Murder on the Sinful Express

by Shari Hearn

  “That’s ridiculous,” Celia said.

  “Actually, it’s not,” Mindy countered. “If safety measures aren’t followed, botulism can occur with baked potatoes in foil. For example, she might have baked it the previous night and quickly put it in her refrigerator still in the foil, or maybe the potato hadn’t fully cooked and she left it sitting in the foil for several hours and then ate it. If you had come to my presentation at the senior center last month, you’d know what I was talking about.”

  Celia crossed her arms. “I know it can happen. And so does Anna. We in the God’s Wives had our own discussion on food safety. And Anna herself brought up the problem of baking potatoes in foil. After reading an article about it, she stopped using the foil.”

  Deputy Breaux shrugged. “You can’t argue with what I found in her trash.”

  “In fact, I can,” Celia said. “She wouldn’t have done it. Period.”

  Several of the women aligned with the God’s Wives nodded along with Celia, who then mentioned that she’d had dinner with Anna recently and was served a baked potato. Baked without foil.

  “You’re thinking someone planted the baked potato in her trash?” Ida Belle asked.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Celia said.

  Gertie folded her arms. “And how would someone get Anna to eat it?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps you could tell us, Miss Fortune.”

  Deputy Breaux held up his hands. “Ladies, please. This is a tragic case of accidental food poisoning. If Sheriff Lee and I felt otherwise, we’d be investigating.”

  “Anna wouldn’t prepare a baked potato in foil,” Celia said. “It’s as simple as that.”

  He chuckled. “I know to you girls it might seem suspicious, but it’s not.”

  Ida Belle’s brows shot up. “Now wait a minute. I don’t like how Celia pointed the finger at Fortune, but she knows Anna. If she said Anna wouldn’t bake a potato in foil, then I believe her.”

  “Well, Hell just froze over,” Bea said. “You agree with Celia?”

  Ida Belle nodded.

  Gertie stood and gazed at the God’s Wives members. “Of every one of you who knew Anna well, would she have baked her potato in foil?”

  Celia and her two minions shook their heads, “no.”

  “Then I’ll do something I don’t ordinarily do,” Gertie said. “I’ll agree with Celia. Who agrees with me agreeing with Celia?”

  Bea and Edilia slowly raised their hands, followed by Madigan. Delphine looked at her mother, Cookie.

  “Mama, do you agree?”

  “No tea,” she yelled. “I brought my Pepsi.”

  Delphine rolled her eyes. “Mama agrees. If agreeing with Celia is fine with Gertie, it’s fine with me.”

  Trixi threw her hands in the air. “I’ll go along with the rest of you.”

  Mindy sighed. “Fine. I’m in.”

  All eyes turned to me. “I don’t know how the potato got in Anna’s mouth...”

  Celia interrupted with a snort.

  I continued, “But I agree there’s something suspicious.”

  “Then it’s unanimous,” Ida Belle said. She looked at Deputy Breaux. “You can start your investigation now.”

  Deputy Breaux frowned. “Since when does the Sinful Sheriff’s Department take orders from citizens?”

  Ida Belle shrugged. “Since the Sinful Ladies Society was founded.”

  “So get on it,” Gertie added.

  Deputy Breaux held up his hands. “I can understand you all getting together once a month to eat baked goods and solve book crimes. But this is real life. It’s time you girls go back to your fun and let the men handle the real-life stuff.”

  Every eye in the place widened. Several “oooohs” were heard.

  Ida Belle folded her arms and glared at Deputy Breaux, whose face reflected his realization that he just slid down the rabbit hole.

  “I meant let the professionals handle things.”

  Gertie folded her arms as well. “But you said ‘men.’”

  “Didn’t mean ‘men.’ It’s just... all the lawme—professionals in Sinful just happen to be men. But I meant no disrespect to you ladies.” He swallowed. “And no tattling to my mom.”

  I stood. “You think you men can solve crimes and us women can’t? That’s a pretty antiquated notion.” I was particularly irked because, unbeknown to most people in town, I’d helped solve quite a number of crimes since I’d arrived in Sinful two months ago. And in my job as a CIA assassin I’d done things most men never dreamed of doing. But the biggest reason I was irked was that I could hear my father in him. My father never thought I could do anything as well as a son would have. But he and my mom never had a son. They had me. I glared at Deputy Breaux. He was a good man. A rather incompetent one, but good. He just picked the wrong day to remind me of my father.

  “Maybe I’d better go,” he said as he rushed for the door and let himself out.

  “The nerve of him,” Celia hissed.

  “Hopefully when Deputy LeBlanc gets back from his fishing getaway he’ll launch his own investigation,” Bea said.

  Ida Belle shook her head. “Not if Sheriff Lee doesn’t think there’s anything worth investigating. Deputy LeBlanc’s hands will be tied.” Her face was reddening. Her jaw clenched. We had similar types of fathers. Deputy Breaux had pushed her button as well.

  Trixi sighed. “What can we do but go back to our book?”

  Madigan stood and called out, “All aboard for the Sinful Express!” She pressed the toy train’s button for the whistle and chugga-chugga-chugga. “I now give the floor to our conductor.” She sat back in her seat.

  I tore open my book, wanting desperately for this group meeting to end so Ida Belle, Gertie and I could strategize on how best to proceed. “Okay, today we’re covering pages one hundred through one hundred and fifty,” I said unenthusiastically. “Jenna is starting to put things together and she approaches her boyfriend, Officer Cody, with her suspicions.”

  “And he laughed at her,” Ida Belle said bitterly. “Said she should focus on her dessert shop, S’Mores Galore.”

  “As if she can’t chew gum and walk at the same time,” Gertie said. “And how many marshmallow pies does this town need, anyway?”

  “They do eat a lot of marshmallows in this book,” Mindy said. “Need I tell you what eating that many marshmallows would do to your life span?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” Celia said.

  I impatiently tapped my fingers on the table, thinking of my father. Wondering what he’d be thinking of me now, leading a discussion of a small town’s dependence on s’mores.

  “There was a major clue I picked up on page one-thirteen that I’d like added to our clues board,” Madigan said. “Fortune?”

  I looked at her. Then realized she wanted me to write the clue on the whiteboard. I picked up the red marker and began writing, “Clues – Fickle Finger of” I stopped. I swore I saw an image of my father on the board, his face in his hands. Turning back to the group, I could see the anger and frustration on many of the women’s faces. Even Celia was seething. Ida Belle looked as if she were about to blow, and Gertie was scrawling angry ink blobs in her notebook. I knew once this group was over that Ida Belle, Gertie and I would go back to my house and start an investigation into Anna’s botulism. But why wait?

  “Aw, heck,” I said. “Does anyone really care who pushed the Widow Jenkins down the stairs?”

  “Not me,” Gertie said, slapping her pen on the table. “She was a mean bitch and was stealing from the Christmas fund. I admit I high-fived myself when her head snapped off and bounced into the wall.”

  “Besides, we all know it was Mona who did it,” Ida Belle said.

  “We do?” asked Madigan.

  “I’m not so sure,” Mindy said. “There’s still the issue of the blue thread.”

  “The blue thread was a red herring,” Ida Belle said. “I know because I cheated and read ahead. Mona did it. There’s
a big scene near the end where Mona points a gun at Jenna, but the gun jams and they fight and Mona picks up a knife from the knife block and is about to stab Jenna, but then Jenna’s poodle jumps on Mona, causing Mona to fall on the knife. End of story.”

  Several women groaned.

  “Thanks a lot for the spoiler alert,” Mindy said, slamming her book shut.

  “Look,” I said, “we can all sit here and stew about what Deputy Breaux said and go back to Fickle Finger of Death, but wouldn’t you rather solve a real-life mystery than a fictional one?”

  Celia grunted. “Spoken like a true librarian. Not.”

  I grabbed Gertie’s notebook with the ink blob she’d scribbled and stuck my thumb down into the ink and transferred my inky fingerprint above the inky blob.

  “You want proof I’m who I say I am?” I said as I ripped the page from the notebook. “Here’s my fingerprint. Have fun with it.” I slid the paper across the table to Celia. If she ever did take it to a lab, it would come back as Sandy-Sue Morrow thanks to CIA Director Morrow. “Now, your friend Anna is lying in a hospital bed from eating something containing the botulinum toxin. The sheriff’s department says it was a baked potato in foil, something you claim wouldn’t have happened. There might be a potential murderer in Sinful, perhaps one sitting in this room. I’d think you’d want to know the truth.”

  “I’ll have you know that as soon as this meeting’s over, the God’s Wives and I are going to draft a letter to Sheriff Lee demanding an investigation,” Celia said smugly, to the nods of her two lackeys.

  “A letter?” Ida Belle said mockingly, holding her hand to her chest. “Now I feel much safer.”

  Gertie nodded. “While you’re practicing your penmanship, we’re going to find out whodunit.”

  “Yeah!” Bea said. “Sinful Ladies to the rescue!”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” Celia said. “After writing the letter, the God’s Wives are going to do our own investigation.”

  “But why not pool our resources?” I asked. “Why not put our differences aside and solve this one together?”

  Gertie and Ida Belle both frowned. “Together?”

  I nodded. “Gather our clues and come up with a perp.”

  “I already know whodunit,” Cookie said. She pointed to me, then to Trixi. “You and you. The two outsiders.”

  Trixi rolled her eyes. “Miss Cookie, I was born here. I had you as a teacher.”

  Cookie pointed to me. “You left your house through the upstairs window. Night before last. What are you hiding?”

  “Mama, please,” Delphine said. “This isn’t about the book you were reading. This is real life. Now enjoy your donut!”

  Cookie glared at her daughter as she angrily bit off a chunk of donut.

  I went to the whiteboard and wrote: Attempted Murder on the Sinful Express: Clues. For the first clue I wrote, Anna wouldn’t bake her potato in foil. “Okay, first off, who might have a motive to try to murder Anna?”

  I looked toward Madigan and asked, “Any thoughts?” I remembered Madigan and Anna having a heated, whispered discussion after the first group meeting.

  Madigan looked down at the table. “No. I mean, I really liked her.”

  “Hah!” Mindy said. “I heard her plain as day threaten to get you fired because you left the book cart in the aisle.”

  Madigan looked up. “We resolved it.”

  “Hmmmph.” Celia folded her arms. “It didn’t look that way from where I was standing.”

  “She did lay into you pretty hard,” Trixi said.

  “Miss Lucy would never fire me over something petty like that,” Madigan said.

  Celia hopped up from her chair. “Oh, so you think what Anna said to you was petty. Include that on the board.”

  “It was!” Madigan said. “But it was nothing to kill her over.”

  Though I believed what went on between them in hushed tones was more serious than a reshelving cart, I put the marker to the board. “It probably wasn’t, Madigan, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to record that in the ‘Clue’ category, along with the names of the witnesses.”

  “Fine,” Madigan said. “But while we’re at it, Mindy left a browser open on the computer yesterday. To a page on poisons.”

  Several women gasped.

  Mindy leapt up from the table. “Prove it.”

  “You tell her, Miss Trixi,” Madigan said smugly.

  Trixi shrugged. “I went to use the terminal and noticed the page opened. I asked Madigan if she knew who used it last. I wanted to look up a recipe, but didn’t want to take over someone else’s computer time.”

  Madigan stared at Mindy. “I looked at the sign-in sheet and saw your name.” She pointed to the board. “Put that clue up there.”

  I did. Along with Trixi and Madigan as witnesses.

  “This is ridiculous,” Mindy said. “What’s my motive to poison Anna?”

  Ida Belle shrugged. “You wanted to win the book club competition?”

  “Maybe you just wanted Anna to get sick,” Gertie said, “but didn’t mean for her to get that sick.”

  “I was looking up how to repel skunks. They’re a real problem this year. If a page on poisons showed up, then someone must have used the computer after me. Or before me and I hadn’t noticed.”

  The accusations flew. Trixi had been taking a walk and saw Madigan on Anna’s street the night before she fell ill. Mindy was seen hovering near Anna’s book bag that she’d left on a reading table. An outsider’s name was even added to the mix, Jake Bourg, a man Anna had suspected of alligator poaching. Apparently, she’d threatened him several months ago.

  With ten minutes to go before the end of the group, I stood back from the board and took in all the clues. I suspected most were meaningless, though some confirmed what I had witnessed with my own eyes—something odd going on between Anna and Madigan and Anna and Mindy. “We’ll pick this up tomorrow morning.” I directed the group members to write the clues in their notebooks. “Maybe the clues will spark something you may have forgotten.”

  Gertie stood. “And don’t forget to ask friends and neighbors of Anna’s. Maybe one of them saw something they thought was unimportant.”

  “And the gals at the senior center,” Ida Belle added.

  On the chance that the perpetrator was in this room, I tossed out a warning before leaving. “If we present enough compelling evidence to Sheriff Lee and Deputy Breaux, they’ll be forced to treat Anna’s house as a crime scene. And one thing about criminals is that they almost always leave evidence behind. Somewhere in Anna’s house is that evidence.”

  Hopefully my words would get through to the perpetrator and she would return to Anna’s house tonight to make sure nothing was left behind. And if she did, I was going to catch her red-handed.

  Chapter Nine

  DEAR DIARY,

  This is something I hadn’t planned on. A call to action to the biggest snoops in Sinful. Maybe I went overboard with Anna. But there wasn’t any way around it. I could tell by the look in her eyes she was going to be a threat. And I needed her out of the way to carry out my grand finale.

  I can’t get carried away second-guessing myself. I need to stay calm and keep my eye on the prize. And what a prize he is. By this time next week, I’ll be the first to his house with a condolence casserole. I’ll stop by the next day to see how he is. And the next day. And the next. I’ll make myself available to him if he needs to talk. Or if he needs a hug. I’ll definitely be there for that. And then in the coming months, weeks if I’m lucky, hugs will give way to stolen moments together. He’ll want to take it slow out of respect for her. But that’s okay. I’ve got the rest of my life to spend with him. Tomorrow can’t get here soon enough. Tomorrow SHE will die.

  Chapter Ten

  FROM OUR TWO-TOP AT Francine’s, Gertie and I had a bird’s-eye view of the happenings on Main Street and the actions we had put into motion just as the sun set. At first, neither Gertie nor Ida Belle were keen on wo
rking with the members of the book club to solve this case. But when I convinced them we could use their help to our advantage, they were all in.

  Mindy passed by the picture window on her way to an oak tree behind City Hall, the tree Gertie had told her to stand under at 8:30 when she called at noon on her burner phone, pretending to be a “confidential informant” with information on Anna’s poisoning.

  “The Eagle has landed,” Gertie said softly into her cell phone, giving Ida Belle the all-clear to enter Mindy’s house and check out her aluminum foil.

  According to Myrtle, the foil covering the baked potato was a 9” by 10¾” foil sheet. Lucky for us Deputy Breaux had shipped the baked potato remains, as well as the rest of Anna’s food garbage, to the health unit labs in evidence bags, discarding nonfood items in the office trash. Gertie had promised Myrtle a chicken casserole if she went through the trash and measured the foil.

  At first, I had ignored the importance of the foil. Not being a cook, I had no idea there were so many different types and sizes of foil. Walter sold two different foil products, the 9” by 10¾” foil sheets and a standard 12” foil you had to manually tear off the roll. This was one clue we weren’t sharing with the book club.

  We initially had three top suspects: Mindy, Madigan and Jake Bourg, the man Anna had threatened to report to the police about suspected alligator poaching, but Jake was immediately eliminated after Myrtle informed us he was currently serving a three-day jail sentence for a drunken brawl at the Swamp Bar. That left Mindy or Madigan. Anna definitely had something over Madigan, I was sure of it, giving Madigan a motive to poison her. And Mindy’s competitive nature could have propelled her to taint Anna’s food in an effort to keep her rival at home for the week. Hopefully after tonight one of them would be eliminated.

  It was Ida Belle’s job to break into the houses of each suspect and determine what types of foil each woman used, but only after being assured the suspects would be gone for a good length of time. Madigan worked till 8:00 PM at the library and usually took an additional 15 minutes to help close up, so her house had been searched first. Ida Belle had determined that Madigan used the same foil squares found in Anna’s trash. Now it was onto Mindy’s house.