The Groaning Board

her
cupboard, does that mean she has this gluten allergy?”
    “Probably. It’s actually called
celiac disease,” Micklynn said. She emptied the rest of the wine into each
glass.
    “If someone sneaked gluten into your
food, could you die?”
    “Oh, hardly. My gastro system might
be knocked out of whack for a while.... Why?”
    “Sheila... a woman I know... the
sister-in-law of a friend. She had all that stuff in her cupboard. She was poisoned.”
    “Sheila Gelber was poisoned?”
    Wetzon stared at Micklynn. Micklynn’s
face was an ashy §ray. Tears were coursing down her cheeks. “You knew her?“
    “She was my friend.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

     
     
     
    “I can’t
believe you knew her.” At first, Wetzon was dumbfounded, then, “But this is New York. It happens all the time.”
    Devora had opened another bottle of
wine and steered them into the living room. It was a large open space with
beamed ceilings and three overstuffed sofas around a fireplace. The sofas held
loose papers, folders, and notebooks. Mick-lynn cleared off one of the sofas by
moving everything to the floor. All except the cat hair. “How do you know
Sheila was poisoned?” She poured wine into the glasses Wetzon had carried from
the dining table.
    Should Wetzon say, My ex-lover was
her ex-lover? It was getting too complicated. Keep it simple. No need to
mention Silvestri. “I know Artie Metzger, Sheila’s brother-in-law.”
    “Right. The cop. This is really
strange, talking to you about Sheila. How was she poisoned?”
    “I guess I shouldn’t have said
anything. I don’t really know anything more than that.”
    “She wouldn’t have done it. She
couldn’t have—”
    Wetzon’s glass shivered in her hand.
“Do what? You know someone who had a motive?”
    “Motive? No. I mean Sheila. She never
would have committed suicide.”
    “Suicide!” Had anyone even considered
that, Wetzon wondered. Aloud she said, “Was she depressed?”
    “Depressed? The way we all get
sometimes, I guess. But suicidal? No way. Not Sheila.”
    “What was she depressed about?”
    “I don’t know. She sort of backed
away from me, from everyone. Except the kids, of course. She loved the kids. I
guess you know she was a schoolteacher.”
    “Yes. When was the last time you
spoke to her?”
    “About a week before it... happened.
She called me and told me if I didn’t stop she would report me to the police.
‘Stop what?’ I said. ‘Let’s talk about this.’ She hung up on me. I was pretty
upset. You didn’t know Sheila. It was so crazy. But she must have taken her
phone off the hook, because I kept getting a busy when I called back.”
    “You never spoke to her again?”
    “I had two really big affairs to
cater.... Then a few days later I heard she fell in her bathroom and hit her
head and—oh, God. What did she think I was doing to her?“
    “She was getting threatening phone
calls.” Damn, Wetzon thought, too much wine was making her indiscreet. Yet she
liked Micklynn. What was the harm?
    “And she thought I was making them?
Oh, no, she couldn’t have—-it’s too crazy.”
    “I heard one of them on her answering
tape. It was pretty scary. The voice was too distorted to be recognizable.”
    “Jesus God, I failed her. I fail
everybody.” Micklynn filled her glass again. “Simon... I thought Simon was a
hypochondriac, always complaining. Then they said he had pancreatic cancer and
he was gone so fast we hardly had time to say goodbye.” She was slurring her
words now.
    “Did you meet Sheila in college?”
Wetzon’s lips were numb; they felt swollen. Was she turning into an aging,
disappointed-in-love alcoholic? The thought was sobering.
    “Uh-uh.” Micklynn was focused on some
distant object. “Met her a couple of years ago. She was Ellen’s English teacher
at Colton. Ellen is Simon’s cousin’s kid. I took her in after her parents
died.”
    “She’s at Colton? That used to be one
of the most aggressive academic private schools in the city.”
    “Still is. When Ellen came to live
with me, we visited a few of the private schools. What do I know about schools,
or kids, for that matter? She liked Colton, so that’s where she went.”
    “She’s a very pretty girl.”
    “She’s... not living with me
anymore.”
    “Oh.”
    “When Simon’s cousin died, Ellen was
eight or nine. Simon was gone by that time. The Moore side of his family all
lived in Oregon. I didn’t know them at all. Then Ellen’s mother died in