The Devil's Bones

by Carolyn Haines

  I smiled. “It wasn’t Erik. He was with me.”

  “But—” Snaith sputtered into silence. “If it wasn’t Erik, who was it? He’s been creeping around here. I showed the sheriff the video proof.”

  “The yard is clear,” Tinkie said when she reentered the house. She already had her phone out and was calling Glory. I answered Snaith’s question.

  “I don’t know who did this to you, but I know it wasn’t Erik. Or Cosmo. Maybe put your thinking cap on and figure it out so it doesn’t happen again. Was there anything in your shop that someone might want to steal?”

  Snaith jumped to his feet so quickly he almost bowled me over. “The tonic. Was the tonic still on the counter?”

  I had no clue what he meant, but I followed him to the front of his shop. He went straight to the counter where a big, brass cash register was still in use. The top of the counter was coated in some kind of oil that dripped onto the floor.

  “No!” Snaith was stricken. “This is wrong. Call the sheriff.”

  Glory was already on her way. “What’s wrong?”

  “The tonic I had on the counter was not for human or animal use. There were two bottles of it. One has been broken, but the other is missing.”

  “What was it used for?” I asked.

  “It was for me.”

  “You’re not human?” I took a little pleasure in the gig.

  “I wasn’t going to drink it, you incompetent fool.” He slapped at my hand when I reached toward the counter. “And don’t touch it.”

  “What is it?” It stank to high heaven.

  “It’s something for Cosmo.”

  “You want to be more specific?”

  “Cosmo paid for it. Ask him.”

  This was getting better and better. “Have you seen Cosmo?”

  “He was supposed to come by this morning early, which was why I was here working. He was a no-show.” He got a roll of paper towels and started wiping down the counter.

  “I’d leave that alone.” This wasn’t my crime scene, but I felt compelled to say what Glory would say if she were here.

  “Why?” he asked.

  Sheriff Glory had come in the back way and she entered the room and answered his question. “Because you’re destroying evidence.”

  “Of what?” Snaith was either trying to play stupid or he was dumb as a rock.

  “The way I heard it was that someone broke in here, knocked you out, wrecked your store, and stole a bottle of some toxic tonic. Is that correct?”

  “Maybe.” Snaith suddenly had clamshells for lips, and they had snapped shut.

  “I’ll know more about what’s going on when I have that substance tested.” Glory used an evidence kit to scoop up some of the stinky goo. “And, trust me, I will have it tested by the best labs around.”

  Snaith dropped the wad of paper towels. “Be my guest. You clean it up. I’ll tell you it’s an herbicide to take care of some invasive plants that Cosmo wants to get rid of. It’s perfectly legal.”

  I would have put my money on the fact Cosmo was going to poison Dr. Reynolds’s plants in the gardens. “Why didn’t he just buy an herbicide at the feed and seed if this is so legal and aboveboard?”

  “He wanted something that would stick to the individual leaf. The commercial products wash off and then get transferred into the soil. He was trying to be environmentally conscious.”

  The tonic Snaith had whipped up was plenty viscous. It didn’t really drip from the edge of the counter as much as it hung there. Glory was still trying to get it off the little container she’d filled, but the container stuck to her hand. At last she wrestled the sample into a plastic evidence bag and quickly sealed it.

  “That stuff isn’t alive, is it?” she asked Snaith.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” He threw a roll of paper towels into the center of the puddle. If he was hoping the paper towels would absorb the mess, he was headed for disappointment. The paper seemed to float in the gooey liquid.

  “So what will that stuff kill?” Glory asked. She leaned in a little closer. “You know it’s eating into the wood of your countertop.” She looked down to where some had finally made it to the floor. “And the floor.”

  “Damn.” Snaith reached beneath the counter and picked up some hazmat gloves. “You’d better get that sample you collected to a lab fast,” he told Glory, nodding at the plastic evidence bag she’d put on a shelf. The plastic was beginning to smoke a little.

  Glory grabbed the evidence bag and Snaith’s upper arm. “You’re coming with me. Sarah Booth, Tinkie, please keep an eye on the place until I can send Deputy Mixon. Shouldn’t be long.”

  “Sure thing,” we sang. This would give us a rare opportunity to poke around in Snaith’s business, and I suspected he had plenty of monkey business to keep us occupied.

  We separated and went through Snaith’s wonderland of “cures” and hyped promises. He was claiming to cure everything from warts to baldness. It became clear to me that vanity medicine probably paid a lot more than curing real diseases—and was a lot less litigious. I mean if a wart didn’t disappear as promised, no jury was going to give big monetary awards for that. More likely, a jury would laugh at the gullibility of the person complaining.

  “Do you see anything that might shed light on who attacked Snaith?” I asked.

  Tinkie just rolled her eyes. “Nicolas Cage could have found the treasure map in here and we’d never know.”

  “Tinkie, we need to figure out who went after Snaith. It couldn’t have been Erik or Cosmo. There’s another player in this.” I’d racked my brain and come up with nothing. Betsy Dell was a vengeful person, but she was also down for the count. Dr. Reynolds was at the gardens. Who else would want to attack Snaith and steal an herbicide?

  “You have to take into account that Snaith likely has a lot of people he’s pissed off,” Tinkie said. “It might not be related to our case.”

  She was right, but my gut told me otherwise.

  While we had the time we searched for any evidence. The back door had been forced open, so the attacker had come in that way. “Snaith has some video cameras.” He’d captured Erik sneaking around his place.

  We found the cameras and some medical gloves so that we didn’t destroy any potential prints and played back the footage from that day. I wasn’t even surprised when I discovered that someone had erased everything from eight in the morning up until just before Tinkie and I had arrived. I put the cameras on a table so Deputy Mixon could take them in and fingerprint them.

  “If the person who broke in came to steal something, we’ll never be able to figure it out,” I said. Tinkie was right about that. Unless Snaith broke down and told us who had attacked him, we were likely not going to get any answers.

  I snapped a bunch of photos, wishing Cece were still with us. She was the best photographer. But she was on her way to a new part-time career, and I was happy for that. “I’ll check out back,” I told Tinkie. “Why don’t you check the front porch?”

  “Sure thing.”

  The house was built off the ground with a crawl space beneath—not my favorite place to examine—but I ducked under and used my cell phone to light up the area. Snaith had bricked around the bottom of the house so that possums and raccoons couldn’t get under the house to pull out insulation, wiring, or pipes. I found an entrance with a wire grate that I removed and crawled in on my hands and knees. I didn’t have to go far. Just inside the opening, I found several containers of gasoline and an area where a large amount of gas had spilled. Two of the containers were empty.

  The horror of what I’d found made me freeze for a moment. I backed out of the crawl space, but not before I found a credit card that looked to have been dropped in the dirt. I examined it and let out a big sigh. It was Erik’s card. It looked to me like someone had planned to burn down Snaith’s Apothecary, with Snaith in it. And Erik had been set up to take the fall.

  When I found Tinkie out front, she, too, had come upon a pharmacis
t’s smock with Best Buy Drugs embroidered on the pocket. I told her about the gasoline. Before we could decide what to do with the evidence we’d found, the deputy had arrived. We had no choice but to turn everything over to him and show him where we’d found everything.

  “I’ll take the gas containers in for prints,” Deputy Mixon said. “This doesn’t look good for Erik Ward.”

  “Someone is framing Erik,” I told him.

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” the deputy said. “I’m sure Sheriff Glory will be in touch when she returns.” He turned away from us, letting us know we were dismissed.

  “We can believe Erik now,” I said to Tinkie. “And I think Glory will, too.”

  “If it isn’t Snaith or Cosmo, who’s trying to frame Erik?” Tinkie asked.

  27

  The sheriff wasn’t at the courthouse, so our first stop after leaving Snaith’s was the coroner’s office, where we met a wall of resistance. The coroner was nobody’s fool.

  “I’m not authorized to give copies of my report to out-of-town snoops,” she said. There was no censure in her statement, just facts, as she saw them. She glanced at her watch. “Ladies, I’ve got an appointment. I have to go. You should go home.”

  “Is there a reason you want us to leave?” Tinkie asked with a bit of a snap.

  “Since you two came to town, we’ve had a shooting on Main Street, a shooting at everyone’s favorite swimming hole, two people killed, and two people attacked. Seems to me that you’ve brought a lot of trouble to Lucedale with you.” She didn’t mince words.

  “Or maybe the trouble was here before we arrived,” I said. “As soon as we conclude our case, we’ll be glad to leave.”

  “Look, I don’t mean to sound so harsh, but Sheriff Glory is coming up for election soon. As am I. We need to settle this business and have a big success with catching the bad people. I don’t think you two are helping her do that.”

  “We want nothing more than to resolve this case,” Tinkie said in a calmer tone. “I’m pregnant and ready to go home.”

  “Okay, I’m going to give you the reports because I do want you to leave town. And just so you know, Glory told me to give them to you.” She grinned. “I don’t always do what she says, but this time, she made a good call.” She went to several filing cabinets and pulled out folders. In no time she had the reports copied and handed to us. I read one and Tinkie read the other. Perry Slay had been poisoned by spotted water hemlock and Patrice Pepperdine had been poisoned with a very strong herbicide. We already knew both of these facts. The coroner’s ruling in both instances was murder. The time of death was around midnight in each case. Both Slay and Pepperdine had been killed somewhere else and the bodies taken to the dump site. From what I knew from Glory, the original crime scene hadn’t been discovered for either body. There wasn’t really anything in the reports that we didn’t already know.

  “Does anyone know where that spotted water hemlock came from?” I asked. “Like, a specific place where it grows…”

  She pursed her lips. “It grows wild around here. And you’d have to eat it, meaning touching it wouldn’t poison you. It has to be ingested. But only a tiny amount can kill, and as you can tell from Slay’s body, it’s not a pretty or easy death.”

  “Would he have tasted the poison?”

  The coroner shrugged. “I went searching for the plant around the gardens and found some down in a swampy area. I dug it up. The root is the deadliest part, and it smells kind of like carrots or parsnip. It might be palatable, but I’m not going to test that. I know a few people I could volunteer for the service.” She held up a hand. “I know, I know. Poor taste, and I was just kidding.”

  “Yeah.” I was thinking specifically of Gertrude Strom. She’d make a great toxin tester. “What about Pepperdine? How was the herbicide administered?”

  “Could have been ingested or inhaled.”

  “How small a dose?”

  “Taken orally, maybe a quarter teaspoon. Inhalation is just as toxic but it takes longer to have an effect. Generally it’s cancer that kills the person. Long, drawn-out process. But from what the medical examiner said, Patrice’s liver was gone. Again, not a pretty death.”

  “Any idea how the herbicide was delivered?” Tinkie’s nose was wrinkled.

  “It could have been in a pill or hidden in spicy food.”

  “Which means the murderer would have to be friendly with Patrice,” I said.

  “Glory’s working that angle. Patrice wasn’t exactly a social butterfly. She was bitter. But there had been a visitor to her place in recent weeks.”

  “An identified visitor?”

  “Glory will give you the details, but the woman was not from Lucedale. She had an argument with Patrice a week or so ago.”

  “Thanks.” I had a few more questions. “Have you heard any updates on Cosmo Constantine or Betsy Dell?”

  “Word around the streets is that Dell was also poisoned with spotted water hemlock, but Erik Ward and his two PIs—that would be you guys—saved her life.” She pointed a fore- and middle finger at us. “You were asking where Glory is, and you should go if you want to catch her before she leaves her farm.”

  * * *

  Glory Howard’s horses were beautiful. Along with the stunt-rodeo horse, Raylee, she had a dressage horse, a hunter jumper, and a walking horse.

  “A horse for all seasons,” she said as she finished feeding. “Great job on finding that gasoline,” she said. “Whoever left it there probably intended to set the place on fire with Snaith in it.”

  I told her about the surveillance videos being erased.

  “So whoever is behind this knows what they’re doing.”

  “Snaith could have erased the tapes and left the gasoline if he really wanted to frame Erik,” I pointed out. Tinkie and I had discussed this exact angle. “The whole thing could be a setup by Snaith to point the finger of blame at Erik.”

  Glory nodded. “It’s possible. But you don’t believe that completely,” she said, watching us closely.

  “I think we have to consider the fact that there’s someone else involved in these murders. Someone we haven’t identified yet.” Tinkie and I had discussed a theory. I decided to try it out. “Snaith was attacked but not killed. His business was ransacked and an herbicide stolen. Gasoline was spilled, or poured, under his house. If someone had lit that fire, Snaith would have burned to death and the implication would be that a poisoner was at fault. The suspicion would have gone back on Erik.”

  “That’s true. But Erik was with you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have another suspect in mind?”

  “No.” At first the coil of the mystery seemed to revolve around Erik, Snaith, Cosmo, and the miniature Holy Land. Snaith’s attack changed that.

  Glory’s phone rang. She answered and I watched the emotions play across her face. Disbelief bled into anger. “I don’t have the manpower to track down an escaped hospital patient. Has Ward turned himself in yet?” She listened again. “Call down to the drugstore. Make sure Erik is there and tell him his time is up.”

  She hung up and faced us.

  “Who skipped out?” I asked.

  “Cosmo left the hospital against doctor’s orders. I don’t have a clue where he went. He didn’t have a vehicle and the hospital says he didn’t call anyone. He didn’t have a cell phone, as far as I know. Of course he was within walking distance of Erik’s house or business.” She gave me the suspect eye.

  I wondered if he was holed up at Erik’s drugstore, but I didn’t offer a comment. I’d learned not to defend our client when it was possible he was doing something that wasn’t all that smart.

  “I have to go,” Glory said.

  I glanced at my partner, who’d grown suddenly quiet. “Are you okay, Tinkie?”

  “I’m going to take a seat over there in the shade,” Tinkie said. “My feet are killing me and I’m feeling a little light-headed.”

  Tinkie’s feet were swollen, but there w
as no need to point out the obvious. She also looked a little green.

  “There’s a drink machine in the gazebo. Maybe a soda would help her stomach,” Glory said. “I’m going back to town. If Cosmo is wandering the streets I need to nab him.”

  “We’re right behind you,” I told her.

  I headed to a large screened-in gazebo where a soda machine blinked neon at me as I opened the door and entered. I’d first assumed I was alone, and it took me aback to see a woman in a plain gray dress—stifling from the look of the long skirt, long sleeves, and what had to be flannel material. She wore a hat to cover her hair and a large red A on her chest. I knew her instantly. Hester Prynne.

  “I’m not in the mood, Jitty.” I fed some quarters into the machine and got a diet drink for me and a fully loaded cherry Coke for Tinkie. I absolutely didn’t want to deal with a fictional character who so willingly bore the blame and the shame and the public censure of an illegitimate child while that scoundrel Dimmesdale had gone free. “Take the damn A off your dress and skedaddle back to fiction land.” If I had to deal with fictional characters, I much preferred the clear-eyed courage of Jean Louise Finch, who stood with her daddy against the racism and cowardice of a mob.

  “Not all moments in time require the same action.” Hester stepped closer to me.

  “Stay away from me. You’re the creation of a male writer who found it acceptable to blame the woman.” I’d almost been thrown out of my college literature class when I had a hissy fit about the professor’s misogynistic reading of “the Edenic myth” and how Hester Prynne was synonymous with Eve and the snake in the garden. She was the temptress that had cost Dimmesdale his innocence, just as Eve was to blame for the fall of man.

  “I could have said no,” she said.

  That really burned my bacon. “Yeah, and Dimmesdale could have kept it in his pants.” I held out an imaginary apple. “Take a bite, Adam,” I mocked her. “Just a tiny little bite. It’s so delicious. A special treat for a handsome man like you.” I did my best Marilyn Monroe impression and stopped—Jitty had also appeared as Marilyn Monroe. What was going on with her?