Bone Appétit (17 page)

We both nodded. “We promise,” we said in unison.

“Well, Marby, why don’t you just jump in her lap like a good little doggie?” Jansen was disgusted.

“Thanks, Reverend Tanner,” I said. “Good to know someone in Leflore County keeps his word and knows how to behave like a professional.”

Jansen only rolled his eyes as I unfolded the paper. Tinkie pulled at my elbow, and I adjusted the pages so she could read along with me.

The first report was on Janet Menton. I’d seen enough autopsy reports to get the gist in a hurry, but what I read stopped me cold. “Ricin?” I asked.

Marlboro and Jansen nodded.

“That’s incredibly dangerous.” I didn’t know much about poison, but I knew the U.S. government had worked on an antidote in case of biological warfare. “A tiny amount could kill hundreds of people. Thousands.”

“And it isn’t hard to get hold of,” the coroner said. “Fact is, those castor plants grow wild, especially in the warmer regions of the state, like around the Gulf Coast area.”

“The area where Miss Blackledge is from,” Jansen said.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’m sure you can log on to the Internet and buy this stuff,” Tinkie threw in. “It isn’t exactly like only one person here could find it.”

“True,” Jansen said. “Almost anyone who wanted to kill could get it, if they had enough money.”

“That rules Hedy out,” I said. “She’s broke.”

Jansen gave me a long look. “Folks sometimes acquire money when they want it bad enough.”

I shuffled the papers and located the time of death. From what Hedy had told me, it appeared Janet had died within an hour of her departure from the room. The ricin could easily have been in room service food or the pastries I’d noticed on the floor.

“I’ve questioned the kitchen staff and the waiter who delivered food to Miss Menton,” Jansen said. “Hedy was in the room when the food arrived. She had every opportunity.”

“And so did anyone in the kitchen. Or the tray could have been left for a moment. Or Janet could have had someone stop by her room.” Someone like Marcus Wellington. He’d gotten Hedy out of the room, I was sure. Why? Maybe to poison Janet. “If you had the evidence on Hedy, she’d be under arrest.”

“The poison was in the pastries,” Jansen said.

He’d deliberately riled me, but I’d learned something valuable. “Where did the pastries come from?” I asked.

“They were apparently homemade,” Jansen said. “According to Miss Kompton, those cream cheese pastries were known to be Janet Menton’s favorites.”

“So who made them?” I asked.

“I intend to find out,” Jansen said.

I flipped to the autopsy report on Brook Oniada. Sure enough, there was something strange on her skin. Ambergris.

“Isn’t ambergris somehow connected to whales?” I asked. Visions of
Moby-Dick
, a book I’d hated, flashed through my mind.

“Yes.” Marlboro looked pleased, like I’d answered a trivia question correctly. “It’s produced in the hindgut of sperm whale and was used in perfume, but not anymore. It’s been banned because folks were killing whales to harvest it. Actually, the whales expel it naturally.”

“What’s it used for?” Jansen asked.

“It was a fixative in perfumes. It’s a cholesterol-type substance . . . and it was once considered a culinary delicacy. It’s highly flammable.” Marlboro swallowed.

“Where would you go about getting ambergris?” Tinkie asked.

“Like anything else, folks can get it on the Internet,” the coroner said. He looked away, as if something troubled him. When he faced us again, he seemed to have aged at least a decade. “Ambergris is sometimes used in witchcraft or voodoo ceremonies.”

“How did you find out about that?” I asked.

His smile was wry. “The Internet. Like everyone else, I recognize it as a great resource.”

“And if you found it, so could anyone else.” I made my point clearly. “The question is, who knew ambergris was both flammable and used in voodoo? Someone is making it look like Hedy is to blame.”

“That’s a million-dollar question, Ms. Delaney,” Jansen said. “I’m sure if you find the answer, you’ll be in touch with my office.”

“Count on it, Chief.”

By the time Tinkie and I returned to the cooking gazebo, almost everyone had gone. Crews were there to clean up. The barbecue was over—and no one else had died.

It was ten when we finally met up with Cece and Millie at the bar in the Alluvian. They were staying the night, though they both had to get up early the next morning to return to Zinnia.

While my friends chatted and discussed the barbecue cook-off, I heaved a sigh of relief. The body count had not risen. But it could. It might swell to huge proportions. The illness Oscar had just recovered from could be child’s play when contrasted with a minuscule release of ricin.

I wanted to tell Cece, but both Tinkie and I had promised the coroner, and we couldn’t break our word. Cece was the ultimate professional and would never print such a thing, but still, we couldn’t tell. Ricin was so toxic, if a hint of someone using it slipped out, a panic would be easy to start and hard to stop.

“You look worried, Sarah Booth,” Millie said.

Since I couldn’t reveal the information about ricin, I gave them another of my concerns. “I’m a little tired. And Sweetie Pie is running wild.”

“That hound could find her way home if she got dropped down in California,” Millie reassured me. “Remember, she did that once.”

“She speaks the truth, dahling,” Cece said. “If she hasn’t come home by tomorrow, I’ll talk Mr. Truesdale into doing a front-page story with a photo of her. We’ll find her.”

I nodded. My friends were doing everything they could to help me.

“I got some great photos at the barbecue,” Tinkie said. She offered her camera so Cece and Millie could check them over.

“These are wonderful,” Cece agreed. “The newspaper is certainly livelier since you started sending us photographs, Tinkie.”

“Any hint of who’s ahead in the competition? It was a tough call determining the best barbecue.” Millie smoothed back a curl from her cheek. “I finally settled on the honey-basted pork roast. As you know, the scores were tallied, but won’t be revealed until the last night of the contest. We weren’t even told who’d gotten the highest score.” Her eyes twinkled. “So who cooked the pork roast I liked so much? Since the judging was blind, I never found out.”

Tinkie and I looked at each other. We hadn’t eaten any barbecue. “I don’t remember,” I finally said.

“Just as well,” Millie said. “From all you’ve told me about Karrie Kompton, if I’d voted for her dish, I might have had to be rushed to the hospital to have my stomach pumped. She makes me sick.”

“If you knew what was in her dish, you’d really be sick.” Tinkie recounted the awful episode, and she had Cece and Millie in horrified stitches. As much as they didn’t want to
laugh, they couldn’t help themselves. Tinkie’s descriptions even had me smiling.

“On that note, we need another round of martinis.” Cece signaled the waiter. “That Kompton girl is cursed. First, chocolate-covered roaches, and now, horse by-product in her barbecue. Someone really doesn’t like her.”

“No one ate a bite of it,” I said. “The pot of barbecue was removed before anyone was served. Still, it was a moment to remember when she fished that lump out of the sauce.”

“So how will they judge her in that event?” Millie asked.

“I have no idea, but you can bet she won’t be disqualified. I’d hoped she might be cut from the contest. She’s such a troublemaker.”

“In all fairness, it really wasn’t her fault that her dish was . . . contaminated,” Millie said. “It would be wrong to disqualify her from the title because someone played a practical joke on her.”

“That was a bit more than a practical joke,” Cece said. “That was a spot of genius, dahling. Spill it. Which of you girls dropped in the road apple?”

Tinkie and I refrained from any response. I couldn’t even look at my partner, because I was afraid I’d blow her cover.

My cell phone rang, and my heart sank when Oscar’s name and number appeared on the screen. “It’s about Sweetie Pie,” I said to the girls before I answered. “Oscar must not have found her.” The worry I’d worked so hard to bury resurrected. Sweetie could navigate her way with an uncanny sixth sense—she should have gone home by now.

“We’ll all go back to Zinnia and help hunt,” Tinkie said as I answered the phone.

“Sarah Booth,” Oscar began. “I want to reassure you. We’ve had several Sweetie Pie sightings. Mr. Truesdale saw
her behind the Piggly Wiggly carousing with that other hound. He said they were barking at paper sacks blowing around, and I got a report that they were down at the creek beside the high school, swimming and cavorting later this afternoon.”

This all sounded good. Sweetie enjoyed the water, and she loved to play. But had she thrown over her friendship with Chablis for a man-dog? That didn’t sound like my feminist hound. “I thought for sure she’d return by now. Fun’s fun, but this is ridiculous.” I sounded like the mother of a wayward teen, but I couldn’t help it. “Have you checked at Dahlia House? She may be in the barn.”

“Already checked.”

There was something in his voice. “What is it, Oscar?”

“I don’t know how to say this, exactly . . .”

“Spit it out.” He was scaring me.

“It seems Danny the hound has a shoe fetish. Sweetie has fallen in with him on a crime spree.”

It took several seconds to process this. My friends were staring at me, and I tried to control my expression. “All dogs chew shoes. What are you saying?”

“This is a serious fixation. A number of cleats from the high school football team went missing. And the cheerleaders’ performance shoes, too.”

“And they’re blaming Sweetie and Danny? Two dogs? For what, forty pairs of shoes?”

“Fourteen, to be exact. There’s not much doubt the dogs did it, Sarah Booth. Mrs. Hedgepeth saw them running behind her house. Each dog had a pair of football cleats.”

I couldn’t believe it. Mrs. Hedgepeth was like the old witch in
The Wizard of Oz.
She’d had it in for Sweetie from day one. “You know that old bat would lie for the fun of making trouble. She hates Sweetie.”

“If it were just her word . . .”

I sensed big trouble here. “What kind of evidence does she have?”

“She got a picture of both dogs with her cell phone. There’s no doubt Sweetie and Danny are guilty.”

I was outraged. “Mrs. Hedgepeth knows how to use a cell phone camera?” How was that possible? Though Tinkie was up to speed on technology, I hadn’t mastered the art yet. “Did she bring you the photo?”

“She showed it to Coleman, and when he only laughed, she took it to the high school football coach. He’s up in arms and wants a manhunt for the dogs and the shoes. It’s sounding more and more like a lynch mob.”

“Look, it’s possible the dogs took a couple of pairs of shoes, but there’s no point in getting all overwrought about this. When we find the dogs, we’ll return the shoes.” I knew the high school football coach and winning was everything to him. He would be furious about the cleats. Sweetie had shoenapped from the wrong person. “How did the dogs get the cleats?”

“The coach said they finished practice and the team was in the showers. The dogs must have moved in and nabbed the cleats. Then they moved on to the girls’ gym and snared the cheerleaders’ shoes. They did it all in under an hour.”

As much as I wanted to defend my hound, I couldn’t. Sweetie had never displayed a fondness for stinky athletic shoes, but she was under the influence of Eros. Love can generate strange behavior. “Those dogs have to be right in the neighborhood, Oscar. They’ve hidden the shoes somewhere nearby.”

“Let me talk to Tinkie a moment,” Oscar said.

I passed her the phone and watched her face. She was amused, which made me feel a little better.

“Shall Sarah Booth and I head home?” she finally asked. She listened a moment. “No, no more problems. Hedy hasn’t
been formally charged with anything. We can head home tonight, if necessary.”

Her tone was so reasonable, so conciliatory. She was masterful at the role she’d taken on.

“Thank you, Oscar.” She shut the phone and handed it to me. “He’s worried about Sweetie, Sarah Booth. And he feels responsible. She got loose on his watch.”

“That’s nonsense. Sweetie is her own woman, but I’ll run back to Zinnia while you stay here.” If anyone could find Sweetie, it would be me. And I had to get those shoes returned before Sweetie and Danny became the footgear Bonnie and Clyde of Zinnia.

“Are you going to call Graf and tell him about this?” Tinkie asked.

Beneath her innocent question was the real one. “Would you take care of that for me?” Both Cece and Millie looked at me hard. I picked up my phone and her keys. “Thanks, Tinkie. And you girls be good. I’ll let you know when I round up my hound.”

Driving through the early-summer night home to Zinnia, I felt the Delta rise up around me like the walls of a familiar room. I knew this land the way a devotee knows the contours of her beloved. The taste and smell of the cotton fields were a huge part of my tactile memory. Riding through the night with the stars pulsing in the sky, I had such a sense of home. It was true I’d never made my living farming, but it was the basis of everything in the Delta. The land was interwoven through every facet.

I’d borrowed Tinkie’s Caddy, and the headlights illuminated the rows of cotton on either side of the two-lane. Where the light faded, I knew the cotton extended in all directions as far as the eye could see. I’d learned to gauge
the seasons, both climate and financial, by those endless rows. The hard thing about farming is that a bumper crop can mean financial troubles as much as a poor crop. Too much cotton and the bottom drops out of the price.

The cotton gave way to another crop. Soybeans. As my aunt Loulane would say, it’s never smart to put all of your eggs in one basket. Savvy farmers planted plenty of cotton, but they also put in soybeans and other crops. Rotating was good for the soil, cut down on the spread of insects and disease, and had other benefits.

I rolled the window down and let the night scents blow into the car. Someone had just mown grass nearby. The clean smell made me think of watermelons, cold, crisp, and juicy.