Assault and Buttery

by Kristi Abbott

  “Wallace, what’s going on?”

  “Edna and me, we just thought that maybe it might be, you know, prudent if we didn’t order your popcorn for a little while. Maybe just until this thing with Lloyd McLaughlin is cleared up.”

  “Lloyd?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “Yes. You know. The guy you poisoned.” He said it with a matter-of-factness that shocked me.

  “I didn’t poison him!” Unbelievable!

  “Oh. Did we hear wrong? It wasn’t your popcorn that was poisoned?” Now he sounded worried.

  “Yes. I mean no. I mean, the poison was in my popcorn, but I did not put it there.” Why on earth would I poison a man I didn’t even know? Why would I do it in a way that would come back to me so quickly?

  “So who did?” Wallace asked.

  I paused. “How should I know?”

  “Look, kid, you know we love your popcorn, but neither Edna nor I want to take any chances. We’ve got kids to raise, you know? We’ll be back as soon as this is all resolved.” He hung up before I could say another word.

  Wallace was not the last. By two o’clock on Thursday afternoon every one of my usual special orders had canceled. Every one of them, and I knew why.

  • • •

  I knew why because I’d been told why. I’d taken Sprocket out for a walk. I’d run into Mr. Christensen near the intersection of Hyacinth and Rose. After a chat about whether the weather would turn cold or colder for the weekend, I said good-bye. We were nearly around the corner when he said, “You make sure that Carson cleans up that kitchen of yours real good.”

  I turned around slowly. “Excuse me?”

  “I heard you had a little trouble. Some fellow that ate your popcorn died. You better make sure that kitchen is good and clean so nobody else gets sick.” He shook his finger at me.

  “Lloyd McLaughlin didn’t die because of something that happened in my kitchen.” My face got hot. It had to be beet-red by the way it felt. At least it was keeping me warm.

  “Oh, my mistake, then. I’d heard he died from something in your popcorn.” Mr. Christensen’s face furrowed.

  “He did, but it wasn’t anything I put in there.” I took a few steps toward him. “Where exactly did you hear this?”

  “Over at the diner,” he said, smiling big enough for me to see all of his dentures. “Megan was saying.”

  “Figures,” I muttered. I looked him in the eye and said, “Lloyd was poisoned. Someone put poison in a batch of my popcorn after it left my shop. After.”

  He nodded. “So you say.”

  I did say. I had a whole lot more to say, too. I turned around and Sprocket and I marched to the diner. I flung open the door, making the little bell tinkle wildly. I pushed my way through to the kitchen.

  Megan turned around as I pushed through the door, letting it bang shut behind me with a whump. The kitchen smelled great, which only infuriated me more. Megan must have been baking. I smelled butter and cinnamon and my mouth watered despite myself.

  “What do you have against me? Why are you spreading rumors like that?” I demanded.

  “Why are you always talking about how bad my food is?” Megan turned from the counter and assumed the power pose, feet spread, hands on hips. She must have been watching TED Talks in her spare time.

  I wasn’t posing. I had the power of truth on my side. “Because it is.”

  “It’s been good enough for everyone in this town since you were five years old, missy. It’ll be good enough when you decide you’ve had enough of Grand Lake and leave again.” She picked up a rolling pin and tapped it against her leg.

  “First of all, just because people don’t know better doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to be your best. And second of all, I’m not leaving. I’m back for good.” She could threaten me with three rolling pins. I didn’t care.

  She snorted. “Well, pardon me if I don’t start a parade in your honor.”

  “I don’t want a parade, but I don’t want to be slandered.” I took another step toward her.

  She wasn’t backing down, either. “Slandered? How about what you tell everyone about my au jus? How about that? Or my chicken-with-rice soup?”

  I pressed my lips together. I had not been complimentary about those two items. The soup was gloppy and I was pretty sure she made her au jus with a bouillon cube. “It’s not slander if it’s true, Megan.”

  “Not all of us got some fancy culinary school education. Some of us learned our trade at the grill, working our fannies off.”

  “Congratulations.” It came out sounding snottier than I’d intended.

  Megan shook her head and walked out to the dining room.

  I watched her go. It was a shame, really. The diner had so much potential. I personally loved good diner food, but the emphasis had to be on good. Fresh ingredients. Simple cooking methods. It could be done.

  But apparently not here.

  Six

  Cathy started doing sit-ups. I winced a little at what that concrete floor must feel like as she rolled and unrolled her spine up and down. Prison made you hard in more ways than one. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” she gasped. “This is where you got pissy, right? Megan was spreading rumors about your poisoned popcorn and hurting your business. It’s always all about the Benjamins, isn’t it?”

  It was about the Benjamins, but it was about something more, too. I’d felt like I’d finally worked my way into the town’s good graces. When I first came back, no one thought I was anything more than the wild child who’d raced out of here like Flo-Jo from the starting blocks as soon as she could. Everyone kept expecting me to screw up. The worst was when everyone suspected me of killing my beloved Coco. I’d really felt like I’d hit bottom then.

  But then I proved I hadn’t. I proved that I was better than they thought I was. They’d granted me a sort of grudging respect since then, but with each subsequent day, I’d felt like the grudging lessened and the respect got greater. To have it all ripped away hurt worse than accidentally dripping a dark chocolate roux on my wrist, and I had a permanent scar from that.

  “It was about my reputation, too, Cathy,” I said.

  For a second, I didn’t think she’d heard me. She didn’t say anything. When she finally did speak, her throat sounded clogged. “Yeah, I get that, too. I know I did it to myself, but it hurts like hell to have people who used to look up to you act like you’re dirt under their shoe. Geraldine Richards used to hang on my every word. The last time I saw her, she actually turned and walked away from me.”

  Cathy was right. She had done it to herself. That didn’t mean she didn’t deserve a little sympathy, though. I stuck my hand through the bars. She took it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Me, too.”

  The door opened and Haley came in with Evan, followed by Vera. Evan was half asleep in Haley’s arms, his left hand grasping a bit of her shirt. “Did Dan give you any trouble?” Haley asked.

  “No. Well, he tried. Vera took care of him.” I smiled at Vera and tucked Emily back into her car seat. I looked around to be sure I’d gotten everything back in the diaper bag and then thrust my hands through the bars so Vera could cuff me.

  “Thanks, Vera,” Haley said, taking Emily. “For everything.”

  After Vera relocked the cell and uncuffed me, I reached through to pat Evan on the back. “How was gymnastics?”

  “I did a flip into the cubes and Tiffany got a bloody nose,” he reported.

  I looked over at Haley. “Are those two things related?”

  She shook her head.

  “Why does Miss Vera keep putting those bracelets on you and then taking them off?” Evan asked.

  “Because she doesn’t trust me,” I said. “Isn’t that strange?”

  Evan looked very serious. “Did you lie
to her, Auntie Becca?”

  “Nope.” I shook my head.

  “Did you cheat at a game?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  He pondered for a moment and then finally asked, “What did you do?”

  “I tried to find out what happened to somebody so I wouldn’t get blamed for it and now everyone’s mad at me.” It was the most accurate summary I could come up with on short notice.

  Evan thought about that for a second. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Not to me, either. I think you should talk to your daddy about it tonight at dinner,” I suggested.

  “Rebecca,” Haley said, loads of warning in her voice.

  I shrugged. “Or not, Evan. Do what your conscience guides you to do.”

  “Rebecca,” Haley repeated, her tone sharper.

  I waved my hand at her. “Whatever. Evan, don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine and I’ll be home soon.” I said it with more confidence than I felt.

  • • •

  The night my special orders had been canceled, Garrett came over to my apartment. I’d been steamed and not quite sure what to do with my anger. Garrett pulled me down onto the couch next to him after I’d been pacing long enough to make Sprocket cover his eyes with his paws and whine. “You know you’re not a serious suspect, right? You know Dan’s only investigating your part in this because he has to. He knows you didn’t poison Lloyd.”

  I had been trying to explain to him the depth of the disservice that had been perpetrated against me. He’d been trying to kiss me. I hated it when our goals weren’t in sync.

  “Yeah, well, you may know that. I may know that. The rest of the town doesn’t know that, and with Megan telling everyone that my popcorn’s poisonous, I might reopen POPS to find out I no longer have any customers.” I leaned forward and put my head in my hands. I’d sunk everything I had and more into POPS. It wasn’t like I wouldn’t be able to reinvent myself again if I had to, but I certainly didn’t want to. This reinvention had been painful enough. “Dan needs to focus on somebody else in his investigation and fast.”

  “You’re not going to do this.” Garrett rubbed my back. “Who am I kidding? Of course you’re going to do this. Of course you’re going to meddle in this situation. I really wish you wouldn’t. Dan wishes you wouldn’t. Haley wishes you wouldn’t. The whole town wishes you wouldn’t.”

  “The town is not giving me much of a choice, is it?” How many times would I have to prove myself to the people of Grand Lake? Maybe it wouldn’t take as much this time. Maybe I could scare up some other suspects for Dan so people would have something else to talk about. Then I’d totally peace out. I could probably get it done before Dan even realized what I was doing. “I’ll try not to meddle.”

  Garrett’s hand stopped rubbing my back. “Promise?”

  I sat up so I could look him right in the eye. “Cross my heart. Hope to die.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that this time.”

  • • •

  Garrett stayed until I took Sprocket out for one last walk, then went back to his place. The sky had clouded over. No stars shone down on us. I could make out the hazy circle of the moon only as a bright spot behind the clouds. The air had a dampness to it. Rain was coming.

  All those years in California had turned rain into a special event for me. It was kind of a pain. Sprocket didn’t like to get his feet wet, so he wasn’t excited about walking in it. In fact, he was downright recalcitrant. The humidity made my hair get huge and turned my bangs into unruly corkscrews. I still loved it, though. I loved waking up to the sound of it pattering down on the roof of my apartment. I loved the special scent that rose up from the ground when it first started falling. I loved making hot chocolate and feeling all cozy inside while it soaked the world outside. I especially loved what happened when the sun came out after a morning rain. The whole world looked washed clean with diamond sparkles on the puddles.

  Plus I had bought super cute new rain boots and I was excited about getting to wear them.

  I shooed Sprocket back up the steps to the apartment and got ready for bed. I cuddled into bed with the diary and started to read.

  I talked to CG tonight. I waited until Mama and Papa went out for a walk after dinner. “I need to talk to you about FW,” I told her.

  “I thought your mama and papa told you to forget about what I said,” she said.

  “They did. I can’t, though.” I showed her the star and she started to cry.

  I asked her how she could be so sure. The war was a long time ago now. It’s been over for close to ten years. Maybe she wasn’t remembering right.

  She told me that if you go through something like she did, you never forgot anything. You prayed to forget. You begged to forget. You couldn’t, though.

  I asked her if maybe FW just looked like the same guy. She said no. She said she was sure. She looked so certain and so scared. I felt bad for her. I want to believe her just to make her feel better, but she also believed that if Mama sewed the hem of my skirt while I was still wearing it that the Angel of Death would think I was being sewn into my shroud and would take me during the night.

  I reached over to scratch Sprocket behind his ears. “It sounds like Esther’s starting to believe her cousin about FW, boy. What do you think?”

  Sprocket thumped his leg.

  “Good point. I should read more.”

  I went on to the next entry.

  I don’t ever think I’ve been so sick in my entire life. It was so humiliating. It started at school. In algebra class, no less! I felt so sick all of the sudden. Like my head was on fire and my stomach was being twisted into knots all at once. I remember standing up to ask Mr. Stevenson if I could be excused, and then nothing. Bubbles told me I made a funny noise and then crumpled to the ground like a balloon that someone let the air out of. Then I apparently barfed on Jimmy Allen’s shoes. Total humiliation. My dad got sick, too. Dr. Halpern thinks it was food poisoning. I just know that I’ve never felt cramps anywhere that bad.

  Could it have been someone deliberately trying to poison her? Two entries after that, I read something that chilled me even more:

  I almost died today. Standing on Main Street waiting for the bus. It was almost to the stop when I felt hands at the small of my back, pushing! If HH hadn’t been standing next to me, if he hadn’t grabbed me by my book bag, I would have gone splat down in front of it. My heart is still racing. I turned to see who was behind us, but there were too many people. Then I saw FW walking away.

  Maybe Esther had good reason to be frightened. I turned out the light and burrowed down into the covers. Sprocket edged closer to me. I looped my arm around him and shut my eyes, but it was a long time until I slept.

  • • •

  Grand Lake boasts an actual Carnegie Library. Built in 1903 in the neoclassical style, it is a monument to grace and symmetry and geometrical harmony. At least, on the outside it is. Outside, the brick facade is studded with three Palladian windows on either side of a centered front door that is framed in granite and topped with a pediment. It speaks of solidity and congruence. It made something in my chest feel calmer and lighter by its mere presence.

  On the inside, it is a busy public library with toddler story times and memoir classes for senior citizens and conversation groups for people wanting to learn foreign languages. It’s all presided over by Juanita Arnold, a tiny little sprite of a woman with a temper the size of Cleveland and an electric wheelchair that she’s been known to use as a battering ram.

  To my surprise, Juanita had on a tutu and was carrying a wand when I walked in. She normally tended toward slacks and button-down shirts. She wheeled up to me.

  “Nice getup,” I said, gesturing to the tutu.

  “Screw you, Rebecca.” She stuck her tongue out at me, too, for good measure.

  I smiled. I loved i
t when Juanita cussed at me. The tutu made it so much better. It was like having a tiny Latina Tinker Bell spouting obscenities. Really, does it get much better than that? “What’s with the costume?”

  “Freaking story time. It’s going to be the death of me. All those kids. All those germs. All that snot.” She shuddered. “What is it you want from me?”

  “I want to see the Sentinel from some time in the 1950s.” I pulled Sprocket a little closer to my side as a small herd of kids ran past. He wasn’t prone to chasing the small ones, but I wanted to be careful. I was pretty sure Juanita gave us some kind of special dispensation to even have him inside the library. I didn’t want to abuse it.

  “You know the 1950s are a whole decade, right?” Juanita tapped some information into a computer.

  “It occurred to me.”

  She looked up from the computer. “And you know the Sentinel’s a daily newspaper, right?”

  “I’m aware.”

  “So that’s like three thousand, six hundred and fifty days of news. Want to narrow it down at all?” She pressed her hands together in a prayerful pose. “Try? For me?”

  I whipped out the diary from my bag to look at the dates. I’d given Barbara the copy I’d made and kept the original for myself.

  “What’s that?” she said, suddenly straightening up.

  “It’s a diary I found in the wall of POPS during the renovations.” I paged through the first few entries.

  Her eyes were big and her breathing had gone funny. “Can I see it?”

  I pushed it across the counter toward her.

  She ran her hand over it, then held it to her face and sniffed it.

  “Are you smelling my diary?” There really wasn’t another explanation, but I was hoping.

  “Nothing smells as good as a primary source. You should definitely show this to Sheri. She’s done some great historical workups of the town. This is right up her alley.” She handed it back to me.

  “Show me what?” Sheri was at my elbow, with two of her three kids.

  I jumped. “How did you do that? Just materialize that way? Are you like Beetlejuice or something?”