twenty-six
FLINGING OPEN CABINET DOORS, MIKE VAN DYKE finally found a bowl and dumped the oleander leaves into it. Then he raided the refrigerator. “Look at this. You could open a gourmet restaurant. Radicchio. Chinese parsley. Endive. Kale. Even cilantro! How convenient. This will have the cops all over the map wondering which one of these freakish lettuces from weirdo places accidentally got packaged with some oleander. Good for me.”
Ripping open bag after bag, he threw a little of each kind of green into the bowl, then he took the oleander leaves and broke them up into it, mixing it with his hands. I watched as the white sap melted into the water beading on the lettuce leaves. I was in trouble. Deep trouble.
As Van Dyke opened the refrigerator door, I finally got a good look at his hair. Yuck. It was number two clipper-cut on the sides, but he’d permed the crown sometime in the decades since his wedding and had it plastered in a mini-pouf with both gel and hairspray (control issues) like he thought he was some sort of blond JFK (ego issues). With a grunt of satisfaction, he flourished some lemon-lavender salad dressing he’d found behind the milk and doused the assembled leaves with it, chortling. “And when they wonder just why you could stomach the taste of the oleander, well, here’s the answer. I bet this tastes like crap.” He looked on the label at the expiration date. “I’m the luckiest man alive! It’s even out-of-date.”
Well, it didn’t taste scrumptious, but I wasn’t admitting that to him. I’d bought it on a lark a long time ago, tried it once, and never tried it again. My third if-I-live- through-this resolution—clean out the refrigerator so I won’t have any extra ammunition for homicidal maniacs who happen to come calling.
The cordless phone sitting next to the refrigerator rang. We both looked at it like it was alive.
“I thought I cut the phone line,” Van Dyke complained.
“So it was you, not the accident down the street.”
“That was me, too, and it’s no accident,” Van Dyke boasted. “I paid some guy in a trench coat big bucks to throw a firecracker into a gas tank.”
I guess the flasher had a place to stay tonight—the burn unit of the hospital. Nice guy, this Van Dyke.
The sirens still blared. The dogs still barked. I was still up the creek without the paddle. I looked more closely at the phone. It was the long-range cordless I’d bought for the salon. Mario had been talking on it to Trudy when he’d gone to make his sandwich. He must have forgotten to take it back to the receptionist desk. Thank the good Lord for dimwit friends.
It stopped ringing. Van Dyke looked at me.
“It’s the phone for the salon.”
The phone started ringing again.
“Do you have an answering machine?”
“Yes.”
“Then why aren’t they leaving a message?”
“Bring it to me, and I’ll check the caller ID.”
He showed me the display. Trudy was calling from home.
“It’s my best friend.” I smiled in relief.
“So?” He was getting worried, time to play on that. The phone stopped ringing.
“So, she’s probably called my cell phone and my home phone and gotten no answer. If I’m not answering at the salon, then she’ll get worried and rush over here. Right away. Speedy quick.”
Van Dyke grimaced. “How far away does she live?”
“Not far,” I lied. “Five minutes or so.”
We stared at the quiet phone. I prayed as hard as I ever did for Trudy to try a third time. Ten of the longest seconds of my life ticked by. It rang again.
Van Dyke swore. He sat down next to me, holding the knife point in my back, where the brush had stuck out of Ricardo. He jammed the receiver to my ear. “Talk to her, then, but you’d better not let on that anything’s wrong, or I’ll forgo the nice, clean way to kill you in favor of the quick, bloody way. Remember, I’ve done that before. I don’t like it, but I will do it.”
He pressed the talk button with his thumb and leaned in so he could hear.
“Hello?” The knife point dug into skin. I winced. He dug it deeper. I felt some blood seeping out. I tried not to panic.
“Reyn! I was frantic with worry! Why didn’t you answer any of your phones? Are you crazy? Don’t answer that! I know you are.”
“Hi, Trude, no need to be worried. I was just busy.”
“Busy doing what? What could be so important that you’d give your best friend a heart attack imagining the things that could be happening to you right now?”
I paused. How could I come up with a way of telling Trudy something was wrong without Mr. Quick Stab catching on? And I didn’t want her to faint if I shocked her too strongly. I went for the humor angle. Inside joke. “I was trying on some things I got from Frederick’s of Hollywood for my date.”
Van Dyke wiggled his waxed eyebrows. What man waxes his eyebrows? Gag. I might be sick even before I took a single bite of oleander.
“Date? What date?”
Oh, come on, Trude!
“The date with that tall hunk you tried to set me up with all week, of course, you silly. How could you have forgotten? What kind of friend are you?”
“What things from Frederick’s of Hollywood?” She sounded suspicious now. Praise the Lord, I think she was getting it.
“Oh, you know, the leopard-print satin pushup bra with the black fur trim.” I suddenly wished I actually looked at those catalogues they sent. Who knew it might save my life one day? Was Van Dyke breathing heavier? Gross. I finished my description quickly. “The red see-through negligee with the gold feathers. Those black suede crotchless bikini panties.”
I know I heard Trudy swallow a laugh. Bitch. “Oh, yeah, those things. I remember now. Your date’s gonna love them.”
Van Dyke brought the knife up to make a cutoff motion across his throat. Don’t I wish he’d get a little closer to his neck. Trudy had the message. I just hoped she had enough time to get help before I was a goner.
“I hope he does.” I giggled just for good measure in case Trudy hadn’t gotten it by now. I doubted she’d ever heard me giggle.
“You and the mirror have fun!”
Van Dyke cut the connection and threw the phone onto the table. “Gosh, after that, I wish we had the time to have you model those luscious items. But, sorry, got to kill you in time to make dinner at the club tonight.” He glanced at his Rolex. “I might take them to my girlfriend, though, if you don’t mind. Of course, you won’t mind, you’ll be dead. Might as well make good use of them.”
He chuckled for a moment, then sobered up suddenly. “Let’s get on with it.”
He found a fork and stuck it into the pieces of green and shoved the bite toward my mouth. I stared at the pieces of leaves in front of me, trying to pick out the oleander from the other. It probably wouldn’t matter; enough sap had gotten on the other pieces to do me in. One bite of cardenolide glycoside wouldn’t kill, the gardener had said. I wished I’d asked exactly how many bites of the toxin was deadly. That knowledge might come in handy right about now.
My lips refused to open.
“Listen,” he said, peeved, as he reviewed the Rolex again. “I only have an hour before I have to be at the San Antonio Country Club.”
“That’s only about five minutes from here,” I pointed out helpfully.
“Yes, but I want to make sure you’re dead before I leave.”
“Oh.”
He shook the bite of salad in front of my face. I shook my head. He picked the butcher knife back up off the table. “Quick or slow. Pretty soon, you won’t have a choice.”
I opened my lips. He shoved the bite in and pricked my jaw with the knife to get me to chew. Ick. Man, did it taste worse than dog do. And I’d know, because my thankless brothers made me eat that when I was four years old. I told myself to gag, throw up, but I didn’t then, and I didn’t now. Sometimes having an iron stomach is a handicap. I pretended to gag.
Van Dyke reached into his back pocket and flourished the duct tape. “I can shove a whole bunch of this in your mouth and duct tape it closed between bites.”
I vetoed that idea, only partly because nothing in my life had hurt worse than ripping that duct tape off my face. The other part was, I wanted use of my tongue. I was getting a confession out of him, even if I wouldn’t be alive to repeat it. Trudy’s right. I am competitive, and I would beat the cops at this or else.
I was feeling “or else” right now. The far end of the kitchen was looking a little hazy. I’d better hurry.
“I’ll take another bite if you tell me why you killed Ricardo.”
“Because he was a stupid busybody, just like you are.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you sticking your neck out—your life out—just to find out who killed your friend?” He forced another bite into my mouth.
I tried to act as if I was chewing. I shoved the wad into the corner of my cheek and pretended to swallow. “Because it wasn’t fair that he died. I owe it to him to find out who did him wrong.”
“The only person you owe anything to is yourself. Those of us who live long lives know that. We are born selfish beings and are meant to live that way. But foolish Ricardo was just like you in the end. He thought he owed some kind of protection to a son he never acknowledged. I’m going to blow the poor boy out of the water in the state rep campaign, and Ricardo was trying to ensure his bastard son’s success by forcing me out of it.”
Somehow, despite the oleander, the sick pit in my stomach seemed to lighten. I didn’t realize how hard the thought of Ricardo being so callous as to take a bribe hit me. That he tried to be altruistic in the end boosted my morale. I now saw two guys in tennis whites holding butcher knives, but they came together periodically. Then the whole room started to swim. “How was he going to force you out of it?”
“Blackmail. You see, he was the first paramedic on the scene and found us in flagrante delicto. The old codger was finally dying in his study and had called 911 himself. Hell, I’d been trying to poison the old boy with oleander in his damned desserts for about a week. I didn’t know that night we’d hit the lotto. Ricardo went straight to Johnstone, and then his partner came in, they loaded him up, and off they went. We saw them at the hospital later, and I recommended to Sarah that she give him a “gift.” It was the perfect plan, because once he accepted the money, he became an accomplice. But he didn’t know an accomplice to what—just a little indiscretion or more.”
“He knew it was more,” I said, not able to make the two Van Dykes in my vision come together again. I smelled that bitter, rotten lemon. My stomach was cramping, but nothing was coming out of my mouth. Thanks a lot, iron gut.
“Yeah, I didn’t know that until he called and wanted to meet me at that queer club. He threatened to come forward with proof that I’d killed Johnstone. Then his fate was sealed. I hate to be pushed. He pushed. I stewed about it long enough to realize I didn’t want to give up anything I had, including my dream to be a politician. I called him and met him that night at his salon. He wouldn’t compromise this time, so I killed him.”
“Hands up!”
I tried to throw my hands into the air. I felt as if I was drunk on tequila in Tijuana. Nothing was focusing. I thought I heard Scythe’s voice, Trudy’s voice, and Mario’s voice. But I also saw floating in my mind’s eye suede crotchless black undies, a red and gold feather negligee, and a leopard-print pushup bra. I felt fingers slide under my jaw, I saw dry-ice eyes filled with a strong emotion—it may have been concern, but I was dying, so I couldn’t be sure—and suddenly, for the first time, I felt like throwing up. I tried to reach across the table for the barf bag that had been sitting there for days and buried my face in it.