Софи Райан - The Whole Cat Аnd Caboodle

Rose nodded her agreement. “No doubt about it. You’re the smartest of all of us.”

I waved a hand at them. “What about me?” I asked. “Who am I?”

“Napthathion,” Mr. P. said.

I looked at him. “Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry, Sarah,” he said. “That’s the name of the poison that killed Arthur Fenety.”

“Naptha what?” Liz asked.

“Napthathion. It’s a pesticide. It was banned just over two years ago.”

“This helps, doesn’t it?” Rose said. “How on earth could Maddie have gotten her hands on a chemical that was banned two years ago? What was it used for?”

Mr. P. glanced at the computer screen again. “Before it was banned it was used to control—”

“Earwigs,” Charlotte said, slowly. “Not slugs. Earwigs.” All the color had drained from her face.

“How did you know that?” I asked. This was the second time I’d seen Charlotte react to a conversation about what had killed Arthur Fenety.

She had to swallow a couple of times before she answered me. “I have a bottle of it in my garage,” she said.

Chapter 13

“I thought you cleaned everything out of the garage last year,” Rose said.

“I did,” Charlotte said. “All I kept was the napthathion and something to get rid of the ants. But Maddie didn’t know I had it. Nobody knew.”

I turned to Avery. “Go help Mac, please. Now.”

“You don’t want me to hear stuff,” she said.

“No, I don’t.”

She nodded, her expression serious. “Okay.” She leaned down and gave Liz a hug and then left.

I looked at Mr. P. and gestured toward his laptop. “What can you tell me about napthathion?”

His fingers moved over the keyboard. “It was on a long list of herbicides and pesticides that the state banned two years ago,” Mr. P. said after a moment. He scrolled down the screen. “Where is that?” he muttered.

I waited.

“Here it is,” he said. He looked up at me. “Sarah, it wasn’t until napthathion was taken off the shelves that anyone figured out that it had any effect on people. It messes up electrical signals in the heart, but only in someone who already has some kind of heart problem and who’s taking a couple of different medications.”

“The perfect storm,” I said, softly.

Mr. P. nodded. “Exactly.”

“Whoever poisoned Arthur would have to have known that,” Liz said. “And they would have to have known that he had a heart condition and what drugs he was taking.”

“Maddie didn’t know,” Charlotte said. Her color was better now. “She told me that she liked the fact that he didn’t talk about his ailments, and then she said because he was so healthy he didn’t actually have any.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Rose said.

“It’s not bad,” I said.

“But that pesticide in my garage is.” Charlotte fiddled with her teacup.

I nodded. “Yes, it is. The police will say Maddie had motive. They’ll say she found out that Arthur was scamming her.”

“But she said that she hadn’t given him any money,” Rose said. “So she doesn’t have a motive after all.”

Liz shook her head. “Even if she can prove that, it doesn’t mean Maddie didn’t have a motive. The man had what? Four wives and at least that many girlfriends. That kind of humiliation is a pretty good motive.”

“So, who could have known that Arthur Fenety had a heart condition and also known what medications he was taking?”

“It sounds like the kind of things a wife would know,” Mr. P. said.

“Alfred’s right,” Liz said. “It’s a lot harder to hide something like that when you’re living in the same house.”

“I’ll see what I can dig up on Fenety’s wives.” Mr. P.’s fingers were already moving over the keyboard.

I nodded. I didn’t want to know how he planned to do that so I didn’t ask. Just the way I hadn’t asked how he’d gotten the name of the pesticide that had killed Arthur Fenety. I was beginning to suspect Mr. P. had a little more of the bad boy in him than I’d thought.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Liz asked.

“Do you have a phone?” Mr. P. said.

“Yes.” She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket.

“Can you sound like an old lady?” he asked.

“What? You’ll have to speak up,” Liz said. Her voice was shaky and pitched a little higher. She sounded a good ten years older.

Mr. P. smiled approvingly. “You can help,” he said.

Rose looked at her watch. “I need to get to work.” She got to her feet.

“And I should go home and see how Maddie’s doing,” Charlotte said.

Rose laid a hand on Mr. Peterson’s shoulder as she passed behind him. “Thank you so much for your help, Alfred,” she said. “I don’t know how to thank you. Could I at least get you another cup of tea?”

He smiled broadly. “Maybe in a little while,” he said.

I remembered the woman Jess and I had seen at The Black Bear the same day that Arthur Fenety died. I raked my fingers back through my hair. “Start with Grace MacIntyre,” I said. “Jess and I saw a woman who looked just like her photograph at Sam’s on Monday night.”

“One of Arthur’s wives was in town?” Rose paused in the doorway.

“Maybe.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll find her,” Mr. P. said.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Liz said to Charlotte. She pulled her chair a little closer to Mr. P. “So, where do we start?” I heard her ask him.

I walked out to the front of the store with Charlotte. “Can I ask you something?” I said.

She smiled. “I don’t know. Can you?” she said.

It was an old joke between us and I was glad to see it could still make her smile.

“Do you think Maddie killed Arthur Fenety?”

She looked at me like I’d suddenly sprouted an apple tree on the top of my head. “Why on earth would you ask that? Of course I don’t.”

“Then don’t beat yourself up because you have an old bottle of bug killer in your garage.”

Charlotte smoothed the front of her yellow shirt. “Maddie thought I’d gotten rid of all those chemicals. She’d been after me for years about using them.” She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “But what if the person who actually did kill Arthur used the napthathion in my garage?”

I looked at her. “Seriously?”

She looked back at me a bit sheepishly. “It sounds silly, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe a little,” I said.

She reached over and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “You remind me of your grandmother.”

I smiled. “Thank you. I take that as a compliment.”

“It’s meant as one.”

Mac had carried in a large box with the rest of the quilts that Jess had repaired and I’d managed to remove the musty smell from with vinegar and Woolite. I’d made a display stand out of an old folding clothes rack and painted it creamy white. Rose was sorting the quilts by color. She clearly had everything under control, and I left her to it.

“I’m going to do those dishes before I go,” Charlotte said. “I just remembered that Maddie had another meeting with Josh so she isn’t home right now.”

“Thanks,” I said.

She smiled. “Liz and Alfred Peterson are out in the sunporch, trying to find Arthur Fenety’s wives. I think I’m the one who should be thanking you.”

I shrugged. “I like Mr. P., especially when he has his clothes on.”

Charlotte laughed and headed for the steps. Mac walked over to me, carrying a couple of message slips. He handed me the pieces of paper. “Everything okay?” he asked.

“There’s a geriatric computer hacker using my Wi-Fi and doing things I don’t want to think about, but, otherwise, things are fine.”