Sue Grafton - I is for Innocent

I tucked the phone against my shoulder while I picked up a pen and reached for a scratch pad. "What's Burt's number, did he give it to you?"

She gave me the number. As soon as she hung up, I dialed his office.

"Coroner's office. Detective Walker."

"Hello, Burt. This is Kinsey. Ida Ruth said you wanted me to get in touch."

"Oh, good. Glad she found you. Hang on a second, let me grab my notes." In the background, I heard paper rustling. He put a palm across the receiver, engaging in a brief muffled conversation before he came back. "Sorry. We just finished the post on Morley. Turned out he died of acute renal failure, with evidence of liver damage, cardiovascular damage with circulatory collapse, tubular necrosis-"

"Caused by what?"

"I'm getting to that. I called Wynington-Blake after we talked yesterday? I had a chat with the funeral director. I wanted to tell him what was going on and I was curious if he'd picked up on anything. He says when Morley was brought in, he was 'markedly jaundiced.' "

"From the drinking?"

"That was my first thought, but then I did a little research. I got to picking through that bunch of household and garden items you dropped off. The pastry specimen bothered me because it was vegetable material. Most of that other stuff I couldn't see how anybody could ingest without being aware of it. I checked some reference books here and I'll tell you what popped up. The autopsy confirms this. Did you ever hear about Amanita phalloides?"

"Sounds like a sex act. What the hell is it?"

"The death cap mushroom. Amanita verna is another possibility. That's another species from the same family, also known as the fool's mushroom. Both are deadly. Judging from this pastry-whatever you want to call it-it looks like somebody baked him an Amanita strudel."

"Sounds grim."

"Oh, it is. Listen to this. One fifty-millionth of a gram of phalloidine injected into a mouse is fatal in one to two days. Takes less than two ounces to kill a human being."

"Jesus."

"And either type would do just about what you describe of Morley's symptoms. Interestingly enough, ingestion can be followed by what they call a latent period of six to twenty hours. Then what you'd see is nausea, abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea, and cardiovascular collapse."

"So if he got sick midday on Saturday, he could have conceivably eaten the stuff anywhere from early Saturday morning to some time on Friday."

"Looks like it."

"Where would somebody find the damn things? Do they grow in this area?"

"Book says eastern North America and Pacific Coast, late summer and fall. It'd be late for that, but I suppose it's possible. Verna is said to be common in hardwood and coniferous forests. They can grow singly, or in clumps or rings. Says they're rare on the West Coast, but somebody might have brought 'em in from some other part of the country. Dried or frozen, something like that. Where'd you find the pastry, at his house?"

"In the wastebasket in his office out in Colgate. I saw the bakery box the first time I was there, but I didn't think anything about it until I went out again."

"Any idea how he got it?"

"I didn't even think to ask. I just tucked it in the bag along with everything else. Actually, I was assuming he'd stopped at the bakery and picked it up himself. Betty, in the beauty shop, says he sneaked all kinds of food in. He'd been on a strict diet for a week, but she'd seen him with doughnuts and Chinese, all kinds of fast food, so the bakery box wasn't inconsistent. Maybe somebody brought it out to him and left it on his doorstep-"

Burt cut in. "I'll tell you something else. According to the data I'm looking at? There's a brief calm period sets in. Remember telling me he got to feeling better? With Amanita poisoning, it sometimes looks like the patient's condition is improving."

"You're talking about Sunday morning," I said.

"Right. The truth is, the damage would have been done by then. This toxin tears up your liver, dissolves blood corpuscles, causes hemorrhaging in the digestive tract. He was probably experiencing bloody stools and bloody vomitus, though from what you've said he never mentioned it. Either he didn't think anything about it or he didn't want to alarm his wife. Actually, even if he'd gone into the emergency room, they couldn't have done anything to save him."

"He must have felt like shit. Why didn't he try to get some help?" I asked.

"It's hard to know. Severity of symptoms probably depends on how much he ate. He might have tried some, decided it was spoiled or something, and tossed the rest in the trash. You ever watch Morley eat? He was quick. Man prided himself on how fast he could put food away."

"Somebody knew him pretty well," I said.

"Not necessarily. He made no secret of it. Same with his health. He was always talking about his heart problems and his weight."

"What about the mushrooms? Can they be identified on sight?"

"Not unless you know what to look for. I'll read you what it says. 'A. verna is pure white. A. phalloides is yellowish green to greenish. Spores in both are white and not attached to the stem.' Yada, yada, yada. Let's see. This particular type of mushroom starts out enclosed in what they call a universal veil that leaves a cup at the stem base. When you're picking mushrooms, you have to dig around some because it's sometimes hidden in the dirt. The illustration looks like a toadstool busting out of an egg. Says it's slimy, too. You want more?"

"I got the basics. If the killer had a batch of 'em growing in the yard, the rest would be gone by now anyway. What happens next?"

"I've sent the pastry up to Foster City, the Chemical Toxicology Institute, for analysis. Might be a while until we hear back from them, but I have a feeling they're going to confirm our suspicion. I've put a call through to Homicide, but you might want to talk to Lieutenant Dolan yourself. Believe me, the hard work has just started. Tough thing about homicidal poisoning is proving legally that a crime was committed. You have to demonstrate that the death was caused by a poison that was administered with malicious and evil intent to the deceased by the accused. And that means 'beyond a reasonable doubt.' How are you going to link the killer to the crime in this case? Somebody bakes a cake and drops the damn thing off. Morley gets to his office, 'Oh, hey, is this for me?' Odds are nobody even saw where it came from, so what the whole thing's going to boil down to is all circumstantial. We don't even have a suspect."

"Yeah, I know," I said.

"Well, you have to start someplace. I'll give you a call as soon as we have more. In the meantime, I wouldn't eat anybody's home-baked goodies."

"I'll try not to. And thanks, Burt."

By the time I hung up the telephone, my hands were cold. In the past several months, Morley had talked to a number of people associated with the murder of Isabelle Barney. What had he discovered that precipitated his death, too? It must have been significant. A poisoner is considered one of the smartest and most devious of murderers, largely because poison, as a method, requires knowledge, skill, premeditation, and cunning. One doesn't poison in the heat of passion. Poisoning is not an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment crime. The covertness and deliberation suggest the kind of cruelty that makes a charge of first-degree murder nearly automatic in such cases. Morley Shine had died of an internal violence that probably left no outward mark, yet his death had been as agonizing as a stabbing or gunshot wound. I had a sudden flash of the killer with a supply of deadly mushrooms, leafing through a cookbook for a little appetizer Morley might enjoy. I pictured pastry dough being rolled out, the filling gently sautéed with butter, the strudel lovingly assembled, packed in a bakery box, and delivered to Morley's doorstep. The killer might have sat and chatted with him while he ate the lethal savory. Even if it had tasted strange, Morley might not have complained. Too hungry from his diet. Too polite to protest. And then the hours that had passed while he became aware that he wasn't feeling well. He probably didn't even associate the nausea and the stomach pain with the pastry he'd consumed so many hours before…