Madness In Maggody

9

Lissie couldn't stay at home, so I told her to wait by my car and went into the house. One of Plover's men was taking photographs of the recliner. The coroner was in Lillith Sinew's room, pronouncing the obvious to Deputy Vernon, who looked ill. In the kitchen, a trooper with an exceedingly grim expression was removing items from a garbage can and placing them on the table. Plover and Harve muttered to each other as they examined the items.

I kept my eyes averted from the bunk beds as I packed a few things in a small suitcase. I told Plover I'd be back, then put the child in my car and drove toward the Lambertinos' to see whether she could stay there for the time being.

"Where'd they take Pa and Martin?" Lissie asked.

"To the hospital."

"Why didn't they take Gran, too?"

I glanced at her, but she looked only mildly curious. "I'm afraid Gran was too sick for the medics to help her," I said gently.

"Is she gone to heaven with Mama?"

"Yes, she has."

"Oh." Lissie leaned down and pointed at the battered police radio. "What's that thing do?"

As I explained what the thing was supposed to do but rarely did, I pulled into the Lambertinos' driveway and cut off the engine. "Lissie, I need to ask you some questions. Is that okay?" She nodded, still frowning at the radio. "We think that Pa, Gran, and Martin all ate or drank something that made them sick. You're not sick, so you obviously didn't have whatever they had. Can you think what it might have been?"

"Huh-uh. Does the siren work?"

"Upon occasion," I said, watching her closely. "Let's talk some more about what happened today. Were you awake when Pa came home from the supermarket at seven?"

"Yeah, I woke up real early like I always do, but I didn't get out of bed right away. I read a story to Roxanne, and then we made up our own stories."

"So you and Roxanne made up stories?" I said encouragingly. "Then what did you do? Did you have breakfast?"

She nodded, but her forehead was wrinkled and her lower lip was extended. "I didn't make up the stories. Roxanne did. I just listened." She held up the doll as if to verify the statement.

"Fine, fine. And then you went to the kitchen, right? Was everybody having breakfast?"

"Is this where I'm gonna stay until Pa and Martin get back? I don't think I want to stay here, Miss Arly. Saralee might hit on me, and she's mean."

"Mrs. Lambertino won't let Saralee bother you." I reminded myself of the necessity of eliciting information, and let an authoritative authoritative edge creep into my voice. "Lissie, you do understand that I'm the police chief and I have to find out what happened at your house today. You need to help me. Once you've done that, we can talk about the radio or anything else you want. Okay?"

"Okay, Miss Arly. Gran fixed me cereal, but she was grouchy, so I ate real fast. Then Pa came in and she said she wanted to talk to him in the back room. He said he had a gawdawful headache, but she said they was going to talk right then."

I nodded. "Good, Lissie. Did they talk?"

"In the back bedroom. I couldn't hear much, but I think they were both mad at Martin. He came in from the backyard, and pretty soon Gran came out and told Martin to go talk to Pa. I finished my cereal and went into the living room to watch television."

"Did Martin tell you why Pa and Gran were mad at him?" She shook her head so vaguely that it seemed to drift back and forth. "I watched television all morning. Gran came in and looked hard at me, but all I was doing was sitting in Pa's big chair with Roxanne. Martin went back outside, and I think Pa went to bed on account of how he had to stay awake all night."

"You're doing great, Lissie. What about lunch?"

"Martin and me had canned spaghetti and leftover corn bread. Gran fixed it, but she said she wasn't hungry. While we ate, she talked on the telephone about how people were getting sick from something. I think she was talking to somebody named Eula, 'cause she said, 'land sakes, Eula,' and 'I can't believe that, Eula.' Pa came out later and had a baloney samwich and a beer." In that I didn't know what poison had been used, I didn't know how long it had taken until the symptoms became serious. Breakfast seemed innocuous, and Buzz and Martin had eaten different things for lunch. According to Lissie, Lillith hadn't eaten anything. I scowled at myself in the rearview mirror, then tried to smile. "I want you to do something for me, Lissie. Close your eyes and try to think if your pa brought home a bag from the supermarket."

She obediently scrunched up her eyes. "No," she said in a faraway voice, "he just came in and said he was tireder than a fiddler's elbow at a barn dance. Then Gran started in on him and they went to the back bedroom."

"Did you see anyone have something to eat or drink after lunch?" I asked without much hope.

"No, but everybody was fumin', so I stayed in Pa's chair until he told me to go outside and play. I wanted to watch television some more, but he said the noise was giving everybody a royal pain." She began to squirm on the seat. "It's awful hot sitting here, Miss Arly."

"You're right," I said as I took her overnight bag from the backseat. "Let's go talk to Mrs. Lambertino."

Joyce wasn't thrilled, but after I explained the situation, she agreed that Lissie might as well sleep on the other roll-away cot and keep Saralee company.

"Saralee's not here," she added as she took the bag from me and sent Lissie inside. "She went to practice about half an hour ago.

"Practice," I said hollowly, having been preoccupied with more important things for most of the afternoon. "There's no way on God's green earth I can get over there, not even for a minute. I don't suppose there's any way you can…?"

"The baby's teething and has been howling nonstop for three days. Larry junior's running a temperature, and Traci's acting like she's coming down with something, too. I'm smack in the middle of fixing supper. Larry Joe's off practicing with the SuperSavers, so he won't be home for another hour. I'm real sorry, Arly, but there ain't no way."

I asked if I could use her telephone and then dialed the number of Ruby Bee's Bar & Grill. It was answered with alacrity. "Arly? What in heaven's name is going on? Is it true half the folks in town have been poisoned, including the entire Milvin family? All four of them found dead in their beds?"

"Calm down," I said through clenched teeth. "The grapevine's a little ahead of itself. Yes, there have been a few isolated…problems with items purchased at the SuperSaver. The Milvin family seems to have gotten the worst of it." I stopped for a moment, puzzled. "Where are you getting your information, Ruby Bee?"

"Here and there. In fact, Estelle heard a most astonishing story from Perkins's eldest, who cleaned at Mrs. Jim Bob's this afternoon. I'll be the first to agree that Perkins's eldest may be a few logs shy of a rick, but Estelle said she said Mrs. Jim Bob said-"

"Stop! I don't have time for this-now or ever. Can you and Estelle handle practice for me?"

"Baseball practice?"

"No, parachute practice. The plane's waiting for you out front."

She sputtered for several seconds before she said, "You know I have an aversion to heights. My eyelid starts twitching when I have to ride an escalator. Now why would you think I-"

"Of course I'm talking about baseball practice. I've got to go back to the Milvin house. Have Hammet go to my apartment and get the equipment bag, then trot yourselves out to the pasture and make sure everyone survives. Don't worry about teaching anyone to do anything. just tell them to play catch for an hour."

"But I have to keep the bar open."

"Then tell Estelle to do it. You'll only have seven players today, since neither Milvin child will be there. But the rest of them are probably waiting by now, and you're liable to find fresh blood on home plate if you don't get over there-now."

"But what if they start acting up? What if they ask me about how to play or bat?"

"What if you had wheels? Then you'd be a tea cart, right? For Pete's sake, Ruby Bee, I've got other things to do, and unless you want Georgie McMay's untimely demise on your conscience, you'd better get over to the field." I hung up on her and shrugged at Joyce, who was trying to pretend she hadn't been listening. "I think it's different in the major leagues."

"Me, too," she said. She promised to call me if Lissie remembered anything of importance, and I drove back to the Milvin house.

Brother Verber was sweating like a roofer in August, but it wasn't because of the paltry confessions he'd wrung out of Kevin. Even if he'd been paying attention, hearing stories about a few smooches and a bizarre-sounding encounter in an outhouse (of all the dadgum peculiar places) wasn't going to begin to compete with his study material. Which brought to mind a serious problem, and in spite of himself, Brother Verber let out a groan that sounded like a Greyhound bus belching carbon monoxide.

Kevin stopped in mid-confession. He glanced at Dahlia, who hadn't moved in so long that he was beginning to worry, then he looked back and said, "Are you all right? You look mighty sickly."

"I am wrasslin' in my soul on your behalf," Brother Verber snarled. "If you weren't such a revolting, perverted sex fiend, none of this would have happened."

"You mean we wouldn't be here?" Kevin said, his voice cracking in bewilderment.

Brother Verber couldn't explain exactly, so he nodded and pursed his lips as if he was thinking real hard. "Just get on with your disgusting story, and don't take all day about it. I got better things to do with my time than to listen to you snivel about every little peck and every little pat on the fanny."

"But you said to tell about all that and not skip anything," Kevin pointed out, now so befuddled that he wouldn't have known which end of the fork to scratch his head with. It was out-and-out mystificating, trying to figure out what he was supposed to say and what he wasn't and why Brother Verber kept looking out the window window like he thought there was more sex maniacs loose on the grounds of the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall.

"There was the time we went for a walk out to Boone Creek," he suggested, then waited to see if it qualified or not.

Brother Verber shook himself like a wet dog in a snowstorm. "Okay, okay, let's hear it. But if you're going to describe nature, you'd better make sure you're talking about the birds and the bees. Otherwise, I'll be sorely disappointed, Kevin Buchanon. I may be so sorely disappointed that I'll be obliged to send you away and get to work on my Sunday sermon."

Nervously wetting his lips, Kevin again peeked at Dahlia. She didn't so much as quiver, so he took a deep breath and said, "It was a right pretty evening. The birds was chirping, but I ain't sure we saw any bees. Dahlia had fixed us a nice picnic supper. Deviled eggs, if I recollect rightly, and pimento cheese sandwiches with the crusts trimmed off and double-fudge brownies with icing. The dogwoods were beginning to bloom, and you could smell the sweet evening air like it was perfume."

He continued along these lines, working himself into a veritable poetic frenzy that would have irritated Brother Verber, had he been listening.

Mrs. Jim Bob rang Eilene's doorbell, her foot tapping steadily and the corners of her mouth veering downward with each passing second. "This is most inconsiderate," she said under her breath. She'd driven all the way over to have a talk with Eilene, and now it looked as if Eilene had just gone on her merry way without worrying one bit about keeping people standing on her front porch as if they were peddling burial insurance.

When Eilene opened the door, she didn't appear to appreciate how much she'd vexed Mrs. Jim Bob, who was in the midst of a trying day. "We're having supper," she said with a vague look toward the kitchen.

"I heard about the pin in the cupcake," Mrs. Jim Bob said briskly. "I came over here to talk to you about it. Shall we sit in the front room or out here on the"-she glanced at the porch swing and shuddered-"I believe the front room will do nicely."

"For a minute." Eilene opened the screened door without noticeable enthusiasm and gestured for her visitor to come inside. Once they were seated across from each other, she said, "What have you got to say about the pin?"

Mrs. Jim Bob realized Eilene was not going to be an easy row to hoe, not with her sitting there like she was a judge facing a common criminal. "I heard how you scratched your tongue," she began, sounding as solicitous as possible.

"On a cupcake that came straight from Jim Bob's SuperSaver Buy 4 Less."

"That doesn't mean Jim Bob had anything to do with it, Eilene. Use your head; why would Jim Bob want to make everybody mad at the SuperSaver?"

"I don't know, but he's doing a real fine job of it," Eilene said unhelpfully. Mrs. Jim Bob regretted not wearing her white gloves, since she always believed they gave her an authoritarian air. She went ahead and waggled her finger anyway. "Now, let's not go leaping to wild conclusions. Jim Bob didn't put pins in the cupcakes or poison in the sponge cakes…but I know for a fact who did!" She waited for a moment, but Eilene didn't budge, so she had no choice but to lift her chin and plow ahead. "It was Lamont Petrel, that fellow from Farberville who was Jim Bob's partner. You may not have heard, but he fled the scene of his crime right when everyone started getting sick in the picnic pavilion. His wife called the police yesterday to report him missing."

"I heard. Doesn't mean he did it."

"Then why did he run away? You just tell me that, Eilene Buchanon."

"I don't know why he ran away, but he doesn't have any more reason to poison everybody than Jim Bob has. You yourself said he's a partner." She stood up. "If that's all you got to say, then I'll be getting back to the supper table. My tongue's so sore, all I can have is liquids. Earl says we ought to get ourselves a lawyer on account of my injury."

Mrs. Jim Bob stood up, too, but her knees felt like gelatin and she had to hold on to the arm of the sofa until she got herself steadied. "I cannot believe my ears," she said coldly. "Neighbors don't treat each other like that, and it's hardly the Christian thing to do. You and Earl have been upstanding members of the Voice of the Almighty for years, and I'd like to think you're above spite and malice."

"I am-but my lawyer ain't." Eilene smiled as the blood drained from her visitor's face.

The troopers and the coroner were gone, as was the body and what scraps of possible evidence anyone had found. Les Vernon was in Harve's car, talking on the radio to the dispatcher. Plover and I sat on the green metal glider on the Milvins' porch. Harve had pulled over the matching chair, fired up a cigar butt, and was now making notes on a legal pad.

"Lemme see," he muttered, "the kid said none of the victims ate the same thing at any of the meals, and she didn't notice much of anything all day due to the television set being on. That right?"

"She also said her father didn't have a bag when he came in this morning," I said slowly. "If what we have is related to the product tampering at the SuperSaver, then we missed something in the search. These people didn't eat sponge cakes-unless they ate the cellophane wrapper, too. Besides, I'm guessing those were doctored with syrup of ipecac, just like the tamale sauce. Everybody we've heard from recovered within a few bouts of…unpleasantness."

Plover nudged the glider into motion and said, "We've got three episodes of poisoning-Saturday at the grand opening, sometime late yesterday evening or night, and whatever happened here today. The first two have an unmistakable resemblance, since Arly's apt to be correct about the substance on the sponge cakes. We don't know if this is related or not."

"Buzz got off work at seven," I said, frowning. "He's the night manager. Who relieved him?"

Harve flipped back a few pages. "Jim Bob. He and one checker showed up at seven, and then the other three boys came in after a while."

"Kevin paid a checker with a black ducktail for his bag of groceries," I continued. "Why don't we find out if Buzz happened to buy anything?"

Grumbling, Harve went into the house. Plover and I sat in silence, although not of the companionable variety. I was thinking about what might happen to Lissie and Martin if their father died. The officers who'd searched the house had found no reference to any other relatives; at the moment, Lissie was the official next of kin. Plover seemed to be entertaining equally glum thoughts.

Harve looked a damn sight more pleased when he came back to the porch. "That was sharper than a hornet's behind, Arly. The checker said Milvin bought a magazine and a package of dessert cakes on his way out. Didn't want a bag and just stuck them in his coat pocket."

I took a deep breath. "You might send a man over to the Lambertinos' to collect Lissie's doll's rainbonnet. It was made of cellophane."

"This is a goddamn mess," Harve said. "And I'm handing it over to you, Plover, all officially and wrapped in cellophane. We don't have the manpower to handle this kind of investigation. I'll assign Deputy Vernon to assist you, and there's no way short of incarceration to keep Arly out of it."

"It's my turf," I muttered.

Ignoring me, Plover said, "I'll get Anderson on the paperwork as soon as I get to the office. As for the local chief of police, I tend to agree with you. I suppose we'd better have another run at the sponge-cake display. Maybe we'll get lucky and find one package with one print."

"Maybe," Harve echoed.

As we walked toward our respective vehicles, I looked at the dandelion. It already had wilted.

On the way back to the supermarket, I swung through the motel parking lot so I could check on practice in the field out back. Petrel's car was still in front of number four, but I barely glanced at it.

Ruby Bee and Estelle stood next to the fence, neither one doing much of anything. Georgie and Ray were exchanging blows by the burlap bag designated as third base. Enoch was pensively picking his nose as he watched. Earl Boy was on second base, pounding his fist into his glove as if he was hoping to be invited to join in the fun. Jackie and Saralee were chasing butterflies out by the fir trees.

I backed out before assistant coaches number one and number two spotted me and threw themselves in front of the car. I drove across the street and parked next to Plover's car. The SuperSaver was dim except for a light in the office area, and the deputy outside told us Jim Bob had left a few minutes before.

I told the deputy to stay put. Plover and I went inside and continued into the office. While he called the hospital to find out if the initial analysis of the contents of Milvin's stomach had suggested sponge cakes, I leafed through various papers and documents on the desk. One notebook seemed to contain a variety of lists, notes, and cryptic reminders such as: cheap whiskey, stock boys-9, call KPIG, qt, close Thursday, 12, and a lot of squiggles I couldn't decipher (which isn't meant to imply I was having mind-boggling success with the ones I could).

"Look at this," I said to Plover when he'd completed his call. "It's Petrel's personal notebook."

"I don't suppose it has anything about an appointment in Des Moines Saturday afternoon?"

"No, but it has a schedule of sorts, I think. If one were to interpret this as a continuing story line, he was going to buy cheap whiskey for the stock boys at nine, call the television station but quietly, close the store Thursday either at noon, midnight, or on his way to the twelfth green."

"Fascinating," Plover said. He sat down and held out his hand for the notebook. I resisted the urge to put it behind my back, having given up my childish ways several hours ago.

"Just remember who found it," I said in a display of maturity.

"That's fascinating, too, because I searched the office late yesterday afternoon and it wasn't here."

In a display of increased maturity, I merely gave him a dirty look as I said, "You searched the office and didn't invite me along?"

"You were at the practice field, although it looked more like tackle football than baseball. That little girl with the yellow braids is fearless, isn't she? I watched for a while, but I could see you were having too much fun to be interrupted. Please may I have the notebook?"

I handed it to him, then went around to lean over his shoulder. "The first four notes seem to deal with the grand opening on Saturday. Booze, stock boys, media. But he wouldn't need to call the media on the QT, would he?"

"Maybe he intended to close the store on Thursday on the QT," Plover suggested. "Of course, with the ipecac in the tamale sauce and the pins and poison in the cupcakes, it might be challenging to keep things quiet for a week."

"What did the lab report?" I said, losing interest in Petrel's hieroglyphics. "Did it confirm our theory about the sponge cakes?"

"They didn't have anything on the contents of the boy's stomach, but they had done some preliminary analysis of Milvin's, since he was first to have his stomach pumped. We were on the right track but in the wrong lane. There was a small quantity of sponge cake and cream filling, along with tinted coconut flakes."

I went over to a display shelf and pointed at the cellophane-wrapped mounds. "I went through these earlier, and I didn't spot any evidence that the seals had been opened.

"So your prints are all over them?"

"I was careful, but I can't swear I didn't touch one," I said levelly.

Before he could come up with a smart-assed comment, various official cars promptly pulled into the parking lot.

I gestured at the latest arrivees. "The cavalry has arrived. I'm going to take another look at the deli."

"I'll let you know if we turn up any prints on the coconut-cake packages."

"I'm sure you will." I went through the picnic pavilion, around the corner of the deli counter, and into the kitchen area. Most of it would be visible from the front, I realized, so it would be impossible for a nonemployee to sneak to the stove and sabotage a pot of tamale sauce.

Everything had been put away. The counters were as spotless as Ruby Bee's, and the spice bottles above the stove were neatly aligned. I examined each one, just in case, but they were all innocuous. I tried to remember what I'd learned in the emergency first-aid course. Ipecac came in one-fluid-ounce bottles, small enough to be concealed in one's hand. But one fluid ounce wasn't going to take down twenty-three people.

However, I thought as I roamed around the kitchen, picking up utensils and replacing them, opening and closing cabinet doors, we'd only been offered samples. Each tamale had been sliced into half a dozen pieces and then speared with a toothpick. Dahlia'd brought out platters and put them on a picnic table. A cheerleader had picked one up to circulate, and I was fairly certain I'd seen another go by with a platter of ugly orange tidbits. We weren't necessarily dealing with a vast quantity of sauce requiring a gallon of ipecac, especially not with the power of suggestion murmuring to slightly queasy stomachs. If one of the cooks had stirred the sauce three or four times, she very well could have dumped enough ipecac into it to set off a chain reaction in the pavilion.

But why? Two of the cooks were temporaries from another of Petrel's stores. Dahlia had looked angry, but she'd also chomped into a tamale herself and ended up in an ambulance. Dahlia was stupid, but not that stupid. Or that wily.

It would be risky to approach the untended platter and sprinkle the contents of a small bottle on the tamale slices, but not impossible. I'd noticed Ruby Bee and Estelle in the vicinity; Mandozes had headed that way, as had Ivy Sattering and several dozen other people.

I stopped cold and forced myself to evaluate the possibility that Ruby Bee-my mother-would do something that drastic to put the picnic pavilion out of business. You may be shaking your head, but I wasn't. Ruby Bee'd once gotten so ticked off at Eula Lemoy that Eula had been besieged by a nonstop parade of cemetery-plot salesmen and vacuum-cleaner demonstrators. After several weeks, Eula actually came over and offered an apology. She retracted it when she started receiving somewhere in the range of a dozen magazines a week-invoices attached-and the solicitous attention of bicycling missionaries, not to mention Cheese of the Month Club selections, records, books, and telephone calls from asthmatics who'd read her personal ad in a porn magazine. It took most of a year for the dust to settle outside Eula's mobile home. Ruby Bee never admitted anything, but she had an aura of complacency most of that very same year.

So it wasn't incomprehensible that she might have wanted to make a public statement about the deli, I thought with a shrug. But she wouldn't have put pins in the cupcakes, much less used the substance that I was assuming had resulted in Lillith Smew's death.

I didn't know much about Mandozes, but he had been angry at the opening. Ivy had joked about becoming a migrant worker. Her smile had lacked depth, though, and her voice had been too tight. It wasn't impossible to imagine her or Mandozes adding a few packages to the display. But would either of them see the SuperSaver as such a threat that he or she would be willing to kill?

I gave up and went to the front of the store. Plover was talking to a fellow trooper who was putting away bottles of black powder and wispy brushes.

"Corporal Anderson, Chief Hanks," Plover said as I joined them.

Anderson nodded at me, then said, "Prints all over the display shelf, naturally, but I suspect they'll match with those we'll have to get from the installation crew and the stock boys. I pulled up two partials from this package; from their position, I'd guess some customer picked it up and changed his or her mind."

I made a face at Plover. "Unless a law-enforcement agent of some species picked it up earlier when we searched for tampered packages."

"Yours are on file," Plover said. "We'll keep them in mind."

Anderson finished packing his equipment and picked up the case. "The rest of the packages are all clean as a whistle, thanks to automation in the factory, and the seals look okay. I doubt any of them have been tampered with."

"Well, shit," I said, eliciting a frown from Anderson. Once he'd moved away, I perched on the checkout counter and said, "Then how did Buzz happen to buy the only one laced with the mysterious poison? Do we have anything on the ducktailed kid?"

Plover beckoned to a sheriff's deputy (we were still an oddly homogenized group) and asked him to find the deputy who'd interviewed the employees. We twiddled our thumbs and gazed blankly at tidy rows of candy bars until Les Vernon arrived.

"Yeah, I took their statements," he said. "That kid smelled okay. We ran background checks on all of them, and he was one of three that doesn't have a track record. The others have a smattering of minor-in-possession, driving without a license, busting heads after football games, that sort of thing. It's hard for our youth to find ways to amuse themselves out here. But that kid in particular seemed clean. Lives in Emmet, a cousin of Jim Bob's, planning to work full-time until school starts and then cut back for football. And cut his hair."

I threw up my hands, literally and figuratively, and went to the office to call the hospital. Buzz Milvin was critical but stable. Martin Milvin had been moved to a semiprivate room and was upgraded to resting comfortably. I called Joyce and learned that although Saralee had come home with a bloody nose, she and Lissie had eaten supper and were out doin' something. A baby screamed incessantly in the background.

My stomach rumbled, but I wasn't about to snitch a candy bar from the rack. I told Plover I'd start questioning people the next morning, and also inquire whether anyone had seen Petrel after three o'clock Saturday afternoon. As I walked across the parking lot, I realized I was two meals short and very confused. If the checker was clean, which I supposed he was, then he didn't set out the poisoned package for the first customer to pick up. Buzz wouldn't have done so and then eaten one later in the afternoon. It occurred to me that Kevin might have noticed something. Yes, a long shot, and apt to be as successful as teaching a turkey to sing.

Hammet and his companions were hunkered down way in the back corner of the baseball-practice pasture, hidden for the most part by a scraggly mess of stunted firs and prickly blackberry bushes.

Their expressions ran a broad gamut, from shock and incredulousness to straight-out disgust. Eyes widened from time to time, and jaws were going up and down as if they were chewing big wads of bubble gum.

"I cain't believe that," Hammet gasped.

"I don't even wanna look."

"I may just puke. Look at that calf slobber all over them."

"That one's homely enough to crack a mirror, fer chrissake. Why'd anyone want to put whipped cream there?"

Hammet bravely turned the page.