“Elias and Lulu Manwaring. Timothy and Jacquie Neilsen.”
Gemma-Kate wrote down the names. “You eat and drink there.”
“Maybe a piece of rumaki or two. And wine.”
“Are you sick yet?”
“No. I’m fine. The dog is sick.”
“Day two.”
“That’s when I went over to the Neilsens.”
“No.”
“No?”
“First you had coffee. I made the coffee that morning. You have to remember everything, Aunt Brigid. Even if it incriminates me.”
“But Carlo drank it, too.”
“The thing is, maybe we’re not talking something that could take effect with one dose. Antidepressants have a cumulative effect, and Carlo might have had some without having any reaction. Now. You visit the Neilsens and agree to investigate the death of their son, Joe. Do you have anything to eat or drink there?”
I was sort of fascinated watching her mind work and played along. “Yes, I had a cup of coffee. One of those Keurig single serves.”
“Who fixed it?”
“Tim Neilsen, I think. Yes, Tim Neilsen. Wait, Jacquie fixed me the first one, then Tim Neilsen gave me another one.” I closed my eyes, imagining the scene. “I turned around at one point and he was opening a pill container on the counter. I thought it was to see if Jacquie had taken her drugs, and I turned back, not wanting to seem nosy.”
She made a note of that. “Something could have been added to the coffee either after it came through the machine, or injected into the little plastic container with a syringe beforehand. After the Neilsens’ what do you do?”
“I call … called Mallory and stopped by her house. I complained about you.”
“Do you eat there?”
“Gemma-Kate, this is absurd.”
“Humor me.”
“I did. The health care aide brought us both some soup.”
“What’s the aide’s name?”
“Annette.”
She wrote that down. “What kind of soup?”
“Something with beef broth and kale and beans and Parmesan cheese grated on top. We both ate it on TV trays in Owen’s room. And coffee.”
“Are you sick yet?”
“No. It wasn’t until the middle of the night I started to get nauseated. I might have thrown up. That was after your meat loaf with the sauerkraut and Swiss cheese.”
“I lose the thread here. Next day?”
“I was with a lot of people that day. I visited the detective who had investigated Joe Neilsen’s death, such as it was, went to the vet to visit the Pug, maybe I went to the gym to work out and talked to my trainer … maybe not.” I struggled to remember, feeling some for all the people I’d interviewed this same way.
“What do you eat and drink that day?”
“Coffee at Starbucks and a plain bagel. That’s about it. I was feeling sick to my stomach, so I didn’t eat much except a few crackers here.”
“All right, next day.”
“I forced myself to take a walk, thinking the fresh air and activity might help. That was when I found the toad you used to poison my dog.”
“But you weren’t with anyone else that morning.”
“I tried to talk to Carlo about you, but he wasn’t listening. Men are nice, but they don’t always see things the way we do. So I met Mallory for lunch.” I filled in before Gemma-Kate could ask, “I had a salad, and some wine.” I paused. “And some blue cheese with garlic. We both ate the same thing. I was anxious at that point and she offered me a Valium but I turned it down. Then I went over to her place, and they gave me a lavender drape.”
“You mean that rabbit thing you had on?”
“That’s the one.”
“Who’s ‘they’ specifically?”
“Annette. Annette got it for me and nuked it in the microwave.”
Gemma-Kate carefully noted Annette’s name on her timeline for that day and wrote the number two next to her name. “Where is it now?”
“What?”
“The rabbit thing.”
“I threw it over a chair in the bedroom.”
Gemma-Kate disappeared for a moment and came back with the boneless rabbit. She sniffed it suspiciously, shook her head, and draped it over the edge of the table like Exhibit A.
Seeing it made me shudder. “I was on the road that day and had my first hallucination. But I can’t remember when it happened.”
“What happened when you were driving?”
“Carlo turned into a skeleton,” I whispered. It was real, dammit, it was real.
“Carlo,” Gemma-Kate said.
“He walked in front of my car. Then his flesh fell off. I jammed on my brake and watched him melt into the pavement.”
“Did you have anything there?”
“No. Owen had a crisis, they stabilized him, gave me the lavender drape, and told me I should take it home. Then I came back here. You cooked dinner again. You’ve been cooking every night except last.”
“Incorrect. You brought takeout Chinese one night…” She scanned the chart, thinking.
“See, it’s not so easy.”
“Still sick then?” she asked.
“I can’t remember. I think so. It’s all sort of running together, and my brain isn’t helping. I was sick enough to keep an appointment next day with Timothy Neilsen. He gave me a prescription for an antidepressant.”
Gemma-Kate wrote down that information. “How much?”
“Twenty milligrams of Rextal. Before that I was on two milligrams of antianxiety meds up to twice a day and ten-milligram sleeping pills for when I had trouble sleeping. The doctor told me to stop taking those.”
Gemma-Kate nodded. “It’s called polypharmacy. Combinations of drugs that are fine by themselves but taken together can really mess you up.” She rifled through the pages of the book on the table while I got up and got a refill of coffee, carrying the Pug gently so I wouldn’t disturb her. The coffee was cold, but at least I was beginning to think Gemma-Kate might not have added anything to it.
When I came back I said, “I forgot to say I went down to the police station to talk to the death investigator on the Neilsen case. He gave me a cup of coffee.”
She wrote that down and then tapped on one of the books opened on the table. “The drugs you had been taking are really low doses. But I couldn’t find what if all three were taken in combination, so maybe your doctor is correct.”
“I didn’t take them in combination,” I said.
She wrote that down. “Do you remember how you were feeling at the police department?”
I remembered the blood on the folder, that I was so nervous I’d been biting my cuticles without noticing. “Anxious. Real anxious. Like my esophagus was rigid as wood and my heart was trying to crawl out of it. And I was having these brain farts where I’d zone out.”
Gemma-Kate wrote that down. “What next?”
“I can’t remember. Oh wait. The appointment with Neilsen was the day
after
I met with the detective.” I pointed at the date on her chart and she erased what she had and wrote that in correctly. “And right after Neilsen I met Mallory at Ramone’s bar, it’s in the Westin on Ina, and had a vodka martini. Olives. Blue cheese olives. The bartender’s name was William.”
“What night did you have that episode?”
“Episode?” I was being coy, I know, but I still hated to even think about that night.
“When you wandered into the backyard like a crazy woman. That was when I started getting curious and noting your symptoms. That was when I ordered the books.”
“You were observing me all that time?”
“Uh-huh. So back to your first major hallucination.”
“I … I think it was the very night I started taking what Neilsen prescribed. Maybe I let Neilsen off the hook too soon. Maybe it’s a conspiracy with the pharmacist.”
“Whoa, not so fast. We’re not done. Keep going.”
“What are you thinking?”
“You stayed home until we all went to church.”
“The antifreeze,” I said.
“That’s right, but not you.”
“Not for lack of trying. You gave me a cup of coffee. And a doughnut.”
Gemma-Kate looked at me sharply.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.” She wrote down the coffee and the doughnut. “What next?”
“Next day I went to see Elias Manwaring. At the church. Did I have coffee?”
“You really need to back off the caffeine, but that’s beside the point.”
“Nothing at the church. Wait, he gave me a glass of water and I drank half of it. No, I didn’t see where he got the water. We talked for a while, then we went over to the rectory and I saw Lulu and their son, Ken. I was dizzy and had to sit down or lean against the wall. That was when I found out about the Choking Game.”
“Off point. Did you have anything at the house?”
“Lulu offered, water I think, but no. I didn’t eat or drink anything there. Found Frank Ganim’s body.”
“That’s okay. What about the next day?”
“It’s amazing how you lose chunks of your life when you have to spell it out. Shows you how mundane it all is. I went to see the sergeant in charge of detectives, Tony Salazar. My initial plan was to find out if Peter was responsible for Joey’s death—”
“Peter! You think he had something to do with Joseph Neilsen’s drowning?”
I said, “But the meeting turned into a cat-and-mouse thing about Frank Ganim, and I think I was the mouse. They questioned me about finding his body, gave me a little information but wanted more. You fixed dinner. I had toast in the morning. Nothing more until brunch at Mallory’s the next day.”
“Was this Annette there?”
“No, Mallory gave her some time off.”
“What did you have?”
“Quiche.”
“What kind?”
I thought I detected a more culinary curiosity. “Artichokes, mushrooms … Swiss cheese.”
“Who made it?”
“Annette did. Wine. More of that blue cheese and garlic like at the restaurant. We all had the wine, and quiche, and the cheese. Mallory didn’t have any dessert, but Carlo did. Something called spotted dick with lemon curd.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Seriously. It wasn’t bad.”
“Are you sick?”
“On the way home I’m so off-kilter I maybe start to hallucinate about red snakes in the road, although I could swear right now there was at least one. That’s when I ran into a cactus and the cop thought I was drunk. We went to the hospital in an ambulance, and they x-rayed both of us for anything broken besides Carlo’s nose and treated the abrasions on our faces. If they’d found elevated levels of blood alcohol I would have been arrested.”
“Then you came home, and we both know what happened then. You went off on me like a meth addict.”
“I did not go off on you like a meth addict. And if I did I had good cause.”
Gemma-Kate didn’t argue with me. She was too busy filling out her flow chart of the days since I started to get sick. “That brings us to today. Still sick?”
“No. Yes. I’m so befuddled I can’t tell anymore how I’m feeling.”
Gemma-Kate stretched her neck muscles as if she had been a little tense herself. “I’m going to have some lunch. Do you want anything?”
“I’ll get something for myself.”
She wandered off studying the flow chart. When I followed her into the kitchen she was microwaving a can of chicken soup she had dumped into a bowl. While it heated she scribbled on her pages. She looked at the chart and began circling certain areas and frowned at them. I thought I heard her murmur “cheese” but couldn’t be sure. The microwave timer went off, and she got the bowl out, arranged it with a spoon, napkin, and her papers at the sit-down counter, and studied her notes while she slurped the noodles.
She had pulled me in despite myself and I couldn’t help my curiosity. “What do you think?” I asked, getting my own can of lentil soup that couldn’t possibly have been doctored, but pretended not to care about her answer as I popped the metal lid off the can, and dumped it in a bowl. I didn’t bother to heat it.
Gemma-Kate sat back in her chair, apparently satisfied that she had finished the soup and found a plausible theory at the same time.
“Here are the facts I have so far,” she said to my back. “A doctor didn’t find a clinical cause for the way you were immediately feeling. He fell back on a diagnosis of depression like a lot of doctors do, especially with women. If you have been poisoned it seems to be with an overdose of that same antidepressant, one which has a cumulative effect, and that you can’t detect immediately after dosing.”
“So far you’re not giving me anything new.”
“I’m reviewing for my own sake. An interesting sidelight is that the drug is one that other people can take a single small dose of now and then without it affecting them. You’re the only one who would react because you’d already ingested so much. Also, I tasted one of your pills and it’s flavorless so it could be ground up and even, say, brushed onto the powdered sugar of the doughnut at church. Either someone is doing a very poor job of poisoning you, or they don’t want you dead. Maybe they want to incapacitate you without killing you, someone who fears that it would be too easy to trace back to them. If you knew why they wanted to weaken you, it might lead you to them.”
I got a tablespoon out of the drawer and started in on the cold lentils. “Still no surprises,” I said.
Gemma-Kate did not seem cowed by my remarks. She tapped the pages in front of her with her spoon, not realizing there was still a little chicken soup on it. “If you can trust Carlo, there are two other people who were in contact with you more often than any others, which means often enough to deliver doses of the substance.
“I’d say at this point it’s either me or your BFF, and I know it’s not me.”
Gemma-Kate stared at me as if there was dramatic organ music playing. But there was only the silence of my utter amazement.
“That’s what all this has been leading up to? All this paper and charts and shit? You’re trying to pin this on Mallory Hollinger?” I didn’t know whether to laugh or smack the kid.
“Why not?” she said.
“Because Mallory is the only person in the world I could trust not to poison me. Okay, Carlo, too. I wouldn’t even put it past my own mother if she thought she had a good reason.”
“What if you found out a good reason?”
“Exactly. The question is, why believe you? I’m going back to the assumption you’ve poisoned a dog, me, and were at least an accessory to Frank Ganim’s death. What are we, home science experiments?”