Larkspur (9 page)

Around two thirty the TV car from Channel Three showed up. The reporter had herself
taped making hard-hitting comments by the door while the cameraperson panned over the sign.
Larkspur Books
. Step right up, name your poison. I refused to give them an interview. I
also said no comment to the
Chronicle
stringer who drove his camper into the lot and
was obviously set to lay siege.

"Tomorrow I close the store," I said grimly.

"We're making money hand over fist." We were both at the checkout counter. Ginger
was enjoying herself.

"That is the point."

"Oh. Exploitation." Ginger is not dumb. She rang up the paperback edition of a
low-cholesterol diet book for a teenaged girl who tittered when I looked her in the eye.

"Did Dennis say how his mother was?" Dennis had called two hours before, and Ginger
and I hadn't had a minute to discuss what he'd said.

"He took her to the hospital."

"Really?"

"Just nerves."

"No, we have no more copies in stock, madam." That to a woman in her fifties who
looked like the stereotype of an English teacher. She wanted Llewellyn's poems. "Try the public
library."

Ginger rang up a map of Portugal. Portugal? "You were going to leave at six."

"I won't desert you. No, sir, that's out of stock." I told the man, who looked like the
stereotype of an accountant, that we might have copies of Llewellyn's poems by the end of the
week. I recommended H.D. if he liked imagist poetry. He left without H.D. I wondered whether
he'd have bought Ma's latest if he'd known she was Llewellyn's literary executor.

So it went. We didn't have time to eat. The TV camera and its auxiliaries left by three,
the better to make the five o'clock news, but they were replaced by a dozen assorted children on
bikes and skateboards. Two teenaged girls rode up bareback on a roan horse, and sat and stared.
The horse crapped on the asphalt. Dozens of cars drove by, some with bad mufflers, all with
gawkers. The reporter's camper stayed. The "customers" kept coming.

None of the intruders who entered the store had anything intelligent or even kind to say,
but about half had enough shame to think they had to buy something. One non-buyer handed me
a tract about the wages of sin. I told her the Bible Life Bookstore's address on Main Street. She
called me a jezebel, on what grounds I know not, and flounced out, having exercised her First
Amendment rights.

Ginger stayed with me. At five minutes to nine I dimmed the lights, and by nine-fifteen I
had rung up the last sale, a school-year calendar boosting the Monte J.C. Women's Athletics
Program. I yanked the shades down and locked the front door.

Ginger and I looked at each other. "Phew," she said.

"Let's total out the register. Can you take the money to the night deposit?"

She nodded. "Dennis is picking me up."

"Thanks. Thanks for staying, too. I'm going to have to put in an emergency order with
the supplier in Sacramento." And hope he could get me a dozen copies of Llewellyn's
Collected
Poems
at $29.50 retail.

"Were you serious about closing the store tomorrow?"

"Absolutely. It's Sunday. All the religionists in the county would come in and lecture me
and feel righteous about not buying anything. Besides, I think I ought to close. Staying open isn't
respectful."

She raised her eyebrows. "How about Monday?"

"Monday will be business as usual. Well, not quite. You'd better count on a one to nine
shift all of next week, though I'll close again for a half-day if the funeral is held here. I don't
imagine it will be. Llewellyn lived in San Francisco."

She tried not to lick her chops. Ginger was attending classes full time, but she needed as
much work as she could get. Her kids were in college, too. "I'll drop my one o'clock."

"The art history class? I thought you liked it."

"Sure, but they teach it every semester, and besides I need more time to study." She
looked virtuous.

I had to laugh. "Don't do anything hasty. This flurry of business will probably peter out
in a couple of days."

I let Ginger out the front door when I saw Dennis's pickup pull in. That was a ploy to
distract the
Chronicle
reporter, while I escaped out the back. I set a record shutting off
the backroom lights and locking up and zipped out the alley. I took the back way in to my
apartment.

My telephone answering tape was full of urgent messages from members of the press
looking for exclusive stories--and a somber request from my mother to call her whenever I got in,
even if it was 2:00 a.m. in New York.

I dialed home, and Mother answered on the fourth ring. My father had heard a news
story around three their time, and they'd been worrying ever since. I should have called them
from the lodge. I knew that, and my bad conscience made me defensive.

When I'm defensive I wise-crack. Understandably in the circumstances, Mother didn't
appreciate my flippancy, and we almost quarreled. Then she found out I hadn't eaten since 8:00
a.m., forgave me, and told me to call again the next morning.

Jay let himself in the door as I was scrambling eggs. I added three to the bowl and grated
some cheese. "You look beat."

"You, too. Was it bad?"

"The store? A circus." I told him what had happened and that I wasn't opening Sunday.
He approved. We ate all the eggs and were still starving--he hadn't eaten either--so I made a stack
of sourdough toast and broke out a couple of cold beers afterwards.
Haute
cuisine
.

We sat on the couch, sort of leaning on each other, and sipped our beers. After a while I
said, "Are you going to shut me out of this one?"

He straightened and looked at me without smiling. Jay's eyes are the color of Glenlivet.
When's he's feeling good they have gold lights in the depths. They were dark as a peat-bog. "You
know I'm not supposed to discuss criminal cases with you."

I nodded, watchful.

He sighed. "But I'm going to, of course. It's inevitable. The thing is, Lark, you've got to
promise not to blab."

"Thanks a lot."

"You told Dennis Fromm Llewellyn was murdered."

"Dennis is a friend!"

"Dennis's mother is a suspect."

I made a rude noise.

"It's unlikely she's the murderer. She doesn't strike me as a planner, and this crime took
elaborate planning. Still, she grows her own herbs and flowers, and she brews up salves and teas
all the time. She could have stewed the damned delphinium. And her relationship with Llewellyn
struck me as very murky."

That was interesting. "Murky, how?"

"Murky as in puzzling. Are you going to promise me to keep your gorgeous mouth
shut?"

"As far as is humanly possible," I said with dignity. "I know the people involved, so I
can't pretend absolute ignorance, but I won't say anything to them you don't want me to. And to
the press I guarantee I will make No Comment. It will give me great pleasure."

"Do you include Bill Huff in there with the press?"

I took a sip of beer.

"Huff filed his story from the lodge--on the UPI wire."

"I'll read it and decide."

"Cut it out, Lark."

"You always say that." I relented. "I promise I will keep my lip zipped. You would have
been proud of me at the bookstore. One of the Twinkie brains even asked for my autograph."

That amused him and the tension eased a little. "Who has a motive?" I asked casually.
"Angharad Peltz, obviously."

"Not so obvious. Nobody's seen the will." He rolled his beer bottle back and forth
between his palms. "I don't even know the law firm he dealt with."

"Didn't you ask the Peltzes?"

"The Peltzes weren't giving me the time of day." His mouth quirked. "Especially after
Dan Cowan confiscated a stalk of larkspur, roots and all, from the middle of their flower
garden."

"Cowan," I said, awed. "You have this vindictive streak I never noticed before." Deputy
Cowan was not exactly suave. Jay always insisted he was a good cop, but I wasn't so sure.

"I figured I owed Peltz." He took a swallow of beer. "When I've talked to the lawyers I'll
have a better idea of motive, though greed isn't the only reason for murder."

"Miguel."

He frowned. "I don't think Miguel was Llewellyn's lover, if that's what you're suggesting.
I talked with the kid, of course. Kevin wanted me to take him in. Maybe I should have. Miguel
was at the bar, so he had a better opportunity to poison the drinks than anyone else."

"Drinks?"

"Two."

"How about the Campari bottle?"

"It was okay. We found the poison container, by the way. In the garbage can. No
prints."

"Did anybody see...?"

"For Godsake, Lark, you know damned well the murderer could have disposed of half a
dozen bottles that size while you and I were administering CPR. Everybody was milling
around."

I sighed. "I suppose it was an ordinary bottle, too."

"It was a flavoring bottle, the kind you buy vanilla or lemon extract in."

"Small."

"It would fit in a small woman's palm."

"Are you looking for a small woman?"

"No, damn it. I don't know who I'm looking for. That's the point. It had been rinsed out,
probably run through a dishwasher or boiled before the poison was poured into it."

"Is the poison hard to extract?"

Jay snorted. "The toxicologist said you could puree a plant in your Cuisinart and strain
the juices through cheesecloth."

"Easy."

"Yeah. He said the mess was boiled down to concentrate the poison. That could have
been done on a kitchen stove. Probably was."

"Then it's going to be hard to prove..."

"Anybody at the party could have done it--maybe weeks in advance. There was no trace
of a label or flavoring, though there was a bit of the poison left in the bottle."

"Easy to smuggle into the house."

"Dead easy."

We drank beer.

The flavoring bottle made me think of the cook. "Did you get old Domingo to talk?"

Jay sighed. "Yes. His English is better than Dan's. He knew nothing and saw nothing and
was watching a videotape of
The Sting
when the crime occurred."

"I didn't see any TV sets at the lodge."

"He has a small color set, a large VCR, and a library of old flicks my brother Freddy
would kill for. I believed him--provisionally. As far as I know he didn't stand to gain anything
from Llewellyn's death, and he'll be losing an easy job."

"Easy!" I was thinking of the elegant meals Domingo had produced.

"Ordinarily he only had to cook for Llewellyn and give the other servants their orders.
He was well-paid, had posh quarters in the San Francisco townhouse, and Llewellyn dined out a
lot. Of course Llewellyn may have insulted his
crème
fraiche
or seduced
his baby brother, but I don't think so. It's not going to be that easy. Domingo refused to discuss
his employer's private life. He had nothing to say about Miguel, either, though I gathered he was
jealous of the kid."

"Aha!"

"Not necessarily jealous sexually. Miguel is a newcomer. Domingo started working for
Llewellyn right after World War II. He said the kid did his job."

"Where does Miguel come from?"

"Baja. I know the town--it's a scabby place outside of Mazatlán. Miguel says he
was parking cars at the Casa Miranda last year. Llewellyn hired him to drive around the resort,
and offered him the chauffeur's job later. Miguel jumped at it."

"Naturally."

Jay didn't smile. "Naturally. According to him, he's supporting his grandmother, his
mother, five brothers and sisters, and an ailing uncle. He showed me his green card and said he
was going to apply for citizenship. I believed him. I wasn't so gullible when he denied a sexual
relationship with Llewellyn. He was bound to do that. The culture looks down on
homosexuals."

"He was very demonstrative--sobbing and wailing a lot."

Jay shrugged. "That's culture, too. He was grateful to Llewellyn, and he's afraid he'll
have to go back to Baja. He thought we were cold fish."

I finished my beer and set it on the coffee table. "What about the others? Did you turn up
anything interesting?"

"Janey Huff doesn't like her step-mother."

I hooted. "The great detective."

Jay grinned. "The Huffs were very cooperative, even if Bill was mentally writing leads
for the
National
Enquirer
the whole time I was questioning him."

"The
National
Enquirer
? Be fair. The Huff Press is a class outfit."

"Yes, but that side of it's Lydia's doing, according to Janey. Bill goes along but he's a
newspaperman at heart. Worked for the
Chronicle
until his father died and left him the
local rag."

I digested that. "Well, okay. What about Denise? Dennis took her to the hospital,
according to Ginger. Did you use your rubber hose on her?"

Jay shuddered. "I'm the one who should've been sedated. That woman is an emotional
shark."

"The kind that eats its young."

"I don't think sharks do that." He put his arm around me. "Just swimmers and surf bums
and unwary prime ministers. Come to bed, Lark. We won't solve the case tonight." We didn't try
to solve anything else, either. We were both too tired.

At 7:00 a.m. my mother called. It was ten for her, so I may someday forgive her. She
talked, sadly, about Llewellyn and what his influence had meant to her, and I eventually woke up.
Jay did, too. He glowered at the ceiling for five minutes of uh-uh and unh-uh, and apparently
decided the phone call wasn't going to go away.

When he came back from the shower we were still on the line. I had given Ma a full
account of our rescue attempt and talked to my dad, too, and cried on his shoulder, and gone back
to Ma. She was speculating about what being literary executor would mean when bells went off
and lights flashed.