The Secret Poison Garden

by Maureen Klovers

  “Married, with three kids.”

  “And Courtney D’Agostino. She was a debate champion, went to the U on a scholarship, and now—”

  “Is married, with two kids. Ma, they’re only good enough because they’re not available. If they were available, trust me, you’d find something wrong with them.” Gina reached across the table and patted Rita’s arm. “Don’t worry. No woman will ever replace you in Marco’s affections. He’s a total mamma’s boy. Besides, I think you’re going to warm up to Susan. She’s pliable, easy to please, like putty in your hands. She even wants to learn how to cook like you.”

  Rita spit out her coffee. “What?”

  “Yup. I told her it was a great idea and that I’m sure you’d like to give her lessons.”

  “Mmmm-hmmmm,” Rita murmured as noncommittally as possible.

  “That sounds like a ‘no.’”

  “It’s not a ‘no.’ It’s an ‘I’ll think about it.’ I’m very busy now, you know.”

  Gina nodded sagaciously. “Ah, yes. The new job. How’s it going?”

  “Oh, just fine, cara.”

  “I really liked the article on Miss Simms’s poison garden. I never would have guessed—”

  Gina stopped herself in mid-sentence. Her lips were slightly parted; she held a half-eaten cannoli shell an inch from her lips. Her eyes were wide. “Oh,” she said suddenly, and Rita had the feeling that Gina had completely forgotten that Rita was in the room. “Oh.”

  “So you did have an inkling?” Rita said softly, refilling her daughter’s cup.

  As if coming out of her reverie, Gina gave a swift shake of her head. “No. Not at the time anyway. It’s just now I know why Vinnie was so sick that time.”

  Rita gasped. “She poisoned him?”

  Gina rolled her eyes. “Well, not on purpose, ma. She wasn’t responsible at all, really. He snuck into her garden, picked what he thought was wild marijuana, smoked just a tiny bit as a test, and got sick as a dog.” She laughed. “I just didn’t put two and two together until now.”

  Feeling the panic welling up in her chest, Rita clutched the kitchen counter. “You don’t think that Vinnie ever went back though—or that he suspected it was poison—or even if he did, that he would—I mean—”

  Rita felt the room beginning to spin. Miss Van Der Hooven had insinuated that Vinnie had been in on the cruel prank on the coach. Now her own daughter was suggesting that Vinnie knew—or suspected—that Miss Simms’s plants had dangerous properties. But then again, she tried to reassure herself, so did all of the readers of the Morris County Gazette.

  Rita took a deep breath and looked straight into her daughter’s big brown eyes. “Gina, I have something to ask you, and it’s very important that you answer truthfully.”

  There was a glimmer of triumph in her daughter’s eyes. “Aha. This is why you asked me here.”

  “I’ve heard some gossip.”

  “From whom? The quilting circle?”

  “Never you mind,” Rita said sharply. “All you need to know is that I’ve heard some gossip that Vinnie was involved in the prank at the pool. Do you know anything about that?”

  Rita watched her daughter carefully as she ran a finger along the edges of her plate, scooped up the remaining cannoli cream, and licked her finger. Her eyes were clear and limpid; her fingers did not tremble in the least. “Not a thing,” Gina said, meeting Rita’s gaze with an imperturbable, innocent look. She popped up, rinsed her hands in the sink, and kissed Rita on both cheeks. “I gotta go, ma. Sharon’s got another man crisis, and I promised her a good stitch-and-bit—”

  Rita shot her a warning look and coughed.

  “Sorry, ma. A nice chat while knitting. I’m making a scarf for cousin Leo.”

  She planted one final kiss on Rita’s cheek, headed to the door, and practically collided with her older brother, who was just coming in the door.

  “Perfect timing,” she chirped, clapping him on the shoulder. “I was just leaving so ma can interrogate you all alone.”

  “I will do no such thing,” Rita huffed, hurrying down the hallway.

  Marco leaned in and kissed Rita on both cheeks. “What does ma want to know?” he asked his sister.

  “If Vinnie had anything to do with the incident at the pool.”

  Gina closed the door behind her, and Marco followed his mother into the kitchen.

  “Why do you want to know that?” he asked, folding himself into the chair his sister had just vacated.

  Rita was furious with her daughter. This was not how she had planned to broach the subject with Marco. She had wanted to ease into it, bring it up as casually as possible. Now he had his guard up.

  “Because I heard a rumor—an unfounded one, I’m sure—that Vinnie was somehow involved.”

  “Huh.” He reached for a cannoli with one of his huge, meaty hands. “Well, you know how Acorn Hollow is. Not much happens, so people have to invent news.”

  “So it’s not true?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Do you know where Vinnie was the night before your birthday?”

  Marco thought for a moment. “I saw him at Giordano’s with some friends.”

  “Which friends?”

  “Oh, you know, the usual crowd. Rocco, Mikey, Luca, Joey.”

  “Did you talk to them?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “And did they say anything about the coach? Or about a practical joke?”

  “No, ma, they were—”

  “They were what?”

  He sucked a mouthful of cream out of the end of the tube and held up a hand. Marco was the most polite of her children—and the only one who never talked with his mouth full.

  He finally swallowed. “They were going to a movie. Fast and Furious Six or something like that. You know Vinnie—the more exploding cars, the better.”

  She did know Vinnie. He loved movies with explosions, car chases, shoot-outs in abandoned buildings—lots of testosterone and almost no plot. But she also knew Marco, and had the distinct impression that he had been stalling for time, hiding behind his impeccable manners. To anyone else, the slight furrow in his brow and the quick jerk of his Adam’s apple would have been imperceptible. But she had seen it—that split-second hesitation, that realization that Vinnie maybe, just maybe, had been involved.

  Her darling Marco had lied to her.

  Rita prattled on as if she had not noticed, regaling her son with news from church and book club and the quilting circle.

  By the time Marco left and Vinnie arrived, Rita was mentally and physically exhausted. She kept bringing the conversation back to Miss Van Der Hooven and the pranks and the coach’s untimely death, but throughout, Vinnie maintained his best poker face.

  “Beats me.” He shrugged. “Probably just some eggheads from the U, like Dad says. Maybe they got in over their heads.”

  “And killed him?”

  “Naw. They were probably just playing.”

  “Well, who killed him then?”

  “Craig, maybe. He was diddling his wife, after all.”

  “Vinnie!”

  “It’s true,” Vinnie said sheepishly. “He was.”

  “Well, you don’t have to say it.”

  Vinnie looked wounded. He grabbed two more cannoli, put them on a plate, and skulked off to the family room to watch TV, muttering, “You asked.”

  Sighing, Rita sank down into a chair and took a bite of cannoli. Yes, she had asked.

  But she hadn’t gotten many answers.

  Chapter Eleven

  Having been sorely disappointed in her ability to get to the bottom of the matter as a mother, Rita decided to approach the situation as a private investigator might. She had met a private eye once and been crestfallen to learn that most of the work was quite mundane. But she had gained one useful nugget of information: every case seemed to involve a stake-out—hours and hours of sitting in a parked car, waiting for a client’s middle-aged, balding husband to come rushing out
of the house and into the arms of his mistress or for a client’s employee, supposedly too injured to come to work, to help a friend move a piano.

  She decided to stake out Vinnie. Making a big show of getting ready to go out, she freshened up her lipstick, grabbed her coat and purse, and rushed into the family room, where Vinnie was sprawled out on the couch watching Geraldo.

  “Ciao, bello,” she said, planting a kiss on his cheek. “I’ve got to go interview Mr. Bowman about his stamp collection. I should be back in time to whip up dinner.”

  He looked up at her hopefully. “Lasagna?”

  “Not that much time, caro. Something quick. Fish, maybe.”

  Her son looked a bit dejected, but kissed her anyway. “Have a good interview, ma. If anyone can make his stamp collection interesting, it’s you.”

  Smiling at the compliment, Rita tousled his dark wavy hair and then went out the front door, closing it loudly behind her. She backed the car out of the driveway, swung around the corner, parked, and slid down in the seat until only the top of her head and her eyeballs were visible. Craning her neck forward to see around the corner, Rita was acutely aware of the fact that her body was folded into an uncomfortable U-shape.

  Fortunately, Rita did not need to wait long. Fifteen minutes later, just as the crook in her neck was becoming unbearable, she spotted Vinnie’s battered Pinto shoot down the driveway and peel off down the street in a cloud of exhaust.

  Easing away from the curb slowly, Rita let two cars go through the stop sign first and then, keeping both cars between them, followed Vinnie as he continued south down Maple Avenue. She didn’t have the slightest trouble following Vinnie. The Pinto was olive green with bright pink splotches of paint covering the rust spots, a twenty-year-old relic that rumbled through the streets of Acorn Hollow like a dinosaur in its death throes. It wheezed, gasped, and rattled, sputtering to a stop at the intersections, then groaning to life again when the light turned green. The muffler was busted; the windshield was cracked. And yet somehow, the Pinto managed to survive, year after year, on a strange combination of good luck, goodwill, and dubious connections.

  Kind of like Vinnie.

  The Pinto veered left onto Glebe Lane, past the few new houses on the edge of town, and Rita followed. Where could he be going? Rita couldn’t imagine him knowing anyone who lived in these big, modern identikit houses, but it seemed equally unlikely that he’d follow the road to its end, at the state park on top of Mount Esquiline. Vinnie was not a hiker or an outdoorsman of any kind. When asked what he had missed most about home during his week at Boy Scout camp, he had earnestly replied “TV,” which had sent Rita into an hourlong crying jag locked in the bathroom. No, he was most unlikely to be headed up the mountain, unless he had some sort of clandestine meeting in the woods. But what kind of secret assignation could that be? Rita’s heart rate sped up just thinking about the possibilities, her hands gripping the wheel tightly, her knuckles white.

  Suddenly, she gasped. Vinnie was not headed up the mountain. Instead, he turned into the last place she would have expected.

  The community college parking lot.

  Rita watched Vinnie roll down the window and hurl himself out of the Pinto—the door handle had long since stopped working—and head into the building on the right. She tied a scarf over her hair, slipped on a pair of dark sunglasses, and changed into an old coat that Gina had conveniently left in the trunk, which unfortunately Rita couldn’t button. A glance in the mirror confirmed that she looked more like a scary Russian babushka than Grace Kelly, but Rita reminded herself that a good investigator never lets vanity get in the way of research.

  The interior was ugly and utilitarian, with cinderblock walls painted white and cheap linoleum flooring. Rita wandered the hallways until she practically collided with a burly, middle-aged man in some sort of protective suit as he came out of the men’s room.

  “Can I help you find something, ma’am?”

  “No, thank you.” She hesitated. “Well, maybe, you see I’m Rita Calabrese—”

  He clasped his hand over hers. “Oh, you’re Vinnie’s mom!”

  “Ah, you know Vinnie.”

  “One of my best students.”

  He beamed and shook her hand vigorously. Rita’s wrist went limp in his hand; her mouth gaped open. This was a first. None of her conversations with Vinnie’s teachers had ever gone like this. Not to mention the fact that she hadn’t even known Vinnie was a student.

  “I’m Mark Evans,” he said eagerly. “His welding instructor.”

  “Welding?” Rita repeated in a hoarse whisper.

  “Vinnie’s got the technical skills, of course. But what really sets him apart is that he really understands the physics and chemistry behind it.”

  “Vinnie—my Vinnie?” she spluttered. “He barely passed those classes in high school.”

  Mr. Evans shrugged. “Well, some kids are late bloomers, you know. But he’s been asking all of these questions lately about tensile strength and load bearing. Quite remarkable. And he’s been burning the midnight oil in the lab too; I’ve bumped into him at all hours.” He checked his watch. “Do you need me to find him for you?”

  “Oh, no,” Rita said weakly. “I can talk to him at home.”

  Before he could sing any more of Vinnie’s praises, she spun on her heels, walked briskly back to the car, and plopped into the driver’s seat, tears streaming down her face.

  What had her baby done?

  She was sure of it now—he’d made the metal talon from which the coach’s car had been suspended. But why? He’d never been coached by Jay Stiglitz—he barely knew him, in fact. Vinnie didn’t even have friends, as far as she knew, in Mount Washington. So what could have possessed him to participate in such a risky stunt?

  If that’s even what it was. Her own words haunted her. Was it a prank, or a warning? She’d said that before she knew her own son was involved. Surely, that changed everything. The prank must have been just that—a prank, the product of young, fertile imaginations, too much testosterone, and maybe some liquid courage—but not something more sinister. Whoever wanted Coach Stiglitz dead then had the perfect opening—they had planned the murder to look like an accident or, if discovered, like a crazed football rivalry gone awry.

  Yes, that must be it, she told herself, then immediately thought, Rita, you’ve lost your mind. Just listen to you, reassuring yourself that Vinnie only stole the coach’s car. That’s not reassuring, that’s alarming.

  And doubly so if the chief finds out—and decides it was a prelude to murder.

  But he won’t find out, will he? She mentally ticked off all of the stupid things Chief D’Agostino had done from her very first memory of him—when he had wet his pants while their kindergarten teacher had read Goodnight, Moon—through today. He had always hung back, waiting for someone else to make the call. He was slow, plodding, lacking in initiative, and so very cautious—the type of police chief who only liked to make an arrest when he caught someone red-handed.

  He wouldn’t catch Vinnie doing anything red-handed. There wasn’t much to go on—just some rumor Miss Van Der Hooven had heard, and the fact that Vinnie had taken a sudden interest in welding. It was all very circumstantial, at best.

  And Chief D’Agostino was up against a force much greater than anything he could marshal—a mother’s love. Rita bared her teeth in the mirror. “I am Mama Bear, hear me roar,” she grunted, and the face that stared back at her was certainly frightening, a jowly, wrinkly olive-brown mass streaked with rivulets of mascara. My war paint, she thought with a perverse sense of satisfaction.

  No, Chief D’Agostino will not find out, she resolved as she turned the key in the ignition. Not yet anyway—not until she had found out who was responsible for Coach Stiglitz’s death. Then she’d present the whole solution to the chief, tied up with a bow, just in time for him to make a splashy arrest and take all of the credit. And in return, he’d agree to overlook Vinnie’s little prank.

  As she
swung out of the parking lot and back towards town, she reflected that there was one tiny silver lining in all of this.

  What Sal had thought only some egghead engineering student could pull off, had in actual point of fact been pulled off by their son. Not Marco—not their perfect, studious, brilliant son—but the one that they had practically written off.

  Her baby cub was a lot smarter than she had ever imagined.

  Chapter Twelve

  The next morning, Rita went through the motions. She made cranberry pancakes for Sal and Vinnie, shooed them out the door, weeded the garden, picked a few apples, and actually interviewed Mr. Bowman about his stamp collection. But, hour after hour, she was plagued by the same nagging thought: If Vinnie had been the engineering mastermind of the prank, who had been his artistic counterpart?

  She hadn’t seen the figure up close, but it didn’t seem like Vinnie’s handiwork. On the other hand, she had thought the same about the metal talon.

  Did anyone she know have a photo of it?

  Dr. Walker, perhaps, but he wasn’t her first choice. Perhaps Dante LaMarca, the high school janitor. She had caught a glimpse of him at the pool that day, and she sang in the funeral choir with his wife.

  She decided to give Dante a ring. After five minutes of pleasantries, during which she asked after his wife, who was recovering from a hysterectomy, and he thanked her for the trays of lasagna she had sent over, Rita got down to business.

  “As you know,” she said, “I’m an investigative reporter for the Morris County Gazette now—”

  “Oh, we know.” Dante sounded proud of himself just for knowing such an important personage. “We read all of your articles. I especially liked the one on Miss Van Der Hooven.”

  Rita smiled smugly. Everybody liked her article on Miss Van Der Hooven.

  “Thank you, Dante,” Rita trilled. “I appreciate that.”

  She lowered her voice and adopted an appropriately somber tone. “Now,” she said, “I’m investigating Coach Stiglitz’s death and all those pranks, well, to see if there could be a connection between the two. But of course it’s all very hush-hush at the moment. I’ve got to get the facts straight first.”