A Diet to Die For (12 page)

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Authors: Joan Hess

BOOK: A Diet to Die For
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“Would you please get to the point? I’ve had a rough day thus far, and certain areas of my anatomy are screaming.”
“Drinking wine with another woman’s husband can be tiring,” Joanie said with a sniff. “Out of consideration for your anatomy, I shall continue. Betty Lou was in the intensive care ward, waiting to escort a patient to a private room, when she heard a conversation from the next cubicle. She is by no means nosy, but she did rear five children and learned early in the game the importance of listening to all conversations conducted in whispers. One of the whisperers was referred to as Lieutenant Rosen, the other as Dr. Home or Haynes or something like that. She said the two were discussing a patient’s urinalysis results.”
“And—what?” I said. “What did Betty Lou hear?”
Joanie leaned back and crossed her legs, gave me a smug smile, and said, “She heard the doctor telling the lieutenant that the Galleston girl had a severe potassium deficiency, so severe that he was surprised she could walk around the week before the accident, in that her mental acuity would be that of a stalk of asparagus. Betty Lou said she thought that was a vulgar remark, especially from a professional who—”
“What else did she hear?”
“That’s it. They moved away from the curtain, and the orderlies finished settling the patient in the wheelchair. Betty Lou said she had no choice but to wheel the old man away.”
I flopped back on the sofa, realized I’d made a serious error, and rolled over onto my stomach. “But Maribeth said that Gerald had brought her a bottle of potassium caplets, and he said the same thing before he turned ugly a little while ago. If she’d been taking the caplets all along, and then began taking extra doses, why would she have this severe deficiency?”
“I have no idea,” Joanie said, glancing at her watch. “I’ve got a class in fifteen minutes. I’ll put the soup on the stove, but you’ll have to serve yourself when it’s ready. We’re throwing today, so I need to change.”
“Throwing up? Throwing fits? Throwing the baby out with the bath water?”
“Throwing pots. I’ll come up for the pan after the funeral,” she said as she carried the soup into the kitchen, clicked a knob, and headed for the front door.
“The funeral?” I repeated.
“Candice Winder’s funeral, today at four o’clock. It’s at that funeral home near the bypass, in their
chapel. I’m not sure whether it’s to be followed by interment or cremation.”
I listened to her footsteps as she went down to her apartment. Candice’s funeral was in three hours. I decided that if I started immediately, or after a bowl of soup, then I could be dressed in funerary finery and ready to go with a good five minutes to spare.
I
had just discovered, amazingly enough, that one agitates muscles not only in one’s back but also in one’s buttocks in the process of combing one’s hair, when Caron and Inez tumbled into the bathroom with their typical lack of reserve.
“Are you okay?” Caron demanded, although we’d discussed the issue numerous times during my incarceration. “You look all pale and, well, sort of frowsy.”
“Your hair,” Inez elaborated in an awed whisper.
“It seems that when you raise your arms, certain muscles are stretched upward. The muscles are sore, and thus the arms are not enthusiastic to do their duty.”
Caron and Inez studied the areas in question, looking as though they were fighting back snickers. I gazed at myself in the mirror and concluded that “frowsy” was a compliment. Discarding the comb, I said, “How’s the popcorn and grapefruit juice diet coming? Lost any weight?”
Caron picked up my comb and ran it through her hair. “It was going just fine, but then Rhonda talked to her cousin and found out we weren’t supposed to
butter and salt the popcorn. Have you ever tried to choke down dry, unsalted popcorn? It’s worse than eating pieces of Styrofoam. We nearly gagged, didn’t we, Inez?”
“It was yucky,” Inez said loyally, “although I’m not sure what Styrofoam tastes like.”
“So what diet are you on now?” I asked.
“A vastly superior one,” Caron said. “We bought this box of diet-aid candy at the drugstore. We have two or three pieces before each meal, along with a glass of warm water, and they sort of expand and kill your appetite.”
“Is it working?”
Caron nudged me aside to take full possession of the mirror. “Not yet, but the candy’s pretty good. How come you’re dressed like that? I thought you were supposed to stay in bed for a few more days, in case you’re going to turn into a werewolf or something.”
“I have to attend a funeral,” I said, sighing as I considered the drive to the funeral home. “Would you like to drive me there?”
Caron had whined and pouted herself into a learner’s permit several months ago. Peter had given her a few lessons; I myself had refused to entertain such folly, but now I realized it might be better to pad the passenger’s side with pillows or lounge face down in the backseat.
“Do we have to go to the funeral?” she said, clearly gripped with a heady dose of approach-avoidance. “I don’t like funerals, you know. All those people sniveling and snuffling, and the sickly smell of the flowers, not to mention the casket. I mean, it’s a real downer. I could drive you to the mall, or to a pizza place, or even around town.” She gave me an appraising
smile. “You need some fresh air, Mother. We can drive out toward one of the little towns, then—”
“The funeral home or nowhere at all.”
“How about if we drop you off and then come back later?”
“You’re not allowed to drive anywhere without a licensed adult in the car,” I said firmly. “Take books or the box of candy, and you can wait in the car during the service.”
Inez gulped nervously. “My grandmother’s funeral lasted more than an hour, and then we had to hang around while all these people shook our hands and went on and on about Granny and her parakeets. She had fifty-four of them.”
“Why?” Caron said.
“She was allergic to cats.”
“I’m allergic to shellfish, but that doesn’t mean I collect boa constrictors.”
Inez blinked. “That’s different—you hate snakes. Granny loved her little parakeets.”
“It’s up to you,” I inserted. “I’m going to get my purse, some pillows, and the car key. If you don’t want to risk a long wait outside, then I’ll see if I can catch Joanie. She didn’t say that she was coming back to change, but she might, and she may be willing to drive me.”
I left the two debating the pet poser, got my things together, and stood by the front door. Eventually Caron stalked out of the bathroom with Inez in tow and held out her hand for the key.
“We’ll wait,” she said coolly, “but they’d better not get too carried away with this funeral service. The person’s dead, for pity’s sake. There’s no point in
going On And On about it; the star of the show can’t hear it.”
Once in the garage, I decided it was wiser for me to cower in the backseat of my battered hatchback, where I would be less inclined to offer editorials. Peter had said she was doing fairly well; then again, he’d made quite a few misevaluations of my invaluable assistance during official investigations. I arranged my pillows, buckled my seat belt as tightly as I could bear, gave her precise directions, closed my eyes, and bleakly told her to have at it.
After a series of false starts, the car hiccupped out of the garage, died in the driveway, was coaxed to life, and sputtered its way to the edge of the street. I clamped my teeth on my lower lip and tried to think of balmy spring afternoons, quiet evenings with a good novel, serene sessions in the bubbly, more active sessions with the cop. And could think of nothing but the nightmarish scene when Maribeth seemed to be determined to run me down in the Ultima parking lot.
Maribeth of the severe potassium deficiency, so severe the doctor had compared her mental capacity to that of a stalk of asparagus. No wonder she had experienced such difficulty driving; perhaps, as Joanie said, she had returned to the parking lot for help, then lost control and crashed into the front of the store. All that made some sense, although I couldn’t figure out why she’d developed the deficiency in the first place.
A car’s horn blared, jarring me out of my thoughts. I peered over the edge of the front seat. “We seem to be straddling the middle line,” I said evenly.
“I know,” Caron growled, her fingers white around the steering wheel, nicely contrasting with her scarlet neck. “But that’s no reason for everybody to get nasty.
You’d think no one ever had to scoot over just a tiny bit.” She rolled down the window, and shouted, “Whatsa matter, buddy? Spill a cup of ice in your lap?”
“Caron!” I said. “Is this what Peter taught you to do? If you don’t roll up the window this second, I’ll—I’ll put both of you on the sidewalk, lock the car, and call a taxi.”
“Yeah, yeah, but he didn’t have any reason to make that gesture at me,” she muttered as she stepped on the accelerator. The car took off like a sprinter, fast enough to fling me backward and knock any further remarks out of my mouth.
There were more honks and presumably more gestures, but I gritted my teeth, kept my eyes closed, and somehow we made it to the funeral home without injury. Once the engine died, I sat up in time to see Bobbi Rodriquez and Jody Delano going through the front door. Bobbi wore a dark dress, the hemline of which came down at least halfway to her knees. Jody wore a more conventional suit and tie, although he tugged at his collar as if he wished he were wearing a well-ripened, redolent sweatshirt.
“Who was that?” Caron said abruptly.
“The girl that works—or worked—at the Ultima Center. She’s into leotards and sweat.” I found my purse, which had fallen to the floor during one of the more enthusiastic hiccups, and began to edge toward the car door, keenly aware of every splinter of glass that had pierced my epidermis.
“The
guy
, Mother. Who was the guy?”
“He owns a fitness center. This shouldn’t take too long, and I expect you to sit right here and not pull any tricks. Understand?”
“Gee,” Caron said in a superficially sympathetic voice, “there aren’t very many people going to the funeral. That’s kind of sad, isn’t it?”
She must have jabbed Inez, because the latter let out a muffled grunt and said, “The family’s going to feel bad if no one comes to show respect for the deceased.”
“I’m impressed with your compassion,” I said as I opened the door and began the arduous ascent to my feet. Sir Edmund probably had a less painful trip to the top of Everest. “All this worry about the family’s feelings indicates a great deal of maturity—and all developed in the last twenty minutes, too. How utterly astounding.”
“Oh, Mother,” Caron said, “you always underestimate me. Besides, you look like you’re going to fall on your face any minute. Inez and I had better help you inside before you do something Too Humiliating for Words.”
My little saints got out of the car and solicitously took my arms. Feeling no more senile than any permanent resident of a nursing home, I allowed them to escort me into the foyer, where we encountered a elderly man in a sober suit and a suitably sober expression.
“Yes?” he inquired. “Are you here for the service, or”—he ran a professional eye over me—“to make some kind of arrangement for the future, when we can be of assistance to your loved ones in their time of grief and mourning?”
“I told you to put on makeup,” Caron whispered fiercely in my ear. “He thinks you’re a walking cadaver.”
“We’re here for the service for Candice Winder,” I said.
“Of course you are,” he said with a faintly incredulous smile. “The service is in the Remembrance Chapel, to the left. If you’ll spend a moment looking it over, I think you’ll find it small yet surprisingly comfortable, able to accommodate more than fifty mourners. With the judicious placement of folding chairs, we’ve been able to squeeze in as many as seventy-five. I personally chose the decor and insisted on a state-of-the-art quadrophonic sound system. We have more than two hundred musical selections, ranging from the traditional to the more lively contemporary works. If you’re interested, after the service I’ll be happy to take you on a tour of the rest of our facilities. We’re a full-service mortuary, which can drastically reduce the cost of a first-class funeral.”
I vowed never to die as long as I lived, curled a lip at the ghoul, and took off for the chapel door, dragging Caron and Inez with me. There would be no need of judiciously placed folding chairs. Sheldon Winder sat in the first pew, his head cradled in his hands. Three pews behind him sat Bobbi and Jody, their shoulders touching and their heads together as they talked softly. About a dozen others, obviously Ultima clients, were scattered throughout the pews, some dabbing their eyes with tissues and others obediently assessing the decor and awaiting quadrophonic music.
I spotted a familiar head of hair and slipped in beside Joanie Powell, who was neither dabbing nor assessing but merely sitting with her hands folded in her lap. She gave me a wan smile, then noticed Caron and Inez.
“What are they doing here?” she said tartly. “For that matter, what are you doing here? Aren’t you under orders to stay in bed?”
Before I could answer, Gerald Galleston slunk down a side aisle and sat down in the pew directly opposite Bobbi and Jody. He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief, then settled back and shot a dark look at the back of Sheldon’s head.
Caron and Inez were buzzing at each other, so I hissed at them to be quiet and turned back to Joanie. “The doctor had no objection,” I lied, “and I felt like I ought to come, especially since I was there when it happened. Had Candice and I been standing the other way around, I’d be tucked away in a satin-lined casket, and …” I gestured vaguely toward the front of the room. “Where is the casket?”
“This is a memorial service. She’s already been cremated,” Joanie explained.
Caron poked me in the side. “Guess who’s here, Mother.”
I slowly swiveled my head until I caught sight of a glowering face in the back pew, then turned back and sighed. Joanie might have fallen for my slight misrepresentation of the doctor’s orders, but Peter had been in the hospital cell when I had agreed meekly not to set foot out of bed for an additional forty-eight hours. I had my fingers crossed at the time, naturally, but I had a feeling that Peter wouldn’t be pleased with my minor junket. Wondering if I could blame it on a concussion, I shrank down in the pew.
A minister in his early thirties came out a side door as music flowed through unseen speakers. He folded his hands and rocked on his feet through the first selection—blessedly of the more traditional bent—sug-
gested we pray, admitted he’d never met Candice Angelica Carruthers Winder but had been assured by her family and friends that she was a warm, loving person whom we would all remember as such, and in general conducted a generic service.
Once the final notes had faded, the minister shook Sheldon’s hand and disappeared through the side door. The Ultima clients stood up and began to squeeze themselves out of the pews. Joanie was stirring, but I had no intention of moving from my position, in that I knew what (who) awaited me at the door. I was not overcome with anticipation.
Sheldon rose, stopped briefly to straighten the creases in his trousers, then turned and saw Bobbi and Jody. “What are you doing here, Delano?”
Jody scratched his head. “Sitting here like everybody else, I guess.”
“It can’t be as amusing as engaging in unnatural sex in the Jacuzzi.”
“Oh, Shelly,” Bobbi said, “don’t be like that. Jody and I just wanted to pay our respects. I mean, like, I worked with Candice for five weeks, and she was so super and my very best friend. We had lunch together and everything.”
Sheldon smirked. “How about you, Galleston? That minister was correct when he talked about all of Candice’s dear friends—some dearer than others.”

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