Tea Cups & Tiger Claws

by Timothy Patrick

On a crisp and clear Saturday morning in January 1972, about a month after her mom had died, Sarah found herself on thrush duty, along with Mack, because a few of the horses in the shady stalls had come down with a mild case of that fungus. Mack had the job of holding the hoof steady while Sarah brushed on a solution he’d made of povidone-iodine and sugar.

  Mack pulled the horse’s rear leg between his legs and picked out the hoof. And for some reason Sarah started daydreaming. Of all things, she thought about how she’d take it when Mack finally got a girlfriend. Probably not very well because just thinking about it made her sad. And that made her mad because of the selfishness of it. And why was she even thinking about these things anyway?

  “Sarah, she’s not going to stand on three legs all day.”

  Roused from her daydream, Sarah moved in with the little brush with the silver handle. “Sorry…I guess I was daydreaming.”

  Two skinny geldings goofed around with each other just outside the stall where they worked. Among Sarah’s first rescues, twenty-four-year-old Sandy and twenty-five-year-old Buggs had since been granted a unique retirement plan: every morning they got turned loose and had the run of the stable for the rest of the day. With gray whiskers and withered frames, they played, dozed, and snuck into empty stalls to eat the food of horses that were out being worked. Just then they happened to be squared off, bobbing and twisting, each looking to score a quick nip—their usual horseplay. Then the sound of an approaching car distracted them.

  Mack let the mare have her leg back and stood up. “That guy’s going to fly right past the no parking sign,” he said.

  Sandy and Buggs stood at attention, ears pricked toward the car.

  “You know who that looks like?” asked Sarah.

  “An idiot who can’t read?”

  A red Porsche Carrera sped through the opened gate that separated the parking area from the stable and came to a sideways skidding stop twenty feet from the stall where Sarah and Mack stood. The old boys got scared and ran away as fast as their skinny legs could carry them. They threw in a few bucks and kicks for old times’ sake.

  “It’s Grant.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  A tall, black haired young man with a partially unbuttoned baby blue collared shirt unfolded from the sports car and draped himself over the opened car door like a farmhand on a fence rail.

  “Howdy pardners!” he said, with a brilliant smile.

  He looked as handsome as ever—and as full of himself.

  “Grant! Did you see what you just did to those horses? You know you’re not supposed to park in here.” she said.

  “I’m home baby! I had to do something special!” he said, with an even bigger smile. “Now come over here and show me how happy you are.”

  She glanced self-consciously at Mack and went out of the stall to give him a kiss.

  “There. Now park your car where it belongs.”

  “Here you go cowpoke.” He tossed his keys to Mack. “I bet you’ve never driven one of these before.”

  “Grant! Park it yourself.”

  “Nah, I don’t mind,” said Mack, as he set his gear outside the stall and closed the gate. “I’ll put it somewhere safe.”

  Grant reached into the front pocket of his baby blue polyester slacks and came out with some wadded cash. He held it out to Mack. “Now remember, it’s not a Pinto,” he said, as he winked at Sarah. Mack ignored his outstretched hand, got into the car, and drove away.

  “That wasn’t nice, Grant. He’s not your valet.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know things got so complicated down here on the farm,” he said with a sarcastic twang.

  Sarah didn’t laugh.

  “Come on baby. It’s just a joke. I’m hungry. You think that grumpy cook will make me something to eat?”

  “I’m sure he will. Just leave it to me.” She’d always had a hard time staying mad at Grant. They walked hand in hand up to the house.

  Grand enjoyed an early lunch, and Sarah admired his handsome profile. She remembered back a few years, to nineteen, their ages when they’d first started dating. Even then he’d had a manly face with a strong chin and a straight, aristocratic nose. In high school she’d dated boys with pubescent voices that sometimes slipped out of gear. Grant’s had been deep and locked in, like a movie star. A lot of boys back then still had pimples and peach fuzz. He’d had sporty sideburns and a debonair mustache. And while the other boys acted like clumsy ducklings with memorized pickup lines and smooth moves they’d seen at the movies, Grant swam comfortably with any swan that caught his eye. Even back then he’d not only acted like someone going somewhere, but someone who’d pretty much already arrived.

  That didn’t explain his arrival at the manor, though. He still had a semester left at Harvard. The original plan, made before her mom had gotten sick, had been for him to finish in time for a summer wedding. “Now what do you mean ‘you’re home’?” asked Sarah.

  “I left school—didn’t even pack—and I’m not going back. Why should I? All I’m doing is killing time, waiting for a diploma I don’t need. My trust fund starts in a few years and you’ve got your inheritance now. We’ll bump up the wedding a few months and try to get by for a few years. Maybe even eat TV dinners once in a while. How’s that sound for a plan?”

  Bad. That’s how it sounded. Moving an already neglected wedding up a few months didn’t sound good at all, especially to a person trying to get lost. Women in wedding dresses don’t get lost. They get escorted, handed over, and bound by solemn oath. They get surrounded by hundreds of witnesses who whisper into each other’s ears and titter over misspoken words. Women in wedding dresses get photographed, greeted, toasted, and kissed. Over and over again. They are not allowed to get lost. Sarah didn’t feel ready for a wedding dress.

  “But you’re so close to graduating,” she said, as the two strolled back toward the barn. “You might need it for a job. Have you thought any more about what you want to do?”

  “Yes. I’ve decided to spend countless hours just staring at you,” he said, as he put his arm around her. “And when you get tired of that I’ll go to the club and play tennis.”

  “I meant for a job.”

  “Oh. I’m sure one of Father’s connections will offer me something, or maybe I’ll think about it for a while.”

  And right on cue Sarah heard the stern warning of her mother’s voice: he’s not a man if he doesn’t work. Sometimes that voice annoyed her.

  They walked back to the stable, Grant’s arm lazily draped over her shoulders. Sarah covered her sadness with a put on happy face. When they rounded the bend below the pond and saw Grant’s red Porsche parked on top of the manure pile, her smile became real.

  ~~~

  Another man had marriage on his mind that day. And fleeting thoughts of annulment too. Walter Tubbs, the attorney with a quick eye and an eager smile, had successfully lured a rich widow to the altar. For the longest time his professions of love for Mrs. Emily Barnes had elicited only frightening looking blushes and coy protests about their difference in age. To which he’d lied, repeatedly, saying that she by no means looked fourteen years older, and that it wouldn’t have mattered if she had. Of course by then he’d had a good look at her address book and had calculated the payoff; she had thirty-five or forty prominent names in that book, all of them personal friends from the hill, ready to welcome her new husband with open arms. And ready to open their wallets, no doubt, to the various business ventures he had in mind.

  Only later, after she’d accepted his proposal, did he learn that while she had prominent names in her address book, it didn’t mean they had her name in theirs, because they didn’t. It turned out that the book had belonged to her dead husband, a true Prospect Park blueblood, and the names had been entered before he’d foolishly acquired Emily from a beauty pageant in Atlantic City. After getting tangled feet during her tap dance, she didn’t come away with the sash and tiara but did manage to finagle a marriage to Horatio Barnes. The story had all
the makings of a frolicking, romantic musical. It didn’t, however, have the makings for a happy life on the hill in Prospect Park. Beauty pageant queens and bad tap dancers weren’t readily accepted in that realm. After the ill-advised union, the newlyweds found themselves forever banished from all but the most undesirable of the hillside mansions.

  Normally when one side takes something off the table, the other side renegotiates, but how do you renegotiate phony professions of love? Either Tubbs took what remained—the eminence of the widow’s street address and a sizable bank account—or he walked away. Back to the calculator he went, where he tried to put a price tag on a forty-six year old man with robust appetites who sacrifices himself to a sixty year old faded beauty queen.

  It never added up, but he decided to marry Emily Barnes anyway. And he did it because of the lousy address book. It might’ve looked worthless, but who’s to say that, in the right hands, that little book might not start paying dividends after all. He, Walter Tubbs, had landed in Prospect Park with nothing. He’d built a successful, if not spectacular, practice. He’d boasted Dorthea Railer as a regular client (even though he’d still never met her personally and didn’t have her signature on so much as a scrap of paper). Even Judith Newfield had called upon him when she needed help with her daughter. He would marry the old lady, take the book from her wrinkled hands, and start massaging that blessed thing until the big money names started popping like corn in a kettle.

  The wedding invitations went out, a few low-level dipsticks responded, and that’s how Walter Tubbs found himself in a mostly empty Methodist church at the base of the hill on that late Saturday Afternoon in January 1972.

  Chapter 20

  Important people kill each other with poison. Commoners, on the other hand, face off in seedy beer joints and try to snuff out each other with sweaty, commingled bodies or with wide-eyed knife fights or with guns fired in front of two or three witnesses and heard by even more. Their unrefined brains care more about indulging animal passions than exerting the brain power needed to achieve real solutions to their problems. Unfortunately, the wench who shoots her cheating husband as he sleeps, and the rogue who strangles the other rogue who insulted his football team, get about two minutes of satisfaction before they trip all over themselves all the way to prison. Yes, it’s true, commoners have occasionally tried their hands at poison, just as a fair number of desperate noblemen have resorted to unsheathed daggers in any number of royal palaces, but throughout all recorded history, there has been only one continuously revered alternate pathway to power for the rich and influential: poison.

  Poison is discreet. No one has to witness the gruesome plunge of a knife or hear the loud report of a gun. Poison is elite. From the Borgias, to the De’ Medicis, to the palaces of France and England, the poisoned goblet has been served by the most respected families and in the most refined homes known to mankind. But most of all, poison is civil, even convivial. In what other deadly enterprise do adversaries shower so much affection upon each other? They uncork fine wine and toast each other’s health, paying no heed to the faint taste of bitter almond in one of the glasses. They dine together, enjoying hardy companionship and hardy food that also happens to be hardily spiced. They give thoughtful gifts such as kidskin riding gloves that cause the hands to tingle the moment they are put on.

  A smile, a kiss, a chocolate truffle and then some momentary writhing on the floor; there just isn’t a friendlier way to kill.

  Of course the kind of poison chosen and the way it’s administered say a great deal about the poisoner. Adder venom on a blow dart is exotically lethal and shows that the plotter is resolute and mindful of their place in society. Dart frog mucus added to skin lotion sends a thoughtful message of deadly elegance. There are times, though, when the administrator has no choice but to accept the means at hand. If one resorts to common foxglove poisoning, it should not necessarily result in a blemish on one’s reputation. As long as it doesn’t happen often. If one has time constraints, or accessibility issues, and settles for an empty capsule filled with the extracted poison from five foxglove leafs and then places that capsule in a half full bottle of prescription medication, allowances should be made. And if the recipient is already on a medication derived from foxglove, which will make the death look like an accidental overdose, then it is even more acceptable.

  ~~~

  Inside a darkened room on the top floor of Park Royale Hotel, a lady sat transfixed before her looking glass. It differed in appearance from other magic mirrors and looked instead like a vast plate glass window, but when she pulled her chair up close, it revealed everything she needed to know. She didn’t ask to see the secret pathway to power or riches, and she didn’t care to know the fairest maiden in the land. She simply wanted to gaze upon the object of her desire, which she’d been doing with scarcely a blink for the last six hours.

  The lights had been left on at Sunny Slope Manor, and it sparkled like a priceless jewel in the cold, dark January night. The lady thought it a fitting tribute to her victory, albeit an unwitting one; most likely the lights had been left on because the servants had been too busy and distracted to turn them off. The grand house had been turned upside-down because Judith Newfield had just finished dying. The lady at the glass knew it because she had caused the death. Some of the same light that now sparkled down on her, also sparkled down on the dead body of her enemy.

  Part Three

  Enemies

  Chapter 21

  They had lost the war and didn’t know it. On the night of the most important battle, for the life of Judith Newfield, the enemies on the hill had slumbered peacefully in their European featherbeds. The next morning they enjoyed orange marmalade on toast, two minute eggs, and rumors delivered by telephone of her sudden death. These rumors, mixed with some thin details about an accidental overdose of heart medication, flowed from mansion to mansion, supplemented in the following days by several special editions of the Prospect Park Tribune. And that’s about as far as it went. Rumors, newspapers, and very little in the way of suspicion.

  They didn’t understand. They didn’t see the little cracks starting to form. And they didn’t realize that Dorthea intended to get their complete attention because a self-satisfied, secret victory didn’t interest her. It had to have teeth and look like the triumph she’d been dreaming about for the last forty years.

  ~~~

  The dining room made more money for Prospect Park Country Club than the café, bar, and golf course combined. And everyone knew the reason for its success: Frank Izzo. Short and square, like a butcher block with legs, he’d found favor with the good people on the hill and it showed by the way they flocked to his enchanted kingdom six nights a week. He also happened to be grossly overpaid, a fact that perpetually irked the board of directors, and one that also had no known remedy; Izzo, as most people knew him, had become indispensable, and his bloated salary came with the deal whether the directors liked it or not.

  He’d started at the country club at age thirteen when his father, a carpenter who’d worked in the area for many years, got him a job washing dishes at the café. Izzo quickly demonstrated a knack for the restaurant business and steadily worked his way up until becoming café manager at the young age of nineteen. He also had a knack for making money. The day he got promoted he told the general manager about an idea he had to increase profit by replacing some of the items on the menu and by adding tables to the patio above the tennis courts. He’d watched for years as the same wasteful routine played out every day of the year: the lunch crowd moved into the café’s limited number of tables and didn’t budge, not because they had all day to waste, but because the food took too long to prepare. Everyone knew you either got a table at eleven in the morning or you ate down the hill at State Street Lodge or Marcel de Gabrias.

  Young Frank Izzo knew the answer: ditch the fluffy soufflés and fancy cream sauces and fill the café’s tables as many times in a day as possible.

  Needless to say, this
idea didn’t exactly fall in line with the way things worked at the country club, but his boss seemed to like the enthusiasm, not to mention the prospects of a bigger year-end bonus. Without going out on a limb, he approved the extra tables and a single change to the menu—as a test. Izzo dropped the filet of sole, with blanched vegetables in hollandaise and replaced it with the Reuben sandwich and French fries. It quickly became the most popular item on the menu, which convinced the boss to adopt some of Izzo’s other ideas. Profits rose steadily over the next few years.

  In 1965 the club needed to find a new manager for the dining room. Nobody considered Izzo. He fit in well enough at the café, and he’d had some good ideas, but he didn’t belong in the dining room. Too unorthodox. Too ethnic. Izzo hounded the general manager just the same and eventually wore him down. In the interview with the directors, however, Izzo ran into a row of seven polite but bored looking faces, like people doing a good deed that also happened to be somewhat tedious. They didn’t expect much from him, other than, perhaps, an opinion that the dining room needed to be run more like the café. He said just the opposite and saw just a bit of the boredom fall from their faces. In order to make the dining room more successful, he argued, the members had to be kept at their tables for as long as possible, running up their tabs with a never ending parade of culinary temptations. The dining room had tremendous strengths that needed to be utilized, chief among these being the small army of elite chefs who worked there. Unlike any restaurant in the county, these chefs had the ability to repeatedly create masterpieces at every table in the room, six nights a week. In order to do this, the menu needed to be changed from a fancy looking order form to a guide that helped the members navigate from one artistic course to another and another. Champagne and latte worked fine as bookends, but the rest of the library—the appetizers and salads and soups and pastas and exotic main dishes and fruits and cheeses—needed to be expanded and refined and offered to the members in a way that encouraged them to create rather than just eat. And of course the wine cellar needed to be able to accommodate every course of the meal, and the dessert cart had to make a fat man cry.