Fed Up (14 page)

Emilio and Josh. Josh and Emilio? An interesting combination. I shrugged my shoulders. “I think Josh will be fine. Digger will be here to help him out.” Digger was not only Josh’s friend, of course, but a chef who could be counted on to put out delicious food. Besides, I had no visceral reaction whatever to Digger, whereas the prospect of having Josh work next to the hunky Emilio was all too . . . visceral, let’s say. “But we could definitely use Emilio’s help with all the other work that will need to be done that day. Anyhow, I’ve got to get going. I have to go pick up Inga.”

“Who is Inga?” my confused mother asked. “A new friend from school?”

I laughed and explained how Josh had rescued the white cat from death by Charles River. “She’s at the groomer’s right now. I’m just hoping the owner there didn’t have to shave all her fur off.”

“Josh is an angel, isn’t he?” Mom said warmly.

I had to agree. Josh was an angel. I felt scummy for even noticing Emilio. Would Emilio ever save a pitiful cat from death? His dedication to finding solutions to a multitude of environmental crises might save the world, but I couldn’t say for sure that he’d have rescued Inga.

But I did want to think so.

“HERE is Miss Inga!” Glenda beamed as she lifted the cat carrier onto the counter. “She looks like a whole new cat, doesn’t she?”

She truly did. Even peeking through the grated door, I could see she looked clean and beautiful. “I told you I’d come back, little girl, didn’t I?” I cooed to my cat.

I swear that there was gratitude in Inga’s big blue eyes. Sticking a finger into the cage for her to smell, I felt her touch me with her wet nose. Then she rubbed her head against my finger.

“How was she, Glenda? Was she a monster?” I was sure that Inga had peed all over the groomer as she had the vet, but I was wrong.

“She was fine. No trouble at all. I think she knew I was trying to help her. Those were some nasty mats she had, but I managed to just shave off the clumps and let her keep the rest of her coat.”

“Thank you so much for fitting her in today. How much do I owe you?” I reached for my purse. Even though Glenda gave me a discount because of Inga’s escape from death, I still shelled out a hefty sum. But my money bought me a clean cat no longer tormented by mats that yanked at her skin. As if to celebrate Inga’s rehabilitation, Glenda had tied a silly pink bow between the little cat’s ears. I waved thanks to Glenda and drove Inga back to my condo.

When we got home, Gato was sitting on the couch, but one look at Inga sent him back to the top of the fridge to mope. I knew that he’d come around in a few days, but I hated to see him even crankier than usual. Gato normally ate dry food, but I kept a small reserve of canned food for special occasions and bribes. I opened a can of salmon and chicken, dumped it in a bowl, and placed it on top of the fridge in an effort to cheer my boy up. Gato didn’t share my opinion that the cat food smelled like garbage. On the contrary, it elicited a steady purr. As Gato scarfed down his meal, I reached up to pet his shiny black coat.

Then I went to my bedroom, which was the largest room in my small condo and hence doubled as a work space for school and for my summer job. Sitting at my desk, I checked my e-mail, sorted through a few messages about rain barrels, and decided to do another search for information about digitalis.

Wham! Digitalis was a genus of perennial plants, the most common being foxglove. As the daughter of two horticultural experts, I should have known! In fact, my parents would’ve been horrified to realize how little botanical information I’d absorbed over the years. In particular, I liked the common names of plants and had never bothered to learn botanical names. So, digitalis was a stranger, but foxglove was an old friend. I’d always adored the tall, spiked plants with their showy, tubular flowers.

Digitalis in the form of foxglove was obviously much easier to obtain than was digitalis in the form of a prescription medication. In fact, as I read about foxglove, I had to wonder why such a dangerous plant was positively all over the place: offered in seed catalogs, sold at garden centers, and grown in backyards. Every part of the foxglove was poisonous, and especially toxic were the leaves from the upper stem. The symptoms of having ingested foxglove were identical to those that Francie had shown. Furthermore, it had a strong, bitter taste. So that was why Josh’s arugula pesto and lamb had tasted so putrid! Dear God, all of us who’d tasted it could have died! I remembered how sick Josh had been. It was a blessing that in vomiting up everything in his system, he’d rid himself of most of the poison.

Damn. Instead of pestering people about possible cardiac conditions, I should have been asking about gardening. My questions about heart problems and family health histories had been awkward and unwelcome, but gardening was an ordinary topic that was easy to introduce in a casual conversation. My mother was always saying that gardening was the most popular hobby in America. Had anyone present at Leo and Francie’s house pursued the hobby?

Evan and Willie shared an apartment. I hadn’t been there, but they could be growing foxgloves in pots on a balcony or in a yard, and they might well not have realized how lethal a practical joke involving digitalis could be. Leo and Francie’s house had some kind of a disheveled garden, but I hadn’t really paid attention to it except to notice that it was a weedy mess. Foxglove was a biennial rather than a perennial. In its first year, it produced leaves, but it didn’t blossom until its second year. Then, I thought, it died. But it self-sowed. In other words, if someone had planted foxglove in Leo and Francie’s yard a long time ago, the descendants of the original plants could still be growing there. Although it was obvious that neither Francie nor Leo had been maintaining the garden, Leo might have known all about foxglove and might have known that it was growing right outside his house. Murders were often family affairs, weren’t they? They were on TV. So Leo had to be a suspect. What’s more, the rest of us had just met Francie. What possible motive could Robin, Marlee, Digger, or Nelson have had for killing her? None, so far as I could tell. Except possibly Nelson? Not that the cameraman had had anything personal against Francie, but he’d certainly been the weirdest person there. He’d kept spouting off at the mouth about the power of reality television, and he’d ghoulishly kept filming when Francie had fallen ill and after she’d died. He’d even tried to film the aftermath of the poisoning in the ER. Could Nelson have killed Francie only to have “reality” to film? If Nelson was, in fact, the murderer, he probably hadn’t cared which of us died. Maybe he’d even been disappointed to have only one victim. Sick thought, yes, but especially as a social-worker-to-be, I knew that there were sick people in the world.

I remembered something else potentially important. When Josh and I had both sampled some of the food before it had been served, there had been nothing wrong with it. But when we’d tasted the same food after Francie had complained so forcibly, it had been horrible. In between those two times, there’d been chaotic activity. The food had been served, returned to the kitchen, and served again. The scene at the dinner table had been filmed and filmed again. Everyone, or almost everyone, had had the opportunity to contaminate the food with poison. Marlee and Digger had handled the food when Robin and Nelson had accompanied them to the kitchen to reshoot the plates. Leo had had his hands all over the food, hadn’t he? To complicate matters, it seemed possible that the digitalis had been added either to what was originally on Francie’s plate or to one of the bowls or pans used to replenish her plate before the dinner-table scene was reshot.

It’s typical of me that the thought of food, even food loaded with a fatal toxin, made me hungry. I was in the kitchen getting myself a snack when the phone rang. “Hello?” I managed between bites of garlic-stuffed olives. I really needed to go food shopping.

“Hi, Chloe. This is Robin. From the TV show.”

“Robin. Hi. How are you?” I couldn’t imagine why Robin was calling me.

“Fine. Fully recovered. Well, I’m fine considering the hellish week it’s been. The station is having a fit about what happened. They’re trying to spin it in a way that doesn’t get our show off the air forever. It’s a nightmare, actually. But the reason I’m calling is that I wanted to find out more about this wedding ceremony you’re performing for your friend. Angelica, is it?”

“Adrianna. Adrianna and Owen.”

“I thought I might be able to do a piece on getting a license to perform a wedding ceremony. It’s such a fun idea that a friend of the couple can officiate. After Monday’s disaster, I’m trying to find other pieces to do for the station in case they yank the chef series. This wedding business sounds like a great human interest story. I was thinking that we could film the wedding, if your friends don’t mind. But maybe they already have a videographer.”

On their budget, Ade and Owen most certainly did not have a videographer. My parents had mentioned the possibility, but there was no way that my friends would accept more than my parents were already paying for. Adrianna and Owen did, of course, want a video of their wedding, but all they intended to do was to shove a recording device into a guest’s hands and hope for the best. “Robin, that would be wonderful,” I said. “I’m really excited about doing this wedding. Ade and I have been friends for ages, and I just adore her. And Owen is a good friend of mine, too. I know they’d love to have you film their wedding. I don’t even have to ask.”

“Listen, I have to run, but how about we meet for dinner tomorrow? Have the bride and groom come with you, and I can talk to you more then about how you got licensed. I’ll bring Nelson, and we can talk about filming the wedding.”

Although I wasn’t dying to spend an evening with that creepy Nelson, I was eager to find out more about him. What’s more, sometime during the dinner, it would be easy to slip in a subtle reference to gardening and to find out whether Robin or Nelson had a garden.

“Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll have to run the idea by Adrianna and Owen first and make sure it’s okay with them, but I’m sure they’ll love it. Where do you want to have dinner?”

“Why don’t we meet at Marlee’s restaurant? Alloy, it’s called.”

“It’s in the South End, isn’t it?” So were dozens of other trendy restaurants.

“Yes. Tomorrow at seven? The food is fantastic. Very contemporary. You’ll love it.”

The choice of Alloy didn’t surprise me, since Marlee was one of the chefs in rotation on
Chefly Yours.
I assumed that her food must be good. She was, after all, competing against Josh and Digger, both of whom I knew to be talented. “That sounds great. I’ll see you there.”

I scrounged around in the kitchen for something else to eat and came up with nothing good for dinner. Too bad I wasn’t meeting Robin tonight.

I called Adrianna and explained Robin’s idea for filming the wedding. “It wouldn’t cost you a thing, and you’d have the entire day on tape. Isn’t this cool?”

“That sounds really nice. Please tell Robin we accept her offer. But I’m not eating at Alloy, I can tell you that. I have a client who ate there once, and she said it was the worst.”

The real reason for Adrianna’s refusal suddenly occurred to me. “My treat,” I said casually. Not that I had all that much money! But Ade and Owen had practically none.

“No, it’s not that, Chloe. Really, she said that it was pretentious and snobby, superexpensive, and the food was nasty.”

“Oh,” I said, disappointed. If I was going to shell out money for a pricey dinner, I expected the food to be delectable. I hoped that Ade’s client had lousy taste buds.

“Didn’t you read the Mystery Diner’s review a few months ago? He totally panned the place. Said it was one of the worst restaurant experiences he’d ever had. Not only was the food a disaster, but he wrote that it was dirty and probably broke every health code in the book.”

The Boston Mystery Diner, who wrote a popular column for a local paper, was genuinely mysterious: nobody knew who he was. Josh told me that restaurant staff around the city were forever wondering, worrying that the patrons on a given evening included the elusive reviewer.

“I’m surprised he wasn’t sued,” I said. “I didn’t see that one, but you know how unfair some of his reviews are. He said Pinnacle serves a revolting basket of fried clams, and I think it’s the best seafood place in Boston.”

“True enough,” Ade agreed. “Can you imagine what an awesome job that would be? Eating in restaurants with no one knowing who you are? And eating everywhere and having the paper pay the bills? I’d do that job in a heartbeat.”

“Join the club. You sure you don’t want to talk to Robin yourself?”

“No. I’m sorry, Chloe. I can’t eat at that place after what I’ve heard. Besides, I’m too huge to leave the house. I’ll probably end up having the baby in my apartment because they won’t be able to push me out the doorway.”