A Subtle Change

“Before I sit down, sheriff, would you like some coffee and cake?” Norma Winstead said.

“Appreciate the offer, Norma, but I’ll just have the coffee if it’s all the same to you. The missus is on me about my blood pressure, and I don’t plan to give her any more ammo in that particular battle.” Bill Henshaw said.

“Nonsense, Bill! If you don’t go off blabbin’ to Mary I sure won’t,” Norma said, fetching two plates with floral patterns and a pair of heavy silver forks. “Besides, this is the recipe that’s won the blue ribbon at Payne County Fair three years running! Despite the previous reigning champion, miss Beverly ‘four-tiers-high-and-decorated-with-fondant” Fischer,” she said, pronouncing it as ‘fawn-DAWN-t’. “Sometimes folks just need the comfort of good old-fashioned chocolate cake to remind them of simpler times.”

Norma cut them each a slice and placed them on the coffee table. Bill’s piece was so thick he was reminded of one of the wedges you’d win for a correct answer in a game of ‘Trivial Pursuit’. He thanked her as she poured them both of a cup of coffee and, never one to deny southern hospitality, Bill dug in.

“By damn, Norma, I can see why this is award-winning,” Bill said.

“Bill Henshaw, you’ll do well to watch your mouth in this house. Don’t know how you keep the language at your home, but here we respect the Lord,” Norma said.

Bill flushed, “Yes ma’am, my apologies.”

Norma smiled and gave a quick laugh, “I’m sure the heavenly father will forgive you since you were under the influence of fine home-cookin’.” She took a seat on the recliner directly across the coffee table from the couch where Bill sat. The light slipping in between the blinds made the floral patterns on the furniture take on their own life, as though bioluminescent lilies and roses had grown into the upholstery. The house smelled of freshly brewed coffee and IcyHot. “Enough about all that, though, Bill. I’m sure you’re not here to entertain an old woman, so what can I do for ya?”

“Well Norma, it’s about Vern,” Bill said.

“Good Lord, not this again, Bill! It’s been almost four years and I can’t go a week without someone bringing up my dead husband. What’s the theory now, that I conjured up some devil or demon to scare the man to death?”

Bill put his hands up defensively, “Now hang on, I’m not suggesting anything. The only reason I’m here is because Sandra…” but Norma cut him off before he could finish.

“Well, obviously you’re here because of Sandra! I swear the only thing worse than being married to Vern for 38 years was being a sister-in-law to that harpy.”

“You see Norma, talk like that is why folks get suspicious of you.”

She sighed, took a bite of cake and a sip of coffee, her features slackening to a pensive visage. Bill had a bite and sip of his own while he waited. His years as sheriff had taught him that silence was more effective at getting answers than most questions. It didn’t hurt that the chocolate dessert was one of the most indulgent dishes he’d had in some time.

“So, what would you like to know this time, sheriff?”

They were back to ‘sheriff’ now.

“Look, I’m just trying to give Sandra some closure. Vern was the only family she had, and, unlike yourself, she wasn’t too excited to see him go. I’m not here to accuse you of murder or anything of the sort, but I promised I’d come talk to you again, just to get a fresh telling of the tale, so to speak. Maybe catch something we missed.”

“I don’t know what it is you’re hoping to hear that you don’t already know, but I suppose I’ve had worse table conversation before. Next time you darken my doorstep I think I’ll hide the cake, though,” she said. “Where would you like to start?”

“Just from the beginning, as best you can recall, please.”

“As I’ve told you before, the last time I saw Vern alive and awake, since I barely count a sleep-addled wave of the hand as awake, was Saturday evening.”

“Saturday, April 19th, correct?” Bill said.

“Yes, Bill, Saturday the 19th of April. The Saturday before Easter. Year of our Lord twenty-aught-three. Are you gonna let me talk, or would you like to tell the story yourself?”

Bill nodded his acquiescence, keeping his eyes trained on Norma, but staying relaxed as he could. Relaxed was best.

“It was Saturday evening. I was in the kitchen preparing the very same cake recipe you’re eating now, Billy Graham preaching something or other on the TV in the living room, and gospel music on the radio in the kitchen. No telling what songs were on. When you get to be my age, you’re just lucky if you remember to put your teeth in come morning. Anyway, so I’m mixing together my batter, humming along to who-knows-what, when the front door bangs open with a crack so loud, you’d have thought it was the rapture. I do my best to ignore it, thinking Vern will stumble his way to the bedroom and pass out like he’s apt to in that state. I figure keeping quiet was a slight better than dealing with an angry drunk.”

“But that didn’t work?” Bill asked.

“You know it didn’t.”

Bill nodded.

“He must not have been as drunk as he seemed, ‘cause he managed to close the door and, a minute or two later he starts screaming about bringin’ him some food.”

“Just ‘food’? Or something specific?”

“Just ‘food’! So, here I am in the middle of getting the cake together for the Easter potluck the next evening, Vern screamin’ at me like he’s the King of England and I’m his table wench. Well, I yell back that there’s leftover stew he can heat up himself because I was busy. Bill, you’d have thought I threw the stew at him the way he came storming into the kitchen, face red, breath stinkin’ of booze and smoke.”

Norma paused for a moment. She stared into her mug the way a fortune-teller looked deep into their crystal ball, searching for answers from the void.

“Vern storms into the kitchen, and he yells, ‘You’re too busy, eh? Too busy for your husband? The man who puts bread on this table and keeps this roof over your head? The man who pays for the precious eggs and flour you got mixed up in that bowl?!’ Then he snatched the bowl from me and flung it across the kitchen. I was lucky to only end up cleaning batter from the wall instead of replacing a window. Then he starts laughing this hateful laugh. Hateful like a bully who just knocked over the class nerd and couldn’t be prouder of himself. Then he says, ‘You don’t look so busy now. So, hurry and make me a sandwich!’ before going back to the living room and flippin’ the TV to some old war movie. I was next to tears, but I still made that sandwich. Even brought him a Coors in hopes he’d pass out so I could go about making a new cake.”

“Now it’s that sandwich I have questions about, Norma. You don’t think there’s any way you accidentally fed Vern something he wasn’t supposed to eat? You said yourself he had severe food allergies. Shellfish, nuts, dairy…”

“Norma Winstead does not put ingredients in her dishes by accident Bill, be they sandwiches, stews, or cakes. The only thing that sandwich was guilty of was too little mayo. Vern wasn’t allergic to eggs, thank goodness. Any of that other stuff and he’d need an EpiPen!”

“But his EpiPen was in the car and not the house?”

“Must’ve been so drunk he left it in the car that night. Who can say? Though your night crew deputies should be watching the streets a bit more carefully for drunk drivers,” she said, and Bill agreed, but only in his mind.

“So that was the very last time you saw him alive?”

“Not quite. I did see him that morning before leaving for church. They do sunrise service for Easter, you know, so I had to be there early. I woke him to tell him I wouldn’t be home ‘til late ‘cause I was going to the community Easter egg hunt to watch the kids play (and eat Mindy Turner’s potato salad) and to remind him about the stew in the fridge if he got hungry. ‘Course he was so hungover I don’t know that he remembered that little conversation. Anyway, a bit after one that afternoon I realize I’ve gone and left the cake at the house! So, I drive back, expecting Vern to be tying one on already, despite it being so early. My Sunday ritual was church and community, his was the sacred house of Jim Beam. I walk in the door and there’s Vern, sprawled across the floor, not movin’ a muscle. Immediately I know things aren’t right. He wasn’t moving, but it was a wrong kind of not moving. You know?”

Bill did, and he said as much.

“Well, that’s when I reached down to give him a shake and he was cold and he wasn’t breathing. No rise or fall in his body and no muffled snores, either. So, I called 911 and a half-hour later they pronounced him dead of massive heart failure.”

“Heart failure possibly related to anaphylaxis, correct?”

Norma’s silver eyes leveled Bill’s green ones and the next three seconds that passed could have been hours.

“They said it was a possibility,” she said, setting her mug down, keeping her gaze intent on his, “They also said that years of alcoholism could have finally caught up with him, or high blood pressure, or plain old age. The heart failure took him too quick, and you know as well as I do that the medical examiner didn’t feel the need for an autopsy. We really don’t know, do we?”

“No, I suppose we don’t know,” Bill said. He had finished his cake and coffee and left the empty plates on the table. “Though I would like to know why you didn’t keep a spare EpiPen around the house. You know, just in case?”

Norma shrugged, “We’re old retirees on a fixed income, Bill. Are you gonna pony up the extra hundred dollars for one?”

Bill sighed, nodded, collected his hat, and stood to leave. “Thanks for your time and your hospitality, Norma. I’ll try to stay out of your hair.”

“Now, now, you’re welcome over anytime you’d like if you want to chat about anything but this. I’ll never turn down the company of a strapping gentleman such as yourself, sheriff.”

Norma stood to see him out. They reached the door when Bill paused.

“I guess it was sort of grim luck you forgot the cake that day, huh?” he said.

“I guess it was.”

Bill smiled, nodded, and said, “One more thing, Norma. Strictly off the record.”

She looked bemused, “And what would that be, Bill Henshaw?”

“What exactly did you put in that cake to finally beat Bev Fischer?”

Norma’s smile stretched from ear to ear. “Oh, that! Well, strictly off the record? Sometimes folks need a change from what they’re used to in their food just like in life. So, I added nuts!”