The Cat, The Professor And The Poison

Fourteen

Once I was on the road, I tried Candace’s cell phone, hoping we could meet at Belle’s Beans. I wanted to tell her about Robin’s contact with the professor, but my call went straight to voice mail. I checked my watch. Almost noon. She’d worked yesterday at the professor’s farm gathering evidence, so maybe she was at her apartment, sound asleep.

Home sleeping with what she considered a murder investigation in progress? Think again, Jillian, I thought. Candace believed Morris Ebeling didn’t value her input, and if I knew her, she’d be hard at work hoping to prove him wrong. “Bet I know where to find you, my friend,” I said as I made a U-turn. I’d just passed the turnoff to VanKleet’s place and decided I’d drive by the old farm. My hunch was that the evidence hunter might have gone back for yet another look around that property.

But what I saw far down the road made me clench the steering wheel. Even though it was pouring now, I saw flashing patrol car lights, a fire engine and, as I got closer, Candace, wearing a dark green hooded slicker. She was placing orange cones in the road so no cars could go any farther than right in front of the professor’s farm.

Had they finally listened to her and decided this was a murder scene after all? But that wouldn’t have caused the Mercy brigade to show up here again. No. Something else had happened. Not anything good, either.

Just then a van passed me at mach speed, spraying rain and mud in its wake. I recognized Lydia Monk’s county coroner vehicle.

Uh-oh. Coroners show up for only one thing.

My chest felt tight as I pulled over near the ditch right before the professor’s driveway. I caught a warning look from Candace as she took up a few cones so Lydia could pass. I stayed put until Lydia had driven on down the road to where the rest of the emergency vehicles were parked. Candace hurried toward me, but I grabbed an umbrella and was out of the minivan before she reached me.

“What’s going on?” My gaze was focused down the road.

“No doubt about this one. Definitely murder,” she said. “But you better get out of here before Lydia and Morris see you.”

“Okay, but tell me the quick version first. We can talk later,” I said.

“Finally got hold of an executive of the bank that holds the lien on that property next to the professor’s place. That’s where I think the cats were taken first and where that white van you saw came from. The house is in foreclosure, and the banker told me I didn’t need a warrant-a warrant that would have been hard to come by, though the banker didn’t know that. He said I could search the place all I wanted. But when I got here, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, there he was, dead as he could be.”

“Who?”

“You might not know him. His name is Rufus Bowen. He’s an-”

“Exterminator,” I finished. I suddenly felt light- headed and placed my free hand on the van.

A gust of wind nearly knocked me over, and my pathetic umbrella blew away down the road. But though rain began to soak me, I didn’t care.

Candace gripped my elbow for further support. “What’s wrong, Jillian?”

“W-was he poisoned, too?” My voice sounded so far away.

“Whacked on the head. But what do you know about Rufus that I don’t? ’Cause you sure as heck know something.”

“I’m so sorry for him.” I shook my head, barely noticing how soaked my hair was getting.

“Talk to me, Jillian.”

I swallowed hard. “Rufus Bowen came to my house yesterday.”

“Oh my gosh. You did say something about the bug man, didn’t you?”

I nodded, unable to speak around the lump in my throat.

“You poor thing,” Candace said. “Two men you’ve met this past week are dead. That would stagger anyone.” She reached around me and started to open my van door. “You’re gonna catch a chill. Climb back in your van, and-”

“No.” I pointed in the direction of the property where the crime had taken place. “I need to go down there. You’ll want to talk to me. Take a statement or something.”

She cocked her head, rain sliding down her fair cheeks. “Why?”

“Because I called Rufus Bowen to my house yesterday to talk about poison. Strychnine, to be exact.”

I’d never sat in a fire truck before, but that’s where I ended up. Since no cats needed rescuing, I was spared the distress of walking by a dead man for the second time in three days and seeing firsthand the damage one human can do to another. Candace had turned me over to Billy Cranor’s care while she went to inform whoever would listen that I might want to offer some insight into Rufus Bowen’s final days on earth.

Billy had produced a yellow raincoat and helped me into it. He even found a towel for my soaking-wet hair.

I dried off as best I could but felt chilled to the bone. Meanwhile, Billy climbed into the driver’s seat. He pulled off the hood of his slicker and said, “What in heck are you doing here, Ms. Hart?”

This was how the grapevine began its work. Billy knew I’d been here Friday night, and now I was back. Though I was certain his concern for me was sincere, I had no doubt he also wanted to be the first person aside from Candace to hear the answer to why I’d shown up.

But I was with-it enough to know that whatever my reply, it would be all over Mercy within the next few hours. So I said, “I was driving by-I’d stopped to visit with a friend, and-”

“What friend?” he asked.

I was still so cold, my teeth began to chatter. This offered me the opportunity to ask for a blanket and to avoid answering his questions.

“Sure.” He offered a wry smile that indicated he knew what I was doing. He climbed out and walked up to the emergency-response truck parked ahead.

One of the paramedics gave him a cream- colored blanket, and he tucked it under his slicker and started back to my side of the truck.

But Candace appeared just as he reached the passenger side. They exchanged words, he handed her the blanket and a few seconds later she joined me in the cab.

I was shivering from head to toe, and she had me take off the raincoat and then wrapped the blanket around my shoulders.

“Is that better?” she asked.

I nodded, but my teeth were still knocking together. “I should have asked Rufus more questions. Should have found out why he got so weird when I asked him about strychnine.”

“Wait. I need to write this down. I’ll be taking your statement.” Candace reached inside her slicker and pulled her small leather-covered notebook and attached pen from her pocket. “Tell me about your talk with him.”

“I’d looked up a few things about strychnine on the Internet, but I wondered exactly how accessible that stuff is. I tried to ask Rufus a few questions on the phone, but does he-I mean did he-have a family?”

“Divorced, no kids,” she said. “But his mama is still alive. He took over the business when his father died about five years ago. But tell me why I need to be writing anything down, because it sounds like all you did was ask him a few questions.”

I pulled the blanket tighter around me. “He reinforced what we saw, said that strychnine would contort the professor’s body, but he also told me that I wouldn’t need anything that strong to kill a mouse or a rat.”

“You managed to get him to come to your house just to talk about strychnine?” Candace said.

“Not exactly. I told him my cats killed a mouse the night before-and that was true. So I guess he came over to the house thinking I needed his services.”

Her pen was poised, but so far she’d scribbled only a few words. “Tell me the part where he started acting weird.”

“See, when he first arrived he was all friendly. He stayed friendly even after I told him I didn’t want any exterminating done and just wanted to ask him a few questions. But then, when I brought up strychnine, he got this look on his face, and a few minutes later he practically ran out the front door.”

As she wrote this down, Candace said, “What kind of look?”

“Thinking back, I’d say he was scared. Now it seems he was scared to death.”

Neither of us spoke for several seconds as the weight of my words sunk in.

Finally I said, “You don’t have much to write about, I know. But you do trust me when I say something came over that man?”

“Certainly I believe you. And this could be important,” she said. “I’m trying to decide what to say to the chief-and not about the strychnine, but about you calling Rufus up and having that chat.”

“I shouldn’t have done that, should I? You know me; I just got curious.” And then my stomach tightened. “Did I get him killed, Candace? Is that what you’re thinking?”

She took my hand and squeezed. “No. Of course not. Listen, Chief Baca’s back from vacation, and-”

“When did that happen?” I understood Candace’s concern now. Dealing with Morris was one thing, but the chief was her real boss.

“ Lydia called him about Professor VanKleet’s death. Guess she didn’t think Morris was the man to handle a big investigation. Anyway, the chief decided to cut his trip short. Lydia knew where Baca was, seeing as how she likes to keep track of the objects of her affection, even the former ones.” She looked straight ahead and didn’t say anything for several seconds. “I guess I woulda eventually figured out that a bug man could get hold of strychnine-if that’s what happened.”

“Given more time, I’m certain you would have come to that conclusion,” I said.

“Maybe,” she said.

“And last night when we were out together, I should have explained why I called him. But I was distracted by Kara’s sudden appearance. And besides, Rufus told me next to nothing. I guess I didn’t consider that very important at the time.”

“Don’t worry; it’s absence of evidence again,” Candace said. “It’s not what he said; it’s how he reacted. Unfortunately, Rufus running off scared isn’t enough evidence.”

“Maybe not, but the man’s dead, isn’t he?” I said.

“Oh, he is that. Yes indeed.”

Once I was feeling calmer, Candace and I made a run for my minivan with her holding the yellow coat over my head to protect me. That was an exercise in futility. This downpour bordered on torrential, and every square inch of me was now sopping wet again. Before Candace closed my van door, I heard her mumble that the rain was screwing up her crime scene.

I drove home thankful I didn’t have to hang around and talk to Chief Baca or, even worse, to Lydia. I’d already been worried about how I’d react to seeing her after sharing that kiss with Tom. And we’d definitely shared. I feared Lydia would know the minute she looked into my eyes that Tom and I had crossed that line between friendship and… well, whatever came next.

As I pulled into my driveway, I didn’t see Kara’s car, and then I realized I hadn’t left her a key or the alarm code. Maybe she’d come back and left again when she couldn’t get inside. Or maybe her meeting with Tom was a long one. He could have already put her to work installing security cameras at some fancy house on the lake or had her doing some mundane task like answering the phone at his home office.

Merlot and Syrah greeted me when I came in the back door. Their little noses twitched with interest as I bent to pet them. They were immediately intrigued by my being very, very wet. Since I figured Kara would be home any time, I left the back door unlocked and the alarm disengaged.

I hurried into the living room after abandoning my leather sandals. My favorite sandals. The rain had just cost me about seventy- five bucks. I grabbed the remote and turned off the TV before heading down the hallway. Merlot and Syrah darted ahead as I pulled my soaked T-shirt over my head. I stripped off the rest of my clothes in the bathroom.

Merlot and Syrah tentatively approached the sodden pile on the floor while I stepped into the shower, ready for a good steam cleaning. I stayed under the friendly water-so much kinder than rain-until my fingers shriveled. By the time I got out, the cats had disappeared.

After I pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and blow-dried my hair, I gathered my wet clothes and a few other pieces of dirty laundry. Time to visit the washer and then see what was going on with Chablis, Dame Wiggins and the kittens.

But I never made it past the living room.

I gasped and dropped the clothes the second I walked into the room.

A black-clad person, ski mask and all, sat on my couch holding my precious Merlot.