cream skirt all fresh and ironed as if she wasnât travelling.
âGood morning, Maria. Gosh, you didnât sleep much, did you?â
âMorning, Hats. Tea?â I said, putting a third rusk on the plate for her.
âI am going to make an appointment for you with Doctor Walters,â she said.
We went and sat on the stoep, which was painted an oxblood red, and watched the sun lighting up the Groot Swartberge. Grey cliffs cast purple shadows on slopes of green. This range of mountains linked us all the way to Ladismith and went on beyond Oudtshoorn, towards De Rust.
âJessie went to the hospital first thing,â said Hattie. âSheâll come and report to us.â She looked at her watch. âAny time now. They wouldnât give her information last night, but she says a good friend of her motherâs is on duty this morning.â
I dipped one of the rusks into my coffee and took a bite. It was better than any mosbolletjiebeskuit I could remember. Which says something, because food memories often cheat on the side of sweetness. Hattie sipped on her tea and nibbled on the edge of a rusk, and I shook my head; she knows beskuit are meant to be dipped.
We heard a buzzing sound, and Jessieâs red scooter came zooming towards the house. Instead of driving up to the parking area behind the house, she pulled her bike to the side of the driveway and jumped off. She wore jeans and a denim jacket, and she took off her helmet and shook out her hair as she walked towards us.
I saw her face and did not need to hear her words to know: âHeâs dead. Slimkatâs dead.â
I dropped my mosbolletjie rusk into my coffee.
âDamnation,â said Hattie.
âAg, no,â I said.
âItâs so wrong,â said Jessie. âHe was such a gentle man.â
âHave they established the cause of death?â asked Hattie.
âAt first they thought it might be cholera or food poisoning. They pumped him with antibiotics.â
âBut what about the death threats? And the sauce bottle that Piet found under the Kudu Stall table,â Hattie said, âthanks to our clever cook here? Surely they needed to treat him for deliberate poisoning?â
âYes, but they didnât know what kind of poison. He was paralysed, and it wasnât long till he stopped breathing. Neither the hospital nor the LCRC â the Local Crime Registration Centre â were able to get test results in time.â
âHow did the poisoner know that Slimkat was going to eat that sauce?â said Hattie. âHow did they even know heâd go to the Kudu Stall?â
âHe just loved that kudu,â said Jessie. âItâs about all he ate. Though he did have roosterkoek and scrambled ostrich egg for breakfast.â
âDid Slimkat tell you this last night?â I said.
âJa, and I checked with Reghardt, who was following him. He couldnât get enough of that kudu, and he always put on that sauce from the yellow bottle.â
âSo someone else watching him wouldâve learnt the same thing . . .â said Hattie.
âI donât understand why other people didnât get poisoned by that sauce,â I said.
âI asked at the hospital,â said Jess, âand they had one other person admitted with vomiting. But he didnât have the other symptoms; it looks like he had alcohol poisoning. The sister said he was moederloos gesuip.â Drunk as a skunk.
âWhat would you do if you wanted to poison one person but not others?â said Hattie.
âMaybe the woman who served him put the poison sauce on his sosatie,â said Jessie.
âNo,â I said, âthe sauces were self-service, to speed things up.â
Hattie answered her own question: âIâd get in front of him in the queue, remove the good bottle and give him the poisoned sauce. Then Iâd wait till he was finished and take the poisoned bottle
Kathleen Brooks
Alyssa Ezra
Josephine Hart
Clara Benson
Christine Wenger
Lynne Barron
Dakota Lake
Rainer Maria Rilke
Alta Hensley
Nikki Godwin