Рита Браун - The Tail Of The Tip-Off

"But what does Mychelle have to do with this?" He felt confused. "Maybe her death isn't connected."

"It's connected. It's connected and the killer is Matthew Crickenberger."

Fair's eyes widened. "But why? That makes no sense. Anne makes sense. And, Harry, much as we like her, she has the motive."

"So how did she kill him?"

"Puts her arm around him or touches his neck."

"And the warmth of her fingers won't melt the ice? This has to be a thin, sharp dart delivered with force."

"Blowgun." He nodded in agreement.

"But why?"

"I don't know. Harry, other people sat behind you."

"I know, but the Sanburnes, BoomBoom, Hayden McIntyre-no motive. Matthew was connected by business."

"Or Mychelle?" Fair said.

"He'd won out over H.H. He has a boatload of money. Why?"

Fair took a deep breath. "Well, this is all conjecture. We don't really know that it's Matthew."

"Maybe he hit Tracy over the head. He was removing evidence." She clapped her hands together, startling the animals. "After a while, your head spins."

49

The first thing Harry did the next morning, Wednesday, was call Rick, also an early riser. She was just thrilled with herself.

He seemed less thrilled. "Thank you, Harry, that's very interesting."

"Interesting?"

"Harry, the investigation is moving along. I thank you for your effort. Go to work. Goodbye."

Harry hung up the phone. "Damn him!"

She bundled her animals into the truck and drove to work. Fair had already left at five-thirty in the morning as he had early farm calls. January meant breeding for the Thoroughbred people who wanted foals born as close to the next January as possible. Too late and the horse would be at a disadvantage racing. All Thoroughbreds have the birthday of 1 January in the year they were born for racing purposes. Of course, if they were born 2 February, that was noted in the foal's records. Since a mare carried for eleven months, people were getting their mares prepared for breeding. It was a lot of work for the owners and vets.

Harry dreamed of a small broodmare operation someday but on this frosty morning she was too angry to bask in her dreams. She pulled in behind the post office, unlocked the back door, clicked on the lights. It was seven in the morning. By the time the teakettle was singing, Miranda, wearing red fuzzy earmuffs, walked in.

"Good morning." She hung up her quilted coat, stamped her feet, unwound the cashmere scarf and hung it with the coat. She put the poppyseed muffins on the table.

"Miranda, I am so mad I could eat a bug!"

"Oh dear." Miranda thought she'd had a fight with Fair or Susan.

She told Miranda everything, including the call to Rick. "He didn't pay the least bit of attention to me."

"Now you know he did. He probably can't say what he's up to-you know, he might be close to an arrest."

"Sure." A dejected Harry reached for a moist poppyseed muffin. A few savory bites restored her spirits, somewhat. "I'll call Cooper."

"That's a good idea," Miranda appeased her.

Although Cooper received Harry's thoughts with more enthusiasm, she, too, remained noncommittal.

Frustrated, Harry attacked the duffel bags filled with mail when Rob Collier dropped them off.

"She's going to put that case of the mean reds somewhere." Pewter laughed as she ate up poppyseed crumbs.

"God only knows what she'll do next," said Mrs. Murphy.

"You're such a pessimist." Pewter rubbed the side of her paw along her whiskers.

Harry's mood sank again although when Little Mim came in for her mail she asked if she could borrow her noisemaker. Little Mim laughed but agreed, going out to her car, returning to give it to Harry.

Miranda tidied up the package shelves. "Harry, sugar, don't fret. It's a slow day anyway. Oh, Vonda called you from the Barracks Road post office."

"Did she say what she wanted?"

"Yes. She said she heard it from the postmaster at Seminole Trail. We are getting a new, modern post office."

Seminole Trail was the location of the county's main post office.

"No way." Harry grabbed the phone. Within minutes Vonda was giving her the blow-by-blow. When Harry hung up, she said quietly, "I guess we are. We don't really need one, Miranda. This one works just fine. And Vonda's moving back to Charleston, West Virginia. I can't stand it. Barracks Road P.O. won't be the same without her. Bet the gang down there isn't thrilled, either." Harry considered her compatriots at the Barracks branch an overworked bunch.

"Growth projections." Miranda quoted what she had heard when she spoke to Vonda. "And I'm sorry she's leaving, too."

"It's a waste of money. A new P.O. A big waste!"

"You haven't learned that government exists to squander your tax dollars? If we can put in our two cents maybe we can make it functionally, m-m-m, useful."

"I don't want a new post office." Harry stubbornly sat down.

"To tell you the truth, I don't, either." Miranda sat opposite her. She looked out the front window. "It's like a ghost town today."

"Yeah."

"You aren't going to do something foolish, are you?" Miranda tilted her head.

"No. Why would you think that?"

"Your jaw has that set to it."

"Oh."

Miranda quoted Psalm 141, verse 3: "'Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord, keep watch over the door of my lips!'?"

Harry said nothing.

50

Rick and Cooper labored at their desks. The sheriff had taken the precaution of assigning an officer to stay with Anne Donaldson.

"Sheriff, pick up the phone!" Lisa Teican, at the switchboard, hollered as Rick had been ignoring the blinking light on his phone.

"Sheriff Shaw."

"Joe Mulcahy. You wanted me to call you-" The head of toxicology in Richmond was interrupted.

"Thank you. What was it?"

"Batrachotoxin."

"Never heard of it."

"There's no reason you would. I've never seen this stuff before in my life, either. Never once has it shown up."

"Well, what is it?"

"It's an acutely lethal substance, so lethal, Sheriff, that nanograms cause instantaneous death to an organism. A microgram could wipe out a platoon."

"Jesus! Is this something some nut can cook up in a lab?" Rick, like other sheriffs throughout the United States, had undergone training to combat bioterrorism.

"That's highly unlikely. I mean, it can't be cooked up in a lab and it's unlikely some nutcase could acquire enough of the batrachotoxin to pose a large-scale problem."

"So, how did the killer get it?"

"From the skin of poisonous frogs, little tiny, actually, like two to five centimeters, tiny frogs. Bright colors with stripes and spots. Beautiful little things, really." Joe opened a book then continued. "Once we isolated the toxin I became fascinated. These little buggers live in the rain forests of South America and the natives would catch them and stress them out. Now they wouldn't necessarily kill them but they'd worry them and the frogs would secrete liquid from the bumps on their back. The natives would collect that, carefully, obviously, and let it dry. Then they'd smear it on darts, arrows, whatever."

"And you said it works quickly?"

"Amazingly fast. It blocks the transmission of nerve impulses and the heart just stops. Dead."

"Jesus."

"He can't help the victim." Joe couldn't resist a joke.

"Guess not. In your research did you find out just where someone could procure these frogs?"

"Well, that's not my department but there's an underground for exotic creatures. Smuggling in contraband animals is a big business and Dulles Airport is a big, big airport. Be pretty easy, I'd think. And hey, all you need is two, a male and a female. You're in business."

"But you'd need to create a specialized environment."

"Sheriff, they're tiny. A small aquarium with the correct humidity and lots of bugs would keep Mr. and Mrs. Frog very happy. And water. Lots of water. Pretty fascinating."