Heaven Preserve Us (9 page)

AFTER A FEW FALSE turns, I found my way out of the hospital
parking garage and back to the highway to Cadyville. I suddenly
understood what the phrase "sick at heart" felt like in real time.

It was late, but when I got home I found Meghan dozing on
the couch, a copy of MFK Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf open on
her lap.

I'd completely forgotten to call her.

A small fire crackled in the fireplace, and the room smelled of
cedar and cloves. Light jazz played at low volume on the stereo. It
was a wonderful atmosphere to walk into, welcoming and homey.

I struggled not to burst into tears.

Meghan started awake. "Oh! I didn't hear you come in." Alarm
flooded her features as her eyes met mine. "Is Barr okay?"

I shucked out of my jacket. "I think so."

She seemed to relax a little. "What happened?"

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

"Honey, what's wrong?" She got up and came over to me, put
her arms around my shoulders, and gave me a patented Meghan
Bly hug.

That was all it took. I turned into a gooey, messy excuse for a
woman, a puddle of angst and insecurity and fear. She led me back
to the couch and made me sit. She brought me tea, strong and hot
and heavily sugared. I spluttered and leaked tears and told her
about Barr and the botulism and how Philip might have died
from it and how Barr being in the hospital made me think about
Mike. She took my half-drunk cup of tea away and brought me a
glass of single malt Scotch.

Bless her heart.

I downed the Talisker. And she gave me some more.

And then she put me to bed.

Exhausted and a little tipsy, I drifted off to sleep surprisingly
quickly. And I slept like a baby until nearly three a.m.

That's when I awoke and lay in bed, thinking. Someone had
threatened Philip Heaven. He knew who it was. He hadn't taken
them seriously at first, but when he'd whispered in my ear while
we waited for the paramedics, he'd believed that was why he fell so
terribly ill. And then he'd died.

Barr's symptom's matched his very closely.

Had someone intentionally given Philip botulism toxin? After
an hour I managed to work myself into a real tizzy, wondering
whether Barr had become worse during the night.

At six-thirty Erin found me sitting at the kitchen table with a
big mug of coffee, on the phone quizzing the nurse I finally managed to track down on the fifth floor of the hospital. He wasn't
any better, but he wasn't any worse, either. He was asleep. She also told me that the test for the presence of botulism toxin had come
back positive and that Barr had already received the antitoxin. She
didn't have any information about Philip, but she had passed on
my suspicions to her superiors, and they had alerted the medical
examiner.

I thanked her and hung up, wondering in a macabre way whether
performing an autopsy on someone who had died from botulism
would be dangerous. I suspected it might be, but I realized that,
other than a vague notion that botulism could be found in poorly
home-canned food, I knew very little about it. As I stared at the
wood grain on a kitchen cabinet, I didn't even notice Erin had put
together her own breakfast until she sat down across from me. Cereal and milk. And a bowl of peaches.

Home canned peaches.

"Don't eat those!"

She stopped with the liquid dripping from the spoon into her
cereal bowl. Her mouth was half open and her eyes wide.

"What's wrong?" Meghan came in, and though her words were
innocuous, I sensed she meant, "What's wrong now?"

I winced. "Botulism. It's confirmed. That's why Barr's sick. But
somebody over there was on the ball, and he's going to be all
right."

Meghan eyed the bowl of peaches.

"Am I gonna die?" Erin asked.

"Of course not," her mother said. "We've been eating out of
that jar for a couple of days. They're fine." To prove her point she
grabbed the spoon out of her daughter's hand and took a big bite
of peach. "They're fine," she repeated after swallowing, and gave
me a significant look.

I forced a smile on my face. "Sorry. Knee-jerk reaction."

"You want some?"

"Urn, sure. But not right this instant. Maybe later." I had no
doubt Meghan was right about the fruit, but I couldn't bring myself to eat any of it. "I'm going downstairs to look up botulism on
the computer. Maybe I can get some idea of where it came from"

"Okay. But don't scare yourself. Bug, are you going to study for
the bee this morning before school?"

Erin nodded and began shoving soggy cornflakes in her mouth
at a record pace. She swallowed and stood up. "Can we leave at
six-forty-five?"

Meghan smiled. "Sure. I'll be ready when you are."

The phone rang, and Meghan's eyes grew round. Phone calls
before seven a.m. generally didn't bode well. She went to answer,
and I sat with my eyes closed and my fingers pressed against my
lips, afraid to move and selfishly praying the call had nothing to
do with Barr.

But Meghan returned almost immediately. "It was a hang up"
Her forehead creased. "Again"

"Again?"

"There were two of them last night when you were at the hospital. Reads `private call' on the caller ID."

Crap. "I bet its Allen, or whatever his name is."

"Probably. Next time it rings, you get it. Try to get him to stop,
okay?"

Erin returned, laden with full backpack and clad in full winter
weather garb. "C'mon, Mom" Her voice held no doubt as to what
she thought of a mother who promised they could leave at sixforty-five and then couldn't get it together in time.

Meghan hustled into the hallway, scooping up a pair of boots
on the way to the bench by the door. "Grab your lunch out of the
fridge and we'll go," she called as she speed-laced her footwear.

Erin rolled her eyes at me, grabbed her lunch, said goodbye,
and they were out the door.

Try to get Allen to stop? Sheesh. What a great idea, Megs. I took
my coffee and went down to my workroom.

My desktop computer sat in the corner of my storeroom. Since I
do a lot of my Winding Road business via the Internet, I spend a
lot of time down there. There was one small window that didn't
open but allowed in some natural light, and I loved the smell of
the soaps curing on the shelves. It also made it easy to ascertain the
availability of the different toiletries in my repertoire, so I wasn't
popping up to check every time I had to create a packing list or
order supplies.

The morning was still pitch black outside. I switched on the
little desk lamp and booted up the computer. Once it was online, I
plugged the words "botulism symptoms causes" into the search
engine and began to read.

Pretty nasty stuff. Slurred speech, nausea and vomiting, disturbed vision, and possible death due to paralysis, especially that
of the respiratory system.

I thought of Philip Heaven, struggling for breath, his body refusing to cooperate. He'd basically suffocated to death. The thought
made the coffee sour in my stomach. As a mild claustrophobe, I
thought that would be a particularly awful way to go.

The most common way to get botulism was via home-canned
food. It was fairly rare anymore and usually found in low-acid foods
like beans or corn-things that anyone who does much home canning knows you have to put through a pressure canner.

I thought back to the offerings at the preserves exchange. Bette
had brought some salmon from her annual trip to Alaska. Ruth
had provided those beets, so beautiful in their jars or on the plate
but not so attractive splattered all over the Heaven House floor,
Maryjake Dreggle-and my shoes. Maryjake had brought jars of
lovely golden corn which I happened to know came from a little
roadside stand south of town and was the best I'd ever eaten, as
well as green beans from her own garden. Had there been anything else that would need a pressure canner? I could only think
of the pickles and jellies, fruits and chutneys, all of which were at
relatively low risk.

Wait a minute. Philip had died before the preserves exchange.
Maybe none of those items were even suspect. Maybe he'd eaten a
can of grocery store soup from a damaged can. I'd always thought
my grandmother was paranoid when she'd throw out any can that
was the least bit dented. Now I had to admit she probably knew
more about the possible dangers than I'd ever considered.

No one had eaten anything at the exchange that I knew of, including Barr. But thinking back, he hadn't looked so great when
he'd shown up.

Philip and Barr hardly knew each other. How had they both ...
wait a minute. Slow down, Sophie Mae. No one had said Philip had
died from botulism poisoning. Not yet.

But his symptoms were right on. And it wasn't like anyone
would be calling me up once they found out, either. I needed more information. Official information, through unofficial channels.
This time Barr was out of the loop, but I had an idea. Checking my
watch I saw it was already eight a.m., an hour before Miss Manners said it was acceptable to telephone people.

However, Miss Manners didn't know Tootie Hanover was such
an early riser, and I did.

CALADIA ACRES WAS A nursing home on the north edge of Cadyville where Tootie Hanover had lived for several years. I'd met her
the previous fall when her son Walter died. He had been our
neighbor. A facility that was intimate in a small-town way, Caladia
Acres emphasized casual comfort in an attempt to overcome the
sterile medical atmosphere found in most nursing homes. When I
walked in, the air was thick with the scents of yeast and spices.
Yum. The residents had been served cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

Ann Dunning, the nurse at the reception desk, nodded a hello
and told me I'd find Tootie holding court in the library. I waved at
a couple of the residents I'd grown fond of from my frequent visits, and they lifted their hands in greeting. Passing behind the
three women and two men who sat with their eyes glued to a dramatic, tear-filled scene from some daytime soap opera on the big
screen at the end of the room, I slipped into the tiny room they
called the library at Caladia Acres.

The space was only large enough to hold a small settee and two
chairs. All four walls held shelves of books, including on each side
of and above the door, and around the single window in the north
wall. A various hodgepodge of nonfiction and fiction, from literary masterpieces to light romances, how-to, history and biography,
with a fair amount of religious works thrown in by some fervent
benefactor, the books didn't seem to have any particular order or
arrangement. I knew from experience, though, if a particular volume needed to be found in the collection, Tootie Hanover could
put her hand on it within seconds. When she wasn't in her room
or the dining hall, she gravitated to this room, with its spare light
and the scent of old ink on yellowing pages.

When Ann told me Tootie was holding court, I'd expected to
find her with a few people, but only one other woman sat in the
small room with her. In contrast to Tootie's tall elegance and patrician features, her companion was short and solidly built, clad in
mustard-colored polyester top and bottom, and sported short, unnaturally black curls above an attractive round face. Tootie's signature gray braid coiled on her head like a crown, and she wore a
forest-green silk sweater over black slacks. That woman could
show more style in a day than most people could muster in a year.

"Sophie Mae, come in. Have you met Betsy Maher?"

I closed the door behind me, glad it was solid wood and shut
out most of the volume from the television down the hall.

I smiled at the woman sitting opposite Tootie in the leatherbacked rocking chair. "I don't believe so. It's nice to meet you, Mrs.
Maher."

"Please, call me Betsy."