Chili Con Corpses (20 page)

Gillian, who was standing nearby, leaned toward the couple and asked in concern, “Is she all right?”

“Ten!” Dick Clark announced, and the room began counting in unison.

“Nine!” Lucy yelled as she closed in on James’s right flank.

Gary looked up at Gillian with appeal in his eyes. “I can’t wake her up!”

Gillian bent over Kinsley’s form and frowned.

“Five!” Murphy chimed in on James’s left, and she held out a flute for him to take.

James didn’t reach for the drink. His eyes were fixed on Gillian. Suddenly, his friend waved at him. “James, I need you!”

“Three!” the partygoers screamed.

Just as Lucy was about to place a proprietary hand on his arm, James pushed forward through the crowd and sank to his knees next to Kinsley. He saw the rise and fall of her chest but was frightened by the slackness of her face. For a second, he was transported back to Luray Caverns and was gazing upon Parker’s lifeless form in horror.

“Two!”

Through the tangle of people, James was unable to see Murphy, but Lucy had repositioned herself in order to watch James, and he caught her eye immediately.

“Call an ambulance!” he roared over the other guests, who had just hollered “One!” at the top of their lungs.

And then the room erupted. “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” was shouted over and over again all around the house, paper horns were blown, streamers were ripped from the ceiling, and balloons were batted about as they floated down, released from their crêpe anchors.

A set of impossibly long fingers clamped onto James’s shoulder.

“Step aside, please,” McClellan ordered in a bass rumble that seemed to permeate through the cacophony of the revelers. He checked Kinsley’s pulse, gently lifted an eyelid in order to examine her pupils, and then turned a stony stare upon Gary. “How long has she been like this?”

Gary shrugged. “I dunno. Two hours, maybe. She’s had a bunch of that red stuff, and she’s been through a lot lately,” he added defensively. “Who are you anyway? You a doctor or something?”

“I’m with the State Police,” McClellan answered and then scooped Kinsley up into his praying mantis arms. “I’m taking her to the hospital. I can get her there a lot quicker than waiting for the paramedics. Emergency services are always stretched to the limit on New Year’s Eve,” he informed Gary and then started walking.

“Wait a minute!” Gary protested, but then he paused, as though he wasn’t quite sure what his protest was about. “I’m coming with you, then!” he added and then trailed after the sergeant, who cut a swath through the crowd and left a wake of gaping mouths and anxious whispers.

Within seconds of McClellan’s departure, two members of the local law enforcement arrived. Lucy’s boss, Sheriff Huckabee, and her least favorite co-worker, a redheaded chauvinist named Keith Donovan, entered the house. Huckabee, who bore a close resemblance to a walrus due to his large girth and flaring gray mustache, made a beeline for Lindy.

“Party’s over, Ms. Perez.”

“What is going on?” Lindy put her hands on her hips as she watched her guests make hasty departures.

“One of your guests is a murderer,” Huckabee replied as Donovan rudely hustled Lindy’s friends out the door. “But don’t worry, we know
exactly
who it is.”

James slept late
on New Year’s Day. Amazingly, his father didn’t seem hell-bent on waking him up in order to have his breakfast cooked. In fact, it was a phone call from Lucy that finally forced James to rise from the layers of blankets made warm by his slumbering body.

“I’m at the station,” Lucy explained, meaning that she was calling from her desk at work. “Huckabee’s told me everything about our case so I thought I’d get our phone tree going, starting with you.”

Yawning, James rubbed sleep from his eyes. “Okay,” he croaked, “but I’m going to fix some coffee while you talk.”

“Gee, can you at least
pretend
to sound interested?” Lucy’s enthusiasm turned sour.

Downstairs, James was delighted to see that a pot of coffee had been brewed and the glass carafe was still warm to the touch. “Yes!” he declared in relief, and Lucy believed he was responding to her.

“That’s better. Now,” she inhaled for dramatic effect, which was lost on James. He was too busy fixing his coffee just right and wondering if there were any eggs left in the fridge. “First of all, Kinsley’s going to be fine. She was released from Shenandoah General early this morning.”

“That’s great news,” James replied guiltily. In his state of fatigue, he had almost forgotten about the young woman’s frightening physical state the night before. “She was like Sleeping Beauty,” he remarked. “What was wrong with her, Lucy?”

“She was poisoned!” Lucy whispered with a mixture of horror and delight. “With a very high dose of Wildnil. Does that brand name ring any bells?”

James took a grateful sip of coffee and felt the blood coursing sluggishly through his veins pick up a bit of speed. “That’s the potent drug stolen from Colin’s office, right?”

“Yep. A whole mess of it was put in one of the bowls of
chili con queso
.”

“Wow,” he breathed. “But how can she be fine? I thought that stuff was really potent to humans?”

“Apparently it takes a long time to work if it’s ingested,” Lucy informed him. “At first, it just makes you super sleepy. Dwight should have injected it directly if he wanted Kinsley to die, but who knows what he wanted!”

“So Dwight’s definitely the killer, huh.” James was more than ready to accept this assumption and put the mystery of Parker’s death behind him.

“Dwight was questioned all night and it’s not looking good for him. There was an ampoule of Wildnil beneath the driver’s seat of his car and a pair of muddy boots in the trunk that are an exact match to a set of tracks left outside of Colin’s office. McClellan and his team are searching Dwight’s house today.”

“Has he confessed to anything?” James wondered.

“No. Just the opposite. He claims that someone has set him up and swears that he’s never been to Colin’s office in his life and has no reason whatsoever to hurt Kinsley.”

That gave James pause. “That does raise a point. Why
would
he wish her harm?”

“I don’t know.” Lucy sounded impatient.

“And Parker? Does McClellan think Dwight killed her?”

“He’s playing his cards close, but think about it. Dwight could have easily slipped out of the office and transformed into Mr. Sneed.” Lucy was growing bored with James’s questions and was obviously anxious to spread the tale. “The state cops will need to find some evidence in his house to link him to that crime. Right now, he’s only being held for attempted murder.”

“Only?” James spluttered. “I don’t get this. If nothing else, Hutchins seemed like a sensible person. How could he be so stupid as to leave his boots in the car?”

“People aren’t always rational when it comes to murder, James,” Lucy responded with a touch of condescension. “I’ll call you later if I hear anything else. Start the phone tree, will you?”

In no particular rush to inform the rest of the supper club members about Dwight’s arrest, James ate some low-fat oatmeal with a low-salt butter substitute. He drank a second cup of coffee and then called Lindy.

“I’m still trying to put my poor house back together!” Lindy grumbled. “Teachers are the
worst
party guests. I’ve seen them trash other people’s houses, so I don’t know why I expected better behavior from them, but I did!”

James interrupted her litany of complaints, ranging from the amount of punch spilled on various pieces of furniture to the fact that garbage was deposited in both her houseplants and umbrella stand, to tell her that Kinsley was hospitalized but physically unscathed.

“I know all about it, James! She was poisoned!” she shrieked. “And at
my
party! When the Blue Ridge parents get wind of that little tidbit I’ll be out on my ear. First, Parker’s killed on my field trip and then her sister’s poisoned at my house. I’m officially cursed!”

“No one’s going to blame you,” James soothed his friend. “It sounds like Dwight is our bad guy. How did you know about the poison already?”

“As soon as the ER doc told the police that he suspected Kinsley had consumed something toxic, the cops took samples of all of the leftovers. I wasn’t allowed to clean anything up until this morning. I was told the
chili con queso
was spiked because its salty taste masked the taste of the Wildnil.”

“And a vet would know all about Wildnil. Looks like Dwight is going to jail for a long time.” James drained his coffee cup and began to feel like a human being again. “I know this is off the subject, but did you have any luck with Chavez last night?”

“Well, I was hoping for a New Year’s kiss, but now I realize that he’d never make a move on me in front of the other teachers. He
did
stay with me until the bitter end.” She issued a frustrated sigh. “I swear he was going to say something important, too. He took my hand and gazed at me with those beautiful, coffee-colored eyes, and then that Donovan jerk interrupted us. Chavez went home and I may never know what he was going to say!”

“Hmm,” James murmured sympathetically. “We’ll just have to find another way to get you two alone. And soon.”

“What about you, James?” Lindy asked sharply. “From where I was standing, there was more than one female looking to get a little love from
you
last night. Have you ever had two women after you at once?”

“No,” James gulped. “And just for the record, I don’t like it. I have problems enough handling one woman at a time.”

Cheered, Lindy laughed and promised to phone Bennett before she resumed her cleanup.

After an extremely long and luxuriantly hot shower, James bundled up in a heavy wool sweater, jeans, and lined boots before fixing a mug of black coffee for his father and heading out to the shed. He did a double take when he noticed Milla’s minivan in the driveway and heard the sounds of a relaxed conversation emanating from the shed.

“Pop?” James knocked and then slowly opened the door. He didn’t know what he expected to find, but Milla and his father were both engaged in perfectly innocuous activities. Jackson was painting and Milla was organizing his paints and brushes by arranging them in cutlery boxes according to size and color. Jackson’s radio was set to a soft jazz station, and a plate of partially eaten ham biscuits sat next to a bowl containing the remnants of a fruit salad.

“Happy New Year, James!” Milla gave James a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Can you believe this marvelous work? Your daddy is a genius!”

Looking around, James had to agree. Stacked all around the small space were paintings of hands. Hands sewing, hammering, twisting electrical wires, bagging groceries, changing oil, stirring soup. Each set was as different as a pair of eyes. The skin tones, minute lines, small hairs, freckles, scars, age spots, and other unique markings were as varied as the occupations illustrated.

“Whose hands are those?” James asked. He stepped closer to his father as Jackson added a stroke of green to the palm of a hand holding the foot of an infant while guiding it into a pad of ink.

“Doc Spratt,” Jackson answered without taking his eyes from his work. “He insisted on doing your footprints himself.”

James stared at the tiny foot, cradled with gentle firmness in the nest of the doctor’s skilled hand. The action was tender and proud, and James could almost sense the excitement that his parents must have felt. How his father was able to capture all of these feelings by painting two hands and one foot was beyond him, but Jackson had found a way.

“Amazing, Pop.” James gestured around the room. “Are all of these hands you’ve seen before?”

“’Course!” Jackson snorted. “I just need to see someone’s hands once and for no good reason at all, I can recollect them like that.” He snapped his fingers. “I haven’t been around about town in a while, but folks don’t change too much from one year to the next.” He hesitated. “Not in the hands, anyway.”

Milla collected the plates of food. “I’m going to load the dishwasher, and then we’re going shopping, Jackson Henry. I’m no artist, but there are things a person needs when they sit in one spot all day and we’re going out to get them!”

James waited for his father to argue, but he simply grunted, stood, and began to clean off his brushes.

After the pair drove off in Milla’s minivan, James undertook the chore of taking down the Christmas decorations, boxing them, and hauling them to the storage space his family referred to as the attic. Calling the rickety pull-down ladder and drafty area above the bedrooms an attic was a stretch, and James had debated over whether or not to bother with the family advent wreath, the boxes containing all of the ornaments James had made in school, or the treetop angel hand-sewn by his mother. It was the thought of Milla coming over to an unadorned house that motivated James into setting up a tree and stringing lights around the lamppost outside. Now, however, he grumbled vociferously over having to return them by way of the steep and narrow ladder.

“At least I’m getting some exercise,” he said after standing up and bumping his head on an angled roof rafter. By the time the house was restored to its pre-holiday order, James noticed that Milla had brought over a floral arrangement consisting of carnations and greenery and had set it out on the kitchen table. She had also purchased a new dishtowel in a cheerful plaid. These little touches—ones that the Henry men didn’t know how to add—were already making their small house more pleasant.

“Milla is a miracle!” James told Murphy later that day as they met at Dolly’s Diner for dinner. “She took Pop to an art supply store
and
to a furniture store to pick out a new chair.”

“That’s great news. See? It’s a whole new year.” Murphy smiled and sipped her tea. “Who knows what can change for the better?”

James reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “Mine is starting off pretty well so far, thanks to you.”

Pleased, Murphy looked around the diner. “I thought I might see Lottie here. It seems as though she’s finally agreed to go out on a date with Scott. I was kind of surprised because her ex-boyfriend is your typical beefy-jock type, so I thought Scott didn’t stand a chance.” She shrugged. “But apparently he made something for her, and she was just swept away by his creativity. I thought she mentioned coming here, but they probably hang out later than old folks like you and me.”

As the two moved on to the subject of Dwight and his antisocial behavior at the party, Kinsley and Gary walked into the diner. Murphy jumped up and waved the couple over to join them.

“You’re looking pretty good for someone who was poisoned!” Murphy teased Kinsley.