FRANK BIDDLE TRIED to concentrate on the reports from Eleanora Duncan’s case file but found his mind wandering, and with good reason.
He’d read the contents at least ten times already, practically had the words memorized, and that included the list of food bagged from Eleanora Duncan’s refrigerator. It was long enough to be mistaken for the inventory of a small grocery store. Frank closed his eyes and recited aloud, “One half gallon skim milk, organic prune and carrot juices, one jar of bread and butter pickles, a package of uncooked chicken breasts, pickled herring, and half a dozen pint-sized containers of cat food from a gourmet pet shop in Alton.”
Oh, yes, plus the crab dip and stuffed mushrooms prepared by Jean Duncan, as well as the poisoned pâté.
Biddle sighed and pushed the case file away.
What if Eleanora Duncan had eaten the pâté when Zelma hadn’t been around to witness her stomach cramps and convulsions? If the old lady had been alone in the house when she’d died, no one would’ve been the wiser. No doubt it would’ve appeared she’d had a stroke or aneurysm or one of those other fatal medical terms he’d heard Doc mention.
Is that what Jean Duncan had hoped for? Had she figured Eleanora’s death would be relatively quick and unquestioned? Had she assumed that the eighty-year-old widow would simply be buried without a fuss?
Surely she hadn’t envisioned an autopsy.
He rubbed his eyes. He’d hardly slept last night. This case was getting to him, all right. He’d rolled over and reached for Sarah so he could wake her up and bounce some ideas around, but she hadn’t been there.
“I’m staying a couple more days at my mother’s, lamb chop, I hope you don’t mind,” she’d told him when she’d phoned a few minutes earlier. “Her hip replacement’s been giving her trouble, so I’m going to the orthopedist with her in the morning. Though I do hope you miss me.”
Frank thumped the heel of his hand against his chest and let out a belch that would’ve earned him applause in some kitchens.
Maybe Sarah was right about that cholesterol thing. He wasn’t so sure that a few more days of eating at the diner wouldn’t kill him.
That brought his thoughts right back to the murder.
Like the devil on his shoulder, Helen Evans’s voice played in his head.
Why, just yesterday as I was leaving here, after Jean had made up her mind to go to Eleanora’s, she made a comment about hoping Eleanora wouldn’t accuse her of trying to poison her. If that doesn’t prove she’s innocent, then I don’t know what does. Why on earth would she say such a thing and then go poison her mother-in-law? That would be like pointing the finger at herself, wouldn’t it?
Or perhaps it was a very clever way of deflecting guilt once Eleanora was dead.
But Mrs. Evans’s voice didn’t stop there.
Splat? You’re arresting her because of this? . . . Everyone in town uses Splat. The corner market sells it like hotcakes.
Frank pressed his fingertips to his temples, as if the action would drive away the woman’s persistent nagging. How he wished Mrs. Evans would just stay out of this!
He liked her. He really did. She was a nice enough lady with good intentions, and he admired her energy. She had enough of it to go around and then some. Hell, Frank could use some of it himself. Sarah was always dogging him about walking instead of driving the squad car everywhere he went. But he ranked exercise right up there with tofu and cleansing teas. Working up a sweat for no good reason just wasn’t his style. He needed every ounce of energy to take care of the citizens of River Bend.
So he owed it to them to work on the case, not work out at a gym, he reasoned as he rubbed a hand over his weary face.
With a sigh, he reopened the file, placing it front and center on his desk, and attempted to look at it with fresh eyes. Okay, so what did he have here?
Eleanora was killed by a lethal dose of sodium tetraborate found in the goose liver pâté prepared by Jean Duncan. A bottle of Splat—the suspected poison—had been found in Jean Duncan’s kitchen. Then there was the fact that Jean Duncan and her mother-in-law shared a deep, abiding hate.
So far as the sheriff was concerned, that gave the younger Mrs. Duncan motive, means, and opportunity.
That was a winning trifecta when it came to crimes like this.
So why hadn’t he arrested Jean Duncan already? What was stopping him? The evidence was awfully obvious, but wasn’t that the best kind? Simple cases were that much easier for prosecutors to explain to a jury, which usually meant a slam-dunk conviction.
If only Helen Evans’s voice didn’t keep popping into his brain.
If you’re looking for someone who wanted Eleanora out of the way, why don’t you start hounding Ms. Winthrop and Mr. Duncan instead of Jean? You might want to ask the two of them why they were meeting in secret at the playground last evening. I don’t think they were discussing the weather, do you?
Damn it! There it was again.
Frank groaned loudly.
Why did such an otherwise lovely woman seem to believe she was Miss Marple incarnate?
Ah, well, he told himself, she was right about one thing anyhow. Jean Duncan might be the most obvious suspect, but she certainly wasn’t the only one.
Frank had one eye on Floyd Baskin. The guy rubbed him entirely the wrong way. So Frank had put in a call to Eleanora’s lawyer and found out that yes, indeed, she had them working overtime, trying to put the kibosh on any further payments to the Save the River Fund. If Baskin knew about it, wasn’t that motive for him to want Eleanora dead before she cut him off?
And then there was Stanley Duncan and Jemima Winthrop, suddenly a pair in the sheriff’s mind since Mrs. Evans’s report of witnessing their unlikely tryst.
Each had been at the Duncan house the day Eleanora had died, which meant both had had a chance to poison the pâté. Frank had found a bottle of Splat beneath the sink in Eleanora’s kitchen. It would have been simple enough to hold the container of poison with a tissue so as not to leave behind any prints.
Frank’s eyes began to blur and his head to ache. So he tapped the pages back into the manila file and put it away in his desk drawer. Then he rose from his chair.
The chimes of the carillon broke through the air, trilling out a clunky rendition of “My Old Kentucky Home,” and Biddle found himself humming along with it.
So it was noon already, he realized, and his gut let out a grumble.
It wouldn’t hurt any to go over to the diner and have lunch first. Investigating a murder was hard enough without having to do it on an empty stomach.