Gut Feeling | Sympos

Gut Feeling

Roman Sympos

When they were asked about dessert, she said, "No. I don't think so."

He shook his head at the server and asked for the check.

As the young man walked away, she reached for her purse.

They started speaking at the same instant.

"No, no, this is on me," he said.

"I don't think this will work," she said, rummaging.

That stopped him, so she continued.

"I've been at this a while now, so I've gotten good at telling if it will or won't."

She looked up and paused to let him reply. He didn't, but she wasn't surprised. He'd hardly said two words the whole meal. Or looked at anything but what was on his plate.

Shy? She could work with shy. But there was nothing to work with here.

This was her tenth (eleventh?) arranged date using "Sohl Mates." David Sohl, the TV match-maker, had founded it. It worked by restricting information, not adding to it. You could state your gender and gender preferences, and what you liked most and what you disliked most--a single item that was not a personal trait. (She had to spend half an hour on the latter and settled on snoring, which she did not consider a "trait.") No limit on "Dietary Restrictions." Age categories were listed by overlapping decades. She'd checked 55-65, he'd checked 60-70.

Sohl Mates based its matches on this restricted, prix-fixe menu.

The idea was summarized by the pun on Mr. Sohl's last name. True soul-mates were bonded by intangibles, not a shared detestation of Jeff Koonz. Barring loud pop music, sleep-apnea, and nuts (allergies), she'd announced to Mr. Sohl that she could conceivably find happiness with any heterosexual man 50 to 70 years of age who shared her passion for composting.

In just five weeks she'd discovered more about herself than about all of her dates put together. Nothing they said surprised her nearly as much as she surprised herself: how much she appreciated a good head of hair, for instance, and a complete set of teeth.

This despite the fact that all of them were talkers and, like most men, they loved to talk about themselves. She'd expected this and her life had prepared her for it, giving her lots of practice at getting in a word here and there. Tonight's unremitting silence had reminded her to choose carefully what you wish for.

Mr. Sohl let you change your information form as often as you liked. (She suspected that was how Mr. Sohl held on to his customers for as long as he said he did.) She would no longer resist changing hers. Under "Likes," "good conversation" would replace "working in the yard."

The silence lasted until the server returned with the check.

As her eleventh date (yes, she was sure now) fished for his credit card, she said, "I've just got a gut feeling."

Then, without warning, she farted. Loudly. At length.

He looked up.

They burst out laughing. (Good teeth and good hair! And that tan said he liked being outdoors.)

The smile faded, but he didn't look down or away. She was about to apologize when he added, "Wasn't the chili delicious, though?"

By the time the waiter returned with the check, she'd changed her mind. They'd like to share the flan. Two spoons please.

They were married within the year. She was very happy.

The size of their combined incomes didn't hurt, although she was sure they could be just as happy with less. Up to a point.

The Sohl Mates intake form didn't ask about income, or anything to do with money. Wealth was as far away from matters of the soul as you could get. Money mattered to her, however. Not as much as gardening, but yes, it did. She wasn't ashamed to say so over the flan. He wasn't ashamed to say he agreed.

She didn't tell him she'd come from poverty, the last child of seven, abused when not neglected, and had fought hard not just to survive, but to thrive. Left the hell that was home before graduation and punched above her weight ever since. Got her GED, taught herself proper etiquette, grammar, pronunciation, how to dress, how to apply makeup. Got a job, enrolled in a community college, transferred to a four-year school on scholarship. Summa. Phi Betta.

She was proud of what she'd accomplished, but even after all this time, she didn't like to talk about it.

She was pleased to discover not only that he was widowed, like her, and well-educated, but also, again like her, fairly well-off. He was a former entrepreneur (robotics) who'd retired at the age of fifty to live on his investments. He knew grief, and he knew how to get on in the world—what money meant. She'd inherited from her first husband enough to live on comfortably, so it wasn't as though she needed more. She just didn't like the idea of wealth disparities between husband and wife. Her second marriage had taught her that. Too much chance of resentment. Too much quarreling over what activities to pursue, where they could afford to travel, who they could socialize with.

Before leaving the table, they exchanged income and asset figures.

Above all, trust was important to her. It was paramount. She trusted him absolutely and, as the months passed, worked hard to earn his trust. Every now and then her old insecurities prompted her to test it. Neither had children, only step-children, and no relations they cared about nearly as much as they cared about each other. That made it easier for her to ask, as a first anniversary gift, that they revise their wills to name each other as beneficiaries.

They adjusted easily to each other's shortcomings.

Her appearance, for instance. One thing that had drawn her to Sohl Mates was that you weren't asked to provide a photograph or a physical description. Her chaotic and violent childhood had accelerated the ravages of the years and left her looking much older than her birth age.

He didn't seem to mind a bit. But what if he did? He came with his own array of allowances. The shyness, to begin with.

He was a man of few words: gentle and solicitous, sometimes ruminative, often witty. But laconic. The two of them surmounted this obstacle almost without trying. She got used to his silences. He got used to her monologues.

He was also severely diabetic. Congenital. Type 1. Resistant to drug treatment. His life depended entirely on insulin injections at mealtimes. Even the idea of needles entering flesh repulsed her, so he kept the paraphernalia and injections out of sight and never referred to them. Aside from this, his health was excellent for his age. He was lean, and mobile, and aware.

And handsome.

That was important to her even at sixty. She could do little about her own face, but kept herself fit and trim. She craved physical affection, and had been born with a healthy libido. She was accustomed to men whose sexual appetites matched or exceeded her own. His fell a bit short—in part, she suspected, because of the diabetes. Not by enough to count, however, and there were other ways to satisfy her.

His tan came from sailing. Perhaps the biggest challenge for her to overcome.

He'd begun as a child, married an avid sailor, and had been living on his boat since his wife died two years ago. Joining him for a life on the bounding main was clearly out of the question, even if she hadn't had a sprawling garden to care for. The boat was simply too small. And she suffered from motion-sickness. Just the swaying of the hull at anchor, she found, made her queasy.

Here, also, they managed to compromise. He had no objection to moving into her landscaped Victorian in Rockport, asking only that she not object to his weekly day-trips, once boating season came around. And perhaps, she could accompany him once a month? Just for an hour or two? He recommended Dramamine. To her surprise, she found that it made the voyages manageable--especially when it put her to sleep. In return, he would help her in the garden. Their winter schedules were entirely their own.

It wasn't until mid-April, well into their second year together, that he broke the news about his investments. They'd taken a plunge after the holidays and had yet to recover.

The two of them had agreed to keep their finances separate, despite the revisions in their wills. Surrendering control over your own resources while you were still breathing? Neither saw the sense of that. Gardening expenses were all hers, sailing expenses his responsibility. They kept careful records of their expenditures, individual and shared, leveling things out at the end of every month. Less friction all around.

This morning had started out exceptionally fine. The snowdrops and crocuses had come and gone, replaced by daffodils, "dancing," as the poet said, in the sunny breeze. The hellebores had lasted long enough to be joined by the bleeding hearts. Two weeks ago she'd sprayed magic circles of coyote piss around each bed of tulips to keep the rabbits away from the new shoots. Sleek, green buds were just poking up. The day was full of promise.

She was pruning hydrangeas at the edge of the lawn when he rolled up a second wheelbarrow of mulch and made the announcement.

The pause as she opened her shears to clip the next withered stalk alarmed him.

"I've been meaning to tell you for a while now," he said. "Hoping for an uptick so I wouldn't have to worry you."

The clipping resumed.

"I'm sure the ship will right itself, soon," he added.

She stopped and turned to face him. "Speaking of ships, have you put the Dandy in the water yet?" He'd been talking about it, but she didn't know if he'd gotten around to calling the boatyard.

"Yes, just yesterday."

That was the real reason for the delay in telling her.

"Keeping it in drydock would have saved you some money, wouldn't it?" She knew the answer, but wanted to see what he would say.

"Not really. And this is just a rough patch. It'll be over soon."

"You could bring it home, couldn't you? Keep it on the trailer, behind the garage? You wouldn't have to pay the marina anything at all."

"Mmmm. Wouldn't be easy." He explained the difficulties, in surprising detail. Then, "I knew this might worry you. Just give it another week or two. You'll see."

He stopped talking and stood there behind the wheelbarrow. He'd long passed his discursive limit, which bothered her almost as much as the news he'd delivered. It must be worse than he said, to have elicited that much talk.

Hearing no reply, he dumped the load of mulch, turned the wheelbarrow around, and ambled back to the pile.

She gave it the week or two he asked for. The property tax bill arrived. She paid it in full and entered what he owed her in the debit column, where it remained at the end of May. She let another month pass, saying nothing. The debts mounted.

They'd planned to spend July touring Alaska, but now he couldn't afford to travel. Tanglewood concerts in the Berkshires were out, too, for the same reason, and evenings at the Gloucester Cinema soon went by the board, unless she wanted to go by herself.

She didn't, but remained silent. She wouldn't nag.

More than his delinquency, she hated the idea of quarreling over their day-to-day lives. Or their night-to-night lives, for that matter. It wasn't long before his financial woes began to affect their love-making, his shame and her resentment combining to rip a hole in their intimacy through which mutual desire slowly drained away.

Two things didn't change, at least at first: her gardening, with him helping occasionally, and his sailing, with her dutifully on deck the first Friday of every month. As the summer passed, however, he found ways to prolong his solo voyages, sometimes mooring at distant harbors overnight. She found ways to spend more hours alone in the garden shed, where he'd only be in the way.

With more time on her hands, she decided to try some new vegetable cultivars and reintroduce an old favorite. She'd never grown legumes, so she decided to start with string and kidney beans in the greenhouse. For the solarium, and for old times' sake, she chose the lovely, ornamental castor bean—not a legume, she knew, but still a "bean," at least in name.

She'd started growing castor beans years ago, but only because her first husband fell in love with the plant after accompanying her to a spring garden show. She was wary of its toxicity and didn't like handling it. Castor beans, she knew, contained ricin, one of the deadliest of all known poisons, natural or chemical. There was no known antidote and the end was agonizing—vomiting, bloody diarrhea, massive organ failure, coma.

When her first husband was dying of stomach cancer, she was glad she'd braved the dangers, for his sake and for hers. He refused hospice care. Only she would do. It was unbearable to watch but the doctor wouldn't hear of assisted suicide. She filled his room with castor bean. Mercifully, his agony didn't last long, and the morphine dulled the pain. She got rid of the plant immediately after inheriting the estate, but kept a handful of beans for her seed collection.

Good thing, too. During the endless weeks of bickering with her second husband before he died, the castor bean's large, lush palmate leaves and bright red female blossoms—so perfect for the cozy, controlled environment of the solarium—had reminded her of the happier days of her first marriage.

Perhaps the plant could work its magic again this time around. She would have to be careful to wash her hands thoroughly after handling any part of it. But she always washed her hands after gardening, so that was no deterrent.

Their second anniversary was fast approaching—it would fall on the first Friday of September, in less than a week. One morning, over breakfast he said, "A pod of whales has been sighted off Georges Bank. Shall we try for it?"

The prolonged silences at meals had become almost as unbearable as the idea of quarreling over shared activities. She'd been taking more of an interest in sailing since their voyage together early in July, trying to jump-start a conversation on a topic he knew well and might take some pride in explaining.

The strategy worked, up to a point. His answers were desultory, rarely more than a single word or sentence. For instance, the sandbags she noticed in the "bilge," the space under the floor of the cockpit? "Ballast, for solo navigation." Period.

She'd had to read about it online. The Dandy was a 25-footer designed, ideally, for a crew of four. Sandbags below made up for the weight of missing crew members, helping to keep the boat upright in rough weather and thus easier for a single person to handle.

Still, the answers were answers and he seemed pleased that she was interested. She was pleased that he was pleased.

"Is Georges Bank very far?"

"We could get there and back in a long day, if we left at dawn."

She recalled whale-watching with him a year ago at Stellwagen Bank, on the eve of their first anniversary, and how much, to her surprise, she enjoyed it. Georges, however, was much farther away than Stellwagen, and an entire day on the water could play havoc with her stomach, even on a full dose of Dramamine.

But how could she pass up this opportunity?

"We'll take a picnic lunch," she said brightly.

They smiled at each other for the first time in weeks.

The squall arose earlier than predicted and it was at least another hour before they'd get to the place he had in mind. The wind had shifted to the east, forcing him to lower the sails and run on fuel. Tacking into the wind would take too long. He'd brought several extra gas cans for this eventuality.

She'd noticed and asked about them. He explained they were in case the wind speed was low. The forecast was sunny and mild, he told her. "Sails might not get us there and back before dark." The boat might even be becalmed.

The weather when they started out was sunny, yes, but not mild, with winds out of the south up to 15 knots. Choppy enough to require two doses of Dramamine. She took the second right after lunch: ham, cheese, and mustard on rye (his favorite), with pickles and a Mexican bean salad.

She went right out.

No need to slip an extra dose into the iced tea.

He loved Mexican food, and so did she. That's why he thought she must be feeling sea-sick when she put down the remains of her sandwich and refused to eat anything more.

"You haven't even touched the beans," he said.

She smiled and said, gamely, "You know they give me flatulence!"

He had to admit she was a good cook. That was one of the many reasons he'd married her. And the sex. Despite her looks. Now the good cooking was all that was left, although to judge from her reply, her sense of humor seemed about to make a comeback.

How to do it had stumped him, once he decided. The thought of her allergy to nuts immediately came to mind. But he knew it wasn't life-threatening unless the dose was massive enough to be detectable at first bite. Besides, in almost two years she'd never once let him enter the kitchen, not even to do the dishes.

It was a shame, wasn't it? A shame that money made such a difference to her. Would he have cared that much if their positions were reversed, if she were the one whose finances had hit a reef? Would he have made every day a trial of silent accusations, every meal sheer torture? He liked to think not. Still, he knew himself well enough to recognize that he'd never really been tested. Until now. Look at him, just an hour away from throwing her into 7,000 feet of water with a sandbag tied to her ankles.

Her change of mood the last couple of months had almost persuaded him not to go through with it. But he needed the money.

After lunch he'd told her not to worry. Nothing to see for another hour or two. He'd wake her as soon as he saw the first spout.

Instead, he'd continued past the little fleet of commercial whale-watching boats, heading for the edge of the Continental Shelf. He would not take the risk of being seen, and he felt the need to sink her "deeper than did ever plummet sound." (He knew The Tempest almost by heart, and felt a special affinity with Prospero. Imagine navigating a dingy all the way from Italy to Bermuda single-handed!) It was an irrational need, but an urgent one. Why not indulge it? He had the time, and the gas.

But the squall had come early.

And with it, the nausea.

He'd weathered many storms at sea worse than this, but not even in the worst of them had he felt sick. For the last half-hour he'd been struggling to keep his lunch down and the winds were approaching gale force. Now he was beginning to cramp.

He was squinting at the compass next to the tiller, wiping the rain from his eyes, when he heard his name. Looking up, he saw her staring at him.

Even before she opened her eyes she could tell something was wrong. She was lying on her side, on a hard surface, and she couldn't move. Her hands were tied behind her at the wrists and her knees and ankles were tightly bound together. Big rain drops were pelting her face.

She opened her eyes and saw her husband at the tiller, bent over 90 degrees from upright. She called his name.

He seemed surprised to see her, as if she'd been deposited there by a wave washing over the gunwale.

The boat was rocking and pitching, and something heavy was keeping her from moving her feet. When she sat up to look, she saw it was a sandbag. Probably the one at the top of the pile in the bilge. The one she'd intended to use herself.

How had she not suspected?

The moment of self-reproach passed quickly. She knew how. She'd had other things to think about.

The means of killing him had never posed a difficulty, any more than it had when she'd mercifully ended her first husband's death agonies and relieved herself of the terrible burden of witnessing and cleaning up after them. Merely mentioning assisted suicide to the attending physician had been counter-productive, prompting him to ration the morphine, which just made things worse. Even a modest amount of the sedative, however, helped both her and her husband cope with the most distressing symptoms. Throwing up blood—what clearer sign of death by stomach cancer do you need? The doctor felt no need to look for one, despite his earlier alarm.

She'd nursed her second husband at home, unassisted, and buried him in the raised zinnia bed that he'd made for her when they were newlyweds. She reported him missing and, after five years, had him legally declared dead.

This one, though . . . aside from the diabetes, this one was healthy as an ox, and two husbands out of three mysteriously disappearing would certainly raise suspicions, wouldn't they?

Divorce was out of the question. She knew from the bitter experience of her second marriage that Massachusetts law required the "equitable distribution" of all combined assets, whether or not ownership was shared and regardless of when the asset—say, her house—was acquired. If they split up, the entire estate, along with its gardens, would have to be sold and the profits divided 50-50, or she'd have to pay her spouse the equivalent of his half. (She felt some consolation when she imagined him having to sell his boat.) All the while, her mate's potential contribution to their combined liquid assets would continue to shrink while the lawyers haggled over terms.

Ricin, especially in its refined form, had proven effective and reliable. It took a while to finish the job—up to three days, depending on the means of entry (inhalation, injection, or ingestion)—but in nearly all cases, the victim was incapacitated within hours and easily handled from then on.

And it was relentless. Vomiting, diarrhea, medicinal purgatives, none of them made any difference once it entered the bloodstream. You couldn't "use it up." It kept going until you were dead.

She'd considered lacing a few of his insulin bottles with the stuff, but the danger of discovery was too great. One look at the corpse, absent an alternative explanation, would send any responsible physician to the coroner's office, and there were means nowadays to test for ricin poisoning at autopsy.

No, the body would have to disappear. But how?

Two months ago, as their July sailing date drew near, she started asking him about the compass, the radar, how to start the engine, connecting fuel lines. It wasn't just to lower his guard with flattery. She would have to sail back to Boston Harbor by herself. (She'd already composed the sad tale of his tragic "accident at sea" to her satisfaction.)

She was getting ready to propose they take a long sailing day like this one, before the season ended, but he'd saved her the trouble.

And now look.

"I wish you'd stayed asleep," he said. "Perhaps another Dramanine? It will make this easier."

For him. He could pretend she was already dead.

The boat gave a sickening lurch and the prow rose high in the air before crashing down and spraying them with seawater. She resisted the sudden urge to throw up. It took every ounce of will power. She had something to say.

Before she could open her mouth, however, he groaned, leaned over the stern and vomited.

Turning to face her, he wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. "Maybe I'm the one who needs it."

"You're not seasick," she told him, raising her voice as the wind began to shriek. "You've been poisoned. Ricin, in the bean salad. From the castor beans."

He seemed not to understand, or not to have heard her clearly.

"Ricin!" she yelled. "It's a deadly poison made from castor beans!" He continued to stare, trying to make sense of what she was saying.

"The beans that I grew in the solarium! You ate some in the salad!"

The syntax of his emotions was clearly legible on his face: shock, hurt, and, as another stab of pain bent him double, fear.

This time he couldn't aim anywhere but between his legs.

"There's no antidote," she said, lowering her voice as the wind caught its breath. She wasn't going to pretend she had one, or knew how to get one. That wouldn't motivate him to untie her. He'd simply torture her until she admitted the truth, then throw her overboard anyway. She couldn't stand pain, in any degree, and she needed to keep her wits about her.

"You won't survive this, so why go through with it?"

Did he believe her? No matter, she'd gotten his attention. Now she needed to keep it until the pain and fatigue became too much for him to do anything but lie in a bunk in a fetal position. If he could make it to a bunk. Then they might ride out the storm. Perhaps she could even work herself free and finish what she'd started. If not, there was still a chance of rescue. It was a very slim chance, and his corpse, whether lying in a bunk or on the floor of the cockpit half immersed in seawater and vomit, would need explaining. In any case, she had no chance of surviving more than two minutes if he tossed her overboard.

Why hadn't he already?

Then it occurred to her: he was heading for a particular spot and the storm had slowed him down. She was supposed to be asleep. He was using up fuel and it would be dark soon. If he didn't reach his destination in the next few minutes, he'd have to settle for dumping her pretty much anywhere.

That moment arrived with the thought of it.

As she watched, he fastened the tiller and stood, trying to remain upright while the boat bucked and yawed. Another spasm brought him, groaning, to his knees, within inches of the sandbag. He reached for it blindly, his back hunched and his head lowered in the posture of a supplicant, as if the object of his worship might, in answer to his prayers, levitate and fling itself over the gunwale.

Before it could, he retched, coughing.

Little came up, but he gained a moment of relief. Raising his head, he grabbed the sandbag and tottered to his feet.

He was about to pitch it over the side she was sitting on when the boat rolled violently in the opposite direction. A wave towered up behind her and broke, flooding the cockpit and rushing out the other side. It lifted her off her seat and flung her against the low wooden railing across from her. Something cracked and she felt a sharp, searing pain in her upper arm. Turning onto her back, she found herself upside down in the middle of a raging cataract flowing over and around her. The boat hesitated, then resumed its ascent under her feet until her head was under water. They were about to capsize, and she was about to drown.

For what seemed like forever, but could only have lasted seconds, she hung there, her crushed fingers grasping at the low rail underneath her. Then the rail slid away and the surge of water pouring out of the cockpit began carrying her out to sea.

The next thing she knew, the gunwale was rising beneath her butt. As soon as she felt the rain on her face, she gasped for air. The hull continued to right itself until she found herself suspended over the railing, like a gymnast about to do a reverse handspring into the sea.

The pain in her arm was now an intense, aching throb that flashed white hot as she sat up and maneuvered to let her butt slide down onto the seat without crushing her hands.

Her feet were in water halfway to her knees and beneath the surface she could see the sandbag that had saved her life.

She didn't see her husband anywhere.

Of the dozens of cases Pete Fallon had investigated in more than two decades, he remembered maybe two or three in any detail. He'd remember this one, he told himself.

Not for the drama, although that alone made it memorable.

Trawler caught in a storm, heading for port. Captain spots a sailboat clearly in trouble—heeling over, bobbing like a cork. No distress signal, nothing on the ship to shore. He gets out the binoculars. Sees something to tell the grandkids, when he has them.

A woman is sitting in the cockpit, bolt upright, with no arms (apparently). And there's no one at the tiller. Scanning the boat from stem to stern, he sees only the woman.

As he's looking, the woman stands up and leans forward and starts screaming at him, and doing a crazy kind of dance, twisting her body back and forth and then hunching over, as if in pain, before being thrown back onto the seat. He's dumbfounded until he realizes her arms are tied behind her and the gyrations are all she can do to say, "Come and save me!"

This is way the fuck out beyond Georges Bank. Takes the Coast Guard more than two hours to get there. Meanwhile the captain is staying close, in case the boat capsizes and his crew will have to do a rescue at sea. The woman remains seated once she sees the trawler is heading in her direction. The captain gets near enough to use the bullhorn, let her know help is on the way. He's not about to try rafting up, not in those seas, and there's no point in tossing the woman a tow line if she can't use her hands.

By the time the Coast Guard arrives, the wind has died down enough to make things easier. The woman is brought on board and given medical attention. Her arm is broken above the elbow and she's in shock. The boat is tied to the trawler and towed back.

Next morning, her arm in a sling, she's telling Fallon and his partner how it happened. After she's released from the hospital, she's telling reporters. Before dinnertime, the story is item one on every news and social media outlet in the country. Hell, in the world.

It goes like this:

The woman and her husband went out for the day to watch whales at Georges. She took some Dramamine and fell asleep. When she woke up, she was tied at the wrists, knees, and ankles and a sandbag was attached to her feet. Her husband was going to throw her overboard, report her missing, and inherit the estate.

Yes, she said, they'd been "having difficulties." His investments were tanking, and it had soured their relationship. But she'd never in her wildest dreams . . . .

Anyway, a storm comes up, and just as her husband is about to throw the sandbag over the side, a big wave crashes over them. The sandbag falls back into the boat and he's swept overboard.

The sandbag is what made the story newsfeed caviar and turned it into a meme and a hashtag. The irony! Saved by what was supposed to kill her!

But there was something not right. Fallon knew it in his gut.

Clearly, she couldn't have tied herself up like that, and she wasn't about to break her own arm just to make her story more convincing.

Fallon was suspicious because many years ago, when he was just a Detetctive Sergeant, he'd helped investigate a ricin poisoning, and when he read the autopsy report on the husband, he did a double take.

They'd found the man the next day, floating not more than a quarter mile away from where his wife was picked up. Death by drowning, said the coroner. No doubt. But stomach contents showed food residue from a recent meal that included red kidney beans and some other bean that was hard to identify, it was so mashed up. Could be pinto. Moreover, there was hardly any residue to examine, and if these were the remains of the bean salad the woman said she'd prepared for lunch, there should have been more. Beans are hard to digest. That suggested the man had vomited, perhaps several times. The stomach lining was inflamed and ulcerated—not a symptom of motion sickness. Food poisoning, perhaps?

More tests could have been done to determine the cause of the inflammation. But the higher-ups said it would be a waste of time and money. The coroner was satisfied. Whatever the man had eaten, he died from breathing water.

She arrived at Tonno before Fallon did and was reading the menu as he approached the table. To put her at ease, he'd told her he was working on a book about true crime, with a nautical theme. Her story would make a great chapter. It sounded bogus even as he'd said it. But it worked.

He hadn't told anyone he'd arranged to meet with her. Not colleagues, not friends. Not even his wife. If what he suspected didn't pan out, he'd be saved the embarrassment.

She was even uglier than he remembered from the interview at the hospital. Uglier, certainly, than her newspaper photos let on.

That wasn't hard to square with her account of her first date with the deceased. Any man would have stayed silent, bolting his food to shorten the ordeal.

She saw the look on his face, and when she finished her story added, "We didn't have much in common, including good looks. But we thought alike on the things that mattered. And we shared the same . . . ." She hesitated. "We shared the same dislikes."

"Snoring?" he asked. "That was his biggest 'dislike'?"

"No," she replied, smiling wistfully. "Our marriage taught both of us, I think, that there are worse things. Like quarreling over money."

She was teasing him, wasn't she?

"So, you really were 'soul-mates'?"

"If by 'soul' you have in mind something more meaningful than a TV personality, then yes."

Fallon wondered how far to push it.

She gave him an opening.

"I'm still not sure why you wanted to get in touch with me, detective. For your book, I mean. My statement included everything of any importance, surely."

He decided to plow ahead.

"This 'soul-mates' thing, 'thinking alike,' all of that. It only went so far, right? You both hated quarreling over money, but you didn't try to kill him and throw him overboard in a storm at sea."

He could see she understood him. He wouldn't have to spell it out.

"I didn't need the money," she said. After taking a bite of her sea bass and chewing it thoroughly, she added, "And I fell asleep."

He expected her to drop the subject, but she didn't. She started talking in hypotheticals, how it might be done, the difficulties. He didn't have to mention castor beans. She volunteered the information, including how lethal they were.

"My first husband loved that plant—strictly to look at, of course!"

"Do you still grow it?"

"I stopped for a while. It brought back painful memories. But I started again, eventually. The pain diminished, and I was reminded of what it meant. What it meant to us both."

As they waited for the check, she rose to visit the ladies' room, taking her purse with her.

He asked the server for a container to take the rest of his chicken piccata home with him.

"It needed salt, by the way," he said.

She returned as he was signing the credit card slip.

"How was the sea bass?"

"Delicious," she said.

"Didn't need salt?"

"I never add salt."

She preceded him to the door. As he reached for the box of leftovers he glanced down, out of habit, to make sure he'd taken his credit card.

That's when he noticed the salt shaker was missing.

It had been there, of course, right next to the pepper grinder. He'd used it during the meal.

Had it been there when he was waiting for the check? If not, when had it gone missing?

When she'd left for the ladies' room.

I never add salt.

She'd arrived before him.

He felt queasy.

He put the box of leftovers on the table and headed for the door. After three steps, he turned back.

Someone might feed it to a pet.

Also, the doctors at the emergency room would need it, for testing.

Addison-Gilbert was the nearest hospital. Five minutes, tops, with the siren. Driving himself there, he considered the possible outcomes.

If the test was negative, the shame and ridicule--the whispers, the nickname (there'd be one, for sure)—would follow him the rest of his life.

Fine. At least he'd have a life.

And she'd have a good laugh.

If it was positive, he might still survive. Early treatment upped the chances.

If he didn't, the coroner might like to know.

THE END