Fed Up - By Jessica Conant-Park & Susan Conant Page 0,21
Gato, jumped onto the couch, positioned himself with his front quarters on Josh’s lap, and began purring loudly. “Hi, there, my friend.” Josh started patting Gato’s shiny coat. That darn cat, who loved Josh to pieces, fended off most of my own attempts to snuggle with him. To me, Josh said, “I’m so sorry you had to watch Francie die. And I’m sorry I wasn’t more help. I was feeling terrible, and I don’t know that I was thinking all that clearly. What a horrible thing for you to have to go through.”
“Josh, I can’t shake the image of Francie struggling for air. And her eyes were all glassy and unfocused. What do you think happened?”
“I’ve got one explanation for this.” He sighed. “But it’s not good.”
“There aren’t any good explanations, so shoot. Tell me what you think,” I said with a sniffle.
“I hate to even think it, but I wonder if Evan or Willie had something to do with it.”
Josh’s words shook me out of my tears. “What? You think Owen’s brothers did this? What on earth—”
“Hear me out.” He held out his hand to stop me from telling him he was out of his mind. “You know how Evan and Willie are. They’re always pulling practical jokes and goofing around. What if they thought it’d be funny to pull off a joke that ended up on television? To pull one on me? Remember when they stuck a few pieces of fish into the engine of Owen’s delivery truck? Once those things started rotting and the smell got into the driver’s area, even Owen knew that was not the normal way a seafood delivery truck should smell. They could’ve messed with the food or the wine to make me look terrible. I don’t know what they could’ve put in the food or maybe in the wine, but it’s a possibility.”
I froze. Far from hitting me as off-the-wall, the idea struck me as hideously possible. Owen swore that his brothers had always been a lot like Fred and George, Ron Weasley’s twin brothers, but that once Evan and Willie had read the Harry Potter books, they’d deliberately modeled themselves on the practical-joking tricksters. Until recently, their antics had simply provided a topic of lighthearted conversation, but as Owen and Adrianna’s wedding approached, I’d begun to share Adrianna’s fear that Willie and Evan would pull one of their stunts at the wedding, maybe even during the ceremony. I took a sip of tea and thought for a moment. “You know, it seemed obvious to me that Evan knew we were coming to the Wine and Cheese Shop. Willie probably called him to give him a heads-up. Evan had wine bottles open and breathing, and he had that platter conveniently displaying cheeses for you to sample. Do you think he could have put something in the wine? Or on the cheese? Or Willie did something to the lamb?” Oh, God, it would’ve been just like one of them to lace the food with laxatives to make everyone get sick on camera. But could laxatives have killed Francie? Could an overdose be fatal? Would they cause vomiting, though? I really didn’t know enough even to take a guess.
“I’m sure that Willie tipped Evan off,” Josh said. “And it would be just like the two of them to do something. But what? And what could have been so toxic it killed Francie that quickly? And, well, I don’t know . . .” He paused and frowned. “The more I think about it, I don’t know that they would have done something to make me look that bad. I don’t know if ruining my episode is really their style. Now, if Evan had given me a wine bottle that had a fake snake pop out when I opened it, that wouldn’t have surprised me. But I don’t know those two that well.”
“Ugh, I hope they don’t do anything stupid at Ade and Owen’s wedding. It would be just like them to pull some dumb stunt on the day of their brother’s marriage.” I could just imagine Adrianna’s bouquet shooting water into her face or the wedding rings sending jolts of electricity through the bride and groom.
Josh said, “So maybe there was some kind of bacteria in the food we bought. Like E. coli in spinach. Remember that? The arugula could have been tainted with E. coli. We keep hearing about all those food recalls and news reports on people dying from this kind of stuff.