Granny had grown up on a farm in Tennessee, and she loved to talk about old-time remedies from her girlhood. As a teenager, Evelyn was disgusted when Granny told her that country people used to tie moldy bread to a bad cut to cure the infection.
Later on, Evelyn realized they were using a primitive form of penicillin.
Of course, not all of Granny’s old-time remedies were useful. Evelyn didn’t believe a pan of water under a bed would break a fever, but it did no harm.
Granny ran outside when she heard Evelyn’s car and gave her a comforting hug. Evelyn breathed in her grandmother’s old-fashioned violet sachet. Granny’s kitchen was perfumed with the warm sweetness of fresh- baked blackberry pie.
“You’re too thin,” Granny said, which made Evelyn feel better. You could never be too thin on TV.
“And how’s my other favorite TV girl?” said Granny.
“Who’s that?” said Evelyn, as she felt her insides go dead. Had that tinselly Tiffany seduced her Granny?
“The little blonde who rescued that dog,” Granny said. “She’s got a good head on her shoulders.”
“Too bad there’s nothing in it,” said Evelyn.
“Evelyn, is that the green-eyed monster I see in your eyes?” said Granny.
“No,” Evelyn lied.
“Then have some homemade pie and tell me why you’re dropping in on me in the middle of the day,” Granny said.
“Because I haven’t seen you in awhile,” said Evelyn. She couldn’t tell Granny the real reason. Not now. Not after she knew Granny was a Tiffany worshiper.
Granny cut a big slice from the blackberry pie cooling on the rack. Warm purple juice oozed out on the plate and dripped on the counter, but Granny ignored it. She was staring out the window.
“Those new people have their white horse in that pasture again on a sunny day,” Granny said. “They know that field’s full of rue plants. I’ve told them and told them, but they won’t listen to me. Damn yuppies think I don’t know anything. If that horse suffers, it’s their fault.”
“What’s wrong with rue?” asked Evelyn.
“It’s poisonous to white animals, especially in the sunshine,” said Granny. “Grows right there.” She pointed to some weedy-looking plants by the pasture fence.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Evelyn said. “Why would they poison only white animals?”
“Don’t know, but they do,” Granny said. “Poison white people, too.”
“Come on, Granny, plants don’t discriminate,” said Evelyn. She wondered if age was eroding Granny’s sharp mind.
“I mean really white people, like blondes. It won’t hurt dark-haired types like you,” Granny said. “And that’s no old wives’ tale. It’s a scientific fact. If white animals eat rue, celery, and plants like that, then stand in bright sunlight, they can get real sick.
“But a chestnut horse can eat the same plants and nothing happens. Dark-haired animals and people don’t get sick. The plants are only poisonous to very white people and white animals.”
“What happens?” asked Evelyn.
Granny loved to describe symptoms. “Their face, throat, and eyelids swell up,” she said gleefully. “They get dizzy and stagger around like they’re drunk.” Granny staggered around the kitchen, clutching the purple pie knife to her chest.
“Happened to your Aunt Virginia,” she said solemnly.
Evelyn tried to picture her stout gray-haired aunt staggering. “When?”
“When Virginia was a young girl. At the Cedar Springs church picnic,” Granny said. “I know you’ll find it hard to believe, but Virginia was a little bit of a thing then, and had platinum-blonde hair down to her hips. Wild as a March hare, too. Some boy dared her to eat a plant in a field. Your Aunt Virginia saw a brown horse eating it and figured it was safe. But it was rue. Her throat swelled up terrible. That girl liked to died. Couldn’t get Virginia to touch anything green again, not even a plain old lettuce salad.”
Evelyn could see another little blonde eating a salad, then going out into the sweltering Fair Saint Louis sunshine. She could see her white throat swelling and closing up, and the blonde staggering and dying just before the paramedics arrived.
Then Evelyn saw herself taking back the fair assignment that was rightfully hers.
Granny had given her the solution to the Tiffany problem after all. In fact, she’d served it on a plate.
“What’s this phenomenon called?” Evelyn asked.
“Photo… photo… photo-something,” Granny said.
Photosensitization.
“A pathological sensitivity caused by eating certain plants that are not ordinarily poisonous,” Evelyn’s researches at the library revealed.
“A form of light dermatosis,” said one old book that was a virtual manual for poisoners. Evelyn couldn’t risk checking it out, so she stole it from the library, burying it in her briefcase. At home, she read the section on photosensitization over and over, gloating over each sentence.
“Its symptoms are an inflammatory swelling of the ears, face, and eyelids, with throat and lung disturbances, dizziness and a tendency to stagger,” the book said. “When, in rare instances, death follows, it is due to mechanical asphyxia from the swelling of the nose and throat.”
Death would be nice, Evelyn thought. But she would settle for seeing the golden girl swell up like a red balloon. Maybe she’d pop, right on camera.
Evelyn giggled, but it was not a cute Tiffany Tyler Taylor giggle.
Her researches only got better: Rue and celery, especially the green leafy parts of celery, were rich in furanocourmarins. The name alone was enough to make you turn red and swell.
Some people were supersensitive to them. They’d get a horrible sunburn-like reaction. The lighter-skinned you were, the more intense the reaction. Especially if you went out into the sun.
And if you were taking a drug like Coumadin, it further intensified the reaction, Evelyn read. Lots of people took the blood thinner Coumadin. It was also the main ingredient in rat poison.
All Evelyn had to do was make a nice salad with rue and celery, then spice it with a little rat poison. Not enough to make a brunette sick. Just enough to blow up a little blonde.
It was so easy.
Evelyn knew where to get the rue plants. The pasture near Granny’s was filled with them.
Evelyn knew how she would serve them, too. She’d make a field greens salad, then add the rue. It was a field green, too. When people were chomping baby oak leaves and stuff that looked like it had been raked off a lawn, who’d notice some rue? Then she’d sprinkle on green celery leaves for color. Everyone used celery.
A cheese dressing would disguise any bitter taste.
For everyone but Tiffany.
For good measure, she’d Cuisinart a little rat poison and add it to the dressing. It would blend in with the herbs and spices. She’d calculate exactly the medicinal dose for a small woman-divided by three salad eaters. Sun, celery, rue-and rat poison. Tiffany would rue the day she went after anything of Evelyn’s.
There was one problem. How would she get Tiffany to eat the salad? Everyone knew Evelyn hated the woman. She barely said hello to Tiffany in the newsroom. She had one month to make friends with her enemy: Evelyn would have to swallow her pride so Tiffany would swallow her salad.
Next morning, Evelyn walked into Margaret’s office and said, “You’re right. It’s time I buried the hatchet.”
“In Tiffany’s forehead?” Margaret said, suspiciously.
“For real,” Evelyn said. “Yesterday, I had some time to think about what you said. I’m only hurting myself. I want to take Tiffany to lunch. My treat. Would you come as referee?”
“Delighted,” Margaret said, her pale face turning pink with pleasure. “I’m so happy you’re taking my advice.”
Tiffany was wary when Evelyn invited her, even when she explained that Margaret would be there, too. But she could not resist Evelyn’s handsome apology. “I’ve behaved stupidly, Tiffany,” she said. “I want this lunch to be a peace offering.”
