From Herring to Eternity (20 page)

“Probably not the best ingredient in that form,” he said. “You may have noticed the label is red, not black.”

“I did,” I said, looking around. I had noticed but figured he just ran out of one kind of felt-tipped pen.

“It’s poisonous in more than the smallest of small doses,” he said.

“Then why sell it?”

He answered, “As poison. As an ingredient in all-natural pest control.”

“Forgive me, but why would someone care about killing vermin naturally?”

“Because the ingredients return to the earth,” he said. “A bird of prey might eat a dead rat. Metabolized bamboo would be less toxic to the predator than, say, lingering traces of indandione anticoagulants or 4-hydroxycoumarin found in over-the-counter rodenticides.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed.

He came closer. “Ms. Nash, please do not confuse veganism with being inherently naive or weak. The police asked about my bamboo and my rat poisons. I explained that, yes, an organically based compound would dissipate more rapidly and efficiently into the human body until only a very skilled forensic chemist would be able to correctly identify it. I suspect that quick discovery, not the latter, is the reason they surmised that one Tippi Montgomery died from ingesting the kind of mixture prepared in my shop. I emphasize ‘the kind of.’ Any competent herbalist could have prepared that mixture in their kitchen. And you will find, incidentally, that I do
not
sell mercury, which—according to the Herbal Defense Fund Association website—was the poison found in the body of the first victim, Ms. Montgomery’s brother.”

“True, but that was when someone, apparently, was trying to put the finger on my herring.”

“It is quite right for you to defend your honor and that of your fish,” he agreed. “None of which is my concern or my doing. I don’t mean to sound callous, but I am constantly under suspicion and even assault from the authorities due to my activism. I am not responsible for the actions of my customers, only my own. And, like you, I look after the integrity of my product. Which brings me back to, what can I help you with today?”

One thing was certain: I’d been told.

“Sorry to have interrupted,” I said with a nod toward the counter.

“You didn’t. I finished that step.”

I’d been told, again. I’d had enough of this. I’d learned that he sold what may have been used to kill Tippi Montgomery—but not definitively. I turned to go and saw, on the shelf, rows of his own remedies. They were packaged in little brown bags, like upscale tea leaves. Among them was one I’d seen before. It was called Karmamine and had a picture of a wave.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

He was still standing where I’d left him. “Seasickness,” he replied.

Great
, I thought. So maybe Yutu shopped here, too. Maybe he had a reason for killing Lippy. Or Barron again—he could have purchased the Karmamine and, by the way, let’s have some all natural rat poison for the boat. Mad had had access to Lippy’s food. I didn’t know who had access to Tippi. And what did any of that have to do with the trumpet case going missing, then turning up—if anything?

Was everyone in my circle a potential suspect? Was everyone involved? Should I just go home, remove myself from events, and let them take their own course? What was it my great-grandmother used to say about why she never read a newspaper?
Let the world knock its own heads together
.

I left knowing little more than I had before, only glad that I was out of that rank tomb with its walking cadaver.

I headed back across the Cumberland River with almost nothing in my head. Or, rather, nothing particularly motivational. Dammit, I needed a hobby that didn’t involve dead bodies. I was thinking about where to go. I didn’t want to go to the house, where the Wiccan tent was still pitched; I hadn’t seen Sally that morning and I suspected she wasn’t there since her cat was sitting outside the flap, the familiar waiting. I didn’t want to go to the deli which I never seemed to escape. What about a movie? A museum? Something different, like a hot air balloon ride? A hike? There was the Leatherwood Ford Trail that went to the Angel Falls Overlook. That sounded—sweaty.

“How about you just keep driving and head north, to New York?”

And then I put something else in my brain. Before going to bed the night before, I had downloaded the song Luke and Mad had been humming—”More Coffee.” I turned on my iPod, gave it a few listens. It was as catchy as everyone had said, with the added benefit that the electric harp was soothing in a kind of full-body-harmonic-New-Age way. It was like “Achy Breaky Heart” and “Livin’ La Vida Loca” except that you didn’t hate yourself for liking it.

I didn’t go home or to the deli. It was a very clear and warmish day so I went to the Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park and walked around a bit. The nineteen-acre park, one of the great urban open spaces in the nation, had been newly restored after disastrous 2010 flooding. I hadn’t been here before but the fountains and columns of the fix-up were stunning. I walked from the capitol building through the Court of Three Stars with its stately ninety-five-bell carillons. I strolled by the Tennessee River Wall and the thirty-one geyserlike fountains representing the state’s rivers and waterways. Then I picked up a pulled-pork wrap and Coke at the farmer’s market—take that, vegan-alien!—and plopped myself on the grass. I had a flashback to Central Park in the early fall, when it was still warm and the trees were only just beginning to turn and there were distant sounds of traffic and kids with balls and Frisbees and dogs, just like now. I thought about what had filled my head then, the short-term worries and ambitions. I actually missed them. They were manageable bites. Finish analyzing this portfolio. Get my hair done for that date. Make sure to pick up Mom’s birthday cake. Pick up a couple of magazines so I won’t go crazy staying home on Yom Kippur.

Who
was
that girl and where did she go?
I wondered.
When
did she go? It wasn’t a precise time and place and I couldn’t even trace the process. All I knew is that she seemed like someone else. What I couldn’t figure out was whether I was wiser now or simply beaten down and jaded. I did know that I was more
hamisch
now—down-to-earth, a real person.

“They were both you,” I murmured. “Only now I’m the tree without the trimmings.”

The phalanxes of bells rang the hour. That was a signal to come back to the present. I did. Sitting here, doing nothing at all, life didn’t seem so bad. I was earning enough money, I was my own boss, and—okay—there was some
tsuris
with the house. And the “fella” situation could be better. But lots of people had those problems and worse. Like the fact that “More Coffee” was still playing in my head even though the iPod was in the car.

I checked e-mails—there were zero—so rather than feel like a loser and put my phone away, I looked up the gal who performed the song.

Ximene Gonzalez Gallego, born 1989, a winner on the Spanish talent TV show
Operación Éxito
in 2009, released an album that same year which was a moderate hit, another album in 2011 which got some attention here, and then wham—
“Más café.”
Romantically linked to Flamenco guitarist Juanito Mantilla, to Basque singer Nino Laboa, to fiery young Berliner Philharmoniker conductor Kurt Furtwangler, and presently—

Oh ho
.

I stopped. That was interesting. She was currently dating Chimanga Strong, the president of the Southern Free International Bank. According to the entry, Strong was also the founder and financier behind Cotton Saint Tunes.

“So Fly Saucer has a bankro daddy,” I muttered.

That in itself wasn’t so strange as the fact that Fly Saucer didn’t seem to make a big deal out of having a big record. I wondered if even Luke knew that it was his. Maybe it happened so often for Fly it wasn’t anything special.

Dammit.

There was only one person who would be able to help unravel whatever had happened, and that was the cop who was already trying to figure the whole thing out.

“Don’t even think about that,” I told myself. “The day is too sweet for compromise.”

Though I did wonder—because I’m like a dog with a bone; I can’t leave things be, even when they’re bad for me—what would I do if he happened to walk by? Coincidences like that did occur. Would I want him to sit with me as just someone I know or the cop on the case—or would I want him to walk on? If I could pick and choose how he was going to integrate with my life, he could sit down. If not, he could stroll on by. Not that I expected him to stop. He had to have seen the police report about the assault outside my house. He hadn’t even texted to see how I was.

I ate my delightfully greasy wrap and dripped some kind of barbecue sauce on the grass. I sat on my suddenly unmotivated
tuchas
. I smiled at the cute park ranger who ambled by. He looked impassively back at me, which made me feel old and ugly and I suddenly hated him and whatever bimbo belle he was dating. I tried to change the mental subject and think about where I wanted to be a year from now.

Yes, things are okay
. But I knew that I did not want to be back in this park next fall, by myself, wondering where I wanted to be a year from then . . .

Chapter 20

I had a little bit of an epiphany while I was lying in the park.

I was thinking about my mother and how much she would have liked the trees and the occasional twittering birds. She was always too busy and too concerned about me to worry about herself. I realized that my life down here was pure Mom. I worked, I looked after my staff, I did my little part in these various homicide investigations, all so I wouldn’t have to do what I’d just done: reflect on my own life. Not that there was anything wrong with helping others. But if you put yourself on the sidelines, pretty soon there was no time left to do anything about your own life.

I honestly didn’t know how to change that. I didn’t know if I
could
change it. I remember my mother saying how
her
mother was always taking on too much, especially things that were none of her business. Maybe it was in my DNA. But I decided, then, to try and give myself perspective instead of being swept along with the current. I’d keep a journal, and resolved to write down something new I’d learned every day—even if it was something small, like, “Mature shade trees actually have a personality” or “pulled pork causes acid reflux and makes me
grepts
.” One way or the other, the same time next year would be different.

It was late afternoon when I finally picked myself up and took a walk through the city. It was early evening when I found myself on 3rd Avenue not far from Union Street. I decided to go over to The Oatmeal Stallion. I’d never been and I decided I wanted to see a place where Lippy had played. I wondered if the police even knew about the connection. Fly had said he’d screwed up here. I wondered how.

It was still early so there was no bruiser at the red velvet ropes, no one behind the black velvet ropes that marked the smoking area, and no problem getting in. Things didn’t really heat up in this part of town until the hours moved back into single digits.

The bar was a horseshoe with tables packed tightly on both sides. A floor for the jazz band was at the open part of the horseshoe. There were two small dance areas on either side of that. Even though the club was open, it felt closed. There were only a few customers—mostly tourists, it looked like—and the bartender was busier with his cell phone than he was preparing drinks. I don’t drink much, but when I do, I order something fruity like an apricot sour. It didn’t really taste like liquor, but just one made me very nominally, pleasantly light-headed.

I sat away from the door, near the stage. It was tomb quiet, surprisingly depressing. But it did enable me to hear some yelling from somewhere behind the stage.

“Trouble with the talent?” I asked the bartender.

“Nah, it’s the big boss,” said the young man, who had a treble and base clef cut in either side of his scalp. He said it without looking up from his text. “He likes to yell.”

“You mean, Fly? He seems so laid back.”

The kid snickered. “Not the Fly man. The
big
boss. Mr. S.”

“Oh. Is Ximene with him?” I joked.

The kid snickered. “She’s on tour in Asia.”

“Maybe that’s why the big boss is so cross,” I said. “Hey, can I ask you a question?” I didn’t want for him to answer. “Did you know Lippy Montgomery?”

He looked up for the first time. “Why? You CSI?”

“Nope. Just a friend who misses him, wanted to talk about him.”

“I didn’t really know him,” he said, and went back to texting.

“But you know he was killed.”

“DYD, I got that tweet,” he told me—or rather, told me off—then shambled away. Least sociable bartender ever; the kid didn’t seem interested in conversation—at least, not with an old lady. And, by the way, after puzzling over it for a while, it wasn’t until the next day, when I asked Luke, that I learned DYD meant “Drink Your Drink” with an implied ALMA—”And Leave Me Alone.”

The muffled shouting rose and fell, like the sounds of a trumpet with a wah-wah mute. After a few minutes, a man I assumed to be Chimanga Strong emerged. He wore a tailored gray suit that probably cost more than my car and he trailed Clive Christian No. 1, which costs about two grand a bottle. I recognized it from an insert in a women’s magazine. It was something you were supposed to treat your man to—which, even if I had one, I never would.

He didn’t look like a man who, on paper at least, had it all.

What surprised me was who followed him out. It was Grant.

He was in his off-duty clothes—jeans, a button-down white shirt, blue blazer—and was poking at his cell phone, looking down. He was nearly past me when he happened to look up. He was facing ahead. I was on his right as he passed. He saw me peripherally and turned, like a rubbernecker at a traffic accident. He kept moving forward a moment longer, then stopped. Once they found me, his eyes never left me. He hesitated, then took a few steps toward me. His look was a strange mix of incredulous, glad, and hostile.