Pomeroy was and always had been an enigma to me. Apparently he also gave that impression to the other women in town, who had given him the moniker Ice Man. He had none of the flirtatious mock shyness that John Richard used to such advantage with women.
Arch, on the other hand, adored Pomeroy. Something about his aura of quiet, his life in a remote cabin, his way with the bees, had magnetized my son. Through a whole year of teaching Sunday school I had only rare clues that Arch was absorbing any of the study-of-saints curriculum. Nevertheless, after his spring project working out at the hives, Arch had said Pomeroy was like Saint Francis. He loves all the animals, Arch had said; he understands nature.
So I was interested in Pomeroy in a way that was more than curiosity. I had been unwilling to discuss my interest with Alicia, as I didn’t know what kind of chance I had with an icy-tempered beekeeper.
“You walked away from that conversation awful fast,” I said to him.
He shook his head. “I don’t have to listen to her when she’s like that, or when she’s talking about that … subject. No one has to.”
“Oh, well. Besides Vonette, how’re you doing?” I asked with a bright smile.
He said, “Why do you care?”
So much for social interchange. I said, “I don’t know,” and walked back to my ex-mother-in-law.
“How’s your coffee, Vonette?” I asked. It was on the table, and it looked untouched. Under the table was the purse that held the flask.
“Think I need it?” she asked, her voice still full of self-pity. Her head of wild red hair shook slightly. I waved my hand at the dessert and beverage tables, where Arch and Patty Sue were now feverishly trying to keep up with the flow of people finished with the main portion of the meal.
“No,” I said, “but everyone’s lining up for shortcake now, and they’ll be wanting coffee, too. I brought you some so you wouldn’t have to get up.” But of course she needed it. This day was upsetting enough without another trip to detox.
Arch was looking frantic by the coffee machine; I joined him.
“Mom,” he said, “I need more lemons. I don’t know why everyone wants lemonade all of a sudden.”
“I’ll do it. Just keep them going with the coffee and wine, if they want it.”
Out in the kitchen, I located my manual squeezer and extracted the juice from a dozen lemons, then cut paper-thin slices from two more using a knife from a wall mount. After a few moments Arch came in.
“Now what?” I asked. He was opening cupboards and looking through them.
“Well,” he said as he pulled over one of the kitchen chairs to climb up for a better view, “now somebody wants herb tea. All we’ve got out there is that Lipton stuff.” He strained to look in the high cupboards. “So I have to find some.”
I left the lemons and joined Arch in his search. In the process I finally found Laura’s sugar in a canister with a magazine picture of Sugar Ray Leonard taped on the front. But there was no herb tea.
“See if whoever it is will try this,” I said as I handed him Postum. “I’ll be out in a minute with the lemonade.”
He left. The running water foamed up over the sugar and juice. When I brought the pitcher into the living room, Arch had disappeared again, and there were only a few people left in the food line. I hoped the lemonade shortage would be our last crisis of the day.
Within twenty minutes people were nearly finished with the last of their plates. Conversation settled into small pockets around the room. Quietly I began to gather plates and ashtrays to take out to the kitchen. Clients do not like to have dirty plates around at a party, but they don’t want to hear you wash them either. Luckily there was a door between the kitchen and the main room, and I could begin the cleaning unobtrusively.
Hot water and suds were just churning over the silverware when I heard a sound that made me shudder. Someone was moaning.
I turned off the water. From the living room came the same loud sound, the kind of deep groaning you associate with…
Associate with…
I didn’t even want to think. If someone vomited at a function I catered, that would be the end of the business. Or close to it.
I pushed through the door to the other room. The groan became a howl. There was a crowd gathered around the sound, and several people were walking quickly toward me uttering names of things they wanted.
“Water—”
“Phone—”
“Towel—”
My face was suddenly cool with the sweat of fear, as I prayed,
“Let me through,” I begged the people I was elbowing past, darting my head all around to find Arch. The first thing I saw was the jar of Postum on the coffee table.
I gasped and pleaded to be let through, then at the front of the crowd asked, “What is it?”
Fritz Korman was on the floor. His large frame was writhing on the blue rug. He was holding his stomach. Horror and distress surged through me—Fritz was family, or had been. And he was in terrible agony.
“Get back, get back!” my ex-husband was yelling above the general buzz and the groaning from Fritz, which continued unabated. John Richard was waving his hands to move people away from around Fritz, who was now curled up on his side like a fetus. Arch was tugging on my apron. I clutched him to me.
“What is going on?” I asked into the general melee.
John Richard started screaming as soon as he saw me. “You did this, you bitch! You poisoned my father! Did you mean it for me and then do him by mistake?”
I could feel my mouth come open, my head shake from side to side.
John Richard shrieked, “You did it, and I’m going to have you nailed!”
CHAPTER 4
At first, I thought some kind of shock had made John Richard accuse me. But after his outburst; he turned his back and refused even to acknowledge my presence. What was worse, debonair, ever-in-control Fritz was not getting any better. All around, people were turning their heads away and murmuring. Someone was phoning for help; others were applying damp cloths and asking questions. Was it the mayonnaise, the cream, the fish? There was nothing for me to do. That was a good thing, since I couldn’t have done anything anyway. I felt terrible, and dizzy with a vague sense of guilt … Did Fritz have a food allergy, too?
I herded Arch back to the kitchen, found the pack of Kools, and smoked one after another until Patty Sue came out and said Fritz was on his way to the hospital. She added, hesitantly, that John Richard had called the police and they were coming over. Now that my ex-husband had left, I went into the other room. That he would call the police was incredible. What could he possibly have told them? Was he even remotely convincing? Would they believe that I was trying to poison anyone? I, who had, earlier in the afternoon, tried to keep an abusive ex-husband from suffering an allergic reaction to tomatoes? Would they believe me, a caterer? Or would they believe him, a doctor?
I wondered what the food would be like in jail.
Investigator Tom Schulz of the Furman County Sheriff’s Department was introduced to us by another cop, whose reverential tone said, Here’s God. Schulz loomed large in height and bulk. When he came striding through the door of Laura Smiley’s house, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he looked like one of those old-time movie heroes who use sword and cape to threaten villains, to keep skeptics at bay, to summon up an imposing sense of self-importance. Only the investigator needed neither sword nor cape. He had his size.
In general, I felt powerful with hefty people. They held me in great esteem because I was an expert cook. But within five minutes of watching Investigator Schulz scan the tables, glasses, coffee cups, and the bevy of trembling faces, my confidence melted. He consulted a guest list given to him by Laura’s aunt. Then he cocked an
