The Last Blue Plate Special (26 page)

“I know. I can’t go. How can I? But …”

I suspected Roxie was having feelings similar to mine. Her goals had been clear since she was a kid, and this career opportunity
fit her goals. She hadn’t wanted me in her life; it just happened.

“Of course you’ll go,” I said gamely. “You have to go. I’ll go with you. Where is it again?”

“Philadelphia. Pennsylvania. You’d hate it. It’s a city.”

“I don’t hate all cities. Isn’t that where the Liberty Bell is? Have you ever been there?”

“You never told me you were dying to live near the Liberty Bell, and no. Have you?”

“No. Oh, Roxie, why now?”

After several repetitive cycles of this we were still crying but laughing at the same time. Two competent adults revealed
to be dim-witted adolescents inside, unable either to cope with the bond between us or to place a major American city on a
map.

“There’s still a killer on the loose,” I said, sniffling and giggling. “Can we table this? I have to call Kate Van Der Elst.
Pieter’s left her because she won’t drop out of the city council race. He’s moved into a hotel until he can run home to the
Netherlands. Kate’s alone and scared.”

At “alone and scared” we both burst into tears again, then laughter.

“Call her,” Roxie said, standing and heading for the kitchen. “I’m going to make a sandwich.”

As Brontë followed her I looked at Roxie’s braids tumbling over broad shoulders, the straight, strong line of her back. She
hadn’t played games with me over her Philadelphia job offer, hadn’t ducked her own pain and confusion about what it might
mean. But most importantly, she hadn’t left me alone with it. She’d come to me and told me and let the shock be absorbed in
us, together. She didn’t hide. Roxie was no coward. I loved her, but in that moment I felt something more. I felt a deep respect
for her. I could never be as rational and businesslike, but I knew I’d spend the rest of my life trying to be as brave as
Roxie Bouchie was with me that night.

“Rox,” I said as I picked up the phone to call Kate, “thanks.”

She’d turned from pawing through my refrigerator and her head was backlit by its fifteen-watt bulb as she nodded. The nimbus
of light behind her clattering braids made a sort of halo. She knew what I meant. There was nothing else to say.

O
h, Blue, I’m so glad you called,” Kate Van Der Elst said when she heard my voice. “Pieter’s gone to the Marriott downtown,
the big one next to the convention center. He won’t take my calls. Or else he’s
swimming.
You know, they’ve got all those beautiful pools and you can swim from one into another under bridges and down little waterfalls.
Sometimes we’d spend a night there just to swim from pool to pool. That’s probably what he’s—”

“Kate,” I interrupted, “is there anyone at your house with you? Are you alone there?”

I didn’t like the way she sounded. Her voice was reedy and her remarks had a giddy tone that suggests panic.

“There’s no one here,” she answered in the same strained, high voice. “Who would be here? Dixie Ross was my best friend, but
someone killed her and her funeral is tomorrow. I can’t very well call her to come over and hold my hand, can I? She’s in
a
casket,
Blue. And my husband has turned into a man I neither like nor even know, who walked out on me because he loves me, he says.
I
can
call him and I have, but he won’t talk to me. Blue, I’m just undone by all this. Could you possibly come over?”

“I’m sorry, Kate,” I said in quiet tones I hoped would help diminish her anxiety, “but I can’t drive into the city tonight.
It would be best if you weren’t alone, though. Surely there’s someone else you could call. Maybe one of your campaign staff
?”

“I don’t want anyone connected to the campaign to know … to know what’s going on between me and Pieter,” she said, making
an obvious effort to calm herself. “I’m going to say he’s been called to Amsterdam due to illness in the family. Less than
two weeks remain until the election. I can’t have it all over town that my husband has left me.”

She was right. Not that being right ever got anybody through the night.

“Kate, I just can’t believe Pieter would do this,” I said. “I know how much he wanted you to drop out of the race, but to
leave you when there’s danger, leave you tomorrow to attend the funeral of your best friend alone? That’s not the Pieter I
know.”

“He hasn’t been himself since the day he found that threatening note pushed under the door of my campaign headquarters,” she
said, sighing. “You know, the one on green paper that said I’d die? It did something to him, Blue. Since then he’s barely
eaten and tosses all night. He looks terrible. Maybe I should just have done what he wanted.”

“But you didn’t,” I pointed out. “And so you have to plan a course of action that deals with the way things are now. You need
to get out of there, go someplace with lots of people around. The hotel where Pieter is will have a good security staff, since
it services conventions. I want you to pack a few things and check in there. You’ll be near Pieter and you’ll feel safe. It
may sound silly, but it’s not.”

“Blue, I’m not going to chase after Pieter and I hate being away from home anyway, because the food thing is a problem,” she
said. “You know I’m on this diet, and talk about sounding silly, but it’s almost impossible to get the right combinations
of carbs, protein, and fat in a restaurant. They just load you with bread and pasta and there’s never enough protein.”

“Kate!” I heard myself yelling. “Stop worrying about that stupid diet and get yourself somewhere with people around you. I
can’t believe you—”

Roxie had been listening to the conversation from the kitchen, but now hurried toward me.

“Let me talk to Kate,” she said urgently.

I couldn’t quite peg the look on her face as she took the phone, but it was serious.

“Kate, this is Dr. Bouchie,” Rox said professionally, talking fast. “I want you to tell me
exactly
what you eat on this diet and what you don’t. It may be very important. Please leave nothing out.”

For a while there was no sound but the scritching of Roxie’s pencil on a sheet of paper she’d pulled from my printer’s feed
tray. From time to time she drew deep breaths, then nodded.

“Mostly fruits and vegetables, then. Do you
ever
eat meat? Turkey breasts and fish that you buy fresh. Okay. Are you taking any antidepressants or cold and sinus medications?
Good. Don’t take any.”

I could almost hear Rox’s mind working, a sound like lock-pins dropping in cylinders. Hundreds of them, one after another.

“Here’s what you
must
do,” she told Kate Van Der Elst. “Don’t eat anything but fresh fruits and vegetables until I get back to you. Nothing else.
Especially nothing dried, pickled, or fermented. Do you understand? No, no raisins. They’re dried. I can’t explain right now.
I have to check some things. I may be wrong. Meanwhile, these precautions won’t hurt you and may save your life. If I’m right
it won’t matter whether you stay at home or in a hotel tonight, except that you’ll feel more comfortable if you’re not alone.
Either way, I’ll want to talk to you tomorrow morning, so I’ll need to know where I can reach you.

“And don’t worry, if what I suspect is true, you’re in no danger unless you eat certain things like fava beans, a lot of imported
chocolate, salami, there’s a long list. Just eat nothing except what I told you. I need to make some calls right now, so I’m
going to hang up without giving you back to Blue. But leave the number where you can be reached tomorrow morning both here
and with Detective Rathbone. You’ll be hearing from me.”

“Rox, what?” I asked the second she hung up, but she was already punching Rathbone’s number.

“Wes,” she said seconds later, “it’s Roxie Bouchie. Do you know what Bettina Ashe had to eat today? Find out and call me back
immediately. I’m at Blue’s.”

He hadn’t asked why she wanted to know, merely understood that the question was important and agreed with her request. But
I wasn’t Wes Rathbone.

“Roxie, what is it?” I begged. “What’s the food connection? What have you figured out?” I can’t stand not knowing, being in
the dark. Not knowing makes my ears ring.

“It’s so obvious I should have seen it,” she muttered, moving back to the counter to take another bite of her sandwich. “Nobody
else would be likely to, but
I
should have. A psychiatrist should have.”

“You should have seen
what
? What are you talking about?”

“MAOIs,” she answered, pronouncing the letters slowly as she wandered back across my living room to look through the picture
window at tumbleweeds blowing by. Deep in thought, she continued to munch on her sandwich, dropping crumbs on the carpet.
Brontë hovered beside her happily, consuming the crumbs. I sat in my desk chair and bit my lower lip.

“MAOI means ‘monoamine oxidase inhibitor,’” she finally explained. “It’s a drug used in the treatment of depression, although
it’s not used much these days. Patients don’t like the dietary restrictions associated with it, and most doctors prescribe
everything else available before trying MAOIs.”

“Dietary restrictions,” I said, trying to find a thread. “Is Kate taking this stuff? Why did you tell her not to eat anything
but fresh vegetables?”

“It’s a long story, Blue.”

I love long stories.

“Tell me,” I said as she flung herself on the couch and looked longingly at the phone. “Wes will call you back as soon as
he knows what Bettina Ashe ate today. There’s time.”

“We’re omnivores,” she began. “We evolved eating anything we could find, and our distant ancestors couldn’t afford to be picky
about freshness, to put it mildly. If it hadn’t turned to ooze, they ate it. Even if it
had
turned—”

“I get the point, Rox,” I said. “But Bettina Ashe did not eat ooze today. I’m sure of it.”

“No, but her stomach should have been ready if she had. We all produce a monoamine oxidase in our gut, an MAO. It’s there
to oxidize a substance called tyramine, which is found in rotten foods and even some that aren’t spoiled, especially liver.
We evolved, you might say, with a roadkill palate.”

I thought of vultures feasting unspeakably in the desert. And crows. And us.

“Then about forty years ago somebody discovered that inhibiting the chemical effect of MAOs helped reduce the symptoms of
clinical depression by altering certain chemical patterns in the brain,” she went on. “For a while these MAO inhibitors, or
MAOIs, were widely prescribed for people suffering from chronic depression, but patients taking them had to watch their diets
very carefully.”

“No roadkill?” I said, tracking the explanation although it still made no sense.

“A number of foods are actually somewhat spoiled and meant to be,” Rox went on. “The process of spoilage gives them their
distinctive flavors. Fermented drinks like red wine and beer are made from rotted grapes or hops. Miso is fermented soy mush.
Pickled foods like herring or sauerkraut, same thing. Hard sausage, bologna, salami. They all contain substantial quantities
of tyramine, which we can oxidize, or digest, because we’re producing MAOs.

“But if we’re taking something that inhibits the MAOs, what happens?”

“In extreme cases,” Rox said, her brown eyes bright, “a hypertensive crisis. Blood pressure shoots way up, the heart races
at over a hundred beats per minute. The person experiences sweating, dizziness, nausea, a sudden, agonizing headache, and
then blam! An artery bursts in the brain and death occurs.”

“Rox, that’s what happened!” I cheered. “You’ve figured it out! Dixie Ross must have had this stuff in her somehow, this drug,
and then she must have eaten pickled herring or one of those things, and it killed her. Same for Mary Harriet Grossinger.
And Ruby Emerald. Somebody delivered a deli tray to Ruby the night it happened, Rox! A deli tray with caviar, liver pâté,
European chocolate, and red wine. All the bad foods. Poisons, for her. Except her boyfriend threw the whole tray against the
wall in a fit of jealousy before she could eat much of it.”

“Probably saved her life,” Rox said thoughtfully.

“And then he tried to shoot her the next day,” I finished the strange love story. “But what about Kate, Roxie? She’s been
threatened, but nothing’s happened to her. She’s fine.”

Rox stood up to pace beside the telephone.

“That was the tip, Blue. When I heard you tell her to forget about this diet she’s on. She eats a lot of broccoli, vegetable
salads, fresh meats she buys and cooks herself. This Zone diet is based on a strict balance of carbohydrates, protein, and
fat. Every time she eats, her food is fresh and perfectly balanced, and she doesn’t eat anything that upsets the balance.
She wouldn’t eat salami, for example, which is full of tyramine and could have killed her. Too much fat. Kate Van Der Elst
is protected from the danger of inhibited monoamine oxidation by her diet!”

I remembered carrying Kate’s snack in my purse at the fundraiser. Half an apple, a stick of low-fat skim-milk string cheese,
and two macadamia nuts. It had seemed ridiculous at the time. Who can eat only two macadamia nuts? But Kate Van Der Elst was
alive.

“How did Sword do it?” I began as the phone rang. Roxie grabbed it before the end of the first ring.

“Wes?” she said. “Some liver pâté? Oh, God. What else? Grilled cheese sandwich her husband made for her himself. What kind
of cheese, Wes? Aged sharp cheddar they order from Vermont, with a little strong Romano. Got it. Anything else? Miso soup.
That’s enough to do it, Wes. Liver pâté, aged cheese, miso. That’s enough to kill her. And a couple of imported chocolates.
Couldn’t be worse. She never had a chance even without the chocolates. Yeah, I’ll explain.”

I listened as Roxie outlined the roadkill chemistry again to Rathbone, but I was already thinking. We’d need to chart what
each of the victims had eaten immediately prior to death, I thought. In Ruby Emerald’s case, prior to a hypertensive crisis
that could have killed her except that seventy-four-year-old Jerry Russell Jones had smashed the lethal delicacies against
a wall in a fit of jealousy that saved her life. The irony of Jones’s behavior was stunning and reminded me of my personal
philosophy. The grid. It just
loves
stuff like this. “Man Accidentally Saves Life of Woman He Will Try to Murder the Next Day.” Film at eleven.