Lethal Lasagna

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S
he has to die.

Mitzi Douglas is sweet and kind, but she’s making my life miserable. I can’t have her coming into the room and being the center of attention, it’s just not fair. A layer of lasagna noodles went into the pan.

She makes me sick! A chuckle filled the kitchen. Now that is funny...she makes me feel bad, and so I’m making a special dish to make me better, much better.

The fragrant scent of meat sauce rose as it poured on top of the pasta. Ummmm. This smells good enough to eat. But, I won’t. It’s for Mitzi alone. She’ll just die when she gets a taste of this.

Laughter filled the room, and more layers were added to the poisoned pan.

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Lethal Lasagna

by

Rhonda Gibson

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Lethal Lasagna

COPYRIGHT © 2009 by Rhonda Gibson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [email protected]

Cover Art by Kim Mendoza

White Rose Publishing

A division of The Wild Rose Press

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0706

Visit us at www.whiterosepublishing.com

Publishing History

First White Rose Edition, 2009

Print ISBN 1-60154-632-7

Published in the United States of America

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Dedication

This book is for Kathryn Velarde Baharami. Meeting in a bookstore made us friends, hanging in there through the good times and the bad has made us sisters. You have been behind me pushing since the beginning and for that I will always love you. Thanks.

Prologue

She has to die.

Mitzi Douglas is sweet and kind, but she
’
s making my life miserable. I can
’
t have her coming into the room and being the center of attention, it
’
s just not fair. A layer of lasagna noodles went into the pan.

She makes me sick! A chuckle filled the kitchen. Now that is funny...she makes me feel bad, and so I’m making a special dish to make me better, much better.

The fragrant scent of meat sauce rose as it poured on top of the pasta. Ummmm. This smells good enough to eat. But, I won’t. It’s for Mitzi alone. She’ll just die when she gets a taste of this.

Laughter filled the room, and more layers were added to the poisoned pan.

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“She was my best friend. Why would I kill her?” I grumbled, resenting this recent summons to appear at the police station. A mint caught my eye as I dropped the car keys into my pocketbook. Walking and digging at the same time for the elusive candy, I pondered my friend Mitzi’s murder.

My head slammed into a wall of firm human chest. As I was propelled backwards firm fingers grabbed my upper arms.

Shocked, my gaze moved from the strong hands up to determined brown eyes. Had I not been the one falling backwards into what I knew was hot concrete, I would have found the whole scene amusing.

He jerked hard, and I found myself slamming into his chest once more. This time, he held me in place until I felt steady, and then he gently set me back. “Are you okay?”

Heat filled my face and all the spots where I’d made contact with him. “I’m sorry...I think so.”

“Good.” He smiled.

That simple action caused his eyes to turn from deep brown to a light caramel. My heartbeat picked up, and I couldn’t breath. Get a grip! To my shame, my senses ignored the silent command.

“Well, if you’re sure, I’ll be going.”

A verbal response would have been nice, but all I managed was a head bob. Wow, what this man did to my nervous system even St. John’s Wort couldn’t soothe.

He nodded back and turned to leave. Long jean-clad legs carried him to his awaiting pickup.

****

Later, I stared across the desk at the police officer, Detective Howard. He appeared to be in his early sixties. His short haircut reminded me of a military man. Only in his case, I think he kept it short due to the visible bald spot on the crown of his head. He tapped long slender fingers together forming a church steeple between his hands.

This wasn’t the first time I’d been brought in for questioning, but it was the first time I’d met Detective Howard. So far, he hadn’t impressed me much. It had been a month since I’d found my best friend, Mitzi Douglas, dead on her kitchen floor, and they still hadn’t caught her murderer.

“I’m not charging you with murder, Mrs. Parker.” He chewed on the unlit cigar as he leaned back in his chair like a Columbo wannabe. His steel blue eyes studied me.

I crossed my legs, folded my arms and returned his hard stare with one of my own. Just because I’m a retired postal worker, did not mean I’d gone postal and killed my friend. “Seems to me you are. Why would you call me, request that I come in, and then start asking me questions?” I emphasized the word me, to remind him that so far, our conversation had been all about me. Normally I like everything being about me but not this. I continued speaking as if he were still listening. “I’ve already told you I don’t know where Mitzi got the lasagna.”

“We got the autopsy back, she died of poisoning,” Detective Howard stated. His narrowed gaze studied me even more intently. “The food was laced with some form of mushrooms. Deadly mushrooms.”

My thoughts raced, and I found myself saying them aloud. “Mitzi wasn’t allergic to mushrooms. She would have eaten them with no fear of a reaction.” I looked at the detective and asked. “What kind were they?”

His eyes softened. Maybe now he believed me. The detective dropped his chair back to the floor. “Let me see.” He riffled through the mountainous stacks on his desk, spilling scraps of paper and stray paperclips about the floor. The cigar remained clamped in his teeth, and a frown creased his brow.

After several searches through the piles, he pulled the abused cigar from between his lips. “That file isn’t here. I must have left it in Detective Bow’s office.”

His lazy manner irritated me, but what could I do?

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

He’d done it again. Once more, I was the target of his speculations. My best friend for the last forty years was gone, and all the police seemed to do was lose her paperwork and ask me a lot of questions, which I had no answers to.

A tired sigh escaped me. “No.”

“Well, if you think of something, call me.” He handed me a business card.

I jammed it into my purse and stood. “Then I can go?”

A smile touched his thin lips but not his eyes. “You were free to go at any time.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I knew I was still a suspect.

The trip to my car seemed to take forever. Of course in Adrian, Oklahoma the summer sun beats down on you and time seems to stand still. Thankfully summer would soon be over, and I could enjoy cool evenings again.

I clicked my seatbelt together, avoiding the hot metal as I did so. “Claire Parker, if you aren’t careful, the next clicking sound you hear could be the echo of the lock on a jail cell as they shut you up for good.” Talking to myself was getting me nowhere.

I backed out of the parking lot. Another tired sigh escaped me. No matter how many times I told the police I hadn’t murdered my best friend, they still didn’t believe me. Why weren’t they looking for the real killer instead of pestering the life out of me? It was then and there, with the air conditioner blowing full blast and Rachel Lampa performing “You Lift Me Up,” that I determined to prove my innocence and keep myself out of jail.

After all, I’m not some green kid to let myself be pushed around. I still have straight even white teeth—all mine, sparkling blue eyes—at least that’s what I’ve been told, and my hair hasn’t seen a hint of grey in the last five years. Okay, that’s since I found the bottle of dark sandy brown hair color that they sell at Wal-Mart. Five years ago my natural dark sandy brown hair began to show signs of turning platinum blond – if I want to call it blond and not grey, that’s nobody’s business but my own. I just un-blond myself every six weeks. I’m not ashamed of my age, I tell anyone who asks how old I really am. So no harm done. Oh yeah, my point is, I’m fifty-two-years old, and that’s too mature to be in jail.

I arrived at my small house on the edge of town. I like to think of it as the country cottage I dreamed of from childhood. You know, white paint with blue shutters, boxes filled with various colored flowers line the windowsills, and it sits against the backdrop of a small magical forest. Only now that I’m older the thick tree line no longer feels magical.

Sprocket greeted me with a soft woof. To this day, I’m not sure what breed he represents. He’s somewhere between a large sheep dog and a puppet. His name is Sprocket because my daughter Megan loved the children’s show Fraggle Rock when she was a little girl. At the moment, he was sitting inside the fence, and he poked his nose through the white pickets.

I called to him as I unlocked the side door. “Hey boy, let me put my purse away, and then you and I will go for a much needed walk.” Some people might think I’m crazy for talking to him but I don’t care. I decided a long time ago, it doesn’t really qualify as crazy until he talks back in audible tones.

My pocketbook landed on the kitchen table with a thud. I hung the car keys by the door and headed to the bedroom. The answering machine sat on the side table by the bed, its light blinking. I pushed the play button and pulled an old pair of grey shorts out of the bottom dresser drawer.

Megan’s voice sounded at the beep. “Hey, Mom; Greg and I were wondering if you’d like to come over for dinner tonight. Call me back when you get in. Love ya.”

My daughter is a schoolteacher and her husband, Greg, is a principal. Pride washed over me at the thought of those two young people carving their way in this world. I knew what a strain it was for both of them to finish their education while working full time and being newlyweds. I also knew I was going to turn down their invitation.

I hated missing supper with the kids, but last night we’d had a horrible thunderstorm and my fear of tornadoes had kept me awake most of the night. Then, this morning Detective Howard had insisted I come to the station.

I’d either end up asleep in Megan’s mashed potatoes or ranting about the investigation into Mitzi’s death. Either topic made me bad, bad company. So, my plans were to walk Sprocket, have a quick sandwich and take a nap. The rest of the evening, I planned on watching an old movie and eating all the popcorn in my kitchen cabinet.

I pulled on the shorts, grabbed a pink tee shirt, and tugged it over my head. Then I sat down on the bed to return Megan’s call. A few seconds later, I took my turn at phone tag with Megan’s answering machine.

“Hey Megan, this is Mom. Thanks for the invitation to dinner but I think I’ll stay in tonight. After that thunderstorm last night, I’m beat. Maybe we can make dinner another evening. Love ya, too, sweetie. Bye.”

Sprocket’s big brown eyes gave me an accusing look as I clicked the leash onto his red collar. “I’m sorry ole boy, but Megan called and invited me to dinner. I had to call her back.”

He licked my hand, apparently to let me know I was forgiven.

Sprocket and I walked the length of the driveway and started down the sidewalk. My house is in one of the last neighborhoods on the edge of town. Mostly retired people live in this community, and that’s the way I like it. After my husband, Frank passed on ten years ago I moved out here and have been happy.

Sprocket stopped to investigate a tree.

My thoughts returned to Mitzi. Who would have killed her? That question plagued me night and day. Mitzi lived downtown not too far from the college. It was a busy community. She should have been safe there. And yet, she’d been murdered in her own kitchen. A shiver ran down my spine.

Mitzi and I met forty years ago at church camp when she was ten and I was twelve. A watery smile touched my lips at the memory. She was a tomboy through and through, but she was also very shy. Not me, I wasn’t much of a tomboy, and I definitely wasn’t shy. That was the year we both invited the Lord into our hearts and became best friends.

From then on, we saw each other through the good times and the bad. When Frank and I got married, she served as my maid of honor, and later I was the matron of honor at hers. She had her son, Luke, six months before I gave birth to Megan, and we were both present for those births. I was there when her husband died and eight months later she supported me when Frank passed on.

I wiped at the tears that flowed down my cheeks. “Sprocket, I can’t let her killer run loose. How do I catch him?”

Sprocket pulled on the leash. I don’t think the old dog cared how I caught a killer as long as he could continue inspecting all the trees and bushes on our block.

Since I’d made the decision to get to the bottom of this, without help from the police, I thought about all I knew. Sprocket pulled me down the sidewalk. For the first time in three weeks I made myself think about that day.

First of all, whoever killed Mitzi must have known her. Someone had brought her lasagna laced with poison mushrooms, and she’d accepted it. That meant it had to be a family member, close acquaintance, or someone she thought of as a friend.

That fateful Thursday night, Mitzi and I had planned to go to the movies together. I was to pick her up at six so we could catch the seven o’clock show. When I arrived, the front door was open. Thinking she wanted me to come on in, I did. I called her name but she didn’t answer.

If found her lying on the dining room floor.

Lasagna had splattered everywhere. The half empty pan, a broken plate, and an empty glass also lay on the floor close to her. I’d shoved the mess out of the way and rushed to her side. She felt cold to the touch. I called for an ambulance and the police but knew Mitzi was dead.

Thinking back to that horrible night caused another tear to slip from the corner of my eye. I swiped it away and realized Sprocket and I had completed our walk and we now stood by the entrance to my front yard. Mechanically, I opened the gate. Sprocket hurried inside the yard and sat. He waited while I unhooked the leash and then ran for his water bowl that stood in the shadow of the house.

“Thanks for the walk, boy.” I moved up the steps to the front door and let myself in. Perspiration clung to my legs. I needed a shower.

The air-conditioned draft felt wonderful against my sweating skin. Once more I made my way down the hallway and into my bedroom. As I peeled off my damp clothes, I thought of all I would miss doing with Mitzi.

There would be no more long afternoons at Starbucks. No more going to the movies on Thursday nights. And no more late night chats on the phone.

Why hadn’t I realized something was wrong when Mitzi hadn’t answered her phone for three nights in a row? Why had I written it off that she was just busy with the Rose Hat Club and her creative writing class?

As I stepped into the shower, I allowed my mind to travel once more to that night.

The police had questioned me and I’d told them everything I knew. At that time I wasn’t a suspect, so they released me. I’d come home stunned and called Mitzi’s son, Luke. He’s a doctor who lives in Dallas. He stayed with me as we made arrangements for his mother’s burial.

I’ll never forget the look of shock on his face when shortly after the funeral the police paid us a visit and asked me to come in again for questioning. It seems my fingerprints were all over the pan that held the poisoned pasta sauce.

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