Janice Bennett - Cold Turkey

Sarkisian stared at her, frowning, then looked to me.

“I think,” I said slowly, “that my aunt can help out with this. Hugh Cartwright listens to her, sometimes. I think she can shame him into endorsing what Peggy did.”

He nodded, obviously relieved. “We’ll have a talk with Ms. Lundquist, then.”

Peggy beamed at him. “Did you want to arrest me? That would have been quite an experience. I’ve never been arrested before.”

“One can only wonder why not,” Sarkisian muttered as we at last headed out the door.

“No one’s dared, I expect.”

He climbed into the car, then turned to look at me. “If she didn’t really mind our finding out, it doesn’t seem likely she’d panic over Brody’s finding out, either.”

“Or Dave’s,” I agreed. “And Tony would have known it wasn’t a matter of life and death to her, so that lets him out, too.”

His expression went blank with that look I was beginning to recognize as a rapid review of facts. “Hatter’s prints weren’t on the ledgers,” he announced abruptly. “Only on the inventory sheets waiting for processing.”

I groaned. “You mean we’ve been wasting our time on the wrong thing?”

Sarkisian ran a hand through his curly pepper-and-salt hair. “Hatter had been going through papers. Maybe he knew what he was looking for, maybe he was just doing it as part of his job. But someone didn’t want him doing it?” He made the last a question.

“Not Peggy,” I asserted. “She was fiddling the books, not the inventory-” I broke off, realizing what I had just said.

“Fiddling the inventory,” Sarkisian repeated, an odd expression in his gray eyes. “Damn.”

We fell silent, then reason intervened and I shook my head. “Sorry. That doesn’t make sense. The employees can get all the bottles-”

“The experimental batches,” he corrected. “Good for personal drinking, but not for resale. Hugh Cartwright will never let anyone have the bottles with labels bearing the Brandywine Distillery seal. Because,” he added with emphasis, “they sell for so much money.”

“So Dave might have caught someone making off with stock?” I warmed to this line of thinking until I realized it didn’t let out Peggy, or for that matter, Gerda. “Anybody in the whole damned town could have been stealing from the Still!” I said in disgust. “Dave might even have been taking bribes to keep quiet about it.”

“Until his conscience got the better of him, perhaps?”

We crested the hill to be greeted by a bright spotlight focused on Aunt Gerda’s gate. Or more accurately, on the fence post beside it that Simon’s van had knocked over the night of the murder. The halogen bulb flared from a massive battery, illuminating Simon, his van, a new post and the remnants of cement mixing.

Sarkisian slowed to a stop, and Simon waved to us. “A bit late, isn’t it?” Sarkisian called to him.

“Thought I’d better do it before it started pouring again.” Simon’s mouth twitched into a lopsided grin. “I’ve felt damned guilty about this.” He turned back to his labors.

Sarkisian guided the Honda along the winding drive-missing most of the potholes, I noted-and stopped again behind the garage.

The front door opened, and Gerda came out on the deck and looked down at us. “Annike? I was getting worried.”

“It’s been a long evening,” I agreed as I crawled out of the car. Right now, I wanted my bed and twenty-four hours of uninterrupted sleep. I’d be lucky if I got six.

“Is that the sheriff? Good. I’ll be right down.”

Sarkisian waited while Gerda hurried back into the house. She emerged a couple minutes later, wrapped in her purple cloak, and came down the stairs.

“Here!” With an air of triumph, she thrust out her hand, holding a piece of paper liberally smeared with garbage. “The cash register receipt for my vanilla, with the date and time of purchase printed right on it.”

“Your alibi?” Sarkisian took it by a corner, eyeing the crumpled, slimed thing with distaste. I could only hope it would satisfy him.

Simon’s rattling old van pulled up beside him. “All done, Gerda,” he called. He opened up the back and dragged out a spare fence rail. “I’ll shove this in the crawlspace.” With the board balanced on his shoulder, he opened the garage, felt around until he found Gerda’s spare key, then unlocked the low doorway that led to her tool storage area. He came out several minutes later. “Some of that floor insulation has come loose,” he said as he returned the key to its not-very hidden home. “I’ll come by in the morning and fix it.”

“You know where the spare keys are?” asked Sarkisian.

“Well of course he does.” Gerda regarded the sheriff as if he’d just said something particularly dim. “He’s been doing odd jobs for me practically since he moved here.”

The key. The murderer had to have had access to a key to Gerda’s. I’d forgotten that. Again.

I glanced at the sheriff and recognized the calculating look in his eyes as they rested on Simon. Lowell had just given away the fact he knew where to find the spare key. Just how many people around here shared that knowledge?

I had the horrible sensation it was going to become very important to discover the answer to that.

My head ached. I wanted to go to bed. I didn’t want to think about the murder-or rather, the murders-any more. I still had tomorrow to survive. And that meant dealing with the Dinner-in-the-Park. Owen Sarkisian was never going to have the time to call the school officials for permission for us to hold it in the cafeteria, which meant I was stuck doing it. Leaving the sheriff talking to Gerda and Simon, I dragged myself up the stairs, let myself into the house and went into the kitchen. Next Thanksgiving, I swore, I would be hundreds of miles away from Upper River Gulch.

For several minutes I just stood there, glaring at the phone. I had no way of reaching anybody. Anyone high enough in the school hierarchy to have the authority to give permission also would have the sense to have an unlisted phone number. Frustrated, I tried calling a couple of party rental firms before admitting it was too late on a Saturday night and I hadn’t a chance of getting through. I sank onto the kitchen chair, and at once the manx Hefty scrambled up my leg, using all his claws, and into my lap. I was so tired I made no more than a token protest, then just sat there, cradling the purring beastie. Infinitely better than cradling That Damned Bird. Tedi Bird, for God’s sake. I felt like crying, but at the moment it would take too much effort.

If I was going to put that much energy into anything, it ought to be solving the problem of the dinner. If I couldn’t rent a pavilion, maybe we could make one. Tarps, lashed together, to create one giant canopy covering for the entire park. We could anchor it to trees on one side, the electrical pole on another, and with sufficient ropes we could probably reach across the street to another tree on the fourth corner. Or maybe with sufficient rope I could just hang myself.

With an effort, I dragged my thoughts from the wistful back to the practical. Everyone around here had a tarp or three. They were part of the requirements for country living. Never mind that with all this rain, everyone would already be using them to protect things of their own.

“Why are you just sitting there?” my aunt demanded. I looked up to see her swirling off her new cape to drape over the back of a chair in front of the pellet stove in the dining room. “Don’t you have phone calls to make?”

I nodded. “How many tarps have we got?”

She had stooped to pick up Dagmar, and straightened at this with her arms full of purring gray and white fur. “Whatever for?”

I told her my plan.

She settled the cat across her shoulder. “Whatever for?” she repeated. “Do you really like roughing it? What’s wrong with the school cafeteria?”

I closed my eyes. “Fine. You call and make the arrangements.”

“The sheriff already took care of that. Didn’t he tell you?”

There was going to be a third body, any minute now. I was going to kill Sarkisian. “You mean I’ve been sitting here, frantic, and all this time…”

She shook her head. “Really, Annike, you worry too much. We told you at the beginning, just assign jobs, and everyone will pitch in and do their part.”

Even the sheriff, with two murders to solve. “Let’s give him the turkey as a thank you present,” I suggested. I felt amazingly better, even though Gerda refused to consider my generous impulse. Most likely, Sarkisian had delegated as well and had someone in his department take care of it. I’d have to call-scratch that, I’d drop by-with heartfelt gratitude for Jennifer if I survived all the way to Monday.

The change of venues meant I had to activate the phone tree again, first to arrange for a decorating committee in the morning and secondly to let everyone know they wouldn’t have to come to the dinner armed with beach umbrellas. While Gerda put on a kettle for much needed tea, I telephoned Ida.

“More decorating?” the woman demanded in tones of foreboding when I’d explained the situation to her.

“Hey, it’ll be dry. And the school already has some stuff up for the kids.”

Ida snorted. “Paper turkeys and pilgrims, colored with crayons.”

“You can have a real turkey,” I tried.

Ida, sensibly, ignored me. “Well, I’ll see who I can round up. What a pity today’s refreshments got ruined in the rain.”

“Throw the cookies back in an oven to dry them out?”

She laughed and hung up.

Maybe-just maybe-I could go to bed soon. We made a pot of chamomile infused with oat straw, then Gerda took her turn at the phone. She called Hugh Cartwright. He answered on the fifth ring, and judging from the sound of his “What do you want?” that belted over the wire instead of a more conventional “Hello,” his mood could not be described as good.