by Leslie Caine
broken tree limbs and the knee-high pile of debris.
"It's the cottonwood tree. A branch broke off." Although
I held my tongue, I'd warned her last year that cottonwoods
were notorious for losing huge branches in storms, and
that hers had been planted too close to the house for comfort. "It took out half your kitchen," I said, stunned. The
lovely black granite countertops were cracked. The island
and cooktop were crushed, the sink smashed. Water burbled through the pipes somewhere underneath the trunklike tree limb. "I'm going to run downstairs and shut off
your water main."
She nodded. Tears brimmed in her eyes.
"Audrey, I am so, so sorry this happened."
Again, she nodded, still unable to speak. I turned and
jogged down the stairs. The least I could do was keep her
kitchen from flooding. Yet I had the desperate feeling
that there was little else I'd be able to do to shore up her
106 L e s l i e C a i n e
spirits, now that her gorgeous, sparkling kitchen lay in ruins.
It took me a while to squeeze past all of Audrey's suitcases and boxes of art supplies and shut off the main.
Afterwards, I raced back up the stairs, expecting to see
Audrey sobbing. Instead, she was on the phone, calmly
making arrangements. She thanked whoever was on the
line and hung up. "I've called a tree company," she declared. "They'll cut up the branch and haul it out of
here. Next I'll call my insurance agent and get him up to
speed."
"Okay. I'll call my favorite contractor, and we'll see
how soon he can get here to board up the damage." I
sighed. "Again, Audrey, I'm so sorry."
"Oh, well," she said cheerfully. "The house is fully insured. The refrigerator's fine, so we didn't lose any food.
And now that the branch has knocked out half the room,
it's the perfect time for me to bump that wall out and
build the breakfast nook I've always wanted."
c h a p t e r 9
Personally, I believe that when life
gives you lemons, you shouldn't settle
for mere lemonade. Lemon chiffon
pie, for example, is my absolute
favorite dessert.
--Audrey Munroe
After donning parkas and fastening an old
wool blanket as best we could across the gap in
BLISS the wall, followed by several minutes of phone
calls to the insurance company and contractors, Audrey and I were able to find humor in the
sudden intrusion of half a tree in our kitchen. As
we inspected the damage, I remarked, "You
never said anything about wanting a breakfast
nook before."
"Well . . . I do now. And I live with an interior
designer who can help me plan an even nicer
kitchen. How perfect is that ?"
I chuckled. "Gee, thanks, Audrey. It's nice to
DOMESTIC know that I can help you turn this disaster into
something positive."
108 L e s l i e C a i n e
"Yes, indeed. We can bring the kitchen up to greenhome standards this way."
I hesitated. "Actually, Audrey, we can--and will--get
the most energy-efficient appliances on the market, for
anything that's sustained considerable damage. But
Energy Star guidelines went into effect in 1993, so that's
when efficiency standards took a quantum leap.
There's nothing in here more than five years old."
"Well, not counting the two of us."
I grinned. "Right. I just meant that they'd be worth
considering replacing if they were ten-plus years old,
because of energy efficiency. And we'll do whatever
else you'd like to do in addition to that. But the truth
about green homes is that the greenest home is the
one that's already built."
"Maybe so, but this home is missing one wall and a
sizable portion of its roof."
"True. But when you apply that same axiom to a
remodel, it's the one that uses the fewest new materials."
"Oh, I see." She scanned the damaged roof, window,
and wall. "In that case, we'll concentrate on rebuilding
only the damaged areas and building the breakfast
nook there." She pointed to the corner where there
were cracks in the walls from the heaviest part of the
branch."Are you saying that we'd be better off continuing the heart-of-pine floorboards rather than going with
bamboo or cork throughout?"
"Almost definitely, just because there's such a small
percentage of the pine that's likely to have been dam-D o m e s t i c B l i s s 1 0 9
aged. By the same token, we should order replacement
cabinetry from the same manufacturer, instead of all
new cabinets throughout. We just need to ensure that
they use formaldehyde-free materials for the shelves
and drawers .. . maybe wheatboard or strawboard, if
that's an option."
She nodded and scanned the ceiling."You know, I've
always wanted a skylight over my sink. And we can
make a combination greenhouse/breakfast nook with
lots of windows."
"That'd be wonderful. That's what's known as daylighting--when we reduce our power use by taking advantage of daylight." I stopped, realizing she was well
familiar with the term and didn't need a lecture from
me. But as I scanned the room, I made a mental inventory. We could use individually controlled task lighting so
we wouldn't waste electricity illuminating more space
than we'd need, and we'd install fluorescent bulbs.
We'd add insulation when we rebuilt the wall, and all
the new windows would have high-performance glazing. Plus we'd make sure we could create cross breezes
through the new kitchen. "Since the sink's a goner, we
can consider getting rid of the garbage disposal and installing a recycling center in one cabinet."
"I could live without a disposal," Audrey said thoughtfully.
"And we could construct the greenhouse to have an
external door. We can heat the room exclusively with
passive solar energy and close it off at night. That way,
too, we can do wonders with the floor . . . put down
110 L e s l i e C a i n e
heat-absorbing slate. I'm sure I can find nice tiles at the
reclamation yard."
"Hildi will love a nice sunny room with a warm floor."
"She will. It'll be like her own private sauna."
"I can't wait. I'm so glad this happened!"
"You are?"
"Yes. Work with me, here, Erin. This is how I avoid needing mood-enhancing drugs."
"In that case, this storm damage is a stroke of good
luck. Just not for the tree."
"Well, no. But this was an act of nature, so it must have
been its time." A chilly breeze swept through the room.
"Let's seal off this room once we get my dishes and
cookware moved into the dining room. I've got that
thick roll of plastic in the storage room of the basement,
and some duct tape. Good thing you didn't quite finish
painting the dining room. Now we'll be able to tape the
plastic to the walls without worrying about damaging
the paint."
"Yet another positive take on this."
"And I've got the perfect architect in mind. We'll be
killing two stones at once
when I hire him to work for us."
I chuckled a little at her deliberate botching of the
two-birds cliche."Really? Who?"
"Jeremy Greene."
"Audrey! I consider him a key suspect in Richard
Thayers's death!"
"Precisely! And what better way to get information
out of him than by hiring him?"
c h a p t e r 1 0
he next morning, it was strange and upsetting for
Tme to enter the dining room and realize that we
would be using this cramped, claustrophobic room as
our makeshift kitchen for weeks to come. The space was
the typical clutter catastrophe that normally caused people to solicit my services. Last night, I'd urged Audrey to
put everything in storage except those few items that she
knew we would need for the short term. Yet she must
have dragged armloads of stuff into the room the minute
I'd gone to bed. Two full sets of plates, including her
fine china, were stacked in the corners. We were now
112 L e s l i e C a i n e
equipped to serve a dinner party of sixteen, provided the
dinner guests ignored the fact that we had no oven or
cooktop, and that seven of the eight chairs at the table
were either filled or blocked by the complete contents of
her sizable pantry. Cans, pasta boxes, cereal boxes, and
spices were piled everywhere, and cookware, utensils,
and glasses sat on every flat surface.
Audrey had at least stuck with my directive to reserve
her sidebar for her essential small appliances, which
would temporarily serve as our only means to cook indoors. There I'd placed her coffeemaker (which was already doing its thing, thanks to the timer), her toaster, hot
plate, and electric frying pan. The microwave was too
large for the sidebar, but rested on the ice chest next to
the designated temporary home for the refrigerator.
Unfortunately, she'd also brought out the pasta maker,
the bread maker--which hadn't been used once in the
two years that I'd lived with her--two mixers, the ice
cream maker, and the blender. I was betting that the waffle iron was around here somewhere.
I heard Audrey open the front door, no doubt to retrieve the newspaper. She shuffled into the room in her
robe and snow boots, her nose buried in the paper. I
watched her nervously. She was taking her life into her
hands, given the numerous opportunities to trip over
something. Once she'd arrived safely, I considered quipping that she'd missed the opportunity to use the chandelier as storage hooks, but I didn't want to give her
any ideas and instead simply gave her a cheery, "Good
morning."
"Morning, Erin." She poured herself a cup of coffee.
"We got an even foot of snow yesterday. Maplewood's
been plowed, so you'll be able to drive to work. You're go-P o i s o n e d b y G i l t 113
ing to want to read the front-page story first, though." She
handed me the A section of the Sentinel.
My vision was drawn to a photograph of Richard
Thayers at a rally, holding a placard that read World's
Watchdogs. The banner headline was "Ecoterrorism
Connection?"
"Oh, jeez. Sullivan's going to be on the rampage."
With considerable effort, I angled myself past the stacks
and boxes and into a chair to read the rest.
"Did you see the paper this morning?" Sullivan
promptly asked when I arrived at the office. "The
Sentinel printed nonsensical speculation by a batch of
talk-radio airheads, claiming Richard was an ecoterrorist.
And so some rational person got fed up and decided to
strike back by committing first-degree murder."
"I did see it." I hung up my coat and scarf, and made
my way to my desk chair. "They must have been talking
to someone in the same social circles as Asia McClure,
because she suggested the same possibility to me the
other day."
"Yeah, well, that woman's a crabapple with legs. The
story is total crap. No way was Richard an ecoterrorist."
"The papers never said that he was, you realize . . . only
that the killer could have assumed he was a member of
World's Watchdogs, because he was photographed at
their rally."
"Watchdogs has nothing to do with ecoterrorism, either. It was a misguided splinter group of theirs that
claimed responsibility for a handful of ecoterrorist acts."
"I know." That doesn't mean the killer knew that,
though, I said to myself.
114 L e s l i e C a i n e
Sullivan remained tightly wound. "I called Walter
Emory and asked him to drop by to discuss this. He cares
as much about finding Richard's killer as I do."
That last remark stung me immeasurably. I couldn't
decide if objecting would make things better or worse,
but after a few seconds, I reluctantly let it pass. "What
time did he--"
The little brass bell above the door jingled as someone
opened it. Speak of the devil, I thought, as Walter
stepped inside, wearing the same coat and baggy pants
he'd worn on his last visit, although he'd added a hat with
Elmer Fudd earflaps to his ensemble.
"Morning, Walter," I said.
"Morning." He beamed at me. "Fine day, isn't it?" he
nearly shouted.
"If you like gray, dreary, and cold," Sullivan replied.
"When you get to be my age, any day you can get out
of bed counts as a fine morning." He removed his hat and
coat, but kept hold of both instead of using our coat tree.
"I've been worried about the story on the front page of
the Sentinel today," Sullivan said. "Did you read it?"
"Yeah, I did."
"Do you think there's any substance to the claim that
Richard could have been killed by an antiecoterrorist?"
"Kind of doubt it." Walter lowered himself into the
chair that was stationed halfway between our desks and
laid his coat and hat over his knees. "Don't you? I mean,
killing somebody for being a zealot when it comes to the
environment doesn't make a whole lot of sense."
"Yeah," Sullivan said, "but there've been less sensible
motives that have driven people to murder."
Walter crossed his arms and regarded him for a moment. "You see, Steve, here's the way I look at it. Of the
P o i s o n e d b y G i l t 115
two of us, Richard Thayers and myself, I'm the one with
the national reputation for lobbying to save our planet.
So if anyone's going to be a target of pro-pollution vigilantes, it's going to be me, not him."
"But whoever killed Richard Thayers probably isn't
someone who's focused in on the national news," I interposed. "It's more likely someone with a personal ax to
grind. Maybe someone who's just thinking locally, about
a perceived slight, or because his own business failed."
Someone like Matthew Hayes, I mused in silence.
"Ah. You mean someone who's got his or her selfinterest at heart, but who is spurred on by a big hatred of
environmentalists."
"Maybe," I replied with a shrug.
"Well, I guess that's always possible."
"Aren't you nervous?" Sullivan asked Walter.
"About?"
"About your own safety. If this is the work of someone
who detests your organization and all that it stands for,
don't you worry that you might have put yourself in the
crosshairs?"
Walter sat staring into space for a moment, his eyes
widening. "Hmm. In other words, I could be next in
line."
"I didn't mean to scare you," Sullivan said. "In fact,
Erin and I got the message 'You're next' on our own business card . . . with red paint splattered on it. We're in the
crosshairs ourselves."
"So you're just spreading the joy around, eh?" Walter
replied, giving me a jovial wink. In that moment, my appreciation for the man doubled.
"I'm sure nothing will happen, Walter," I said. "For all
we know, Richard's murder might have nothing to do
116 L e s l i e C a i n e
with the contest, or his interest in conservation. But a little precaution and vigilance wouldn't hurt."
"Just keep your eyes open," Sullivan added.
"Right. I will." He grinned at me. "Thanks for your
concern, Erin. And don't worry. I'm nearly done with my
judging. Just one more impromptu visit to each of the finalists' homes, to see if catching them off guard makes
any difference. Then I'm putting this sorry affair to bed,
once and for all."
"Good," I said. "I'm glad for everyone's sake that this is
almost over with, so we can move on."
"Yeah. Not counting Richard," Sullivan growled.
I winced, chagrined at my own insensitivity.
"Oh, now, Erin didn't mean it like that." Walter got to
his feet and struggled back into his coat, shuffling his hat
between his hands. "Anybody can see she doesn't have a
mean bone in her body." He gave me a nod, and said,
"I've got to shove off." He grinned at Sullivan. "It's been
good for me to see for myself that part of Richard lives on
through his students. I'll keep you posted on the contest."
Walter's visit seemed to put Sullivan into a funk.
Maybe he took offense to Walter's taking my side, or
maybe he was still mired in angst over his recent loss, but
once again he seemed to need some space. I wondered,
though, if all this "space" he needed wasn't steadily pushing me right out of his life. I started working on Audrey's
new kitchen, calculating that with all the extra hours
Sullivan was putting into our work, I could squeeze in an