A Rip Roaring Good Time (9 page)

"Same here, Wendy. But I still think he should realize that someone of Lexie's character wasn't involved in the murder and let her go without further investigating of any motive she might have had to want Trotter dead," Stone said optimistically. "Smith can't possibly despise her to that degree."

"I'd agree with you, Stone," Wendy said ruefully. "But then we'd both be wrong. Don't think for a second he's forgotten the time we threatened to file a lawsuit against Trotter, because of ─ well, you know. And I imagine he's held that against Mom all along, too."

"Oh, good Lord," Stone repeated, dropping his head into his hands, which were resting on the kitchen table. "I'd forgotten about that incident too!"

* * *

We sat in the kitchen nursing our cups of coffee as one hour lead to the next. We could hear voices and even laughter as a number of detectives were reexamining the crime scene in the parlor. There didn't appear to be an overabundance of gravity amongst the investigating team. Of course, it stood to reason they might have very little use for the victim themselves, or possibly even for their boss, the victim's stepfather.

Three hours later, Detective Johnston finally called to inform Stone that Lexie was being held in custody while the investigation continued. Wyatt said he'd tried to get the detectives to let her go home if Lexie promised not to leave town, but his effort had failed. According to him, the other detectives thought it best to let the chief make that decision since the crime involved the death of his stepson, not theirs.

Chief Smith was not present at the police station because he obviously had other pressing matters. He was at the coroner's office, where Nate had taken his son's body. Wendy was also called to the coroner's lab to assist in the autopsy, which the police chief had demanded be performed immediately.

Even though he was no doubt grieving tremendously, he was apparently not going to let any grass grow under his feet in his eagerness to apprehend the person responsible for his loved one's murder. Unfortunately, according to Wendy, who had returned from the lab an hour after she left the inn, Chief Smith was convinced he already had the killer behind bars.

Wendy told us her boss, Nate, had sent her home from the coroner's lab soon after the procedure began. Nate told her Chief Smith had insisted she not be involved in the autopsy. He believed having her assist in the thorough postmortem examination while her mother was being held as the prime suspect was a conflict of interest, Wendy explained. "Apparently, the chief thinks I'd skew the autopsy report in Mom's favor to try to save her from the gas chamber. It's not that the chief wasn't correct that, at the very least, I would be tempted to intervene if it would help save my mother's hide. But regardless, to out and out suggest I'd so such a thing is preposterous. What a freaking a-hole!"

"The gas chamber?" Stone asked with a catch in his voice.

"Just a figure of speech, Stone," his stepdaughter replied. "Actually, in Missouri, they'd give her the needle."

"The needle?" Stone gasped. And here I'd thought Rip didn't know when to zip it. I decided to steer the conversation away from the manner in which Lexie might be executed before Wendy dug an even deeper hole and pushed Stone headfirst into cardiac arrest.

"So why did they call you to come in if they didn't want you involved in the case?" I asked.

"It was merely out of necessity. When Nate made the initial thoracic-abdominal incision he noticed that the cadaver's blood and body tissue were bright red," Wendy said, as if we'd all automatically know what that implied.

Then the young dear turned morbid on us, detailing the standard autopsy procedure. After a few comments about opening the pericardial sac to determine blood type, removing and weighing organs before slicing them into sections and looking for petechiae, or tiny hemorrhages in the mucus membrane inside the eyeballs, I asked her to spare us the gruesome details and cut to the chase. I was getting ready to prepare sandwiches for everyone, and I didn't need visions of dissected eyeballs in my mind while I ate my lunch. I did change my mind about serving hard-boiled eggs with the sandwiches though.

"Oh, sorry," Wendy said apologetically. "Force of habit, I guess. I'm used to talking things like this over with my coworkers in the lab. Anyway, bright red blood and tissue in a cadaver indicates the presence of cyanide, but it has to be verified by smell. In the county coroner's lab there are Nate, the county coroner; a deputy coroner, Max, who's retiring at the end of the year; and a few assistants like me. In the entire department, I have by far the best sense of smell when it comes to detecting and identifying specific odors such as cyanide. Some people can't smell it at all, but I can easily pick up its scent if the poison is present."

"What does cyanide smell like?" Rip asked. He'd taken the words right out of my mouth and probably Stone's as well.

"It has a bitter almond scent to it. Kind of smells like Andy's dirty socks, actually," Wendy explained with a smile. "So anyway, they called me in to go 'under the hood' as we say. It's a process to trap the fumes in order to verify that cyanide was in Trotter's system. Then they told me I was not allowed to be involved any further in the autopsy, as I said before. I was extremely miffed at being barred from the case."

"I don't get it," Stone said, taking the words out of my mouth once again. "I thought his throat was sliced."

"It was. But only after he'd been weakened by cyanide poisoning, which was also detected in the liquid residue on shards of the broken goblet he'd been drinking from. My guess is that the perpetrator didn't want Hayes to bring attention to himself by thrashing on the floor while trying to get oxygen into his lungs. Also, and most likely, to prevent the risk of Trotter not consuming enough of the poison to kill him. That might allow for help to arrive quickly enough to save his life."

"Yeah, that wouldn't have been good," I remarked without thinking. The others looked at me for a few seconds before turning their attention back to Wendy.

"As soon as the victim fell to the ground, the killer had to have stepped behind Hayes and sliced through the carotid artery and jugular on the left side of his neck. The right side was unaffected, indicating the killer was most likely right-handed, as were all but four people on the premises at the time of the murder. Slicing his throat in this manner would not be an altogether easy task with someone of Trotter's muscular build, but it could be achievable, particularly if the perpetrator was in a rage and had adrenalin going for him. The old 'woman lifts car off baby' type of adrenalin."

Wendy told Stone that the chief knew Lexie had an ax to grind with his stepson. "And he believed that, due to Mom's impulsive nature, she could have easily acted out her desire for revenge in a fit of fury like I just mentioned." The news was not exactly what we all had hoped to hear.

Rip turned to Wendy and asked her if Missouri law allowed suspects to be held for forty-eight hours without officially charging them with a crime, and Wendy replied, "Missouri law only allows a twenty-hour hold time. But I'm sure that Chief Smith, being Chief Smith, will push the envelope as far as he possibly can. He'll likely pay no attention to that law whatsoever."

We were only marginally relieved to hear Wendy's response. I'd been silent during the conversation so far. I was brooding about how Rip and I might be able to help out with the situation. We were to be at the inn for at least a week while the mechanics at Boney's garage completed the repairs on our travel trailer. No sense sitting on our cans twiddling our thumbs during that time. And particularly not if we had a friend in need who could use our help.

At first I'd prayed the repairs would be taken care of as quickly as possible, given they were costing us seventy-five hard-earned bucks an hour. But now the penny-pinching trait in me had been swallowed up completely by the righteousness one. I didn't care how long the repairs took now that we had a more important issue to contend with while they were being completed. Neither Rip nor I had any intention of leaving town while Lexie was rotting away in jail.

Okay, I'll admit that perhaps "rotting away" was a little melodramatic, but I knew she wasn't a happy camper about being incarcerated, even if only temporarily. I could remember what my pappy always said after having spent time in jail for a public intoxication or disturbing the peace arrest, both of which occurred frequently.

Pappy would stuff a wad of Beechnut in his mouth, chew for a spell, spit on the ground—or on occasion his already grimy boots—and say, "The big house is not a place you'll ever want to find yourself, Princess. Being locked up there is about as much fun as having a bear drop a load in your Easter basket."

I'd been too young to comprehend what he was saying. As a child it seemed to me that the "big house" would be preferable to the dilapidated, dirt-floored, three-room flea trap we lived in at the time. But if Pappy said otherwise, I figured it must be so.

Chapter 6

It was nearly midnight when Detective Johnston called to tell Stone that nothing further would happen until morning regarding the case, including a change in Lexie's imprisonment. He'd seen to it she'd had a comfortable cot and a decent meal since the catered supper had gone uneaten. I knew for a fact she'd skipped lunch as well, too busy to take the time to eat—as had I. He suggested we all get some sleep and that he'd call again in the morning after he'd heard the latest on the situation.

We agreed. We were all wrung out from being fraught with worry and shell-shocked by the vicious murder that had taken place in the parlor that evening. Stone had been especially concerned about his wife's welfare, naturally, but was also muttering about what affect yet another murder in the Alexandria Inn might have on their bed and breakfast business. I'd heard him remark to his stepdaughter, "Wendy, how many people do you think can get killed in the inn before customers are too scared to stay here? So far, the first two murders have not seemed to slow down the steady stream of guests, but eventually the word will get around that booking a room here is a bit like playing Russian roulette. We'll be deemed 'the house of horrors,' I'm afraid."

"Don't worry, Stone," she'd replied. "It'll all work out in the end. Mom, and the business, will come out just fine. Try to get some rest, as hard as that'll be for all of us, no doubt."

I'm pretty sure the only one who slept at all that night was Dolly. She'd had a very active day. The Alexandria Inn was a half-a-block long, and it had no doubt been a long, tedious task for her to get it all sniffed out. It was a vital part of the feline job description. And who could tell when the food fairy might leave an unanticipated cat treat in an obscure location? I'm sure this was Dolly's line of thinking since she appeared to believe she was always be on the brink of dying of starvation.

My mind was racing, preventing me from nodding off. At around three-thirty in the morning, Dolly had jumped off the bed to settle on a pile of clothes on the floor after being disturbed several times by my tossing and turning.

When I kick the bucket myself, Lord, please have mercy on my soul
, I prayed.
Let me come back as a housecat
. How nice it'd be to only have to be concerned with a few things: a bowl full of food, a comfortable place─ up high preferably─ to nap, a clean litter box to poop in, and most importantly, well-trained servants to wait on me hand and paw. Even the mice could scurry all over the house, unless of course, I had a hankering to chase them down to wear off a sudden burst of energy.
Ahh... what a nice life that'd be
, I thought before finally drifting off into a fitful slumber.

My sleep was rendered even more restless with a dream about eyeballs being dug out of a corpse with an ice-cream scoop, sliced in two with a knife and placed on the top of a birthday cake with a candle sticking out of each half. "Surprise!" The unidentifiable people around me shouted, as melted wax the color of fresh blood began to run down the candles and onto the whites of the eyeballs. Startled awake, I sat up in bed feeling as if a ghost had walked over my grave.

* * *

The situation had not righted itself as I'd hoped by the time Rip and I joined Stone in the kitchen for a cup of coffee early the following morning. Our host looked dejected as he remarked, "It just doesn't seem right to be sitting here in the morning drinking coffee without Lexie."

"I'm sure it doesn't, my friend. We'll do our best to get her back where she belongs as quickly as possible. Any news yet?" Rip asked. I'd noticed he had descended the staircase very tenderly, rubbing his hip after each tentative step. Maybe now I could convince the hard-headed mule to make an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon. We were insurance poor, having paid premiums for health care we seldom needed for five decades. It was about time we recouped some of that investment.