Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

Then she would grill her brain for anything she might have done that could have led a murderer to believe that she was almost ready to name a killer.

Chapter 53

Drop-Dead Red

Late that evening at the Circle Ritz, Temple determined to go back to the convention first thing tomorrow, Fontana brothers be darned!

She would, however, ditch wearing the pink hat on advice of counsel. She’d return in a hot red hat from her vintage collection even though that was “illegal.” At least it would help disguise her from the convention strangler. And she wouldn’t leave until she’d fingered a killer and an attempted killer.

In fact, she had a hat-brained plan to smoke out the killer, one that everyone she knew would object to on grounds of insanity, hers. So she wouldn’t tell anyone. Most of what she needed was locked up in the conference room, but it required a slight modification.

Working on a craft project is supposed to be relaxing. As Temple assembled her materials she hummed to herself. Nothing special, just an absorbed, happy sound.

The Fontana brothers’ playful toasts of yesterday echoed in her mind: salud, prosit, skoal. Those guys were true bon vivants, French for high-livers. What would that be in Italian? Toasting with a good drink was a universal trait from sunny Mediterranean climes to the frozen northlands. A Vôtre Sante, toasted the French. To your good health. Most countries’ toast word or phrase was used in other languages as commonly as Joyeux Noel or Feliz Navidad.

Wait! Alch had said Elmore Lark “wasn’t just toasting his health” on the panel when he fell ill. Was the detective implying a foreign substance, or that someone foreign was a suspect? Or was it the toast? What had the Fontana brothers fallen back on after using the Italian variation yesterday? Prosit. Salud. Skoal.

Common variations … “Eureka!” Temple said, nearly slicing off a chunk of her forefinger before she dropped the scissors.

Something small that would slip into a jeans pocket in a bottle or a … tin! Something easily doctored with poison. Something that other people knew about or saw Elmore using.

Temple abandoned her coffee table craft project to take her home office computer for a spin on the Internet. She couldn’t help wondering how Sherlock Holmes would have ever impressed anybody with his instant store of vast but specialized knowledge if he’d had to compete with Google.

She typed in the suspect word and came up with usual 3,869-plus sites.

The top entries were most enlightening.

Skoal, she read, was a leading manufacturer of chewing tobacco, along with Copenhagen, Red Seal, and Rooster. My, but the color red came up a lot, if you considered that roosters had that scarlet coxcomb.

She didn’t know any users, thank goodness, and understood women’s distaste for that male affection for the stuff known as “spit” tobacco, or “dip” (as in “dipwad”?), or “chew.”

That “pinch between your cheek and gum” she’d seen advertised now and again (and had ignored) offered a nicotine rush and a risk of mouth cancer to go with it.

Hmmm. Other effects were increased heart rate and blood pressure, not to mention decreased smell and taste, which would make a man a prime candidate for poisoning.

And the stuff came in “compact little tins.”

That Alch! Had he led her on, without ever lying!

Her eyes nearly popped out of her head when she read the next paragraph. Spit tobacco contained such lethal additives as arsenic, cadmium, DDT, formaldehyde, and hydrogen cyanide, the poison used in gas chambers.

Wasn’t that what Cold War spies had implanted in their teeth for instant suicide if caught? Cyanide capsules. A clever person with access to cyanide certainly could “roll” his or her own. Empty a harmless pill capsule, fill it with cyanide, and dump the poison in Elmore’s ever-present tin of chew.

Temple remembered him hawking into a handkerchief at the debate table. He probably used the tobacco in the john before and after appearing in public. Maybe that last chaw was already disagreeing with him. If enough cyanide to fill a tooth could be instantly fatal, so could a dose taken in a wad of tobacco.

She looked up “Skoal” as a toast, just for fun. It didn’t seem directly relevant, but the entry she found was certainly grisly.

It seemed that at the full moon, in early northern European caves, the priests of the Norse god Odin would toast him using the skull of a fallen foe as a sacrificial cup.

Well, wasn’t that special?

She quickly called Electra on her desk phone.

“I have two questions. Where were you at 2:20 P.M. yesterday?”

“Assisting in a perkshop demonstration of hair extensions. Is that important?”

“Important and good. That’s when Kit was mistaken for me and attacked.”

“I heard about that, also that she’s going to be all right. Such a shame. You had to ask me?”

“Yes. That puts the kibosh on the police’s suspicion of you.It doesn’t clear you of Oleta’s death, but it sure upsets the Railroad Electra trend.”

“I should hope so! Although I’d never want anyone to be hurt just so I was cleared.”

Temple decided to keep mum about her upcoming brilliant hokey plan.

“What was your second question?” Electra asked. “Did Elmore use chewing tobacco?”

“Not when I knew him, or I’d have never ‘married’ him. He always was a sports addict. Don’t a lot of athletes use chewing tobacco because it doesn’t affect their wind the way cigarettes do?”

“Skoal!” Temple crowed.

“Ah, have we got something to celebrate?”

“Yes, I know now what almost killed Elmore. It’s not `Skoal’ as in a toast, Electra. It’s a brand name! Elmore’s now hooked on chewing tobacco, and that’s where the poison was placed. Remember the cyanide capsules foreign agents had built into their teeth in all those old spy movies? This was to be a vintage death.”

“Whatever you say, dear. But I left Elmore before he had any such disgusting habit as chewing tobacco. I can put up with a lot of things, but stinky brown spit every few minutes isn’t one of them. There are spitting lizards I could cohabit with if I’d wanted that.”

“Don’t you see? Whoever tried to kill Elmore knew his nasty habits, and used them. And must have known him after you did.”

“But the police won’t believe that I never knew him to use that vile stuff.”

“I’ll just have to find out who did know he used chewing tobacco, and used it to try to kill him.”

“That’s nice, dear, but do be careful! Now just go get some Crystal Light to toast yourself and use some other word than Skoal, and calm down. You sound really overheated.”

Subdued, Temple complied and returned to her living room, wondering how she could nail a killer with a small tin of chewing tobacco. Still, she only had to figure out who wanted Elmore Lark dead and knew enough about him to hit on the perfect method.

Meanwhile, her first trick to trip up the killer was a corny scheme, but centered on a hat and would attract attention. What more did she need for bait at this particular convention? Except maybe herself.

Ouch.

Would that stop Viking stock? No!

Temple lifted her glass of Crystal Light and envisioned the recent computer graphic of Viking warriors chug-a-lugging from a dead enemy’s skull.

“Skoal!”

Chapter 54

The Red Hat Rage Brigade

My partner is still off on her own private crusade working the missing Mr. Max Kinsella case when it becomes clear from eavesdropping on the recent hullabaloo that my Miss Temple has plans to put her life in danger.

I see her set the bait this morning and soon the word gets all around the convention. People come to gawk and spread even more word around. By the time all the conventioneers exit to attend the two simultaneous banquets tonight, Miss Temple’s bait will be left for someone bad to come sniffing around it.