Despite being dressed for bed at noon, she invites us in. We follow her into a family room that looks like it’s been decorated by Betsy Ross. The red, white, and blue décor involves a whole lot of flags. Some are in the quilts that cover the couch and chair; others are framed and hang on the wall. Woven baskets with red, white, and blue trim sit atop an entertainment center with a large screen TV.
“Sit, sit.” Mrs. Meriweather waves her hand and disappears. Carson and I sit side-by-side on the couch, trapped between large, overstuffed pillows of—yep, you guessed it—red, white, and blue. I am admiring an Uncle Sam carved out of what I think may be a section of old telephone pole when our hostess returns. She is rolling one of those decorative carts with a pitcher of something pale red and two platters of baked goods.
“Raspberry green tea,” she intones as she fills glasses and hands us each one. “I make it myself to preserve the antioxidants in it.”
She picks up a platter and holds it toward us. “Have a treat,” she says. “All organic with nary a single preservative or additive.”
I take what may be the flattest brownie I’ve ever seen while Carson takes a cookie. We chew and nod as Mrs. Meriweather extols the virtues of the Organic Agriculture and Archery Guild. Carson manages not to choke when she leans toward him and confides in a near whisper, “If you have trouble like my darling Rudy, come see me. Those little pills the doctors give men for you-know-what can be terribly dangerous to your heart. I have an herbal compound that works just wonderful.”
The flush reddening Carson’s cheeks is totally unexpected. I mean, who would think that a tough detective like him would get embarrassed when a fifty-something housewife suggests she has an answer to ED, as the commercials coyly refer to the condition. I know that’s something he doesn’t have to worry about, so I’m pretty sure it’s having a nightie-clad tea brewer mention it that causes Carson’s reaction. He grabs a flat brownie for himself and takes a big bite, I assume in hopes of ending this particular conversation.
“I have an excellent winter tonic, too,” she says, her attention now turning to me. “It builds up your blood and keeps one regular. I’ll drop some off for you as soon as I make a new batch.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“We love you, dear, and want you to be in top form. I’m sure your job is very hard. The responsibility of gathering news must weigh heavy.”
I mutter something non-committal. Someone really needs to change this conversation. To my relief, Carson does.
“You were at the whole festival, weren’t you?” he asks.
Mrs. Meriweather nods.
“Can you recall anyone giving you a complimentary drink, food sample, anything like that?”
She leans forward, a frown marring her face. “Young man, I’m very careful about what goes in my body, including my husband.”
I choke on my tea, but manage not to spit it out. She has no idea what she just said because she continues blithely on.
“He’ll tell you himself that I’m quick to spot anything going rotten. Only the best and freshest for me. That’s why I’m in such good health, only ingesting the very best.”
A quickly-muffled sound erupts from Carson. Being very careful not to look at him, I say, “Do you make everything from scratch?”
“Make it myself or trade with someone in the guild,” Mrs. Meriweather says. “Florine is terribly fond of my rutabaga cupcakes, and my dear husband loves her rye bread. Got two loaves from her at the festival, and all but a tiny part of one loaf is gone already.”
We chat a few moments more, but learn nothing pertinent to the case and one fact I could have skipped. Mr. Meriweather ends up in dietary distress when he eats his wife’s cupcakes.
“Rutabagas are just so good for you, but he always gets the trots.” She shakes her head. “If he’s told me once, he’s told me a dozen times.”
Once we’re out of earshot of the Meriweather house, I look at Carson. He’s grinning and I know he heard things just as I did. When he says, “I hope you’re as careful about what goes in your body as she is,” he absolutely loses it. He stands on the sidewalk, hand on the power pole, laughing harder than I’ve seen him in a long time. I hope the chief doesn’t drive by on his way home from recertifying his shooting skills and decided my darling has succumbed to the Fortuna Malady as well.
As soon as he gains control, I suggest I should call when I get home and get Mrs. Meriweather’s recipe for rutabaga cupcakes. Carson’s stomach starts shaking; I have to look away. I most definitely do not want Luther or the chief to see us both twitching and giggling like a pair of fifth-grade girls.
A sudden splat of rain on the concrete is followed by a steadily increasing downpour. Even though we run, we’re soaked by the time we hit my porch. Carson, gentleman that he is, held back to my pace, which means he’s a lot wetter than if he’d gone it alone. I do admire a man with manners.
We head to the bathroom to strip out of our wet clothes and dry off, which inspires us to take a shower together to warm up. Warm soon becomes red hot, and our sit-down to discuss what we did and didn’t find out is forgotten as we take turns lathering each other up, rinsing each other off and doing other, much naughtier things before the water goes stone cold. He redresses in jeans and a tee, but I settle into my robe and nothing else. I feel positively wicked sitting next to him sans undies.
“How many people belong to that organic thingy?” Carson asks as he reviews his notes.
“A dozen, maybe a few more.” I shrug. “Some are all into it like Florine and the Meriweathers, but I’ve seen others buying roller food at the mart. You think one of them slipped some LSD in the all-natural beet turnovers?”
“Tell me you’re making that up,” Carson begs.
I cross my heart. “All true. I find it quite easy to resist temptation when it’s being served up at their booth.”
“What do you think was in those brownies?” he asks. I wonder if he figures a prominent ingredient is good old mary-ju-wanna, as the folks around here say.
“Prunes.”
“Prunes?” His face wrinkles in distaste.
“Yep. Replaces the fat and gives a natural sweetness. I heard the whole spiel when I stopped at the guild booth.”
I will say this. Based on this conversation alone, I’m pretty sure my darling will never become a card-carrying member of the Organic Agriculture and Archery Guild once he moves here. I toy with suggesting that I make a nice lasagna with tofu tomorrow, but decide he can only handle so much in one day.
“I wonder who all bought their food,” I muse, flipping through the lists from Lovenna again. Several guild members are also volunteers. That doesn’t surprise me. Fortuna is so small practically everyone is involved with everything.
“I wonder how much they made of everything,” Carson adds. He leans against the couch back, hands laced behind his head, and closes his eyes in his deep thinking pose. I take advantage of his mental absence to slip into the kitchen and put on coffee. I still haven’t had a chance to stock up on people food, so I’m going to offer either pizza from Antonio’s or a trip out of Fortuna as a dinner suggestion. Either that or I piss off Miss Priss by digging into her supply of cooked turkey to feed my man.
Carson’s jotting in his little notebook when I walk in with two filled cups. He offers an absent thanks as I sit his coffee down on the table beside him. Whatever idea struck him seems to possess him.
“Can you remember what those kooks sold?” he asks.
“Now, Carson, they’re not kooks,” I reprimand. “They’re concerned about their health and their bodies, remember?”
“Like I could forget.” He looks up at me and smiles. “You do live around some interesting people.”
That’s one way to describe them, a very polite way. I pick up the vendor list Lovenna has supplied and study the names. Now it’s my turn to close my eyes while I picture the booth at the various times I passed it during the fall festival.
“Lemon poppy seed muffins,” I recall. “The infamous rutabaga cupcakes and cornbread from corn they grew and ground themselves. Cups of spinach-cranberry soup and pumpkin broccoli soufflé.” I open my eyes. “And of course homemade bread with apple butter they made right there on the street.”
“What kind of bread?”
“All dark. Among their mottos is ‘the whiter the bread, the closer to dead.’ Florine supplied rye, I know, and there were several wheat breads. They all looked alike since they grind their own flour and bake in their kitchen. I had a slice of honey wheat with home churned butter, and it really was tasty. It was also the only thing they sold that I’d even consider eating.”
I move close to Carson as we study the list. Odd as the combinations might be, the food was wholesome and locally grown. The only possibility that occurs to either of us is cross-contamination, but that doesn’t make sense.
“If it was good old fashioned food poisoning, all those people would have been in the ER with the usual symptoms instead of winding up in the psych ward,” I tell Carson. I stand up and begin to pace. “We’re missing something. What is it? Why haven’t we found it?”
I’m sure Carson shares my frustration even though he says all the right sympathetic things. Yes, I realize if the doctors couldn’t find it right off, we shouldn’t consider ourselves failure. And yes, I also know we may never find out, but that doesn’t sit well with me. Carson suggests we forget it for a while and go out for dinner.
Since that was my plan, I’m quick to agree. I dress in jeans and a sweater while Carson tends to Miss Priss’s meal. A half hour later, we’re back at the comfort food restaurant ordering the evening special. Baked steak with a mound of mashed potatoes and pile of corn sounds absolutely divine as the waitress describes it.
Carson amuses me by telling what I believe are exaggerated stories about the people in his apartment complex. I return the favor by describing my disastrous attempt to make zucchini bread from a recipe a listener called in. By the time the food comes, we’re ready to eat in a companionable silence.
Each bite is a bit of heaven. The steak is thick, but so perfectly cooked it can be cut with a fork. Once again I find a lump in my potatoes, which is right as rain by me, and the gravy had to be made with the steak drippings. In one word, the meal is fantastic.
As is the company. My mother encouraged me over the last ten years of dating one Mr. Nowhere Near Right after another by telling me that when I met the man meant for me, I’d know it. And I did. I intended to make Carson mine from our first meeting, so it was thrilling when I learned he felt the same way. My family would have been so embarrassed holding a shotgun on a hogtied man as we exchanged our wedding vows.
The radio plays as we ride back to Fortuna. An old song, “Autumn Leaves,” comes on which leads Carson to suggest that next fall we go on a fall foliage tour of New England. The very idea thrills me. Not only would I like to see Vermont before I die, but if he’s already planning “us” activities a year ahead, then what we have must be real. Maybe he’s thinking it would make a nice honeymoon trip. I could live with that.
“If we’re going to Massachusetts, we have to visit Salem,” I say. “I’ve wanted to ever since we read that play about the witches in high school English. I know scientists have come up with an explanation but…” My words trail off as a bit of knowledge gleaned for a junior year report jumps front and center in my brain.
“Oh, my gosh!” I slap the dash with both hands. “The witches. That’s it, Carson, that’s it!”
To his credit, he doesn’t immediately call one of Dwaine’s stand-by ambulances to come haul me away. He slows, pulls onto the shoulder, and turns to stare at me. “I’m missing something.”
“That’s because you didn’t have Dinkbrain for American history.”
“Excuse me?”
“Brian Dinkle was a new teacher, full of enthusiasm and stuck with a class of kids who didn’t much care,” I explain. “He tried with us, he really did, but once he found out we called him Dinkbrain behind his back, he assigned us this mother of a paper to write. Naturally, he also gave us the topics. Mine was to find an example of mass hysteria in the United States before 1900.”
“So you wrote about Salem.”
“Exactly. When I turned in my first draft, he told me to research an alternate explanation for the behavior and the reaction. That’s what it is.”
“Not helping much,” Carson says.
I stop and begin again. He listens as I gave a quick rundown on the scientific theory that the first behaviors demonstrated were caused by ergot poisoning and then copied by other young girls.
“Ergot poisoning is caused by bad rye that is ground into feed,” I said. “See, humans don’t get it much anymore because of the processes used in making bread. But if the bread isn’t commercially made…”
“Then Florine dished up a big heaping bunch of crazy from the guild booth.”
“Exactly.” I give a big sign of satisfaction. Maybe I’ll be proved wrong, but at least we have a starting point.
Carson pulls back onto the highway, and we debate whether to call the chief tonight or wait until morning. I point out that it’s Thursday, and the chief plays in the darts league at Fortuna’s only bar on Thursday nights. Morning will be fine, we agree.
I’m practically floating as I get out of the car and hurry into my house. Carson runs in behind me, shivering from the cool night. Next time maybe he’ll listen when I suggest he grab a jacket.
My mood is so good I actually pet Miss Priss, who’s curled up on the counter next to the sink. Granted, she was asleep so I got the edge on her, but the action was still without incident. She unfurls, stretches, and glares at Carson who orders her to get down. She obeys, but in her own sweet time.
Still elated with my breakthrough, I decide to dig back into the Miz Waddy mystery. I gather up the various documents we’ve accumulated and settle at one end of the couch. Carson takes the other end and crosses his feet on the coffee table. I realize why he’s not delving into the data with me when he turns on a football game. Since my idea of a spectator sport is watching the annual croquet tournament on the library back lawn, I don’t know what teams are playing or even if it’s a new game. For all I know it could be the Superbowl from 1992. But my man is happy, which makes me happy too.