The Secret Poison Garden

by Maureen Klovers

  “Rita,” Sam said, “no one actually ever says that.”

  “Not even if the journalist in question has just been an eyewitness to the arrest of two of Acorn Hollow’s most well-loved citizens for the murder and attempted murder of Jay Stiglitz?”

  “When can you get me the story?”

  “In an hour.”

  “Do it,” Sam said. “If I have to personally drag Marjorie out of bed to re-do the layout, I will.”

  “Give my apologies to Marjorie, and tell her she’s got a homemade chocolate almond mousse cake coming her way.”

  “You’re the best, Rita. I mean it. The best hire I ever made.”

  As she clicked the off button, Rita smiled. Not bad for a woman with no journalism degree and almost no experience.

  When Sal pulled into their driveway a minute later, Rita raced up the front stoop, flung open the door, and hurried to her laptop. There was not a minute to waste.

  Her fingers flew over the keys as she recounted Detective Benedetto’s brilliant analysis of the case (really, he turned out to be much more competent than she had expected), Mary Beth’s tearful outburst when she realized that she had overlooked the incriminating parking ticket, and Angelica’s stoic defiance. Sal puttered around the kitchen, silently refilling Rita’s coffee cup each time she emptied it.

  When she had finished—with two minutes to spare—she triumphantly hit “send.” Then she allowed herself one celebratory waltz around the kitchen with Sal warbling “Lovely Rita, Meter Maid” in her ear, took a hot shower, and fell into bed.

  Rita slept fitfully. Each time she drifted off to sleep, the evening’s events replayed themselves in her dreams. But each time, the dream was slightly different, as though she were watching successive takes of a film’s emotionally-charged climax—and one the actors could not get quite right. The words were the same, but the hand gestures, the silences, the meaningful little looks, and the subtle changes in intonation varied each time. Rita’s brain tortured itself wondering what all of these little permutations meant. Had she been right after all? Or was Angelica actually innocent?

  When she awoke for the umpteenth time at eight-thirty, she decided it was useless to try and go back to sleep. She couldn’t bear the thought of reliving last night one more time. She wanted to think about something—anything—else. Something boring, perhaps, like the planned upgrades to the county’s sewer system.

  Yes, Rita thought, as she put on stretch pants and a wool cardigan, that was just the ticket. Over a leisurely breakfast of biscotti and a latte, she’d finish up her article on the improvements to the county’s sewer system.

  Unfortunately, her heart and mind were not of one accord. She found it nearly impossible to concentrate on her article—her dull, but very informative article—while she still had unfinished business to attend to.

  Or did she? Was what she had found in the Morris County Gazette archives really her business, and did it even matter? And what would she do if her suspicions were confirmed?

  Rita didn’t really have a good answer to any of the questions swirling around in her head. But the investigative journalist inside of her could not let it rest.

  She had to know.

  “Luciano! Cesare!” she called, and her two Bernese snatched their leashes off the hook and rushed to her side. “Siete presti ad essere i miei cani di guardia?”

  They tilted their heads and regarded her intently, earnestly trying to understand. She decided to take their furiously wagging tails as a sign that they accepted their mission as guard dogs.

  “Andiamo!” she commanded, and they followed her out the door and into the Buick.

  They rumbled through the neighborhood, so quiet in midday, and then, as they passed through the cemetery gate, eased onto the gravel road that wound its way through the gravestones. The little black speck—partially obscured by a gray rectangular object that Rita suspected was the Morris County Gazette—grew larger and larger. As they crunched along, the black speck grew larger. Slowly, the widow’s shape came into focus, the cut of her severe black dress, her little scarecrow ankles and odd little booted feet. Her face was buried in the Morris County Gazette, which now appeared a multicolored jumble of pictures and words rather than a monolithic gray mass. But when the wind rippled through the trees, the newspaper fluttered downwards, and Rita caught a glimpse of a choker around her neck. That was her splash of red today.

  Rita parked under the tree by her mother’s grave and, Luciano and Cesare by her side, went to join the widow on her marble slab.

  “Well done, Rita, dear,” the widow Schmalzgruben said, lowering the paper, which bore the headline “Principal’s Wife and Coach’s Fiancée Arrested” in forty-point font. She had the air of a duchess congratulating the winner of a fox chase or a sailing regatta. “This easily must be the most fascinating piece I’ve read in years. Maybe since we landed a man on the moon.”

  “Thank you,” Rita said, taking a seat. The marble was bracingly cold, and she shivered. Luciano and Cesare looked much more comfortable sprawled out on the grass. “But the problem is that now that I’ve dragged Angelica’s name through the mud, I’m not even sure that she did it.”

  “Ketamine was stolen from her former vet on the weekend she was in Vermont.”

  “But that could be a coincidence.”

  Rita’s black-clad companion folded up her newspaper and slid it partially beneath her, to prevent it from being blown away. Her eyes—already pinpoints in her wrinkled, drooping face—narrowed further. “Well, who else seems like a likely suspect?”

  “Miss Van Der Hooven.”

  “Is there any evidence against her?”

  “No. But she had a motive—well, sort of—and the opportunity.”

  “Yes,” the widow said, enunciating each word very distinctly, “but who had the ketamine?”

  “I know, I know,” Rita groaned. “Maybe it’s just that I want Miss Van Der Hooven to be guilty. Get her comeuppance. Or maybe because she’s just so darn clever. She’s smart enough to plan all of this and get away with it.”

  “Well, she can’t be that smart,” the widow said tartly. “After all, she didn’t succeed. The honors go to Mrs. Walker.”

  “She would have, though, if Angelica hadn’t taken him to the hospital right away.”

  The widow cocked her head. “That’s what Angelica wants you to believe, at least. Maybe she waited as long as she thought prudent and called 9-1-1 to seem like the loving spouse. Maybe she thought he would be dead by the time they arrived.”

  “But if she tried to kill him on Sunday and failed, why didn’t she try to finish him off on her Monday morning visit?”

  “Too obvious. And by that logic,” the widow countered, “if Miss Van Der Hooven tried to kill him on Sunday and failed, why didn’t she finish the job on Monday afternoon?”

  Rita didn’t have an answer for this, so they slid into a long companionable silence.

  Then Rita said, “Mary Beth Walker will go to prison, but I wonder if the earlier attempt on Jay’s life will ever be solved. I wonder about that sometimes—all of the cold cases out there. Each day, the trail gets a little colder.”

  Her companion nodded sagaciously.

  “And then,” Rita continued, “there are the murder cases that aren’t exactly cold cases because they are not even, officially, cases. The medical examiner can’t determine the manner of death, or is fooled into thinking the individual died in an accident or of natural causes. A heart attack, perhaps. That could happen even now, but I’m sure it was even more common in the old days.”

  “Lots of things happened in the old days,” the widow observed in a hard, brittle voice.

  Rita nodded. “We romanticize the past sometimes, but it wasn’t always so wonderful, was it? Industrial accidents, children dying of measles and flu, children with polio in iron lungs. Domestic violence.”

  The widow said nothing.

  “While I was in the archives,” Rita said, “researching Miss Van
Der Hooven’s chances of being chosen for the teacher slot on the Challenger—thank you for that tip by the way—I decided to look up your husbands’ obituaries.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Oh, just curiosity. The death announcement for Thomas”—Rita patted the marble slab beneath her, in tribute to the widow’s first husband, who lay just underneath—“was very touching. You gave him a lovely send-off.”

  “Thank you, dear. It was devastating, really, after thirty years of marriage.”

  “You weren’t married to the other two as long.”

  “No,” the widow said in voice so low that Rita could barely hear her. “I didn’t have much time to get attached.”

  Rita smiled ruefully. “I’ll say. Nine days, in the case of Leonard. And Thaddeus—he had the misfortune to die on his wedding night.”

  “I guess the excitement was too much for a middle-aged man with a weak heart.”

  “He wasn’t that weak when he pushed your sister down the stairs.”

  The widow looked at her sharply, her eyes flinty and hard. Luciano leapt to his feet, on alert, and growled softly. Cesare’s ears rotated up and open.

  “The police,” the widow said through gritted teeth, “ruled her fall an accident.”

  “The police chief was his brother.”

  “It was a man’s world back then.”

  “And Thaddeus. He wasn’t that weak either when he stabbed his first wife, your neighbor.”

  “The police said it was self-inflicted. They said she was despondent over the recent loss of her daughter.”

  “The police said a lot of things.”

  “Maybe they still do.”

  “There’s no statute of limitations,” Rita said, “on murder.”

  The reply was soft and halting. “Don’t I know.”

  Rita held her breath. This was as close to a confession as she was likely to get. And, she realized, this was also as much of a confession as she wanted. No one would benefit from putting this crusading centenarian in prison.

  “Are you Catholic?” Rita asked.

  Squinting at her suspiciously, the widow said, “Dutch Reformed, although I haven’t set foot in a church since my last wedding. Why?”

  “Father De La Pasqua is a good person to talk to, that’s all. Even if you’re not Catholic.”

  The widow’s dry lizard lips cracked into a smile. “My mother would roll over in her grave. Not that I’m sure I care.” Laughing, she wagged a finger in Rita’s direction. “See, didn’t I tell you? No one—”

  Rita finished the phrase for her. “—is who he or she seems.”

  The tension was broken at last. Sensing that the danger had passed, Luciano and Cesare laid back down, paws out, basking in the sunshine once more.

  Rita reached down and scratched them behind the ears. “You were right, you know. In so many ways. Angelica was not really the grieving widow. Miss Van Der Hooven was not quite the celibate, dried-up spinster everyone assumed she was. Marco’s fiancée Susan is not so bad really.”

  Her voice swelling with pride, Rita added, “And my children are far cleverer—and far more fiercely protective of each other—than I ever imagined. Vinnie, in particular, is a revelation. He’s been masquerading as a ne’er-do-well for years—and it turns out he’s not!”

  Her companion did not look surprised in the least. Not for the first time, Rita wondered how much she knew.

  As the sun rose higher in the sky, Rita began to tell the widow Schmalzgruben of her plan to invite her children—and Susan—to a big family dinner, with Rita’s grand mea culpa as its climax. As a fitting finale, over dessert, she would give each one of them her coveted red sauce recipe—all ten ingredients, with complete instructions—as a symbol of her commitment to step back and hand the torch to the next generation.

  She recited her speech over and over again, with her friend’s encouragement and occasional edit.

  “Very good, dear,” the widow murmured. “But try not to be so dramatic, or they’ll think that you’re dying of some terrible disease. Now, for the conclusion—”

  But Rita never got to hear the widow’s thoughts on her conclusion. They were rudely interrupted by the strains of “Va, Pensiero” emanating from deep within Rita’s purse. She would have ignored it were it not for the fact that the call was from Sam.

  “Rita,” her editor barked, “Phil Baldassaro is going to give a press conference on the courthouse steps in an hour, and I need you there.”

  The next thing out of Sam’s mouth almost caused Rita to drop the phone.

  “Apparently,” she said, “Angelica hired him as her lawyer.”

  “But he doesn’t do criminal law, other than a few routine DUIs.”

  “Well, he does now, I guess. And he’s off to a roaring start—my sources say he’s about to drop a bombshell. Something about how the arrest of a drug dealer in Vermont exonerates his client. And,” Sam continued glumly, “let’s hope he doesn’t conclude his speech by announcing that he’s filing a libel suit against the Morris County Gazette.”

  Rita felt her heart sink.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  For once, Rita paid far more attention to what Phil was actually saying than to his beautiful blue eyes. Of course, she couldn’t actually see the color of his eyes from where she stood. But he still managed to look like the Hollywood version of a small-town lawyer—tall and handsome, resolute and noble, with just the right amount of righteous indignation that his client had been so defamed.

  “A few hours ago,” he said, the American flag fluttering behind him as the perfect backdrop, “my client was released on bail, which let me tell you, was quite a relief to her and her family.”

  He turned to acknowledge Angelica, who was standing off to his right and gave a solemn little nod to the cameras.

  “But my client,” he continued, his voice rising with indignation, “should never have been arrested in the first place. My client isn’t a perpetrator, but a victim—a woman who has lost her fiancé and then, in the midst of her grief, fallen victim to this gross miscarriage of justice, arrested based on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence.”

  Rita shuddered. Flimsy circumstantial evidence, he might have said, that she had provided to Detective Benedetto.

  Of course, that didn’t mean it was wrong.

  “This circumstantial evidence,” Phil said, “consists of nothing more than the fact that my client was attending a friend’s baby shower in Montpelier, Vermont, on the same weekend that a vial of ketamine was stolen from a veterinarian, Arnold Jenkins, who lives near Montpelier and is an acquaintance of my client. That’s the sum total of the evidence. But even that won’t be admitted in court. Because”—here, he paused dramatically—“a Vermont-based drug dealer, Ramon Spivak, also known as Ramses the Spider, was arrested yesterday following the tragic death of a teenaged girl from an overdose of heroin laced with ketamine. The girl’s friends identified Mr. Spivak as her supplier. Under questioning, Mr. Spivak confessed to stealing the vial of ketamine from Dr. Jenkins.”

  Phil pursed his lips and nodded solemnly. “The death of a teenaged girl is very tragic indeed. But this chain of events does demonstrate, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my client did not steal the ketamine used in what the Acorn Hollow police allege was the attempted murder of Jay Stiglitz—the attempted murder that preceded his actual murder the following day.”

  Nervous laughter rippled through the crowd.

  “I do not know,” he concluded, “whether the incident that landed Jay Stiglitz in the hospital was a suicide attempt, an accidental overdose, or attempted murder. But I do know that my client had nothing to do with it and, in fact, were it not for her, he would have died that day, from the ketamine. She was the one who found him and who immediately called 9-1-1. So I beseech the Acorn Hollow Police Department to end this farce and drop all charges against my client.”

  Rita didn’t have the heart to join the other reporters who thronged around Phil shouting thei
r questions. Instead, she hung back, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible as she furiously took notes.

  She was scribbling the initials “R.S.” for “Ramon Spivak” when a thought suddenly occurred to her. Reaching for her phone, she called Vinnie.

  “Hey, ma, what’s up?”

  The background noise almost drowned out her son’s voice. She could hear hacksaws, drills, all kinds of power tools. She hoped Vinnie was wearing earplugs and eye protection.

  “Are you in class?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was there a boy named Ramon Spivak in your class? He might also have gone by a nickname like—”

  “Spidey? He was a year behind me. A real crazy dude. Rumor had it that he was a dealer too. But don’t worry, ma, I never had nothing to do with him.”

  The sounds suddenly died down, as if he had stepped into the hallway. “Why are you asking?” he said.

  She explained everything to him, and he listened sympathetically.

  “Do you think Miss Van Der Hooven knew he was a dealer?” she asked.

  “Probably. After all,” he reasoned, “she knew everything that went on. And I mean everything.”

  She placed one more call before heading home to file her article.

  “Detective,” she said, “you might want to take a little trip up to Vermont. To ask a certain Mr. Spivak how he got the idea to steal the ketamine, and why he stole it that particular day. And I’d also get his phone records. Find out if he got a call from Miss Van Der Hooven—or Dr. Walker’s office.”

  For perhaps the last time, Rita stood outside the door of room 207. This time, however, she did not knock. Instead, she stood silently, as Detective Benedetto rapped his knuckles on the glass, twice, with Chief D’Agostino at his side.

  The reply was acerbic as usual. “Yes?” Miss Van Der Hooven grunted, in a way that made it clear she actually meant “no.”

  Rita remained standing just outside the door as the two policemen entered and closed the door behind them. Then Rita hurried to press her ear to the glass.

  “Gentlemen,” Miss Van Der Hooven said, “to what do I owe the honor?”