The Secret Poison Garden

by Maureen Klovers

  “She did, did she?”

  “I can’t wait to get started,” Susan drawled and then started babbling about how the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach and Marco loved Rita’s cooking and Susan wanted to have a big family and big family dinners, kind of like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but with Italian food and little Italian children instead.

  She made Rita’s head spin. “Mmmmm-hmmmm,” Rita murmured, nodding and searching frantically for an escape. Her gaze landed on Father De La Pasqua. “Oh, dear, I’m sorry but I just need to have a word with Father.”

  “So that’s okay?” Susan looked at her expectantly.

  “Er, yes, dear. Whatever you say.”

  Grinning from ear to ear, Susan clasped Rita’s hand. “See you at noon tomorrow then!”

  Rita nodded weakly. She supposed it served her right for failing to pay attention.

  Waving a good-bye, Rita slid into the seat next to Father De La Pasqua. In a black leather jacket and jeans, he didn’t look much like a priest. Only the Roman collar gave him away.

  “Pssst, padre.”

  He smiled weakly. “Rita.”

  “I took your advice. Marco’s not having an affair.”

  “See? Sometimes your imagination plays tricks on you. It happens to the best of us.”

  “He’s still hiding something, though.”

  “Well,” he said indulgently, “we’re all allowed our little secrets.”

  They were interrupted by the roar of the crowd, who leapt to their feet as the Squirrels’ quarterback ran into the end zone. Rita took her leave. She was walking back to her seat when, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Gina and Courtney heading off together.

  That’s odd, Rita thought. Gina and Courtney had never been friends. In fact, as far as she was aware, they hardly knew each other. The only thing they had in common was Marco.

  Marco.

  Warning bells were going off in Rita’s brain. Maybe her suspicions hadn’t been so crazy after all.

  Rita followed closely behind as Gina and Courtney headed towards the sidelines and then slipped under the bleachers. She held her breath in the darkness and, straining to hear them, cupped a hand over her ear. She caught only snatches of conversation, little snippets that suddenly emerged, with startling clarity, between outbursts of the school’s fight song and the cheering of the crowd.

  Gina said, “This is my brother we’re talking about. You’ve got to tell him.”

  “It hasn’t been a good time yet.”

  “You’ve got to tell him,” Gina repeated. “Soon.”

  With a sinking heart, Rita came to the realization that Marco had lied to her after all. It was one of the few times she took no pleasure in being proven right.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Squirrels won the game—23 to 14. Sal was ecstatic. He twirled Rita around the living room, crooning “Volare” and “Lovely Rita, Meter Maid,” until Rita got dizzy and begged him to stop. Then he gave her a blow-by-blow account of the game as if he were announcing the game in real time, seemingly unaware that Rita’s mind was on other things.

  Those other things included not only Marco’s possible infidelity and bald-faced lying to his mother (she wasn’t sure which was worse), but also a surprisingly friendly meeting on the sidelines between Angelica and her ex-husband. Rita had watched the encounter unfold through her binoculars and while she had no idea what had been said (neither her binoculars nor her lip-reading skills were up to that task, regrettably), it seemed quite friendly indeed. It appeared as through Angelica had leaned in and given Craig a kiss on the cheek.

  “Victory!” Sal mumbled happily as he polished off the last of their gelato. Rita went to bed.

  In the morning, she went into her garden to harvest what she needed for Sunday dinner—a big round pumpkin, a few shiny eggplants, a big bowl of arugula, and a handful of gleaming apples. Then she changed into a dress as black as her mood and went to Mass with Sal. Afterwards, she gulped down three pastries and two cups of coffee, alternating between staring at the Morris County Gazette without really reading it and anxiously glancing at the clock.

  She dreaded Susan’s arrival. It was bad enough that Gina had foisted Susan on Rita in a misguided attempt to engineer some sort of détente. The cooking lesson was sure to try Rita’s patience; she shuddered just thinking about how Susan would be itching to deep fry everything in sight and mixing up the sugar and the salt. Dinner would surely suffer as a result. If Rita turned her back for a minute, the eggplant would turn out dry and woody, the ravioli would unravel, and the cheesecake would fall flat—as, no doubt, would Sal’s face. Rita owed him a nice Sunday dinner, and she was annoyed that it was almost sure to disappoint. But the worst part was that, while she pulsed and puréed, diced and julienned, patiently explaining it all to a befuddled Susan, she would also have to be on guard not to reveal that she suspected Marco was unfaithful. On the other hand, she didn’t want to encourage the poor girl’s delusions that Marco walked on water either.

  Should she steer clear of talking about Marco, or gently plant the seeds of doubt in Susan’s mind? Rita sighed. Just surviving the afternoon would require all her reserves of subtlety, tact, diplomacy, and patience—not to mention culinary mastery. It was like being asked to be Julia Child and Condoleeza Rice, simultaneously.

  Rita was reaching for a fourth pastry when Susan arrived wearing her Sunday best.

  “Hello, dear.” Rita kissed her on the cheek and waved her into the kitchen. “Here’s the first tip. Wear sneakers and old clothes.”

  She pointed accusingly at Susan’s four-inch heels, and Susan obediently kicked them off. Rita handed her an apron. “Now,” she said, “there are really only two things you need to know about Italian cooking.”

  Whipping a notebook out of her bag, Susan began taking down every word from Rita’s mouth.

  “First, a proper Italian meal—that is, Italian from Italy—starts with a primo, that’s a first course, usually pasta. Then there’s a secondo, that’s an entrée, often fish. But since you’re a vegetarian”—Rita sighed—“the options are a bit limited. Often, there are vegetable side dishes—those are the contorni. And finally, there’s the dolce.”

  Susan glanced up from her notes, wide-eyed. “Marco will be as wide as a house if I feed him all of that.”

  “It’s tradition,” Rita said flatly. “Although most families only go to all of that trouble on Sunday now.”

  “Oh.” Susan drew out that one syllable for what seemed like a minute. She nodded sagaciously. “Like my momma’s Sunday dinner—fried chicken, mashed potatoes, chitlins, okra, hush puppies, sweet potatoes—”

  “Yes, just like that.” Rita felt as though she were interrupting Paula Deen. “Now, the second rule,” she continued, “is that, unlike French cooking, which relies on fancy techniques to make the unpalatable palatable—only the French would try to trick people into eating frog legs and snails and then have the audacity to charge an arm and a leg for them—Italian cooking is simple. It’s all about the ingredients. They must be top-quality, fresh, in season, bursting with flavor. You start by figuring out what ingredients you have and then you plan your menu accordingly.”

  Rita waved a hand over the kitchen countertop, which was laden with pumpkins, tomatoes, eggplants, late-season raspberries, leftover cantucci, fresh sage leaves, and a wheel of parmesan cheese and a tub of ricotta from the local creamery. “So if these are the main ingredients to work with, what do you think we should make?”

  Susan bit her lip. In a small, squeaky voice, her Southern accent as thick as ever, she hazarded a guess. “Spaghetti, eggplant stew, and raspberry pie?”

  Sighing, Rita said, “I was thinking pumpkin ravioli with sage and brown butter for a primo, eggplant parm for a secondo, and a raspberry almond cheesecake for the dolce.”

  Susan looked very, very impressed.

  ******************************

  An hour later, Rita was instructing Susan in the finer
points of ravioli making, wielding her rolling pin like a steamroller. “Now, your sfoglia—that’s the sheet of pasta dough—should be cosí sottile da poterci leggere un giornale—thin enough to read a newspaper through. It’s like a painting. The pasta is just the canvas for your masterpiece—the filling.”

  Susan scribbled furiously while Rita scowled in the direction of her disobedient pasta. “This looks a little dry to me. We need to brush the sheet with an egg white wash.”

  With a flick of her wrist, Rita brushed a thin film of egg white over the dough, then showed Susan how to place little spoonfuls of filling a thumb’s width apart until the entire surface was dotted with little golden mounds. Rita covered this with a second sfoglia and pressed down gently. Snatching a pastry wheel, she cut the sheet into little squares, each with a covered mound in the center. “Now,” Rita announced , “we must let them rest.”

  She was relieved that Susan did not ask why. The truth was that Rita didn’t know why, but her mother and nonna had insisted that the ravioli must rest for half an hour before they were boiled, and Rita had accepted this as gospel.

  They salted the eggplant and then began preparing the cheesecake.

  “Now, it’s very important,” Rita shouted over the roar of the mixer as she added the sugar and egg yolks, “to drain the ricotta first.”

  “What happens if you forget?”

  “Soggy cheesecake. I did that once when my mother-in-law came to dinner.”

  Susan wrinkled her nose. “Soggy cheesecake is awful,” she agreed. “The cheesecake in the hospital cafeteria is soggy.”

  Along with everything else, Rita thought, recalling the one and only time she had had the misfortune to dine in the hospital cafeteria. Everything—fish, collard greens, corn—was sopping wet and tasteless, as if to punish people for having the temerity to actually visit their loved ones.

  A thought suddenly popped into Rita’s head. “Susan, how do patients at the hospital order their food?”

  Susan twirled a blond tendril around her finger absentmindedly while licking the cheese filling off a beater. “Oh, on the telephone.”

  “Yes,” Rita said impatiently, “but how? I mean, are they allowed to order just anything? Who takes the order? What do they do with it?”

  “The doctor goes into the computer system and indicates what the patient is allowed to eat. You know, like a diabetic can’t have pasta or dessert, or maybe someone else can’t have salt.”

  “And then?”

  “And then the patient can order anything on the menu as long as it complies with any dietary restrictions.”

  “Is the patient’s order recorded anywhere?” Rita poured the cheese mixture into a springform pan and slid it into the oven. “I’m asking,” she said, “because it could help solve Jay’s murder.”

  Rita looked up at Susan, whose eyes filled with tears. The poor girl was still feeling guilty.

  Brushing away a tear, Susan furrowed her brow and pulled out her phone. “Let me call my friend Ellen.”

  She punched a number into her phone and proceeded to have a long meandering conversation with Ellen, which included asking after Ellen’s lost cat, lovesick teenaged niece, and Alzheimer’s-stricken father (whom she was currently trying to talk out of a tiger-hunting trip to India with a certain Mrs. Portman, whose husband had been a diplomat stationed in India and who was inordinately fond of riding on elephants).

  “The meals,” Rita hissed, stirring a saucepan of raspberry compote. “Ask her about the meals.”

  Susan nodded patiently and handed the phone to Rita.

  “Ellen? This is Rita Calabrese from the Morris County Gazette.”

  To Rita’s dismay, Ellen seemed never to have heard of her. Perhaps she was one of those Millennials who were allergic to newsprint and spent all day fiddling with their phones.

  “Do you know,” Rita asked, “what Jay Stiglitz ordered on Monday?”

  There was a long pause. “I guess what a patient ordered isn’t confidential, right? I mean they didn’t cover that in training, but it’s not like medical information, right?”

  “Oh, no,” Rita reassured her with far more confidence than she actually felt. “It’s not confidential.”

  “Let me see if he’s still in the system,” Ellen said, sounding relieved. The click-clack of long fingernails on a keyboard filled Rita’s eardrum. Then Ellen’s voice came back on the line. “Toast and orange juice for breakfast. Chicken, brown rice, and broccoli for lunch.”

  “Anything to drink?”

  “Just water.”

  Rita thanked Ellen and hung up.

  “Well?” Susan asked. “Did that help?”

  “I think so.” Rita stirred the raspberry compote thoughtfully. “Whatever poison was used would have had a distinct taste. Belladonna, for example, tastes like cherries. It would have been hard to mask that taste in any of the foods that he ordered. Which means that it must have been hidden in some homemade dessert or beverage brought into the hospital. Something” –she swirled the hot pink liquid in the saucepan—“like this.”

  “But he would only accept something like that from someone he knew.”

  Rita grimaced. “I agree. Which makes this a premeditated, cold-blooded murder by a friend or relative.” She turned off the burner. “How would I find out who was at the hospital that day?”

  “Every visitor signs in and indicates whether they have an appointment or who they are there to visit. Then the guard checks their I.D.” Susan flushed and looked away. “Don’t tell Marco, but old Crane is sweet on me.”

  Rita eyed her suspiciously. “How old is ‘old Crane’?”

  “Seventy, seventy-five. I think of him like I think of my grandpappy.”

  “And if I came by during your break, do you think you could, er, distract him?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The dinner was a smashing success. The ravioli were plump and flavorful, sweet and slightly spicy. The eggplant was moist—and so tasty that Sal limited himself to just one grumble about the lack of meat. Rita shot him a sympathetic glance, with raised palms and a slight wag of the chin, and managed to communicate, “What did you expect now that our son has brought a vegetarian interloper into the family?” And the cheesecake was the perfect finale.

  By the time Rita served the after-dinner cappuccinos, she was relaxed and happy—so relaxed that she was hardly bothered when Susan brought up the wedding. For a change, it was Sal who seemed perturbed. “They’re not going to start speaking in tongues, are they?” he demanded, glowering at Susan and Marco over his coffee.

  “Oh, no,” Susan drawled, “those are the Pentecostals.”

  With a bemused glanced at his parents, Marco slung an arm around Susan. “Look who speaks in tongues,” he said. “Ma can barely get out a complete sentence in English, and you both go to Mass in Italian.”

  Rita’s nostrils flared. How dare her son lump the language of his ancestors in with the hocus-pocus babbling of some holy rollers? And why shouldn’t she speak her mother’s native tongue?

  “That’s different,” Rita insisted. “Italian is the world’s most beautiful, most cultured language, the language of Dante, of Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Marconi, Verdi—”

  “Machiavelli, Muss—” Susan started to say before she stopped herself. A pale little hand fluttered to her lips and stayed there, awkwardly.

  Sal stared at her. “Mussolini?” he thundered. “You’re bringing Il Duce into this?”

  All color drained from Susan’s face. Even Marco looked slightly horrified.

  Rita glanced from Sal, whose forehead vein was beginning to throb, to Marco and terrified little Susan, and then back to Sal. Then she burst into laughter. Before long, tears were rolling down Rita’s cheeks as she clutched her stomach and pounded the table, sending the espresso cups clattering. The more confused Susan looked, the harder Rita laughed.

  Springing to her feet, Rita gave Susan a peck on the
cheek. “Good for you, dear. You need to stand up for yourself. Otherwise your suocera—that’s me—will crush you like a bug. That’s what mine did for the first ten years of my marriage.”

  “And then,” Susan asked in a small, timid voice, “you, uh, learned to stand up for yourself?”

  “Oh, no,” Rita exclaimed without the slightest hint of irony. “Then she died.”

  Susan was better at bamboozling old men than Rita had expected. She rushed up to the white-haired security guard, all flushed and misty-eyed, with a sob story about her uncle, who had just been hospitalized for a heart attack back in Mississippi.

  Rita suppressed a smile as she stood at the reception desk, pen in hand, trying to sign in as slowly as possible. “Let me just look up the spelling of his name,” Rita murmured apologetically while scrolling through her phone. “You see, Father De La Pasqua asked me to stop by and give him Communion, but now the name escapes me…”

  “Take your time,” Crane muttered as he turned around to give Susan a hug. Susan deftly reached around and threaded a few of her blond hairs around the clasp of the gold chain that hung around Crane’s neck, so that when Crane tried to extricate himself from the embrace, he found himself hopelessly entangled in Susan’s hair.

  While Susan and Crane struggled, Rita flipped through the book until she found the four pages of log entries from last Monday. She snapped four quick photos, shot Susan a grateful smile, mumbled something about having forgotten something at home, and headed back to the parking garage.

  With the engine running and Luciano Pavarotti serenading her, Rita’s fingers flew impulsively to her phone. She had to know who had been at the hospital, and she had to know now.

  The first two pages were full of people that Rita knew, mostly little old ladies from church, the ones who were always complaining about their kidney dialysis or diabetes (often right after reaching for a donut at Bingo). They all indicated that they had had doctor appointments or lab work that day, which Rita found eminently believable. The only young person that she knew was Angelica, who had stopped by to visit Jay on her way to work. On the third page, she saw that Mary Beth Walker had signed in to visit her mother in the cardiac unit at 1:00 and signed out again at 2:30. Marion Von Beek had visited various elderly parishioners between 2:00 and 4:30. An Al Scalzo had signed in at 2:30 and signed out again at 3:55. He claimed to be visiting Betty Manfredi, but Rita wondered if he were a relative of Sean Scalzo.