Stork Raving Mad

by Donna Andrews

  I was immensely relieved. Dad was an avid reader of mystery books and always loved the idea of being involved in a real-life case, even—or perhaps especially—if he was a suspect. But he could hardly nominate himself as the killer if the chief himself could alibi him.

  The chief punched a few buttons on his cell phone. I closed my eyes and tried to demonstrate my complete lack of interest in eavesdropping during the chief’s brief conversation with the mayor.

  “Lucky thing, your dad being with me at the vet’s,” the chief said, after he and the mayor had said their goodbyes. “That makes him practically the only person associated with this household who isn’t a suspect.”

  “Including me,” I said.

  “Including you,” he echoed. “Though I have to admit, I can’t help but consider you a long shot.”

  “Because of your profound respect for my character, or because you don’t think a pregnant woman capable of murder?” I asked.

  “Never mind,” he said. “Shall we continue our discussion?”

  “What about Horace?” I asked. “If you’re having Horace do the forensic work—”

  “Horace and Sammy were at the veterinarian’s office with your father and me,” the chief said. “Some fool tourist ran over Sammy’s dog, Hawkeye, this morning. Didn’t even stop to see if the poor beast was all right. Which he will be,” he added, noticing my anxious face. “But it took Doc Clarence an hour and a half of surgery, with your Dad helping out, while Horace and I calmed Sammy down and got a description of the car. Been a lively morning already.”

  “And now this,” I said, shaking my head. “By the way, don’t you want to tell Dad about his temporary appointment?”

  “Good point.” He started to sit up, realized the chair wasn’t about to let him, and then tried again. He managed to lever himself out, which was more than a lot of people could, but he gave it a thunderous glance once he’d escaped. “Though I don’t know why I bother. He’s been acting as if he already had the job from the moment he arrived on the scene. But still, your father’s—”

  “Chief?”

  Cousin Horace. With Dad right behind him.

  “We have good news, sort of,” Horace said.

  “Sort of?” the chief echoed. He glanced back at the chair, then changed his mind and leaned against the desk.

  “Tawaret didn’t do it.”

  “Tawaret?” the chief asked. He pulled out his notebook and flipped a few pages forward. “Who the hell’s Tawaret?”

  He glared at me, as if rebuking me for leaving out a critical suspect.

  “Meg’s hippopotamus statue,” Horace said. “It wasn’t the murder weapon.”

  “You’re sure?” the chief said.

  “Reasonably sure,” Horace said.

  “We’ll know more at the autopsy, of course,” Dad said. “But I think the evidence is fairly conclusive.”

  “I thought you found strands of her hair on the hippo, and the dent in her head matches the thing’s snout,” the chief said. “If she wasn’t hit over the head with it—”

  “She was,” Horace said. “But that’s not what killed her. She was already dead when the blow was struck. No bleeding.”

  “Exactly,” Dad said. “It could be a natural death, but more likely she was poisoned. You might want to secure the kitchen.”

  Bad news for the paella makers. The chief pulled out his cell phone again.

  “What was she eating?” he asked, as he pushed one of his speed-dial numbers.

  “Weak tea,” I said. “And lightly buttered toast. You might want to see if Rose Noire took the same thing to the other prune.”

  “The other what?” the chief said, frowning.

  Oops. Better not explain. I’d just let him try to figure out if he’d misheard or I’d misspoke.

  “The other professor,” I said. “Dr. Blanco, the one who came with Dr. Wright. I could be wrong, but I think they both ordered weak tea and toast.”

  “And prunes?” the chief asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, wincing. “Ask Rose Noire.”

  “Great,” the chief said. “Which reminds me—Dr. Langslow, the mayor sends his regards and asks if you’ll fill in as acting medical examiner while Smoot’s away.”

  “Shouldn’t that be acting acting medical examiner?” I said. “Since Smoot—never mind.”

  The chief was glowering at me.

  “Splendid,” Dad said.

  “So carry on, and keep me posted,” the chief said. “One other thing—”

  Dad and Horace both paused in the doorway and looked back expectantly.

  “We don’t tell anyone about this,” the chief said. “Apparently Dr. Blake has already spread the word that she died from being hit over the head. So let’s leave it that way. Let everybody think that’s what we think.”

  “To weed out false confessions,” Dad said, nodding vigorously.

  “And to create a false impression of security in our killer,” the chief said. “If he doesn’t know we know about the poison, maybe he’ll think he’s got plenty of time to dispose of the evidence. So don’t say anything to anyone about poison. What should we say she died of?”

  “Blunt force trauma to the upper right portion of the occipital bone,” Dad said.

  “Too specific,” the chief said.

  “I’m the one most people are going to be interrogating,” I said. “How about if I just say it looked to me as if she was hit on the back of the head with something.”

  “That’s probably best,” the chief said. “Holding back information is one thing; deliberately spreading inaccurate information might be counterproductive.”

  “All right.” Dad sounded disappointed. “I’d better get back to my examination.”

  He and Horace popped back into the library.

  “There’s also the fact that anyone with half a brain could figure out that he’s lying,” the chief said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Dad’s enthusiasm for intrigue far exceeds his acting skills.”

  “I hope he’s not going to sulk about it,” the chief said.

  “He is,” I said. “But only for about five minutes. And I see your point. After all, if someone saw someone else deliberately putting poison in her tea—oh, my God!”

  “What?” the chief asked.

  “Señor Mendoza’s heart medicine. Did I mention that?”

  “No,” the chief said.

  “Of course I didn’t,” I said. “Because I thought she was killed with a blunt instrument. But now that we know she might have been poisoned—”

  “Just tell me about the blamed heart medicine,” the chief said.

  “He spilled it,” I said. “He handed the pill bottle to a student to open, and suddenly there were little white pills all over the foyer floor. And people crawling around everywhere picking them up.”

  “When you say people, you mean all those . . . potential suspects sitting around in your kitchen?”

  “Most of them,” I said. “I don’t think Art and Abe were here yet, or Mother and the Shiffleys.”

  The chief scribbled in his notebook.

  “Of course, that doesn’t mean there weren’t still pills lying around when they got here,” I said. “Señor Mendoza didn’t seem at all worried about getting them all back. That’s why Dad was at the vet, incidentally; because Spike swallowed one, and we were worried about what it would do to him.”

  “He mentioned Spike might have swallowed something,” the chief said. “But just then Sammy came running in with Hawkeye, so I never heard the details.”

  “Anyway, there were pills all over the front hall and probably still are some. I hope Clarence keeps Spike until we can give the hall a thorough vacuuming. You might not know what they were—unless you talked to any of the dozens of people who saw what happened. But—”

  “Did the pills look something like this?” he asked. He held up a small yellowish-white pill.

  “Yes,” I said. “I didn’t know you had a hear
t problem.”

  “I don’t.” He tucked the pill back in his pocket. “I almost stepped on this in your foyer when I first arrived. So we make sure the tox screen looks for digitalis.”

  He glanced up and caught me suppressing a yawn.

  “You should rest,” he said.

  “If you’re finished with me, I could certainly use a nap,” I said.

  “Take care of yourself,” he said, shooing me in the direction of the door. “If you think of anything else, you let me know after your nap.”

  “Will do,” I said.

  I made my way down the long hallway, wondering all the while what it would take to install one of those rolling walkways they used in airports to move passengers from one end of the terminal to the other. Probably not very useful in the long run, so I returned to trying to figure out how we could install an elevator without ruining the look of the front hallway.

  I was still thinking about the elevator when I found myself at the bottom of the stairs. To my surprise, the siren call of my nice, comfortable bed wasn’t as strong as it had been a few minutes ago. Okay, my eyelids were still drooping, but I was also dying to find out what all those witnesses, suspects, and innocent bystanders were up to in our kitchen.

  And also to my surprise, I was hungry. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten—breakfast? Had I had a midmorning snack? Even if I had, odds were it was time for lunch.

  I braced myself in case the kitchen still reeked of seafood and flung open the door.

  Dozens of anxious faces looked at me. And I seemed to have interrupted a migration in process. People were slowly filing out the back door, many of them carrying kitchen chairs. Sammy was standing by the door, holding a clipboard, supervising the departure.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Chief’s orders,” Sammy said. “He said he wants everybody out of his crime scene until Horace has a chance to check it out, and until Horace says otherwise, the whole house is the crime scene. So we’re taking everyone out to the barn.”

  Wasn’t the chief worried that some of these people—including the poisoner—might begin to suspect that he had a particular interest in the kitchen?

  “He’s probably just tired of people sneaking out of the kitchen and coming to the library to bother him,” I said.

  Sammy chuckled slightly.

  “You could be right,” he said. “We’ll have an easier time keeping them out of his hair if they aren’t in the house.”

  I wasn’t sure how much evidence they’d find in the kitchen, though, even if the murderer had done something there to poison Dr. Wright. Clearly someone had made a start at cleaning it. Probably Rose Noire, who cleaned furiously whenever she had to get something out of her system—like Dr. Wright’s rude treatment of her.

  Though it would be interesting to see if anyone had insisted on helping her.

  “By the way, I was sorry to hear about Hawkeye,” I said to Sammy. “How is he?”

  His face fell.

  “He’ll be fine, thanks to Clarence and your dad,” he said. “But I’m worried that we won’t be able to catch the guy who did it, with all this going on. All our officers are here, and I’m not sure the state police are really taking the search seriously.”

  “Hey, if you got enough information for any kind of a search, that’s good, right?” I asked.

  “It was a dark blue SUV,” he said. “But I only got a partial license plate. Debbie Anne’s going to get the DMV to give us a list of possible vehicles, but the more time passes, the smaller our chances of getting useful evidence.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I patted him on the shoulder. I understood why the chief was putting all his officers on the murder investigation. But I also understood how Sammy felt about his dog.

  Just then I spotted the tea kettle on the stove and realized I hadn’t told the chief everything I knew.

  I ducked out into the hall, fished my cell phone out of my pocket, and called the chief.

  “I thought of something I should have told you,” I said. “I don’t know how I overlooked it—except when I was telling you about what happened, I thought Dr. Wright had been killed with the statue. So the tea didn’t seem important.”

  “What tea?”

  I glanced up to make sure there was no one in the living room and cupped my hand around the cell phone.

  “The weak tea Dr. Wright drank, along with her dry toast. Rose Noire made it for her,” I said as softly as possible. “I think that might be how she got the poison.”

  A pause.

  “You think your cousin poisoned Dr. Wright?”

  “Good heavens, no! She wouldn’t poison a fly. At least not deliberately.” I thought, briefly, of all those noxious healthy drinks she kept bringing me. But that didn’t really count.

  “Then why do you think I should know about the tea?”

  “She was making it in the kitchen,” I said. “Weak tea and light toast. I wasn’t there the whole time she was doing it, but when I was there, she was fussing nonstop about how rude and obnoxious Dr. Wright was and making it clear how much she resented having to take a tea tray to her.”

  “And there were other people in the kitchen?”

  “There are always other people in the kitchen,” I said. “The kitchen and the library are where people hang out, and just then Dr. Wright was tying up the library. So anyone could have been in the kitchen. And Rose Noire wasn’t just brewing tea and slopping it into a mug; she was running from the kitchen to the pantry, arranging the sort of gracious tea tray Mother always insists on.”

  “Yes, I saw it in the library,” the chief said. “The black china made a nice, gruesome touch in the crime scene photos. Did anyone help Rose Noire?”

  “Not that I saw,” I said. “But everyone would have known who it was for, and anyone who wanted to spike the tea or the sugar bowl would have had plenty of chances while Rose Noire was fussing over the napkins and arranging the flowers.”

  Another pause. A long pause.

  “So if the poison is in the tea—” he began.

  “Or the toast, or the sugar bowl, or anything else on the tray.”

  “—you want me to know that Rose Noire didn’t do it.”

  “I want you to know that Rose Noire isn’t the only one who could have done it,” I said. “That’s all. And that she might have some idea about who was hanging around and had the opportunity.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “All I can think of for now,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Now get some rest.”

  It sounded like an order. And, while he probably wouldn’t believe it, an order I planned to obey.

  As soon as I figured out what the loud voices in the kitchen were all about.

  Chapter 13

  I stuck my head back into the kitchen. The last few of its former occupants were filing out—Ramon Soto, Bronwyn Jones, and Dr. Blanco, supervised by Sammy and a deputy I recognized as one of Randall Shiffley’s cousins.

  “I insist that you present my request to Chief Burke immediately,” Blanco was saying to the deputies. He could have used some speech lessons. His voice, normally rather high and thin, had a tendency to squeak when he tried to raise it in emphasis.

  “I’ll do that, sir,” Sammy said. “I’m sure he’ll get to you as soon as possible.”

  “I have a very busy day,” Blanco said. “And this disruption is intolerable!”

  Ramon muttered something in Spanish. Bronwyn tittered. Blanco shot him a dirty look but didn’t reply. He strode out the back door, presumably to join the rest of the suspects in the barn.

  “What a jerk,” Ramon said. “Thinks he’s more important than everybody else.”

  I’d have diagnosed Blanco as having an inferiority complex myself.

  “Mr. Soto?” Sammy said. “Chief’s waiting.”

  “Right,” he said. Head down, shoulders hunched, he stumbled toward the door to the hall. Sammy followed
him.

  “See her out to the barn, will you?” he said over his shoulder to Deputy Shiffley.

  The door closed. Bronwyn turned to stare at me and the deputy with arms crossed and a frown on her face.

  “Don’t look at me,” I said. I looked longingly at the refrigerator. I’d intended to rummage in it for something suitable to eat. At the moment, suitable meant anything my temporarily picky appetite could tolerate that was still in its original sealed container. But I’d forgotten that it was an integral part of the crime scene. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat anything from there anyway—not until the police figured out how Dr. Wright was poisoned.

  “If you could follow me to the barn, ma’am,” Deputy Shiffley said to Bronwyn.

  “What about her?” she said, pointing to me.

  “I’ve already been interrogated and released,” I said.

  I could hear Bronwyn still arguing with the officer as I drifted out into the hallway.

  Something to eat and a place to sleep. I had some snacks stashed in my bedroom. But I stared up at the stairs in dismay. It had been a long morning. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go upstairs. If I did, I’d probably be too tired to come down later, which would mean I’d miss everything that was going on.

  As I was dithering over whether to climb the stairs, the doorbell rang.

  “Serves me right for hesitating,” I muttered as I made my slow way to the door.

  But when I opened the door and saw who was standing outside, my mood lifted.

  “Kathy!” I exclaimed.

  Kathy Borgstrom was dressed, as usual, almost entirely in black—black velvet coat, black tights, black wool cap, black platform boots, and black velvet gloves. A cobwebby scarf in neon pink added the one note of color—though very little warmth. But while her wardrobe might look as if she’d raided the crypt of a Goth-obsessed vampire, Kathy herself could never be described as anything but wholesome and perky. Not to her face, of course.

  “Meg!” she said. “You look enormous. How much longer?”

  “Anytime now,” I said. “Come in.”

  “I was kidding about the enormous part,” she said. “I hope you realized that. Most of you looks fine; you haven’t gained a lot of weight in your face or your hands or—”