“I’m not trying to be funny,” Sheldon insisted, and as a matter of fact, he did look serious. Deadly serious, Phyllis thought. “I’m just trying to point out that the terminology could apply to either case.”
“Terminology, schmerminology,” Leo said, and like “jailbird,” Phyllis thought it had been a long time since she had heard anybody use an expression like that. Leo went on, “The guy was murdered, plain and simple. And some woman did it.”
That bold declaration made Phyllis frown. She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “How in the world do you know that?”
“Because if a guy wanted to kill somebody, he’d shoot ’em or stab ’em or take a baseball bat to their head. He wouldn’t sneak around and slip poison into some frickin’ crab cakes—pardon my language.”
“You’re nuts,” Raquel said. “You can’t just say that no guy would ever poison anybody.”
“Leo’s right about men being more violent overall, though,” Sheldon pointed out. “It’s something atavistic in us. However, I agree with Raquel that you can’t automatically rule out all men as suspects just because the murderer employed poison as the means to his or her particular end.”
“So you think a guy could have done it?” Leo said.
“Of course.”
“Then you’re the one who’s nuts.”
None of them seemed to take offense at anything the others were saying, and Phyllis supposed that was because they had all been friends for so long that they were accustomed to such good-natured wrangling. She said, “I don’t think any of you are nuts, as you put it. I just wanted you to know what the situation was. I’m sure the police will be coming around to ask more questions about Mr. McKenna—”
“Oh, my God,” Jessica interrupted as her eyes widened. “They don’t consider us suspects, do they?”
Earlier Phyllis had tiptoed around that same question from Consuela. She didn’t feel like tiptoeing anymore.
“I got the feeling that Chief Clifton considers everyone to be a possible suspect at this point.”
Leo came to his feet as an angry expression darkened his broad face. “Well, that really is crazy! We barely knew Ed McKenna. None of us would have any reason to kill him.”
“Didn’t he usually stay here at the same time as the four of you?” Phyllis asked. She was just assuming that based on comments she had heard them make over the past few days, but it was something that could be easily checked by going over Dorothy’s records. She was sure the police would get around to doing just that, probably sooner rather than later.
“It’s true that our visits usually overlapped to a certain extent,” Sheldon said. “They seldom dovetailed precisely.”
“He was here when we got here,” Raquel said.
“And he usually left before we did,” Jessica said.
“We don’t know anything about him except that he went fishing all the time,” Leo added. “Hell, I don’t even know where he’s from.”
“San Antonio,” Phyllis said.
“See? Why would I kill a guy when I don’t even know where he’s from?”
Phyllis didn’t think that made much sense, but Leo seemed to, and his wife nodded supportively.
“You know who had the best opportunity to poison somebody?” Raquel mused. “Consuela.”
Jessica put a hand to her mouth. “That’s right! She prepares all the food. She could have put anything in it, for all we know! We could all be poisoned right now!”
Leo turned toward her and shook his head. “You’re not poisoned. None of us has been poisoned.”
“How do you know that?”
“You feel okay, don’t you?” He looked at Sheldon and Raquel. “You guys are all right, aren’t you?”
“A little hot and sweaty, maybe,” Raquel said, “but other than that, yeah, I guess I’m all right. How about you, Sheldon?”
“I feel fine,” Sheldon declared.
“You see,” Leo said to Jessica. “If Consuela had poisoned us this morning, we’d all be dead by now.”
“Not necessarily,” Sheldon said. “If she used a different type of poison on us, it might be considerably slower-acting. We might not die until later tonight, or even tomorrow.”
“That’s right,” Jessica practically wailed. “We won’t know until it’s too late!”
Phyllis had listened to all of this she could stand. She said, “No one else has been poisoned, and none of you are going to die. Consuela didn’t murder Mr. McKenna.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Sheldon pointed out. “The police haven’t made any arrests yet, have they?”
“Well, no.”
“And as you said yourself, the chief considers everyone a suspect at this point, and if he feels that way, I don’t see how we can feel any differently.”
“Well, I know one thing,” Jessica said as she got to her feet. “I’m not going to stay in a house where people get poisoned. Come on, Leo, we have to pack. We’re getting out of here!”
Chapter 7
“Wait a minute,” Phyllis said. “You can’t just leave. You have reservations here for the next ten days.”
Leo shook his head. “That doesn’t mean we have to stay. And don’t think you can get away with threatening to keep our payment, either. In a case like this we ought to get a full refund!”
“Yes, I’d say that’s warranted,” Sheldon said. “And refusal would be the grounds for a rather nasty lawsuit. I’m sure the owners wouldn’t want the whole thing dragged into court. That would mean a lot of bad publicity about how one of the guests died after eating poisoned food.”
Raquel snorted. “That’d be the kiss of death for a bed-and-breakfast as far as I was concerned. I’d never stay there again, and I bet nobody else would, either.”
Phyllis felt control of the situation slipping away from her … as if she’d ever had it in the first place. She held up her hands and said, “Please, everyone, just slow down. We don’t need to be talking about leaving, or refunds, or filing lawsuits—”
“You don’t expect us to stay here after what’s happened, do you?” Jessica asked. “It’s just not safe.”
“I’m convinced that it’s perfectly safe—”
“Then you stay here and eat the food,” Leo said. “As for me, though, I’m going somewhere where they don’t poison you.”
Phyllis felt awful about what was happening, and yet she knew she couldn’t have kept the truth about Ed McKenna’s death from them. They would have found out by the next day, at the very latest, when the story about McKenna’s murder appeared in the local newspaper.
Now Dorothy and Ben were faced with all the bad publicity, not to mention the possibility of legal action by their customers. Phyllis knew that none of this was her fault, but at the same time she couldn’t help but feel that she was letting her cousin down.
She couldn’t have prevented this mess … but maybe she could put a stop to it before it got any worse.
But that would mean finding Mr. McKenna’s killer. Playing detective again, as Carolyn and Eve would probably phrase it. She had no desire to do that.
And what if it turned out that Consuela really was the killer? That would truly finish the job of ruining all future business for the bed-and-breakfast.
One problem at a time, she told herself. She couldn’t fix everything at once.
An idea occurred to her. She said, “Listen, if you’ll stay here, I’ll talk to Dorothy about giving you a reduced rate. That way we can refund some of your money.”
She was going to have to call Dorothy, anyway, to tell her about Mr. McKenna. She should have done it before now, Phyllis knew. She’d been putting it off because it was bound to upset her cousin, and Phyllis hated to be the bearer of bad news for anyone.
“You expect us to risk our lives for a reduced rate?” Leo asked with a tone of amazement in his voice. “Forget it!” He grasped his wife’s hand. “Come on, Jess, let’s go.”
Sam’s familiar voice drawled from the doorway, “I reckon tha
t’d be about the worst thing you could do, Mr. Blaine.”
Phyllis hadn’t heard him come up, but she was glad to see him. Just having him around made her feel a little stronger. As usual, he looked very much at ease, leaning a shoulder against the side of the arched entrance between the parlor and the foyer.
Leo wheeled around to face Sam and thrust his jaw out belligerently. “You’re not threatening me, are you, Fletcher?”
“Nope,” Sam said. “Wouldn’t think of it. But it seems to me there’s somethin’ you haven’t thought of, either.”
“And what might that be?”
“The cops’re liable to take it to be a mite suspicious if anybody goes runnin’ off so soon after Ed McKenna was murdered.”
Sheldon said, “Are you saying that if we leave, the police will think that one of us poisoned that man?”
“That’s crazy!” Leo said. “We’ve already been over that. None of us had any reason to kill the guy!”
Sam shrugged. “No reason that we know of. But if the cops start diggin’ around, who knows what they might turn up. And they’ll dig harder if they think somebody’s actin’ suspicious.”
“That sounds like blackmail to me,” Sheldon said with a frown.
“Yeah, I think it was a threat to start with, just like I said,” Leo added. “If we leave, you’ll tell the cops that I had a big fight with McKenna last night.”
“Did you, Mr. Blaine?” Phyllis asked. “I didn’t notice that.”
“That’s because it never happened! It’s a big, fat lie. But that might not stop you from trying to get back at me any way you could.”
With a frown, Jessica said, “I don’t really think Mrs. Newsom would do that, Leo.”
Leo waved a hand toward Sam. “Well, what about her boyfriend there?”
Sam straightened from his casual pose. “I’m not in the habit of lyin’ to the police,” he said. “Fact of the matter is, I try not to lie to anybody.”
“You could’ve fooled me, all that talk about us being suspects if we leave—”
“You’re already suspects,” Phyllis broke in. “We all are. I told you that. So what Sam says just makes sense. The police won’t want you to leave town while they’re conducting their investigation, and if you try to, it’ll make you look more guilty.”
“Maybe we won’t leave town,” Sheldon said, “but we could spend the rest of our vacation somewhere else in Rockport or Fulton. That way we’d still be available for the police to question at their convenience, and yet we wouldn’t be risking our lives by continuing to stay here in this … this murder house.”
Phyllis almost lost her temper at that lurid description of the bed-and-breakfast. Oak Knoll wasn’t a murder house, for goodness’ sake. It was a perfectly respectable establishment, and it had been for years. She couldn’t let this unfortunate incident ruin the place’s reputation. She just couldn’t.
But the Blaines and the Forrests weren’t going to be persuaded to change their minds, either. Leo had hold of Jessica’s hand and practically dragged her out of the parlor. He headed for the stairs, saying, “Come on, babe. Let’s make some calls and see if we can find some other place to stay. Someplace where they don’t murder their guests!”
Phyllis winced at that.
Sheldon and Raquel followed their friends. Raquel seemed to be the most sympathetic to Phyllis’s plight. She cast a glance back and shrugged her shoulders, as if to ask What can you do? Leo had his mind made up, and he seemed determined to bulldoze the others into going along with him.
Sam looked at Phyllis and shrugged, too. “Sorry,” he said. “I was tryin’ to calm ’em down and help ’em see that they were makin’ a mistake, but I reckon I just made things worse.”
“You just told the truth,” Phyllis assured him. “If they left and went home, it would look suspicious to Chief Clifton.”
Something else was on her mind, something that she told herself was completely irrelevant, and yet it wouldn’t let go of her thoughts.
Leo had called Sam her boyfriend. Was it so obvious that they had taken a romantic interest in each other? Phyllis believed that such things were best kept private, so she supposed she would have to start paying more attention to her words and her actions whenever Sam was around.
At her age, she certainly didn’t want anybody thinking she was making calf eyes at him, not even Sam!
A few minutes later, Nick Thompson came downstairs. His steps had a little bounce in them, typical of the exuberance of youth. He found Phyllis and Sam talking in the parlor and used his thumb to point to the upstairs.
“Hey, who put the bug up Leo’s, uh, backside, if you’ll pardon the expression? We heard him going on about how they were gonna pack up and leave. He was talking so loud he woke up Kate and me. We were, uh, catching a little nap before supper.”
Phyllis’s spirits sank. Now she had to go through the whole thing again. She managed a weak smile and said, “You haven’t heard the latest news, Mr. Thompson.”
“Nick,” he said. “Call me Nick.”
Phyllis was more than happy to do that, since Nick was about her son’s age and she had a hard time calling anyone that young Mister. She said, “Chief Clifton was here earlier.”
“Yeah, I saw what looked like crime-scene tape on Mr. McKenna’s door and figured the police must have been here. Why would they seal it off like that? It doesn’t make sense. I mean, he died of natural causes, right? There weren’t any signs of foul play …” Nick’s eyes widened as his words trailed away. He swallowed and went on, “Wait a minute. Are you saying that there was foul play involved in Mr. McKenna’s death?”
“He was poisoned,” Phyllis said. “The preliminary findings from the autopsy were that someone poisoned the leftover crab cakes he ate for breakfast this morning.”
“Son of a—! No way!”
Sam nodded and said solemnly, “Way.”
Nick sank onto the edge of the sofa, disbelief still evident on his face. “But that means somebody in this house must’ve … I mean, if the stuff was in the crab cakes, then it had to have been put there between supper last night and breakfast this morning, because nobody else died.”
Phyllis nodded. “It seems to have been aimed solely at Mr. McKenna. He said at supper last night that he was going to eat the crab cakes for breakfast this morning.”
“Yeah, but somebody else could have gotten into them, too. I might have decided to come downstairs and grab one for a midnight snack!”
“Good thing you didn’t,” Sam said. “I guess the killer didn’t care all that much if he got somebody else by accident, as long as McKenna died.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Murder always is,” Phyllis said.
Nick sat back and shook his head, not denying Phyllis’s statement, just in awe at the situation. “So that’s why the Blaines and the Forrests are leaving?” he asked. “They don’t think it’s safe to stay here?”
“You can’t blame them for feeling that way,” Phyllis admitted.
“Yeah, staying at a bed-and-breakfast where breakfast kills somebody isn’t something most people would do. I guess I can understand why they were upset.”
Phyllis didn’t want to make things worse, but there was no point in delaying the inevitable.
“What about you and Kate, Nick?” she asked. “Will you be moving out, too?”
“I don’t know. This is all so unexpected. I guess I’d better talk it over with Kate and find out what she thinks.” He shook his head again. “If she’s too scared, I couldn’t really ask her to stay. I mean, I can’t believe that anyone here would commit murder, for God’s sake, but somebody had to put that poison in the crab cakes.”
Phyllis nodded wearily. There was no getting around that fact.
Nick put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. He had lost a lot of his exuberance in the past few minutes.
“I’ll let you know what we decide,” he said. “We may have to stay here tonight. It�
��s not going to be easy finding a vacancy this late in the day. But, uh, Kate may want to, uh, eat out somewhere …”
“I understand,” Phyllis said.
And she did. If the situation had been different, she wouldn’t have wanted to stay at a place where one of the guests had been fatally poisoned by something he ate there. She just wouldn’t feel comfortable at all.
That discomfort on the part of the public could spell ruin for the bed-and-breakfast, she thought, unless the murder was solved quickly and it was obvious to everyone that negligence wasn’t the cause of Ed McKenna’s death. Of course, it might be just as bad if Consuela or a member of her family turned out to be the killer. The bed-and-breakfast would share in some guilt by association. There wasn’t really a good solution, Phyllis thought …
Just as there was no good way to put off making that call to Dorothy any longer.
Dorothy was upset, of course. Phyllis wouldn’t have expected any other reaction from her cousin.
“We’ll drive back down there right away,” Dorothy said after Phyllis had filled her in on everything. “First thing in the morning. Goodness, this is terrible! I just wish …”
“What is it, Dorothy?” Phyllis asked, sensing that more was going on than her cousin had told her.
“It’s just that Wendy really needs me here, too. The baby has some medical problems. They may have to perform open-heart surgery.”
“Oh, no!” Phyllis said. “You hadn’t told me anything about that.”
“I didn’t want to worry you without any reason, in case things turned out all right. The doctors are still running tests, and they’re not sure yet what they’ll have to do.”
“Listen to me,” Phyllis said. “You and Ben stay right there and help Wendy and her family as much as you can. That’s the most important thing right now.”
“But Ed McKenna was murdered, you said!”
“Yes, which means it won’t help him for you and Ben to rush back down here,” Phyllis pointed out. “The police investigation will carry on whether you’re here or not.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true.” On the other end of the phone line, Dorothy sighed. “That poor man. He’s been coming to Oak Knoll for years now. Staying there and fishing was just about the only joy he got out of life.”
Killer Crab Cakes Page 7