He whistled softly. “In that one case, I’m in danger just for daring to sell her milk. When it comes to his wife, that is one mean ba — person.”
“Have you had any actual confrontations with Mr. Elias over... Mrs. Elias?”
“Ohhh yes. I certainly have. Please. You don’t want descriptions. I’m the only milkman in the area, and he insists on having everything delivered — from me, the grocer, the druggist... Otherwise, I’d never be allowed within blocks of that back door. Neither would the others. Just ask them. He tells us to come around, but he doesn’t like it, so I’m in and out like a bolt of lightning. I never saw a guy go so nuts for absolutely no reason. Unless he could read my mind.”
“Your mind in this case is not exactly classifying Mrs. Elias as... coyote bait?”
“Not even at ninety could that female be anything other than a wow. But besides being gorgeous, she’s married.” He shrugged. “I admire, maybe, but she’s not available, to my mind.”
“Scruples? Or self-preservation?”
He grinned. “Possibly a healthy dose of both.”
“Well.” She considered him thoughtfully. “I hope you’ll consider a favor I’m about to ask you. It’s going to involve your compromising your survival tactics a bit, I regret to say.”
“And what’s that?”
“Someone is in imminent danger of being murdered, and as distasteful as it is to me to get involved in others’ difficulties, someone very dear to me will suffer if I don’t. I thought of you immediately as a person who is in a unique position to help. You finish your work early, and so you’re available. You’re young, and you seem ablebodied. Your passable appearance is a bonus, but not necessary.”
“Oh yeah?” His eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. He waited, but she added nothing to her request. “And you’re not telling why, wherefore, or whereas?”
She laughed softly. He rubbed his forehead where for the first time she noticed faint freckles. “You’ve got a certain reputation, you know,” he said. His frown contained a small element of alarm.
She shrugged.
He sighed. “I’ve always been a sucker for a pretty woman.”
“Oh my word,” she said with a snort, but she’d plainly enjoyed the compliment.
“Okay,” he said. “Dare I mention that you will then owe me one?”
“I owe nothing. I ask for this favor with no strings, depending merely on the measure of altruism present in most human beings. But I will take care of any necessary hospitalization.”
He paled slightly. “Heh, heh. Funny you should mention that, but that’s not funny.”
She laid her long, graceful fingers across his wrist. “It isn’t meant to be funny. And you’re a fine man. A trifle shallow, but good-hearted.”
“Never mind that stuff, just tell me the details before I chicken out.”
“Well, to begin with, did you know that henbane, foxglove, lily-of-the-valley, and monkshood are all deadly poisons?”
He didn’t, so she explained.
Two days later, the witch, bearing a napkin-covered tray before her like jewels of state, entered Ike’s Fishmarket at the exact moment that the lunchtime crowd was at its peak. In triumph, she sailed across the damp floor, and as she presented him with the dish, she lifted the napkin away with a flourish. Revealed was a wide bowl filled with the stew that contains — with several varieties of fish and shellfish — chicken, sausage, spices, and a sauce on rice. A paella. And such a paella that filled the already odoriferous air with a rich, mouth-watering aroma.
The fishmonger, bursting with self-importance at this unheard-of attention paid him by the village’s most fearsome resident, was beside himself with pleasure and called to his customers and his wife to come see.
Mrs. Elias came running. When she saw what her husband held in his hands, she immediately understood that here at last was the witch’s gift she’d said she was bringing. So she added her thanks to his, although she was extremely relieved when the witch insisted that this dish was only for Ike, that no one else was to have so much as a taste. Ike’s chest swelled at this added attention. Mrs. Elias smiled graciously and modestly stepped away from her husband, allowing him to be the center of the commotion. His voice vibrated with excitement and pride.
At the witch’s urging, he took a serving spoon and shoveled a great mound of it into his mouth, swearing with his mouth full that it was his favorite dish.
The atmosphere in the shop became like a party, and Ike demanded that everyone join him, on the house, with various cold drinks from his cooler and things to eat from his deli case. The noise level rose and rose in the small market as Ike plowed his way through the bowl of paella to please the witch.
When he’d nearly disposed of it all, he wondered out loud where she’d gotten all the fish and shellfish it contained. He didn’t remember selling her any yesterday, or even the day before that. He stoked his mouth with the last spoonful. She murmured in reply that he had himself to thank for it, after all. When he raised puzzled eyebrows at that — his mouth being too loaded to open — she explained she had “borrowed” a few of Mrs. Elias’s lunches he had himself prepared to provide some of the ingredients of the paella. After all, he always fixed his wife such an overwhelming amount each day, much too much for only one woman.
Mr. Elias froze. His massive jaws ceased to chew and remained poised in place like a great masticating machine from which someone had pulled the plug. The color fled from his perspiring, ruddy face. He stood there holding the dish close under his chin, in the center of his shop, in a shock his friends couldn’t understand because the paella was no doubt as delicious as he’d said. Just as his eyes had reached the size of golf balls, he swiveled sideways, still not chewing or swallowing, to gaze at his wife. The moment he found her in the back of the crowd, he caught sight of the milkman seizing his bewildered wife and planting on her soft lips a kiss that would’ve brought cheers in the late night movies.
Ike promptly spewed the contents of his full mouth all over his disgusted customers, turned purple in the face, clenched his teeth, then reeled and hit the floor like a felled oak.
Days of hysteria, questions, and long testimonies fraught with suspicions and accusations later, Mrs. Elias attended the funeral of her husband. After a proper two more days, she installed an air conditioner in the upstairs rooms, where she then sat and spent hours doodling designs for a new sign proclaiming “Flower Shop and Nursery.”
It wasn’t long before she decided to visit the witch. She had a few questions she wanted answered.
She waited at the end of the path where the milkman had waited with his truck, although she didn’t know that, and felt sure the witch would know she was there and would come. And she did.
“It’s the oddest thing. I can’t help this feeling I have that somehow you’re connected with the death of my husband. But I can’t quite see how. Or...” She brushed glossy thick hair back away from her face. She sighed. “There was so much — so much going on that you couldn’t have known.”
The witch smiled. “On the contrary, my dear. There was much you didn’t know yourself. I knew it all. Here. Have a little of this.”
“What is it?”
“Carrot juice. You quite need building up. About that, your departed husband was quite right. Tell me, Mrs. Elias. When you began your new preoccupation with gardening, is that about the time Ike began his devoted lunch preparations for you?”
Mrs. Elias gazed with disgust at the orange liquid in her glass, then frowned off into the distance. The witch had taken her back to her house, and they sat on a bench beneath a huge shady tree. The breeze was pleasantly cooling. “You know, I think it was. Isn’t that funny?”