by Alice Duncan
She did. And she told us. Running up to me, she took my hand, cast a tragic glance at the rest of my family and cried, “Kenny’s dead!”
I’d almost expected it, but I was shocked anyway. So shocked, in fact, that I darned near staggered backward. I gasped, “Dead?” My heart gave a gigantic plunge, and I instantly said another silent prayer for Kenny’s soul. I don’t think Methodists are supposed to do stuff like that, but I did it anyway.
Pa said, “Dear God.”
Ma said, “Dead! Sweet Lord have mercy!”
Hazel nodded solemnly. “They say he died yesterday evening, a little before midnight.”
“Good heavens.” Ma, a very nice person, was truly upset. “Does anybody know what happened to the poor boy?”
Hazel was in her glory now. She took a deep breath and elaborated in a dramatic whisper. “They say he was poisoned!”
“Ha! I knew it!” This, naturally, came from my obnoxious brother Jack.
We all ignored him, although Hazel’s announcement had caught our attention with a vengeance. Ma gaped at Hazel.
I said, “Poisoned? Are you sure? Who said so?” People died of all sorts of things in Rosedale, as they do everywhere, even ptomaine poisoning, but I sensed this wasn’t that kind of poisoning but more on the order of strychnine or arsenic or rat poison or something like that. If so, it was the very first time in my whole life that anyone with whom I was personally acquainted had been deliberately and maliciously poisoned. Well, anyone I knew about, anyhow.
Nodding solemnly, Hazel said, “I heard Dr. Hanks telling my father about it. At first they thought Kenny’d had a severe gastric attack or maybe ptomaine from something he ate at the picnic, but Dr. Hanks said they think it was some kind of poison. They’re going to go through . . . well, they’re going to check his stomach contents and make a firm determination.”
I recollected the basin Mrs. Gunderson had been carrying to Kenny’s sick room and grimaced. If what Hazel said was true, someone was going to analyze Kenny’s throw-up. Ew.
Hazel continued her recital, thrilled to be imparting such exciting news. “Dr. Hanks thinks it might have been arsenic.” She shot a glance around at my family. “He said Kenny’s lips were blue.”
“Good heavens,” I muttered, aghast. Then, of course, because I can’t seem to help myself, I tried to remember novels I’d read in which people had been poisoned with arsenic. Had their lips turned blue? I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure. Still, I figured Hazel had made up that part.
“Wow,” said Jack. “I gotta find Davy! I was right!” And off he ran, in spite of it being Saturday and having work to do, before Ma or Pa could stop him.
“I’m so sorry to hear about Kenny,” said Ma, and we resumed our duties.
“I’m going to go next door and see if Myrtle’s there,” said Hazel, and she vanished as quickly as she’d appeared, eager to spread the ghastly news. For some reason, that morning she made me think of a malaria-carrying mosquito, darting all over town to spread her sickness. I guess I was still shocked.
That day at the rodeo was a demonstration day, when some of the girls who’d grown up on ranches in the area showed everyone how well they could run the barrel race and do other stuff like that. It was kind of fun, although the mood of the spectators seemed to have been negatively affected by the events of the prior evening and the news of this morning. Most of the town was still buzzing about Kenny Sawyer.
“They’re having the funeral tomorrow, even though it’s not summertime and the body might keep for a little longer,” Hazel told me almost as soon as I sat myself on the fence. Myrtle was with me, and we exchanged a look of irritation. Hazel was a really uncomfortable person to be around, darn it. “He’s going to be buried here, in Rosedale.”
That news surprised me. “Why isn’t he being buried in Texico?” I could have smacked myself for asking Hazel anything at all, because once she got started, she tended never to shut up. Still, I was curious.
“Well, he was born here and his mother still lives here in Rosedale, you know. And so does Sarah. Now they’re back to saying he might have died of ptomaine poisoning.” She sounded disappointed. I guess she’d have preferred arsenic.
“Hmm. Wonder how he got it. The food was all either cold or hot. Heck, it’s autumn, not the summertime.” In the summertime, you had to watch out for ptomaine, because it got really hot in our neck of the woods and food spoiled quickly, especially stuff like eggs and things with mayonnaise in them. That was one of the main reasons folks in Rosedale were so happy to have electricity—refrigerators kept food ever so much fresher than ice boxes. Some of my friends who didn’t have refrigerators seemed to be ill with stomach problems all the time, and I suspected the problem was due to lack of refrigeration.
Hazel shrugged. “Ptomaine is funny like that.”
I didn’t think there was a single solitary thing funny about Kenny’s death.
A pall seemed to hang over the events of that day. Charles and Edward didn’t allow Esther Strickland out of their sight, so she couldn’t have flirted with Phil if she’d had a mind to. I was grateful for that, although Phil was too busy setting up for the rodeo to pay much attention to me, presuming he’d had any intention of doing so.
Applause during the events seemed halfhearted, and I felt bad for Gloria Detrick, who won the barrel race, because what should have been the highlight of her year had a great, big fat cloud hanging over it.
A couple of the men in town, who acted as rodeo clowns—fellows who distracted the bulls after they’d dumped their riders so the bulls wouldn’t gore or stomp the downed cowboys—demonstrated the tricks of their trade. They did a good job, but even their exhibition fell kind of flat. It was difficult to cheer and laugh when someone who’d been the star of the show only the day before was dead of some kind of poisoning. Could it have been ptomaine?
Ptomaine didn’t seem likely to me since nobody else seemed to be sick, although I certainly didn’t know a whole lot about poisons. I also know I wasn’t the only one pondering the matter. The whole town was on edge all that Saturday. Even the campfire and sing-along fizzled, and we all went home early, Mr. Gunderson’s request that we all “Say a prayer in church tomorrow for Kenny Sawyer’s grieving loved ones,” lingering in our minds and hearts.
I thought about how I’d feel if it had been Phil who’d been struck down, and decided I was being morbid. Still, my sympathy for Sarah Molina edged up a notch. And what about Kenny’s mother and sister? It’s got to be the worst thing in the world to lose a child. Heck, it’s hard enough to lose a friend, but a child? I decided it would be better to stop thinking at all, since my thoughts were so gloomy.
The next day was Sunday. Blue’s Dry Goods—along with every other business in town—was closed, and there were no rodeo events scheduled. I was glad of it. The atmosphere that had tainted Saturday lingered, and I didn’t want to pretend to be having a jolly old time when I was, in reality, worried and scared. It was kind of odd, too, that the atmosphere should be so solemn. Kenny wasn’t the first person in the world to get sick and die, after all. Maybe it affected us so greatly because he was stricken so suddenly. And via poison. The thought made me shudder.
Another idea crossed my mind, but it wasn’t very nice. But it occurred to me that since the revivalists had come in among us the atmosphere in town had changed somehow, and everyone was already on edge. You didn’t necessarily notice it at first, but there was just a hint of something weird going on. And it hadn’t been there before the arrival of the Stricklands and their entourage.
Or maybe I was just crazy. That’s probably it.
Naturally, the whole church was abuzz with gossip and speculation about Kenny’s death. I didn’t get three steps inside the sanctuary before Myrtle and her parents joined us. Myrtle whispered, “Oh, Annabelle, I just can’t believe he’s dead.”
“I can’t, either.” I frowned. “And of ptomaine, of all things.”
“It wasn’t ptomaine,”
whispered a voice behind me. I turned to discover—who else?—Hazel Fish. She looked positively avid. “It was arsenic.”
“Arsenic?” Myrtle and I chorused together in mutual shock. “How did they find out for certain?”
“Dr. Hanks told my father that after they did a thorough analysis of Kenny’s stomach contents, they discovered it was arsenic.” Hazel scurried off in her mosquito-like fashion, eager to stab somebody else with her terrible news, and I again shuddered at how analysis must have been undertaken.
Good heavens. That meant Kenny had died of deliberate, cold-blooded poisoning. Had probably died that way. I mean, I suppose it’s possible that someone could ingest arsenic by accident, although it seemed unlikely. Heck, if some salad or something on one of the potluck dinner tables had contained arsenic, wouldn’t we all have suffered? But still . . . deliberate murder? It was difficult to imagine such a thing.
And then, because it can’t seem to help itself, my mind went back to the library and that book of poisons lying open on the table. And to Sarah Molina, leaving the library after looking through the book. If it had been Sarah in the library, and I’m pretty sure it had been, although she didn’t turn around so I could see her face. I didn’t mention it to anyone.
“Who’d do such a despicable thing?” Myrtle asked of no one in particular.
“I don’t know.” What a melancholy morning this was turning out to be. And the funeral was yet to come. I sighed deeply.
Myrtle and I took off toward the choir room since we both sang in the alto section, and the rest of the family, except Jack, moved forward to sit in the pew they generally occupied, about halfway up the aisle. It defeats me to understand why nobody in church ever sits in the front rows of the sanctuary, but nobody ever does.
Taking my arm, Myrtle whispered, “Do you suppose the poisoning might have been an accident?”
“An accident?” I’d already thought a good deal about this question, and still hadn’t reached a conclusion. “I don’t know. How do people generally eat arsenic? Can you do it by accident?”
Myrtle looked at me blankly. “How should I know?”
I was feeling pretty blank myself, actually, never having considered any of this stuff before except when I was reading mystery novels. I read stories all the time in which people in pretty little English villages poisoned each other, but—at a rodeo? I don’t know. The whole poison thing didn’t make any sense to me.
“If it wasn’t an accident, then somebody must have wanted to kill him,” Myrtle pointed out. “I can’t imagine anybody we know doing something so wicked.”
“Actually. . . .” I paused and thought some more. Did I really want to say what I’d been going to say?
“Actually what?” said Myrtle.
“Um . . . nothing.”
What I’d been going to say was that I’d always heard that poison was a woman’s weapon of choice, probably because they found it difficult to get their hands on their male kinfolks’ guns. Could Sarah have poisoned Kenny because he’d been paying attention to Esther Strickland? I’d pondered that possibility before, and didn’t like it. Could Esther have poisoned Kenny because she was angry with him for showing attention to Sarah? I liked that possibility a tiny bit better, although not by much. Both scenarios were possible, if unlikely, but I decided it would be unwise to say so since people might chalk up the Esther idea to jealousy on my part. And they might be right.
And then I remembered the altercation the day before between Kenny and Armando Contreras. Good heavens, could Armando have poisoned Kenny? He’d been going to try to beat him to a bloody pulp. Although I’d never say so to Armando, he’d probably have had better luck with poison than his fists, since Kenny was a good deal bigger and younger than Armando and no doubt in better shape. I didn’t like that idea, either, mainly because I liked Armando, even though he was known to have a feisty temper. Given his temper, it seemed unlikely that he’d have used poison. If he got mad enough, he might shoot someone dead or try to pummel him to death, but poison? Unlikely.
Or—egad! Could it have been Josephine who’d done Kenny to death? She’d not only been flirting with Kenny, but with my brother-in-law Richard, too. Maybe, what with one thing and another, she’d slipped a cog and gone nuts. Those things happened sometimes. At least I think they did. They did in novels, for sure. Maybe Josephine had been trying to lure Kenny into her snare, had been foiled by Armando, had gotten mad at Kenny for some reason, and poisoned him!
I don’t know. That theory seemed kind of shaky.
Anyhow, as I’d already surmised, it might just as easily have been Sarah Molina who’d become fed up with her beau’s straying ways and done him in. Besides, it had been Sarah looking at the book of poisons. At least, I think it had been. Or maybe that cowboy Kenny had the fight with had decided enough was enough and slipped some arsenic into his barbecue—although I’d never offer that suggestion to Jack, who idolized cowboys and would taunt me—not that he ever needed a reason to do that.
Or maybe it had been one of Miss Strickland’s keepers, Charles or Edward. Or both of them. Maybe they did away with anyone who paid too much attention to Miss Strickland. I wrinkled my nose when that thought crossed my mind.
Heavenly days, could it have been my very own brother-in-law, Richard MacDougall, who’d become jealous because his mistress Josephine Contreras had been flirting with Kenny? I couldn’t bear the notion of that one, so I made my brain scoot back to the fighting-cowboy scenario.
Or, what the heck, maybe Hazel had decided not to wait for gossip to happen but to do something to stir some up on her own. That last thought was so silly, I decided I’d best stop muddying my brain with wild surmises, put my choir robe on and get ready to sing. So I did.
Every Sunday after church, we all gathered in what we call the Fellowship Hall, for cookies and punch and, once a month, a potluck supper. This was one of the punch-and-cookie Sundays. Lots of folks around Rosedale only saw other folks around town on Sundays, since they lived on ranches and farms quite a ways out from the town. Rodeo week was an exception, but we Rosedale folks still considered Sundays our primary social days.
Naturally, on that particular Sunday, the topic of conversation was Kenny’s death. Myrtle and I sat at a table by ourselves, but that happy state of affairs didn’t last long. Mae Shenkel, the high-school principal’s daughter, soon joined us, as did Hazel Fish and Ruby Bond, her bosom buddy. I wasn’t awfully fond of Mae, who had a brain the size of an English pea, but she was easier to take than Hazel. Ruby was okay. Quiet. I guess if you were used to hanging out with Hazel, you were also used to not talking much.
“Do you think Kenny was murdered?” Mae leaned over the table and whispered her question.
“Don’t know how else he could have taken in enough poison to kill him,” I said, considering my response only practical.
“Well, but, can’t you get poisoned by accident sometimes?”
Not more than once or twice, probably, I thought but didn’t say. “I don’t see how. Under the circumstances and all.”
Mae looked blank. She did that a lot. She was very pretty, with blonde hair and blue eyes and nice clothes, but, as I said before, there wasn’t anything in her head except fluff, in spite of her being the high-school principal’s daughter. “The circumstances? What circumstances?”
“The rodeo and barbeque and all,” I explained patiently. “We all ate the same food and drank the same lemonade and cider and cocoa and stuff. If anything in the barbeque had been poisoned, we’d all have got sick. The way I figure it, somebody must have put poison in Kenny’s cocoa or his coffee or in his food or something. Or his s’more.” Which thought gave me pause. How did arsenic taste? Was it bitter? Did it have any flavor at all? Hmm. Maybe I should look at that poison book in the library myself.
“Oh,” said Mae, blinking her big blue eyes and reminding me of one of Zilpha’s old china-headed dolls. “I guess that makes sense.”
“But who could have done it
?” Myrtle asked, punctuating her question by biting sharply into a sugar cookie.
“I don’t know.”
“I do.” This, of course, came from Hazel.
“Yeah?” I was pretty darned doubtful myself, and I think my skepticism showed in my face. ”Who do you think did it?”
Hazel tilted her head to one side and adopted an expression that was normal for her and that always made me want to slap her upside the head. It was her I-know-something-you-don’t-know expression. “I don’t know if I should say.”
“If you know who murdered Kenny, you’d better say,” I told her in plain, unadulterated English. “If you don’t, you’ll be obstructing justice, and that’s a crime in itself.” I didn’t know this for a fact, but I’d read about obstruction of justice in a detective novel. I think that novel was set in New York City, but surely New Mexico had similar laws. Maybe.
Hazel didn’t like having her little games batted about with the truth. She looked at me with annoyance. “Well, I didn’t say I actually know,” said she.
“Yes, you did,” said Myrtle, my best friend. You can see why.
“Well, I didn’t mean that I know. But I saw Armando Contreras and Kenny having a big fight right before the campfire last night.”
“I saw them fighting, too, earlier,” I admitted.
Hazel nodded in smug satisfaction. “This was later, though. Right before the campfire. So that makes it two fights.”
Hmm. “Was it a fistfight or merely a fight with words?” I wondered if Kenny had gone out of his way to irritate so many people, or if it had been an inborn talent of his. If so, it seemed a mighty unprofitable one and one that might even have led to his death.
“Well, they didn’t come to blows or anything. But they were sure yelling at each other. Armando called Kenny a—” Hazel paused and looked around to see if anybody else was close. “He called him a lousy son of a bitch.” She said the last word so softly, we almost didn’t hear it.