Blue Plate Slayer

by Constance Barker

  “And bacon,” Junior said, “and scrambled eggs and some little potato things.”

  Deloris shook her head. “At least us ladies ate and drank our share of the expensive stuff, Mr. eggs and potatoes.”

  “I had some of that fancy thick soup with real blueberries on it,” Jake said with a serious demeanor. “That had to have been expensive.”

  Deloris just looked at him. “That was oatmeal, you big oaf. We sell it for $2.50 with fruit and syrup and toast and orange juice.”

  “Let’s go,” Brody said, standing up and sliding out my chair as I got to my feet. “I knew it was $49.95 a head plus a tip. It was good food with good people. We’ll have to do this again, Mercy.”

  “Oh, really!” I said, quite impressed with his generosity.

  “Yup – maybe for our 25th anniversary.”

  I nodded with a smile, and whispered, “Maybe Fulton County will help you out with the bill, Brody.”

  “I’m counting on it,” he said with a wink, “so that means we have to solve the case before we go.”

  “No problem, Sherlock.”

  “Oh! I get to be Sherlock?”

  “Yeah. I’ve decided that Watson was always the real brains. Besides, since we’re getting married, I have to start pretending that you’re in charge.”

  “Whoa. Not very modern of you, lady.”

  “I don’t know – You do know that wives always get their way, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “So, nothing is going to change then. By the way, maybe you should consider doing a champagne brunch at the diner on the weekends.”

  “What a good idea, dear!” I said as I showed him the note I had put into my phone’s note pad when the check arrived: Sat and Sun Brunch, $16.99

  “You don’t pretend very well.”

  “Well, great minds!”

  Ruby came with Brody and me to the morgue, and the others decided to go sightseeing and shopping.

  “Atwater wants us to go over the autopsy results with the coroner first, and then meet him at the bridal shop.” Brody opened the door to the big sandstone building for Ruby and me, and we walked to the elevator. “Third floor,” he said in response to my inquiring look.

  The building was mostly empty this weekend, and our heels clicked loudly, like my grade school tap shoes, in the long concrete corridor.

  “It’s the double glass doors on the left,” he said, motioning with his arm.

  “How do you know?” I asked him with an annoyed tone? “Have you been here before?”

  “I’m a detective, dear,” he said with a cocky smile.

  “Yeah,” Ruby replied with a hint of sarcasm, “I’m sure it has nothing to do with the smell of death and formaldehyde...or the directions that Atwater probably sent to your phone.”

  I gave my girl a fist bump, and I gave Brody a cocky smile of my own as I pulled the door open before he could do it for us.

  “Those were merely clues, ladies. It was my deductive powers that...”

  “If you’re looking for the morgue, officer,” a large woman said from behind the desk, “it’s the red steel door at the end of the hall. This is the medical supplies and lab.”

  We all nodded and backed slowly out of the door. Of course, halfway down the hall Ruby and I cracked up. It took Brody a red-faced minute, but he finally joined us in our laughing fit.

  The coroner was a tall, very thin, gray-haired man with round wire-rimmed glasses and a slightly bent stature. We had seen him briefly the other night after the murder, but we didn’t officially meet.

  “Sheriff Hayes,” he said with a nod, without extending his latex-gloved hand, “and ladies...follow me into the examination room. I’m Dr. Goodbody. Miss Jarvey should have the body ready on center stage now...erm, sorry...on Table 3, under the large lamp.

  There were five steel tables throughout the room, but only two had bodies on them, covered with white sheets. He walked up to the middle table and removed the sheet, revealing Petorina Verducci’s naked, lifeless body with the huge “Y” incision on her torso, sewn together with large stitches that looked a bit like leather bootlaces.

  It was nothing like a viewing at a mortuary. She did not look serene or like she was sleeping. She was a pale, very dead corpse like I trained on in nursing school. It was unsettling to think that one day I might be on display for strangers like this – naked, dead, and without a bit of makeup. And, hopefully, a lot more shriveled and wrinkled.

  I spotted the Bonnie LeToure wedding dress in a large plastic bag on one of the side tables.

  “Were you able to get any evidence from the dress, Doctor?” I asked him.

  “Not yet, Miss Howard. The crime lab was about to pick it up so they could vacuum it for trace hairs and fibers, but their hand-vac device gave up the ghost on its previous mission. They should be ready to try again tomorrow, I hope.”

  I thought that a big county like this should have more than one hand vacuum for evidence, but what do I know?

  “I’ve completed all of the preliminary and perfunctory elements of the autopsy,” Goodbody continued, “but I’m afraid I’ve still got work to do. I can tell you she was poisoned, but for the life of me, I can’t seem to find how the lethal dose was delivered into her system, and I am just beginning to do tests for they type of poison used.”

  Ruby was at the foot of the table now, looking at the body of the designer we had known so briefly. I was surprised how well she was handling the morgue scene.

  “You must have cleaned her body with an almond-scented body-wash,” Ruby said, inhaling just a little above Petorina’s feet. “Or else somebody is snacking on them now.”

  Dr. Goodbody and I swung our heads quickly towards each other with a look of “eureka” in our eyes.

  “Cyanide!” we said simultaneously.

  “What?” Brody asked. “Why cyanide?”

  The doctor explained, “Hydrogen cyanide gas has a scent similar to almonds – perhaps because there is some cyanide in almonds.”

  “And apple seeds and lots of fruits and nuts,” I added.

  “But I don’t smell anything,” he countered.

  “Neither do we, Brody,” I told him. “Only about half the people or so can smell HCN, and it seems that Ruby is the only one of us who can.”

  “Really? You guys can’t smell it?” she asked with her big eyes trained on Brody. “It’s really a strong smell.”

  “Maybe she ate something with the poison in it, Dr. Goodbody,” I suggested.

  He shook his head and picked up a plastic bag from a smaller table near the end of Table 3. “Here are her stomach contents, Miss Howard. Not a trace of poison. I know you’re a nurse, and you’re welcome to examine them yourself.”

  Nope. “Ahh...I’m sure your examination was thorough, doctor.” Ruby looked at me with a silent bug-eyed puking expression, and I didn’t disagree.

  “Did you look for injection points, doctor?” Brody asked him, stepping closer to the body.

  “Quite thoroughly, Sheriff. I’ve even checked under her nails. Perhaps I will remove her toenails to get a better look.”

  Gross, I thought, as our gazes all turned to her brightly polished cherry-red toenails. Ruby had an inquisitive expression on her face and leaned in closer to the dead woman’s toes.

  “I don’t think you need to remove her nails, doc. That red polish smells like an almond farm.”

  We all looked at Ruby and then at each other.

  “Ingenious!” the doctor said. “Poisonous nail polish!”

  I nodded in agreement. “And the soft cuticle at the root of the nail would be the perfect entry point to soak it right into the bloodstream.”

  “Now,” Brody said with a rub of his chin, “all we have to do is find out where the polish came from.”

  “And I know right where to start, dear.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Goodbody sent our findings to Sheriff Atwater. When we arrived at the mall, there were a half-dozen squad cars with lights flashi
ng outside the bridal shop entrance.

  I looked at Brody and Ruby as we got out of the taxi. “That was fast! Do you think they arrested somebody?”

  Ruby was looking towards the store entrance, and she made a gesture towards it. “Yup.”

  It was a perp walk. There was a uniformed officer on each side of Antoinette, the cosmetician. She was being escorted out in handcuffs as tears streamed from her eyes, leaving trails of mascara.

  We were only 20 feet away now, and we could hear her protests.

  “I didn’t do it, you guys! I would never hurt anybody. I didn’t kill that lady!”

  “Poor girl,” I whispered to Ruby.

  “Maybe you should save your sympathy for the woman she killed, Mercy.”

  I nodded. “I suppose, if she really is the killer.”

  Antoinette was quickly helped into a squad car, which left the mall with lights still flashing as it made its way through the gathering crowd of people, but without turning on its sirens. Atwater was not far behind them in the procession of deputies with a man in a white lab coat at his side. We met near the curb.

  “Good work, Sheriff Hayes and Miss Howard! Once we knew the poison was in the nail polish, it didn’t take our crime scientists long to trace it back to a bottle of toxic red polish used by that young cosmetologist woman.”

  Brody shook Atwater’s hand. “Nice work, Sheriff. But it was actually Ruby here who was the bloodhound that sniffed out the cyanide in the nail polish.”

  Are men really that stupid, to think a woman will be flattered to be called a bloodhound?

  “Good work, Miss Owana. The people of Atlanta are grateful.” Atwater said with a nod, as Ruby slowly crushed Brody’s toes with her heel.

  Brody turned white as a sheet but squelched the squeal that wanted to come out. Then he gave me an inquisitive look as she released the pressure on his little piggies.

  “Bloodhound,” I mouthed to him, and he showed a glimmer of understanding.

  An ambulance rolled up quickly, and EMTs rushed to the entrance of the shop, two of them rolling a stretcher.

  “It’s a good thing I the got coroner’s message when I did too, Sheriff Hayes. The killer...”

  “You mean the suspect,” I said, without thinking.

  “Sure. She gets the presumption of innocence, of course. I asked her if she used the killer polish on anyone else, and she pointed to a small lady; said she had just asked for the candy-apple red polish. Then, when they were walking, uh...the suspect, Miss Antoinette Summersong, out of the building, just a few minutes ago, that tiny woman looked at her fingernails and said, It burns! Then she fainted in my arms. I called it in right away, but I really don’t know how that ambulance got here so quickly.”

  Tiny woman? I looked to see a stretcher being rolled out of the door.

  “Did you tell them it was cyanide poisoning, Sheriff Atwater?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Oh, my God!” Ruby shouted. “That’s Isabel Lima!”

  “Izzy!” I called as my immediate fear had been confirmed. I ran to meet the stretcher as it arrived at the ambulance. Ruby was with me and leaned over the stretcher to comfort the nearly unconscious woman.

  “Stop!” I commanded the EMTs before they could load her into the vehicle. “She has to be treated at once! Where’s your Cyanokit?”

  A young man jumped into the ambulance to get it.

  “The caller just said to bring amyl nitrite, sodium sitrite, and sodium thiosulfate,” an older woman said,” holding up two ampules and an IV bag.

  “What?! Where is your hospital? Somewhere in 1999? That takes too long! She doesn’t have time for that!”

  “Here’s the kit, ma’am,” the young man said emerging from the back of the emergency vehicle. “I grabbed it when I heard the request for the old cyanide kit ingredients just in case.” Then he turned his attention to his crew. “I’ve already prepared the hydroxocobalamin with a small amount of saline. Start the infusion, stat!” he ordered the older woman. “This antidote will change the cyanide into vitamin B12 right away.”

  “I hope you’re going to medical school, young man. You just saved this young woman’s life.”

  Just as the first ambulance pulled away, a second one showed up in a flurry of lights and sirens.

  An EMT ran up to Sheriff Atwater.

  “Where is the cyanide victim, Sheriff?”

  We all looked at each other with a puzzled expression.

  “Is there another one?” I asked Atwater.

  He shook his head and turned to the paramedic. “She just left here in that blue ambulance,” he told him. “Somebody else must have called another ambulance.”

  The young EMT relaxed. “OK. 911 said our call came from you, Sheriff. Not sure how St. Mark’s crew beat us here. We left right away, and they’re a couple miles further away.”

  “Well, sorry for the false alarm, medic. I called you the second she fainted, and the other unit got here one minute after that. Maybe some higher power was watching over that young woman.”

  Some things just didn’t seem to make sense at the moment, but I knew that trauma and panic conditions tend to skew reality sometimes. I was just glad that Izzy was in good hands and going to be all right.

  Dandy Dan was standing alone just outside the entrance, and I walked over to him. He was visibly shaken and close to tears.

  “Are you okay, Dan? I know this has been a lot for you to take in today.”

  “No, I’m not, Mercy. All the loves of my life are dropping like flies. I know I’m not the best kind of man, but my life is falling apart.”

  I sat with him on a small bench in the shade and put my hand on his shoulder.

  “You’re a good man, Dan. I know that.”

  He just took a deep breath. “No, I’m not, Mercy. Petorina had been grooming me to be the spokesman for her line and her publicist.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “No, but...” He closed his eyes for a minute and then looked at me with a stoic gaze. “What the heck, you know things about me already. Petorina saw me with Izzy in my office, kissing, one time, so she knew the Dandy Dan thing was a sham.”

  “You and Izzy?”

  “Yes. We had been engaged for several months, but we had to keep a low profile because of my image as Dandy Dan – until she dumped me the day before you arrived. You might have noticed there has been a little tension between us lately. Anyway, after the great Verducci saw me with Izzy, that’s when she started making it clear that she wanted me for more than just my management and public relation skills. And she was a very generous woman. I was her arm candy at events, and then we got more and more involved after hours. I hated myself, and I always wanted Izzy, but I...”

  “Liked the money,” I added for him.

  He nodded. “And the acceptance and high life too, I guess.”

  “And then there was Antoinette. She knew about you and Izzy?”

  “Yes, of course. We couldn’t hide things behind the scenes very well. We kept it to my office and the dressing rooms, but Antoinette was always there, doing hair and makeup.”

  “And nails.”

  “Yes. She started getting flirty with me a couple months ago, and I can’t really control the weakness I have for beautiful women very well. I thought she was a really sweet kid. But now she’s killed Petorina and almost killed Izzy. I just can’t believe she had that much evil inside of her. I would never have guessed it in a million years.”

  “So, all three of the women in your little harem knew about each other then...?”

  “Yes, I guess they did.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was barely mid-afternoon, and so much had already happened today.

  “Well, we solved another one, Mercy!” Brody said when the server got back to the table with our drink order at the hotel. We sat in a small corner table of the bar off the lobby, and Brody had ordered a wine and a beer. When the server put them on the table, I slid t
he wine over to Brody and took a big sip of the beer. It was cold, and it was good.

  “Good for us,” I said with a total lack of excitement.

  “And Atwater gladly agreed to cover our brunch and another night for everybody in the hotel. I didn’t tell him that me and the boys had been staying at the YMCA, so I’ve got a room just down the hall from you.”

  “Mmhm.”

  “Mercy...”

  I was lost in space with thoughts swimming through my tired and stressed brain.

  “Mercy!”

  “Oh, what is it Brody?”

  “Are you alright, dear? You seem a little...off.”

  I nodded slowly and then looked at him. I reached across the table and took his hand. “It’s not me that’s off, Brody. It’s this case.”

  “What do you mean, Mercy?”

  “Too many things just don’t add up.”

  “Of course, they add up. The jealous other-woman knocks off the rich Sugar Mommy and tries to kill the fiancé so she can have the handsome and not-gay host of the show for herself.”

  I tilted my head to one side and stared at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Sugar Mommy?”

  “You know what I’m saying, Merse. So, what doesn’t add up?”

  “Dear...why would Antoinette tell the Sheriff that she put the polish on Izzy if she wanted her dead?”

  “Um...so she would only get one life-sentence instead of two?”

  “And why were there two ambulances, including one that got there one minute after she fainted?”

  “Um...”

  “And why did the medical technician say that the caller told them to bring amyl nitrite, sodium nitrite, and sodium thiosulfate?”

  “Sodium what?”

  “Exactly! Sheriff Atwater doesn’t know the antidote for cyanide poisoning. The medications in the old cyanide kit probably still come up in a Google search, but they aren’t the antidote used when a Cyanokit is available.”

  Ruby approached our table and sat. “Did I hear you say something about sodium sulfide or something, Mercy?”

  “Something like that.”