Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake

by Sarah Graves

  “Why’d the harbor seal cross the bay?” he asked, hoisting a dark cloth satchel over his shoulder.

  I shrugged helplessly, glancing at the back door: close, but no cigar.

  “Because he had a sense of porpoise,” he answered himself with a dry chuckle.

  It got a small smile out of me, as he’d always been able to even when I was little. “Now,” he said, “let’s get this show on the road.”

  “Okay,” I gave in, not bothering to argue. I was glad that he was coming with me, suddenly.

  “Oh, I thought I’d find you here,” said a voice from the kitchen doorway.

  I spun around to find Bella standing there, wrapped in a pink chenille robe and fuzzy slippers and looking dubious. But she didn’t argue with my dad or with me, either, or ask any questions.

  In fact, from the look passing between them now—he adored her, and she thought he walked on water when she wasn’t so angry with him she could’ve spit nails—

  Now it seemed as if maybe they’d been talking over a few things.

  Bella’s green eyes were narrow slits in the glow of the kitchen night-light, her henna-red hair frazzling out from beneath a hairnet.

  “You just be careful, the two of you,” was all she said. Then we got out of there, hurrying across the porch and down the steps to the dark driveway before she could change her mind.

  “Just out of curiosity,” said my dad from behind the wheel of my car, “how were you planning to drive?”

  My arm now felt more like a dead log than a burning one, but I had let him take charge, anyway.

  “I’d have figured something out.”

  I would have, too, but I was glad not to be required to. Through the car windows the chilly night smelled like cut grass and chamomile, and from somewhere nearby in one of the small, seasonal ponds that were common here on the island, a lot of spring peepers were yelling their heads off.

  We backed out of the driveway. “Where to?” he asked with a little nod of mock courtliness in my direction.

  I laughed despite myself, but then pain slammed my arm suddenly; I bit the inside of my cheek. If he knew how bad it was, we wouldn’t be doing this.

  But I had to do this. “The police station,” I commanded, and in response he started down Key Street under a canopy of just-fledged maple leaves.

  As we made the turn onto Water Street, past Peavey Library, with its windows full of moonlight, and the Happy Crab restaurant, where a few last-call lingerers waited to be thrown out—

  “Huh,” he said quietly, glancing up into the rear-view mirror.

  But the car behind us turned the other way, and moments later we were outside Bob Arnold’s office.

  * * *

  “And you waited so long to tell me this because why, again?” Bob wanted to know when I’d finished with my story.

  I’d called him from home before even bothering to get dressed and go downstairs, and when my dad and I arrived we’d found the police chief waiting in his squad car in the otherwise empty parking lot.

  Moonlight lay on the water. The boat basin, now still and silent, gave off the smells of mud and seaweed, gasoline fumes, and cold brine tinctured with a little fresh boat paint.

  “Once we had Ephraim back I just wanted everyone to settle down,” I said. “If I’d had to describe in front of everyone how reckless I’d been . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” he said when I finished explaining. I’d put the needle and syringe into a plastic freezer bag; now I handed them to him.

  The movement made me wince. “How’s it doing?” he inquired of my arm, meanwhile peering down at the bag.

  The answer was awful, but he wouldn’t have liked that, so I just changed the subject.

  “They’re doing a complete postmortem examination on Moran, are they? Blood work, what he’d eaten and drunk, the whole shebang?”

  Not just quit when they found out what killed him, I meant; I didn’t know the exact routine at a murder victim’s autopsy.

  Bob grimaced in reply. “Oh, yeah. Right down to the hair and fingernails, they’ll be all over the actual physical evidence in case the defense throws a curveball they need to answer. Why?”

  Then he got a better look inside the bag I’d given him, and his face creased unhappily. “What the heck is this?” he demanded.

  So told him, and I explained where we’d gotten the syringe and needle, as well. “But here’s the thing, Bob,” I said, and went on. “We’d been trying to figure out how somebody got Moran to drink that milkshake, when the awful poison smell should’ve stopped him.”

  “Yeah,” Bob replied. “I wonder about it, too. So what, though? It doesn’t matter how they got him to do it, only that they—oh.”

  He looked down at the needle and syringe again, and I could see him thinking about those poison cartridges from Miss Blaine’s: one opened, the others still full of a killing mixture so potent, it would take only a few drops to finish a person off.

  “Right,” I said, watching enlightenment spread across his face. “What if he drank it because no bad taste did stop him, because there wasn’t any poison in it? Not until afterward. And then—”

  I waved at the injection apparatus, still in the bag in Bob’s lap. “Sure,” he said slowly to himself. “Why not?” And then to me: “You know, the guys who found him told me there was blood on his shirt. Just a smear, but—”

  He let out a low whistle. “So if you’re right, there ought to be poison in the needle track, wouldn’t you figure? In the soft tissue, I mean, where the stab went in and out.”

  Which was a little more clinically detailed than I felt like getting, but I agreed.

  “In which case,” I added, “the milkshake itself and The Chocolate Moose cup it was put into, and the insecticide, were all merely window dressing, meant to turn our attention away from the real method.”

  I took a breath. “The real poison, drawn out from the cartridge at Miss Blaine’s with a needle, and put into the victim the same way.”

  “So there’d be poison in Moran’s stomach, all right,” Bob mused, “but he’d never have had to taste the stuff to get it there, or even have it in his mouth at all.”

  “Correct. Somebody poisoned the milkshake after Moran drank it.” I floated the rest of my theory. “It was the needle part of it that they wanted to cover up.”

  The more I thought of it, the more he couldn’t have drunk it; based on the whiff I’d had, it might not even be physically possible.

  Bob nodded; he’d been thinking harder about all this than he’d let on, I was willing to bet. He just hadn’t been in a position to do much about it, since it had already been made very clear to him that the state guys didn’t want his help.

  Him with his small-town police department, his ten-year-old cruisers, and his community college degree . . . He bore it all with his usual quiet dignity. But . . .

  “You know what?” he said. “I bet you’re right.”

  He shoved the bag with the needle and syringe in it over onto the squad car’s passenger seat and put the car in gear.

  “I think I’ll put a call in to the medical examiner, myself,” he said, sounding pleased.

  The car crept forward. “I might be someone’s idea of a throwback, too far out of the loop to know how modern police work gets done,” he went on.

  “But I know a few people, probably they’re still willing to give me a couple of minutes,” he finished.

  But then he sobered again. “Baby all right, is he?”

  “Ephraim’s fine.” I outlined again why I thought the baby’s faked kidnapping—because clearly it was faked, we’d obviously been meant to find him right away—might’ve been meant as a warning. When I was done, Bob looked almost as troubled as I felt.

  “Jake.” Right hand on the steering wheel, left elbow out the window, Bob peered up at me.

  “Two things. Like I said earlier, I know I didn’t shut you guys down very hard at the start of all this. But now I’d appreciate
it if you and Ellie would cut it out. It’s time, okay?”

  The snooping, he meant. “Things are getting dicey, we don’t know yet what’s going on, and I just don’t want any of you getting hurt.”

  Of course he didn’t. I understood. But: “Yeah, Bob. Okay, we’ll do that,” I assured him, carefully keeping a straight face.

  Thinking, Right. Sure we would. Because I’d thought about things some more, too, and now my opinion was that, of course, we’d just lay back and let the whole unhappy business, including our own personal and professional futures, get handled by a bunch of people who hadn’t been smart enough to keep Bob Arnold involved in the first place.

  “What else?” I said. Through the darkness I could hear the radio in my car booming so loudly that the vehicle should’ve been rocking on its wheels; my dad liked Creedence.

  At the sound of the lyrics having to do with moonlit things that were bound to take your life, another shiver went through me, one that had nothing to do with the chilly night.

  “Sharon Sweetwater and Andy Devine,” Bob answered me. “They both got taken into custody a little earlier this evening, after the homicide investigators from the state completed their questioning.”

  He sighed heavily. “So there’s really no reason for you and Ellie to do more about them anyway. Because it’s over, Jake; even if they do get exonerated eventually, there’s not going to be a wedding.”

  “Whoa.” I blinked, considering this. “Both of them? But that doesn’t make sense, wouldn’t it have to be one or the other?”

  But then it hit me, why it did make sense. Bob nodded, seeing me getting it.

  “The homicide cops have decided they’re both guilty,” he said. “That the two of them killed Toby Moran together.”

  * * *

  When I got back to my car, my dad was staring across the street at something, squinting intently.

  “What?” I asked, but he only shrugged as he pulled out of the parking lot and drove slowly past the fish pier.

  All around us, late-night Eastport shimmered in moonlit silence. On the breakwater, the haloes around the dock lamps’ sodium-yellow bulbs teemed with flying insects massed so thickly, they were visible from here onshore.

  Other than us, they were the only things moving. Even the Rubber Ducky’s neon sign was turned off, the darkness in the windows like a discouraging cherry on an already gloomy cake.

  “Quiet,” my dad observed.

  He went on peering out the windshield as we drove slowly past the Duck, the pet supply store, a fabric shop, and, of course, The Chocolate Moose itself. But if he saw anything interesting, he didn’t say so.

  “Tomorrow morning, Ellie and I will get together and decide what to do about the shop,” I said, although I guessed I probably knew.

  If we weren’t doing a wedding cake, plus all the other little goodies and mini-desserts an affair like this also included, there was no point pretending anymore that we’d be doing anything else.

  Or that she’d be staying in Eastport, either; my heart thumped miserably at the thought, but there was no getting around it.

  “It’s too bad,” my dad said sympathetically as we went by. “But listen, have the state cops even talked to you and Ellie yet?”

  I shook my head, then gave him the news about Sharon and Andy. “So the investigators have been busy,” I finished, “but don’t worry, they’ll get around to us. They have plenty of time.”

  “Hmm. I suppose so. But when they talk to you . . .”

  “It’ll change their minds about their suspects? Or they’ll figure out that Moran wasn’t a one-off and Miss Blaine’s death was connected to this whole thing, too?”

  I shrugged. “I do think they’ll get it right sooner or later. Just not soon enough for us. The poison’s not what they thought, Andy is still lying about something, and they can’t very well just ignore Sharon’s confession, so everything’s all screwed up.”

  “And straightening it all out will take time,” my dad agreed, glancing up at the rear-view mirror.

  “Right. Which we don’t have, at least as far as The Chocolate Moose is concerned.” A sigh rushed out of me.

  “And yeah, it’s too bad, all right,” I said. “All of it.”

  He turned left, up Washington Street past the big old granite-block post office building and Spinney’s Garage, where the geraniums blooming in the office window glowed a radioactive-looking crimson in the glare of Spinney’s yard lights.

  “At least I’ve told Bob everything, now,” I said. “So, you know, I’ve got that going for me.”

  Although . . . not absolutely everything, actually. Later I wondered if I would ever forgive myself for that. But at the time, of course, I didn’t know; I didn’t even think it was important.

  At High Street the yellow caution lamp over the intersection blinked steadily. “Anyway, now you know why I couldn’t sleep.”

  We passed through the silent crosswalk. “I just couldn’t stand Bob not knowing about that needle and syringe,” I went on.

  My dad drove in silence as we rounded the curve past the bank and the Mobil station. He didn’t tell me where we were going, and I didn’t care; I just knew I didn’t want to go home yet.

  Also, he didn’t say anything stupid like, “It’ll be all right,” or “You’ll get over it,” two statements that I personally despise.

  Or “cheer up,” which is arguably the worst of all. “So now he knows all about them and where we got them,” I said. “He’s got the photos we found out at Moran’s place, too,” I added. The cobbled-together, supposedly racy pictures Moran had, meant to show Sharon Sweetwater in skimpy lingerie.

  He turned from Route 190 onto Clark Street and back toward town, between towering fir trees growing close to the road in thickets. As I rode, I felt a tear leak down my cheek; after she left I’d see Ellie every week at first, probably, then every month.

  Thinking this, I swiped furiously at my face just as a motorcycle flew up over the oncoming hill straight at us, headlight glaring, and roared by in the opposite direction.

  “That was him,” said my dad at once. Craning his skinny neck, he watched the motorcycle’s brake light flare at the intersection, then speed away on Route 190 out of town.

  “Downtown, just now,” my dad said. “I wasn’t sure if it was someone in a doorway or not. There was a big, round thing hanging from his hand, and it made me think my eyes were deceiving me, somehow.”

  The bike had gone by way too fast for me to know for sure whether it was the same one Ellie and I had seen out at Miss Blaine’s.

  “Like he was holding a severed head or something,” my dad said.

  One thing was for sure, though, it wasn’t Andy Devine on this one. Because according to Bob, Andy was in custody and so was Sharon, and now it occurred to me that maybe that was a good thing.

  For now, anyway. “Motorcycle helmet?” I speculated. The big, round thing, I meant. My dad didn’t reply, instead pulling a U-turn.

  “Hang on,” he said mildly. And then . . .

  And then holy heck did he ever hit the gas.

  * * *

  “I don’t care,” he replied to my every objection as the moonlit scenery flew by: that he was exceeding the speed limit, that the tires on this car were old, that—

  “Dad, there’s a deer in the road ahead, oh, we’re going to—”

  But we didn’t hit it, or anything else, either, and considering how late it was and how far out at the back edge of beyond Eastport was located, it was unlikely that anyone was enforcing the speed limit out here at the moment.

  Also, it occurred to me that some of the deeds of my dad’s youth had probably involved fast cars; that, or a secret career behind the wheel at the Indy 500. Soon we caught sight again of the motorcycle’s red taillight zipping along ahead of us in the dark.

  But zipping along to where? My dad tromped the gas pedal even harder.

  “You know the worst part of getting old?” he asked as we zoomed onto
the causeway into Pleasant Point.

  “No, wh-what?” I replied as the guardrail posts flew by whap-whap-whap.

  “The humiliation of it.” His gnarly fists gripped the wheel. “I mean to say, Jacobia, it just never ends.”

  Leaning toward the windshield, he looked eager and excited; in the dim light of the passenger compartment, he looked young.

  “Don’t do this, can’t do that, oh, are you sure you’re really up to such a thing.”

  He glanced at me. “It’s infuriating. Like they think you might lose the rest of your marbles at any moment, go running around naked or stick beans in your ears.”

  “That,” I managed, gulping with fright, “must be very annoying.”

  Meanwhile, I wouldn’t have believed my old sedan could even go this fast. As we sped along the last part of the causeway, the vehicle took on a floaty feeling as if the tires had given up even bothering to pretend that they were touching the pavement.

  “Anyway,” said my dad, “that’s the deal. What I’ve been putting up with.” Old age, he meant, and its attendant humiliations.

  “I’ve told Bella how it is, so now I figured I might as well let you in on it, too,” he added.

  Ahead, the motorcycle had slowed for the speed limit sign just where the causeway ended. My dad let up on the gas, too, staying back a dozen car lengths or so from the motorcycle.

  Its rider gave no sign of having noticed us. “Meanwhile, I wonder where the heck this guy’s going,” my dad remarked conversationally.

  Then the blue rotating beacon of a squad car flared suddenly in our rear windshield. A short whoop-whoop! came from the car’s siren.

  My dad pulled over. “Hello, Officer. What’s the trouble?”

  Hands visible on the steering wheel, body deliberately relaxed, he looked up mildly at the Pleasant Point police officer.

  The cop already had his ticket book out and open. But we hadn’t been speeding, we’d slowed down even lower than the limit, so . . . ?

  “Do you know you’ve got a taillight out?” The cop frowned, his glance quickly assessing us both along with the car’s interior.