Munchies and Murder Weapons
David and the Lion’s Den, chapter 22
We stay longer than we should. Howie has her laughing, and I see how she loves having people over, having them enjoy her cooking. We eat our cannoli with more Spanish coffee before we finally go.
I tell Lydia I’ll see her in the morning. But I don’t.
Marco lost his mother just a few hours later in the St. Vincent’s Emergency Room.
I finished reading, cleared my throat, and took a big gulp of red wine.
“I just don’t get it,” Jill complained, sounding frustrated. “She was fine, not even bedridden. She was up and around, cooking and everything.”
Hilda nodded vigorously. “Ja. A mother will stay alive for her child. This much I know for true.”
“Has anybody else wondered about Renaud?” Jill speculated. “He’s making quite a profit from all this.”
I’ll admit it,” Richard replied dryly. “The thought has occured to me.”
“Think about it, David,” Jill continued. “No offense, but your paintings would never have sold for so much if it weren’t for the scandal. And Renaud’s making more money out of it than you are. All the extra attention for his fall show? I bet he sold a lot more than he expected!”
I watched Hilda flip through my notebook, peering through reading glasses like she was searching hard for something. My stomach started to rumble as warm air drifted in from the kitchen, scented with spicy lasagna.
“I’ll say Renaud’s making out all right,” I answered Jill. “Bastard hasn’t even paid me yet. He wouldn’t even take my calls yesterday.”
“Honey, get used to that,” she laughed. “It’s part of the business. These gallery owners… it’s like they think they’re doing you a favor by showing your art, like the exposure ought to be enough. Actually handing over the cash? Ha! Good luck.”
“Well, to be fair,” Richard kicked in, “He told me the cops confiscated all the paintings as evidence before the buyers could collect them.”
“Not like that’s his problem,” Jill griped. “David’s paintings all sold that first night. You think Renaud didn’t get checks right then and there?”
Richard raised an eyebrow and lifted his glass as if to concede the point. “Fair enough. But could he really be the killer? I admit he has a motive, but …”
“What, Richard?” Hilda asked as she glanced up from my notebook and peered at him over her reading glasses.
“He just doesn’t seem the type. Listen, I know him … his peccadillos, his personality … pretty intimately, as it were.”
“Ach,” Hilda exclaimed, laying a hand over her page to give Richard her full attention. “So, you are thinking a man who likes to be … what shall we call it? Punished? You are thinking such a man has it not in him to be a killer?”
Then I swear she clucked at him. “Really, Richard. I am thinking maybe we should look at him very carefully. Ja.”
Richard shook his head and spoke up quietly but firmly. “I’m telling you, I just don’t think he has the balls. I mean, I see what you’re saying, but …”
Jill broke in. “What are you guys talking about? Clue me in?”
“Oh, you didn’t know?” I chuckled. “Renaud’s a client. Carla’s client. That’s how we met.”
“David!” she gasped.
“Not like that,” I laughed. “Carla told him all about my work in between sessions. Then she … er, Richard, introduced him to me, and … you know the rest.”
“Ah.”
“But what about the timeline?” Richard asked while Jill covered her mouth, looking like she was trying to stifle a laugh. “Can you remember when exactly you met Renaud? Hadn’t you already… Jill! What on earth is so funny?”
She was bent over, trying to stifle herself, but strangled guffaws were escaping around her hands. Her eyes were damp and shiny.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “It’s just … Oh, my god, just give me a minute.”
Richard lifted his wine glass and sipped sedately, dignified and severe. I was trying not to chuckle. Hilda’s eyes were round and her cheeks pinked up.
“Jesus, Richard,” Jill laughed as she got herself under control. “I just can’t get that image out of my head!”
He peered at her over his long nose, utterly composed. Then Hilda let loose with hooting little chuckles that set Jill off again.
“What image?” Richard sniffed.
“I just keep seeing Renaud’s big belly in that stupid black turtleneck with that absurd beret on his head, and I see you, I mean Carla, standing over him cracking that whip, and he’s looking all terrified but happy at the same time, and I’m… I … Oh, my fucking god!”
She broke down in giggles, unable to continue.
“Well, if we’re all quite finished being amused,” Richard huffed a moment later, “perhaps we could get back to work?
I’m sure he tried not to, but I swear I saw him wrestle down a smile of his own.
“I dunno, guys,” I muse. “Thinking about it, Allen was already dead by the time Renaud even knew who I was. It’s hard to see how he could have had anything to do with that.”
Jill pulled at her bangs. “Maybe Allen was a coincidence?”
“Huh?”
“Didn’t you tell him about Allen? About him dying?”
“I dunno. Hard to remember. We talked about …”
“Sure you did!” Richard interrupted. “Don’t you remember how strangely he reacted in the garden when you told him?”
“No, not really.”
“Hm.”
“So,” Jill broke in. “Check this. What if Renaud really liked the idea. As Conceptualism. What if he wanted to make it happen again? And again?”
“Come on!” I scoffed. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Maybe ridiculous,” Hilda huffed, pushing herself out of her chair. “Maybe not. But somebody killed them. Somebody was being ridiculous, nein? Maybe Renaud,” she said, walking toward the kitchen. “Maybe not. But I think we have one even more tricky question to answer.”
We all trailed after her. She slipped on a pair of mitts while I opened the oven door for her, my face blasted with hot tomato air.
“How?” she asked as she walked the lasagna over to a cutting board by the sink. “How did this being-ridiculous person, whoever it is, how did they put something in the food? Without we can answer that question, we know nothing.”
“But it’s impossible!” I moaned. “We’ve been over this so many times.”
“No. Nein,” she grunted, sinking a chef’s knife in the food, punching deep, precise cuts with each exclamation.
“Not… impossible… I. Know. How.”
The kitchen fell silent except for the moist schlumph of knife slicing through pasta and cheese.
“Well, bring your plates,” she scolded. “There are two professional waiters in the room, but I’m not one of them. Come get it before it gets cold.”
“Er, that’s quite the bombshell you just dropped there,” Richard deadpanned from a chair at the table. “Care to enlighten us?
“Ja, naturlich. But only after you have food. I’m thinking what I have found is maybe spoiling some appetites. Come along. Bring your plates.”
So, we ate.
I loved Cucina’s lasagna from the first time I tasted it. Three kinds of aged cheese, plus fresh mozzarella. Homemade marinara. Veal, beef, and pork mixed together. Normally, I’d shovel it in until the gag reflex stopped me. Not that night. I felt like I was choking down sandpaper. My mouth had gone dry with Hilda’s announcement.
At least I ate a square. She was right. If she’d told us first, I’d have gone without dinner.
We all ate fast, then waited for her to thoughtfully and very, very slowly nibble down her own portion.
“Very well,” she sighed as she shuffled over to the counter to make coffee. “No more suspense. I am very afraid that the clues are there all along, but only tonight did I see them.”
She measured scoops of beans into a little grinder. A high-pitched whir filled the room. “David,” she frowned at me. “Is it not very strange that Lydia got sick?”
“Of course. We were just talking about that. She was healthy!”
“Nein,” she objected, pouring powder into a Melitta filter, perfuming the air. “We were saying only that her relative good health is meaning it is obvious she was poisoned. What more do we know? Hm?”
She answered her own question as she filled the drip brewer with water from the carafe. “We know the poison,the bacteria, that it must be in the food that you and Howie bring? Yes?”
We all nodded as she stepped back to the table and let Richard help her into a chair. “So, what is strange about this one case?” she asked in a schoolmarmish quaver, wagging an index finger. “Anybody? It’s obvious.”
“Hilda, we’ve been over it a million …”
Richard cut me off. “It’s all strange!”
Then Jill’s hand flew to her mouth, and she gasped. Her face turned bright red. “Oh, my god!”
Hilda nodded and awarded her with a tight, pleasureless smile. “So, you see it too.”
“What!?” I barked, annoyed.
“Lydia didn’t eat it!” Jill shouted.
“Is that all? You think I didn’t think of that already? I know she ate the black beans and pork instead of what we brought, but…”
Now it was Richard’s turn to react, a sharp little intake of air over tightly clamped teeth. Jill’s face went paper white.
“Come on, guys,” I protested. “Give me a break. She must have eaten from the styrofoam boxes after we left. That’s all.”
“Why would she?” Jill demanded. “That food’s not even good. Nobody would eat it if they didn’t have to.”
I didn’t like the accusation in her voice. I was about to make a scene when Hilda spoke again, soothing and rational. “Wait. Let’s not jump to conclusions. You all saw me reading David’s notes, yes?”
I drew in a breath to speak, but she held out a hand. “Wait, Liebchen. I found something very, very strange, and maybe very interesting. May I ask you a little question?”
I nodded, confused and angry.
“When you had dessert at Lydia’s, did all of you eat it? Did she?”
“What? Look in my notes. I don’t remember right now.”
“This is the one thing you left out. Dessert and coffee, this you write. But who is eating? This you did not not say. Please. Did she eat the cannoli? Can you remember?”
I flashed back, seeing it all vividly.
We’re all sitting around Lydia’s fancy dining table. She’s brought the coffee back, and I’m clowning around, trying to force-dip a cannoli into a cup that’s far too tiny for that. Marco is laughing at me. Lydia smiles, ruffles his hair, and takes a delicate bite out of her own pastry. She’d only pecked at the pork, but her eyes light up at the marscapone treat in her hand. She eats it quickly, then reaches for another one.
I looked back at Hilda with a sense of foreboding. I wasn’t quite sure why, but I realized something was terribly wrong. I nodded. “Yeah. Absolutely. She ate two of them.”
“I was afraid of that,” she sighed. “And I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. I keep the books. I see every receipt for the food program. Not once, not one single time, have we ever sent out cannoli for dessert. Ist must too expensive. Our desserts are pudding, and oatmeal cookies, and jello. Fancy pastry? Impossible.”
I knew instantly that she was right. “Now we know what the poison was in!”
Jill had to spell it out for me. “Worse. We know where the poison had to come from. I never would have believed it.”
Richard was the first to say it aloud. “Howie!”
