by Lois Winston
This was ridiculous. “Look,” I said, “if I’d put poison in my lebkuchen, I would have knocked off half our clientele, not just Mr. Fortier.”
I had a good idea where and how he’d ingested the poison, but I thought Delores ought to tell them about that.
Detective Peters made another abrupt stop sign and I expected her to say, “Achtung!” Instead she droned, “We’re not making accusations, Ms....” She thought a moment about her notes, “... Sabala.”
Her fair face went through the mental gyrations I’d seen hundreds of times during my life. She didn’t ask the usual, “What nationality is that?” Possibly she’d skipped to the next step of altering her stereotypes to include an auburn-haired, Americanized, blue-green eyed Hispanic, or she’d taken the path of less resistance and decided—erroneously—that Sabala was my married name. Whatever she made of my last name, it didn’t seem like a good sign that she remembered it without checking.
“He got a Kris Kringle present,” Delores said softly. All eyes turned to her.
“What?” Detective Peters asked.
“He got a Kris Kringle present,” Delores repeated.
“What did he get?” Detective Peters demanded.
“Honey.”
“Pardon me?”
This was not new information, but the new source of it riveted their attention. “Honey. A little jar with red and white ribbon around it. It looked homemade like Tio Victor’s.” She stopped for a moment as the crowd looked toward her uncle.
Victor shrank.
“I mean, at first, I thought Tio Victor must be his Kris Kringle, but now that I know Jean,” she bit her full lips, “was murdered with the honey, I know it couldn’t have been Tio Victor.”
“Victor had my name,” Ray piped in.
The severe eyes of Detective Peters turned to him. “Did he give you any honey?”
Ray gulped. “Well ...yeah. But that was a couple of days before Fortier died. It had a blue ribbon on it.”
“That’s true,” Delores said. “Tio Victor wouldn’t put a red ribbon on nothing.”
My wild imagining of Victor as a gang member may not have been so far off the mark. From living in California, I knew the Norteños claimed the color and their rival Sureños claimed blue. If Victor used blue ribbons and ‘wouldn’t put a red ribbon on nothing’ possibly he did have an affiliation with the Sureños. Right now, though, he was white as a gringo.
“Where is the honey, Mr....?”
“Fitzgerald,” Ray volunteered. “In my locker.”
The male officer, Detective Carman, appeared beside Ray and escorted him toward the locker room.
Everyone waited for more. “And you, Ms. Medina,” Detective Peters said impatiently, “what happened with this red-ribboned honey?”
“Jean ate it with scones. He wanted me to try it.”
Esperanza blanched and closed her eyes. “Aiieee.”
“Of course I didn’t.”
“Why not?” Detective Peters asked.
“I’m allergic to honey.”
Detective Peters scribbled notes while the rest of us digested this detail. Eldon was shifting from foot to foot and had grown a mustache of perspiration. “Vista Dining Room is sold out tonight,” he muttered to the female cop.
I looked over my shoulder. Triumphantly carrying a jar of honey in an evidence bag, her partner returned through the swinging door by the sinks. Ray followed with a sheepish look and mumbled to all of us, “That’s been in my locker the whole time.”
Even though Ray kept a padlock on his locker, I was appalled the uniforms hadn’t found the jar during their initial search. From the grim look on Detective Peters’ face, she shared my dismay.
“Detective?” Eldon said, like a boy who desperately needed permission for the restroom.
Peters turned back to him. She was nearly as tall as he, but looked solid, while Eldon looked like an inflated doughboy. “We appreciate the fact you have a busy kitchen to run. We hope to interrupt its operation as little as possible, but we do have a homicide investigation here. Let me make it clear that we have no way of knowing if the poison was administered with the honey.”
Her skepticism didn’t ring true.
I did suspect the poison had not been administered with the honey in the baggy. At the same time, what were the chances of two jars of homemade honey floating around the kitchen without a connection? I didn’t believe in coincidence. Had someone known the poisoned honey might point toward Victor and made the effort to change the ribbon from blue to red?
“We invite all of you to come to the station voluntarily for questioning. We would, at some point, like to talk to all of you, if you know something, or even think you might know something.”
The officer smiled sardonically and the mossy eyes looked right at me. “Or, if you’re guilty.”
TWENTY-ONE
I got lucky. There were twenty-five Medinas in the phone book, but only one Victor and he had his address listed. I slipped on my black sweat pants but paused before I slipped my red hooded sweatshirt from its hanger. The hood would hide my distinctive hair and would be nice if the morning sprinkle turned into rain, but maybe I shouldn’t wear red. I decided that I was being paranoid and pulled on the sweatshirt.
My goal was to drive out to Watsonville to see if Victor Medina kept bees at his home, and, maybe, with luck, to talk to someone at the home who was not on high alert. Outside the clouds were already drifting inland. During the drive, I sorted through my logic, trying not to be distracted by the sunshine and the crisp colors of the ocean. The world smelled like fresh soil.
The one person with whom Fortier had tried to share his honey, didn’t and wouldn’t, sample it. Another coincidence? As far as I knew, the heroines in my murder mystery collection didn’t believe in them.
If I assumed Delores’s allergy to honey was not a coincidence, where did that leave me? Did Delores kill Fortier, using a food she’d not be expected to taste? That didn’t seem likely. It didn’t make sense, even if she’d found out about her mom and Fortier. Why would she use a food that called attention to her? Besides, her sorrow was convincing.
On the other hand, what did I know of her acting ability? I’d never been good at dissembling and often failed to recognize it. I hadn’t even known my brother was gay until he’d decided to tell me.
Other people might have thought to protect Delores from Fortier, like say, for example, her mom. Eldon had called Esperanza distraught. For all his conversational ineptitude, Eldon made accurate assessments of employees and situations. Maybe Esperanza was distraught. Maybe she had more on her mind than Delores’s depression. But, then we had Tio Victor, who not only would want to protect Delores, but also who farmed bees.
I turned off Beach Street and followed the numbers down Victor’s street. Some of the houses were shabby and peeling, others painstakingly cared for. This was a hopeful neighborhood of upward bound immigrants: homeowners with a nice car here and there, a satellite dish occupying one front lawn, pink flamingos in the rose beds of another. Graffiti blighted fences and sides of buildings in the alleys, but the neighborhood lacked the poverty found across the bridge or in the migrant camps.
Now, in the mid-afternoon, the area was quiet and peaceful. But this was New Year’s Eve and by nightfall, some drunken fool would be shooting a gun into the air. Since bullets responded to gravity, Russian roulette would have been a fairer way to celebrate the holiday.
Victor’s house was the last on the street before it dead-ended at the levee. It was a white house with two matching squares of shriveled lawn. No car sat in the stubby driveway before the detached garage, and as I parked my Karmann Ghia nobody peeked from the windows.
I slammed the car door, but no one stirred. I kept on my sunglasses and flipped up the hood of my sweatshirt. I rang the doorbell and waited. Nobody answered, but I felt like I was being watched. I glanced at the big window to my left, but the beige curtain didn’t stir. I was paranoid.
&nb
sp; I scrambled up the river embankment. On top of the levee a concrete bike path followed the curve of the river as far as I could see. A trickle of water flowed through thick brush. From up on this embankment, I had a lovely view of the agricultural land stretching away from the neighborhood toward distant mountains, sharp blue in the fresh air. To my other side, I looked down into the expanse of Victor’s backyard.
A little goat ran around in the center of the yard, bleating and bunting at a dodging terrier. Yard was a misnomer. It looked like at least a full acre, with a chicken coop and barn at the back. I didn’t know exactly what an apiary looked like—some sort of open boxy structure, I presumed. The coop and barn blocked my view into the far corner of the grounds.
A pebbled, concrete patio guarded the weathered back door, flanked on both sides by a riot of plants, both potted and in the ground. No oleander. But Victor wouldn’t want his bees to feast on oleander all the time unless he intended to poison everyone who ate the honey. He had given a jar to Ray. He didn’t want to kill Ray, did he?
Although I believed both jars of honey originated here—with Victor Medina—maybe the jar for Fortier had been tampered with later.
As I scanned the yard, my heart pounded with nervousness and excitement. What I was about to do probably constituted stupidity, but I was enjoying the pumped-up, adrenaline rush. I felt sixteen again. I wondered if Fortier experienced the same thrill during his illicit forays into the walk-in cooler. Maybe I was having some sort of early, mid-life crisis of my own.
The six-foot, redwood fence kept the goat and dog from racing off along the river, but it was no deterrent to an able-bodied person. I scrambled down the slope from the levee. I found a knothole to use as a toehold and hoisted myself onto the two-by-four top of the fence, grateful for the kitchen work and volleyball that kept my body toned. The little dog looked harmless, but to be certain, I made kissing noises at him. Pink tongue lolling and stubby tail wagging, the terrier bounded toward me.
I dropped into the yard, and a bomb exploded on the back of my head.
TWENTY-TWO
Bugs skittered over my neck and face, but I couldn’t move. Something wet, rough and smelly lapped at my cheek.
“¿Quién es?” a woman asked.
“Some white chick.” The voice sounded young and mystified, but it confirmed what I’d always suspected. Mexicans didn’t see anything Mexican in me, either.
The woman demanded, like mothers everywhere, for an explanation. In Spanish she asked why he’d hit me.
“I didn’t hit her,” the boy retorted defensively in English.
“¡Dìmelo en español!” The mother slapped him for not speaking to her in Spanish. Then, before he had a chance to translate for her, she decided she’d understood him well enough. “Mentiras,” she hissed. The word meant lies.
“I didn’t hit her,” the young voice whined in English. “I threw the grain bag at her.”
I was glad to know I didn’t have an army of ants marching down my neck, just some harmless columns of oats. The terrier whimpered in my ear and licked it.
“Aiiee, Dios,” said the long-suffering mother. She picked up my hand with cool, callused fingers and let it drop. I hadn’t expected her to let go. My hand plopped into a small, silky pile of grain and came to rest on the rough weave of a gunnysack. I couldn’t muster the will to open my eyes. My sunglasses rested on the top of my nose. “Aeii, mijo, cariño pendejo, ¿porque hiciste esto?”
While pendejo literally meant a pubic hair, the slang usage translated to something closer to idiot, or dummy. I heard this type of language so often in the kitchen that I understood it even in my groggy state. She’d just asked her dear little dummy why he’d done that.
“She’s in red,” the boy explained, more respectfully in Spanish. “I thought she was a Northsider. She even has a weird red car.”
“¡Es una gringa!”
My back had been to him, my hair covered by the hood. “Is she dead?” he asked worriedly.
I waited for the answer, half wondering myself.
“No sé.”
A boot nudged my rib cage.
“¿Que vamos a hacer con el cuerpo?” The mother asked what they were going to do with my body.
The boy proposed dumping me in the river.
I forced my eyes open. “Abundio.” I meant to shout, but nothing came out, so I tried again.
“Abundio?” the boy said to me. “Do you know Abundio?” He dropped to his knees, his freckled face close to mine.
The mom leaned over my face from the other side, another mass of freckles. I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened them again, but Abundio’s friendly, goony face was still there. I’d simply died and been reincarnated when he was twelve. “Abundio?”
The two freckled faces gawked at each other and then back at me. The dampness of the ground was soaking through my cotton sweats.
“Emiliano,” the boy said.
“Pendejo,” the mother hissed. She castigated the boy for having given his name. What if the woman filed a police report?
Now that I was awake, the boy argued back in Spanish that I’d been trespassing.
The mother suddenly brightened. “Mijo, ¿es la novia de Abundio?” She wanted to know if I could be Abundio’s girlfriend.
The boy shrugged and sighed elaborately. “How should I know?” he asked in Spanish.
Spanish shot from the mother’s mouth, rapid‑fire, machine-gun style, like a Puerto Rican. Children in Mexico did not speak to their parents the way the boy had. This was what happened when you brought your children to “el norte.” She should send him back to the ranch to live with his grandparents.
Emiliano bent his head, crossed his wrists and looked bored, the tirade as familiar as Mass.
“Ask her,” the mother commanded.
“Ah, Mama,” the boy pleaded.
She shoved him and we almost kissed. “Are you Abundio’s girlfriend?”
I turned my head to empty the grain from my ear and managed to brush my face with a hand. “Yes,” I said. “I’m Abundio’s girlfriend.” This was, no doubt, his mom and brother. For the moment girlfriend status might kindly dispose them towards me. I didn’t know how I’d get out of the situation, but it didn’t seem wise to underestimate two people who’d calmly discussed dumping my body in the river.
“Es vieja,” she said to her son.
The boy wrinkled his nose.
I smiled, like I didn’t know she’d called me old, and tried to sit up. The mother took my hands and pulled me upright, although I was about eight inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than she was. The wiry, red-haired lady was only a few years my senior. The thought that if my life had been different, I could have a child as old as Abundio, gave me a strange feeling, mostly thankful, but a bit wistful, too. A young woman might be ignorant and inexperienced, but at least she had the energy to raise kids. At the moment, I felt too old for children, or for this kind of escapade. I brushed grain from my sweats and tentatively rolled my head.
“Venga a la casa por un pan dulce.” The woman half-closed one green eye and inspected me with a sideways glance from the other.
I used a common defense; I feigned ignorance of the language, and looked, with what I hoped was a convincingly puzzled face, to the boy for a translation.
“Ya wanna have some sweet bread?” he asked.
She nudged her son. They were so similar in size, that they could have worn one another’s clothes if he wanted to cross dress in a skirt and blouse, and she in a Giants cap, an oversized, boldly blocked shirt to the knees, and big jeans. She told him to ask my name.
He complained to her in Spanish. He was supposed to meet Freddy. He didn’t have time to spend the afternoon translating.
The steely little woman argued back, again threatening to send him back to el rancho in Mexico. After a minute of passionate negotiation, they agreed Emiliano would ask my name, and then, he could meet Freddy.
When Emiliano had done his duty, I thou
ght of the Kris Kringle and the little gifts Abundio would have received recently from Suzanne. Then I lied with appalling dexterity, “I’m Suzanne.”
The mother grinned with a smile I knew from the kitchen—Abundio’s smile. “Es tan bonita.”
~*~
When I was seated at a Formica table, the mother brought me ice wrapped in a hand towel. I pressed it to my head as she served me pan dulce and horchata. She pointed at herself and said, “Hortencia.”
“Thank you, Hortencia.” I lowered the icepack and to be polite nibbled at the sweet bread. I choked down the drink, which tasted like the liquid of rice pudding before it was cooked.
Hortencia remained standing in the center of the worn linoleum, arms folded over her blouse, her eyes squinting at me. “Suzanne,” she said meditatively.
I suspected that I would live to rue this day. But since I was here, I needed to make the most of it. I pointed at the pan dulce. “Honey?”
Her eyes widened and she grinned. “Sí, sí.” She hustled to her cupboards, painted a cheerful yellow. She pulled out a jar of honey and set it on the table. As she watched, I spread a bit on the bread. Mexicans didn’t typically eat honey on pan dulce and she seemed amused by this gringa curiosity.
The jar was half empty so the honey seemed safe to eat. I chewed a mouthful of the bread and made a big show of smacking my lips and making yummy sounds. Life would have been much simpler at the moment if I hadn’t pretended not to understand Spanish. Of course, if she thought I could communicate with her, it wouldn’t be long before she asked me why I had jumped into the backyard. Thank God Emiliano, her translator, had taken off to meet his buddy.
Hortencia scraped a step stool across the floor and climbed up to reach a top shelf. I stood to see what she was after and felt woozy. But at least for my effort, I glimpsed a shelf stocked with pint jars of honey—all tied with blue ribbons.
She stepped down and thrust a full jar at me. “Very good honey.”