Joan Hess - Madness In Maggody

Harve gave me a disgruntled look. "We talked to this last bunch of victims. All the tampered products were purchased this morning from the display by the register next to the office."

He scratched his head as he consulted a tattered stenographer's notebook. "We've had six reports thus far, and I'll call the dispatcher shortly. There haven't been any complaints on cupcakes and sponge cakes or anything else purchased yesterday evening, but that may not prove anything. The puke-provoking packages could have been put on the shelf last night or this morning."

"Kevin left the store at seven-fifteen," I said. "That narrows the time frame just a bit."

"There were a lot of folks in the store last night. As soon as we've interrogated the checkers, I'll get the list to you and you can start working on it. Les, you check the cake packages on the shelf for prints."

I felt slightly better that the perp list was now expanded to include more names, especially since I'd eliminated Kevin from contention and couldn't come up with a motive for Hizzoner, despite my best efforts. I suggested we examine the remaining stock for suspicious seals, and we fanned out for what became a tedious two-hour marathon of studying the underside of candy bars and corn-chip bags for telltale smears of glue-all without putting our own prints on top of someone else's, and as it turned out, all for naught, since none of us found anything.

We regrouped at the last register to listen to Deputy Vernon. Three packages of cupcakes had been pierced through the cellophane with straight pins. Two packages of cream-filled sponge cakes had been resealed, and sloppily at that. To our collective disappointment but not our great surprise, there was nary a print on any of the items.

Harve pointed at the beads of glue on one of the packages.

"I'd bet my new weedless bucktail jig it didn't come this way from the factory."

No one took him up on it.

Plover offered to send the evidence to the lab, since he seemed to get better service than Harve and I did. Harve thanked him effusively (the primaries were coming up fast), and went to call the dispatcher for an update on the upchuckers.

I walked out to the parking lot with the amiable state trooper. "I won't fall over backward if the lab finds ipecac in the sponge cakes," I said, squinting as the sunlight pounded down on us. "I wish I knew what the hell was going on. First some unknown party dumps an unknown quantity of the damn stuff in the tamale sauce and takes down twenty-three innocent grazers. Petrel disappears, but it takes a stretch to see him as the perp. He and Jim Bob both have an interest in the store's success, not its failure-and a lot of folks won't be shopping within five miles of it. The picnic pavilion might as well stay closed; no one's going to patronize it anytime soon."

"Heard anything about Petrel?" Plover asked quickly, then winced as if he'd stepped on a live coal and said, "Just asking, Chief."

I told him about Jim Bob's trip into Farberville, but added that I had a feeling Cherri Lucinda Crate would eventually, if somewhat unwillingly, back his story. "Nobody even saw Petrel leave the office? What about the checkers and customers in the front of the store?"

"They all went to the back of the store to watch the show," he said morosely. "There was a ten-minute interval during which Petrel could have ridden out the door on a pink-polka-dotted mule."

He told me he'd be back shortly and drove away. As I started for the door, Deputy Vernon came out and said, "Harve says there's still no answer at Buzz Milvin's house. He wants you to run up there and see if the guy's scrunched in a closet counting up his victims on his fingers and toes."

"The stuff may have been tampered with before he came to work at nine," I said.

"Harve had a chat with the employees, and they finally produced a half-assed list of customers what came in last evening after six. Lots of folks, including"-he gave me an odd look-"Ruby Bee Hanks, Estelle Oppers, Buzz Milvin and his mother-in-law, and a dozen or so more."

"Mandozes, the Mexican guy?"

"I think so. Anyways, Harve says for you to go see if you can hunt up Milvin and bring him back for questioning."

I tried to assign Buzz a motive as I drove down the road to his house, but I was as bereft of inspiration as I was of cool air from the pisspoor air conditioner. I parked beside Buzz's truck and went to the front door. I rang the bell, and when there was no response, I went around the side of the house to see if they might be having a barbecue or something.

As I swung around the corner, I almost crashed into a small figure under an open umbrella. "Lissie," I said urgently, "where's your pa?"

"Napping."

"What about your grandmother and Martin?"

"They're napping, too. I wasn't sleepy, so I got Roxanne"-she held up a rag doll-"and we decided to go for a walk all the way up the road to the mailbox. I made her a raincoat and a rainbonnet. See?"

There was an icy rock growing in my stomach, and growing damn fast. I briefly glanced at the doll wrapped in clear plastic and said, "Good for you. I need to talk to your pa now."

"Please don't tell Pa where I went, Miss Arly. He likes me to stay close to the house, but sometimes Roxanne and I get bored with the same old yard. Pa says not to talk to outsiders, too. I suppose it's okay to talk to you."

Humming tunelessly, she went past me and vanished around the front of the house. I continued to the back door, knocked on the glass, and then ordered myself to try the knob. I had a real bad feeling about it.

"Anybody home?" I yelled as I stepped inside. The kitchen was clean, with dishes drying on the rack and the dish towels neatly hanging from plastic hoops. I repeated my question, listened for a reply, then went along a dark hallway to the living room.

Buzz Milvin was lying in a recliner. His eyes were closed, and had it not been for his wheezy breathing and gray skin, I might have thought he was, as Lissie had told me, sleeping. I hurried over to him and shook his shoulder. "Buzz? Buzz? Are you all right?"

He mumbled something and his head flopped to one side. A trickle of saliva ran down his chin, and his breathing seemed to worsen. I went back to the kitchen and called the sheriff's office. The dispatcher promised to send an ambulance immediately. I glanced in at Buzz, who hadn't moved, and went on down the hall to several closed doors.

I recoiled from the odor as I opened the first one. It had the sour pharmaceutical smell I'd noticed when I first met Lillith Smew, but something had been added that made it even less tolerable. The woman on the bed was motionless. Unlike Buzz, her chest did not jerk up and down as if responding to jolts of electricity. Her skin was grayer than his, and her tongue protruded between slack lips. Death had voided her bowels.

I gulped back an acid taste, shut the door, and went on to the next one. It was the children's bedroom. The bottom bunk bed was vacant, but a hand dangled over the rail from the top bunk. I approached the hand, and again heard labored breathing.

"Martin?" I croaked.

"Yeah?" he said so softly that I could barely hear it. "That you, Gran?"

"It's Arly. I've sent for the ambulance. Someone will be here to help you in a minute." I squeezed his hand, more to comfort myself than him, and said, "What happened, Martin?"

"Where's Gran? I wanna talk to Gran."

"I'll listen," I said, straining to hear him with one ear and the ambulance's siren with the other. "I'll listen to you, Martin. What do you want to tell Gran?"

"That I wasn't lying."

"Of course you weren't lying." I jiggled his hand. "Lying about what? You can tell me; I know you won't lie to Gran or to me, Martin."

"What's the matter with my brother?" Lissie asked from the doorway.