His tone wasn’t threatening, just mildly inquisitive, and I knew he was just doing his job, but lack of food and sleep was starting to make me cranky. Nevertheless I tried to hold on to my temper as I worked it out on my fingers.
“I started with thirty. Three tablets a day for ten days… breakfast, mid-afternoon and bedtime… But I didn’t take last night’s and I still have today’s to go… Four?”
He handed me the baggie. “Shake it.”
Empty.
The bottom fell out of my stomach.
“That’s what put Chan Nolan into anaphylactic shock? My penicillin?”
“According to his allergist, even one tablet would be dangerous for him. Didn’t you see his Medic Alert medallion when you were dancing with him last night?”
“I remember two gold chains, but if there was a medallion, it must have been tucked inside his shirt. I certainly didn’t read it.”
“No?” He twisted one end of his thick brown mustache into a sharp point and regarded me with those warm brown eyes.
“And I certainly wasn’t his only dancing partner.”
“So far though, you’re the only one with missing penicillin tablets,” he pointed out.
“The only one you know about,” I snapped.
“A soft answer turneth away wrath,” warned the preacher deep inside my head.
“Losing your temper is not the way to go,” agreed the pragmatist who shares the same space. “He’s not Dwight.”
“Half the medicine cabinets in America must be stocked with half-empty bottles of penicillin,” I said as calmly as I could. “Besides, from early in the evening, I didn’t even have mine.”
I described the mix-up with tote bags and he wanted to know who’d been where from the minute I set my tote under the table. He wrote down all the names, beginning with Savannah, continuing through Dixie Babcock, Drew Patterson and her father Jay, Kay Adams and her colleague Poppy Jackson, Heather McKenzie, Mai and Jeff Stanberry, and, even though I didn’t know her, that Lavelle Trocchi who was supposed to have given Chan the Hickory-Dock catalog last month and who, according to Dixie, had been next to the table.
He was particularly interested in the plate of food Drew had fixed for Chan and which Dixie had actually handed to him, “although Dr. Harrison says that with that much penicillin, Nolan would have started to react immediately. You sure you didn’t see him again after you left that ballroom?”
As he wrote down my denial, the officer who’d taken my fingerprints tapped on the door, stuck his head in and said, “Two hits on the baggie, Dave.”
“What baggie?” I asked apprehensively.
“The tablets were crushed and stuck into some brownies. We found a baggie in his jacket pocket with brownie crumbs and some of the penicillin residue. Your prints are on the baggie.”
“That’s impossible!” I snapped. And then I remembered the zip-lock bag that Savannah had dropped.
My sudden recollection and hasty account of picking up the bag sounded limp and guilty even to my ears. With as much dignity as I could muster, I said, “Dwight Bryant’s the deputy sheriff over in Colleton County and he’s known me since I was born. He’ll tell you I don’t make a habit of going around killing perfect strangers.”
(Okay, so maybe that was a slight fudging of the facts, but I knew our brief acquaintance in Maryland wasn’t relevant. For all practical purposes, Chan had been a stranger and I really didn’t want to talk about that time.)
“I’ll give you his phone number.”
Underwood’s shaggy brown mustache quivered and I realized he was grinning. “I already talked to Major Bryant this morning before I went over to the courthouse.”
“Well, then,” I said.
“Always a first time.” His grin faded as he asked me again about the people I’d seen in Chan Nolan’s company.
He particularly concentrated on Savannah’s movements. “You’re positive she’d already left the table and the room with your bag before Nolan joined your group?”
“If you don’t believe me, ask Heather McKenzie. She followed the woman out.”
His legal pad lay on the narrow table between us and he made no attempt to conceal it as he drew a heavy black arrow on his notepad from Heather’s name to Savannah’s. “Now, Judge, what makes you think I don’t believe you?”
“The question marks you’re drawing around that arrow, maybe?”
He smiled. “And you’re staying with Nolan’s mother-in-law, right?”
“She found me the place, but it’s actually with her neighbor next door.”
He took down Pell Austin’s address and telephone number, then gave me back my tote bag and purse. The empty penicillin bottle he kept. So far as I could tell, nearly everything else seemed present and accounted for, right down to my cell phone, checkbook and car keys. I usually had three tubes of lipstick. The darkest one was gone. Gone, too, were my nail clippers. And I was in the habit of dropping in my loose change. Sometimes there would be five or six dollars’ worth of coins rattling around at the bottom. At the moment, there were only a nickel and three pennies.
Underwood made a note of it even though I considered them a small enough payment for getting my other things back.
“I’ll have someone drive you to your car,” he said, “and, Judge?”
“Yes?”
“Major Bryant also told me that you’re bad for sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong—his words, not mine.” His half-teasing tone became wholly serious. “Do us all a favor while you’re in High Point, Judge? Don’t.”
10
« ^ » “The younger members of the firm have received all the advantages of education and careful scientific training which our modern times afford… and thus are fully able to take part in keeping the organization.”The Great Industries of the United States, 1872
As a uniformed officer escorted me out of the building, I met Dixie coming in.
She gave me a wan smile. ‘They found your bag?”
“Yeah.”
Her drawn features and the dark circles under her eyes let me know that she hadn’t caught a nap this morning. What I didn’t know was if she’d been told yet that Chan’s death was a homicide. “You okay?”
“Hanging in,” she said gamely.
“Court should adjourn by one-thirty,” I told her. “Want me to take Lynnette for a drive or something?”
She brightened. “Could you? That’d be great. Cheryl’s with her right now but she’s hyped for Market and there’s so much I need to do before Chan’s sister gets here.”
I suborned my escort to drive through Hardee’s before taking me on to my car. I tried to buy him a burger, too, but he swore he wasn’t hungry yet. Tasted like ambrosia to me though, and I had my daily dose of grease and red meat half-eaten before we pulled up beside my car, still parked where I’d left it.
No second ticket on the windshield either.
Licking ketchup off my fingers, I drove back to the courthouse, parked in a judge’s slot, and made it up to my courtroom where I reconvened Verlin vs. Jenner only eight minutes late.
Travis Tritt Verlin’s young parents sat almost exactly where I’d left them on opposite sides of the room, and each eyed me anxiously as I leafed through all the documents looking for answers that weren’t there.
I tried to focus on what was right for this toddler at this time and to keep my mind clear of preconceptions and outside influences.
When I finally came down on the side of the father, I truly do not think it was because I’d let myself be influenced by Dixie’s fierce love for her granddaughter and her despair at the thought of Lynnette leaving for Malaysia.
But how can we ever say for sure what tips the balance?