With Friends Like These...

by Gillian Roberts

  There was a final bit of solidity and adult logic missing from the girl, keeping her a child.

  Her deep brown eyes widened. “I can’t leave again. How would he find me? And what’s happened to him? He never disappears like this! I don’t know what to do about anything. We’ve had two cancellations today, even though it wasn’t my fault—you know it wasn’t my fault, don’t you?”

  I decided that I did know that. It wasn’t my mother or father’s fault, and it wasn’t Lizzie’s.

  “I’m sure he’s sick,” she said. “Heart attack or I don’t know. Whenever I see him, in my head, sprawled out on the floor like…like…” She closed her eyes and shook her head and seemed to have trouble inhaling.

  Wait. We had switched hims in mid-sentence. “Like what?” I whispered, sure she meant Lyle, spread out on the floor, dying.

  Her eyes opened wide and she looked at me as if I might have the answer. “I get so scared if I let myself see it. I know something horrible, horrible has happened—and I know it has, it did, but I don’t mean that. Something else horrible, do you understand? Do you think I’m crazy?”

  I sidestepped both questions and speared a curly-edged lettuce leaf. “Is this the same feeling you had yesterday? Here, in the kitchen before the party. Remember? You became frightened and felt ill and you didn’t know why.”

  She looked puzzled. “I can’t remember. Only something like not being here for a while.”

  “Then where were you?” I was nearly whispering.

  “Somewhere scary.” I could barely hear her. “What’s happening to me? What’s going on?” Her voice regained some strength. “And what’s happened to my father?”

  “You’re very close, aren’t you?”

  She shrugged. “We’re all we have. He’d just never scare me by staying away on purpose. He knew I was nervous—he was nervous, too. That’s why he went for cigarettes. He was trying not to smoke, but he was too shaky after…after…” Her voice rose into the dangerously thin air of hysteria again.

  “I’m sure the police will find him.”

  She shook her head. “He’s not a suspect and they’re real busy—”

  “Is the President still in town?”

  “They told me that lots of men walk away from their families that way. But he wouldn’t. He was just so nervous after Mr. Zacharias fell down.”

  She had odd and childish ways of describing events. Fell down did not seem the appropriate way to describe a dying man.

  “I called all the hospitals and asked for him, but he isn’t registered anywhere. All he did was go out for cigarettes. I’m sure he’s been mugged or even—” She couldn’t say the word.

  “Don’t assume the worst,” I said. “Hang in there.” The words sounded hollow and futile. The girl had problems. Her father was missing, her livelihood was disappearing, and, even before a man had died after eating her food, she’d shown signs of a serious panic attack, cause unknown. I hoped she didn’t know that as of this afternoon, Hattie was also blaming Lyle’s death on her.

  “And that old lady—that old lady called me today,” she said.

  There went that last hope.

  “She said she knew that everything was my fault. That I knew it, too. What did she mean? She sounded—I feel sorry for her, losing her son and all, but she was cruel. It wasn’t my fault. Why didn’t anybody else get sick if it was my fault? Why would she be that way?”

  “People are not themselves sometimes when they’re in a state of grief.” I felt like one of those old-fashioned arcade dolls—put a nickel on the lever, push, and I’ll hand you back a platitude. I could become a team, along with Hattie’s friend Alice. “She’s old,” I continued. “Needs to blame somebody for this tragedy. Ignore her.”

  “I told her—I told the police—he ate a tart. He came in after the salad course and said they were irresistible and that he had to break his diet and have one and I shouldn’t tell. There was a little plate of them, you know?”

  I knew. I remembered my mother pulling out two of her favorites and saying he could nibble away if he liked. I wondered if Lizzie also remembered.

  “Nobody else got sick. It has to be that. But they think I could have poisoned it, and I guess I could have.” She propped her head on her hand. “Of course I could have.” She sighed. “But I didn’t. Why would I?”

  My cue. “Maybe you could help figure out who else could have tampered with the tarts.”

  “Here? In my kitchen?” She looked astounded by the concept, and was probably too sweet and polite to say the obvious—that the tarts had arrived poisoned by the hand of Bea Pepper, who had selected out the deadly culprits and presented them to Lyle.

  “A tart could be muddled around pretty easily, couldn’t it?” I persisted. “Add something, stir the filling, then redecorate the top, sprinkle nuts, squirt whipped cream—”

  “I gave them the can!”

  “Them? The police? What can?”

  “It wasn’t mine. I don’t know where that spray can came from! I saw it in the trash while the guests were eating the beef and I was cleaning up. Everything is fresh here. I would have whipped my own cream, if I’d needed any. I wouldn’t use a squirt bottle!”

  A can of whipped cream. Good. Didn’t it prove the tarts were tampered with after the fact? And surely the can would have a solid fingerprint on the place you push. I could imagine somebody taking advantage of a time when Lizzie’s back was turned, but I couldn’t imagine them donning gloves for the job.

  “Think, Lizzie. Who came into the kitchen after the tarts were delivered? Were you alone much of the time or were there always people coming in and out? I know that when I was in here the first time, so were my mother and Hattie Zacharias and Lyle himself and his current and ex-wives. Did a lot of people come in?”

  “What does it matter? Do you think somebody came here carrying poison? To kill Lyle Zacharias?”

  “I don’t know. The only question I can deal with right now is: who was in the kitchen?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know most of the guests’ names.”

  “Think. Describe whoever you remember.” I had a small notebook in my pocketbook, and, feeling vaguely foolish like a sleuth in a B-movie, I pulled it and a pen out.

  “You were there. Twice. You came back to see if I was all right.” She picked up a carrot slice and nibbled at it with little interest. “And Mrs. Zacharias.”

  “Which one? The dark-haired one or the blonde?”

  “I meant the blonde one. She was in a few times. With her husband once or twice, and by herself, and with Doctor—Shepard McCoy. She said she wanted to open a kitchen shop. Wanted to know if I liked copper better than stainless. That kind of thing. But the other one was there, too, not at the same time. Once when you were here, then later, when she wanted to know if I used preservatives, or artificial sweeteners. She told me she was Mrs. Zacharias. ‘The former Mrs. Zacharias,’ she said, so that’s how I know who she was. Her son was in with her, and then I think he came back. Wanted to know if I had any cream soda. That was during the cocktail hour. Kid was a pain.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “Well, yes. But I don’t know who they were. Some lady who wanted an aspirin and who was allergic to dairy products. You know, Mr. Zacharias had asked everybody to say if they had any food allergies or preferences, and she never said. What was I supposed to do then, with dinner almost on the table and me running all over the place? Luckily, this man came in and told her to stop bothering me. Said it nicely, but she got the message. Boy, was I ever grateful.”

  Janine. I’d bet on it. I wondered how often Wiley had to put the clamps on her obnoxiousness. “Is that it?”

  “To tell the truth, it felt like people never stopped coming in and out. I was surprised, because when we’re just serving dinner normally, that doesn’t happen. But between the guests asking questions and the waiters in and out and trying to get everything on the table at the right time, I nearly burst into tears twice. Ha
d to leave the room and pull myself together, take deep breaths and count to a hundred.”

  “Literally? A hundred?”

  “Three hundred the other time.”

  Great. Not only was everybody capable of tampering with the tarts, but there were now obvious gaps when nobody supervised the kitchen.

  “Some lady who spilled wine on her dress,” Lizzie said. “A green satiny thing. Another lady who wanted the recipe for the crab puffs. I didn’t know what to do. Should I give out my recipes? What do you think?”

  I thought that anybody could have taken the opportunity to doctor the tart and that we were back to square one, which is to say, nowhere.

  Except in the kitchen of The Boarding House, where the telephone abruptly broke the silence. Lizzie rushed to answer it.

  “Yes?” she said. Then “Oh!” and “When?” and “How did—” and a “Where?” and a “Now?” and a rushed, intense “Thank you.

  “My father!” she said when she hung up. “He’s alive. At Jefferson. He got sick on his way to buy cigarettes—really sick. People thought he was a drunk or a junkie and left him alone.” She stopped to absorb this for a moment, wrinkling her brow and biting at her bottom lip. “They left him to die,” she whispered. “He probably looked awful, but they could have called an ambulance, couldn’t they?”

  I nodded and sighed.

  She brightened a bit. “This morning, a policeman noticed he wasn’t a regular street person and realized he was sick, so he had him taken to the hospital. He’d been rolled and had no wallet or ID. Now he’s conscious, and he told them who he was and what happened. And they think he’s going to be okay!” She pulled a ring of keys off a peg on the wall and looked close to jubilant.

  I supposed this was, more or less, a happy ending. Except for the growing suspicion that the timing of Roy’s sudden illness was no accident—or rather, part of the same accident that killed Lyle Zacharias. “Does your father have a sweet tooth?” I asked Lizzie.

  She smiled, as if this were a part of their affectionate history. “Does he ever! Anything with chocolate, nuts, whipped…” She heard herself. “Oh, my,” she said. “That’s who ate some of the second tart.” She took a deep breath. “There was a tart left on the plate. Mr. Zacharias was very precise about that, eating only one. ‘Have to show some self-control,’ he said. But then, by the time the police came, there was only part of one left. My father never eats all of anything. Always leaves a portion on the plate. Says it’s why he doesn’t get fat.”

  This time it was why he didn’t get killed.

  Fourteen

  Mackenzie’s car was parked on the sidewalk in front of my house. Bad timing was becoming our trademark.

  “Your message said you were home,” he murmured by way of greeting.

  “I was home when I said that.” Macavity curled on his lap, purring. Such behavior might not be exceptional for normal cats, but even years after I rescued him from our mean streets, Macavity prefers to show affection subtly. He believes in being nearby, on call, or on anything you’re trying to read, but otherwise he mostly swats the stuffing out of anything that tries to get closer. However, all bets and truisms are off when my gentleman you-know appears.

  “Said you were hungry, too,” Mackenzie mumbled.

  “I was. I still am.” I almost yearned for the withering remnants of the uninspired salads back on the butcher block in Lizzie’s kitchen.

  “So I brought food over. Ravioli, garlic bread, salad, wine. Thought to impress you.”

  “Well, hey. You succeeded.” My mouth watered in anticipation. “I’m impressed as can be. And ravenous, too.” I tried to control myself from drooling while I circumspectly looked around, but the edibles were even more discreet than I.

  “Well, since you didn’t show…” He looked sheepish. “I, um, figured you were out eating. There wasn’t much of anything here. So, I…well…I ate…” His sigh was final. The topic—and the food—were both history.

  Then he brightened. “Your salad’s still in a container in the fridge.”

  I should have known. Lettuce was my karma tonight, but I’d just as soon pass. “I had salad with Lizzie, the cook at The Boarding House. They found her father.” I explained all that had happened and presented my summation. “Which makes three things clear,” I said. These were not items that made me, daughter of Bea, particularly elated, but they were so obvious, I might as well be the person to say them. “First, it had to be, indeed, a tart that poisoned Lyle, and second, the tart was poisoned on site by the whipped-cream can carrier, and third, Lizzie isn’t the poisoner.”

  C.K. nodded. “Already knew about the tart.”

  “How?”

  “That leftover bit had odd seeds in it. There aren’t that many seeds people would put in a sweet tart, and these weren’t sesame or poppy or sunflower or pumpkin or anything anyone in the lab had seen, so they went after them. Normally, findin’ poison, testin’ all the different foods for all the different possibilities, would take ten times as long, but since we were pointed right at the tarts—”

  And their baker, too. “By Hattie, right?” I could have told him that Lizzie was now her suspect of choice, but of course I’d just declared Lizzie not guilty, so why bother?

  “Pretty much, yes.” He nodded and extracted a notepad from his pocket, disturbing Macavity, who jumped off his lap. “You know,” Mackenzie said as he brushed off his slacks, “if there’s still a market for hair shirts anywhere on earth, you could make a fortune off that cat.”

  He flipped notebook pages until he found what he was after. “What they think it is,” Mackenzie said, “is jatropha curcas, or Barbados nut, sometimes called purge nut, for obvious reasons. An unusual poison because it tastes good, which most do not. It wouldn’t particularly seem out of place in a gooey, puffy, nutty tart. But enough of it—not too much—three seeds’ll do you in—and that leftover bit was loaded with seeds—only had to nibble, and Lyle gobbled—and you’re history within the hour. Used as rat poison some places.”

  “Never heard of it.” My scope of information didn’t have any particular relevance, but I hoped to subliminally plant the idea that such an exotic, ridiculous poison was completely out of range for any normal, civilized being’s knowledge. A normal, civilized being like my mother.

  “Why would you? It doesn’t grow here, so it’s nothing you have to be warned away from in these parts.”

  “Where would somebody get it, then? How would anybody even know about it?”

  “Golly, Mandy.” His pale blue eyes opened in fake astonishment. “Just because somethin’ doesn’t flourish in Philadelphia doesn’t mean it’s uncommon. Whether or not you’re aware of it, there are other places in the world that grow things. Nice warm travel-destination places, in fact, the kind that people, people who were maybe at that party, enjoy. Places like Hawaii and Mexico and Central America and Africa and Asia and South America.”

  “Great. That eliminates only those people who came straight to the party from Scandinavia or Antarctica. Or people who never get out of Philadelphia. Like me. And Lizzie, most likely.”

  He shook his head slightly, left to right, then back, as in no, wrong, not so. “Lizzie’s father was just over in Vietnam.”

  “So what? Why would that be of any relevance?”

  “Who knows? But who also knows if he was really sick and alone last night, or setting up an alibi instead? I couldn’t have done it, officer, because I was a victim, too. Luckily, I ate just enough to keep me alive but away from the cops, on the streets—I say—where nobody could identify me. Wouldn’t be the first time people pulled that. I’ve seen guys shoot themselves, cut themselves up, all to prove they—”

  “But he didn’t even know about the party. He was away when it was booked. So even if he had access to poisoned whatsis nuts over there—and even if he had some kind of grudge against Lyle, which is doubtful because how would he even know him? They definitely don’t move in the same circles—but even if that were
true, are you saying he’d bring back poison just in case he someday had a chance to use it? And then someday came the very day he returned home? Isn’t that a bit of a stretch?” And then, having shown how illogical it was to suspect Beecher, I suddenly remembered something about him that didn’t compute. “Except,” I said, “just before he left the hotel, he said something to the effect that none of this would have happened if he’d been there when this party was set up.”

  “Interestin’ remark. Ah, but…” Every Gallic dollop of DNA in Mackenzie’s Louisiana ancestry is visible in his shrug, which, with great world-weariness, made it evident that my thinking was pedestrian and naive. “He said this, he said that. We’ll see.”

  “Wait a second!” My mother could now be crossed off the list of suspects because of geographical impossibility, and I told Mackenzie so. “My parents’ travel itineraries are limited. Destination: here. Boring, yes, but also an alibi!”

  Mackenzie repeated the left-right-left head swoop, his expression compassionate, but all the same, dreadfully, cynically cop-like.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” I insisted. “How could she have gotten those seeds? Are you going to tell me she made a buy? Met some guy on a seamy Boca Raton street corner and bought herself a lid of jatro—whatever? Come on!”

  “It happens that it grows in one place in the continental U.S., too,” he said softly. “Only one.”

  “Not Florida,” I whispered. “Please?”

  “Southern Florida, to be exact. Used a lot as an ornamental plant.” He stood up, unstretching his long, lanky frame, running his fingers through his curly hair. “What puzzles me is this: why not poison one of the tarts in the box instead? That way, Lyle’d go home and kill himself some random day when he hit the target, and the odds would be way against anybody knowing what or who had done him in. It’s a rare poison, and all the other tarts would be clean. But this way’s so obvious. Too obvious.”

  He turned to face me, something important on his mind, pointing his index finger like a mother about to chastise her child. The gesture annoyed and vaguely frightened me. I could understand the annoyance, but not the fear, which further annoyed me.