Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake

by Sarah Graves

  “Oh,” said the one wearing the cap. TWO GUYS MOVING & HAULING, it said. “She gonna be all right?”

  They seemed very . . . normal. “Yes,” I said, feeling my suspicions fade somewhat. Looking down at the plastic box I was still holding, I closed the top and gently put the box back in the window seat.

  If either of them thought there was anything strange about that, they didn’t say so. I still didn’t like the way their eyes darted around, though.

  “Okay. Uh, yeah.” They backed toward the door. “We, uh, we just wanted to make sure you weren’t, like, burglars or something.”

  I smiled hard at them. “That’s nice of you. I’ll let her know you were watching out for her, she’ll appreciate it.”

  I closed the top of the window seat and put the cushion on it. And then, because I just couldn’t help myself: “Pretty isolated spot for an elderly lady. You guys live out here year-round?”

  Their faces hardened simultaneously, not much to my surprise, and then the silent one spoke. “No, we just brought the kids swimming.”

  He angled his head back toward the cottage they’d come from. “Us and his wife. Soon to be ex-wife. Whatever.”

  He turned to his friend. “We gotta go.”

  “Take care,” I called after them as they hustled back down the path to the dock. Their little outboard whined and their boat snake-waked its way back across the lake to their own place.

  Then, “Hmph,” came a voice from behind me, and Bella came down the stairs. “There’s a likely-looking pair.”

  She sniffed. “Checking for burglars, my great-aunt Fanny. Those two were casing the joint.”

  When my dad was an invalid, she’d read a lot of old detective fiction while she sat keeping him company. And while I wasn’t sure the lingo was still current, she had a point.

  It was what they’d looked like. I opened the window seat bin again and lifted the poison out. “I wonder what they wanted.”

  Because while the cottage was comfortably furnished, it wasn’t by any means luxurious; so far, I’d seen nothing worth stealing.

  “No jewelry or such upstairs,” Bella agreed. “Or fancy-looking furniture, paintings and whatnot. Nothing like that.”

  All of which was consistent with what Ellie had said about her old teacher: a solid person, someone who took seriously the idea of treading lightly upon the earth.

  So why did she still have enough cyanide to kill a . . . well, I didn’t know what it would kill, did I? But it sure seemed like a lot of poison. And she wasn’t a farmer or rancher or a government land manager, so I was curious about her keeping what amounted to a mass-murder weapon in her window seat.

  But I could ask her about that later, after she’d recovered. For now, “Okay,” I sighed, getting the plastic box back out and carrying it to a window where the sunlight streamed through.

  It was a four-cartridge set, you could tell by the way they were packed in the box, and by the look of it none of the cartridges had been used.

  Or . . . had they? Bella leaned in to peer at what I was doing. “Keep back a little,” I warned.

  Because I’d looked it up late the night before. “You don’t have to eat or drink this stuff to die from it,” I said. “You could just inhale it, or get it on your skin, and whammo.”

  She blinked respectfully. “Let’s not have any accidents,” I said, leaning in cautiously to inspect the plastic cartridges more closely.

  And at first they all looked perfect: smooth, white, and shiny, about the size of a wine cork but rounded at both ends. Some kind of a spring-loaded piercing device was supposed to hit it and shoot cyanide out its front, I gathered from the diagram on the instructions.

  But... “Look,” breathed Bella, and then I saw it, too, a tiny pinhole on the barrel of one of the cartridges.

  Bella’s green eyes narrowed. “I’ll bet someone took some of the poison out of that thing. With a hypodermic needle or something.”

  I glanced sideways at her, pleased; half an hour earlier I’d have done just about anything to get her thinking—even for a minute or two—about something besides my dad and all his many recent misdeeds.

  And now here she was, looking bright as a new penny. “You know, I think you could be right,” I said.

  But I thought something else, too, as across the lake the little outboard engine went silent: whoever had invaded Miss Blaine’s quiet lakeside cottage hadn’t been here to take something from it.

  I’d been right. Unless I missed my guess, they’d been here to return something.

  * * *

  The walls of Eastport’s newly refurbished downtown municipal building were decorated with photographs of the old trains that had once served Eastport. Passing the photographs on my way into Bob Arnold’s office, I’d wished very heartily that I was on one of those trains . . . and for good reason, as it turned out.

  “A firearm,” Bob Arnold said, eyeing the ugly little .22 pistol I’d deposited on his desk.

  I’d dropped Bella off at home, then come straight over here to tell him what we’d found at the cottage and to give him Moran’s weapon finally, too.

  But now I almost wished I hadn’t. “Yes, Bob, I know it was out of line to keep the gun. But at the time I was a little distracted by—”

  “A firearm that you found while rooting through the belongings of a murder victim. You should never have been there in the first place.”

  Oh, but he was hot. “I told the state guys I found those photos of Sharon Sweetwater,” he said—I had given him those—“so as not to get you and Ellie involved. I said I’d had an idea where they might be based on something Moran said to me once.”

  He sucked in a furious breath. “I lied, in other words, to cover your foolish tails,” he added angrily, “and look what it’s got me.”

  I didn’t blame him. Still... “Bob, I really am sorry. But they were done with the place; they’d even told the landlady she could—”

  Clean the room, I was about to finish, so there was nothing wrong or illegal about us being there. But Bob didn’t give me a chance.

  “You told me about the pictures, you remembered that much, but somehow you forgot the gun you found. Yeah, sure you did. . . .”

  He shook his head, tight-lipped. “Once you were in there, you should’ve left the damned thing where you found it, that’s what you should’ve done.”

  He got up from behind his desk to pace a green indoor-outdoor carpet whose glue smell still tinctured the air years after they’d installed the thing.

  “But,” he continued, “now that you have brought the gun in to me, I suppose . . .” His blue eyes regarded me balefully. “. . . now that you have, I suppose I can figure out something to do about it.”

  “Something that doesn’t involve us?” I asked hopefully.

  He eyed me. “You don’t deserve it. But yeah, I’ll tell them I tossed it in the lockbox in my car last night, and in the aftermath of your dad’s crash, I’m the one who forgot about it.”

  “They’ll believe that?” Not wise of me, I know, but I couldn’t help it.

  Bob made a face. “They already think all us small-town cops are fools. More ammunition for their opinion is just what they like.”

  But then he faced me. “Thing is, though, we’re not. Fools, that is, so how about you tell me now the rest of what went on at Moran’s place last night?”

  And when I hesitated: “Come on, Jake. Moran’s room was torn up and tossed to hell . . . you and Ellie didn’t do that, I know you both better than that.”

  He leaned forward, hands pressed flat on his desk. “And Mrs. Starne, she was all upset, nervous and defensive . . . like maybe somebody just scared the wits out of her and she’s ticked off about it.”

  He really was a very good cop. “Yeah, well . . .” I told him the whole story. “But, Bob, she absolutely insisted that we not call anyone or tell anyone, and—”

  He sighed resignedly. “Yeah, and she’s a real piece of work, too; that sounds just
like her. Anyway, I’ll take care of this.”

  Which meant he thought that I could go now.

  But: “Um. There’s a little more.” I held out the clear plastic box with the cyanide cartridges in it: three loaded ones, and—

  “That one on the end, there,” I told him, “it looks like somebody stuck a needle in that one.”

  Bob’s pale blond eyebrows went up. “Whoa,” he pronounced, setting the box down on his desk and gazing at it.

  I gave him an abbreviated version of how Bella and I had gotten it. “All I want,” I said, “is not to be in possession of it anymore.”

  Although, in fact, it wasn’t all I wanted. Also, as I’d feared, he was still stuck at the how-we’d-acquired-it portion of the program.

  “You weren’t there getting anything for Miss Blaine,” he said. “That was a cover story, socks and toiletries and so on.”

  He gestured at the box. “You were out there looking for . . . Jake, why the heck are you and Ellie so wound up in all of this, anyway?”

  So then I did have to tell him all of it, starting with Sharon and Andy’s wedding, the enormous whoopie-pie cake that Ellie and I were baking for it, and our need to do the job and get paid, or else.

  Plus, of course, what Ellie had said about moving away, somewhere she and George could find work that wasn’t (a) uncertain; (b) poorly paid; and, in George’s case, also (c) backbreaking.

  Bob listened carefully, hands clasped on his desk.

  “So if we could just clear Andy of Toby Moran’s murder by finding at least one other reasonable suspect,” I said.

  “Then Ellie could stay right here in Eastport, where she belongs,” Bob finished for me.

  He shook his head unhappily. “She’s serious about this?”

  “As serious as a—”

  Heart attack, I’d been about to say, but then I remembered just in time about my dad and his truck. I wasn’t sure if any laws had been violated last night when he’d crashed, and I didn’t want Bob thinking about clarifying the subject—for me, or for himself.

  “Anyway,” I went on, “if Andy Devine’s guilty, and now it seems to me there’s some serious doubt about that, then there won’t be any wedding at all.”

  Bob nodded slowly; he still didn’t approve of the gun-and-poison show I’d brought to his office this morning. But he didn’t want to lose Ellie and George, either; we all loved them, not just me.

  “But if he’s not guilty,” I said, “then seriously, Bob, we need to know it. Because those bills of ours—”

  “I get it,” he interrupted as I stopped, suddenly overcome. The whole idea of Ellie leaving Eastport was just impossible.

  Except that it wasn’t. He handed me a tissue from the box of them that he kept on his desk and looked away as I blew. “Sorry,” I said.

  He busied himself moving papers around. “Hey, some days you just gotta run the waterworks,” he replied understandingly.

  Then he filled a foam cup from the coffee urn in his utility closet and brought it to me. The thick black liquid smelled like battery acid, but I drank it gratefully anyway.

  “Okay, listen,” he went on, changing the subject. “The other thing about last night . . . in case you’re wondering, I’m not going to try to get your dad’s driver’s license suspended.”

  I hadn’t even known that possibility was on the table; if I had, I’d have been working on Bob about it already.

  “Yeah, I know that’s what you and Bella would like,” Bob went on. “But, Jake, there’s no legal cause. Just being old doesn’t cut it, you know, if he’s safe to operate a motor vehicle.”

  It was what my dad had said, too. Bob looked out his window at the boats puttering on the water. “His eyesight’s okay, his mental status is good—”

  Turning back to me, he frowned suddenly. “It is, isn’t it? I mean, he doesn’t think he’s Napoleon or anything?”

  “He’s sane,” I confirmed, recalling our conversation outside the Moose the day before. “As for his eyesight, since he had his cataracts removed he can practically see through walls.”

  It was another thing we’d nursed him through over the winter. Now I sat up straight in Bob’s office chair. The coffee was repulsive to drink, but the result was excellent, especially if you like the feeling of having caffeine shot straight into your brain.

  “It’s his attitude,” I went on, “that’s making me crazy. Like a kid who can’t help keep testing the adults. It’s infuriating.”

  The phone console on Bob’s desk began blinking; he ignored it. “He hasn’t left the island today, though, has he? In the new truck?”

  Wiping my eyes with a clean tissue, I confirmed that he hadn’t. “Truck’s still at the garage getting possible damage from last night checked out, so he can’t.”

  Bob went to the other window, overlooking the parking lot. By the rumbly-thud sound of it, some boys were riding skateboards out there, an activity that was strictly against town ordinance.

  He turned his back on them. “Good, because I want to keep an eye on him for a while, just to be sure. But no one’s complained about speeding or driving recklessly,” he went on. “There’ve been no reports of open containers, loud mufflers, or any other kind of misbehavior.”

  He sat again behind his desk. “In fact, as far as I can tell he’s been a model citizen, rules-of-the-road-wise. The kind of accident he had last night could’ve happened to anyone.”

  It was another thing my dad had said, and it was true that deer were a constant menace to motorists all over Eastport.

  “So, let me ask you, Jake, are you absolutely sure it’s your dad’s attitude that’s the problem?”

  I stared, unable to believe what I’d just heard. And when I could finally speak: “I’m sorry? After all we’ve done, his illness, his convalescence, now we’re struggling to get him as near back to normal as we can. . . .”

  It was too much. I got up. “You’re telling me now you think we’re doing something wrong?”

  Bob took all this patiently, his plump pink face serene and his hands resting loosely on the desk in front of him.

  “I’m saying that maybe he’s behaving like a teenager ’cause that’s how you’re treating him. You and Bella both, but he’s a grown man, so he’s pushing back. That’s all.”

  “Right, we’ve all got opinions about things, I guess.” I tossed the Styrofoam cup into the trash. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  “I understand. But think about it,” he said, not backing down.

  Of course, he wouldn’t; over the years he’d faced guys swinging boat hooks, fire axes, and 12-gauge shotguns, to name but a few; he wouldn’t fall into a funk just ’cause I’d gotten annoyed.

  Especially when he was right....

  Outside, I stomped across the parking lot amidst the skateboard boys zooming and swooping. Slamming my car door, I frightened a bunch of seagulls away from a crust of bread they’d been squabbling over.

  But behind the wheel, I cooled off; maybe I’d heard some things I didn’t want to. And maybe, based on what I’d heard, I’d even have to consider changing my own behavior somewhat.

  Or maybe not; I could think about it all some more later. For now, though, the important thing was what Bob had heard, so that he at last had the whole picture.

  The wedding and why we so badly needed it to happen on schedule, the cut-and-paste lingerie photos of Sharon Sweetwater, and the poison from Miss Blaine’s.

  Oh, and the gun. We’d already told him the night before about the motorcyclist speeding out from Miss Blaine’s cottage, whereupon he’d eyed Andy Devine with enough skepticism that I thought I didn’t have to say any more about that.

  And on top of it all, I’d gotten the cyanide cartridges out of Miss Blaine’s cottage so no one else could take them, and out of my own possession, as well.

  What Bob did with it all was his business; I just hoped he’d manage to keep our names out of it, as he’d . . .

  Well, not promised, exactly. But
close; thinking this, I backed out around the skateboarders, turned the corner onto Water Street to head home, and instead spotted Ellie out in front of the Moose.

  And then it hit me, what Bob Arnold hadn’t said. “Get in,” I told Ellie. Because . . .

  “He didn’t say we should quit,” I told her after reporting the whole conversation with Bob.

  Well, not the part about my father; I was still digesting that. But: “He didn’t say mind our own business, or anything like it.”

  “You think he knows something we don’t?” Ellie handed me one of those newly baked biscotti loaded with candied ginger and semisweet morsels.

  “I think he doesn’t know something,” I said around a mouthful of chocolate bliss, “but he wants to.”

  The chocolate was no direct help for any of the situations I was facing, but it made me feel much better and it got the taste of Bob’s terrible coffee off my tongue, too.

  “I could be wrong, but you know Bob. He’s not shy about telling you what he wants and doesn’t want.”

  Or what he thinks, I added silently, still smarting from Bob’s assessment of my dad-handling technique.

  “And I think what he wants is for us to snoop around some more in Toby Moran’s murder, and possibly find out what he thinks the state cops won’t,” I added, pulling away from the curb.

  Downtown, it was all just as busy and cheerful as if no murder-by-poison had happened here at all, much less just thirty-six hours earlier.

  Across from the hardware store, trucks backed onto the fish pier to load lobster traps. In the boat basin, men called to one another across the decks of fishing vessels rafted together three abreast.

  “Something local, then,” Ellie mused aloud. “For the motive, I mean. Or someone local, for the killer. That’s what Bob thinks.”

  On Key Street, my big old white clapboard house stood with its windows all glittering and the gauzy white curtain panels behind them fluttering pristinely in a little breeze off the water.

  “And he thinks if someone else besides Andy is guilty,” I agreed, “the state cops won’t know enough about local people to figure out—”