The Secret Poison Garden

by Maureen Klovers

  Rita felt a pang of pity for her nemesis. Miss Van Der Hooven had once been pretty, maybe even nice. When this photo had been taken, she was probably filled with the youthful, naïve optimism that this was just the beginning of great things. She could not have imagined that this was to be the high point of her career and, from there, it was to be a long slide into oblivion and the endless tedium of PTA meetings and parent-teacher conferences. And she probably never imagined that her love life would be reduced to blackmailing a younger colleague to be her lover.

  Rita was about to go upstairs when she was suddenly seized by curiosity about a completely unrelated matter. Venturing further into the warren of gray metal file cabinets, she opened a drawer with a small typewritten label: “May 1962-September 1962.” She pulled out the editions for the three days immediately after the widow Schmalzgruben’s first husband’s death.

  Thomas’s obituary was published two days after his death. It was lovingly written and a full half page. The notice described him as the love of Emma’s life, “a pillar of the community,” and a “friend and comfort to all who knew him.” The article lionized him for extending generous credit to his customers in the depths of the Depression, contributing generously to the hospital, and volunteering with the Shriners. The yellowed paper and faded newsprint did nothing to detract from his magnetism; his eyes were dark and mysterious, and there was a hint of a playful smile on his lips.

  Yes, Rita thought, he had definitely been a dashing fellow—and probably loads of fun.

  In the photo, he was in the bloom of health. But the death notice said that he had died after a protracted battle with cancer.

  On a whim, Rita decided to pull the obituaries for the widow’s other two husbands. Was she as lavish in her praises of them? Given that she was still using her first husband’s last name, Rita suspected not.

  The other two obituaries were short and perfunctory, merely listing their birthplace and birthdate and the family members who had survived or predeceased them. In both cases, a sudden heart attack was the cause of death.

  But, as Rita perused the list of family members for Thaddeus, the widow’s second husband, there was one name that stood out. “Predeceased in death by his first wife, Ida Vanderpoel,” she read aloud.

  If she was not mistaken, Vanderpoel was the widow’s maiden name.

  After signing in at the office and exchanging a few pleasantries with her favorite purple-haired Millennial, Rita trudged up the stairs, rapped on the door marked 207, and barged right in.

  Miss Van Der Hooven looked up from her desk, nonplussed. “I’m very busy,” she huffed. “Mid-term grades are due tomorrow.”

  Rita slid into the desk directly opposite the biology teacher’s with a plop. “I think you’ll make time for this.”

  “Oh?”

  Miss Van Der Hooven’s stare was icy. Her red pen was pointed at Rita like a dagger.

  “I’m calling your bluff, Elizabeth.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything,” Rita said simply. “I combed through the Morris County Gazette’s archives. Found the details about the competition for the teacher slot on the Challenger. Made a few phone calls. Found out you were”—she leaned forward and glared at Miss Van Der Hooven, whose hulking frame actually seemed to wither under Rita’s penetrating gaze—“disqualified when the committee found out you were dismissed from the Ph.D. program at the U because of”—here, Rita made a show of consulting her notes—“ ‘gross ethical misconduct in experiments involving human subjects.’”

  “That’s not fair,” Miss Van Der Hooven protested. Her shoulders slumped; the bearded dragon on her sweatshirt seemed to droop. “It was a misunder—”

  Rita held up a hand in a silencing gesture. “Maybe it was a misunderstanding, and maybe it wasn’t. The point is that you’ve been lying all of these years. You didn’t just barely miss the spot on the shuttle. They were never going to pick you after what they uncovered.”

  For a change, Miss Van Der Hooven looked defeated. Rita felt the way she imagined Roman gladiators must have felt just before landing the fatal blow.

  “Now,” Rita said in her scary quiet voice, the one that had worked so well with her children, “in exchange for my silence on this matter, I want to know everything. How you knew Vinnie was involved in that prank, what you had on Coach Stiglitz, what you talked about during your bedside visit last Monday, who may have killed him.”

  Miss Van Der Hooven smirked. “You surprise me, Rita. I’d have thought you’d already assumed that I killed him. After all, I was the last person known to have been with him before he died.”

  Silently awarding Miss Van Der Hooven points for candor, Rita said, “Just answer my questions, Elizabeth. Then I’ll decide whether you had anything to do with it.”

  Miss Van Der Hooven put her red pen down and pushed her stack of papers to the side. “Okay. First, kids talk. I heard a rumor about Vinnie, and when my neighbor Mr. Evans mentioned that Vinnie was his star welding student, I knew the rumors were true. Plus I recognized Rocco’s artwork, and I have intercepted enough notes between Vinnie and Rocco in my lifetime to know that they were best friends—and probably still are.” She sighed. “Rocco doodled on everything, even his desk.”

  With a nod, Rita acknowledged the truth of Miss Van Der Hooven’s assessment. “Go on.”

  “What did I have on Coach Stiglitz? Simple. He was using steroids and giving them to some of his players. I’m a scientist. It didn’t take me long to recognize the symptoms and then sneak into the locker room to pinch a vial and run a chemical composition test. I confronted him and blackmailed him into an affair.”

  “Did Julia know?”

  Miss Van Der Hooven peered over her glasses at Rita, incredulous. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

  “How very scrupulous of you,” Rita said drily. “And did Julia ever confide in you about her little counseling sessions?”

  Miss Van Der Hooven frowned. “Counseling sessions?”

  “If a teenaged girl can be believed—and I think she can—several football players acted inappropriately, to say the least, at a party at which Coach Stiglitz was present. He knew of the incident—witnessed it even—and did nothing to stop it. The two girls confided in Julia.”

  “I knew nothing about that.” Taking off her glasses, she squeezed the bridge of her nose and shook her head sadly. “I wasn’t blind to Jay’s faults, obviously.”

  “Obviously. In fact, you exploited them.”

  “But I didn’t—I didn’t think he was that flawed.” Putting her glasses back on, Miss Van Der Hooven said, “As for who killed him, I can’t say. But my money’s on Angelica.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It wasn’t as though Jay really confided in me—not usually anyway. But I picked up on little things. Like the fact that she seemed to have expensive tastes. He was always buying some piece of jewelry or another that I’d find lying around.”

  Rita was shocked. “You met at his house?”

  “Sure. Lunch hour was a good time. Angelica was sure to be at work.” Miss Van Der Hooven said this almost as if they were doing Angelica a favor for scheduling their lovemaking sessions for a time she was sure to be away. She spoke of Angelica almost the way someone would talk about the cleaning lady.

  “Angelica liked gold,” Miss Van Der Hooven continued. “Gold pendants on gold chains, that sort of thing. The most recent one I saw was in the shape of a horse.”

  Rita felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “Did he say why?”

  Miss Van Der Hooven shrugged. “He said she used to ride horses back in Vermont. Then he asked me if I thought she was a gold-digger. And I said ‘why are you asking?’ And he said, ‘Because you’re a good judge of character.’ So I gave him my honest answer, which was ‘yes.’”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Yeah, sometimes I get that impression too.’”

  “Did he explain what he meant by that?”


  “No, and I didn’t ask.”

  “Why did you go see him at the hospital?”

  Miss Van Der Hooven bristled. “To see how he was. Is that so hard to believe?”

  Yes, Rita felt like saying, it is. If Miss Van Der Hooven’s capacity for love exceeded that of her scaly friends, she certainly did a good job of hiding it. But then, perhaps visiting Jay wasn’t really an act of altruism but of self-interest. After all, a dead lover isn’t much good.

  “Did he say anything about what had happened?”

  “He asked me if I thought Angelica had tried to kill him.”

  How convenient. The dead man had confided his suspicions about his fiancée to the woman who was, in fact, the most likely suspect. “Did he say why he was wondering that?”

  “No. But he just kept saying ‘who else could have done it?’”

  “Well, you, for one.”

  Miss Van Der Hooven glared at her. “Well, for whatever reason, he didn’t accuse me.”

  “And when you left, did you see anyone in the hallway?”

  Miss Van Der Hooven’s gaze was far away, as if replaying the scene in her mind. “Yes,” she finally said, “but it’s probably nothing. I saw a woman with long black hair and sunglasses come out of the women’s restroom. The odd thing was that she seemed to give a little start when she saw me. And then she just darted back into the bathroom.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “A trench coat.”

  “Was she carrying anything?”

  “A large handbag.”

  “Shoes?”

  “They were brown.”

  “Were they loafers?” Rita asked.

  Miss Van Der Hooven shrugged. “Maybe. I really didn’t get a good look. I mean, I didn’t know that I would need to describe her afterwards. She didn’t seem dangerous, just a little odd.”

  “Did she remind you of anyone we know?”

  “Not that I could tell,” Miss Van Der Hooven said. “But I didn’t see her up close.”

  Rita jotted down Miss Van Der Hooven’s description of the mystery woman. It wasn’t much to go on, really. She snapped her notebook shut. “Thank you, Elizabeth. You’ve been more helpful than you know.”

  “So you’ll keep my secret?”

  “I have no reason not to,” Rita said, standing up. “Tell me, if you’re such a good judge of character, why were you so hard on Vinnie?”

  Miss Van Der Hooven’s frosty, imperious look returned. “Because,” she said severely, “Vinnie’s intelligence was exceeded only by his laziness. He seemed determined to let his perfectly good mind rot.”

  “I’ll admit that he’s much smarter than I gave him credit for.”

  “Whereas, I, on the other hand, recognized his innate intelligence immediately. Which is why I,” Miss Van Der Hooven said, “am an excellent judge of character, and you are not.”

  It was a stinging rebuke, and one that had the merit of being both cruel and true. It hurt all the more coming from Rita’s nemesis, this woman who had belittled and berated her at parent-teacher conferences for years.

  Rita stomped across the room, flung open the door, and slammed it shut behind her. Her greatest desire was to prove that Miss Van Der Hooven had killed Jay—and to see those awful bearded dragon sweatshirts replaced by an orange jumpsuit. She pictured Miss Van Der Hooven sobbing as the verdict was read, trembling with anger as she realized that Rita had finally prevailed.

  The only problem was that she didn’t have proof. And she wasn’t even sure that this woman, hateful as she was, had done it.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Rita had two hours to spare before her interview with the county engineer about the planned upgrades to the county’s sewer system. She filled the time first by taking Luciano and Cesare on a long walk and then stopping by the hospital for an impromptu visit with Mrs. LoPresti.

  Old Crane greeted her at the sign-in desk. “All visitors, all patients—everyone—has to sign in here. So please add your name and the particulars of your visit to the log, young lady.” He peered over his spectacles at her, and Rita tried to hide a smile as she signed her name and noted the time: 9:52. No one had referred to her as a “young lady” in decades.

  He puffed out his chest with importance and wagged a finger at her. “Now, I’ll need to see some I.D.”

  Rita handed him her New York State driver’s license. Bringing it within an inch of his bulging eyeballs, he scrutinized her picture closely. “Doesn’t look much like you,” he muttered.

  Which, unfortunately, was true. Rita had shaved thirty pounds off her weight when filling out her application, optimistically reasoning that she was on a new (and very short-lived) diet and was bound to lose the weight soon. She was also younger and less wrinkled in the picture and, at the time it was taken, she had been experimenting with a shade of coppery brown hair dye (before reverting to her normal jet-black color). Plus, she was wearing contact lenses in the photo.

  “I changed my hair color, got glasses, and got old,” she explained.

  “Huh.” He squinted at it again. “Well, the nose is the same. And those thick eyebrows. Yeah, I guess it’s you.”

  Old Crane turned the registry one hundred and eighty degrees and inspected her entry carefully.

  “It’s harder to get into this hospital than Fort Knox,” Rita joked.

  “That may be,” he said, without seeming to detect the irony in her voice. “Maybe I should be guarding the nation’s gold supply.”

  He handed her driver’s license back. Rita stuck it back in her wallet and walked past him to the elevators.

  Rita pressed the button for the third floor, and the doors slowly closed. One thing was clear, Rita thought. No one could have signed in with a false name—at least, not unless their driver’s license was also issued under an assumed identity.

  She alighted on the third floor, tiptoed superstitiously past the room in which Jay Stiglitz had died, and, at the end of the corridor, rapped on the door to room 316.

  “Yes?” came the slightly muffled response.

  Rita pushed the door open a few inches. “Mrs. LoPresti?” she called. “My name is Rita Calabrese. May I come in?”

  She heard the sound of a hospital bed buzzing into an upright position, and then a high quavering voice bade her to enter.

  Pushing the door open all of the way, Rita entered the room. It was sterile and impersonal, the way all hospital rooms were. The lone bright spot was a vase of yellow roses on the side table. A tiny, bird-like figure with gray hair and watery blue eyes blinked at her, leaning forward from a mound of pillows. Mrs. LoPresti was probably Rita’s age, but she appeared much older and frailer. “Rita Calabrese, Rita….” She suddenly brightened. “Oh, you must be Vinnie’s mother.”

  “That’s right.”

  The woman looked embarrassed. “Have we met? I don’t remember, but my memory’s not so good.”

  “No, I don’t think.” Rita moved to her bedside. “Maybe just in passing. I think our sons were classmates.”

  “Vinnie’s such a nice boy,” Mrs. LoPresti said, tilting her head towards the vase. “He brought me those flowers, you know. My son told him I was here, and he stopped by to see me.”

  “He’s a good boy,” Rita said. “We’re very proud of him.”

  Her voice cracked on the last word. She hadn’t said that in years—maybe a whole decade—and here she was saying it to a woman she didn’t even know. Rita felt so ashamed. She should have said it to Vinnie’s face. She should have said it when it mattered.

  “Vinnie tells me my nurse Susan is going to be his sister-in-law.”

  Blinking back a tear, Rita nodded. “Marco and Susan are getting married in June.”

  Mrs. LoPresti sighed contentedly and reclined back onto her pillows. “How marvelous,” she said. “I just love a June wedding. I love all weddings, actually. They’re so full of hope.” She shot Rita a knowing little smile. “Misplaced hope, sometimes.”

  Mr
s. LoPresti listened happily while Rita recounted a few details of the wedding and filled her in on what Vinnie and her son’s classmates were up to.

  “Oh, dear,” Rita exclaimed when she happened to glance at her watch, “I’m going to be late for my appointment with the county engineer.”

  “Well, then, you’d better go.” Mrs. LoPresti squeezed Rita’s hand weakly. “Thank you for coming to visit. I enjoyed our chat.”

  Rita squeezed her hand back. “Oh, I did too.” Rita made a big show of gathering her purse and putting on her jacket. Then, as if it were an afterthought, she asked, “Say, do you remember what time Vinnie visited you last Monday?”

  “My granddaughter called right around then and she’d just gotten out of school, so it must have been around 3:20.”

  “And when did he leave?”

  “I’m not sure, really. But before there was all of that commotion over”—she lowered her already low voice—“the coach.”

  “Ah, yes,” Rita murmured. “What a tragedy.”

  Rita said good-bye to Mrs. LoPresti and hurried back down to the first floor, where she decided to try a little experiment. When Crane tapped the book and admonished her to “be sure to sign out, now,” peering at her over his spectacles once again, she made a big show of checking her watch and then neatly writing “10:05” in the “time-out” box.

  Crane waved her away dismissively. “See you next time,” he said, without bothering to inspect her latest entry.

  Rita turned around. The doors automatically opened as she approached, then closed shut behind her. As she crossed the street and entered the parking garage, she smiled grimly. For all of his fastidiousness about checking in, Crane was remarkably lax about verifying the accuracy of check-outs.