Stork Raving Mad (13 page)

And also to my surprise, I was hungry. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten—breakfast? Had I had a midmorning snack? Even if I had, odds were it was time for lunch.

I braced myself in case the kitchen still reeked of seafood and flung open the door.

Dozens of anxious faces looked at me. And I seemed to have interrupted a migration in process. People were slowly filing out the back door, many of them carrying kitchen chairs. Sammy was standing by the door, holding a clipboard, supervising the departure.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Chief’s orders,” Sammy said. “He said he wants everybody out of his crime scene until Horace has a chance to check it out, and until Horace says otherwise, the whole house is the crime scene. So we’re taking everyone out to the barn.”

Wasn’t the chief worried that some of these people—including the poisoner—might begin to suspect that he had a particular interest in the kitchen?

“He’s probably just tired of people sneaking out of the kitchen and coming to the library to bother him,” I said.

Sammy chuckled slightly.

“You could be right,” he said. “We’ll have an easier time keeping them out of his hair if they aren’t in the house.”

I wasn’t sure how much evidence they’d find in the kitchen, though, even if the murderer had done something there to poison
Dr. Wright. Clearly someone had made a start at cleaning it. Probably Rose Noire, who cleaned furiously whenever she had to get something out of her system—like Dr. Wright’s rude treatment of her.

Though it would be interesting to see if anyone had insisted on helping her.

“By the way, I was sorry to hear about Hawkeye,” I said to Sammy. “How is he?”

His face fell.

“He’ll be fine, thanks to Clarence and your dad,” he said. “But I’m worried that we won’t be able to catch the guy who did it, with all this going on. All our officers are here, and I’m not sure the state police are really taking the search seriously.”

“Hey, if you got enough information for any kind of a search, that’s good, right?” I asked.

“It was a dark blue SUV,” he said. “But I only got a partial license plate. Debbie Anne’s going to get the DMV to give us a list of possible vehicles, but the more time passes, the smaller our chances of getting useful evidence.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I patted him on the shoulder. I understood why the chief was putting all his officers on the murder investigation. But I also understood how Sammy felt about his dog.

Just then I spotted the tea kettle on the stove and realized I hadn’t told the chief everything I knew.

I ducked out into the hall, fished my cell phone out of my pocket, and called the chief.

“I thought of something I should have told you,” I said. “I
don’t know how I overlooked it—except when I was telling you about what happened, I thought Dr. Wright had been killed with the statue. So the tea didn’t seem important.”

“What tea?”

I glanced up to make sure there was no one in the living room and cupped my hand around the cell phone.

“The weak tea Dr. Wright drank, along with her dry toast. Rose Noire made it for her,” I said as softly as possible. “I think that might be how she got the poison.”

A pause.

“You think your cousin poisoned Dr. Wright?”

“Good heavens, no! She wouldn’t poison a fly. At least not deliberately.” I thought, briefly, of all those noxious healthy drinks she kept bringing me. But that didn’t really count.

“Then why do you think I should know about the tea?”

“She was making it in the kitchen,” I said. “Weak tea and light toast. I wasn’t there the whole time she was doing it, but when I was there, she was fussing nonstop about how rude and obnoxious Dr. Wright was and making it clear how much she resented having to take a tea tray to her.”

“And there were other people in the kitchen?”

“There are always other people in the kitchen,” I said. “The kitchen and the library are where people hang out, and just then Dr. Wright was tying up the library. So anyone could have been in the kitchen. And Rose Noire wasn’t just brewing tea and slopping it into a mug; she was running from the kitchen to the pantry, arranging the sort of gracious tea tray Mother always insists on.”

“Yes, I saw it in the library,” the chief said. “The black china made a nice, gruesome touch in the crime scene photos. Did anyone help Rose Noire?”

“Not that I saw,” I said. “But everyone would have known who it was for, and anyone who wanted to spike the tea or the sugar bowl would have had plenty of chances while Rose Noire was fussing over the napkins and arranging the flowers.”

Another pause. A long pause.

“So if the poison is in the tea—” he began.

“Or the toast, or the sugar bowl, or anything else on the tray.”

“—you want me to know that Rose Noire didn’t do it.”

“I want you to know that Rose Noire isn’t the only one who could have done it,” I said. “That’s all. And that she might have some idea about who was hanging around and had the opportunity.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Anything else?”

“All I can think of for now,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said. “Now get some rest.”

It sounded like an order. And, while he probably wouldn’t believe it, an order I planned to obey.

As soon as I figured out what the loud voices in the kitchen were all about.

I stuck my head back into the kitchen. The last few of its former occupants were filing out—Ramon Soto, Bronwyn Jones, and Dr. Blanco, supervised by Sammy and a deputy I recognized as one of Randall Shiffley’s cousins.

“I insist that you present my request to Chief Burke immediately,” Blanco was saying to the deputies. He could have used some speech lessons. His voice, normally rather high and thin, had a tendency to squeak when he tried to raise it in emphasis.

“I’ll do that, sir,” Sammy said. “I’m sure he’ll get to you as soon as possible.”

“I have a very busy day,” Blanco said. “And this disruption is intolerable!”

Ramon muttered something in Spanish. Bronwyn tittered. Blanco shot him a dirty look but didn’t reply. He strode out the back door, presumably to join the rest of the suspects in the barn.

“What a jerk,” Ramon said. “Thinks he’s more important than everybody else.”

I’d have diagnosed Blanco as having an inferiority complex myself.

“Mr. Soto?” Sammy said. “Chief’s waiting.”

“Right,” he said. Head down, shoulders hunched, he stumbled toward the door to the hall. Sammy followed him.

“See her out to the barn, will you?” he said over his shoulder to Deputy Shiffley.

The door closed. Bronwyn turned to stare at me and the deputy with arms crossed and a frown on her face.

“Don’t look at me,” I said. I looked longingly at the refrigerator. I’d intended to rummage in it for something suitable to eat. At the moment, suitable meant anything my temporarily picky appetite could tolerate that was still in its original sealed container. But I’d forgotten that it was an integral part of the crime scene. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat anything from there anyway—not until the police figured out how Dr. Wright was poisoned.

“If you could follow me to the barn, ma’am,” Deputy Shiffley said to Bronwyn.

“What about her?” she said, pointing to me.

“I’ve already been interrogated and released,” I said.

I could hear Bronwyn still arguing with the officer as I drifted out into the hallway.

Something to eat and a place to sleep. I had some snacks stashed in my bedroom. But I stared up at the stairs in dismay. It had been a long morning. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go upstairs. If I did, I’d probably be too tired to come down later, which would mean I’d miss everything that was going on.

As I was dithering over whether to climb the stairs, the doorbell rang.

“Serves me right for hesitating,” I muttered as I made my slow way to the door.

But when I opened the door and saw who was standing outside, my mood lifted.

“Kathy!” I exclaimed.

Kathy Borgstrom was dressed, as usual, almost entirely in black—black velvet coat, black tights, black wool cap, black platform boots, and black velvet gloves. A cobwebby scarf in neon pink added the one note of color—though very little warmth. But while her wardrobe might look as if she’d raided the crypt of a Goth-obsessed vampire, Kathy herself could never be described as anything but wholesome and perky. Not to her face, of course.

“Meg!” she said. “You look enormous. How much longer?”

“Anytime now,” I said. “Come in.”

“I was kidding about the enormous part,” she said. “I hope you realized that. Most of you looks fine; you haven’t gained a lot of weight in your face or your hands or—”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Come in so I can shut the door. You’re letting all the heat out.”

“Is this a bad time?” she asked as she followed my orders. “I could come back later if this is a bad time.”

“It’s a horrible time, and don’t you dare leave,” I said. “Abe needs you. We’ve had a murder.”

“A murder!” Her hands flew to her face in a dramatic gesture of alarm. “Who?”

“Dr. Wright,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, in a much less agitated tone. “That’s terrible,” she added, about a second too late.

“You think so? Nobody else does.”

“Just because none of us likes her doesn’t mean it’s okay for some nut to knock her off,” she said, as she shed her coat, revealing a tight-fitting black knit garment that she probably thought of as a dress. I would have called it a tunic. “Besides, you know this is only going to cause trouble for all of us on the drama side of the divide. The police are bound to suspect us. Hell, I suspect us.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Here’s hoping we all have alibis for the time of death.”

“Oh, God,” she said, her face suddenly falling. “I probably don’t. Assuming it happened between the time you called me and now, that is. And it’s all The Face’s fault.”

The Face was what most people called the president of Caerphilly College. He was a kindhearted man of great charm and personal dignity and arguably not a single brain cell. He owed his position to his inexplicable ability to extract large amounts of money from wealthy people and institutions. As long as he stuck to doing that and left running the college to people with some kind of administrative skills, things went smoothly. But Kathy Borgstrom wasn’t a wealthy potential benefactor, so the fact that she’d even encountered The Face was unsettling news.

“What did he want?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” Kathy said. “I mean, who ever does? He
kept asking to see Abe, and I must have explained about fifteen times that Abe was out of the office but that I’d track him down as soon as possible. I didn’t want to tell him where Abe was—the last thing you need is him showing up on your doorstep. And he kept wandering around, picking up papers and putting them down in the wrong places, reading stuff on the bulletin board, and asking questions about whether I was happy and did I think that the building needed painting and had I taken enough of a vacation this year. It was . . . unnerving.”

Studying her face I could see that she really was rattled. Which was odd. Normally an encounter with The Face produced monumental irritation, not anxiety.

“What does he care how happy I am?” she was asking. “I mean, do you suppose that’s what he asks people before he fires them?”

“He doesn’t fire people,” I said in my most reassuring voice.

“No, he leaves that to his minions,” she said. “Like Dr. Blanco. The most obsequious toady ever to slime his way into administrative services, and considering some of his predecessors, that’s really saying something. Anyway, the whole conversation with him was so creepy that I drove halfway out here before I realized that I’d left behind the files I was supposed to bring. I locked them in my desk drawer as soon as The Face showed up, of course, so it’s not as if they fell into the wrong hands or anything. But he was there a half an hour—maybe more—and then all that time driving around on top of the time I spent dealing with him, and only my word for it that any of it happened. And it’s not as if The Face would remember that he was
talking to me if you asked him five minutes after he left my office, much less hours later. And—”

“Calm down,” I said, in my most soothing tones. “So you don’t have an alibi. Hardly anyone here has an alibi. You’ll fit in perfectly. Take a few deep breaths.”

“Sorry,” she said. “Look, what should I do?”

“Go around to the barn,” I said. “Abe’s probably still out there, and you can identify yourself to the deputies and explain that you only just arrived. Don’t go volunteering the fact that you don’t have an alibi unless they ask you.”

“Okay.” She retrieved her coat and tried to struggle into it while opening the front door, a maneuver that ended up costing time instead of saving it. “Will do. Why don’t you get some rest? You really look done in.”

“That’s just what I plan to do,” I said as I shut the door behind her.

The second she was out of sight, something struck me: She hadn’t asked how Dr. Wright was killed. If I were arriving at a house where a murder had just taken place, I think I’d be full of questions about how it happened—especially if I knew the murderer was still on the loose. Kathy hadn’t asked a single thing. Her first reaction to hearing about the murder had been to worry that she didn’t have an alibi. Did she have a reason to worry?

I pulled out my cell phone and checked the time: 1:30. Art and Abe had arrived around noon. Michael had called her a few minutes after he called them, and even considering that she probably had to walk from the drama building to wherever she
parked her car, it shouldn’t have taken her more than twenty minutes to get here. Had she really lost over an hour entertaining The Face and returning to get the files?

I peered out the window and saw that she was near the hedge at the front of our lawn, talking to a uniformed deputy. The deputy was probably there to keep people from just wandering up to the front door during the chief’s investigation—so how had Kathy slipped past him?

I sighed. I hated to admit it, but Kathy was a suspect.