Poisoned Pages Read online

  Antonio Barbero—whom Tricia referred to as Angelica’s secret stepson—passed by. It looked like he’d been enlisted to help pass out canapés as well, and he offered the mini spinach quiches around, with just about everybody taking and enjoying one. Unlike Russ, Antonio loved being a dad to his daughter, little Sofia, born the very same day as Russ’s son. And though Antonio sometimes worked hellish hours, he always found time for his precious bambina. Of course, Antonio was a good ten or twelve years younger than Russ, who Tricia suspected had never contemplated marriage, let alone fatherhood, when he’d worked out his life’s plan.

  C’est la vie.

  “Angelica said you’d made all the food,” Russ said, grabbing a quiche off the tray as Antonio passed.

  Tricia took a sip of her club soda. “Almost. A number of people brought goodies as well. Mary Fairchild brought some hot artichoke dip, and, of course, Nikki brought some of her marvelous mini cream puffs. A lot of people brought wine.” She gestured toward the console table near the entryway, which was covered in bottles. Hmm, she ought to have mentioned that to Angelica when she’d stated they’d run out of red wine.

  “Speaking of food, I’d better get back in the kitchen and make sure there’s enough for everybody.”

  “And I’ll just pour myself another drink,” Russ said, but he didn’t sound all that pleased about the prospect.

  Tricia made her escape and found Angelica leaning against the large white-and-black-veined granite island, presumably taking a breather. Or was it her four-inch stilettos that caused her discomfort—not that she’d ever admit it? “Ange, why don’t you go sit down in the living room and relax.”

  “Me, relax at a party? Unthinkable,” she said, and picked up a cookie-crumb-littered plate from the island.

  “Yes, but it’s my party—not yours.”

  “Tricia, dear, you are the hostess—that doesn’t mean you have to play waitress. Now, I’ve got everything in the kitchen under control,” she said, and held out a hand to show that she’d tidied the island, which had been where Tricia had spread out some of the food, including the chafing dish that was now nearly empty of her childhood favorite Swedish meatballs.

  “Yes—I also see you keep sending Ginny and Antonio out to play waitstaff.”

  “And they are enjoying themselves.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t just browbeat them into helping out?”

  “Of course not! Tricia, I don’t think you realize it, dear, but there are a lot of people who would do anything to help you out because you’re such a force for good in this town.”

  That wasn’t true. It was Angelica who had earned that accolade in her role as founder of Nigela Ricita Associates, and anonymously, too. In a few short years she’d helped shape the village into what it was today—a thriving success. She’d also accomplished that with her dual role as president of the Stoneham Chamber of Commerce. Tricia aspired to take her place, but she was sure she would never be able to fill her shoes. Eyeing the shiny red slingback Jimmy Choos, Tricia decided she’d much rather follow in Angelica’s footsteps.

  Angelica turned for the refrigerator. “Now, what else can we surprise your guests with?”

  “Most of the hors d’oeuvres are probably already gone—”

  “You got that right. There’s just one more tray of those crab-stuffed mushrooms. Wherever did you get that wonderful recipe?”

  “From your first cookbook—as you darn well know.”

  “Yes,” Angelica said with satisfaction, “simple, but elegant. And everybody loves them.”

  At least those who like shellfish seemed to love them. Tricia wasn’t a big fan herself, but they did look appetizing.

  Russ entered the kitchen. “Any chance there’s another bottle of soda around?”

  Angelica handed Tricia the platter of rosettes and plucked the last bottle of club soda from the fridge’s door. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” He headed back toward the living room.

  Angelica looked after him. “He’s had a few tonight.”

  “Yes,” Tricia said, and sighed. “I think he’s grateful to be out of harness for a few hours. I just hope Nikki isn’t going to have to drag him out of here kicking and screaming.”

  Behind them, someone cleared his throat. They turned to find Mr. Everett, one of Tricia’s employees and an honorary family member, standing near the kitchen island.

  “Mr. Everett?”

  “Ms. Miles, I wanted to let you know that Grace”—his wife of four years—“and I are leaving.”

  “So soon?”

  “We’ve had a wonderful time, but we pick up our little bundle of joy bright and early tomorrow morning from the Animal Rescue League. We don’t want to take the risk of being late.”

  Tricia knew the equally elderly cat they were adopting had been waiting nearly two years to find his forever home. “I understand completely.”

  “Where are you parked?” Angelica asked.

  “In the municipal lot.”

  “Let me get Antonio to walk you to your car.”

  “Oh, no. That won’t be necessary. We don’t want to bother anyone.”

  “It’s no bother,” Angelica assured him, and charged toward the living room to flag down Antonio.

  “Will you be bringing pictures of Charlie into work tomorrow?”

  “I wanted to speak to you about that,” Mr. Everett said, sounding contrite. “I was wondering if I might have the entire morning off. I would like to make sure Charlie is well acclimated before I leave him. Grace thinks I’m being foolish, but I haven’t owned a pet in a long time.” He had, however, taken care of Tricia’s cat, Miss Marple, for about a week the summer before. “I don’t wish to neglect my pet on his first day with us.”

  “Of course not. Take all the time you need. Pixie and I will handle everything.”

  “You’re very generous, Ms. Miles.”

  “Nonsense. I want your new family member to feel secure. I’m just so happy for the two of you. You’re doing a wonderful thing adopting Charlie.”

  “It was a difficult decision to make. At our ages …”

  That was why they were adopting an elderly cat—the fear of outliving a younger pet. And also the fact that taking Charlie in would give the feline the opportunity to live out the remainder of his life in a loving home.

  Angelica and Antonio arrived, along with Grace’s and Mr. Everett’s coats.

  “Dear boy, you do not need to walk us to our car,” Grace exclaimed.

  “It would be my pleasure. I want to hear all about your new bambino, too,” Antonio said. Tricia just loved to hear his lilting Italian accent.

  “I’m afraid we may bore all our friends. William has even learned to take pictures with his phone just to chronicle our boy’s arrival.”

  Mr. Everett ducked his head, blushing in embarrassment.

  “I can’t wait to see them,” Tricia said.

  “Me, too,” Angelica chimed in.

  Mr. Everett slipped on his coat and buttoned it, and then he, Grace, and Antonio headed for the door, calling good-bye over their shoulders.

  “Oh, dear,” Tricia said. “Do you think them leaving will cause the party to break up early?”

  “As we’re running out of food and some drink, that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” Angelica said.

  Tricia nodded.

  “Now I’ll hustle that last tray of canapés out to the hungry crowd, while you check on your guests.”

  “Right.” Tricia walked away from the island, heading for a group standing near the door. As she’d feared, several others already had donned their coats.

  “There you are, Tricia,” said Joyce Widman, proprietress of the Have a Heart bookstore a few doors down from Haven’t Got a Clue.

  “Leaving so soon?”

  “I’ve got a big sale going on tomorrow and haven’t finished pricing my stock. I’ll need to get to my store early in the morning. But I had a lovely time. The food was wonderful, the com
pany even better.”

  “Thank you, Joyce. I’m so glad you were able to come.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it.”

  “Me, too, Tricia,” said Mariana Sommers, the Chamber of Commerce’s secretary, with whom Tricia hoped to work closely should she win the upcoming Chamber of Commerce election for its presidency. For months, Angelica had been quietly (for her) pushing the idea that Tricia should run for president of the Stoneham Chamber of Commerce. Now that the renovations on her home were complete, and since the campaign season was to start in three days, Tricia had decided to pursue the job. Oh, dear. She’d meant to make an official announcement on just that subject during the party, but had obviously waited far too long.

  Tricia walked her guests down the stairs and through the front door of Haven’t Got a Clue. If her visitors were going to be filtering out, perhaps she should ask Antonio to stay down there to make sure the shop was secure until the bulk of them had left.

  Sure enough, by the time she made it back upstairs, four more of her guests had donned their coats and were saying their good-byes to Angelica. At this rate, the place would empty out in no time.

  Tricia looked at the clock. Maybe that was good. It was nearly ten o’clock, and she, too, had to work the next morning.

  Antonio entered the shop just as Joyce and Mariana exited.

  “Oh, good. You’re back. It’s looks like we’re about to have a mass exodus. Would you mind staying down in the shop for a few minutes to let everyone out?”

  “Certainly.”

  “You’re a doll.” She gave him a smile and hurried toward the back of the shop and up the stairs once again. But instead of being greeted by a mob about to leave, Tricia returned to what seemed to be a ruckus going on near the windows that overlooked the street.

  “Do something, do something!” Frannie frantically called.

  Tricia rushed to join them, but the rubberneckers crowded at that end of the room made an effective barrier.

  “Stand aside!” Angelica called as Tricia elbowed her way through the crowd. Breaking free, she saw Frannie’s gentleman friend stooped, his hands at his throat, apparently choking, his face turning beet red.

  Angelica was considerably shorter than him, but she came up from behind and wrapped her arms around him, one hand clasping the other at his mid-chest, and made several upward thrusts, but nothing was dislodged from his throat. Again and again she tried, with no results.

  Someone shoved one of Tricia’s upholstered chairs in front of the man, who fell over it, dragging Angelica along with him. “Oww!” she howled as he landed on the back of the chair, her clenched fists trapped under his bulk.

  Several of the male guests moved forward to move the man to the floor.

  “Does anybody know CPR?” Frannie called, still frantic.

  Pixie stepped forward, but again it was Angelica who jumped into action. In a flash she was down on her knees, feeling for a pulse. “Will somebody please call nine one one?”

  Several people whipped out their phones and began punching the number pads.

  “Ange?” Tricia asked, feeling panicked.

  Angelica didn’t answer, but started chest compressions.

  Except for Dean Martin in the background, wailing “Everybody Loves Somebody,” the room was nearly silent as Angelica worked on the man before her, pausing every few compressions to blow air into his mouth—but it seemed that whatever he’d choked on might still be caught in his throat.

  Angelica was back to chest compressions. “Can someone please turn that music off?”

  Pixie darted across the room, and the music abruptly died.

  Angelica continued her efforts while the wide-eyed guests worriedly stared.

  The sound of thundering footsteps echoed up the stairs, and several men erupted into the room. The Stoneham Fire Department’s emergency medical technicians had arrived—and not a minute too soon, for Angelica looked to be on the verge of exhaustion.

  Suddenly Antonio was there to help Tricia haul Angelica to her feet as one of the EMTs questioned the crowd while the other examined the man.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Ginny asked, her voice small and shaky, as one of the EMTs injected some kind of clear liquid into the man’s outer thigh, but nothing seemed to happen.

  Another crew had come with the ambulance, but because of the angle of the entrance to the stairs, they hadn’t arrived with a gurney—but some kind of chair, instead.

  “The patient is unresponsive,” said one of the firefighters as his companion continued CPR. “Anaphylactic shock.” He proceeded to explain how they’d treated the man, but it was obvious the shot he’d administered had no effect.

  “Stand back, please,” one of the newcomers asked the crowd, and everyone was herded toward the kitchen.

  Angelica’s brow was covered in perspiration, and she seemed to be trembling. “You’d better sit down, Ange,” Tricia warned. “Antonio, can you get her some water?”

  “I’ll get it,” Ginny volunteered, and fled to the kitchen.

  Pixie wandered up to stand beside Tricia. “Damn,” she cursed, and shook her head, watching the paramedics work. “Looks like you’re gonna have another stiff on your hands.”

  Tricia turned to glare at her assistant, while somewhere across the room Frannie wept inconsolably.

  TWO

  “How many does this make?” asked Grant Baker, Stoneham’s chief of police and Tricia’s former boyfriend, staring at the sheet-covered corpse still lying on her living room floor.

  Tricia glared at him but made no comment.

  Baker turned to one of his officers. “Have you spoken to all the witnesses?”

  “No, Chief. There were at least twenty or thirty people at the party.”

  “Party?” Baker whirled to face Tricia. “How come I wasn’t invited?”

  “Do you think you could have helped a man suffering from anaphylactic shock?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Angelica was a hero—or rather a heroine,” Ginny said emphatically. “She desperately tried to save him.”

  Angelica sat on one of the upholstered chairs clutching a wineglass. She’d had several since her ordeal, and Tricia had made up her mind to cut her off if she asked for another refill.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Baker reminded her.

  “Why would I invite you?”

  “Because I thought we were friends.”

  Their friendship, like their failed relationship, had ended several years before. And, besides, Baker now had a lady companion. Was Tricia supposed to have invited her as well?

  Again, she made no comment.

  “So what likely caused the man’s death?” Baker asked the room at large.

  “Obviously an allergic reaction to something he ingested,” Angelica said, sounding weary.

  “Who made the food?” Baker asked.

  “I did,” Tricia said. “Well, most of it.”

  Baker blinked. “You cooked?”

  Tricia frowned. “Yes.”

  “Since when do you cook?”

  “Since none of your business.” She didn’t like his tone; the fact that it irked her made her dislike her reciprocal timbre even more.

  Baker looked back to the shrouded body. “So you poisoned the poor guy.”

  “I did not.”

  “Well, he’s dead.” Baker walked around the body. “What’s your relationship with the deceased?”

  “I had none. I never met the man until he walked through my door a couple of hours ago. He was Frannie Armstrong’s date.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In my bedroom, lying down. His death was a terrible shock.”

  “I’ll bet,” Baker grated. “So what killed the guy?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “A stuffed mushroom,” Angelica volunteered. “It was the last tray of them. I walked around the room offering them to everyone.”

  “And nobody else got sick?”

  Tricia shoo
k her head.

  “What was in them?”

  She shrugged. “It’s a pretty standard recipe. I got it out of Angelica’s first cookbook.”

  “A national bestseller,” Angelica piped up.

  Baker scowled, ignoring her. “Can you let me have it? I’ll give it to the medical examiner, and he can test the stomach contents. We’ll try to contact the deceased’s doctor to see what his allergies may have been.”

  That seemed reasonable. “Do you want me to scan it right now?”

  “We can just rip it from the book.”

  “No, you will not!”

  Baker started at her tone.

  “I consider it sacrilege to desecrate a book in that manner.”

  “Then get it to me by morning, will you?”

  Tricia nodded and glanced in the direction of the body. “Will my visitor be leaving soon?”

  “In good time,” Baker answered, which was no answer at all.

  And what about Frannie, up in Tricia’s bedroom? Would she be so disconsolate that she’d want to stay the night? Tricia certainly hoped not, but neither could she kick the poor woman out.

  “Are there any mushrooms left?” Baker asked Angelica.

  She shook her head. “No. The dead guy—sorry, I don’t know his name—took the last one.”

  Baker frowned, then shook his head. “Then it sounds pretty open and shut. The guy just had an allergic reaction.”

  Did he actually sound disappointed? A man was dead. A person who had lived a life, loved family and friends, and come into Tricia’s home a stranger would be leaving in a body bag. She felt terrible about that. If only he had mentioned his food allergies, she would have been able to dissuade him from eating the mushrooms. Wasn’t it the obligation of a person with severe—potentially fatal—allergies to do that?

  Was she trying to talk herself out of the guilt she felt? Maybe. But she did feel terrible that a guest had eaten something fatal while in her home. Meanwhile, the police technicians went to work in the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” Tricia demanded.

  “They’re bagging evidence.”

  “But they’re going through my cupboards and fridge—they’re taking my staples and my serving dishes!”

  “You’ll get them back … eventually. It’s just a precaution in case things aren’t what they seem.”