Heaven Preserve Us (13 page)

"Botulism is terrible. I knew twin brothers who died from it
when I was a young girl. Of course, a woman whose daughter they had-" she glanced at Erin "-hurt gave it to them on purpose, so
that's a little different. Do you know where it came from?"

I stared at her. "You know someone who used botulism as a
murder weapon?"

"Well, she was never caught." Tootie put a ladylike portion of
chicken in her mouth.

"Then how exactly do you know about it?"

She looked sideways at Erin, who studied her with an attentive
gaze, and swallowed. "It was my second cousin, actually. And they
wouldn't have been able to prove it, not then. But I heard her talking to my older sister, so I knew what happened."

"Did they deserve it?" Erin asked.

Again the sidelong look. "I don't think anyone deserves to have
someone else take their life. Not even the state. But in that case,
even I have to admit, there might have been a certain amount
of... justice in what happened. Of course, I didn't find out about it
until well after the fact. It gradually became common knowledge
in town, but it was still only a rumor as far as the law was concerned." She left Erin to think about that a while and turned to me.
"So do they know where the botulism originated?"

"Apparently the people at the Health Department think Ruth
Black's beets were contaminated. They found some beets in Philip's kitchen, and she brought beets to the preserves exchange. The
problem is that Philip got sick before the preserves exchange, and
the beets they found are different than the beets Ruth cans."

Meghan jumped in. "The Health Department came by this
afternoon. They took away everything we got from Ruth at the
exchange."

Wow. They moved fast. I thought about the beets in my closet
with a twinge. Should I have done that? With a sinking feeling, I
asked, "Did they take everything else?"

She shook her head. "No. But they gave me a heck of a lecture
about home canning."
"

I bet they did."

Erin laid her fork down on the table. "Isn't botulism the same
thing as food poisoning? Zoe got food poisoning last year. She felt
really bad, but she didn't end up in the hospital or anything. Could
she have died?"

"Your friend probably had ptomaine, honey," Tootie said. "That's
another kind of food poisoning, and it's a lot more common."

"Then botulism is worse?"

"It certainly can be," I said. "It's a toxin released by an active
bacteria. Thing is, there are a lot of inactive spores of that bacteria
around all the time, and most of the time they don't hurt anyone.
They need a warm, wet environment without any oxygen in order
to activate. That's when the toxin is released."

Meghan wrinkled her nose. "This is lovely dinnertime conversation."

"Sorry."

But she was the one who continued. "Doesn't acid kill the bacteria, too?"

I nodded. "And high heat. That's why the food needs to contain
a certain amount of acid naturally, or you have to add an acid like
vinegar or lemon-pickles, for example-or use a pressure cooker."

"What's a pressure cooker do?" Erin asked around a bite of
salad.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," I said. "It uses pressure to
raise the temperature of the jars without letting them explode."

Meghan grimaced. She felt pressure canners and pressure cookers were dangerous.

"I can't believe they use the botulism poison to erase wrinkles."
Tootie snorted. "Idiots"

I shrugged. "I don't care if someone else wants to inject a toxic
substance into their face, but I sure don't want to." Botox was all
about muscular paralysis to preserve beauty. Not high on my list
of priorities right now.

"Did you know the paralyzing agent in botulism can benefit
people with Parkinson's disease or muscular dystrophy?" I asked.
Like digitalis, botulism was both poison and savior.

Meghan changed the subject then, but as we continued plowing through the mountain of food on the table, I kept coming back
to what Tootie had said earlier about the mother who'd poisoned
the brothers in retribution for hurting her daughter.

What had Philip done to make someone want to kill him?

Meghan returned from taking Tootie back to Caladia Acres after
dinner and went into her office to check her schedule for the weekend. Erin was up in her room doing homework. I tried watching a
little television, but nothing caught my attention. I really needed
to talk to someone about what had been weighing on my mind.
Meghan, as my best friend, won the honor.

"Got a minute?" I asked, setting a steaming cup of strong black
tea on the desk in front of her. "There's something I didn't want to
talk about in front of Erin."

She closed her laptop and sat back in her chair, lacing her fingers
across her abdomen. "The stalker truly is dangerous, isn't he? What
else has he done?" Her narrowed eyes said she'd been expecting this.

"What? No, no. This has nothing to do with that guy. I swear
to God, Meghan, earlier he actually asked when it would be convenient for him to call back. What kind of nut does that? I'm sure
he's harmless."

The expression on her face didn't change an iota. "We'll see. So
something else is going on?"

I paused. A huge philodendron wound its way up a trellis in
the corner of her office. The tiny fountain in the massage room
behind her gurgled softly but failed to sooth me.

"Well? What?"

I sighed and plunged in. "I think someone may have deliberately poisoned Philip."

The look on her face could have stopped an oncoming truck.
It didn't stop me, mind you, but it did warn me of the reception
my theory would receive. I laid it out in a systematic manner, citing Ruth's insistence that the offending beets had not come from
her kitchen, Philip telling me someone had threatened him and
asking Barr about how to get a restraining order, and finally, Philip's cryptic words to me before the paramedics had hauled him
off to the hospital to die.

By the time I finished, she'd leaned back in her chair and was
examining the ceiling. Now she rubbed both hands over her face
and sighed.

"You're not kidding, are you? You know, just because you
thought Walter didn't kill himself, and lo and behold it turned out
you were right, it doesn't mean Philip's death has nefarious roots.
For Pete's sake, the poor man died from botulism, not arsenic."

"Barr thinks it's suspicious, too"

"Great. So he can do something about it. You don't have to."

"He's sick."

"There are other people in the Cadyville Police Department"

I tried to explain that Chief Maher and Detective Lane didn't
have the most receptive attitudes in this situation.

"This is not your problem," Meghan insisted in a dangerous
voice.

I held up my hands. "Okay, okay." But of course I didn't agree,
not at all. Philip had grabbed my arm and as much as told me someone had poisoned him; Ruth had specifically asked me to find out
where the offending beets had come from; and, last but not least, my
boyfriend was in the hospital, possibly due to some twisted killer's
plan.

"You promise?"

I smiled. "Stop worrying." I stood up. "I'm getting more tea and
going downstairs to get a few things done before I go to bed. Do
you want any?"

She looked vaguely dissatisfied. "No, thanks."

"Okay. See you in the morning."

She said something, but by then I was already out in the front
hallway, and I pretended not to hear her. Sue me. At least I didn't
make any promises I couldn't keep.

OKAY, SO I HAD to admit I was a little spooked when I got to
Heaven House that night. I'd worked for a couple of hours, then
called and talked to Barr at the hospital for another. Finally,
Meghan went to bed. Now it was late and dark, and the ugly hulk
of the building squatted in the murky light filtering through the
fog from the streetlight. It was even darker in the alley where I
parked, but the only way I could get in was to "borrow" Meghan's
key, and the only key she had happened to be for the back door. I
was lucky she still had that; she didn't spend as much time at HH
as she used to.

Barr would've had a fit if he'd seen me wandering around town
alone in the dark, using a key I wasn't even supposed to have to
get into a building that could very well be a crime scene. Sneaking.
And very, very carefully ignoring the fact that there seemed to be
someone interested in noting my whereabouts and activities. My
stomach clenched at the thought of my friendly stalker lurking in
the fog-ridden shadows.

I shoved the door open, stepped inside and shut it behind me.
Locked it.

Inside, it was pitch black, the kind of frightening absolute darkness that makes you entertain the idea, if only for a few moments,
that maybe you've really, actually gone blind and will never see light
again in your life. Smothering dark. Darkness so thick it coats your
lungs, clogs your arteries ...

My fumbling hand found the light switch and the overheads
came on. It suddenly became easy to breathe again.

Okay. So far, so good.

The main room looked as boring and uninspired as ever. No
chalk outlines on the floor. No police tape. No suspicion from
anyone in authority that Philip's death wasn't completely accidental. How do you poison someone with botulism? Did someone
simply hand the beets to him and hope?

Was it possible his death really was an accident?

Anything was possible. Some things were just unlikely. I don't
know what it said about me that I found the idea of murder far
more likely than an accident.

Flipping on light switch after light switch, I made my way to
the stairs that led to Philip's office and apartment on the second
floor.

On the first step I hesitated. There was no light in the stairwell.
For some reason I was more inclined to abandon my little investigation now that I was faced with going up to Philip's office in the
dark.

Great, Sophie Mae. Way to act like a girl.

Shaking my head at myself, I clomped up the steps, taking a
certain amount of comfort in the noise my waffle-soled boots made on the worn wood. On the landing, I could just make out
the outline of the doorway to Philip's office, a rectangle of light
leaking out around the door.

Wait a minute. Light? Inside Philip's office? The carpeted hallway silenced my footsteps as I crept to the office door and ever so
slowly pushed it open.

There was no one in the room.

I let out a whoosh of breath, allowing the muscles along my
shoulders to unclench a little. Someone had left the light on, that
was all. The desk was still askew from when the paramedics had
removed Philip to the ambulance, and a dark stain streaked the
wall behind it.

The place smelled terrible. I maneuvered my way to the window, opened the blinds and twisted the paint-encrusted handle of
the double-hung sash and pulled up. Outside, the fog put the street
scene into soft-focus, giving it an almost romantic quality. The
damp winter air drifted in, and I bent to take a deep breath of it
before getting down to business.

Two black metal file cabinets hunched in the corner. I pulled
out the top drawer of the first and flipped through the paperwork,
then moved on to the next. Grant applications here. Foundationrelated information there. Correspondence ... here. I quickly
worked my way through the official Heaven House files and found
nary a threat. Closing the last drawer, I considered my options.
Eyed the desk for a moment.

In the second drawer I discovered still more files. None of them
contained threatening letters. But hang on-there were other places
to keep files. I switched on Philip's computer. It was new and fast
and the operating system loaded in no time.