by Lois Winston
“Carol Sabala.”
She coughed several more times, pounded her chest, and then slugged down some more as though that might help. Tears sprang to her eyes now, but they weren’t from grief. “I mean who are you?”
I sank into a metaphysical quandary, unable to speak. Where did one start—a baker, a thirty-three-year-old....
I avoided the imponderable by resuming my offensive. “Did you quit because of the mess Fortier got you into? Were you afraid the murder investigation would reveal how you and Fortier screwed Buzz Fraser?”
“Jean Alcee didn’t get me into any mess,” she snarled. She slammed the glass onto the counter and slung her arms across her formidable chest.
“Do you mean it was your idea?”
“No,” she said. “What I mean is I’d happily do anything for Jean.”
There were two options. She was lying. Or, she meant it. I’d met people like that who wouldn’t take responsibility for living, but stuck to others like cockleburs and rode through life on the blind side of a leg. These people scared me.
“Did you kill him?” I asked.
She looked mystified. “Jean didn’t want to die.”
THIRTY-THREE
No matter how snotty I got, Detective Carman maintained a professionalism designed to incite madness.
I cursed my bad luck—that he’d been there, that he’d been eager to see me, and that I was back in the humid room. My underarms steamed crescent moons into my gray turtleneck.
I’d dutifully reported the whole episode of the fat lip, resenting every minute of it.
He’d suggested that I back off and let the police do their work, to which I’d made a snotty comment about their progress.
He ignored it. “Not because we’re afraid you’ll undermine our investigation,” he said, “but for your safety.”
“You don’t think ordinary citizens can solve crimes?”
He sighed and pushed the report form across the table, indicating with his index finger where I should sign.
“You have nice hands for a policeman.”
“We’re saying this for your protection,” he said. “We have no doubts about your ability to scare the perpetrator. After all, he assaulted you.”
“So what you doubt is my ability to protect myself?”
He refused to be baited. A long finger capped with a neatly, manicured nail, tapped the paper. “Let’s put it this way. If I were you, I wouldn’t eat anything at work.”
Even though sweating under my heavy hair, my neck prickled at Carman’s words. “You said ‘he.’ Do you think my assailant was a man?”
Carman sat sphinxlike, waiting for my signature.
“A friend of mine said you returned to Archibald’s and asked about the Kris Kringle. Do you think it’s important?”
He leaned back in his chair. He shook his head.
“No?” I probed.
“That shake means you’re impossible.”
“My mom would agree. But, if I were a man, you’d both call me determined.”
He glanced at the unsigned report and wiped his forehead with his shirt cuff. His dark hair looked damp at the tips. Since he was obviously hot, I wondered if the room was overheated on purpose. “To be honest, we don’t have the time or energy to pursue an obstruction of justice case.”
“Obstructing justice? Me?”
He rubbed his chin. “If you withhold information.”
“All I have are theories, and I tried to share those with you before.”
“You mean the Julieanne Fortier idea?”
“That was one.”
“Was?”
“I went to see Julieanne Fortier today and eliminated that possibility,” I confessed.
“Eliminated? How?”
“Julieanne would have blown Fortier’s brains out if he had asked her, but I sincerely doubt he requested her to put oleander in his honey, so I don’t think she did it.”
“Oh,” he said, with a twitch of a smile, “solid evidence.”
I looked down as though reading the report and a trickle of sweat rolled to the front of my neck.
“We could view that as tipping off a suspect.”
“Alexis is my co-worker. I have a right to visit her if I want.”
“Alexis is at work,” he said.
My instinct—about which he was so skeptical—registered with the sensitivity of a lover’s lip the promptness of his reply and the timbre of his voice. “You keep awfully good track of the people in this case.”
His hesitance was the kiss of certainty.
“So you and Alexis....” I fluttered my fingers and smirked. I could picture them together. Although Alexis was petite and Carman average-sized, they both had compact bodies, large brown eyes, and humped noses, Alexis’ by nature and Carman’s most likely by a fist. They’d age into lookalikes. I could imagine them wearing matching shirts and walking hand in hand at the mall. “Fortier left Alexis a nice condo,” I teased. “Maybe the two of you plotted the whole thing.”
“I met Alexis on this case,” he said. “I haven’t asked her out. I won’t until the case is concluded.”
He was so forthright that I felt ashamed of my prying. I certainly didn’t want to discourage him. Alexis needed someone to distract her from her hopeless crush on Buzz. “Can’t we work together?”
“My question exactly.”
We sat across from each other locked in a childish stare-down. I’d honed the skill with my mother and it came back to me in an instant.
He blinked first. “What do you want?”
“If you tell me one thing, I’ll sign this and then we can both get out of this steam bath.”
“That’s extortion.”
“And I’m a bitch. But if I were a man, this would be negotiating and I’d be called tough.”
Carman didn’t agree or disagree to the deal.
“Did you ever find the honey?” I asked.
He snorted. “That’s your question?”
I nodded.
He seemed relieved. “No. We didn’t.”
THIRTY-FOUR
On my second day off, housework became unavoidable. As I pushed our oiled dust mop around the oak floors, my mind meandered through motives.
Buzz had the best one. Revenge for stealing the show. If Fortier had discovered Buzz was drinking again, maybe he had used that against him in other ways as well. Fortier’s death had not only eliminated any future threats, but also positioned Buzz for a move into management, not that Buzz would have any interest in management. He wasn’t that concerned about money. He liked to cook. Revenge, pure and simple, would be his motive.
Dust balls and cat hair collected before the gray ropes of the mop. I swept through a column of ants, marching toward Lola’s bowl. I pushed the mess onto the piece of cardboard Chad and I kept behind the refrigerator. It worked better than our dustpan.
I dotted a terry-cloth rag, part of my last bathrobe, with lemon oil, and started the most boring, and therefore the most neglected task—dusting. After the first windowsill, my dust cloth was black, but I didn’t fold it yet, as the others were just as grimy.
A whole chain of people had advanced because of Fortier’s death, but that didn’t seem like a strong motive since we all received abysmally low wages.
Until the day before yesterday, I’d never considered Suzanne a spurned lover. She might have been more jealous of Delores than any of us dreamed. The truth was I found revenge and ambition better motives because I understood them better. Jealousy mystified me. I’d long ago decided if a person didn’t like me, that was his problem, and if he liked someone else better, that was his prerogative. Competing for a man’s affections was a waste of energy.
Another possibility was money. Maybe Alexis had killed him for the condo. I wondered what Carman thought. He hadn’t asked her out yet. That could be out of professionalism, as he claimed, rather than any real suspicion.
Now that I’d finished windowsills, I folded the cloth to a fr
esh spot for the furniture and realized I should have started with the cleanest stuff first. That showed how little expertise I had at housework. I felt equally as inept with my investigation.
I kicked myself for wasting time on the Kris Kringle. Even with all the givers and recipients matched, anyone could have slipped Fortier the honey, including Alexis. Since Patsy, Fortier’s Kris Kringle, had opted not to give him anything, Fortier’s only curiosity about the honey was probably why he had received just one present.
I hated to throw away a good rag, but every fold was now black with grime. I filled a gallon jug with Miracle Gro and water and made the rounds of my neglected plants.
There was the possibility of a jealous Delores. The police had never found the jar of honey. Maybe Delores had fabricated it. A distraction. No, Eldon had corroborated its existence. Well, how about the protective uncle, who not only raised bees but had scratches on his hand, or a protective mother....
I needed to find out more about Esperanza’s hija natural. A weird thought tapped at my mind. What if Fortier had had his fling with Esperanza nineteen or twenty years ago? I tried to dismiss it. Certainly he’d know if he’d gotten Esperanza pregnant. I couldn’t believe Fortier would make a play for his own daughter. Yet, I knew such ugliness existed.
The phone rang. “Hello.” Silence greeted me and I guessed at the caller. “Mary?”
“Isn’t Chad there?”
“He had a job this morning.”
“Oh, I thought he’d be home.”
Fat chance.
“Well, would you please deliver this message to him?” the long-suffering voice began. “Tell him that I had to go to the Social Security office because they’re saying I’ve been using the wrong number....”
The woman would have needed to moan to sound more self-pitying. I felt fury bubbling up in me. This woman had abandoned her baby, left him with her parents. Granted she had divorced her alcoholic husband and already had a twelve-year-old boy to support, but it’s not as though she’d settled down to that task. Instead she’d tried on men like suits of clothes, until finally after about ten years she remarried to a man who turned out to be worse than her first.
“... and then after I do that, I’m going to have to ride the bus all the way out to Emeline....”
“Mary, I don’t know when I’m going to see him.”
“But you will tell him, won’t you, that....”
I seethed. What claim did Mary have to Chad’s devotion? After marrying her second jerk, she had retaken custody of Chad who was already eleven years old. They had no control over the older boy Ashley, a grown hoodlum. He did nothing. When they tired of his sponging, Ashley stole what he needed. He resented his younger brother. Chad, on the other hand, longed for his grandparents. Only when Ashley beat him, blackened both eyes, broke his left arm, cracked a rib, and left contusions up and down his legs, only when Chad was taken to the hospital and Child Protective Services got involved, only then did he get to return to his grandparents.
The stuff Mary griped about constituted the mainstay of her life, but she talked as though she were being singled out and intentionally harassed. I stifled the urge to tell her these were her problems. I could refuse to tell Chad, but he would not appreciate it. And that’s what I hated most of all. In spite of her neglect and irresponsibility, he loved her.
“I’ll tell him.” I sounded as martyred as she did. Chad would, however, get an edited version. I was not about to guilt trip him for her.
After the call, I sat on the back steps and did some serious thinking about murder. To be more honest, I pictured Mary and me in the kitchen. I had a frying pan in hand. Mary pushed my buttons, the Turner temper blazed, and KAPOW. The scene didn’t even strain my imagination.
But the crime at Archibald’s had not been done in a fury. It had been planned. I imagined collecting some oleander. Easy enough. There was a bush of it at the corner of our street. I could see myself boiling it into a syrup and mixing the potent poison in some honey, but I couldn’t see myself actually giving it to Mary. Whoever had killed Fortier must have really hated him.
THIRTY-FIVE
Chad unlaced and pulled off his boots. His body sank deeper and deeper into the couch. He reached for the remote.
Later I would casually say, “Oh, by the way, Mary called.” If I told him now, he’d jump up to return the call. For the moment, I wanted him to relax. And to be mine.
Chad flicked through the channels, stopping on the local news. Unlike me, he didn’t mind if someone talked while he watched television. He didn’t become engrossed; often he had to switch back and forth between programs to generate enough interest and action to hold his attention.
“Chad,” I said in my most buttery voice. I curled beside him and put a hand on his thigh.
His head whipped around. He eyed me suspiciously. He expected me to confess that I had not really visited the police yesterday. He couldn’t believe that I’d done what he wanted, and he knew me too well to think that I had complied fully.
I held his hand and met his eyes. I’d mastered my technique by age ten. His face changed like a composite sketch as information was added. The eyes mottled with hurt, worry, and guilt. In spite of his concern, he loved me too much to force me to change. I wondered if this meant he loved me more than I loved him, since I had no intention of stopping my no-smoking campaign.
Chad gave me a chagrined smile. “So, what’s up?”
“A new angle.”
He sighed deeply, but didn’t protest. He had already known there would be one, and accepted it. He flicked through the channels.
Hungry for a trustworthy audience, I spewed my latest idea about Fortier and Esperanza—that Delores could be their offspring.
“You think Fortier is sleeping with his own daughter?” His incredulous, grossed-out voice churned up all my doubt. “Why? To get revenge on Esperanza? Someone who dumped him twenty years ago?”
“Not really,” I said lamely. I pushed to the other side of the couch to pout. “But then, I don’t think anyone would sleep with his daughter, but guys do.”
“Well, Delores isn’t Fortier’s daughter.”
“How do you know?”
Chad’s tight lips, hurt eyes, and flurry of channel surfing reminded me that he was barely tolerating this.
“You’re forgetting high school biology.”
He sounded condescending.
“Enlighten me.”
I sounded sarcastic.
“Delores is a blue-eyed babe.”
For all my pontificating about jealousy, ice-cold needles stabbed my heart. Usually Chad couldn’t even keep my co-workers straight.
“Esperanza’s Mexican and Fortier’s French, right?” he continued.
“Both brown-eyed,” I said, letting his argument sink in. It was highly unlikely that Delores was Fortier’s daughter. Yet the Medina clan clearly carried around genes for fair hair and skin. Esperanza’s relatives had red hair and freckles. But I didn’t want to argue about biology and recessive genes. My mind was mulling over Chad’s words. He didn’t call women babes.
THIRTY-SIX
On a small square of waxed paper in the center of the stainless steel bakery table, creamy caramel rolled down from the white stick plunged into an apple’s heart. Around the stick, the rich brown had thinned to reveal a circle of green, most likely a crisp Granny Smith. The caramel, collected on the waxed square, beckoned to my finger. While I didn’t feel like eating a whole caramel apple for breakfast, I could scarcely resist a sample.
But Detective Carman’s words haunted me: “I wouldn’t eat anything at work.” Scarier still, the person who’d put the apple on the table knew me well, knew that working in the bakery, I was immune to the temptations of cookies, muffins and pastries. However, I loved the tart and sweet crunch of a caramel apple. If I left it around, it would lure me all day.
I pulled out the two-foot rolling pin and whacked the apple as though it were a rat. I didn’t want to be
tempted to fish it out of the newly lined garbage can. Shaken, I wiped up the smashed bits of apple and shook them into the fresh plastic liner. I threw the towel into the wash, cleaned and stashed the rolling pin, and lathered my hands with soap. I fought tears. This whole thing was getting to me. I was not cut out to be a detective.
I collected my wits and headed to the cooler for my dough. I heard a whistled rendition of Jingle Bell Rock.
I wanted to bolt to the phone in the hall, to call Chad, and to keep him talking for the next hour until someone else got to work. I didn’t want to be alone with anybody in the kitchen. My stubborn, stupid streak rooted me as the whistling grew louder and louder.
Buzz came out of the back hallway and beamed at me.
“Christmas is over!” I snapped.
He stopped whistling. He stopped walking. He sat down the tray he’d been balancing on the prongs of a hand.
“Carol?” he said softly from across the room. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“That apple. You left me that apple.”
“Yes,” he said. “I thought you loved caramel apples.”
“Why?”
Like a pubescent boy, he looked down. He wore steel-toed work shoes. From across the kitchen, I could see the blush crawl up his fair neck. “I like you.”
“You can’t like me,” I stammered. “I’m married.” I moved my arms like an adamant umpire calling safe. “Forget it.”
“I respect that, Carol,” he said so quietly I barely heard him. “It doesn’t stop how I feel.”
I felt stupid to my toes. My eyes stung with frustration. I had possibly made an egregious error and humiliated my favorite person in the kitchen. “Why’d you give me that apple?”
We stayed frozen on opposite sides of the kitchen. Since I’d already asked Buzz that question, he pondered alternate responses.
“I gave you the apple to make up after the other day. I felt bad that I’d pushed you to tell me about your lip. That’s the kind of thing a person has to be ready to talk about.”
“Chad didn’t hit me,” I blurted.