by Lois Winston
“I didn’t think he did,” Buzz said, too quickly.
Perhaps he had thought Chad and I were on the fritz. What better time to make a move? Or perhaps he’d killed Fortier and had now given me a special treat injected with arsenic. Perhaps he was drinking again, and had lost a firm grip on reality. Perhaps, he was the kind, gentle soul I’d always thought, trying hard to cheer up a friend who’d been behaving in a strange way.
This scene sucked, but at least I knew what I had to do.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Without getting my dough, I turned back to the bakery. I snatched the dirty towel from the wash and pinched smashed apple from the clean, garbage can liner.
I felt his presence behind me and whirled. Buzz blocked the doorway.
My heart hammered.
He stared at the apple fragments in the white terry.
“New recipe?” He flashed a sardonic smile and lifted one blond brow.
“Cobbled apple.” The riposte came from some altered state while my conscious mind scrambled to decide whether Buzz Fraser meant to kill me. If he drank our kitchen sherry on the sly, and apparently he did, I didn’t know him, and I didn’t know what he was capable of, except masterful deception. Behind me lay the rolling pin. Just a couple of steps and an arm’s reach.
“You are acting bizarre.” Buzz stepped into the room. “Are you afraid of me, Carol?”
I nodded. Buzz was not dumb. My fingers trembled as they folded the towel around my evidence. Forensics could confirm or assuage my doubts.
“You think I killed Fortier?”
I decided if he weren’t guilty, nothing would happen if I reached for the rolling pin, and if he were guilty, I needed an equalizer. I bounded and stretched. So did Buzz.
As I jerked down the rolling pin, he caught my wrist, but I continued the momentum with my whole body. The wooden roller slammed into his thigh with reassuring solidity.
“Jesus Christ, Carol!” He did not loosen the manacle on my wrist. “I knew you were going to do that!”
I kicked at his shins, but he jumped back, his grip on my wrist plunging me forward. I heaved around my left and hit him on the side of the face hard enough to hurt my fist.
“Let go of the goddamn rolling pin, Carol!”
He grabbed for my free hand, but I hopped back and kicked at him.
He stuck a foot behind my leg, tripped me, and caught me as I fell. He stumbled after me on to the floor, sprawled over my body, and pinned me to the tile. He panted. His chef’s hat had fallen off and his fine hair puffed in various directions.
I bucked and twisted.
“Stop it, Carol.”
“You stop.”
“I will when I know you don’t intend to hurt me.”
“Me hurt you?” I said angrily, thinking about ways to inflict great bodily damage.
“You don’t think I’d hurt you? Do you?” he asked. He searched my eyes. “I didn’t kill Fortier, Carol. And I’d never, ever hurt you.”
“You’re hurting me now.”
He released my arms. I could have bashed his head with the rolling pin, but I’d decided he was telling the truth.
“Why did you follow me in here?”
His hand reached for my hair. I jerked away.
“Because I couldn’t stand having you shut me out.” The large fingers caressed my cheek, gently stroked my hair. “I’ve cared about you for years, Carol. But it seems like ever since Christmas, ever since you figured it out, you’ve felt compelled to treat me like shit.”
“I thought you poisoned that apple to kill me.”
Buzz shook his head. Straddling my lap, he reached up to the table and pulled down the white terry package. He opened the towel and stuffed bits of apple into his mouth.
I panicked. “No! No! Spit it out, Buzz! Spit it out!”
For some reason he did as I commanded. He secreted his mouthful into the towel as delicately as an Archibald’s customer disposing of an olive pit. His gaze roamed over my face. He spread over me, my body sandwiched between cool ceramic and warm muscle. I thought a thousand things, but my lips had a mind of their own.
It was the saddest kiss of my life. Beyond the tender lips and the breath mint, I could taste it, the fumes rising to his mouth from the high-octane pool in his stomach.
THIRTY-EIGHT
“What are you doing?” Victor said.
Buzz and I untangled and stood. Victor didn’t wait for an answer to what we were doing. He rolled his eyes and beat a retreat to the storage room. Usually Victor moved stealthily. After he left us, he made sure everything rattled and jingled and thumped as he loaded stacks of plates and heavy rubber honeycombs of cups and glasses onto a cart.
Buzz and I stared at each other. I felt flushed. He was an excellent kisser. I brushed bits of grit from the forearms of his smock. He dusted my back. “How’s your face?” I asked.
“Your kisses would fix anything.”
I percolated inside. I loved this man dearly, with enough lust to kindle a fire.
“My thigh still hurts,” he suggested.
I shoved him. “We need cold showers.”
“Together?” he asked.
I shook my head.
Buzz reached down for his hat and put it on. I picked up the towel and my blunt instrument.
“You’ve been drinking, Buzz.”
He shook his head in perfect denial, but where was the surprise, the shock at my statement?
“I haven’t had a thing, Carol.”
My body throbbed, charged with the kisses, but I was too single-minded for an affair. I lacked any refined skill at duplicity. I also loved Chad and any hint of disloyalty from me would bump his occasional insecurity into permanent paranoia.
“You haven’t had a thing this morning,” I qualified.
Victor clattered by with his cart. He looked studiously forward.
Buzz lightly clasped both my hands. “I don’t regret our moment,” he said, “and I’m going to make damn sure you never do either, Carol.”
He kissed my forehead.
I grabbed him and hugged him with all my might. “Suzanne saw you drinking the kitchen sherry,” I murmured.
His body stiffened in my grasp. “Big Red gave that to me as a Kringle present. He didn’t know about me,” Buzz said miserably. “He wanted me to try it.”
The lie was elaborate. “Buzz, when you kissed me, I tasted alcohol.”
He pulled away. His blue eyes looked shattered, like marbles baked in an oven. Shaking his head, he backed into the kitchen.
THIRTY-NINE
When Victor pushed by with his empty cart, I called to him.
He jumped. “Ay, a la chingada,” he muttered. “I didn’t see nothing.”
“It’s not that,” I said. I waved him into the bakery.
“First Buzz, now me,” he teased.
“I thought you didn’t see anything.”
He smiled sheepishly. He gaped at the towel on my table.
“You’re here early,” I said.
He continued to stare at the towel, his strong face contorting at the sight of the smashed apple. “Is that cabron kid. He’s homesick.”
“What’s the matter with Abundio?”
“Cold, flu, his hair, his freckles, his como se dice.” He pointed a stubby finger at the terry cloth. “Wha’s that, looks like baby caca?”
“That’s some apple that Buzz spit out.”
He shrugged as if to say gringos were past figuring.
Fair enough since I couldn’t figure myself. Why had I screamed for Buzz to spit out the apple?
“I bet they screw me and don’t get nobody to help me,” Victor griped. “Do you wanna bet a dollar they screw me, Carol?” He thrust out a hand for a wager.
The masticated apple on the towel distracted me. Obviously, even as Buzz stuck the apple in his mouth, I’d thought it might be poisoned. Did I believe Buzz had poisoned it, and then enacted an elaborate charade? I was going nuts. I shook my head.
“Don’t wanna bet, huh? Smart lady. They’ll screw me.”
Did I think someone had spotted the apple during the brief interval it’d sat there, had dashed off for some poison and a convenient syringe, and then had rushed back to inject the apple, without being noticed? Ludicrous. I didn’t know how I could persuade Carman to test it. I carefully folded up the mess and sat it on the wire rack shelf. Detective Carman deserved to receive it. He had planted the idea that the murderer might try to poison me.
Victor’s dark eyes watched as though the world had gone mad and he was helpless in the face of it.
“Victor, you know that honey Fortier received?”
“You mean that honey that made me a suspect. Course I don’t know nothin’ about it.” He half turned and looked toward the cart in the hall. He wanted to leave, but, in spite of his rough edges, Victor had been raised as a caballero, a gentleman. He wouldn’t turn his back as a lady spoke to him.
“Was it some of yours?”
“Carol, I think it was. But I didn’t give it to him.”
“Didn’t it have a red ribbon on it?”
“Yeah, sure.” He shrugged. “Anybody could change the ribbon. I seen the jar. Jus’ the kind I use.”
“You saw it! Did you tell the cops?”
He gave me an exasperated look. I remembered his fears when the police had arrived. He was an illegal. The last thing he wanted was to interact with the police.
He forgave my stupidity and added, “When Fortier got that present, Abundio came back and me dijo, ‘Sheck it out.’ I couldn’t believe it.”
“Did other people have access to your honey?”
“Oh, sure. It’s my usual present. Jar to Suzanne for her birthday. Abundio, of course. We live in the same house. I gave some to Esperanza and Delores. And one jar to the jefe.”
“Eldon?”
Victor squirmed.
“Eldon?” I prodded, more gently.
Victor tugged an earlobe and kept his eyes averted. “Well, he hired my whole family,” he said defensively.
FORTY
The rain drummed, and the interview room steamed. Why did people think rain was cold?
Detective Carman listened to my information. “Yeah, we could send the apple to Sacramento, but we wouldn’t have results from the Department of Justice for two or three weeks. It’s pretty much take a number and wait.” He smiled. “Are you suggesting we look for oleander, again?”
So he did know that I’d made the anonymous call. He realized his error too late. “How’d you know?” I asked.
“That boss of yours ... the big, puffy guy?”
“Eldon,” I supplied.
“Yes, Eldon mentioned that he’d seen you making a call, acting ‘shifty.’ I put two and two together, listened to the voice on the recording, and guessed.” He seemed proud of his deductions.
With or without the tox-screen results, the apple episode had made me realize how unlikely it was that someone had doctored the honey in the kitchen. Just as no one had sneaked into the bakery and injected the apple with poison, no one would have popped the top on some honey, fussed with mixing oleander into the resistant goo, and tried to put everything back to normal in a busy, gossipy kitchen. I had not even been able to call the tip line without being spotted. The jar had been delivered for Fortier with the poison in it. I believed I knew who the murderer was and the motive.
As the rain outside slowed to a trickle, I shared my hypothesis with Detective Carman.
He listened patiently. When I’d finished, he thought about it, nodded, and said, “That’s possible. Do you have any proof?”
The big question for me was did I want to prove it.
FORTY-ONE
I’d never been a fan of big holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. I prefer less crowded occasions—the Harvest Moon, the equinoxes, and January sixth, the last day of Christmas, the day of the wise men’s arrival, the Epiphany.
On the way to work, I sang along with Tom Petty. By January sixth, Christmas sales ended, frantic lines to exchange gifts melted, and Archibald’s removed the poisonous poinsettias (a four, according to Deadly Doses) along its staircase.
Petty sang about his lucky sister marrying a yuppie and taking him for all he was worth. I had the volume loud so I couldn’t hear myself sing, an area in which I am remarkably untalented.
From the lot to Archibald’s, I continued to sing, but softly, blotting my voice with the jingling rhythm of my keys. I walked in the middle of the road, away from trees and shrubs. Once inside, I turned on lights everywhere before I changed my clothes. I sucked on my sore lip and poked on my cheek to test its tenderness.
Today I was going to bake sesame brioche. I unlocked the refrigerator and crossed to my shelf. The foil cover on one bucket had been knocked off, probably by a cook shoving it aside to clear room for half-used products. My good mood vanished. I’d complain more emphatically. This was the bakery’s shelf and I took pains to keep it neat and uncluttered.
I lifted the bucket. Droplets spattered the dough like dirty rain. I turned back to the Use-First shelf above mine. A covered, but raw piece of meat swam in blood. Surface tension amazingly held the red pool in the shallow plate, but even as I watched, a drop escaped, ran a circuitous route around the bottom, and finally let go. If I even breathed on the plate, I’d cause a spill, but I had to see the exact nature of this idiocy. I considered letting the blood spill through the racks to the floor and then insisting to Eldon that the culprit clean it. Somehow sweetness and light prevailed over my black spirit. I stepped out to the garde manger and nabbed one of their towels. I spread it where my bucket had been and carefully lifted the plastic over the meat. Blood sloshed over the edge of the plate.
Under the covering was a heart. A big heart. I jiggled the plate to spill more blood and then, carefully, drew down the platter.
The door opened, the seals sucking air, and I dropped the plate, spraying my shoes, pants and the floor with red. I bobbled a slippery heart, my hands coated with blood.
“I see you have a heart,” Buzz said.
“Very funny.” I picked up the empty plate while hanging on to the slick purplish organ with one hand. A smooth slice had flattened one side. I placed that side down on the plate and sat the raw meat on the shelf. “Blood from that thing dripped on my brioche dough.” I wiped my hands on my smock since it was already streaked with red.
“That’s the kind of stuff I’ve had to deal with, with Ray on the lead line.”
“What kind of heart is it?”
“Beef. What did you think?”
Buzz poked through containers that had invaded my shelf.
“What’s it doing here?”
“We had that movie star last night.” Buzz glanced over his shoulder. “Michael What’s his name? Some manager or secretary called ahead and said he wanted heart. For the iron.”
“I thought people ate liver for iron.” I snatched the already bloodied towel from my shelf and used it to mop blood from my shoes and the floor.
“That’s what Eldon asked the secretary: ‘Don’t you mean liver?’ The guy goes, ‘No, he doesn’t eat liver. Livers strain toxins and should never be eaten.’“ Buzz shrugged and opened a large, green plastic bowl. “This is so goddamn frustrating.”
“Whatcha looking for?”
“Chicken stock. For the curry. You can see how Ray puts stuff away, and he doesn’t label a friggin’ thing.”
Buzz didn’t have any right to complain. He and Eldon controlled the keys and should have managed the storage.
Buzz pulled forward a gallon jar. “Here it is.” He walked toward the door, but I stomped out in front of him. I wasn’t going to clean any more of the mess. The cooks were responsible and I wanted him to know it. I went to change my uniform.
Two minutes later, I bolted from the locker room, buttoning my clean smock, an epiphany before my eyes. I hadn’t locked the refrigerator because Buzz was there, and I bet he hadn’t locked it because he expected
me to return for the dough. Someone was waiting for this moment. With the door unlocked and Buzz and me in our niches, anybody could now enter the refrigerator. And someone desperately wanted to because that’s where the honey was.
People had seen Fortier with the honey. He’d taken it into the refrigerator with him and I saw now with blinding clarity that it had never come out. Fortier had abandoned it there, possibly for another rendezvous with Delores.
The refrigerator was a natural place. A place where a jar would blend with the surroundings. Like the purloined letter, right in front of our eyes. Well, not quite.
To find it, I needed to do more than shove around the half-used quart of chutney, the wrapped wheel of cheese, and the white five-gallon buckets of pickles like the police must have done.
I entered the kitchen through the swinging door, grabbed my rolling pin from the bakery, and flew toward Buzz.
He saw the weapon and threw up his arms. “I promise I’ll make Ray clean the shelf,” he said.
I put a finger to my lips, but he continued. “My thigh has a bruise on it the size of a baseball, Carol.”
“Did you lock the ‘frig?” I whispered.
He shook his head and slowly lowered his hands.
“Did you hear someone go in there?”
“I might’ve, but I assumed it was you.”
I crooked my finger and he followed me, wiping his fingers on a towel. I pulled open the refrigerator door.
“¿Que estan haciendo ahora?”
“We could ask you the same question,” I said. “What are you doing?”
Victor stood with a great deal of dignity in the center of the cold cell, clutching a cheap ice chest to his stomach. He smiled. “Busted.”
“What’s in the cooler?” Buzz asked.
Victor sat the white box on the floor and squeaked off the lid. In it, ice cubes surrounded a large, white package.
Hanging his towel on my shelf, Buzz wiggled the package from the container, spilling ice cubes on to the tile. “Beef tender?”
“A farewell party,” Victor said. “I guess that’s going to be sooner than we expected.”