Heaven Preserve Us (11 page)

As I walked down the hospital hallway, a stunningly gorgeous,
auburn-haired woman exited room 513.

Room 513? Wait a minute. What the heck was she doing in
Barr's room, with her peaches-and-cream skin and big brown eyes
and cheekbones to die for? I tried to smile as she passed, but she
looked right through me, and it slid off my face like warm butter.
I found myself turning to watch her walk away. The view from
that side wasn't very encouraging, either.

Barr sat propped up against a pillow and stabbed at the food
on the tray in front of him. Tubes were still strapped to his face,
but they were open-ended against his nostrils, providing a little extra boost of oxygen. Nothing to panic about. He shoveled a forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth just as I walked in, necessitating a wave rather than a verbal greeting on his part.

"You look much better," I said.

He nodded and swallowed. "Feel better, too. Not a hundred
percent, but not like hammered rat shit, either. Still don't have
much wind. Did you see that red-haired woman leave just now?"

"Uh huh."

"That's my replacement. Detective Robin Lane, from Seattle.
Not very happy to be here. It won't be for long though. I'll be back
at work in a few days, and she can go back where she came from."

Right. Even though Barr had contracted a relatively mild case
of botulism, it was still a wicked poison with long-lasting effects.
It'd be at least a couple of weeks before he'd feel well enough to go
back to work. Maybe more.

I smiled, suddenly quite cheerful after learning who the mystery woman was. "I'm sure you have enough sick and vacation
time to take several weeks off, if you want to. Let someone else deal
with your workload for a while."

He looked at me as if I'd suggested he eat a live frog. His pasty
complexion and the slight tremor in the hand that held the fork
belied the stoic face he seemed determined to wear. I wanted to
take the fork and feed him the mashed potatoes and meatloaf myself. Except, frankly, it looked pretty gross.

And I didn't think Barr would appreciate being treated like a
child. So I kept my hands to myself and sat down in the chair next
to the bed. "You know about the botulism?" I asked.

"Yes." His voice was curiously quiet. His previous energy seemed
to have leaked away.

"Do you know how you could have been exposed?"

"The Health Department was here asking me that earlier.
They're really jumping on this."

"And?"

"Apparently that's what killed Heaven. They think I must have
been exposed when I ate at his apartment the other day."

"His apartment? When were you there?"

"Day before yesterday. In the afternoon"

"What on earth for?"

"We had a meeting."

"About what?"

He pressed his lips together.

"Barr, he's dead."

After a few more moments hesitation, he capitulated. "He
wanted to find out what he'd need to do to get a restraining order.
Didn't want to make it official yet, so he asked me to stop by as a
favor."

I felt my eyebrows rise. "He told me someone had threatened
him. A few people, in fact, but one person in particular."

"That's what he told me, too," Barr said.

Threat. Meant it. Only a whisper.

"Did he tell you who it was?" I asked.

"He refused. Said he had to know more before he'd communicate anything officially. Wanted to make sure no one got in trouble
if they didn't have to."

"It sounds like he was ambivalent about whomever he was
afraid of. Like maybe he wasn't sure whether he should be or
not."

Barr agreed.

I told him what Philip had said to me. As far as I knew, his last
words.

We stared at each other for a few moments, wheels turning in
perfect unison. Finally, I voiced what I'd been wondering all along.

"What if the botulism poisoning wasn't an accident?"

Barr cocked his head to one side. "The Health Department is
looking into it."

"The police aren't involved at all? Not even your Detective
Lane?"

"She's not my Detective Lane. And no, she's not at all interested
in following up on anything so mundane."

"But it's her job!"

"Treating botulism poisoning as murder? Try to convince her
of that. Or Zahn. Or the Chief, for that matter."

I knew he was right. "Do you think it's suspicious?"

He blinked, suddenly looking as if he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. "Suspicious? Sure. Murder? Well, that's pretty
wacky, but not impossible."

That was enough for me.

"What did you eat when you were at Philip's?"

"He'd made a big salad, you know with ham and turkey and
cheese and a bunch of different vegetables."

"You're not much of a salad eater."

"I hadn't eaten since early in the day, and wanted to be polite.
Didn't end up eating very much of it, so I guess that makes me
lucky."

"I'll say."

He yawned.

"You seem to be winding down," I said.

"I am feeling kind of tired, now that you mention it."

"Okay. Let me move this." I swung the tray arm away from the
bed. He hadn't eaten much. "Do you want me to stay until you fall
asleep?"

"Nuh uh. Tha's okay..."

I stayed anyway, all of a minute and a half, until he was breathing regularly, and, I was happy to see, deeply.

On the way home I swung by HH to see if Maryjake was back at
her desk. If anyone would know what the Health Department had
found out, she would.

Rather than Maryjake, I found Ruth Black knitting furiously
on something large and orange and very, very fluffy. She didn't
look up when I walked in, and her fingers never stopped moving.

I sat down across from her. "What're you working on?"

The muscles in her jaw worked, and when she finally raised
her head I saw she was crying.

She sniffed and held up the orange fluff. "It's an afghan, a wedding present for my niece."

"It's beautiful." I hoped her niece liked bright colors. Really
bright colors. "Is everything all right?"

She shook her head and tears spilled onto her cheeks. "No.
Philip is dead."

"I'm so sorry, Ruth. I had no idea you two were close."

Her hand disappeared into a desk drawer and returned with a
tissue which she blew into with a wet honk. "We weren't. I hardly knew him, really. Maryjake was the one who organized the volunteers."

"Oh. Well, it's a real shame. Did you hear what they say he died
of?"

The sudden fire in her eyes made me sit back in my chair. "I
did not kill him. I don't care what those fools say," she said.

"Kill ... ? What are you talking about?"

She slammed her knitting down on the desktop and leaned
forward. "Those idiots over at the Health Department have decided my beets are what killed Philip. They found a pint jar of
beets in his apartment, and it tested positive for botulism. So they
find out I brought beets to the preserves exchange and make the
assumption that the beets they found had to have come from my
kitchen. My kitchen!" Her voice broke on the last word.

I frowned. It wasn't the craziest conclusion.

She waved her knitting needle at me. "I know what you're
thinking. You're wrong. Not only did Philip die before I brought
any of my canned goods to Heaven House, but I saw the jar they
found up there in his apartment." She paused for effect, and I dutifully waited. "They were sliced." She nodded with satisfaction at
this pronouncement.

I blinked. "Sliced?"

"Yes! I never slice my beets into rounds, and I don't can the
standard round beets. I always use heirloom fingerling beets, about
two or three inches long, from my own garden, and I leave them
whole." She started knitting again, jabbing the needles into the
yarn.

"And the jar of beets with the botulism were sliced. So they
couldn't have been yours. Right?"

"Exactly. Plus, I don't use the brand of jar those nasty beets
were in."

"What did the Health Department people say when you explained it all to them?"

"They ... I couldn't make them ... they just didn't listen to me.
They acted like I was trying to get out of something. If he ate
something I gave him and then died, my denying it wouldn't
change anything, would it? I'd feel terrible, but it would still be an
accident, right? Why would I make up such a story? And now
they're taking all my lovely preserves away to be destroyed. It
makes me sick."

I believed her. She didn't like the idea of people thinking she
wasn't careful with her home canning, but if it had indeed been
her fault, she wasn't the kind of person to try and blame someone
else.

"So where did the bad beets come from?" I asked.

The needles slowed again, then stopped. "Oh, Sophie Mae. I
was so upset about them thinking that I'd killed Philip I didn't
even think about where those other beets could have come from."

Not good news at all. There was still a possible deadly risk
out there, and the state Health Department thought they had the
culprit.

"Do you think you could find out?" Ruth asked.

My attention snapped back to her. "What?"

"Can you find out where Philip got the beets? After all, someone needs to, and you were so clever last year when Walter died."

I sighed. Sometimes it seemed too many people in Cadyville
knew I'd investigated when Walter Hanover, our erstwhile neighborhood handyman, died after drinking a glass of lye. But this was the first time anyone had suggested I should try such a thing
again.

"That was pretty personal. He died in my workroom," I said.

"Well, darn it, this is personal for me. I didn't poison Philip,
and you know it. And there's someone out there canning beets
who doesn't know what the heck they're doing. They must be
stopped."

I almost laughed at her last statement, thinking it melodramatic. But was it, really?

The image of Barr lying in that hospital bed with tubes up his
nose rose in my mind. The beets must have been in Philip's chef
salad. Whether the botulism was an accident or murder, if there
was any way I could keep someone else from getting sick, I needed
to do it. And if I happened to salvage Ruth Black's kitchen reputation at the same time, so much the better.

As soon as I got home, I went into the pantry. Something about
the neat rows of beautifully canned food calmed me. Perhaps it
was related to the primitive safety of having a fully stocked larder.
After rooting around, I found two jars of Ruth's beets from the
exchange.

Not round. Not sliced.

Cylindrical and whole, just as she'd said.

I hesitated, then returned one jar to the shelf. The other one I
took upstairs and hid in the back of my closet.

Then I began making phone calls. Bette took a break from
working with her clay to talk with me, but didn't have any ideas about how Philip could have obtained any beets, Ruth's or anyone
else's. As far as she knew, there would have been no reason for him
to have any of the preserves ahead of time. Mavis Gray was next,
and she said much the same thing.

I thanked her and called Maryjake's house, figuring she might
be home since she was obviously not at Heaven House. James
answered.

"Sorry, she can't come to the phone right now. She's in bed
with a migraine."

"Okay," I said. "Would you mind if I asked you a couple of
things?"

"About what?"

"About Heaven House."

"God. That place. All right, but I don't have much time. I have
to get to the lab." James was a biologist who worked for a national
environmental nonprofit doing field studies and research.

"Maryjake cans a lot of different things. Do you help her?" I
asked.

"No. I contribute to the family table by hunting and fishing.
Maryjake is in charge of preserving the garden produce."