Chapter 40

Espandendosi: Growing broader and fuller; with growing intensity (Ital.)

Daryl blew at the foam on his drink, then leveled his green eyes at me. They looked dark today. “Martha was murdered sometime this morning.” A chill shot through me. Another murder. Another freakin’ murder. My glass jerked in my hand and a couple drops of pop leapt onto the floor.

“That’s why you didn’t see her at the funeral,” he said. “She called me last night and asked if I’d drive her to Grace’s funeral today. Mo is missing. When I stopped by to pick her up, the place was crawling with cops and they hauled me in.”

Gulp! Am I entertaining a murderer?

“Don’t look at me like that,” he groaned.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m Ted Bundy.” He swigged his Coke as if he hadn’t had anything to drink for hours. Maybe he hadn’t.

“I figure, from how they questioned me, she died early today. I worked at home by myself all morning but I also made a couple of phone calls, which the police were finally able to verify. One to my dad and one to an art supplier. After they got confirmation of my phone records they let me go, but I’m still under suspicion.”

I breathed out. I’m not serving Coke to a killer. I told myself that they would still be holding him if they had anything to go on, but was only seventy percent convinced.

“Is Mo clear? Does he have an alibi?” I asked.

“Why would Mo kill his own mother?”

“Well, because she killed his father. Or tried to.”

“Huh? You think Martha killed her old man?”

“I saw her hiding something under one of their stepping stones night before last. I went back later and dug it up, and it was poisonous mushrooms. I took some to Sheriff Dobson because it was such a suspicious thing to do, burying them under a rock at night like that.”

I traced the path of a drip trickling down the outside of my sweating glass, glad the chill had left my spine.

It was so good to have someone I could talk to about all this. Someone I could unburden myself to about my feelings of guilt over the mushrooms.

Should I tell him about Hayley’s confession?

I continued, “I guess the sheriff agreed, even though he gave me a hard time about ‘disturbing evidence’ because, right after that, some sheriff’s deputies came out, picked up the rest of the mushrooms, and she was pulled in for questioning the same day.”

Yes, I would tell him. I decided I trusted Daryl, if no one else. How could Daryl have killed anyone?

“Hayley told me yesterday her mother did serve him poisonous mushrooms the night he died, so I thought maybe Martha killed him. But now someone’s killed her?”

“Yep. But I thought Toombs was stabbed.”

“One news report said he was both stabbed and poisoned, but they haven’t figured out the cause of death yet.”

“Jesus! Poisoned and stabbed.” He jumped up and slammed his drink onto the counter, then started pacing. “He did have a lot of enemies, didn’t he? I never thought his enemies were that violent, though. I didn’t think the people here in my own town were like that.”

“He was a violent man, from what his wife and his stepdaughter said. Mo says he hits people, too, although—how does he put it?—he never hit anyone unless they deserved it. Something like that.”

“Mo said that? Sounds like Mo. He’s the same way, as you know. He was always getting into fights all through school. He could never see what the big deal was. If he wanted to punch somebody, he punched them.”

“How did Martha die?” My voice sounded weak.

“That’s kind of odd. You say she hid the mushrooms under a stepping stone?”

“That’s right. The one nearest the door.”

Daryl stopped pacing and looked directly at me. “Yep, that’s the one. Captain Palmer said her head was bashed in with it.”