“It’s not like I’m not getting enough pressure from my wife. I’m doing the best I can.”
I thanked him, told him I’d see what I could do about Renna, and hung up. I was frustrated. Yes, it was good news. But still it wasn’t the news I wanted. I wished Petulengro had said that Sailor would be coming home for dinner. That my fiancé would be in my arms tonight. That this was all a terrible misunderstanding and, oh, by the way, there was no overarching threat posed by a cupcake lady and your cold is merely a case of allergies and all will be well.
As Graciela used to always say, If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I had to deal with the way things were. I had to find a way.
Maybe I needed a different angle. I deposited two more quarters and called Patience.
“What do you know about the Russian psychics in the Richmond District?”
“That’s like asking what I think of the witches of Texas,” Patience responded. “I’m going to guess there’s a lot of individual variation.”
“Okay, yes, of course you’re right. It’s just that Jamie—the guy who works for the cupcake lady—mentioned he used to run some sort of scam with some Russian psychics, so I was wondering . . .”
“I see what you’re getting at. I happen to know one person, named Juna. Short for Eugenia. Her grandmother used to have a Russian bakery out in the Richmond.”
“Do you think she’d talk to us?”
“She’d talk to a goat as long as it paid her hourly rate. I’ll set it up.”
“Thanks. Also, Sailor’s lawyer, Henry Petulengro, wants Renna to stop threatening to hex him.”
Patience let out an exasperated breath. “She always does that when family’s in jail. I don’t know why she thinks it’s helpful. I’ll talk to her.”
“Thank you. You’ll call me when you set up the meeting with the psychic? The sooner, the better.”
“Of course. Anything else I can do for you? A nice little massage, perhaps?”
“That’ll do for now. See you later.”
After several more quarters, and several more calls, I finally got Carlos to call me back. It turned out he was in the building, so he asked me to meet him outside on the sidewalk. He handed me a large canvas shopping bag containing the wooden box that held my Hand of Glory, and my woven Filipino backpack.
“I don’t even want to know what that alleged ‘candleholder’ is all about,” Carlos said.
“I think that’s best. Thank you so much for getting all this back for me.” I checked the backpack; my keys and wallet were still there.
“I live to serve. Protect and serve, actually—that’s our motto. Let’s stash that bag in your trunk and take a walk,” he said.
Jail #2 is not in a pretty part of town. There were a number of industrial buildings and a couple of twenty-four-hour bail bonds offices, but not a lot of restaurants or café options. We walked down Seventh Street, passing a hot dog vendor.
“May I buy you something to eat?” I asked.
“No, thanks.” Carlos shook his head and kept walking. “So, it looks like Dupree didn’t die from the beating, after all.”
“What did he die from?”
“He was poisoned.”
“Poisoned? How— Wait. You mentioned finding some roots and powders in his hotel room, didn’t you?”
Carlos nodded. “We took them in for testing, but they turned out to be standard herbal remedies for digestive problems, that sort of thing. According to the hotel staff, he had been complaining of not feeling well. But the toxicology report says Dupree died due to complications from mycetismus.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a kind of mushroom poisoning. There are several local mushrooms that are deadly—Destroying Angel and Death Caps, to name just two with evocative names. They’re in the amanita family.”
Okay, Lily. Remember to breathe. Should I tell Carlos that someone who looked remarkably like Sailor had tried to buy deadly mushrooms in a Chinatown shop the other day? Or . . . should I play along, at least until I got an inkling of what was going on?
“Where would Dupree have come into contact with poisonous mushrooms?” I hedged.
“That’s the ten-thousand-dollar question. Apparently they grow in the woods around here. They look a lot like edible mushrooms. Every year people mistake the poisonous ones for the safe ones, and fall ill from mycetismus completely by accident.”
“You’re not suggesting that Tristan arrived at SFO on a flight from Germany and immediately went mushroom hunting?”
“No,” Carlos said with a smile. “I’m suggesting that someone else went mushroom hunting, and somehow Tristan ingested some. Problem is, no one else has shown up at the emergency room with symptoms. Usually with this sort of thing, you see whole families or groups of people who’ve eaten spaghetti with mushroom sauce, something like that.”
“You said Tristan bought things at an herb shop in Chinatown,” I said. “The Lucky Moon. Could he have bought suspect mushrooms at the same time?”
“It’s possible. But the medical examiner says it’s more likely he bought the herbs because his stomach was already queasy from the effects of the poison. That was early in the afternoon, which means he probably ingested the mushrooms sometime in the morning, or even earlier.”
“How long does it take for the poison to kill?”
“According to the ME, with amatoxins—the poison present in the amanita mushrooms—it’s anywhere from five to twenty-four hours for the victim to become symptomatic. So we’re working with a pretty broad window.”
“If he had gotten to a hospital . . .”
Carlos nodded. “If he’d gone to a hospital, he’d probably be waiting for a liver transplant now, instead of a funeral. But he didn’t seek medical attention. Also, it appears he wasn’t in great shape to begin with. The medical examiner says Dupree had the heart of a much older man.”
“So the question is, how—and when—did he ingest the poisonous mushrooms?”
“That’s it in a nutshell. We know that he ate lunch at the hotel restaurant that day, and ordered the special: pasta with mushroom sauce. But we questioned the chef, who cried like a baby and swore up and down he’d bought the mushrooms from his regular supplier, and his story checks out. We also interviewed the waitstaff, who said Dupree ate lunch by himself, and the security tapes confirm he was alone at a table for one. None of the other customers who ordered the dish had problems.”
“So he could have eaten them anywhere.”
“He got off the plane that morning, and no one else on board felt any ill effects, so we’re assuming it happened at some point after that.”
“Did you know if he went by Renee’s cupcake shop?”
“It’s possible. Why?”
“Renee Baker is sort of . . . a suspicious character.”
“I remember you telling me that with regards to her neighbor’s arsenic poisoning, but that turned out to be something else entirely. Any reason you have a bee in your bonnet about this particular cupcake lady?”
“Let’s just say she strikes me as ‘hinky.’ Anyway, so you’re saying we’re no closer to figuring out Dupree’s killer.”
“Every step is a step closer. At the very least, this new information may be enough to get the murder charge against Sailor dropped. Unless the DA wants to claim he was responsible for the poisoning as well—but that would be quite a stretch, and an obvious source of reasonable doubt.”
Speaking of doubt, self-doubt shot through me. I felt like I was betraying Carlos by not telling him what I knew about the ersatz “Sailor” asking for amanita mushrooms at the Lucky Moon. But on the other hand . . . I couldn’t bring myself to betray Sailor by spilling the beans. Besides, what purpose would be served by helping to frame an innocent man?
“The ME estimates several hours elapsed between when Dupree consumed the poison and when he died,” Carlos continued. “So at the moment, at least, it’s looking like the worst-case scenario for Sailor is a charge of assault and battery.”
“Which is an improvement, but not exactly what I was hoping for.”
“Baby steps, Lily. Baby steps.”
Chapter 23