“Just checking back for food orders.” She stood poised with order pad and pen.
“Maybe in a minute, Viola Rose,” Miss Vivee said visibly annoyed with her. And then we all sat quietly. No one speaking as long as she stood there.
Viola Rose looked around the table, clicked the top of her pen a few times and said, “Well I guess I can take a hint.” She clicked the pen once more stuck it through her teased hair and put the order pad in her pocket. “Just give me a holler if you decide you want anything.”
As she walked off, Miss Vivee said, “Hadn’t I already told her that I would?”
I laughed. But Mac picked the conversation back up. He seemed keen to hear what Miss Vivee had to say.
“So, Vivee,” Mac said. “Who’s the murderer?” He eyed her. “Do you know?”
“Not yet. But I’ve been doing some investigating and I’ve got a list of suspects.”
“Really now. And who’s on the list?”
She looked at me and back at him. “It’s incomplete right now. But we’re on the trail of a couple of them.”
He nodded his head slowly, and let his eyes drift upward. He seemed to contemplate Miss Vivee’s theory of murder.
“So since you know that she was murdered, you must know how she was murdered,” he said bringing his eyes down to meet hers.
“I do,” she said and took a sip of her tea.
My ears perked up. She had yet to share her thoughts of how Gemma Burke was murdered with me. It seemed as if she felt like I should just have blind faith in her and follow her every command, without question, as she carried through on her inquisition.
I chuckled. And that was exactly what I had been doing.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I don’t know if Miss Vivee’s pregnant pause was for a dramatic effect or if she had lost her train of thought. But it took her a few minutes to fill us in on how she thought Gemma had been killed. The silence was killing me.
“When Gemma came into the Maypop she was coughing,” Miss Vivee finally said. “She couldn’t seem to catch her breath. Her face looked distressed and she complained to Renmar of chest pains and that she felt really tired.”
“Wait,” I said. “You told me she bounced in. Ponytail swinging. This is the first I’ve heard that she was sick when she came in.”
“I used the word ‘bouncy’ metaphorically,” she explained. “You know, to show the contrast in her state of being in a short amount of time – alive when she came in and dead when she left,” she explained.
I rolled my eyes.
“Anyway.” Miss Vivee directed her attention back to Mac. “She had on one of those running suits.”
“Sweats,” I offered.
“No. She wasn’t sweating,” Miss Vivee said. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see her.” She looked at Mac. “She didn’t see her.”
“No. I meant her outfit. We call them sweats.”
“Oh. Okay. I didn’t want Mac to think that sweating was one of the symptoms, because it wasn’t.” Miss Vivee took a sip of her tea. “Anyway. She coughed the entire time she was there until she fell over dead in her bowl of bouillabaisse. And her ‘sweats’ were dirty, like she’d been on the ground.”
A knowing smile crossed Mac’s face and his eyes lit up. “Like she had had a fall?”
“Exactly.” Miss Vivee’s eyes gleamed.
“You think she dry drowned, don’t you?” he said.
Miss Vivee practically leapt up in her seat. Then she turned and grabbed my arm and squeezed it. “See? He agrees,” she said to me. “Mac thinks the same thing I do. Gemma Burke was murdered.”
“Wait! What?” I was totally confused.
“Vivee thinks Gemma dry drowned.”
“In the bouillabaisse?”
“No.” Miss Vivee frowned up her face. “Not in the bouillabaisse,” she said with some frustration in her voice. “Are you always this slow?”
I opened my mouth to talk and then thought better of it.
“Tell her, Mac,” Miss Vivee ordered.
“From what Vivee tells me, I’d have to concur. I think she dry drowned.” He scooted up closer to the table. “You see people drown when their lungs can’t get enough oxygen from the air. Normally a person drowns because of some kind of fluid in the lungs. But dry drowning is when a person can’t pull in enough oxygen for some reason other than the presence of water.”
“Isn’t that the same as suffocation?” I asked.
Miss Vivee clucked her teeth.
“It’s the cause and effect,” Mac offered. “Gemma suffocated yes, but the reason was because she drowned.”
“The no water