Free Allergic to Death by Peg Cochran Page A

today.” Gigi slid her credit card across the wooden counter.
    Evelyn grunted. She fiddled with her glasses and squinted at the card before running it through the processing machine. “Shame about Martha Bernhardt.”
    “What?” Gigi was startled. Here she’d been searching for a way to bring up Martha’s name, and Evelyn had done it for her.
    “She a client of yours?” Evelyn paused with the bottle of truffle oil half in and half out of a Bon Appétit shopping bag.
    Gigi hesitated. Had Evelyn heard about the peanut oil and Martha’s allergy? Maybe she’d already read the paper and then carefully folded it back up and put it back in its wrapper? Gigi could feel her face getting red.
    “Neighbor of mine,” Evelyn offered in her usual terse style. She pulled a sheet of tissue paper from a roll and carefully wrapped both pieces of the tart pan.
    The front bell tinkled, and Gigi groaned inwardly. Just when she might have gotten somewhere with Evelyn!
    A bright-eyed, middle-agedblond woman approached the counter. She wore white capris, a lime green T-shirt and matching lime green canvas shoes.
    “I’ll be with you in a minute.” Evelyn looked up from placing Gigi’s pan in the shopping bag.
    “Oh, that’s okay.” The woman waved a hand toward Evelyn. “I’m just looking.” But instead of moving toward the shelves of merchandise, she continued to hover near the counter.
    “Sure I can’t help you with anything?” Evelyn handed Gigi her credit card receipt.
    Gigi hesitated. Just when she’d gotten Evelyn talking! “It really is a shame about Martha,” she agreed with an emphatic nod.
    The blond woman approached the counter eagerly. “Is that the woman who died in the car accident?” She lowered her voice. “I heard her death wasn’t completely natural…that some are calling it foul play.” She looked back and forth between Gigi and Evelyn like a spectator at a tennis match.
    Evelyn pursed her thin lips. She leaned over the counter, closer to Gigi and the blond. “I’ve heard the same thing.” She looked over her shoulder briefly. “I heard that something caused her to have that accident.” She crooked her left brow. “And I don’t think it was a heart attack like they’d have us believe,” she finished triumphantly.
    “I heard she was only in her fifties.” The blond looked from Evelyn to Gigi. “I don’t know about you, but that’s not old enough for a heart attack in my book.” She laughed huskily and patted her chest in the region of her own heart.
    Evelyn fiddled with a ball of twine that was sitting out on the counter. “Martha lived two doors down from me. And she was always working in that garden of hers—hauling bags of fertilizer, mulch and top soil as if they didn’t weigh a thing. Then she’d beoff on a long hike up the hills, swinging that walking stick she always took with her.”
    “There you go, then.” The blonde shook her index finger at them. “She was in too good shape to have a heart attack.”
    “Unless it was all that arguing that did her in. Bad karma.” Evelyn drew her lips back over her horsey teeth and brayed loudly.
    Gigi’s ears perked up. “Arguing?”
    “Yup. Martha and her neighbor, that woman who’s running the old Woodstone Summer Theater…what is her name? Give me a minute, it’ll come to me.”
    “Adora Sands?” Gigi prompted.
    Evelyn snapped her fingers. “That’s it. She moved in alongside Martha about six months ago, and it’s been nonstop crabbing at each other ever since.”
    “Oh?”
    “Bicker, bicker, bicker, they’re always at it.” Evelyn said. “First it’s Martha’s dog doing its business in Adora’s yard, then it’s Adora’s cat chewing on Martha’s prize roses. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.” She looked at Gigi. “Not that Martha was all that easy to get along with, mind you. We had our fights, too. The time my Howard accidentally blew some snow onto her driveway…” She raised her eyes and