Allergic to Death (5 page)

Gigi shook her head so vehemently, her hair lashed from side to side. “No. Absolutely not. I don’t even keep peanuts in the house.” She gestured toward the pantry as if inviting him to look for himself.

“Thank you.” Mertz replaced his pen and pad in the inner pocket of his jacket.

Gigi led him to the foyer and opened the front door. She watched as he walked down the path toward his car.

She knew she hadn’t used any peanuts at all in Martha’s meal.

But why did she have the feeling that Detective Mertz didn’t believe her?

Chapter 3

Gigi put the keys to the MINI on the hook she’d installed next to the wall phone in the kitchen specifically for that purpose. A place for everything, she thought as she surveyed the room. She’d just delivered a dozen Gourmet De-Lite lunches, and now it was time to clean up.

She snapped on some rubber gloves and sprayed down the counters with cleaner. She enjoyed tidying. She liked seeing order slowly emerge from the chaos. Today she was tired, though. She’d tossed and turned most of the night listening to the rain lashing the windows and seeing Martha’s terrible accident play out in her mind over and over again.

Then there’d been that very unsettling conversation with Detective Mertz. She rinsed her sponge and squeezed it out over the sink. She had the distinct feeling that he thought she’d been careless and had caused Martha to have an allergic reaction. Mertz himself had unsettled her, too. On the
one hand, he rubbed her the wrong way. On the other hand, she found him impossibly attractive.

She cleaned the tops of her flour and sugar canisters and pushed them back into position against the wall. Spices next. She carefully inserted the paprika into the empty space on the rack between the marjoram and the sage and the tin of thyme between the sage and the dark brown bottle of vanilla extract. Sienna sometimes laughed at her system, but it was the only way she could be efficient enough to prepare a dozen meals three times a day.

She was hanging up the dish towel when the phone rang. Gigi grabbed the receiver and held it propped by her chin as she sprinkled cleanser into the sink. “Hello?”

Gigi hung up the phone with trembling hands. She couldn’t believe the conversation she’d just had. She had to tell Sienna about it. She grabbed her coat and ran out to her car. The drive seemed to take forever, but finally Gigi was shaking out her umbrella and pushing open the door to the Book Nook. Sienna was behind the counter making notations on a computer printout.

“You won’t believe what just happened,” Gigi burst out before even saying hello.

“What?” Sienna pushed the stack of papers aside and leaned her elbows on the front counter.

Gigi’s fingers itched to organize the papers, not to mention the entire counter, and, what the heck, do a little dusting while she was at it.

Sienna gathered her long, strawberry blond hair into a knot at the back of her neck and secured it with a pencil. “Carlo has asked you out?”

Gigi laughed. “No. Of course not. Don’t be silly.” The
idea made her stomach do strange flip-flops, and she could feel her face getting as red as her hair.

Sienna sighed. “I thought Italians were supposed to be so good with women. What’s wrong with that man? Anyone can see he’s crazy about you.”

“He’s just a friend,” Gigi protested.

Sienna snorted.

The bell over the front door jangled, and Gigi turned gratefully in that direction.

“It’s just me.” Alice came into the shop, her raincoat glistening with moisture. She pulled off her hat and shook it over the front mat. “Will this rain never end?” She began to unbutton her coat. “But just so it doesn’t rain on my Stacy’s wedding day, it can flood for all I care.”

“Come on. Let’s have a cup of coffee.”

They followed Sienna into the area known as the “coffee corner.” Two faded sofas sat at right angles to each other, along with a cracked brown leather arm chair and an orphaned red corduroy ottoman. Richly colored shawls were draped over the arms, and soft pillows were stuffed into every corner. Delicious-smelling coffee gurgled from a gleaming chrome machine. The result was warm and inviting. Patrons were known to spend whole afternoons in the coffee corner, reading and perusing books.

Sienna often complained that that didn’t do much for the Book Nook’s profits, but so far she was making a go of it, selling new books as well as used. Not that Sienna really had to worry about money. Gigi sometimes envied Sienna her husband, Oliver, who worked on Wall Street and made more in a week than the Book Nook took in all year. Sienna herself had given up a six-figure income as a publicist when they’d moved to Woodstone in hopes of having a family. So far it was still just the two of them, with Sienna pouring all
her energy into her bookstore. If she was disappointed, she didn’t let on.

“Help yourself.” Sienna gestured toward the coffee machine, which was now humming quietly.

Gigi grabbed two cream-colored mugs with
The Book Nook
written on them. She held one up to Alice.

“Sure. No cream or sugar.” She shot a grin at Gigi.

Gigi filled the mugs and handed one to Alice. “Let me tell you my news.”

“What news?” Alice asked eagerly, taking a seat on the sofa.

“Okay, shoot.” Sienna filled a mug with hot water and added a strangely colored tea bag.

“Do you know Branston Foods?”

“Sure. They’re that big place outside of town, right?” Sienna cradled her mug in her hands. “I’ve been caught in traffic out there a few times when the plant let out. It added twenty minutes to my trip.” She repositioned the pencil in her hair. “Why?”

“I had a call from them today. Right before I got here.” Gigi paused dramatically. “They want to talk to me about producing a line of diet foods.” Her cup shook slightly, and she set it down carefully on the table. “Called Gigi’s Gourmet De-Lite.” Her voice cracked. “And they’re going to pay me for the name and for me to come up with the recipes and…everything!”

Sienna whistled.

“That’s fantastic!” Alice hooted.

“This means I can save money to buy my cottage from Martha’s estate.” Gigi smiled at them, but then her face clouded over. “As long as nothing goes wrong. I won’t really believe it until the papers are signed and…and…everything.” She surreptitiously stuck out her pinky and index
finger in case any jealous, evil spirits were hovering over Sienna’s shop.

“What could go wrong?”

Gigi thought of Detective Mertz, and she could feel the hot coffee sloshing around in her stomach. It made her feel like being sick.

“What’s the matter?” Sienna leaned forward and put a hand on Gigi’s shoulder.

“I had a visit yesterday from a Detective Mertz from the Woodstone Police Department. Apparently Martha didn’t have a heart attack like we thought. She was in anaphylactic shock when she hit that tree.”

“Ana…what?” Alice blew on her coffee and took a sip.

“It’s a kind of shock caused by an allergy. Like to a bee sting. Or, in Martha’s case, peanuts.”

“So Martha ate some peanuts and—”

Gigi shook her head. “She knew she was deathly allergic. She’d never knowingly eat peanuts or anything with peanuts in it. Unfortunately, according to Detective Mertz, the last thing she ate was some of my Gourmet De-Lite food.”

“But you knew she was allergic, didn’t you?” Sienna frowned.

“Yes. But Detective Mertz doesn’t believe me. He thinks I’m responsible.” Gigi fiddled with the fringe on one of Sienna’s throw pillows.

“So she must have eaten something else.” Alice took another sip of her coffee and gazed longingly at the jar of chocolate biscotti Sienna kept next to the coffeepot.

“She must have. But how can we prove it?”

Alice stroked her chin. “If she had eaten something else, maybe there’s a trace of it in her car somewhere.”

“Like a candy wrapper or something?” Sienna refilled
her mug with hot water and swished the tea bag around and around.

“Exactly.” Alice gave a last glance at the biscotti and then resolutely turned her back on the display. “Most of the cars get towed to Moe’s over on Broad Street. It shouldn’t be too hard to sneak in and have a peek.” She looked from Sienna to Gigi and back again.

Gigi grinned. “What are we waiting for, then?”

Moe’s was on the wrong side of Woodstone, near the bus depot and the electric plant. The rain had stopped, and the sun peeked through the parting clouds, sending waves of moist heat shimmering off the cracked sidewalks.

Gigi slid out of her raincoat and draped it over her arm. She could feel her hair curling around her face, and she knew, without looking, that her nose was as shiny as a beacon. They’d all been praying for warmer, sunnier weather, and now it was making them miserable.

Moe’s lot was surrounded by a rusting chain-link fence with a sign out front that read
Moe’s Towing and Storage
. Clumps of weeds poked through the crumbling macadam, and next to the front gate a ramshackle, windowless shed leaned drunkenly to the right.

Gigi picked her way along the buckling sidewalk. A trickle of sweat slid down her back, and she shivered.

“It’s probably best if Moe doesn’t see us,” Alice whispered, pointing toward the shed.

Gigi and Sienna nodded and followed Alice as she tiptoed past the open door under cover of the red tow truck parked out front.

She stopped when they were out of earshot of the shed and scratched her head, gazing at the cars, lined up row after row, in various stages of decay, the sun glancing off their metalwork. “For some reason I thought this was going to be
easy,” she whispered. “How are we going to find Martha’s car among all these others?”

“What kind is it?” Sienna asked, craning her neck and looking in every direction.

“It’s a dark blue Honda Element.” Gigi’s spirits sank at the sight of so many cars. It had sounded like a good idea while they were sitting in the Book Nook, but it now looked like an impossible task. If her whole life didn’t depend on proving that Martha hadn’t died from eating her food, she’d be tempted to give up and go home.

“Let’s split up and take it row by row,” Alice decided. “And stay low. We don’t want Moe to see us.”

Gigi started down her appointed row, rushing toward a dark blue car that just might be…she stopped short, disappointed. It was a Volvo station wagon with the front end pushed in and the bumper missing. Gigi continued down the aisle, her knees slightly bent so that her head was hopefully not visible above the car roofs. She’d rounded the corner of the next row when she heard a low growling sound. She stopped to listen for a moment, but all she could hear was her own heart thumping like a bass drum. She took a cautious step forward.
Grrrrowl.
There it came again. The hair on the back of her neck stood at attention. She stayed perfectly still and looked behind her and to the sides. A mangy, matted mutt slunk out from between two cars and stared at her, head lowered. Gigi smiled, inanely hoping the animal would sense she wanted to be friends. Well, not friends exactly, but hopefully not dinner, either.

She barely allowed herself to breathe, wondering if she should put a hand out in a gesture of goodwill. The animal gave another deep, rumbling growl, and Gigi thought better of it. Every fiber in her being was twitching, urging her to run until she couldn’t run anymore. The animal looked away,
its attention caught by a crow landing on the hood of a nearby car. Should she make a run for it? Gigi hesitated, but then the dog swiveled its head back in her direction again, its eyes narrowed to mere slits.

What should she do? The dog took a step closer. Its ears were back and its tail up. Gigi tried to remember whether that was good or bad. Was it friend or foe? Another guttural growl told her everything she needed to know. Gigi had heard dogs were supposed to be able to smell fear. Was fear like sweat? Would her deodorant protect her? She gave a surreptitious sniff but couldn’t smell anything herself. She tried thinking of lavender and vanilla and ocean spray, hoping to exude the scent of inner calm instead of the heart-crushing terror that had her in its grip.

Someone gave a long, low whistle. The dog’s ears perked up and its head swiveled in the direction of the sound. Another whistle, and it padded off, tail wagging. Gigi had barely let out her breath when Moe appeared around the end of the row of cars. His teeth slashed a white line between the dark of his beard and the dark of his moustache, and black, curly hair sprouted around the knit cap he had pulled down to his eyebrows. Gigi dove between a Pontiac that was twisted on its axle and a Cabriolet that looked more like an accordion than a car.