Allergic to Death

by Peg Cochran

  Sienna swung around to face Gigi. “You look very excited.”

  “So much for my career as a poker player, I guess.”

  “Let’s sit outside.” Sienna gestured toward the French doors leading to a flagstone patio.

  Gigi was about to follow her when she noticed a man’s suit jacket slung over one of the kitchen chairs, and a tie hanging from the pantry doorknob.

  “Is Oliver home?”

  “Yes,” Sienna whispered. “I’ll tell you more outside.”

  Sienna set the tray on a small wrought-iron café table, leaving room for Gigi’s laptop. Gigi tried to control her impatience as Sienna fussed with the tea. Finally, glass in hand, she could restrain herself no longer.

  She nodded toward the kitchen. “How did Oliver take the news about the baby?”

  “He’s thrilled.” Sienna beamed. “It’s all been a misunderstanding.” Sienna stirred her tea. “He hasn’t been seeing anyone, and he said”—she dashed a hand across her eyes—“he doesn’t regret our life here in Woodstone at all. He’s just been really stressed about his job.”

  Gigi raised an eyebrow.

  “Seriously,” Sienna said. “More and more people have been getting laid off every week, and he and the rest of the staff have been taking on more and more work. He’s been staying late trying to get things done and to prove to his bosses that they need him.” Sienna stared into her tea. “He didn’t want to tell me about it because he didn’t want to worry me. Meanwhile, he’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  “What—?”

  Sienna looked up. “He’s lost his job. He didn’t survive the last round of layoffs.”

  “Oh no!”

  Sienna smiled. “But now that it’s over, he can start to move forward. He’s thinking about opening up a small firm of his own right here in Woodstone! That way he can be near the baby when it comes.” She ran a hand over her still-taut abdomen.

  “That’s really good news. So, he’s excited about the baby?”

  “Oh, yes,” Sienna glowed. “He’s as thrilled as I am. We’ve already spent hours talking about names and how to fix up the nursery.” Sienna tapped Gigi’s computer. “Anyway, tell me what you’ve discovered.”

  Gigi swiveled the laptop around and turned it on, her hands hovering impatiently over the keys. “I went to the search engine and plugged in Adora Sands, and the first thing I came up with was this.” She chose a link, hit enter and turned the screen so that they could both see it.

  Sienna tilted her glass in the direction of the screen. “So Alice was right—Adora really was on Broadway once. It’s hard to believe. No wonder she sometimes gets so impatient with the Woodstone Players.”

  “I know.” Gigi leaned over the screen. “The play sounds very avant-garde.” She read the headline out loud. “‘Young Playwright Has New Take on McCarthy Era’.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t sound like my sort of thing.”

  “Mine, either,” Sienna agreed.

  Gigi clicked on another bookmarked site. “Cindy Adams, the New York Post. Check this out.”

  Sienna leaned forward and studied the grainy black-and-white picture that figured prominently in the infamous gossip column. “It’s Winston and Adora.”

  “Yes. Coming out of some fancy nightclub on Fifty-Seventh Street.”

  Sienna peered at the photo again. “With their arms around each other.”

  Gigi nodded. “It looks like Adora might be the one who broke up Martha’s marriage to Winston, not Barbie.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” Sienna leaned back in her seat and curled her feet under her.

  “There’s only one problem,” Gigi said as she snapped the computer shut. “If that’s the case, then Adora should be dead, not Martha.”

  Chapter 18

  Gigi led Reg up the steps to the Book Nook and pushed open the door. She was happy to see Sienna once again behind the counter, her eyes bright and her complexion much rosier than it had been.

  She smiled when she saw Gigi. “I was just going to make some tea. Would you like some?”

  “Is there any coffee?” Gigi leaned her elbows on the counter.

  “You’re in luck. I just started a pot.”

  “Madison?” Sienna called to the spike-haired girl who was shelving a stack of inspirational romances. “Can you watch the register for a few minutes?”

  Sienna swooshed out from behind the counter, her bright cotton skirt swirling around her ankles.

  Gigi followed her to the coffee corner, where she inhaled the delicious aroma of fresh-brewed coffee. “Smells heavenly.” She unclipped Reg’s leash, and he sat down next to the sofa, his pink tongue bobbing with each breath.

  “It’s the Sumatra blend—your favorite,” Sienna said as she poured out a mug and handed it to Gigi. She took a second mug, filled it with hot water and added a tea bag to steep.

  “Hey there.” Alice popped around the corner carrying an armload of colorfully jacketed romance paperbacks. “Two weeks to the wedding, and I’m right on track.” She pulled at the waistband of her skirt to show how loose it was. “I’ve lost all the weight with time to spare.” She beamed at Gigi and dumped her stack of books on the sofa. “And wait till you see my dress.” Alice put her hands on her hips and wiggled them provocatively.

  “I wish all my clients were like you.” Gigi took a cautious sip of her steaming coffee. “Too many of them cheat and then blame me when they don’t lose as much weight as they’d like.”

  “Any more news on that deal with Branston Foods?” Sienna stirred agave nectar into her tea to sweeten it. “I keep thinking they’re going to change their minds—see what a great thing it could be for them—and come back with an offer.”

  “No, not yet. I keep hoping, too.” Gigi stared into her mug of coffee. She tried not to think about it, but her resources were getting low, and she could really use that deal.

  “If it makes you feel any better”—Alice pushed aside the novels she’d dropped onto the sofa and sat down—“Detective Mertz has been asking some questions. I don’t know if it will lead to anything, but he’s a good detective—one of the best. And”—her eyes twinkled—“he seems to have taken a personal interest in this case.” She wiggled her eyebrows at Gigi.

  Gigi tried not to look as pleased as she felt. Alice had probably just imagined it.

  “Speaking of the case”—Sienna perched on the sofa arm and cradled her mug of tea—“Gigi and I found some information online about Adora, and you were right. She was on Broadway once.”

  “And only once as far as we can tell.” Gigi glanced at Alice and Sienna. “I wonder what happened? All her roles after that seem to have been in summer theater or other amateur productions.”

  “Maybe she got married? And they moved away from the city? We don’t really know much of anything about her at all.” Alice began stacking her pile of romance novels. “For all I know, she might have had half a dozen kids between then and now.”

  “I doubt that.” Sienna looked shocked.

  Alice shrugged. “You never know.”

  “Who would know?” Gigi looked from one to the other.

  “Winston maybe.” Alice started to get up. “I think he’s known her longer than any of us.”

  “And speaking of Winston…”

  Something about the way Gigi said it made Alice plunk back down on the sofa, the pile of books mounded in her lap.

  “What about Winston?” She looked from Sienna to Gigi and back again. “Come on, girls, dish. It’s your old friend Alice here.” She leaned forward eagerly.

  Gigi didn’t have the heart to make her wait any longer. “We’ve discovered who broke up Winston’s marriage to Martha.”

  “Well, who? Tell me.”

  “Adora.”

  “No!”

  Gigi nodded. “We found a picture and a small item on them in the gossip column in the New York Post.”

  Alice whistled. “No wonder she and Martha never got along. They must have been
pretty surprised to see each other again—both moving to the same small town in Connecticut.” She absentmindedly ruffled the pages of one of the paperbacks in her lap. “It does kind of make you wonder, though.”

  “Wonder what?” Gigi and Sienna echoed.

  Alice spread her hands wide. “Whether Martha ever got her revenge or not.” She grinned. “And if so, how?”

  Gigi was surprised to see a car parked in her driveway when she got home. She wasn’t expecting anyone and didn’t recognize the cream-colored Cadillac that was blocking her way. She pulled the MINI up alongside, got out and went around to the passenger side. She opened the door, and Reg immediately ran, barking, toward the back of the cottage.

  Gigi was walking up the path when three people came around the side of the house, a young couple followed by an older woman. The young couple were smartly dressed in sophisticated outfits that suggested they must have come out from the city. The older, blond-haired woman was wearing a flowered shirtwaist dress that screamed “Realtor.”

  Gigi rushed over to where they were standing and pointing at the front of the house. Her house. Reg got there first and ran back and forth between their legs, wagging his tail.

  “Reg!” Gigi shouted and whistled.

  The other three stopped talking and turned toward her.

  “Ah, there you are,” the older woman said, coming toward Gigi with her hand outstretched. “I’m Amanda Parker.” She shook Gigi’s hand briefly, extracting her own just as soon as they made contact to dig in the Louis Vuitton handbag that dangled from her arm. “My card.” She pushed the white square into Gigi’s palm.

  “What are you doing here?” Gigi said, her heart hammering loudly.

  “I’m sorry.” The woman patted her perfectly coifed blond hairdo. “Didn’t Mr. Simpson tell you we were coming?”

  Gigi shook her head and bent down to pet Reg, who was leaning against her leg. He seemed to sense her dismay.

  “These young people”—Amanda gestured toward the couple who were both intent on their smartphones—“are interested in buying this charming little cottage.”

  Gigi’s mouth went dry, and her heart hammered even harder. She wanted to scream that they couldn’t buy the cottage. It was hers. Or it would be, as soon as she figured out how she was going to pay for it. But instead she smiled, bit her lower lip with her teeth and opened the front door.

  Amanda rounded up the couple, who barely looked up from their mobile devices, and herded them through the front door and into the foyer, much like a sheepdog collecting its flock.

  Light was slanting through the windows, leaving mellow streaks on the dark wood floor. It was Gigi’s favorite time of day in the cottage—late afternoon—when the sun’s rays took on a golden bronze hue and the cooling air carried the scent of lavender through the open windows.

  She followed the couple and the Realtor into the living room, tagging along like a lost puppy. She was struck anew by how much she loved the place. She’d never felt so at home before, and she wasn’t giving it up without a fight. Fortunately, these two didn’t look like the cottage type. They’d probably take a spin around and then go look at some place more suitable.

  The girl lifted her head briefly from her phone, her thumbs still hovering over the miniature keyboard, and looked around. “It’s kind of small.”

  The young man’s head bobbed in agreement. “Kind of small. Yes.”

  “Nonsense,” Amanda swept out an arm to encompass the room. “The space is lovely, and”—she paused for dramatic effect—“you can always bump out the windows and enlarge.”

  The couple looked around, grunted and then followed Amanda as she led the way to the bedroom, her full flowered skirt swishing from side to side as she walked.

  These people couldn’t possibly buy the cottage, Gigi thought. They had no feeling for it whatsoever. It would be a crime to ruin the charming bay window in the living room for the sake of a couple of extra feet. What were they going to do with all the space, anyway?

  Gigi was glad, as they all trooped into the bedroom, that she made her bed and hung up her clothes every morning. The girl poked her head in the closet and wrinkled her nose. “It’s awfully small.”

  Amanda laughed. “That’s how these old places were built. If you want charm, you might have to sacrifice some space.” She peeled back the white eyelet curtain at the window and stared out. “Nice view,” she said as she let the curtain fall back into place. “Now, if it’s size you want, I can show you this new place just outside of town. It used to be a furniture factory, but they’ve created some of the most amazing spaces out of it. Very avant-garde.”

  Now that sounded a lot more like this couple’s kind of place. City Girl, as Gigi had come to think of her, grunted again.

  “I kind of like this place. What do you think?” She looked over at City Boy, who was still busy texting, his thumbs flying over the keys.

  He looked up suddenly, probably sensing that City Girl was staring at him, her lip curling in dissatisfaction.

  “What did you say?”

  “I like this place.” City Girl gave an imperceptible stomp of her foot.

  Gigi crossed her fingers. Surely he would say it was too small, too old, too something for his taste.

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “Wonderful.” Amanda clapped her hands. “That’s done, then. Shall we go back to my office and draw up the papers?”

  Gigi’s heart plummeted to the pit of her stomach. They were actually going to buy her cottage. She looked at Reg, who cocked his head sadly. What would she do? Where would she go?

  She’d just have to solve Martha’s death, prove that her Gourmet De-Lite food had had nothing to do with it, persuade Branston Foods to reconsider their deal and put a down payment on the cottage herself.

  Sure. Nothing to it. Easy as pie.

  Gigi usually found contentment in certain menial, repetitive tasks. It was one reason she’d been so drawn to cooking. Chopping, kneading and stirring all brought a measure of calm and comfort, even under the most stressful circumstances.

  Except now. She had a stack of newspapers to be tied up for recycling—a boring job that she did while watching television or listening to music. She would usually find, halfway through, that she’d entered a zone of Zen-like tranquility.

  Tonight, however, the task seemed merely irksome, a chore and nothing more. Her fingers kept getting tied up in the twine, her knots refused to hold, and all she really wanted to do was throw the whole stack in the garbage. But she believed in recycling. She really did.

  The television was tuned to a favorite show, but tonight it didn’t hold her attention. She couldn’t get City Girl and City Boy out of her mind. The prospect of their living in the cottage—her cottage—made her stomach feel as if she were on a ship being tossed around in a storm.

  Reg sighed and rolled over on his back, and Gigi reached out to scratch his tummy. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a glass of iced green tea within easy reach, a tottering stack of newspapers to her left and a finished stack to her right. She grabbed a handful of sections and carefully aligned their edges. An advertisement for Abigail’s caught her eye. The dress in the picture looked like the blue silk one she’d tried on. She sighed. It really had looked good on her.

  The section had been left open to an inner page, and Gigi began to unfold it so she could straighten it out. The advertisement was opposite the obituaries, and Martha’s name jumped out at her. She read through the notice again, wondering if they would ever discover what had really happened to the poor woman.

  She was shaking out the section prior to refolding it correctly when a thought occurred to her. Quickly, she opened the paper and scanned Martha’s obituary again.

  She dropped the paper and sat for a minute, thinking. She was on to something. Definitely, she was onto something. The seesawing feeling in her stomach settled and changed to prickles of excitement. She just needed to ask a few questions.

  But who wo
uld have the answers?

  Winston, of course!

  The big opening night of the Woodstone Players’ production of Truth or Dare was hot and humid with the rumblings of bad weather in the distance. Sienna and Oliver were picking Gigi up and, despite everything, she was quite excited.

  She’d taken extra care with the dinner entrée that night for her Gourmet De-Lite customers since so many of them were in the cast of Truth or Dare. She carefully packed poached salmon with yogurt dill sauce and oven roasted green beans in her specially made boxes, spent extra time inking the names on top and even included a short “break a leg” message. She lined the containers up on her kitchen counter—ones for Barbie, Alice, Adora. She thought of everyone else who had somehow been involved with Martha—Carlo, Emilio, Winston. Was one of them really a murderer?

  A trickle of sweat crawled slowly down her back, and she shivered. Maybe it was the effects of the weather, but she had a feeling that things were going to come to a head very soon.

  Gigi dressed as coolly as possible in a sea green sleeveless cotton dress. The air-conditioning at the Woodstone Theater was notoriously unreliable, but if she actually did get cold, she had a darker green shawl to wrap around her bare shoulders. She glanced at herself in the mirror. Not bad, although she still wished she had been able to afford that sweet little number from Abigail’s.

  Sienna and Oliver picked her up right on schedule, but still, when they pulled into the parking lot of the Woodstone Theater, many of the spaces were already taken. Oliver offered to drop them at the front door.

  “I can walk perfectly well, darling,” Sienna said, patting his cheek, but there was no reproach in her voice.

  “I know.” Oliver turned toward her. “But humor me, okay? I feel like pampering you a bit.”

  They sat grinning at each other until finally Gigi cleared her throat. She’d noticed Winston’s car in the lot and thought this might be the perfect opportunity to talk to him.

  Oliver put the car back in gear and moved around toward the back of the theater, finally maneuvering their silver Audi into a spot.