Murder by Mushroom (3 page)

Ridiculous!
Don’t be paranoid!

“Regardless,” the doctor went on, “if she had a history of heart problems, a flu or food poisoning could put her in a weakened condition, and a seizure could send her into cardiac arrest. Of course, an autopsy will be performed, and we’ll know more then. In the meantime, the police have been notified and will probably want to talk to you so they can contact her next of kin.”

The police?

“I washed her sheets,” Jackie said. They all turned to look at her. “I mean, in case the police want to know who did it.”

She felt foolish when the doctor’s eyebrows rose. It was an experience she’d had many times in her life. Why did she always manage to say something stupid?

J
ackie backed away from the dresser, trying to get a look at her feet. She really should buy a full-length mirror. The image stopped at her knees, leaving her to guess at how her flat pumps looked with the narrow black skirt. She’d bought the skirt and blouse two days ago when an inventory of her closet revealed nothing even remotely appropriate for a funeral. Her coworkers at the State’s division for child-support enforcement would probably fall right out of their chairs when she walked into the office in a skirt, but slacks seemed disrespectful somehow.

Yesterday, she’d shuffled all her Friday afternoon clients off onto other caseworkers, so she planned to work through her lunch break and leave at one o’clock. Plenty of time to get from the state office building in Frankfort to the funeral home here in Versailles before the two o’clock service.

She gave up on seeing her feet in the reflection and turned to examine the side view. Not bad. Maybe she should wear skirts more often.

The doorbell sounded. Linus, who did not like visitors, leaped from his perch on her pillow to rush to his habitual hiding place beneath the bed. Jackie glanced at the clock. Who in the world would come to her apartment at seven-forty in the morning?

She swiped a brush through her curly hair a couple of times and snatched a black scrunchie off the top of the dresser as she left the room. Twisting it around her hair at the base of her neck, she peeked through the peephole in the front door. The telescopic image of two men stared back at her. One wore a uniform.

The police? Jackie’s pulse picked up tempo. A visit from the police before eight o’clock in the morning couldn’t be good news.

She unlocked the dead bolt and opened the door. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the uniformed officer. He stood slightly behind the other man, his young face freshly shaved beneath short-cropped hair. Strong, well-muscled shoulders filled out his shirt above a trim waist, and when Jackie looked into his face she found herself gazing at the most gorgeous gray eyes she had ever seen. A tickly sensation in her belly made her look away with a shiver. She focused instead on his left hand, which held a canvas messenger bag. No ring on that all-important finger.

Focus, Jackie!

In front of Mr. Good-Looking Cop, the other man held up a black wallet with a shiny badge. He, too, was clean shaven except for a short mustache, in his late forties or early fifties. He wore a neat gray suit, white shirt, and the ugliest tie Jackie had ever seen.

The older man spoke. “Miss Hoffner, I’m Detective Conner with the Kentucky State Police. And this is Trooper Walsh.” The handsome officer nodded a silent greeting. “We’re here to talk to you about Mrs. Alice Farmer.”

Jackie’s tension lessened as the detective flashed an easy smile. He didn’t look as if he was about to deliver bad news. She opened the door wider. They probably just wanted to follow up on her statement. “Oh, sure. Would you like to come in?”

“If you don’t mind.”

She stepped back, closing the door behind them as they walked into the apartment to stand in her tiny living room. As Trooper Walsh brushed by her, she caught a faint whiff of his aftershave. The tickle in her stomach returned. If only she had taken the time to fix her hair this morning.

“Please sit down. Uh…” A pile of newspapers littered one end of her couch, and cat hairs clung to the cushion on the other end. She pointed toward the dinette table. “Maybe there?”

Detective Conner smiled. “That will be fine. I hope we aren’t interrupting anything important.”

“Actually, I was just getting ready to leave for work.”

“This shouldn’t take too long.” Detective Conner’s pleasant green eyes looked into hers, the corners crinkling with his smile. “I’d like to ask you some questions about Mrs. Farmer.”

Jackie sat across the table from Detective Conner, super-aware of the handsome young state trooper who sat on her left and extracted a notebook and pen from his messenger bag. She hoped she didn’t say something stupid, like she usually did. Should she offer them coffee? She couldn’t remember if she had any clean mugs.

“Well, okay, but I told the sheriff’s department everything I know on Wednesday.”

“I’ve read your statement. If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear it in your own words. Hopefully I won’t make you too late for work.”

Okay, if she ignored the good-looking one and focused on the old guy, she could almost relax. And honestly, the detective’s smile made Jackie feel she was chatting with a friend. What did it matter if she was a little late? Her boss didn’t watch the clock.

She launched into a description of the church picnic and Mrs. Farmer complaining about the UPS man not bringing down the boxes from her attic. Then she told him how she had gone to Mrs. Farmer’s house to help and found the poor woman violently ill. As she talked about the call for the ambulance and the subsequent trip to the hospital, Trooper Walsh took notes while Detective Conner nodded, his eyes never leaving Jackie’s face.

“And then you cleaned up the house.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you wash any dishes, or put anything into the dishwasher?”

Jackie shook her head. “No, I didn’t go into the kitchen at all except to find the mop and detergent. I don’t remember seeing any dirty dishes.”

“I see. Tell me about this church picnic. Who was there?”

“Just about everyone at Heritage Community Church. Close to ninety people, I’d say.”

“And can you tell me what was served?”

Jackie’s pulse quickened. Leftovers from the potluck
had
given Mrs. Farmer food poisoning! “Uh, it was a potluck so everyone brought something. There was a lot of food. We had fried chicken and sliced ham and a smoked turkey breast. There were at least a dozen casseroles and a bunch of salads, like potato salad and pasta salad and that green Jell-O—”

“What about spaghetti?” he interrupted. “Was there a dish with spaghetti sauce?”

Her mouth went dry. “Actually, I brought a spiral pasta casserole. But there wasn’t anything wrong with it.”

“Did you eat any of it?”

“Of course I did. Lots of people did.” She shifted her attention toward Trooper Walsh, who stopped scribbling on his pad to look at her with those arresting eyes, and added defensively, “It was good.”

Detective Conner went on in the same calm tone. “Did anyone else bring a dish with spaghetti sauce?”

Jackie closed her eyes, picturing the food table. Hers was the only dish with tomato sauce. She wiped her damp palms on her skirt under the table and then shook her head.

“Have you heard of anyone else in the church getting sick after the picnic?”

“Of course not.” She raised her chin. “And there was nothing wrong with my casserole.”

“One more question. Do you recognize this?”

Detective Conner nodded at Trooper Walsh, who reached into his canvas bag and drew out a container sealed in a large plastic bag. He placed it on the table in front of Jackie. It was one of those disposable Ziploc containers with a blue lid, the inside stained orange with what had been, Jackie assumed, tomato sauce.

She swallowed hard against a dry throat and turned to Detective Conner. “If you mean do I recognize what it is, of course I do. If you’re asking if I recognize this particular container, that would be nearly impossible.”

He gave her a bland look. “I’m aware of that. Can you at least tell me if it might have contained your casserole from the church potluck?”

A flicker of anger sparked in Jackie’s mind. No way were they going to pin this on her. There was nothing wrong with her casserole!

She took a deep breath. “The church keeps dozens of those containers in the kitchen so they have something to put leftovers in to send home with people after potlucks. Some people throw them away, but others wash them and return them to the church when they’re finished. So yes, it’s possible this one might have contained some of my casserole.” She leaned forward, looking directly into his eyes. “But there was nothing wrong with it. It couldn’t have given anyone food poisoning.”

Detective Conner studied her a moment. “The coroner’s report said Mrs. Farmer died of heart failure, brought on as a result of monomethylhydrazine poisoning, not food poisoning.”

“Monomethyl—what?”

“Monomethylhydrazine. The coroner called it MMH. It’s an uncommon poison, but not all that hard to come by. It’s found in certain types of mushrooms.”

“Mushrooms? You mean wild mushrooms?”

Jackie had heard of mushroom poisonings. Everyone had. That’s why anyone with half a brain stayed away from wild mushrooms.

“Specifically a mushroom called
Gyromitra ambigua
. It’s common in wooded areas around here.”

“Well, the mystery’s solved then, isn’t it?” Jackie sat back in relief. “There are woods behind Mrs. Farmer’s house. She must have decided to go mushroom hunting and got hold of the wrong kind.”

There was no humor in Detective Conner’s smile. “I wish it was that simple. But we don’t think Mrs. Farmer picked those mushrooms herself.”

The hairs at the base of Jackie’s neck prickled. “Why not?”

“Because we took the dishes out of her dishwasher, which, thankfully, you had not turned on when you cleaned the house. We sent them all to the lab, and they found something.”

“Was it in the tomato sauce?”
Please say no! Please say no!

“Bingo.”

Jackie’s heart thudded in her chest. How could poisonous mushrooms get into her tomato sauce? It was impossible. Her mushrooms had come from the grocery store. She ate them herself.

She shook her head. “At least a half-dozen people took leftovers home, and I haven’t heard of anyone else getting sick. Maybe Mrs. Farmer thought the sauce needed some spicing up and she added wild mushrooms at home.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” the detective said. “I know sometimes my wife adds something to leftovers to dress them up a bit. So we went through her garbage very carefully. There was no trace of mushroom stems or pieces. She almost certainly would have trimmed the stems before cooking them.”

“Maybe they were chopped up in the garbage disposal,” she suggested.

“There is no garbage disposal. And we found the remains of the pasta, which she had scraped off her plate before putting it in the dishwasher. It was full of
Gyromitra ambigua
.”

“But surely she could have tasted poisonous mushrooms!”

“Actually, this variety has a very mild taste. When mixed with a spicy sauce, they would be virtually undetectable.”

Jackie sat back against the hard chair. Mrs. Farmer, poisoned! That poor woman. Who could have disliked her enough to do something so awful?

And why had they chosen
her
potluck casserole? This news would spread like wildfire. The church gossips would have a field day.

Conner cleared his throat. “I know this is most upsetting, Miss Hoffner. But I’m afraid we need to examine your kitchen.”

“My kitchen? But surely you can’t think—”

“We don’t think anything at this point. We’re just following procedure. Will you show us the utensils you used to make your casserole?”

“But…but I’ve washed them!”

Detective Conner sighed. “I expected that. Still, we need to take them for analysis.”

“Are you saying you think I killed Mrs. Farmer?” Blood pounded in Jackie’s ears. “Do I need a lawyer?”

He sat slowly back in his seat, his eyes never leaving hers. “We’re not here to accuse you of anything, Miss Hoffner. We simply want to eliminate the possibility that the mushrooms came from your kitchen. A necessary step in the investigation, nothing more.” He folded his arms across his chest. “If you want to call a lawyer, you’re entitled. But we still need to examine your kitchen. If we need to get a search warrant, we will.”

Her focus dropped to the surface of the table. If she didn’t give them permission to look in her kitchen right now, they would think she was hiding something. She would look guilty. And she had nothing to hide.

“Fine.”

Trooper Walsh reached into his bag and pulled out several large, plastic, zippered bags. She knew their purpose from watching
CSI
on television. The police used them to bag evidence at a crime scene.

Her face flaming, Jackie rose from the table and led them into the kitchen. She stood silently, fingernails biting into her palms, and watched the young officer search through her cupboards. He confiscated her cutting board, her casserole dish, and every knife she owned. When he opened the refrigerator, her jaw tightened. Did they actually think they’d find poisonous mushrooms in there? She clenched her teeth as Walsh pawed through the contents and removed several plastic containers. Detective Conner’s direct stare made heat rise under her collar, but she did not look at him. He’d tricked her into thinking he was a nice man with that pleasant smile. She wasn’t going to fall for that again.

When he finished cleaning out her kitchen, Trooper Walsh gave a slight nod to the detective and turned toward Jackie. “I think that’s about everything, Miss Hoffner. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

Inconvenience? Humiliation gave way to fury, which roiled inside her as she followed the pair to the front door, her lower lip caught firmly between her teeth to keep from spouting angry words. As he stepped through the doorway, Detective Conner turned and gave her that false friendly smile. He extracted a business card from his suit pocket and held it toward her.

“If you’re planning any out-of-town trips in the near future, it might be a good idea to give me a call and let me know. Just in case we need to get in touch with you.”

She really was a suspect? As though in slow motion, her hand reached out and took the card.

“Thank you, Miss Hoffner. Have a nice day.”

Trooper Walsh, his arms full of her dishes, gave a sympathetic nod before following the detective down the breezeway to the parking lot.

Jackie closed the door behind them and sagged against it. Her fury drained as she looked down at the card in her hand. She was a suspected murderer. The police thought she had killed Mrs. Farmer with her spiral pasta casserole.