by Cindy Davis
Payton moved the bottle to the center of the counter that was the same color as the floor. “While that breathes, I’ll show you the patio.” She pushed aside wispy gauze drapes and shoved open the glass door. The breeze off the harbor smelled like spring—earthy and damp. The backyard was lined with mature trees that lent privacy and insulated it from neighborhood noises.
“That chestnut tree is coming down tomorrow,” Payton explained.
“My goodness, why? It’s beautiful,” Mamie said.
“It is pretty, but it’s responsible for mildew on both my house and Helen’s. It’s so big that no sunlight gets through. I had a couple of others removed a few weeks ago. This was an afterthought. I held off because it’s so pretty, but it’s just got to go. I’ll replace it with something, maybe a Japanese maple or a Russian olive; something that doesn’t get so big. Later, I’ll do up this spot with brugmansia and summersweet and some foamflowers and lilyturf. Over here, I’ll put in an arbor and grow moonflowers on it. I love their scent. Don’t you?”
Mamie gave a nervous chuckle. “After you said Russian olive, I didn’t understand a single word you said.”
Payton laughed too, but hers was heartfelt, not poking fun in any way. Mamie seemed to realize this and joined anew, apologizing for being such a horticultural dunce.
“That’s ridiculous. Not everyone is interested in or knows about plants. Just like I know next to nothing about art.”
“You knew about Ocaso,” Mamie said.
“All I knew was that it had a southern feel and the colors matched the room. So I’m an artistic dunce. Anyway, I should have the plantings done in time for the gallery opening. Did I hear you say it’s slated for the Fourth of July weekend?”
“Yes.”
“Things are falling right into place. Shall we eat now?”
Claire followed the other two inside. “Claire, would you pour the wine? I’ll put the food on the table.”
“What are we having?” Claire asked.
“I thought we could start with Tuscan onion soup. Then lamb noisettes with braised asparagus.”
“You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble for me,” Mamie said.
Claire heard the trepidation in Mamie’s voice. Not one to be very adventurous in her culinary attempts, Mamie had probably spent the afternoon stewing over the menu. It didn’t matter to Claire. She wasn’t a picky eater. And though she’d never heard of lamb noisettes, the aroma was simply wonderful. Claire was a good cook when she wanted to be, but her fare tended more toward the traditional.
Claire sipped the soup. “Payton, why do you say you can’t cook? This is like silk.”
Payton lowered her voice, as though she was about to tell the secret of the century. “I didn’t cook any of this. I ordered it from the Barracks Inn. They do a wonderful job, don’t you think?”
Mamie eyed Payton sadly. Just as Payton’s embarrassment over Mamie’s compliments had raised her in Claire’s esteem, the confession seemed to lower her in Mamie’s. Mamie believed everyone should work at something until they succeeded. She would rather have eaten a poorly cooked meal stirred by Payton’s own hand than this gourmand’s delight. Not Claire, she liked quality and perfection wherever possible. If this was Payton’s way of achieving it, so be it. Payton was smart enough to know her limitations.
The upstairs of the house looked as beautiful as the ground level. The hallway was wide with long walls between the doorways, perfect for hanging art. There were a couple of pieces already there, and from Mamie’s reaction, they were originals. Payton and Mamie talked about one in particular, making Claire feel left out.
“We’ll have to install some track lighting, I think,” Payton said.
“I agree. I will pay for it,” Mamie offered for the second time. And for the second time, Payton said nothing.
The long narrow guest bedroom was bright and fresh and looked out over the street. The twin beds and windows were covered in colorful Mexican and Spanish fabrics. The furniture was all square edges of some light colored wood.
“I might have put my office in this room,” Claire said.
“I thought about it, but the downstairs room just seemed so perfect for a library. Problem is, I have more rooms than I need.”
“Maybe someday you’ll get married again and raise a family,” Mamie said. “Then you’ll need more space.”
“I don’t have the patience for children.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute.” Claire noticed Payton hadn’t ruled out another marriage, only children. Did this have something to do with “retiring early” from teaching?
Mamie’s face had turned serious. Another strike against Payton. Mamie had wanted nothing more than to have a houseful of children. She’d blamed her and Donald’s childless state on herself, but Claire always believed it had been Donald’s choice. He was just too cold, too self-centered.
“I think I would have liked the master bedroom here. You can see all up and down Broad Street,” Mamie said shyly.
“Come, I’ll show you why I didn’t.”
Payton led them across the hall and flicked on a light switch. Claire’s eyes were accosted with a vision of white. The master bedroom took up most of the back of the house. The tall four-poster bed of some rough finished wood was covered in layers of pouffy white fabrics: cotton, seersucker, eyelet lace. A multitude of ruffled pillows graced the headboard. There was a white braided rug on the gleaming hardwood floor, an armchair in white brocade in the far corner, white drapes framed the French doors.
Claire suddenly broke into harsh laughter, collecting a pair of disbelieving stares. “I was just picturing old man Brice in here.”
“This is definitely not a man’s room,” Payton said.
“Especially not Mr. Brice,” Mamie added. “He was very old country.”
Payton slid open the French door and stepped out onto a brand new deck. Across Sackets Harbor, a mere strip of amber-colored light separated the dark layers of sky and bay. The sky was a deep navy blue, cloudless and dotted with gold twinkling stars. The bay was mirrored charcoal, the town’s lights reflecting like cloned images.
“Wow,” Mamie said. It was an uncharacteristic word from her, but it truly described the view.
Claire wished she had such a haven.
“I love to sit out here with a glass of wine, watching the lights and the stars compete for twinkling space,” Payton said.
“How poetic,” Mamie said.
“Does anyone smell peppermint?” Claire asked.
Payton went to the rail of the deck and peered below. “There’s a porcupine walking through the herbs.”
TEN
Claire didn’t arrive home from Payton’s until after eleven. She was exhausted but there was much to do. She had managed to talk Mamie out of driving her home saying a walk was just what she needed. And it was. The air was cool and fresh, the streets quiet. It seemed like she had the whole world to herself.
Dinner had been fantastic. Payton’s house pristine. Claire thought about making some serious changes to her old Victorian. Not Spanish/Mexican like Payton’s, that wouldn’t suit this house, or her personality, but basic things like opening up the small rooms into larger, airier spaces. That was the style these days. Besides, the rooms would be easier to heat and keep cool. She walked around her downstairs, picturing which walls might be knocked out, what furniture could be replaced. Certainly not her old recliner. Not that antique sideboard in the dining room that Sean’s adoptive mother Edna had given her. And not that beautiful dining set.
What about a glass room like the one Helen was getting? Or a deck off the bedroom? By the time she’d made the circuit, Claire had decided that some new wallpaper and curtains would be just fine—but later. Now, she would concentrate on the Sean situation and worry about redoing the house afterward.
Looking at the Tin Pan Galley cookbook, she thought back almost thirty years into the past. Should she have done things differently, made the only other decision available and
kept Sean to raise herself? No, things would have turned out the same, of that she was certain. The only difference would be that his actions would have hit much closer to home. She’d still be faced with baking this Deathday cake. Killing someone she’d once loved dearly.
Claire shook off the memories, drew two mixing bowls from the bottom cabinet and clunked them beside the canisters. She took matching layer pans from the drawer under the stove. Claire rubbed a generous dollop of shortening around inside both pans, doused them with flour, set them aside and turned the oven to preheat.
A tear poked from each eye. She was about to kill her son. Her only child.
As Claire measured dry ingredients into the larger bowl, not for a moment did she consider whether this was the right thing to do. She’d been over that in her mind dozens of times through the years. Sean never should have been born. Since she’d brought him into this world, it was her duty to remove him, pure and simple.
She sniffled and removed the paper cup from the windowsill, careful not to slosh the liquid on herself. She mashed the leaves against the side of the cup with a Popsicle stick she’d found in the junk drawer. Where it came from, she had no idea. Next she poured the concoction into the two-cup measurer, holding the leaves in the cup with the rounded tip of the stick. Were the fumes toxic? No time to check the book. Claire flung open opposite windows, then for good measure, the back door also.
She added milk to the liquid in the cup to make the total measure required for the recipe. This she poured in the other bowl and followed it with the remaining liquid ingredients. She whisked them together, just enough to blend in the eggs and hopefully not enough to ruin the poison properties of the monkshood because, though she knew it was the only answer to the problem, she didn’t think she could do this a second time if it failed.
Through it all, Claire held her breath, just in case the fumes weren’t entirely pushed away by the frigid breeze. She poured the liquid from one bowl into the dry ingredients every now and again stopping to run into the hallway to take a breath of clean air. It took a while, but at last the batter was in the oven. She had been unable to find information regarding the mixing and baking properties of monkshood. Would noxious baking fumes asphyxiate her? Just in case, she found a blanket and hung it in the kitchen door leading to the hallway. She set the oven timer, put on a jacket and went for a walk.
A few lights shone in people’s houses, mostly the ambient blue of televisions. Damned television. Nobody read books any more, just planted themselves on their asses watching that stupid box. Even Mamie. Movies movies movies. Claire put up with it because she was lonely, just as she expected that was the reason Mamie put up with her. Claire knew she wasn’t perfect. Her fastidious housecleaning grated on Mamie more than once. But that wasn’t as bad as ruining your brain in front of an inane brown box. Was it?
12:22 p.m. The cake should be half done. She turned and retraced her steps, her heart fluttering and a cold clamminess breaking out on her palms. She jammed her hands in her jacket pockets and wiped them on the lining. All the way up the driveway, she pictured herself handing Sean the plate, the slice of cake resplendent under its thick layer of dark chocolate frosting and symmetrical row of chocolate chips around the top edge. He’d thank her profusely, might even kiss her cheek. That thought gave her a funny feeling inside. Her son had never kissed her. How could he? He’d grown up thinking Edna was his mother.
Edna had done a marvelous job with him, Claire had to admit. It wasn’t her fault he’d taken his father’s genes. Claire pushed the thought of Sean’s father from her head. He wasn’t worthy of anything more than a fleeting memory. The slime had run for the hills as soon as the “p” word had come from Claire’s lips.
The air was filled with the delicious chocolate aroma. She wondered how potent the poison was all the way outdoors. Should she hold her breath or would the air disperse it? Claire walked slowly up the driveway. As she got about halfway, the timer went off. Her heart did a flip-flop. She took an extra deep breath and stepped indoors.
She took one pan from the oven, hurried to set it on the back porch to cool, raced away and took a breath, then did the same thing for the second layer. Sitting on the windowsill, they looked perfectly normal.
Claire left the blanket hanging in the doorway and the ingredients on the counter. Her meticulous nature pecked at her to clean things up, but she wasn’t certain the air was fit to breathe yet. She’d wait till morning to wash up and whip the buttercream frosting. One single slice of cake for Sean. Not the whole thing because he might give a piece to someone else.
Claire poured some brandy. Yes, morning was soon enough to dispose of the remaining cake; break it into chunks and wash the pieces down the garbage disposal. Just some bleach afterwards and it would all be gone. The authorities would determine that the cake killed Sean, but who’d baked it would remain a mystery.
* * * *
Claire couldn’t sleep. Just after 3 a.m., she got up and went downstairs. She pulled back an edge of the blanket and poked her head into the room. A blast of cold air hit her. She sniffed. Was that a chocolate smell, or her imagination? The air should certainly be all right to breathe by now, shouldn’t it?
Everything seemed all right. At the stove she put the kettle on for chamomile tea. While the water heated, she went out to the porch and peeked at the cake layers. They were beautiful—tall and fluffy. The potion hadn’t destroyed the rising properties of the baking powder. Well, the tasting would be the most telling factor. And only one person was slated to taste this cake. Too bad. Such a lovely specimen.
Usually while making frosting, Claire couldn’t keep herself from sampling thick fingerfuls of it, but today she couldn’t get the image of the monkshood mixture from her brain. She hadn’t put poison in the frosting, but the vision was too strong to take the chance. By 4:14 a.m., the cake was iced in wide sweeping swirls of creamy goodness.
She slipped on a new pair of gardening gloves and took a china plate from the dish drainer. It was a pretty plate, with tiny roses etched along the outer edge, and a gold rim. Claire didn’t know where that had come from. Maybe the same place as the Popsicle stick. For some reason, the notion was humorous, and she spent some time envisioning the people who’d visited her home, bringing food. Would one of them have also brought Popsicles? She couldn’t recall the last time she’d eaten a Popsicle.
Still smiling, she wiped around the plate’s surface, making sure all the fingerprints were removed. It had crossed her mind to use a paper or foam plate, but one—she didn’t have any in the house, and two—the cops were good at tracing such things. Surely some store clerk would recall her buying a package just a day before the murder.
Claire took the gloves off long enough to cut a wedge of cake. If her townspeople thought she’d been famous for her cake before, what would they think in a week? She laid the slice on the plate, careful not to smudge frosting or drop crumbs. She rinsed the cake cutter under scalding hot tap water, then put the gloves back on. They were too unwieldy and she had to try more than once to pull plastic wrap from the box, tear it along the little metal cutter and shape a double layer around the plate. Finally it was done. She stood back and viewed her work. It looked good. Nothing to trace back to her. The plastic wrap was a common variety.
The rest of the cake had to be disposed of, but right now it was most important to get the kitchen cleaned up. She had a dishwasher but didn’t trust it to remove all the trace evidence. She’d learned about trace evidence on CSI. So maybe television wasn’t so bad. Claire boiled water in her largest pot—a lobster cooker—and drank tea while everything soaked for at least ten minutes. Next she hand washed each item, scrubbing the nooks and crannies with an old toothbrush. This had to be the perfect crime. No one could be blamed. It took more than an hour, but Claire finally had the kitchen cleaned to her satisfaction.
She wanted Sean to have the cake first thing tomorrow morning. She could bring it to the café, but there was always the chance
one of his employees would get hold of it or see her delivering it. No, it would be better if she waited till late at night and brought it to his home, a small ranch twenty minutes away in Chaumont.
What if MaryAnn was there? Claire hadn’t seen Sean’s soon-to-be ex-wife around lately, hadn’t heard any new rumors. At least there was no danger of MaryAnn eating any cake. She was deathly allergic to chocolate. Everyone knew that, still talked about the time she’d eaten—what was it now—the item escaped Claire, but it was at the Church Bazaar last year. MaryAnn had been raced to the hospital gasping for every breath.
Claire climbed on a chair. A slight tingle in her ankle reminded her to be careful. It wouldn’t pay to fall. A vision of ambulance attendants rescuing her but taking along her cake and gorging themselves on the way to the hospital erupted goosebumps along her arms. She removed a few items from the topmost shelf over the sink, pushed the cake in back, then replaced the things she’d taken out. She made another cup of tea and took the cup upstairs. She removed her robe and climbed into bed. One sip of the brew was all she had before falling asleep.
Daytime had spread across the sky in a gray and gloomy mess of clouds. Rain pattered against the window. It was a sound she’d always found comforting. Claire sat up, stretched her arms over her head and emitted a deep satisfied sound. The heady aroma of chocolate drifted into her senses.
She sniffed, once, twice, and then flew to a sitting position. What if she really was smelling it? The kitchen had seemed all right last night. She’d done the dishes and not suffered any ill effects. What if the poison was floating through the house? Sticking in the tiny hairs of her sinuses. Was the poison in her nose, too? Of course not. The book said the effects worked very quickly. The poisonee—was that the right word?—was affected within minutes. She must’ve received only a glancing blow, from the aftermath of the aroma. Would that mean she’d just die slower?
Claire forced herself to take several breaths and calm down. It had to be all right. She’d made it through the night. Felt all right. She took another breath. There was no pain, no tightness.