she knew my grandmother.” I decided to leave out the frightened part.

  She snorted. “Likely so. Back then everyone in Grand Lake knew everyone else. Who was your grandmother?”

  “Ella Conner.”

  “Bubbles? You’re one of Bubbles’s girls?”

  I smiled. “One of her granddaughters.”

  “I heard one of them got a little wild. Are you the wild one?” She peered at me again as if my wildness might be written on my face along with my singleness.