Something small that would slip into a jeans pocket in a bottle or a … tin! Something easily doctored with poison. Something that other people knew about or saw Elmore using.
Temple abandoned her coffee table craft project to take her home office computer for a spin on the Internet. She couldn’t help wondering how Sherlock Holmes would have ever impressed anybody with his instant store of vast but specialized knowledge if he’d had to compete with Google.
She typed in the suspect word and came up with usual 3,869-plus sites.
The top entries were most enlightening.
Skoal, she read, was a leading manufacturer of chewing tobacco, along with Copenhagen, Red Seal, and Rooster. My, but the color red came up a lot, if you considered that roosters had that scarlet coxcomb.
She didn’t know any users, thank goodness, and understood women’s distaste for that male affection for the stuff known as “spit” tobacco, or “dip” (as in “dipwad”?), or “chew.”
That “pinch between your cheek and gum” she’d seen advertised now and again (and had ignored) offered a nicotine rush and a risk of mouth cancer to go with it.
Hmmm. Other effects were increased heart rate and blood pressure, not to mention decreased smell and taste, which would make a man a prime candidate for poisoning.
And the stuff came in “compact little tins.”
That Alch! Had he led her on, without ever lying!
Her eyes nearly popped out of her head when she read the next paragraph. Spit tobacco contained such lethal additives as arsenic, cadmium, DDT, formaldehyde, and hydrogen cyanide, the poison used in gas chambers.
Wasn’t that what Cold War spies had implanted in their teeth for instant suicide if caught? Cyanide capsules. A clever person with access to cyanide certainly could “roll” his or her own. Empty a harmless pill capsule, fill it with cyanide, and dump the poison in Elmore’s ever-present tin of chew.
Temple remembered him hawking into a handkerchief at the debate table. He probably used the tobacco in the john before and after appearing in public. Maybe that last chaw was already disagreeing with him. If enough cyanide to fill a tooth could be instantly fatal, so could a dose taken in a wad of tobacco.
She looked up “Skoal” as a toast, just for fun. It didn’t seem directly relevant, but the entry she found was certainly grisly.
It seemed that at the full moon, in early northern European caves, the priests of the Norse god Odin would toast him using the skull of a fallen foe as a sacrificial cup.
Well, wasn’t that special?
She quickly called Electra on her desk phone.
“I have two questions. Where were you at 2:20 P.M. yesterday?”
“Assisting in a perkshop demonstration of hair extensions. Is that important?”
“Important and good. That’s when Kit was mistaken for me and attacked.”
“I heard about that, also that she’s going to be all right. Such a shame. You had to ask me?”
“Yes. That puts the kibosh on the police’s suspicion of you.It doesn’t clear you of Oleta’s death, but it sure upsets the Railroad Electra trend.”
“I should hope so! Although I’d never want anyone to be hurt just so I was cleared.”
Temple decided to keep mum about her upcoming brilliant hokey plan.
“What was your second question?” Electra asked. “Did Elmore use chewing tobacco?”
“Not when I knew him, or I’d have never ‘married’ him. He always was a sports addict. Don’t a lot of athletes use chewing tobacco because it doesn’t affect their wind the way cigarettes do?”
“Skoal!” Temple crowed.
“Ah, have we got something to celebrate?”
“Yes, I know now what almost killed Elmore. It’s not `Skoal’ as in a toast, Electra. It’s a brand name! Elmore’s now hooked on chewing tobacco, and that’s where the poison was placed. Remember the cyanide capsules foreign agents had built into their teeth in all those old spy movies? This was to be a vintage death.”
“Whatever you say, dear. But I left Elmore before he had any such disgusting habit as chewing tobacco. I can put up with a lot of things, but stinky brown spit every few minutes isn’t one of them. There are spitting lizards I could cohabit with if I’d wanted that.”
“Don’t you see? Whoever tried to kill Elmore knew his nasty habits, and used them. And must have known him after you did.”
“But the police won’t believe that I never knew him to use that vile stuff.”
“I’ll just have to find out who did know he used chewing tobacco, and used it to try to kill him.”
“That’s nice, dear, but do be careful! Now just go get some Crystal Light to toast yourself and use some other word than Skoal, and calm down. You sound really overheated.”
Subdued, Temple complied and returned to her living room, wondering how she could nail a killer with a small tin of chewing tobacco. Still, she only had to figure out who wanted Elmore Lark dead and knew enough about him to hit on the perfect method.
Meanwhile, her first trick to trip up the killer was a corny scheme, but centered on a hat and would attract attention. What more did she need for bait at this particular convention? Except maybe herself.
Ouch.
Would that stop Viking stock? No!
Temple lifted her glass of Crystal Light and envisioned the recent computer graphic of Viking warriors chug-a-lugging from a dead enemy’s skull.
“Skoal!”
Chapter 54
The Red Hat Rage Brigade
My partner is still off on her own private crusade working the missing Mr. Max Kinsella case when it becomes clear from eavesdropping on the recent hullabaloo that my Miss Temple has plans to put her life in danger.
I see her set the bait this morning and soon the word gets all around the convention. People come to gawk and spread even more word around. By the time all the conventioneers exit to attend the two simultaneous banquets tonight, Miss Temple’s bait will be left for someone bad to come sniffing around it.
I expect her to be lying in wait, and I intend to be lying in wait with her, unbeknownst to her, of course. I am your unbeknownst go-to guy.
What good will it do if Miss Midnight Louise finds Mr. Max alive and in the meantime Miss Temple has been offed? That is what you would call an ironic situation, although it is more of a moronic situation, in my opinion.
I know it is up to me. As per usual. Because, of course, the Fontana litter are off seeing to Aldo and Miss Kit Carlson. Even the police are no longer hanging around here as much. The Red Hat ladies will be tuckered and tucked away for the night while visions of purple plums dance in their heads after the evening’s banquet.
This being Las Vegas, plenty of patrons and hotel personnel are stirring on the Crystal Phoenix’s main floor, but the Red Hat Sisterhood’s public spaces are shut down.
I realize I will need reinforcements before this case is over, but have nowhere to turn. The police are not expecting more mayhem on-site. The hotel security forces are top-notch, but they are only human.
What is needed here is the superhuman sight and hearing of my kind. I am ready to gnaw my nails in frustration, except that I will need them later, when a bright idea occurs to me.
It is not only fresh and exciting, but it will improve my status among the desirable ladies of my species.
I dash through a moving parade of feet to the elevators. How convenient that I was hanging about the lobby when the first convention-goers arrived, for I then burned a particular suite number into my inboard memory device.
The first carload only takes me a few floors up before emptying. I prance with impatience waiting for another elevator to stop where I have been marooned. Several stop, because I have leaped repeatedly at the call button until it depresses. I hang out of sight behind a cigarette butt stand while riders grouse about thoughtless people who call the elevator, then decide to walk and leave the doors opening on nothing.