Husbands And Lap Dogs Breathe Their Last (24 page)

“Boston?”

“Yes, where Tom and Otto went to college. I’ll be gone for only a few days.”

Cummings left early the next morning and stopped for the night at the edge of New York State. He starting driving again after breakfast and arrived at Ernestine’s in midafternoon.

“Would you like some tea, dear?” Ernestine asked, even before he’d put his suitcases into one of the guest rooms. “I just asked Rebecca to fix a pot. Or would you prefer yours iced?”

“Either would be great, thank you,” he responded.

Rebecca appeared from the kitchen.

“We seem to have run out of honey,” she said to Ernestine. “Would you like sugar instead?”

“No, dear,” Ernestine replied. “There’s that jar I got from Chess last Christmas.”

“Where did you put it?”

“It’s in the pantry somewhere.”

She returned to the kitchen. Ernestine patted the sofa cushion next to her, indicating that Cummings should sit close.

“So what are you doing back so soon?” Ernestine asked him. “Not that I’m not happy to see you.”

Cummings explained that the Chicago case was all but solved, though Chess’s murder seemed far from closure.

“Then you have to keep doing the investigating until there’s an arrest,” she insisted.

“I will, though I’d say that’s more the police’s job than mine.”

“You know my estimation of our Officer Bernier,” she said with a snort of Yankee contempt.

Cummings nodded in agreement as Rebecca came in with the tea. It came in a pot that matched Ernestine’s tea cups on an antique silver tray with some cookies, lemon slices and the jar of honey. The label identified it as being from the Harpwater Hives.

“Do you have a relative named John?” Cummings asked Rebecca.

“Yes, dear. He’s my son.”

“I met him. I bought some of your candles. So this is your honey.”

“Yes, dear. Chess Biederman was one of our best customers, may he rest in peace. You be sure to have some in your tea. It’s wicked tasty!”

“I drink tea plain, but I’m sure it is.”

Rebecca smiled and went back into the kitchen. Ernestine poured Cummings a cup and handed it to him. She poured one for herself, spooning a generous dollop of honey into her cup. She offered Cummings the cookies.

“Do you have any particular leads about Chess’s murder?” she asked.

“Let’s say I have a hunch,” Cummings replied. “I think the solution may be in Boston.”

The tea and cookies were refreshing, but they didn’t truly relieve the fatigue of his long drive. Cummings excused himself. He took his suitcase into one of the guest rooms, kicked his shoes off and stretched out on the top of a chenille bedspread.

Some time later he was woken abruptly by a rough shake of his shoulder. It was Rebecca.

“Ernestine’s been taken wicked sick,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Cummings asked, not quite awake.

“I called for an ambulance. It’s coming from Gethsemane now.”

“Is she conscious?”

“She’s been mumbling. I can’t understand anything she is trying to say.”

“Where is she?”

“On the floor in the parlor. She tried to get up off the sofa, and she fell.”

Cummings ran to the front parlor. Ernestine, crumpled on her side with her legs askew, a puddle of vomit by her head, moaned almost inaudibly. Cummings knelt down and held her hand.

Rebecca offered to ride in the ambulance with Ernestine, but Cummings insisted he would go. He promised to phone Rebecca just as soon as there was news.

The emergency department at Gethsemane Hospital wasn’t particularly busy, but there was still a considerable wait until a doctor emerged and spoke to Cummings.

“Are you allowed to talk to me?” Cummings asked, assuming there might be a problem with confidential health information.

“You’re Mister Wanamaker, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Cutter identified you as her son-in-law.”

This had been true, more or less. He and Terry certainly would have been married had this been legally available at the time. “So she’s conscious?”

“She’s lucid but experiencing severe abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea. It could be food poisoning. It could be the flu. It could be something else. We’re running tests, and we’re going to admit her. Do you happen to know what she’s eaten today?”

“I don’t know everything. I’m only visiting, and I arrived this afternoon. We had tea together. That included some shortbread that we both had, and I feel fine. I don’t know what else she’s had to eat today.”

“We’ll let you know when she’s settled in her room.”

“There was some honey,” Cummings suddenly remembered. “She put honey into her tea. I drink mine plain.”

“That’s very unlikely to be the cause of the problem. Usually it’s meat or poultry, sometimes dairy, sometimes fish.”

“Right,” Cummings said, “although I understand it’s possible for honey to be naturally poisonous sometimes.”

The doctor shrugged. “That might be possible, but I’ve never seen a case.”

Cummings spent an hour with Ernestine in her room, then left. She was weak, nauseated and sliding in and out of wakefulness, but at least she didn’t seem to be getting worse.

Cummings drove back to Horeb and immediately went into Ernestine’s kitchen. He searched carefully, both in the refrigerator and the cupboards, hoping he might be able to identify the cause of the malady, assuming food was involved. There wasn’t much food in the house, and what there was seemed fresh and properly stored.

Next he searched for the jar of honey. Curiously, he couldn’t find it.

He suddenly remembered that he was supposed to call Rebecca but realized he didn’t have her number, so he went into Ernestine’s study. He searched her computer but didn’t find an electronic address book. Next he looked in her drawers and eventually found a black leather personal directory. Fortunately, there was only one Rebecca listed, no surname or address. Cummings dialed the number, which he observed had a Samaria prefix. There was no answer. There was no voice mail.

Next he phoned Odin.

“Things aren’t going well here. Ernestine is sick.”

“How ill?”

“I think she’ll be all right. It may just be the flu. I think I should stay a few extra days. I didn’t really think about this until tonight, but I don’t think she has anyone to help her. Terry was her only child. There are no nieces or nephews that I’m aware of.”

“Of course. Do what you need to do.”

“Thank you. I’ll call you as soon as there’s news. I love you.”

“Tell her I hope she gets well soon,” Odin said, although he and Ernestine had never actually met.

Finally Cummings phoned Rockland, who confirmed that Ernestine’s symptoms might suggest a range of possible diagnoses of which the flu or food poisoning were the most likely. Cummings mentioned the honey. Rockland seemed tepid. “My money’s on meat,” he concluded.

The next morning Cummings returned to the hospital with a vase of wildflowers. Ernestine was improved enough to express appreciation and chat a bit, but she clearly still felt miserable.

“I know Rebecca’s concerned about you,” Cummings said, getting up to leave.

“She’s late in the tide just like me,” Ernestine said weakly.

Cummings wasn’t sure what this expression meant. He thought it might be a metaphor for old age, but he didn’t think this was the appropriate time to discuss Maine lingo.

“I tried to phone, but I couldn’t reach her. I thought I’d drop by her home. She and John don’t have an address listed. Do you know where she lives?”

“I’ve never been to her home. She lives with her son.”

“Okay. Maybe I can reach him at the factory.”

He tried to phone Rebecca again, but there was still no answer. He tried the Beiderman factory, but John wasn’t in that day.

Cummings drove to Samaria. The farmers market wasn’t operating, so he went to the crafts store. It was open, if empty, staffed by a young woman who was sitting on a stool in one corner reading a novel.

“Good morning,” Cummings said. “Do you know John and Rebecca Harpwater?”

“Yes,” she replied neutrally.

“Do you know where they live?”

“Why do you ask?” she asked, her neutrality changing key into suspicion.

“I’m Ernestine Cutter’s son-in-law. Do you know Ernestine Cutter?”

“No.”

“She lives in Horeb. Rebecca works for her. Ernestine’s in the hospital. Rebecca will want to know how she is. I tried to call, but Rebecca’s not answering her phone.”

The woman thought about this, then said, “I’ll get you the information,” and disappeared into a back room.

While he was waiting, Cummings perused the crafts again. They were much the same as they had been the last, and only other, time he’d been in the shop.

The woman returned and handed Cummings a slip of paper.

He drove to the address. He wouldn’t have found it without GPS. The house was off a main road, then off a side road, then at the end of a dirt road. It was worn and old, an eighteenth century saltbox that hadn’t seen a coat of paint since at least the Reagan administration. The house seemed to be surrounded by some amount of land, mostly wooded, but it wasn’t clear how many acres, as the boundaries weren’t obvious. Certainly no neighbors, even distant ones, were visible when one looked through the surrounding trees. Cummings noticed that the trees were not particularly old. Apparently lumber was a source of income for this family.

Cummings walked around to the back door and banged on it. There was no response. He looked in the windows. The furnishings were modest but appeared comfortable. He saw no one, and no lights were on. Perhaps he had simply missed them last night, and they had both left early in the morning to go to work.

Cummings went back to his car and opened the glove compartment. There, among the assortment of items he always kept on hand, was a small pad of lined paper. He wrote a note, updating Rebecca about Ernestine’s condition, and folded it.

He looked for the mailbox. It was not by the side of the road as one would expect in Maine, but he did locate it by the front door. He dropped the note in and headed back to the car.

His phone rang.

“Cummings? It’s Rockland. What I’m about to tell you is highly speculative and most probably incorrect. After our last call, curiosity got the better of me. I did some research. Let’s assume that your friend was poisoned with a substance that causes the symptoms you described. The degree of toxicity of whatever was used was likely only mild to moderate—after all, she’s ill but not dead. Let’s further assume the substance was widely available, easy to work with and relatively tasteless and odorless, all of which would contribute to the ease of poisoning. What about rhubarb leaves? The stalk, of course, is quite edible, but the leaves are poisonous.”

“Rhubarb leaves,” Cummings repeated, thinking about it.

“It’s only a possibility, among other possibilities,” Rockland reaffirmed. “As I said earlier, it’s much more likely your friend has garden variety food poisoning, and the pun is unintentional.”

“Thank you, Rockland.”

Just for kicks, Cummings looked around for a garden. He didn’t immediately see one. Scouting farther, he discovered a large area in a clearing in the woods fenced with high chain link. Inside, he saw a well-tended assortment of seasonal vegetables, including a verdant stand of rhubarb. Of course, this proved nothing: Rhubarb is as common as taciturnity in rural New England.

Ernestine’s color was better when he went back to the hospital the next day, though she was still enervated.

“I’m feeling better,” she insisted, but the untouched food on her lunch tray indicated that her appetite hadn’t returned. “The doctor was in. He said they might let me go tomorrow or the next day.”

“That’s great! Did he say what’s wrong with you?”

“I’m not sure they know for certain, dear.”

“I have a question for you. I couldn’t find the honey you ate yesterday.”

“Why were you looking for that?”

“I thought it might be the source of your illness.”

“It was right on the kitchen counter. Maybe Rebecca put it away.”

“Is there any possibility Rebecca might have removed it from the house?”

“Cummings, I am absolutely positive that Rebecca has nothing to do with this. I have known the woman for years. Many years. Why would she want to harm me?”

“I didn’t say that she does,” Cummings responded.

The phone beside Ernestine’s bed rang. It was Rebecca. She had received Cummings’s note and was calling to see how Ernestine was getting on. They chatted for a few minutes, and then Ernestine said to Cummings, “She wants to thank you for leaving her the note.”

“Please ask her about the honey.”

“Rebecca, do you know what happened to that jar of honey I ate from the other day? I see. Hold on, dear.” She covered the mouthpiece and told Cummings, “She accidentally broke the bottle while she was cleaning.”

“So it’s in the trash?”

“I imagine so, but today is trash day. More than likely, it’s been picked up.”

By the time Cummings brought Ernestine home from the hospital, which occurred two days later, she was more or less herself. He got her settled comfortably into her bed.

“Didn’t you say something about going to Boston?” Ernestine asked.

“It can wait.”

“I can look after myself for the afternoon. Now go!”

Cummings’s first stop was the Cambridge office of the
Boston Basilisk
, the former underground weekly newspaper of radical leftist politics that presently existed only as an online vehicle for entertainment, sports banality and personal ads. The office was small, and the staff was sparse. Cummings had little trouble locating the editor. She introduced herself as Joyce.

“We take ads online only these days, but you can use that computer over there, if you’d like,” she said politely, incorrectly anticipating Cummings’s request.

“I’m not here about an ad. I’m wondering if you have a morgue.”