"Wedding plans?"
"Not hardly."
There was something wrong with the story, but I couldn't quite get hold of it. Dahlia's veiled remarks about blackmailers-"them"-should have made some sense, should have done something besides confuse me all the more. But if her mind moved, then it did so in deeply mysterious ways and she wasn't about to offer me a map. I thanked her for her invaluable assistance and drove back to the PD to make a few notes.
"Now this is just between you and me," Barbie Buteo said over the telephone to Joyce Lambertino, who was stirring eggs with one hand, buttering toast with the other, and keeping an eye on Larry junior, who was feeding the baby pieces of cereal.
Holding the receiver with her shoulder wasn't making life any easier for Joyce, but Barbie had called long distance and it wouldn't be polite not to listen. "What's between you and me?" she said, doing her best to sound intrigued.
"You got to promise not to tell another soul. This was told to me in the strictest confidence-and it could cost someone her job."
"Then don't tell me." Joyce tossed pieces of toast to Saralee and Traci, dumped milk on Lissie's cereal, and snatched up Larry junior's glass of orange juice just as the baby lunged. "Maybe I ought to call you back," she added.
"It's about that Petrel fellow. I just wanted to warn you to lock all your doors and windows, Joyce. I know Larry Joe's gone all day, and I hate to think you and the children would be at the mercy of a madman."
The glass slipped out of Joyce's hand and splattered the floor in a yellow-orange explosion that delighted the spectators. "Mommie did a boo-boo," Larry junior cackled. Saralee, Lissie, and Traci giggled, and the baby threw a handful of Cheerios in the air. Everyone thought it was festive, except for Joyce, who'd turned rigid and was gulping like crazy.
She snapped at Larry junior to clean up the mess, then took the telephone and moved around to the far side of the refrigerator. "What on earth are you talking about, Barbie?" she whispered. "Petrel is Jim Bob's partner, isn't he?"
"I wouldn't know about that," Barbie said. "I'm only telling you this for your own good, Joyce, cause we were best friends in high school and I'm worried about you. The police arrested him for raping a bunch of girls, but he escaped from their clutches and is hiding in Maggody somewhere, waiting for a chance to brutalize some innocent girl or housewife. That kind don't stop until someone puts a bullet through their hearts-if they have hearts, anyway. He's an animal, a crazed wild animal out there watching and waiting." Joyce looked out the kitchen window at the tire swing, the sandbox with its collection of plastic trucks, buckets, and shovels, Larry junior's deflated basketball, and the usual crap she saw every day through that same window. A robin hopped across the yard and a squirrel was hanging from the bird feeder. Their dog, a scrawny tan mutt with a fondness for plastic trucks, lay on his side in the sun. It looked pretty normal, and it was hard to think of a rapist squatting behind the forsythia bushes.
"He is?" she finally said about the time Barbie was starting to get alarmed.
11
When I got to the PD, I called Harve to see if he'd heard anything from the state lab on the second and third incidents of poisoning. He hadn't, but the lab moved exceedingly slowly and neither of us bothered to feign any surprise.
"You working on the list of witnesses?" he asked.
I told him what Cherri Lucinda Crate had said the previous night on the balcony of the Airport Arms Apartments. "It's screwy," I added. "I can't think of any reason either of them would bother to lie about it."
"Folks lie all the time," he said succinctly.
"I know they do," I said, sighing, "but usually for some perceptible motive. Jim Bob's whereabouts at eleven o'clock Monday night aren't relevant-or at least I don't think they are. What may or may not have happened in her apartment is only of prurient interest."
"Guess you better run it by him again, tell him what the gal said and ask him what all he's got to say. Hold on a minute, Arly, I got to see a man about a horse."
I leaned back in my chair and propped my feet on the desk. If the V formed by my feet was the gizmo at the end of a barrel, I'd have a clean shot at my visitor's seat across the room. I twitched my feet for a minute, frowning, then let it slide and picked up the notes I'd written after talking to Dahlia. Almost all the scribbles had question marks at the end, and when Harve came back on the line, I went over them with him.
"So the sauce could have been spiked Friday night or Saturday morning," I said. "But according to Jim Bob's statement, the SuperSaver was uninhabited that night because there wasn't any cash in the registers. Dahlia and the other two cooks showed up early in the morning and were in the kitchen until the tamales were taken out to the pavilion."
"Which puts us right back where we were. Unless you want to pin it on the cooks or a cheerleader, one of the folks in the area went over to the table and dumped ipecac on the tamales. And unless we got a copycat, that same person got nastier and nastier till the Smew woman died."
"Damn it, I wish we knew what was in that coconut cake," I said. "At some point Monday evening or during the night, someone must have set the tampered cakes out where they'd be the easiest to pick up."
"Weren't many folks there during the night," Harve pointed out. "You'd better look harder at those who came by before the SuperSaver closed and had reasons to resent it."
Like Ruby Bee. "Wait a minute," I said, getting so excited that my feet nearly slid off the desk. "According to Jim Bob, the regular schedule calls for Buzz Milvin to come in at nine, total the register tapes, and count the money. Jim Bob verifies it and takes the money to the night depository in Starley City. But something changed Monday night, and Jim Bob sent Buzz with the money and then went to Cherri Lucinda's apartment or not, depending on whose story you believe."
"So the store was empty for what-about an hour?"
"Not exactly," I said slowly, "but I think it's time for a long talk with Kevin Buchanon. Dahlia hinted at dark secrets. Kevin will spill the beans if I have to handcuff him and hoist him into the sweet gum tree in his backyard."
Harve chuckled and wished me luck.
I called the hospital and learned that Buzz was out of immediate danger but still hooked up to various support systems and unable to have visitors. Martin Milvin was fully conscious and would be released after twenty-four more hours of observation. I wanted to pass along the news to Lissie, but Joyce's line was busy and I was primed to tackle Kevin Buchanon.
He was sitting on the porch swing, looking as distracted as Dahlia had earlier, although he wasn't shoveling cookies into his mouth. "How's it going?" he asked as I came onto the porch.
"Not well," I said. "You've heard that Buzz and Martin Milvin were poisoned and Lillith Smew may have been murdered?"
"Yeah, my ma heard something from somebody last night when she was swapping recipes. Buzz is a pretty good ol' guy for the most part, and I feel real bad for all of them."
I gave him an icy look. "Then maybe you'll cooperate? I don't know what you and Dahlia have been up to, but I want to hear the truth-and I want to hear it now."
His face turned splotchy and he began to gulp loudly. He grabbed the arm of the swing, staring at me as if I'd announced I'd come to arrest him for murder and execute him on the spot.