Catch As Cat Can

47

Coop breezed in the back door of the post office at seven-thirty in the morning. She tacked up the bogus auction poster on the bulletin board in the front part of the building.

Miranda and Tracy both knew what was afoot. Every single person who came into the post office commented on it that day.

Lottie wondered if the Clatterbucks were that hard up. She then sarcastically said she thought Harry would be in the first row of the attendees since Harry couldn't resist sticking her nose in other people's business.

Mim, just returned from New York, thought it much too soon. One needed time before sorting and selling.

Little Mim questioned who would want to buy bears' paws and the like.

Jim Sanburne merely shrugged. He accepted a broader range of behavior than did the women in his life.

The Reverend Herb Jones thought the whole thing was too sad.

Sean O'Bannon read the notice without comment.

At the end of the day, Rick Shaw listened to Marshall Wells on the phone. The lab report had come back with all due speed. Roger O'Bannon had been poisoned with quinidine, a drug which, taken in excess of one gram, kills within fifteen to twenty minutes. It can be administered in pill or powder form. Unlike most other poisons, this one kills without producing horrible convulsions. It is sometimes given to heart patients to suppress acute arrhythmias.

Coop, standing next to him when he hung up the phone, simply said, “Do we arrest Lottie Pearson?”

“She handed him the coffee. Can you prove she poisoned him? Intentionally?” He emphasized the word.

“Not just yet. She's not going anywhere.”

At three o'clock that night, a car, lights off, glided down Don Clatterbuck's short driveway. The driver emerged, noiselessly closed the door, and walked to Don's shop. What no one had noticed when they left Don's shop after re-installing the lock was that the tiny red light on the video camera was reflected in the windowpane. The thief noticed and left.