were providing us with bills indicating we paid top
dollar and bought only the best. Naturally, Ty was
also claiming he was fired because we were afraid that
he suspected the truth.
‘‘Anyway, the upshot was that Bobbie Jean sued us
82
Selma Eichler
for fraud. And word of the action got around. Not
only did it make the newspapers—which was bad
enough—but, in addition to that, Bobbie Jean wasn’t hesitant about attacking us to anyone who was willing
to listen.’’
And now Grace, looking like she was about to burst
into tears, grabbed up a handful of dress fabric and began to twist it. ‘‘She eventually lost the suit—luckily,
Ty made a terrible witness—but Karl and I lost even more. Our reputations were seriously damaged by
Bobbie Jean’s taking us to court like that. After BanJean’s went under, it was more than a year before my husband could find another position. Even today he’s
not managing the same class of restaurant or making
the same kind of money he once did.
‘‘At any rate, Karl and I made the decision to turn around and sue Bobbie Jean for slander. In hindsight,
we both recognize that it was a pretty stupid move on
our part. And this would have held true even if we’d won the case—which we didn’t. You know, Desiree,
I’m amazed at how many people have that ‘where
there’s smoke there’s fire’ mentality. That suit of ours
only served to remind everyone of Bobbie Jean’s ac
tions against us two years earlier—and raise the old suspicions all over again.’’
‘‘You seem convinced it was this Ty who manufac
tured the lie about the suppliers—and not the other
way around,’’ I put to Grace. ‘‘I mean, isn’t it just as likely that it originated with Bobbie Jean and that she
induced him—maybe bribed him—to back her up?’’
‘‘Well, I can’t be a hundred percent certain, of
course. But I have to figure it was Ty who dreamed
up that little fairy tale. Bobbie Jean had always held creative positions; she knew nothing about the busi
ness end of things—particularly when it came to the
restaurant industry. It’s hard for me to conceive that the idea of suppliers’ phonying up receipts would even
occur to her. Ty, on the other hand, had to be aware of the existence of practices like that.’’
MURDER CAN RAIN ON YOUR SHOWER
83
I agreed that this made sense. Following which I
asked Grace how she and Karl had ever hooked up
with Bobbie Jean in the first place.
‘‘Allison and I grew up together. Since grammar
school we’ve been like that. ’’ She crossed her middle and index fingers. ‘‘And about a dozen years ago we
formed a bridge club with some other women. We
met once a month on a Saturday afternoon. This was
while Bobbie Jean was working for some high-toned
fashion magazine in Paris. But soon after the club’s inception, she came back home. And, as it happened,
one of our members suddenly chose to abandon
bridge for golf at that time. So Bobbie Jean—who was
an excellent bridge player—asked if she could take
Fiona’s place. Of course, we were all familiar with her
terrible reputation—she’d achieved almost legendary
status by that point. But everyone agreed to let her join anyway, primarily because of Allison. Besides, the
way we looked at it, we’d just be spending a few hours
with her every four weeks over a card table.
‘‘Well, Bobbie Jean and I had only been casual ac
quaintances before that—she spent almost half of her
adult life living abroad, you know. But as a result of the bridge games we grew pretty chummy. She could
be very pleasant, very warm, and nobody else has ever
been able to make me laugh the way Bobbie Jean
could.’’
‘‘But didn’t the things you’d heard about her give
you pause about becoming buddy-buddy with the
woman?’’
‘‘Initially I kept my distance. But I couldn’t help it; eventually I came to really like her. So I chose to think that the stories about her behavior could have been exaggerated or that there might have been exten
uating circumstances.’’ Grace smiled ruefully. ‘‘You
might say I was in denial.’’
‘‘What she’d done to Lorraine didn’t have any effect
on you?’’
‘‘I knew very little about it. Actually, I hardly knew
84
Selma Eichler
Lorraine. It wasn’t until she’d moved back East and
found out that I’d been one of Bobbie Jean’s casual
ties, too, that Lorraine and I became close.’’
‘‘And how did you feel about Bobbie Jean’s having
run off with Carla’s husband?’’
‘‘That didn’t even happen until a few years later. I was aware that there had been some sort of hostility between Robin—Carla’s mother—and Bobbie Jean.
But while Robin seems like a very nice person, it isn’t
as if we ever palled around together, so I never
learned any of the details.’’
‘‘Nevertheless, in view of everything you’d heard
about the dead woman, I’m surprised that you didn’t
have any qualms about entering into a partnership
with her.’’
‘‘Don’t forget,’’ Grace retorted, her tone slightly de
fensive, ‘‘I was determined to close my mind to those stories about her. Besides, Bobbie Jean’s sexual esca
pades were one thing. But, to my knowledge, nobody’s
ever condemned her business ethics.’’
‘‘Let me ask you this,’’ I brought up then. ‘‘Is there
anyone else you’re aware of who may have had . . . uh . . . issues with Bobbie Jean?’’
Tilting her head back and lifting her eyes, Grace
pondered the question for a few seconds before re
sponding. ‘‘I’m not really tuned in to the local gossip, but not too long ago there was a rumor making the
rounds about this woman’s catching her husband and
Bobbie Jean in a . . . in a compromising situation—
and in the woman’s own bed, too. But this person
wasn’t at Ellen’s shower.’’
I jotted down the name anyway. Just in case the
results of the toxicology report—which Chief Porchow
could be revealing to the Lyntons at that very mo
ment—indicated a slow-acting poison, God forbid.
‘‘Did you happen to notice if anything of a suspi
cious nature occurred on Sunday? And I mean any
thing at all.’’
‘‘No, I didn’t,’’ Grace answered, appearing genu
inely apologetic.
MURDER CAN RAIN ON YOUR SHOWER
85
‘‘I think that about covers everything,’’ I said now.
‘‘But satisfy my curiosity before you go, okay? With all the animosity you felt toward Bobbie Jean, how
could you even consider being around her again?’’
‘‘I wanted to find out if the food at Silver Oaks was
as sensational as Lorraine claimed it was.’’ And then Grace grinned impishly. ‘‘No, seriously, I love Allison
and Wes, and I adore Mike, too. Not going was never
an option.’’
‘‘Am I correct in assuming that this was the f
irst
time you’d been in Bobbie Jean’s company since you
and Karl sued her?’’
‘‘Yes. I’d always avoided her like a case of the
measles.’’
‘‘Well, I give you credit for having the stomach to so much as look at her again.’’
Another playful grin. ‘‘The credit belongs entirely
to Xanax. All 0.5 soothing little milligrams of it.’’
Chapter 13
Just minutes after Grace Banner had squeezed her
feet back into the offending oxfords and limped out
of my office, I heard from Allison.
‘‘Bobbie Jean was murdered,’’ she informed me in
a strained voice. ‘‘The poison was in her salad.’’
So the killer was somebody who was at Silver Oaks that day after all! I said a silent, ‘‘Thank you, God,’’
before asking, ‘‘Did Chief Porchow give you the name
of what was used?’’
‘‘It was something called monkshood. Are you fa
miliar with it?’’
‘‘No, I’m not.’’
‘‘I understand from the chief that it’s a plant of
some kind and that it grows pretty much all over the country, throughout the Northern Temperate Zone, in
fact. At any rate, it works very rapidly. It’s also ex
tremely lethal—it can even be absorbed by the skin.
Although, as I said, in this instance the monkshood
went into the salad. Whoever did this awful thing
shredded the leaves and then mixed them in with the rest of the greens.’’
‘‘Porchow bagged Bobbie Jean’s salad, I assume.’’
‘‘On Sunday he collected what remained of it. He told
us that initially he wasn’t certain that Bobbie Jean had been a crime victim, but he wasn’t convinced that she hadn’t been, either. And he believes in playing it safe, he said. At any rate, once it was established that she’d been murdered, the contents of the salad were analyzed,
and it was found to be the vehicle for the poison.’’
Now, there are hundreds of toxic substances out
MURDER CAN RAIN ON YOUR SHOWER
87
there—maybe thousands, for all I know. So it fre
quently takes weeks, even months, to identify what
did the job in any particular instance. That is, if it’s ever identified at all. Plus, regardless of its availability, monkshood isn’t your everyday poison of choice—not
like arsenic, say, or cyanide. ‘‘I’m surprised they were able to arrive at this monkshood so quickly,’’ I
commented.
‘‘Evidently it was Bobbie Jean herself who steered
the toxicologists in the right direction. On the way to the hospital she was trying very hard to communicate with the paramedics, so they removed her oxygen
mask for a moment. She brought her finger up to her ear and mumbled what sounded to one of the men
like ‘ringing,’ but he couldn’t be positive of this be
cause her speech was so slurred. And then she put
her finger just under her eye, and that time she said fairly clearly, ‘Green.’ The fellow thought she might be hallucinating, however, because Bobbie Jean’s eyes
were brown. Nevertheless, he spoke to Porchow about
what he’d heard, and the chief passed the information
on to the medical examiner. Well, it appears that both
tinnitus and yellow-green vision can occur with this
particular poison.’’
‘‘So now we know what killed Bobbie Jean.’’
I had no idea that I’d said this aloud until Allison repeated softly, ‘‘Yes, now we know. Incidentally,’’
she went on, ‘‘Wes and I weren’t sure you’d want us to say anything to the police about our enlisting your help on this, so we kept quiet about it. In order to provide you with as many facts as possible, though, I kept requesting that Chief Porchow elaborate on ev
erything—which, plainly, he did not appreciate—and
then I managed to jot down a decent portion of his explanations. I claimed I was taking notes because I’d
promised to fill in my son, who couldn’t be here today
and who had been very close to his aunt.’’
‘‘Good thinking,’’ I remarked admiringly.
‘‘It wasn’t actually a lie, either. I did promise Mike I’d call and tell him what the police had learned.’’
88
Selma Eichler
‘‘What else did the chief have to say?’’
‘‘He had me go over the list of shower guests, quiz
zing me on whether there might have been some sort
of unpleasantness between Bobbie Jean and any of
the women.’’
‘‘And your response was . . . ?’’
‘‘That I wasn’t aware of anything like that.’’ Before
I could comment, Allison continued in a rush. ‘‘I just couldn’t bring myself to incriminate my friends, De
siree. Especially since in all likelihood there were oth
ers at the affair with a grievance against Bobbie Jean.
As I’ve told you before, my sister-in-law only talked to me about that sort of thing on a ‘need to know’
basis.’’ Allison paused here (most likely for breath) before adding, ‘‘Besides, there’s something else to
consider.’’
‘‘What’s that?’’
‘‘The Silver Oaks staff. I mentioned to you on Tues
day that Bobbie Jean could be very imperious when
the mood struck her and that this might have so en
raged one of the club’s employees that he or she
killed her.’’
While I figured that Allison was grasping at straws
here, I didn’t feel that anything would be gained by forcing her to face reality. Not yet, anyhow. So I very
thoughtfully refrained from pointing out that murder
was a pretty extreme response to somebody’s de
manding that her steak be more well done. But evi
dently, on reflection, Allison had reached this same
conclusion.
‘‘I have since come to recognize what a far-fetched
theory that is,’’ she admitted. ‘‘But there’s another possibility pertaining to Silver Oaks that does make
sense. Suppose Bobbie Jean had been having an affair
with someone who worked there—something that
would hardly be a shock to anyone who knew her.
Well, under certain circumstances, this lover might
have felt compelled to rid himself of her. For instance,
Bobbie Jean could have been threatening to tattle to
MURDER CAN RAIN ON YOUR SHOWER
89
the man’s wife about their liaisons. Of course, that’s only one example.’’
Now, it had been my intention all along to question
everyone on the Silver Oaks staff, particularly those who were working at the place on Sunday. But it
seemed to me that the management there would be
more cooperative if I held off until the official word came down that Bobbie Jean had been murdered.
I’d been hoping to learn two things from a visit to the country club. One was whether anyone had wit
nessed something untoward that day. The second was
whether Bobbie Jean had been engaging in a bit of
hanky-panky with any of the Silver Oaks employees.
At that moment, though, it popped into this pea
brain of mine that it would also be advisable to ques
tion the staff about the victim’s relationships with her fellow club members. Listen, who’s to say one of them
didn’t sneak into the dining room that afternoon to
put some extra zing in Bobbie Jean’s salad?
Still, my primary suspects remained Allison’s bud
dies—at least for the present. I mean, Bobbie Jean
had given them such dandy little motives for wanting her dead.
I decided to keep these things to myself, however.
‘‘You have a point there,’’ I told Allison. ‘‘And I’ll be
driving out to Silver Oaks as soon as I can set up an appointment.’’
‘‘I’m glad to hear that.’’ There was relief in her
voice.
‘‘But look, Allison,’’ I warned, ‘‘from what I’ve
gathered, it’s no deep, dark secret that Bobbie Jean caused those four friends of yours a lot of grief. So I’d be really surprised if sooner or later—and most
likely sooner—Chief Porchow didn’t find out how
much they despised her.’’
‘‘I was just about to tell you—he’s already been
apprised of that. When I pleaded ignorance, Wes
stepped in and named names, briefly outlining why
each of them had such antipathy toward Bobbie Jean.
90
Selma Eichler
Don’t think he was comfortable talking about that,
either. But he’s absolutely determined that Bobbie
Jean’s killer be brought to justice.’’ And now Allison tagged on dryly, ‘‘Naturally, Wes soft-pedaled her
abominable behavior to the extent that this was
possible.’’
‘‘How is he taking the news that she was murdered?’’
‘‘He’s terribly shaken that somebody hated his little
sister enough to poison her. But I’ve been saying a prayer that once the guilty person is apprehended, it will be easier for Wes to come to terms with what
happened.’’
‘‘Let’s hope so,’’ I murmured.
‘‘Chief Porchow also asked if we had any idea who
profits from Bobbie Jean’s death. Wes told the chief
he was familiar with his sister’s will and that our son is slated to inherit a fairly substantial sum of money. Aside from that, Bobbie Jean specified a significant
portion of her assets to be divided among her three favorite charities. And the balance, which is the bulk of the estate, she bequeathed to Wes.’’
I was thinking that this gave Allison herself a reason
for wanting Bobbie Jean to go bye-bye—apart from
having to tolerate the woman all these years, I mean. But while I hadn’t examined the Lyntons’ bank state
ments, I didn’t imagine that even without that windfall
Murder Can Rain on Your Shower Page 10