If Looks Could Kill (20 page)

I sat down gingerly in a small yellow armchair with at least three throw pillows wedged into the back. There was a silver
tea service perched on the coffee table, but Darma ignored it as she sank into the sofa, and it became clear very quickly
that no refreshments would be offered. This experience was going to be as far as you could get from one of those General Foods
International Coffee’s moments.

“Your home is so lovely,” I said, trying to break the ice. “Did you decorate it yourself?”

“Mostly. Though of course I had someone I worked with.” She shook her massive mane of hair off her collar, as if she were
imitating the movement of a horse. In the brighter light of the sunroom, she appeared five years older than she had in the
doorway. I put her age somewhere between forty-five and fifty. I also noticed that despite the
pashmina
and pearls, there was something slightly cheap about her. Even though she’d had a career in magazines, she brought to mind
hat check girls who married millionaires after a six-week courtship.

“You’re living out here full-time?”

“Yes,” she said, “there’s really no reason for me to be in New York anymore. And you—you’re out just for the day?”

“Actually, I’m staying at a friend’s in Carversville.”

“Perhaps I know her.”

“It’s a man, an older man, named Landon Hayes. He’s got a busy social life out here, so your paths may have crossed.”

“I don’t know the name. We always socialized with a close circle of friends.”

“I’m so sorry about your husband,” I said. “I only met him briefly at a few industry events, but of course I know what a great
reputation he had.”

“
We’ve
never met before, have we?”

“No, I don’t think so. But I’m sure we’ve worked with some of the same people over time.”

“Leslie Stone’s at
Gloss
, isn’t she?” she asked. “I worked with her at
Food and Entertaining
. And I know Dolores, of course. She and Tucker were friends. They were both horrified, of course, when they saw what Cat
Jones was doing to
Gloss.”

“It’s not everyone’s thing. But readers seem to like it.”

“As they say,” she said with a sniff, “there’s no accounting for taste. Now what is it that you needed to talk to me about
so urgently?”

“Well, first of all, thank you for seeing me, because it’s really pretty important. You probably wouldn’t have heard this
news out here, but Cat Jones’s nanny died on Sunday and apparently she was poisoned. It seems the intended victim was actually
Cat herself. I wondered if there was any chance her death could be linked to your husband’s.”

With her emerald green eyes, she offered me a stare so cold and hard that I had to resist the urge to squirm in my chair.

“This is why you wanted to see me?” she said, barely containing her anger. “This is the reason that you insisted on coming
out here?”

Oops.

“Yes, I thought you could help us,” I said quickly. “I’d heard there was some speculation that your husband died from eating
bad mushrooms. Two incidents like this six months apart—it seems awfully strange, perhaps more than coincidental.”

“So the poison mushroom myth is still floating around out there,” she said cryptically.

“That’s not what happened, then?”

“They really have no idea what caused Tucker’s death. And there’s not one shred of evidence it had anything to do with mushrooms.
One of the doctors at the hospital suggested that without any proof whatsoever.”

“Your husband liked to hunt for mushrooms?”

“Yes. And he liked to eat them, too. I suppose there’s a chance he might have eaten the wrong one. The whole thing sounded
more like ass covering on the part of the hospital, if you ask me.”

“He got sick at work?”

“Yes.”

“In the middle of the week?”

“It was a Thursday. He didn’t feel quite right after lunch. He had planned to drive out for a long weekend—I was already out
here—but he felt bad enough that he ended up taking a car service. By the time he got out here he was seriously ill and I
took him right to the hospital. He was nearly seventy. These things happen at that age, unfortunately.”

“He never said anything about eating mushrooms?”

“No, he did not,” she snapped. “And frankly, what difference does it make now?”

“Well, as I said, since it appears that someone tried to kill an editor in chief of another woman’s magazine, I wondered if
his death might be the result of foul play.”

She paused and turned her profile to me as she stared vacantly out the windows. The tip of her nose had an odd little round
ball at the end that you couldn’t see when you looked at her straight on.

“Oh, now I see,” she said sarcastically. “Kind of like
Someone Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe
.”

“Well, I never read the book, so I wouldn’t know. But it does seem as if there could be a connection between the two deaths,
that someone might have a grudge against the editors of women’s magazines and could try again.”

“Oh, is that right?”

“At the very least, I think someone should mention it to the police.”

Her face hardened. “As far as I’m concerned, it all sounds preposterous—and I’m not in the mood for it. My husband is dead
and it doesn’t matter one iota to me what’s going on back in Manhattan.”

“I can understand that,” I said. “I just have one more question. Had your husband had problems with any employees before he
died? Had anyone made any threats against him?”

“People
adored
my husband. If you had known him, you wouldn’t be asking outrageous questions like that.”

“Well, I’m sorry I didn’t know him,” I said. “Why don’t I head out now and not take up any more of your afternoon.” Maybe,
I thought, what killed Tucker Bobb was the sheer terror that resulted from pondering what would happen if he ever stepped
out of line with this babe.

Instead of leading me back through the house, Darma rose and crossed the room to a large glass door that opened onto a patio.
It bounced on its track from the force she used as she slid it open.

“This way,” she said, dismissing me. “The garage is over there.”

“Thank you for taking the time to see me,” I said, sticking out my hand. She shook it limply and dropped it almost instantly.
I was barely out onto the patio before she rammed the glass door shut again.

I hurried across the lawn to my Jeep, wondering if she was about to detonate it with a remote-control device or at the very
least set a pair of Dobermans on my heels. It took three tries to fire up the engine. Finally it caught and I headed out the
gravel drive.

But I hadn’t gone two minutes before the road narrowed and turned from gravel to dirt, and I realized I’d taken the wrong
way out. I was on some sort of logging or hiking road. There was no easy spot to turn around, and I’d be damned if I was going
to continue through the woods to find one—the day had enough of a
Blair Witch
feeling to it already. So I backed out, a laborious, jerky process.

No, she was
not
waiting for me with a shotgun on her shoulder when I pulled back into the courtyard. I put the Jeep in drive and crept forward,
looking for the right way out. It was behind the biggest barn, which I should have remembered, but I guess I’d been too hell-bent
on getting out of there. As I drove off, I glanced in my rearview mirror. The Marlboro Man in the denim shirt was heading
up the path to the house.

Despite my agitation I managed to find my way easily to Route 611. The time was exactly two P.M. Since the interview had been
so brief, I had over an hour to kill before my appointment with Dr. Tressler. Halfway to Doylestown I pulled into Sammy’s,
one of those roadside food stands where they sell hot dogs and ice cream and buckets of fries and you have to give your order
through a window with a screen that they lift up when they take your money. I ordered a black-and-white milk shake and took
it back to the Jeep.

I pulled out my steno pad and jotted down what I could remember from my conversation—if you could call it that—with Darma.
I hadn’t wanted to take notes in the house for fear of spooking her, which was ironic considering I was the one who’d ended
up spooked. I was tempted to immediately do a mental postmortem on the experience, to try to figure out why her ass had gotten
so chapped from my questions, but that would be putting the cart before the horse. It was essential to get down her comments
and my impressions before I drew any conclusions.

When I’d finished, I started the Jeep and got back on my way. The hospital, Landon had told me, was right off Route 611 and
there’d be signs along the way.

Sure enough, I spotted the big white
H
on the blue sign by an exit ramp just as I came toward the city and I swung in that direction. The hospital was less than
two minutes from there.

The ER reception area was a study in Danish modern. When I explained to the woman behind the information desk that I had an
appointment with Dr. Tressler, she told me to have a seat and she’d page her. There were only a few people in the waiting
room—a fiftysomething couple (she for some reason in boat-size blue bedroom slippers) and a mother with a little boy who was
hitting her on the head with a rubber cow. It was impossible to tell with either twosome who the patient was. I’d only perched
my butt on the edge of a seat for a minute before a woman wearing a white doctor coat over pants pushed open a door at the
far end of the room and strode purposefully in my direction. She was about thirty-eight, thirty-nine, attractive in a mannish
sort of way, and she appeared to be in a hurry.

“Bailey Wagon?” she asked before she was even halfway toward me. I started to rise and explain the mistake with my name, when
she held up both hands in a stop position, as if she were helping me back out of a tight parking spot.

“Look, don’t get up,” she announced. “I’ve got a patient and I’m going to be at least twenty to thirty minutes. Sorry, but
I can’t predict these things.”

“That’s not a problem. I appreciate your taking the time.”

“It might be easier for you to wait in the cafeteria. You could grab a coffee and I’ll run over when I’m done.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

“You just take the yellow hallway there,” she said, pointing behind me. “Follow the signs.” Then she turned and strode away.

I found my way to the cafeteria and bought a cup of coffee, which tasted like a liquefied rubber band. I had nothing to read,
so my only choice was to sit there, taking tiny sips so I wouldn’t gag. Thoughts of the previous night began pushing into
the front of my brain. It was clearer than ever that K.C. was interested in nothing more than a fling and I’d be smart to
just back off before I got burned somehow. He’d probably never call again, anyway.

I was halfway through my coffee when Dr. Tressler flopped down in the next chair and thrust her legs straight out in front
of her. She had brown eyes, with two small beauty marks in the lower lashes of her right one, a strong nose, and a long mouth
that seemed to run across the entire length of her face. No makeup. Earlier I’d thought she had short hair, but now I saw
it was actually long and pulled back in a French braid. Under her lab coat she was wearing tan pants and a navy turtleneck,
and she had a pair of brown clogs on her feet.

“Sorry about the delay,” she said. “This ten-year-old kid had an altercation with a skateboard ramp. He needed twenty-seven
stitches.”

“I guess you see all sorts of disasters once the warm weather comes.”

“Oh, yeah.” She’d brought her own coffee in a Styrofoam cup and used her thumb to pop off the lid. “So you work for
Gloss
? You don’t have anything to do with those sex articles, do you? Wow, I took a look at a copy last night. That’s pretty graphic
stuff.”

“No, they don’t let me near that material,” I said with a laugh. “I work on the news stories. But I’m also a good friend of
the editor, and that’s why I’m here. As I mentioned on the phone, it appears that someone tried to poison her. Tucker Bobb
was in the same industry, and I wondered if there could be a link.”

She cocked her head to the side. “How so?”

“I’d heard there was some thinking he might have died from poison mushrooms.”

“Mushroom.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just one kind of mushroom—a type called
Amanita phalloides
, more commonly known as death cap. I’m the one who suspected that might be what killed him.”

“Did you treat him yourself ?” I said, flipping open my steno pad and beginning to write. “By the way, the notes are just
for my personal use.”

“No, I was out of town at a medical conference when all of this was happening. But since he was a big shot, I reviewed the
chart when I got back.”

“The doctors who treated him never suspected?” I asked it casually, not wanting to sound critical.

“Look, you’ve got to understand,” she said, crossing her arms, “death by poison mushroom isn’t something you see every day
in an ER. And the symptoms can look like a lot of other things. Generally the only reason you’d even know you were dealing
with mushrooms is from the patient history. But if the patient doesn’t offer it up, it’s probably not going to come to mind.
And you can’t detect it in the blood.”

“Why did it come to
your
mind?” Again, casual.

“It’s an interest of mine, kind of a minor specialty. I was doing my residency in ER medicine in Ohio. A family of Laotians
came in deathly ill, and we realized that they’d all eaten death caps.
Amanita phalloides
looks almost identical, it turns out, to a totally benign mushroom found in Laos. We lost three of them. Two of the youngest
we saved with liver transplants.”

“Too bad you weren’t on duty when Tucker Bobb came in.”

“Wouldn’t have done any good. He was past the point of no return by then. And because he didn’t mention anything about mushrooms,
it might not have even occurred to
me
. It was only after I talked to his M.D. out here and heard about the first attack that I really suspected amanita.”