by Joan Hess
At 10:35, Estelle Oppers tried to warn Tom Selleck not to get in the convertible with the bleach-blond floozy, but he didn't pay her any mind and got right in. Estelle figured he deserved what he was gonna get before the next commercial (it was a rerun and she knew for a fact he was going to be mighty sorry, even if he didn't know it).
At 10:36, Ruby Bee read the last page of a mystery novel about a deranged, tattooed serial killer who murdered seven beautiful models before the quick-witted police detective tracked him down in a seedy bar in Miami and shot him deader'n a doornail. As she reached for the light, she thought she heard footsteps outside. It took a good five minutes before she found enough courage to go over to the window. All she saw was the parking lot, and it was empty. She stayed at the window for a minute, because it looked kinda shimmery and romantic in the moonlight, like a lake.
And at the end of this busy day in Maggody, perhaps even as early as eleven o'clock, everybody and everything had pretty much shut down except for the night shift at the SuperSaver. Jim Bob had come in and disrupted the scheduled routine with a lot of nonsense, but he was long gone. Buzz was driving to Starley City, the two canvas money bags on the seat beside him. Kevin was supposed to be setting out cans of pork 'n beans, but he wasn't.
The only other light worth mentioning was in the apartment above Stiver's Antique Store: Buy, Sell, or Trade. It was a small yet adequate reading lamp beside the bed.
*****
It was nearly noon by the time Hammet and I headed for Ruby Bee's for lunch. Because the SuperSaver was open and, based on the number of cars and trucks in the lot, doing a brisk business, I was on the leery side as we went into the bar and grill.
Ruby Bee gave me a calculating look as I hopped up on a stool, but merely tossed me a menu and asked Hammet if he'd like a cheeseburger and glass of buttermilk.
"Yessum," he said.
"Business seems normal," I said as I debated between pork chops and pot roast with gravy.
She busied herself cleaning up after one of her sloppier customers. "For the time bein', I suppose. I saved some lemon icebox pie for you and Hammet. Earl Buchanon liked to burst into tears, but I told him no siree Bob, this is for Arly and her little friend what plays on the Ruby Bee's Flamingos. How's that coming, by the way?"
This display of nonchalance and maternal charity wasn't fooling fooling me one whit. "If I had an assistant coach to sit on Georgie McMay's head, I might make some progress. As it is, no one knows the difference between a dugout and a hole in the ground."
"Ain't that a shame." She stayed busy for a minute, but I could almost hear the corroded gears grinding in her head. "I hope you all will do me proud at the game. I was thinking Estelle and me might go into Farberville and buy some little trophies to give to everybody at a party after the game Thursday. I was of a mind to serve hot dogs and corn chips, but Estelle says everybody likes hamburgers better. What do you think, Arly-hot dogs or hamburgers?"
"I think you think I didn't hear what you just said," I said promptly. "Or perhaps you think I think the Ruby Bee's Flamingos will master the rudiments of the game in two days and be ready to take on a team made up of jockstrapped giants. That leads me to think you're out of your ever-lovin' mind."
"I think hot dogs sound swell," Hammet contributed, then caught my look, slithered off the stool, and went over to the jukebox to ponder the selections.
"But the Starley City tournament starts Saturday," Ruby Bee said in a low voice, keeping an eye on those on nearby stools in case they were SuperSaver spies in denim trench coats. "We got to prove my team's the champions if we're going to represent Maggody at the tournament."
"We may lead the league in cow-patty hurling and nature study," I began, then stopped as the telephone behind the counter rang. Ruby Bee answered it, and, after a moment, whispered, "It's Eilene Buchanon. She's looking for you."
"Oh," I whispered back as I took the receiver. "What's up, Eilene?"
"Arly? I think you'd better come over here as soon as possible. I got something you need to see."
"Can you tell me what this is about?" I asked, more concerned with the pork chop versus pot roast dilemma.
"I don't think I better say any more on the telephone."
I said I'd be there shortly, then handed back the receiver to Ruby Bee and told Hammet to wait for me. Ruby Bee was frowning, but she had enough sense not to ask me anything. I was puzzled by Eilene's insistence that I come to her house. Although she's got two strikes against her (she's married to a Buchanon and is Kevin's mother), she always seemed a reasonable sort.
I drove down Finger Lane and parked in the driveway. Eilene met me at the screened door and said, "Thanks for coming, Arly. I wasn't sure what to do, but I figured I'd better do something before Earl gets home from work this evening." She ushered me through the living room to the kitchen, where she pointed rather melodramatically at a chocolate cupcake on the table. "That's the culprit."
Nothing in my training had prepared me to arrest a cupcake, or even interrogate it. In that it was nestled in the remains of a cellophane wrapper and had a squiggly line of white icing across its top, I deduced it was store-bought. In that they tended to come in two's (à la Noah's ark), I furthermore deduced one was missing and was either ingested or had fled the scene of the crime.
I straightened up and said, "What's this about, Eilene? I know these have enough sugar in them to levitate a nursery-school class, but that's not enough to press charges against the bakery."
She wasn't smiling. "Look at that little silver dot on the side," she said. "You recognize what it is?"
I examined the culprit more carefully. "It looks like a pin head."
"And it's attached to the rest of the pin. There was one in the other cupcake, too. I know this because I bit into it and scratched my tongue. Luckily, I had enough sense to spit it out. If I'd swallowed it, the Lord only knows what damage it would have done further down the road."
I stared at her for a minute. "A pin in the cupcake?" I said, not sounding especially bright. "Someone put a pin in one and you took a bite and hurt yourself?"
She stuck out her tongue and pointed out a ragged red scratch along one side. "Ith thill bleeding," she said.
I sat down and studied the second cupcake. I suspected I already knew the answer, but I went ahead and asked, just for the hell of it. "Where did this package come from, Eilene?"
"Kevin brought it home this morning from that supermarket where he's working. When he went in last night, I gave him a grocery list. It didn't have cupcakes on it, but he decided on his own account to get a few other things. I had to take the cupcakes away because he's not allowed to have chocolate on account of breaking out."
"I suppose I'd better talk to him," I said. Eilene told me he'd gone to Dahlia's house. I asked her for a bag, scooped up the evidence, and went to find him.
Dahlia and her granny lived out past Raz Buchanon's place. The porch didn't look strong enough to support her granny, much less Dahlia. However, I traversed it without trouble and rapped on the door. I wasn't surprised when Kevin opened the door, but I certainly was when he yanked me inside and said, "Thank God you're here, Arly! We got to do something fast! Dahlia's been poisoned!"
I dashed past him and found the object of his affection on her hands and knees in a tiny bathroom. She regarded me over her shoulder, then jerked back in time for a brief episode of severe gastric disorder.
Kevin shook my arm. "Should I call an ambulance?"
"Shut your mouth," Dahlia said before I could answer. She backed out of the bathroom to the hall, where she had room to get to her feet, and proceeded to do so, albeit ponderously. "I must've told him twenty-seven times it's just another touch of that stomach flu. I ain't about to go off to a hospital again. I liked to have rolled right off that narrow ol' bed they made me get on last time. And the nurses were the snottiest people I've met in all my born days."
"But, beloved," Kevin protested, "what would I do if'n anything happened to you?
"
"Visit that fat, pious pig by yourself, that's what."
"You're awful pale."
"You're plain awful, acting like you did and tearing a hole in my best blue blouse."
"I told you I was sorry."
"You can be sorrier than an undertaker for all it matters to me."
"Both of you hush," I said. "Kevin, did you bring Dahlia anything from the supermarket-such as a package of cupcakes?"
His jaw dropped and his Adam's apple shifted into fifth gear. "I paid for everything I took this morning. You can ask that checker with the black ducktail if I didn't pay for everything."
"That's not the question. Just answer me before I shake it out of you."
"I brought my sweetheart a peace offering," he mumbled.
Dahlia had her hand on her mouth and she was beginning to look a little bug-eyed, but she managed a nod. "Kevvie brought me a package of those little gold-colored sponge cakes. He knows they're my favorite."
I realized time was of the essence. "You ate them?"
"I didn't stick 'em in my ears." Her cheeks bulged, as did her eyes, and she pushed past me to fall to her knees in front of the commode. The entire house shook; we're talking six or seven point something on the Richter.
Not wishing to invade her privacy, I grabbed Kevin's elbow and hauled him to the front room. It took a good while to get his story, what with Dahlia appearing and then thundering away every three minutes or so, but after a half a dozen more episodes, she seemed to recover and admitted that the sponge cakes hadn't been up to snuff but that she'd eaten them anyway. Kevin assured the both of us he'd taken them and the cupcakes off the shelf beside the checkout counter, and no, he hadn't examined the wrappers, but why would he do that?
When I left with the cellophane wrapper safely stashed in a small plastic bag, I knew there was something going on at the SuperSaver that was at best malicious and at worst murderous.
Once I got to the highway, I debated whether to go directly to the SuperSaver or stop by the PD and call Harve first. I opted for the latter, and found Sergeant Plover seated in my chair, behind my desk, talking on my telephone. There was a scratch pad in front of him and a much maligned expression on his face.
"Yes, ma'am, I'll give her the message," he was saying as I came inside. He wiggled his eyebrows at me, listened for another minute, and said, "Yes, ma'am, as soon as possible. I do understand the urgency, but Chief Hanks is out on an investigation at the moment. I'm just helping out for the afternoon. No, I don't know where she is. Yes, ma'am. Goodbye, ma'am."
"Now what's going on?" I demanded.
"You're asking me? How in blazes am I supposed to know what's going on in this bucolic bedlam of yours? I came by to see if you were still in the mood to rip my ears off. The telephone started ringing, and I've been taking calls for a good twenty minutes."
I tried not to wince. "Any messages of interest?"
He came around the desk and put his hands on my shoulders. "I didn't mean to insult you-okay? You're a very efficient chief of police."
I ducked out of his grasp and took possession of my chair. "As much as I'd enjoy remaining in a foul, immature, unprofessional snit, I've got too many other things to worry about for the time being." I glanced at the names on the scratch pad in front of me: Ruby Bee, Lottie Estes, Millicent McIlhaney, Perkins (who, like his eldest daughter, has never been honored with the usage of a first name, if he has one), and someone named Barbara Buteo. "Anybody report an emergency?"
Plover looked at me. "Your mother said the big game's at three o'clock sharp, and she and Estelle will do everything possible to get to help out at practice this afternoon. The next three callers presumed you might be interested in their gastrointestinal upheavals. The Buteo woman said she'd call back, because what she had to say was too delicate to discuss with me."
"You're not going to believe this," I said, not too sure what I myself believed. I told him where I'd been the last half hour or so and what I'd learned about the goodies from the shelves of Jim Bob's SuperSaver Buy 4 Less.
"Holy hell," was all he could say when I had finished.
"It sounds as if we'll be there shortly, " I said. I rubbed my face, then called Harve and reiterated the facts, along with the presumption that three of the previous callers had suffered ill effects also.
"But I got the report from the health department right here on my desk," Harve said unhappily. "This doesn't have anything to do with the inspection, and the deli's closed. Unless you think Eilene Buchanon stuck a pin in a cupcake to add a little crunch, you'd better take my word for it and back me up when I go close down the SuperSaver in five minutes," I said. "State Police Sergeant Plover from the barracks in Farberville is here in my office. Jim Bob won't be able to ignore him, but I've got to have your okay on this, Harve."
Harve told me to do whatever I had to do and he'd get himself organized and be there shortly. Plover offered to drive. As we went outside, I asked him if he'd encountered a similar problem before.
"We've never seen any product tampering in this area," he said, opening the car door for me as if we were heading out for dinner in a prefeminist (read: prehistoric) era.
I managed to close it all by myself. "But it's been in the news within the last two or three years," I said. "Do you honestly think someone's so opposed to this new supermarket that he would stick pins in cupcakes and dribble some substance on the packaged desserts and on the free samples the other day?"
"A substance like syrup of ipecac?" Plover put on his sunglasses and assumed the stony demeanor of a state trooper.
"Why'd you say that?"
"Because I called my ol' poker buddy at the state lab earlier. You won't get the report until late this afternoon, so I came out here to tell you what he told me."
I sank down in the seat and turned the air conditioner on high. "Ipecac is used primarily to induce vomiting in the case of accidental accidental poisoning by a noncaustic substance," I intoned. "Third week of emergency first aid at the academy. The one thing it's not is an ingredient in chili sauce. Mandozes said something to me about the sauce tasting like sweet catsup. Ipecac has a nauseatingly sickly sweet taste to it." I switched the air conditioner back to low, partly out of a heightened awareness of the need for global energy conservation and partly because I was shivering like a dashboard hula girl.
8
Jim Bob was not a happy camper by any means. He sputtered threats and cursed steadily as Plover and I rounded up all the shoppers, ordered them to abandon their carts in mid-aisle, and sent them away bereft of bargains. The four employees gathered near the office door, awed equally by Plover's commando tactics and Jim Bob's command of the viler side of the King's English.
Once the door was locked, I went over to Jim Bob and said, "Go right ahead and call the sheriff. I've told you I cleared this with him beforehand. He's busy having his men question everyone who called to report nausea and pins, but he'll be here shortly. You can't keep selling merchandise until we figure out what in blazes is going on."
"I cannot believe this shit," Jim Bob groaned. "We open Saturday at two o'clock and at three we're closed down tighter than a rabbit's ass. We reopen not even twenty-four hours ago, and now we're closed down again. Is this some kind of friggin' conspiracy to keep the SuperSaver closed until we go broke? You working for somebody, Chief? Somebody who doesn't like the competition, for instance?"
"Shut up," Plover said as he came around the corner of the office. He looked at the huddle of high-school boys. "You all came to work yesterday afternoon and again this morning at seven, right?" They nodded. "Anyone missing who worked yesterday?" They shook their heads. "Go wait at the picnic tables in the pavilion. Someone from the sheriff's department will be there before too long to take your statements."
They reluctantly went toward the back of the store, leaving Jim Bob to grouse without an appreciative audience. When he lost momentum, I told him we'd have to question the night staff, too, since Kevin had bought the cupcakes and
sponge cakes on his way out the door shortly after seven o'clock that morning.
I followed him into the office enclosure and waited impatiently as he threw papers here and there and made several graphic comments about my lineage, among other things. He at last found a notebook, opened it to the page with the schedules, and tossed it to me. "Are you saying one of these people diddled items on the shelf to try to kill half the town?"
The list was distressingly short: Buzz Milvin and Kevin Buchanon. I frowned at it for a minute. "No one else came into the store last night after it closed at nine o'clock?"
Jim Bob sat down at the desk and took a bottle of whiskey out of a drawer. "Nobody had any cause to. You'll have to ask Milvin.
"I will, but he can wait for the time being. According to the schedule, he's supposed to total the receipts and count the cash. Is there a safe here?"
"It hasn't been installed yet. I came by at ten-thirty to verify the figures and take the cash to the night depository at the bank in Starley City," he said, his face turning pale. He took a drink from the bottle, but it didn't seem to help. "I ended up sending Milvin to the bank because I was in a hurry."