Dying for Chocolate (26 page)

Her eyes blazed. “Yes, I told Philip Miller the truth,” she said fiercely. “I didn’t want to, but he just kept egging me on with all his questions, just like you are now. How did we come to have Julian in our house? he wanted to know. How were we relating to him? How did he
think
I was going to relate to my own son whom I hadn’t seen since birth?” Her face contorted. “And I said the biological father, Brian Harrington, had shown no interest in his son. I said I wanted to kill Brian Harrington. I had learned about getting things on the black market from Bo. I’d gotten Spanish fly and I was going to use it, because so many women had wanted Brian to love them. It would serve him right.”

“But Philip took it from you—”

“Yes, he took it! He threatened to call the police right away if I didn’t give it to him. Said I needed help, and that he was going to have to notify Brian that his life was in danger.” She smiled. “But he didn’t get my whole supply of Spanish fly. And the black market wasn’t the only thing I’d learned from Bo. After I’d seen Philip Miller, later that afternoon, I created a distraction. Pretended I’d left my cane in his office. The receptionist went to look for it and I memorized Miller’s calendar. I knew I’d have to act quickly before he turned me in. The eye doctor appointment was perfect.”

The abdominal pains in my stomach had turned to cramps. I felt hot. How I wanted this conversation to be over. How I wanted Schulz to come back. And most of all, how I wanted to know where Arch was, to be assured that he was all right.

Adele was talking. I struggled to focus on her voice.

“I’d just had the glaucoma test myself, so I knew they used anesthetic. And Bo had told me all about peroxide torture when he was researching sabotage. There are more nerve endings in the eye than anywhere else in the body. The more nerve endings, the more pain. Put peroxide on those nerve endings, and you’re going to do a lot of damage. Very quickly.”

I whispered, “How’d you do it?”

“I went into the eye doctor right after I saw Philip’s calendar. Pretended I was there to raise money for the pool, while I took the saline rinse bottle from beside the ultrasound machine. Right under their noses! Then I came home and emptied the saline rinse bottle and put in Julian’s peroxide. I called the headmaster and insisted that Philip be the one to bring more decals, that no one else could do it but Philip Miller, especially if they wanted me to give the last twenty thousand for the pool.” She cackled. “So right after his eye appointment, he’d have to drive out to the school, then drive back to town. I thought with any luck he would die on that road. I couldn’t afford for him to talk to anybody, least of all Brian Harrington or you. You see, he wanted to warn you about living here. That’s why he called so early that morning. He thought he was being so careful, saying to you, Not on the phone!”

I said, “So you were the one listening in on my calls. Then you told the general what was going on in my life.” She didn’t respond. I said, “You never gave up on Brian.”

She sniffed and moved her hands in a nervous motion. Then she looked at me, as if she were searching for something. She said, “Oh, yes I did. At that anniversary party, when he kept on and on with Sissy, I knew it was over.”

“How did you get him to take Spanish fly?”

She sighed, fluttered her hands again. “I told him to come back after the party. I wanted to invest in Flicker Ridge. I smoothed cantharidin on top of his fudge. He died for chocolate!” She laughed. A wave of nausea swept over me. “Your son saw us the last time we were together. That’s why I’m sorry to say that he’s going to drown, too.”

I screamed, “Where’s Arch?”

“Where you won’t be able to save him this time.”

I was going to throw up. I bolted for the hall bathroom. But I could hear Schulz in there. He was sick. I couldn’t listen to it. I held my stomach and lurched back to the living room.

“What have you done?” I yelled at her.

She said calmly, “The only thing I could be sure you would ever eat or drink was that damn espresso. So I put Spanish fly in your coffee can. I’m sorry, Goldy. You and the policeman should be dead in an hour.”

29.

I lunged toward her. “You bitch!” I screamed. “Where’s my son?”

Just before my hands reached Adele’s neck she grabbed her cane and whacked me across the stomach. I doubled over with pain. My stomach heaved. The cane lashed my back. The living room blurred as I crash-landed on the floor. Pain surged through my body. I vomited on the Oriental rug.

Adele stood over me and caned my arm. She screeched, “Get up!”

It was so hard. Everything hurt: my stomach, my back, my innards.

“Move!” she yelled. She flailed at my legs with the cane. “Get down to that bathroom!”

I moved. “Tom!” I cried as I limped, furious at my physical weakness. “Tom! Bo! Help me!”

“Shut up!” said Adele as she prodded my calves. “Bo can’t hear you. I put Valium in his scotch. And your policeman friend may be dead. One hopes.”

Desperately, I whirled to attack her. But she caught me across the shoulders with the cane. Pain shot through my body. I fell against the wall outside the bathroom. She poked the bathroom door open.

I peered in. Tom was on the floor. His big body was curled tightly in the fetal position. Prods from Adele elicited a few moans. He rolled over and lifted his face. It was pallid, an awful yellow. His eyes beseeched me.

“Get in there!” howled Adele as she cracked me across the ankles. The woman was strong. I lost my balance and put my hands out to avoid hitting my head on the tile floor.

Adele hovered overhead, a fuzzy-faced helicopter. “You just don’t understand,” she said as she closed the door. I heard her wedge something under the knob and then tap-step away.

I turned to Schulz. His eyes were glazed with pain.

He whispered, “I think I’m going to die.”

“You’re not,” I told him with as much firmness as I could muster. Fire consumed my insides. The poison had to be diluted with water immediately, I knew that. I cupped my hand under the faucet and brought handful after handful of water to Schulz’s mouth, then to mine. Ten, twenty, thirty handfuis of water. My body burned with pain. In some distant part of my brain I heard Adele slam a door. She was leaving the house. Leaving us to die. Who would be blamed? The general? Me? Pierre the critic would have a field day with this one.

I swallowed more water, squeezed my eyes shut, and summoned a mental picture of Arch. I had to find him. I had to. Find, find, find. I repeated this mantra while I got down on my hands and knees and peered under the bathroom door.

Bathroom doors can’t be locked from the outside. To keep us in, Adele had anchored the general’s portable door jam under the knob. I could just see the rubber end of the extended pole on the wooden hallway floor. It was no comfort to think her fingerprints might be on the top of the jam.

I closed my eyes and saw Arch. I tried to think about what the general had told me about the door jam. The wedged pole made it impossible for an intruder to push a door open. The trick, the general had said, was to put the jam under a door that opened toward you.

I rolled over. I was not going to try to push the bathroom door out. It was constructed to open inward, so it would not swing out to hit anyone passing in the hall.

“I just wouldn’t understand, huh?” I said weakly as I delicately turned the knob, pulled on the door, and heard the jam clatter on the hall floor. “I don’t think so.”

I hauled up on my elbows, whispered a prayer that Schulz, who was groaning weakly, would understand why I was abandoning him, and dragged myself down the hallway. Spasms of nausea tore through my body. I crawled toward the garage. Twice on my way I had to stop to be sick.

I had thought Adele was my friend. I had wanted it. I had imagined we were confidantes. And now I was paying the price of my own self-deception, with the poisonous drug mistakenly taken when you tried to make people love you.

I kept my head up as I crawled. I visualized ice, coolness, anything to get my mind off of what was really happening inside my abdomen. I visualized Arch.

The garage door was open. I dragged my body across the gritty floor. Each movement was a struggle, getting into the van, hauling myself up, opening the glove compartment. My hand closed around my trusty safety kit. I prayed thanks and swallowed some ipecac.

When I had made my torturous way back to the bathroom I asked Schulz to try to get up on his elbows. I cradled his head under my elbow. His face was awash in sweat.

Before he would take the ipecac, he murmured, “If I die, I want you to know how I feel about you.”

“I know how you feel about me. Swallow.”

He did. I was sick into the toilet and then I held him around the torso while he was sick. It didn’t take long, but it was horrible. If Schulz and I could go through this together, we could weather anything. I stood up shakily, then helped him to his feet.

“I’m going to look for Arch,” I said once I had rinsed my mouth out with tap water.

“The heck you say,” he said feebly. He grasped the side of the marble basin and tried to steady himself. “I’m calling the department. Get help to track down Adele Farquhar. Get a medic here for you, me, and the general.”

I didn’t say anything. I was shaky but okay, and there was no time to wait for the Furman County Sheriff’s Department to muster itself up to Aspen Meadow. I needed more water, and then I was going to look for Arch, whether Tom Schulz liked it or not.

I limped shakily out to the porch. Bo’s face was extremely pale. His snores sounded like a small propeller-plane engine. I shook his shoulder. Nothing. The automatic timer flicked on the pool lights. It was 9:00 P.M. The murky, phosphorescent half-spheres on the walls of the empty pool cast an eerie pall across the patio. I heard Schulz wobble to the kitchen, then murmur into the phone. I moved slowly to the living room and picked up a bottle of Perrier from the bar. I didn’t have any weapons, so I threw the general’s toolbox into the van. Wrenches and Perrier: yuppie defense. I roared down the driveway.

Where could Arch be? Why had Adele seemed so sure he would die tonight?
Where you won’t be able to save him this time.

The pool.

I peeled off in the direction of Elk Park Prep.

I was so used to that road I could whip around its curves and drink bottled water at the same time. The Perrier was a necessity to help dissipate whatever poison lingered in my system. I knew from reading about Spanish fly that some people became much sicker than others, and it didn’t necessarily depend on the dose. This would explain why Schulz had been sick before me. I shook my head from side to side. My brain felt woozy. I ordered myself to sharpen up. My sensibilities might be the only thing to save Arch.

Luckily, some vestige of mental sharpness kicked in just when the van careened around the last curve and came up on the school entrance. I had to slam on the brakes to avoid smashing into the electrified gate.

I cursed mightily and stepped gingerly out of the van. The gate was armed and the stone wall was too high to scale. I wished every flower behind Elk Park Prep’s deer-proof gate would burn in hell or be eaten by a marauding herd of wild animals.

I stared at the electrified wires. I couldn’t risk touching it: I had heard too many stories of electric shock throwing unsuspecting humans for first-and-ten yardage. But I had to get through. Short of breaking the power circuit. . . But why break it? Why not keep it? I walked back to the van and got the general’s wire cutters and my jumper cables.

I hustled back to the gate and began to attach the jumper cables to the wire. I thought that I would have given a year’s supply of unsalted butter for the presence of a rocket scientist. Ten years’ worth for an electrical engineer.

I clipped the wire and didn’t die. Hallelujah. I cut savagely at the fence, tore out the hole I’d made, and began to run up to the school. I didn’t want them— whoever they were—to hear me coming.

There were no infrared security lights here to detect human approach. Why should there be? They had electricity to keep Bambi out. Still, the shadows of trees cast long, fingered shadows across the road and made my heart pound in my chest. Voices carried through the night air from the pool site. Every fifteen yards up the driveway, short lanterns on poles shed disks of yellow light. Poppies and bluebells waved in the night breeze like fairy-sentries on their mounds. I focused straight ahead and walked fast until I was at the wire fence surrounding the construction area.

Another damn fence.

I knew it was six feet exactly, and that it was required by building code when a pool was under construction. If you wanted to get in easily, you had to go through the gate, now closed and locked. Adele had somehow wea-seled the code out of the construction workers, because I could see Arch. I could hear him splashing and calling to someone who was holding a flashlight and either reading or writing in a notebook next to the gate. But who was it? There was no car in the parking lot. The voice I could hear was female. If Adele was around, she was not visible. I listened and then recognized the voice: Sissy.

Arch had known something was wrong. Why was he playing? Or was he?

On the far side of the pool area behind the newly installed diving board, a small mountain of dirt bordered the concrete deck. The chain-link fence ran behind the dirt pile. On that side, the area behind the fence fell away sharply. I could hide behind that ridge, but what good would it do me? I had to get through the chain-link fence. Arch had signaled he was in trouble. Maybe Sissy had some kind of weapon. I didn’t want to find out by feeling it against my skull.

I scanned the school grounds. The dark silhouette of the old hotel building rose ominously over the parking lots. Here and there in the darkness, floodlights shed tents of light. The tall evergreens that peppered the campus whooshed in the night wind.

I crouched like an Indian and stumbled over to behind the fence. From where I was hidden, I could not see Arch. I gripped the wire cutters and began to clip. Arch must have been over by Sissy. Their voices were somewhat distant. They began to argue. “You . . . you . . .” Arch was saying. I couldn’t make the rest of it out.

Then she said sharply, loudly, the way you do when you want to change the subject, “Forget about it! You
have
to do this thing with the manacles! Adele doesn’t want another messed-up magic trick in her pool!”

Arch shrieked, “I don’t want to! My mom wouldn’t want me—”

“Shut up, scaredy-cat. Besides, if you don’t do it, Adele’s going to fire your mother! Is that what you want?”

I ran through the soft dirt to where I could see them. Dim light from a distant floodlamp cast long, thin shadows across the concrete deck. Sissy leaned over and appeared to be rummaging in a bag. Her notebook was on the ground, papers askew. Did she have a weapon? I couldn’t tell. Arch had his back to her. He put his hands behind him. Sissy took out a stick and two pieces of rope. My heart stopped.

The Chinese manacles. Arch’s favorite trick. The magician appears to be shackled at the wrists with the ropes, which are threaded back through the tube and drawn tight by one or more assistants. The trick is that a tiny piece of string attaches the ropes. When the trick is done right, the assistant who puts the magician into the shackle breaks the string by appearing to pull the ropes taut. Sissy accompanied the cuffed Arch over to the diving board.

I clawed madly at the dirt to get back around to the fence. Blood beat in my ears. I sent clods of soil flying.
God, help me,
I begged as I cut as fast as I could. I could not imagine what Adele had used to replace the string inside the manacles.

“I think you need to be over here next to me while I’m doing this,” came Arch’s voice, much closer now. He must have been on the diving board. Sissy said something indistinguishable. “Okay!” cried Arch. “You pull it tight and then I’ll go off the board. Then it’ll look like I get out of them underwater.”

“Oh, all right,” came Sissy’s voice.

I clipped the last two wires and ripped out the hunk of fence just as a splash erupted from the pool. Seconds ticked off in my head—
one, two, three, four, five
—as I tore up the dirt mound behind the diving board. Sissy, fully clothed, was still standing on the board. I leaped up on the board and pushed her into the water. She shrieked before splashing in.

Arch’s head emerged from the water. He sputtered and coughed. Yelled, “I can’t seem to get them off!” His voice was full of panic.

The water was like ink. I jumped away from the board and Arch’s voice. The cold was a shock. Once in the water, I couldn’t see a thing. Fear seized my body. Arch was thrashing nearby. Sissy was yelling, “Who is it?” but I had no intention of answering. I swam to where I thought Arch was. With my arms rigid in front of me, I dove. I was hoping to reach Arch, but only nicked the bottom of the pool. I brought my legs to the pool floor and pushed upward. Sissy had scrambled out of the pool. I heard her voice but could not see her. A few feet behind me, Arch surfaced and yelped. I lunged for him.

“It’s me, it’s me, it’s me!” I screamed when I had hold of one of his arms.

He was screaming and thrashing in a complete panic. “Mom!” he sobbed. “Mom! I can’t get out of these things!”

I put my arm across his chest. Treading water madly, I pushed up on his head and shoulders so they were above the water. With his arms locked in the handcuffs, Arch’s body was heavy, hard to grip. He thrashed against the constraints and gagged helplessly on the water.

“Hold still! Stop moving!” I yelled. The water raged with his kicking and jerking. I couldn’t hold on to him. My hair fell like cold seaweed over my eyes and I was blinded. A sudden unwanted memory of being caught by the undertow on the Jersey shore rolled over me. The dark water had sucked me down like a muscled giant, and I had had the very clear thought, at age eleven, that I was about to die.

My lungs burned as I heaved up again and caught Arch under his armpits.
Come on, honey, come on,
I sent my thoughts to him the way I had prayed in childbirth.
If we can just get through the next five minutes,
I thought,
if we can just get through . . .