Drop Dead on Recall (16 page)

48

The waitress cleared away
the ruins of our dinner and served us steaming cups of fragrant spiced
chai
. The real thing, not the coffee-bar version. Talk shifted to high school, and Tom told me about the band he was in with Connie’s brother, Jerry. “We practiced a lot in the big old barn on their grandpa’s farm down near Ossian. I played drums.” He mimed a drum riff. “We didn’t really care about music, we just wanted groupies.”

“Did you get them?”

“Nah. All we got were complaints from the neighbors. Said the racket upset their hogs.” He chuckled. “Jerry’s dad finally shut us down, much to Connie’s delight.”

“Connie didn’t like the band?”

“She wanted to be in it. She used to show up for practice with a toy tambourine and get absolutely furious when Jerry wouldn’t let her join in.” He guided me further down memory lane. “It was their grandpa who got me interested in ethnobotany.”

“I thought he was a farmer.”

“Yep. Good old-fashioned Hoosier farmer. Corn, beans, hogs, feeder calves. But he knew his weeds. Used us kids to patrol the pastures for jimsonweed, hemlock, and the ever-popular wild
cannabis
, all hazards for his cattle.”

“I can’t see Connie traipsing around farm fields.”

“It wasn’t pretty. Whined all the way about getting her jeans dirty.”

We talked the sun down, so the garden tour was off, but in spite of my reservations, I wanted to keep the giddy feeling a while longer. Okay, so maybe I was hoping to take this thing a step beyond the talking stage.
Might as well find out if the guy can kiss before you get in too deep
, whispered Janet Demon. I heard myself invite Tom home for a nightcap, then racked my brain trying to remember whether I’d left any underwear lying on the bathroom floor.
If I did, please be sure Jay didn’t carry them to the kitchen
, which he did from time to time
.

By the time I reached my van I’d exhumed all the questions about Tom that raging estrogen had made me forget. What was I doing, inviting a guy with a motive for murder into my home? I mean, hormones have made me do some dumb things in my time, and I’d been out with a few lady killers in my younger, wilder days, but as far as I know none of them were actual murderers.

And even if he were perfectly non-homicidal, what was I doing? I was dead sure I didn’t want to put my heart out on another limb like the one Chet shoved it off. Not that I hadn’t dated a few guys through the years, but it had been a while, and none of them had made my innards react like this.
Oh well
, I thought as I unlocked my van,
too late now.
I watched Tom open his car door, and my heart did a back flip when he turned and stabbed me with another of his killer grins.

49

We sat in the
kitchen with mugs of blackberry sage tea, a plate of Goldie’s anise-seed and almond cookies between us. I considered opening the bottle of Scotch I’d been saving, but decided I didn’t need to mix alcohol with newly revivified hormones. Jay kept bringing his eyeless, one-eared squeakie bunny to Tom, who tossed it around the kitchen and into the dining room. There was a call on my answering machine, but I ignored the little red light.

“So, you enjoy these nature hikes?” I asked. Tom had just told me he’d be leading an educational outing on spring wildflowers at Fox Island Nature Preserve the following Saturday.

“It’s a nice way to get out for some fresh air and spread the gospel of nature appreciation.”

“So, if you teach about edible plants, you must mention the inedible?”

He watched me with a look I couldn’t read, and my cheeks went hot. Again.
Girl, you’ve done more blushing since you met this guy than you’ve done in twenty years
.

“Lots of toxic plants out there. Some lethal, some just nasty.” He spouted off the Latin and common names for a whole string of plants that grow in Indiana, most of which I was surprised that I knew. “If you do any gardening, chances are you have poisons growing all around you.”

“That’s more or less what Goldie said.”

He smiled at the mention of Goldie’s name. I was about to ask him why when Leo sauntered into the kitchen. He took less than a second to size up our visitor before he sidled up to him, back arching and tail twitching as he deposited a film of orange hairs on Tom’s beige slacks. Tom reached down and lifted the cat onto his lap. Leo gazed at him through squinted eyes and ran his motor loud enough that I could hear the purrrr purrrr from across the table. The man likes my cat and, more telling, my cat likes the man.
You’re in serious trouble now, MacPhail.

“Hello, Leo.”

I didn’t remember mentioning that I even had a cat, let alone what I called him. “How did you know his name?”

Tom massaged the back of Leo’s skull and the cat looked practically orgasmic. “What else could a handsome leonine fella like this be named?” I was almost jealous, though of which of them I wasn’t sure. “So tell me about Goldie.”

“My neighbor with the garden.”

“Right. The mystic at the co-op.”

“Mystic?”

“I’ve known a lot of shamans, mystics, people of power. Your friend has the …” He paused, searching for the word. “Hard to define. Energy, power, charisma. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

I had indeed. “I thought you science types didn’t believe in such things.”

He lowered his eyelids and replied slowly. “You don’t have to believe in magic to know that some people have something most of us don’t. Or more to the point, they know how to use something inside themselves that the rest of us have forgotten about.” It occurred to me that he might not be inclined to say that to a room full of college professors. I wasn’t entirely sure what I thought about it myself, and decided to get back to rational conversation, if talk about friends killing friends can be called rational.

“So, we’re surrounded by poisonous plants, huh?”

He gently lowered Leo to the floor and watched him stroll toward the living room. “Most of them won’t kill you. Some would give you a good belly ache, or visions, but that’s about it.”

But a guy who knows what he’s doing could use those plants to kill
, I thought.
A guy like you.

“Now, if I wanted to knock someone off with plants, there are only a couple I’d use.”
There he goes again, answering my unspoken questions.
“I’d want to be sure that my victim was dead or beyond help before help arrived, and I’d want the symptoms to look like natural causes.”

I hoped he couldn’t hear the beating of my telltale heart.

“Janet, I didn’t kill Abigail.”

The temperature in my face must have spiked over the lethal level at that. I wanted to crawl under the table.

“It’s okay.” He smiled. “As you already know, I
could
have a motive, and I have the know-how. But I don’t care about family history. Mom told me many times that we were better off without them. She liked to say they were dysfunctional before dysfunctional was cool. I didn’t even know the old folks, and knew Abigail just to say hi. From what I know
about
them, I didn’t miss anything.”

Janet Demon was back, whispering,
Other than a whole pile of money.

50

Tom’s eyes twinkled as
he watched me stammer, “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry. Shit! I’m so embarrassed.” I’d just as much as accused the man of murder. Nice move on a first date, if that’s what this was.

“No need. It’s a perfectly reasonable line of thinking. It just happens to be wrong.” He changed the subject. “How’s Connie doing through all this?”

“I dunno. I guess she feels bad for Greg. I don’t think she and Abigail were all that close.”

His eyes seemed to turn a shade browner. “No, I think that’s a bit of an understatement.”

“Oh?”

“Connie’s a couple years older than Greg, but he hung out with her younger brother. She was a bit goofy for Greg way back when. Teenage crush mostly, although she kept it up into college. I always thought Connie made more of small things than Greg ever meant, if you know what I mean.”

I knew precisely what he meant. I’d misplaced a few crushes myself in my high-hormone days. I thought back to Connie’s comments about what a catch Greg was. What was it she’d said? Something about a good-looking guy with a snazzy ride?

“Connie’s brother Jerry and I went off to different colleges and drifted apart, but Connie used to call me at school. We’d get together when I was home. I guess I was sort of a big brother without the emotional baggage.”

This was definitely a Connie I didn’t know. But then my friend Gina is the only one of my current friends who knows anything about the Janet of thirty years ago, let alone forty, so why should I know more about Connie’s younger years?

“She got married herself a year or so later. I had hoped she’d be happy.” Tom looked thoughtful. “I think she was for a while.”

“She was in the middle of her divorce when we met.”

We sat in silence for what seemed a long time, and then Tom reached across the table and covered my hand with his, sending a zing up my arm and down to my toes, with several Tasmanian-devil-type spins en route. “So, you said Greg left you a gift? Hard to imagine him baking dog biscuits, especially now.”

“They look homemade, but I’m sure he must have bought them.”
I slowly withdrew my hand so my juices wouldn’t boil over.

“Maybe someone made them for him.”

I tried to stifle myself, but Tom must have seen my lips twitch.

“What?”

“Nothing.” A giggle slipped through, and Tom leaned back, watching me from through slitted eyes and waiting for an explanation. “Giselle seems to have a thing for Greg, that’s all. She’d have baked him biscuits if he asked.”

“No kidding? Boy, he has ’em lined up.”

“Has what lined up?”

“Girls.”

“Hmm. Maybe I should take a closer look at Greg.”

That killer grin again. “Or you could consider the road less trav
eled.”
Whoa!
No one had flirted with me like this in at least a de
cade,
or if they had I’d missed it. Queasy as it made me feel, I decided I didn’t hate the feeling. I was still groping for something to say when Tom spoke again.

“So, let’s see them.”

“See what?”

“The biscuits.”

I went to the pantry and reached for the top shelf, hoping that Tom wasn’t watching my rear end as closely as I always watched his. I pulled the basket to the edge of the shelf and cautiously lifted it down. Something thumped softly at my feet, and as I lowered the basket I saw that the cellophane wrapper was torn open. Jay started toward me, his eyes focused on the floor in front of my toes. Tom intercepted him with one of those quick collar snags that come naturally to experienced dog owners, and in the same motion moved Jay to the back door, and out.

I held the basket to my side and looked down. “Ewwww!” A tiny corpse lay belly-up on my kitchen floor, glazed eyes open, little fists tucked up to its chest. I put the basket on the table and reached for some paper towels, thinking I’d entomb the body in the garbage. The outside garbage.
What is this, dead rodent week?

“Hang on a second.” Tom placed a hand on my arm as I moved toward the dead mouse. He turned the basket so that he could see the hole in the wrapper, and extracted a broken, or nibbled, biscuit through the hole. “Janet, did you say you gave Jay a biscuit?”

“Yes. A coup … Ohmygod! They’re poisoned, aren’t they?”

Tom and I gaped at one another for a quarter second longer, then both of us sprang into action with the precision that sheer panic can inspire. Tom carefully loaded the mouse into a plastic sandwich bag, the suspect biscuit into another. The back door sprang open and Jay burst in. “Down!” I snapped, and Jay dropped to the floor, his whole being focused on the bags in Tom’s hands. “That’s it! I’ve got to replace that damn handle with a knob he can’t open!”

I called the emergency vet clinic and, surprised that my voice stayed as firm as it did, told them the basics and said we were on our way. I put a leash on Jay, grabbed my keys, and sprinted for the van. Tom brought the biscuit and the corpse.

51

We stayed until the
initial treatment was over. It had been hours since Jay ate the biscuits, so there was no point trying to make him bring them back up. Besides, we didn’t know positively that he’d been poisoned, or what the poison was if he had, although the mouse appeared to have bled out internally. They took blood from Jay for a liver function analysis, and administered fluids and vitamin K to counteract the probable anticoagulant and promote clotting. The vet commented several times on how cooperative Jay was throughout the ordeal. That’s my good boy.

When we left the emergency clinic at 2:30 in the darkest morning I’d seen in a long time, Jay had a two-inch square of pink skin showing where they’d shaved his foreleg and shoved a catheter needle into a vein to pump fluid into him. He accepted all that without missing a beat, but when he realized I was leaving without him, he put on his saddest-dog-in-the-world face and ripped out a piece of my heart.

Tom drove me home, solid and silent while I ranted all the way and into the house.

“How could anyone attack my dog? It’s sick!” I punched the top of the table.

Tom said softly. “We don’t know for sure yet that the biscuits were poisoned.”

I glared at him. How could he be reasonable at a time like this? I wanted to punch somebody. “What if it were Drake?”

“Don’t get me wrong, Janet. If the biscuits are poisoned and we find out who did it, I’d like a private turn myself with the lily-livered rat.” The muscles in his jaw flexed, and his eyes were rivers of heat, at once gentle with concern and aflame with outrage, and something else, something that frightened me, something I wanted to hold and wrap around myself.

Something that ripped through the slender web of control that was holding me together. To my horror, my rage dissolved in a rush of tears. Tom wrapped an arm around my shoulders and steered me to the living room couch. Still holding me, he leaned over and shoved some magazines to the floor, clearing a spot for the two of us. He held me in his arms, and the spicy scent of soap and masculinity worked its way into my over-taut brain. We stayed like that until my well ran dry and my nostrils closed in protest. I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water again and again over my swollen eyes and nose. Then I blew my nose, wiped the mascara streaks out from under my eyes, and ran a brush through my tangled hair. A big hunk on the side of my head that had pressed itself against Tom’s chest refused to lie down, even when I wet it, so I gave up and went with the half-nuts look.

By the time I rejoined Tom in the kitchen he had found the Scotch and poured me a double shot. “Drink this.” The amber liquid burned its way into me, spreading from my core outward until my mind and limbs together were suffused with a muzzy warmth.

It took almost all the energy I had left to tell Tom, “I’d like to be alone for a while.”

He nodded and stood to go. “Get some sleep if you can.” His voice was thick with concern. I walked him to his car.

“Thank you.” Two words, so often misused, so often all there is to say.

Tom hugged me again, and I almost recanted, almost asked him to stay. Instead, I stood alone in the waning night and watched him drive away.

The eastern horizon glowed with the blue-green light that comes before dawn, the sky above still indigo but for a slim silver crescent to the east. The sparrows and house finches that nest in the big blue spruce beside my garage twittered and stirred. I sat in the rocker on my front porch and wallowed in the loneliness of night until long strokes of tangerine and violet painted the day with promise. The birds began to flit in and out of the sheltering branches, murmuring good mornings. An occasional hint of hyacinth from Goldie’s yard wafted over me on a light breeze.

I shivered, and realized that it wasn’t just my heart that was chilled. I went in. My favorite prints, my handmade rugs, the carefully chosen hues of my walls tried to make me feel at home, but without my dog, this was nothing but a house.

I’d never be able to sleep, so I went to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee before showering. Leo lazed on the counter next to the telephone, and I greeted him in polite Cat with a mutual nose-bump. As I stroked his glossy body, I noticed the answering machine light still pleading for an audience. I pushed
Play
, crossed the kitchen to make a pot of caffeine, and listened to Marietta Santini’s voice, fast and pitched high.

“Janet, are you there? If you’re there, pick up the phone.” I was pushing the scoop into the bag of coffee and thinking it odd for Marietta to call when I froze. “Janet, it’s awful. Suzette is dead!”