Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake

by Sarah Graves

  “And, of course, way out here it was nerve-wracking at night,” she added. “Which is the thing I really want to tell somebody about.”

  Okay, now we were getting to it. I gestured to her to walk us to the car; the dogs followed along, too.

  “These guys,” she said, gesturing at them, “got so anxious about Toby, they’d go nuts barking whenever he came around.”

  “They didn’t bark at us,” I pointed out as we got into the car.

  Carrie nodded as I backed the vehicle around. Afternoon light filtered greenly down through the trees into the clearing.

  “Right,” she said. “Only at him, no one else. And he hated it, I know because he sent me e-mails about it, threatening to poison them.”

  I hit the brakes. She was just outside my car window. “Poison them,” I repeated.

  She nodded again, her brown curls bobbing. “And what I heard is that that’s what he ended up dying of, himself. Is it true?”

  Beside me, Ellie glanced at her wristwatch again. “True,” I said. “But . . . look, Carrie, if there’s something you have to tell us—”

  She nodded, tight-lipped. “I do. About the dogs, about him saying he’d poison the dogs. Because the thing is, he tried.”

  The words came out in a rush. “It was late, I heard them barking, they ran out the dog door. I got to the hamburger he threw down before they did, luckily. I couldn’t believe it, that he would . . .”

  She stopped, overcome for a moment by the memory of what must have been a terrifying event. But then she gathered herself.

  “Anyway, right about then he seemed to lose interest, and pretty soon I found out he was dating that pretty teacher, Sharon—”

  She snapped her fingers, searching for the name. “Sweetwater,” I supplied, and she nodded.

  “Yes, it’s why I never told anyone about what nearly happened with the dogs. I didn’t want to attract his attention again. But if that information is of any help to anyone, now . . .”

  That wasn’t why she was telling us this. “So you don’t mind us informing the police about him trying to poison pets, but I’m guessing you want to stay out of it,” I said, “is that it?”

  She touched her bent nose again unthinkingly. “Yes, if you can. Because—”

  I understood, or hoped I did. He’d ruined her face, nearly ruined her life, and she wanted no part of the investigation into his murder.

  Especially since from what I could tell, she had a great motive of her own and the cops wouldn’t miss that; if they hadn’t had Andy Devine already in their sights, they’d be interested in her. I put the car in gear while she was still talking.

  “Because maybe what he died of wasn’t something somebody else got to use on him,” she was saying.

  Above, an enormous bald eagle sailed toward the big nest. I let the car creep forward some more.

  “Maybe it was something he already had, that he’d gotten hold of so he could do bad deeds with it, himself,” Carrie Allen finished.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I told Ellie as we went back down the driveway. Ominous-looking thickets of small trees still lined it and the cellar hole still gaped, but the doll I’d thought I’d seen dangling was gone.

  “Deeds like trying to poison people’s animals, for instance,” I said, and Ellie’s reply was exactly what I’d been thinking.

  “Sure,” she said. I turned back onto the main road, heading toward Eastport. “That’s possible.”

  “But,” she added, “on the other hand, what if Toby gave Carrie the idea by trying it on her dogs, and she did the last one of those poisoning deeds, herself?”

  * * *

  “So it seems Toby Moran liked his revenge served hot,” I told Bob Arnold soon after our visit with Carrie Allen.

  I’d dropped Ellie off, and now I was working the final two hours at the Moose so my daughter-in-law could go home. A whole day of peace and quiet had been too much for her, as it turned out, and anyway, the babysitter brought the baby home early on account of family problems.

  The babysitter’s problems, that is; her parents’ separation and imminent divorce was screwing the kid’s life up terribly, according to Mika.

  “Yeah,” Bob said sourly. “Guy had no patience. You hit him, Moran would punch you back harder, and right away, too.”

  The way he’d done to Carrie. . . . I relayed the rest of what she’d said. “She doesn’t want to be involved, and I don’t even really know if what she said is true, but I thought you should know—”

  The sweet, spice-sharpened aroma of a mocha pound cake baking in our big oven mingled with the strains of a Mozart violin concerto on the sound system in the shop.

  “She says he tried to kill her dogs. With poison,” I said.

  Bob crunched into a chocolate biscotti and chewed. “Interesting. So maybe she wanted revenge, too, you mean, for her broken face?”

  He swallowed. “Nice theory, but I’m afraid it doesn’t get Devine off the hook. Plenty of people hated Moran, sure. But only one was in a fistfight with him just before he got croaked.”

  It was lovely in the shop: fresh coffee, good things to munch on, a cool, salt-smelling breeze coming in the front door . . .

  Too bad it was all going to end, soon; that is, unless I managed to do something about it.

  “Let’s face it,” Bob went on, “Devine was the last person known to have seen Toby Moran alive, and I don’t care what he says about how he walked into a door, or some such nonsense. Ask me, their meeting was violent enough that he came out of it with a gashed forehead.”

  He eyed me sharply. “And he still won’t say who stitched it up. You and Ellie don’t happen to know, do you?”

  I ignored the question, hoping he might not notice. Luckily, just then Bob changed the subject, himself.

  “So, anybody could take one of these?” He pointed at the paper milkshake cups stacked atop the display case, then picked one up.

  “Cute,” he remarked of the cartoonlike moose grinning toothily from the cup. Then he eyed me sharply.

  “Seriously, Jake, when the state cops get around to asking you ask if Devine could’ve gotten one of these cups without your noticing, what’ll you say?”

  He waved at the glass shaker full of antler-shaped chocolate sprinkles on the counter.

  “Or those? I mean, who else has access to them is what the state guys’ll want to know. Assuming,” he added with the hint of a sly grin, “they don’t decide you killed the little bastard.”

  “Bob,” I replied tiredly. By then I’d had another conversation with Bella, and it hadn’t gone well. “If I were of a mind to commit murder, Toby Moran wouldn’t be very high on my list.”

  The guy who’d sold my dad that red pickup truck, though . . .

  “But to answer your question,” I went on, “like I’ve said before, just about anybody could waltz in here, take one of those cups and shake some sprinkles into it, and walk right out again with them.”

  One of us might notice. Or not. Mika hadn’t been able to say. “And the milkshake ingredients?” Bob asked. “Anyone could get them?”

  He made it sound as if milkshake-making was rocket science. But: “Absolutely. All the fixings, right there at the IGA,” I replied.

  Well, except for Ellie’s secret ingredient. The pre-measured bags containing malt powder were stored in a breadbox behind the counter, and I doubted anyone could’ve filched any of them, or found the can in the kitchen cabinet, either.

  On the other hand, I doubted Toby Moran had been a milkshake connoisseur, so he probably hadn’t missed it. Heck, probably he hadn’t had time to miss it . . . Bob’s pale blue eyes narrowed.

  “So,” he said, raising an index finger. “Access to the cups, the ingredients, and the sprinkles.”

  Another finger. “Possible access to the poison, if like you’re thinking cyanide does turn out to be the real method.”

  I turned to him: so he was taking my idea seriously.

  “Miss Blaine did discuss cyanid
e at her library talk, by the way,” he added. “And she revealed that she still had some.”

  I’d included the possibility when I’d spilled my guts to Bob earlier in the day, and just as obviously, he’d checked it out.

  “So Devine at least knew about it,” he went on. Another finger went up. “Then there’s the motive. The pictures of Sharon Sweetwater, plus a couple of beers and some spur-of-the-moment anger: bingo.”

  He took a breath. “And last but not least, good old-fashioned opportunity, which Devine also had.” His ring finger went up.

  “Right.” I snapped the cash register drawer open and began to count the money in it. “But there’s the rub.”

  He sighed, crunching another biscotti. “Yeah, I know. It’s not just a chance to shoot or stab Moran that the killer needed, was it?”

  He took a napkin and wiped his fingers on it. “Somehow, someone either forced or persuaded Moran to drink a poison-laced milkshake.”

  Which might not’ve been so hard if that’s all it had in it. But it didn’t. It stank of bug killer. The smell would’ve been obvious.

  “Right.” Bob’s lips tightened. “That’s what I don’t understand.”

  Me, neither; not for sure, anyway. So far, we only had a theory.

  “Also, how’s Andy supposed to have known he’d run into Moran? This murder wasn’t spur-of-the-moment, remember.”

  Bob shook his head impatiently. “Nah, he could’ve planned it, got all his materials together in advance, then gone home and whipped that shake together in the Coast Guard station’s kitchen, run back to the Duck with it.”

  He thought a moment. “Behind the Duck, I mean. Where he’d have known Moran was probably still hanging around, half in the bag.”

  That’s what a prosecutor would argue, at any rate, he meant, and I had to agree; it could have been done that way.

  I just didn’t think it had. And my big question still wasn’t answered. “Look, Bob, even with the nasty bug killer smell rising off of it, are you sure we should assume Moran understood that the shake was poisoned?”

  Because that was the part I really couldn’t come up with a theory for; not unless our cyanide idea panned out.

  “What if instead of forcing it on him, somebody presented him with the drink as a sort of peace offering?” I said. “Remember, he was intoxicated. Not thinking clearly.”

  “Huh,” said Bob. “So the killer just handed it to him, maybe he was too drunk to notice the stink, and . . . down the hatch.”

  “Maybe, but . . .”

  “That’s right,” Sharon Sweetwater interrupted, the little silver bell over the door tinkling as she came in.

  “Down the hatch,” she repeated. “He took it, he drank it right down, and presto, one less lousy bastard in the world.”

  She looked at both of us. “Toby was a greedy little creep with a mean streak a mile wide,” she went on, “and he got what he deserved.”

  We stared back. Sharon’s short dark hair was disheveled, her face splotchy and without makeup, and instead of her usual impeccable outfit she wore grubby jeans, an old gray sweatshirt, and sneakers so raggedy they looked as though they might actually fall off.

  “Have you heard?” she demanded. “Well, have you?”

  I tried gently ushering her to a chair, but she resisted. “I mean, have you heard that Andy just got arrested?” she clarified.

  Oh, Lord. “No, I haven’t,” I replied while Bob just shook his head in annoyance. Not being told things in advance by the state cops was par for the course.

  But that didn’t mean he liked it. “What happened?” He took out his cell phone, punched numbers into it.

  “This morning,” Sharon reported, her voice full of misery. “He met with them, they’d asked him to come in. Just to talk, they said.”

  A little sob escaped her. “But,” she added, “he never came out again until they led him out, into one of their squad cars.”

  She wiped her eyes with a napkin. “I was waiting outside, but they didn’t let me talk to him. They took him away.”

  “Does he have a lawyer yet?” I’d figured this must be coming, but I hadn’t expected it so soon.

  Sniffling, Sharon shook her head. “Not his own. He’d talked to his C.O., but he was just so confident that this was all a mistake.”

  Bob turned his back to us, still talking on his phone.

  “And I believed him,” Sharon said bitterly. “But now I’ve got to straighten this mess out, before Andy takes the consequences for—”

  “Stop,” I said sharply as Bob Arnold turned to us.

  Because I knew what else was coming now, or thought I did, and I don’t care how good a friend Bob Arnold was to all of us; you don’t admit to having committed a murder in front of a police officer.

  You just don’t.

  But then Sharon Sweetwater did.

  * * *

  “Bob,” I said when he was getting ready to leave the shop. He’d sent Sharon up to his office, telling her he’d meet her there.

  “Bob, about something else.” I mentioned the babysitter Mika had hired and told him about what had happened with her earlier.

  “Mika says the girl had to bring the baby back to our house, and that she seemed upset. Do you know anything about the family?”

  Was there some situation in the girl’s home besides the ongoing divorce, I meant, that would make her unreliable or unsafe around the baby. He understood.

  “Well, the mom and dad are separated, you know that, I guess, and the dad’s a twerp. Thinks the mom is turning the girl against him.”

  “Is she?” My ex-husband had tried tricks like that. He told Sam once that I was planning to send him to military school.

  Sam was five at the time. Bob sighed heavily.

  “She doesn’t have to turn anyone against him. He does it, he’s like a two-year-old, has a tantrum if the kid doesn’t want to spend time with him even if she’s got a good reason.”

  Because she’s babysitting, for instance . . . “Okay,” I said, “I appreciate the information.”

  I handed him a croissant and he went out with it in a napkin so he could munch it without getting crumbs all over his squad car, and twenty minutes later I locked the shop and departed, myself.

  Driving home past the fish pier, I watched a barge unloading wooden barrels full of lobster bait, plus bales of the brightly colored nylon netting bags that the bait went into before being fastened into the lobster traps.

  At the corner of Water and Key streets, the library’s benefit garden sale was in full swing, fresh green seedlings and perennials on display all around the log-stuffed cannon mounted on the library lawn.

  Along Key Street the tiny white-picket-fenced front lawns, all neatly trimmed as if with manicure scissors, gleamed in the afternoon sunshine like rows of square-cut emeralds.

  Everything was in good order in Eastport today, in other words, and then I got to my house. There, a red pickup truck sat alongside Wade’s big work pickup, the Honda sedan that Sam and Mika drove, and an open-backed REO farm truck with a railed wooden platform instead of a standard truck bed mounted behind the cab.

  Oh, goody, I thought uncharitably; I’d never seen the farm truck before, or the items crammed into it, either. Striding past it, I counted a lawn tractor, a push mower with a wheel missing, a rototiller, and a wooden barrel with a lot of yardwork tools stuck into it—rakes, hoes, shovels, and so on, plus a coil of garden hose hanging around the tool handles—crowded together on the truck’s platform.

  I mounted the porch steps and pulled open the screen door; inside, the baby cried lustily while Mika walked haggardly back and forth, trying to calm him. She adored little Ephraim—we all did—but just then she was wishing hard that she’d stayed in the shop, I could tell, and I didn’t blame her.

  I already felt that way, myself. At the stove, Bella scrubbed burner tops with one hand while stirring a cream sauce destined for her famous shrimp-and-spaghetti casserole with the other.


  That is, if the baby’s yells didn’t curdle the sauce. “Smells delicious,” I shouted to Bella over the din, and she glowered at me in reply, from which I gathered that the Pickup Truck Wars had not yet reached a satisfactory conclusion.

  “Your father,” she snapped furiously at me, “is the most annoying man I ever met!”

  Her voice, harsh as a raven’s croak, cut through even the baby’s eardrum-lacerating cries. “He’s got his keys upstairs with him, and he won’t give them up!” she grated out.

  Suspicions confirmed; leaving the kitchen, I went on into the dining room, where I found my son, Sam, disassembling a small gasoline-powered engine on the dining room table.

  Like I say, Mister Fix-it. He’d put newspaper on the table, but still.

  “Hey,” he said, looking up as I came in. “Look, I got a perfectly good gas weed-whacker engine for nothing. All it needs is some . . .” His voice trailed off as he noticed my expression. “Oh, don’t worry, there’s no gasoline in it,” he assured me.

  He waved around at the small engine parts spread out all over the papers. “No solvents, nothing that might hurt anyone to breathe.”

  “Sam.” The square, 1830s-era dining room with the tiled hearth, tall draperied windows, and elaborate cranberry-glass chandelier was like a little jewel box, most of the time.

  But now it looked as if one of the repair bays from the Mobil station had been moved into it. “Sam,” I said calmly again.

  Very calmly. No wonder Bella had looked at me like she might explode. On top of her annoyance with my father, she must’ve found Sam with his project in progress and not dared open her mouth about it, for fear of what might come out.

  Sam’s look turned to one of caution as he caught on. “You know,” he said not-quite-casually as he got up, “maybe I’ll just clear all this stuff away right now and find some other place to work on it.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said evenly. “That’d probably be a good idea.” Then: “So I guess that awful farm truck outside is yours, too?”

  “Uh, yeah. Summer people’ll be here soon, thought I’d go into the yard-work business,” he offered nervously.

  He already had a job. Or I’d thought he did, at the marine store where he’d worked summers in the past. Now, though . . .