'Til Death Do Us Part Read Online Free

familiar with any antidepressants that interacted badly with food.
    “Must be an MAO inhibitor,” he said matter-of-factly.
    “Explain, please.”
    “Monoamine oxidase inhibitors are a type of antidepressant. They’re used as a last resort for people who don’t respond to the new drugs like Prozac. They were pretty popular at one point, but then it turned out there’s a big downside. If you mix them with certain foods, they can spike your blood pressure—in some cases fatally.”
    “What kinds of food?”
    “It’s a fairly long list. Any fermented or aged foods. Preserved or smoked meats—you know, salami, sausage, that sort of thing. Soy sauce, caviar, chicken livers, I think. Beer. And cheese. You gotta stay away from the cheese. In fact, the hypertensive crisis that can occur is sometimes called a cheese reaction.”
    “What happens exactly?”
    “Okay, stop me if I get too technical. All the foods I mentioned contain tyramine, a molecule that affects blood pressure. MAO enzymes in your brain get rid of any excess tyramine. But if you’re taking an MAO inhibitor, it eases depression but can’t stop tyramine from building up. You can end up with a brain hemorrhage.
    “So you’d be really stupid to eat any of that stuff intentionally.”
    “Yeah, but some people can’t resist cheating—just like on any diet. They sample a little bit and discover nothing bad happens. That’s because foods don’t always contain the same amount of tyramine. You may get away with cheating once or twice, but then it’s the third or fourth time when you have a reaction.”
    “How long would it take for the reaction to occur?”
    “A few hours, I’d say. It wouldn’t be instant.”
    “One more question: Could you murder someone on a MAO inhibitor by making certain they ate these foods?”
    “It’s always murder with you, isn’t it, Bailey,” he said, chuckling. “Well, I suppose you could sneak it into a person’s meal somehow. But what happens in most cases when there’s a problem is that people just go off their diets. They just give in to the temptation of a nice, runny Brie, and it proves to be a fatal mistake.”
    I thanked him for the info and signed off. Next I called
Gloss
’s food editor, who I figured might have crossed paths with Jamie and would have heard details about her death. No one picked up in her office. I left a message but knew from past experience calling her for recipes that it might be several days before she checked her voice mail.
    When I left my apartment building just after eleven, the streets had been thoroughly plowed, but the city still looked like a wonderland. The snow was the kind that twinkles in the sun, and it was still in pristine condition. There wasn’t enough traffic to have turned the piles of it along the road into giant black cinder blocks.
    The first half of the trip to Greenwich was easier than I’d expected. The highways were mostly clear, and traffic was light. But Greenwich itself was another story. Greenwich Avenue, a main street lined with impeccably maintained little shops, was clogged with cars. Obviously people had decided not to let the snow prevent them from shopping for expensive wines and cashmere sweater sets.
    My ex-husband had once suggested we look at the suburbs, and I’d nearly had a panic attack at the thought. I’d fallen in love with New York and couldn’t imagine leaving. Of course, this was before I’d figured out he had a hopeless gambling addiction. It would soon become apparent we wouldn’t be living
anywhere
together for the rest of our lives.
    When I finally reached Ashley’s town house, not far from the center of Greenwich, she answered the door as quickly as she had the phone. She was dressed in pale peach today and was holding a lit cigarette, one of those superlong ones that made it appear as if she were smoking part of the Alaska pipeline.
    “Nice place,” I said as I stepped inside. The living room was decorated within an