The police had come and gone without finding anyone lurking about. I was no help as far as a useful description. I’d seen part of a shadow, nothing more.
To their credit the two officers hadn’t treated me like a nutcase. And I wasn’t. I’d heard as well as seen. All I could guess was that the lurker had turned away when I reached the lighted area.
They promised to run a patrol car through the parking area regularly to discourage any outsiders with theft or worse on their mind.
They wrote out their report, offered all sorts of assurances, and left me.
The first thing I did was hop in the car and head home. As I drove, my thoughts zoomed every which way: Marge… Travis… his date with Maddy… Stanley Harris… peanuts… malpractice… Eddie the Shark Stark…
But they kept returning to tonight’s incident: Was I a random target, or had someone been watching me? Was it a coincidence that hours after I’d been poking through Stan Harris’s house someone tried to assault me? Had he realized I’d invaded his filing cabinet and feared I’d seen something incriminating?
Stan Harris stalking me with a knife seemed way over the top, but if he’d killed Marge, was it so farfetched to think he might kill again to protect himself?
Questions… questions… and no answers.
And behind them all, the memory of Marge’s pale, slack, staring face. And her last words.
He’s killing me!
Who, Marge?
The “he” had to be Stan.
But why—why did she think someone was killing her?
She’d realized something at that moment… something she never had time to tell.
But how had she known? Had she tasted something? I stiffened behind the steering wheel. Taste!
That was it!
I looked at the dashboard clock: 11:13. No way Trav would still be out with a ten-year-old—if he’d been out with a ten-year-old. I grabbed my cell, scrolled through RECENT CALLS and thumbed his number.
Trav picked up on the second ring. “Lawton.”
He must have thought I was someone from the department.
“Trav, it’s Norrie.”
“Norrie! Anything wrong?”
“Look, I’m sorry to call you at this hour but—”
“Forget it. I wasn’t sleeping anyway.”
“That’s a relief. I hope I didn’t wake Maddy.”
“There’s no phone in the other bedroom. What’s up?”
I told him what had happened.
“Jesus! Why didn’t you call me?”
“I did but you weren’t in.”
“I’ll give you my cell number. Jesus, are you okay there alone? Want me to—never mind.”
“Never mind what?”
“I was going to offer to come over but I can’t with Maddy here.”
“That’s okay. I’m on my way to my mum’s”
I told him my suspicion that Stan Harris might have been the one who’d chased me.
He said, “I can’t see him doing something like that. He’s no dummy, and that would be very dumb. Probably some drug-starved mook looking for someone to rip off. I doubt he’ll be back.”
“I hope you’re right.” I felt better just talking to him. “But that’s not why I called. I’ve been thinking about Marge.”
“Me too.”
“I think I know why she thought someone was killing her.”
“I’m listening.”
“She’d detected a peanut flavor and knew instantly that she was in big trouble.”
“Okay, but that doesn’t mean someone was trying to kill her.”
“It does if the peanut flavor was where it shouldn’t or couldn’t be naturally.”
I stopped and let him take the next mental step.
“Like in a banana, for instance?”
“Exactly. Can’t you picture Stanley Harris drawing peanut oil into a syringe, then injecting it into a banana?”
“I can picture him doing just about anything. But where’d he get the syringe? You can’t simply walk into a drugstore and buy one. And where’d he dispose of it?”
“I can’t answer that, but—oh jeez, wait…”
“What?”
“The reaction.” I slammed my palm against the steering wheel. “It just occurred to me. The reaction would have been immediate. By the time Marge recognized the peanut flavor, the symptoms would have been escalating. If the reaction occurred in the study—and no one seems to dispute that—then where are the coffee cup and the banana skin? They weren’t in the office when I was there. You were at the house right after the EMTs arrived. Do you remember seeing them?”
“No, but things were in such an uproar, I could have missed them.”
“Well, if they were there, they aren’t now. Which means someone moved them.”
I gasped as an awful scenario flashed through my mind.
“What?” Trav said.
“I just had a picture of Stanley Harris standing in the kitchen listening to Marge’s strangled cries as her throat closed, waiting until she stopped, then going in and removing the cup and the remains of the banana.”
I shivered.
“And then what?” he said.
“And then taking the banana along as he left before the EMTs arrived.”
Another pause. “You really think Harris is that cold-blooded?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Another shiver. I didn’t want to think anybody I’d been in the same room with could be that cold-blooded.
“Yeah, but that scenario leaves him without an alibi.”
“Not if he has people to cover for him.”
“Yeah, well… I can see people covering for something like an affair or a night out with the boys, but with a dead wife involved…”
I sighed. “You’ve got a point.”
“Let me play devil’s advocate this time. You’ve been dealing with an awful lot of ifs. Let me give you one: What if we search the house and find the banana skin in the garbage and there’s no needle hole in it? What then?”
I thought about that. Good question. And a good idea: Look at the flip side.
“Okay, if the banana’s innocent, and the reaction occurred in her office…”
“And don’t automatically assume that Harris is involved. Just come up with some innocent way Marge could have gotten some peanut into her system. Once we’ve got that, we can figure out whether or not it was the result of foul play.”
“Tough one. It looked to me like she was taking her diet pretty seriously—I couldn’t find a single edible in that office.”
“Could there be another way?”
I couldn’t imagine one. I closed my eyes and pictured Marge’s desk… the bills… the envelopes, some sealed, some not… the—
Envelopes! I felt a rush of adrenaline.
“Oh, my God!”
“What? Tell me.”
“She was paying bills… she was part way through the stack when the reaction hit.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I remember some of the envelopes were sealed. And to seal them she had to—”
“Lick them!” he cried. “Goddamn! She had to lick the flaps! Just like in Seinfeld!”
“Seinfeld? What are you talking about? This isn’t funny.”
“The Seinfeld episode where George’s fiancée dies after licking the envelopes for their wedding invitations. You must have seen it.”
“No, sorry. Never.”
“Come on! Everybody’s seen it.”
“Well, then, meet Ms. Everybody-Minus-One.” I’d never gotten into Seinfeld first run—too young. I’ll catch the occasional rerun nowadays, but fatal envelopes didn’t ring a bell. “But the envelopes weren’t poisoned, were they?”
“No, just an accident. It doesn’t matter.”
“But it does. If someone watched that episode and got the idea of spreading just a tiny bit of peanut oil on the glue strip—”
“There you go again. Looking for murder. In the show it was cheap glue that happened to be toxic. This could be similar: What if the envelope company used a glue that just happened to include some sort of peanut-related product?”
“But it’s obvious from the call that Marge recognized a peanut taste and knew that Stan had set her up.”
“She suspected. She couldn’t know.”
“But it’s perfect!” I said. “Harris knows his wife does bills every Thursday, so on Wednesday morning he smears a little peanut oil on the glue strip of one of the envelopes, then takes off for New York. He’s out of state when his wife has the reaction.”
“But he couldn’t know she’d die.”
“No, but if she does, he collects a million or two. If she doesn’t, he gets to sue me. It’s win-win.”
During the ensuing silence I could hear Trav breathing on the other end of the line. Finally…
“I’ve got to get hold of those envelopes. An unfortunate ingredient in the glue lets Harris off the hook. But a smear of peanut oil…”
“Yeah. Then he’s cooked. But how do we get them?”
“We?”
“Yes, we. You can’t let Nancy Drew figure this out for you, then leave her out of the kill.”
“I’m not going to kill him.”
“Just a figure of speech. But Trav, I’m serious. I want to be there when you go back.”
I wanted to watch Stan Harris’s expression, wanted to look into his eyes as the deputy sheriff asked him for the envelopes.