Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake

by Sarah Graves

  “This won’t hurt,” he whispered, raising the needle, from which a clear droplet hung, shivering.

  He bent toward me purposefully, just as that parrot yelled from inside. “Hello! Hello!”

  Wait a minute. The parrot . . . ?

  A needle prick stung my throat, just as some sort of commotion started happening behind Marienbad. Then came the explosion, a dully massive ka-boom like the sound you hear in the movies when the bomb goes off. Huge smoke billows began rising from behind the roses.

  Norm jumped up, the syringe still gripped in his fist. His face sagged whitely as he must have realized what just happened.

  “My cars!” he cried. “My . . . the barn, call the fire department!”

  Which with me dying there in the bushes like that was kind of beside the point, I thought as Norm took off back up the path toward the house, shoving Marienbad thoughtlessly aside in his panic.

  She let him go and just stood there, looking . . . well, I don’t know what she looked like, actually, only that from behind her Bob Arnold appeared suddenly, grabbing her by the shoulders and shoving her again in his haste to get to me.

  “Hey.” He crouched by me anxiously. “Jake, you okay?”

  But he didn’t wait for my answer, instead punching the speed dial on his own phone to summon help. Meanwhile, from somewhere on the other side of the rosebushes came the snap, crackle, and pop of a building burning, very nearby.

  Marienbad looked stunned. “Sit,” Bob snapped at her.

  She sat. Hearing that tone out of him, a stone statue would’ve obeyed. Then three sharp explosions sounded one after the other in the burning barn, and after that came a familiar roar.

  A motorcycle’s roar . . . “Hey, Hannah,” Bob said into the phone.

  Hannah Blanchard was the emergency services dispatcher I’d talked to earlier, which I wouldn’t mention here except that while it was all going on, I was so proud of myself for remembering it.

  My own name, though, or where I was or who the president was . . .

  Not so much. “Hannah, ask Reggie—”

  Reggie was the ambulance’s driver; another point in the memory department’s plus column for me.

  “Ask Reggie if on his way up here he’d do me a favor and knock this little goofball off his two-wheeler if he sees him, will you? Guy’s taking off from town right about now, I’m a little busy.”

  He added the location, Norm’s description, and the direction he was heading: off-island, almost certainly. But Reggie didn’t have to do anything about it, because the next sound I heard—through the distant, insistent hiss of waves rushing on a beach, which I imagined was the sound of my remaining brain cells shutting down en masse . . .

  The next sound I heard was the bum-bada-BUM-bumbum-bum of an enormous, God-knows-how-many-horsepower engine, the kind that comes on a brand-new pickup truck.

  Next came a shriek of tires, the scream of a different, smaller engine revving itself madly into the red zone, and finally silence.

  The perfume of roses washed over me, warmly comforting. “Oh,” said Ellie sadly from somewhere. “Oh, help her . . .”

  Then it got dark again.

  Really dark. And it stayed that way for a while.

  Eleven

  “That cake was fantastic!” my son, Sam, enthused a week later at Sharon and Andy’s wedding reception, held in the Episcopalian church hall across from my big old house on Key Street.

  “Glad you liked it,” I replied, exhausted but happy. I’d been out of the hospital for three days, and the wedding had gone off without a hitch, every sweet, sappy moment of it.

  The bride rode to the church in a horse-drawn carriage fit for a fairy princess, which was what she looked like. Andy Devine was waiting impatiently for her, handsome in his blue dress uniform. The jangling of the church bells had filled the air with a joyous clamor, and the ceremony was lovely, too.

  As was the reception afterward, catered with an abundance of energy and style by the Eastport church ladies and featuring homemade creamed chicken on hot-buttered baking powder biscuits, just-picked fresh-steamed peas with herbed butter, and a salad of many greens from the gardens full of early produce all over Eastport.

  “Has Mika had cake?” I asked, and Sam assured me that she had. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard officers, their significant others, teachers from Sharon’s school, and friends and relatives of the happy couple mingled in celebration, all dressed in their best for the occasion.

  Also, there was champagne, about which enough said; I didn’t make a fool of myself, but I wasn’t fit to drive, either. Not that I wanted to; instead I sat quietly, watching people enjoy what we’d baked.

  “Mika’s the real hero,” I told Sam, gesturing with my champagne glass. Wearing a green dress, his young wife was across the room socializing with the church ladies, looking gorgeous as usual with her raven-black hair and the baby on her hip.

  “While she was covering the shop for us,” I said, “all those times we were out trying to chase down who might’ve killed Toby Moran, she worked up a sheet-cake recipe that tastes just like whoopie pie.”

  Seriously, my daughter-in-law was a genius. “After that, it was just a matter of . . .”

  I stopped. Sam was listening pleasantly, an attentive smile on his face. But I knew for a fact that the only part about baking that he was interested in was the eating part.

  “Oh, go on,” I shooed him away indulgently, and he drifted off happily to find something else to devour; besides the main courses there were pickles, relishes, slaws, cheeses, fruit, and my favorite, a casserole full of homemade baked beans and tiny hot dogs.

  Oh, good heavens, but it was delicious, and I was about to go get more of it just to make sure that it was as fabulous as I’d thought it was the first time, when Bob Arnold sat down beside me.

  “So.” Purse-lipped, he regarded the hall full of happy people.

  “So, who knew Norm had a motorcycle, huh?” Because he had, of course, in that car barn of his with all his other vehicles.

  Bob glowered. He was still mad at me. “Bob, I couldn’t call you,” I said. “By the time it all really started to go south, I was out of cell-phone range.”

  In Machiasport, I meant; the abandoned houses, and the beach. He eyed the celebration going on around us balefully.

  “Yeah, yeah. You couldn’t have said something to me about McHale earlier, though? Keep me in the loop?”

  The part about Norm stitching up Andy’s forehead, he meant.

  “Yeah.” I felt my shoulders sag; it was the part still bothering me, too.

  “Bob, I know it was a mistake. I was trying to keep Norm from losing his veterinary license permanently, and—”

  “Yeah,” he said. “And you didn’t know it mattered, who put the stitches in Devine’s forehead.”

  That the fact might’ve started the state homicide investigators on a line of inquiry that led to Norm, he meant.

  “Bob, I’m very sorry. If I’d just spoken up, if I’d told you what Norm told me . . .”

  Miss Blaine might still be alive, I was about to say. But Bob was already taking pity on me.

  “Ah, forget it, Jake. I was pretty ticked off, but the truth is, it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

  He drank some ginger ale from a plastic cup. “Norm couldn’t let the old lady live no matter what you said or did, or when. So don’t make yourself miserable about it.”

  Relief touched me. Not a lot of it, but more than I’d had in a while on this particular subject.

  “In fact, he was so paranoid, he waited several days to get rid of the rest of the evidence in case he was under surveillance,” said Bob.

  That was what Norm had been doing at Jasper Beach, of course. Bob went on: “Meanwhile, even if you had spoken up, the state cops wouldn’t have jumped right to the conclusion that Norm was hiding something.”

  “Sure, but . . .”

  “Bottom line, he’d have killed the old lady anyway. I asked him,” B
ob added, “specifically about it. So I know you’re not responsible for her death, Jake, you just feel like you are.”

  “Oh.” The rest of the weight rolled off my shoulders. Bob had asked Norm this pointed question just so he could tell me the answer, I knew.

  “Thank you. I mean it, Bob. And I promise, I will never again keep any secrets from—”

  You, I was about to finish, but he held his hand up again.

  “Never say never,” he cautioned, and after a moment I decided he was probably right about that, too.

  “So how about my dad knocking Norm off his motorcycle,” I said, changing the subject, “was that great, or what?”

  Using his new pickup truck to do it, naturally. Bob smiled. “Just what I’d have expected from him. Tough old bird.”

  Then another thought struck him. “I got a call from the medical examiner’s office this morning. She took a second look at Toby’s body after Norm and Marienbad confessed. And with what she said plus what the culprits have told anyone who’ll listen, now I can pretty much figure how the whole thing went.”

  The musicians had been playing dinner music. Now they put away their acoustic instruments and picked up electric ones.

  “Marienbad got Moose cups and chocolate sprinkles off your shop counter,” Bob added once the shriek of electronic feedback got hastily cut off and the amplifiers were repositioned.

  “She did it weeks ago, long before the murder happened. Just walked in and took what she needed.”

  Everything . . . “Wait, you mean the shake itself wasn’t one of ours?”

  “Nope,” Bob answered. “The night of the murder, Norm mixed what passed for a milkshake in the blender behind the bar in the Ducky, right before they did the bad deed. Milk, ice cream, and Hershey’s syrup, that’s all.”

  Another little pulse of relief went through me; I hadn’t liked thinking that one of our Moose Milks had been involved.

  “What exactly did the medical examiner say about the poison?” I prodded.

  “Well, for one thing, that there was no poison in Toby’s mouth. That meant that both the cyanide and the insecticide were added to what remained in the milkshake cup after Moran had drunk most of it,” Bob replied.

  He went on, “Norm says they used the can of Raid that Marienbad kept in the bar’s utility closet.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “And they did that part, put the smelly insecticide in, because . . . ?”

  Bob sighed. “So people would think it was what killed Toby. Think it, I mean, just long enough for Norm to go out and silence Miss Blaine. That way, by the time the cyanide was revealed as the real method, Miss Blaine wasn’t alive anymore to talk about having given any to Norm for his supposed rat infestation.”

  “So if he didn’t drink it, how did the cyanide get into Toby’s stomach, then?” I asked.

  Bob answered grimly, “After the argument that Andy and Toby had in the Ducky, Norm slipped out the back way. He caught up with Toby on the walkway behind the Ducky, but then Andy appeared again.”

  I pictured it: Norm crouched in the shadows, ready to pounce, until suddenly . . .

  “Couple punches got thrown, Andy missed but got slugged in the forehead, himself; then he backed off, started thinking about how not to get written up for fighting right when he’s in line for a big promotion,” Bob continued.

  Sure, because good character was important if you wanted to rise through the ranks in the Coast Guard.

  “Once Andy was gone, Norm approached Toby and offered him the milkshake, and Toby was pretty loaded that night, you know. Sweet and cold, I suppose it must’ve looked good to him.”

  Bob took a breath, watching the dancers. “No poison in it, yet; they had to be sure there wasn’t any off taste to the drink at all, so Toby would be sure to swallow it right down.”

  So far, so fine. But I still didn’t see how . . .

  “Then, when Toby had nearly finished the shake,” said Bob, “that’s when he got stabbed in the stomach with a hypodermic needle from Norm’s old veterinary practice. It’s what shot the cyanide into him.”

  He turned to me. “Finally Norm doctored the milkshake with both poisons, and the deed was done.”

  “Wait a minute, the autopsy wouldn’t show that the cyanide was injected?”

  Bob shrugged. “Yeah, if the coroner was looking for something like that, which she wasn’t, at first. It’s a needle track, not a stab wound, and with cyanide in the drink and in Toby’s stomach, why would she be looking for it?” he finished.

  Right. “So the argument with Andy, earlier in the bar,” I began.

  Just then the groom danced by with his bride in his arms, looking so handsome his uniform that it was hard to imagine him even thinking about murder.

  “Had nothing to do with it,” Bob said. “Handy way to put the blame on him, that’s all, that he had argued with the deceased earlier in the evening.”

  He dropped his plastic cup into a trash bin. “But Andy didn’t commit murder and that’s what the state cops have told Andy’s Coast Guard superiors.”

  So Andy’s career wouldn’t be ruined, after all. “Gave Norm a good scare, though, when Andy turned up at his place two minutes after Norm got home that night, himself,” Bob added.

  A laugh burst out of me. “I’ll bet. It’s a wonder he could keep his hands from shaking long enough to put the stitches in.”

  Bob nodded wryly, sipping his ginger ale. I went on. “What about the other syringe from the guys’ camp out at the lake?” He’d interviewed those guys very extensively, I knew.

  More couples danced by. “That was an old syringe they’d used for giving medicine to one of their dogs,” Bob replied.

  “Oh,” I said weakly. “Sure.” I’d forgotten the dogs until now.

  “But,” I went on, “then why was their business card on the steps down in the Machiasport house?”

  If it hadn’t been, they wouldn’t have been summoned by Sally Sanborn to come and fetch me in their van. “I mean, they must’ve been involved somehow, because surely that wasn’t some kind of a—”

  “Nope,” said Bob, “no coincidence. But think, now . . .you were in a vacant house. And those guys had what in the back of their van?”

  He eyed me expectantly until I got it. “Oh . . . they had plumber’s tools, didn’t they? For pipes, to cut them and . . .”

  “Correct,” Bob said. “And you remember all those copper thefts that’ve been driving me nuts lately?”

  I did, and I recalled that the water hadn’t worked in the vacant house, either; I’d thought it had been shut off.

  Bob’s eyes narrowed in satisfaction. “Turns out it was our two pals doing the crimes. They won’t be depriving any more innocent basements of their plumbing pipes, by the way, ’cause they’re both going to jail.”

  It’s what they’d wanted at Miss Blaine’s house the night she was attacked, I supposed; to case the joint for future stripping of its valuable metal, and to make sure Ellie and I weren’t there to get it all before they could.

  I said as much to Bob, and his answering smile was like the one on the face of the tiger.

  “Yep. As for the motorcyclist at Miss Blaine’s, that part was almost like you thought. Norm McHale had told Miss Blaine he had a rat problem, talked her into giving him one of the cyanide cartridges for some traps he claimed he’d made.”

  “Ellie and I saw one rat down near the car barn,” I recalled, “but with all those cats he has—”

  “Yeah, and you wouldn’t use poison around pets anyway, would you? Which he didn’t, it just got used on Toby. But afterward Norm didn’t want it in his possession, or for Miss Blaine to be able to say he’d had it.”

  “So he went out there and put the cartridge he’d used back into the box with the rest of them,” I theorized.

  Bob nodded. “Tiny little hole in it, he hoped nobody would ever look at the cartridge, but if they did, maybe they wouldn’t notice.”

  “Only she caught him at i
t. Surprised him, maybe?”

  “Yup. Not that it would’ve mattered. Like I said, he knew all along he’d have to kill her sooner or later. Just hadn’t wanted to take that particular risk until it was necessary.”

  Hey, it wasn’t how I’d have done it, but then, I’m not a killer so what did I know?

  “Oh,” I replied as George and Ellie danced past us, making the most of a slow tune that the musicians had begun playing.

  “Anyway,” Bob said, smiling a little as they went by, “Moran had finally pushed Marienbad too far. Drunk, slobbering all over her, then threatening her with those tax problems of hers. So with Norm’s help, she finally did something about it.”

  Yeah, she sure had, all right. Only it seemed to me that Norm had done more than just help . . .

  I got up. Those little hot dogs weren’t going to taste themselves. Again, I mean.

  “Oh, Jacobia,” interrupted one of the wedding guests, waving a champagne glass. “That whoopie-pie cake was completely fabulous!”

  Then the bride and groom danced by. Sharon appeared rapturous, and as for Andy, if anyone ever looked more like somebody had just handed him the keys to the kingdom, I’d never witnessed it.

  “Cute couple,” Bob said, his face softening.

  Which was when my dad came in, pausing in the church hall’s entryway to peer searchingly around the room for me.

  “Bob, one last thing. About that business card . . .”

  His face creased into a grin. “Yeah, interesting, huh?”

  But then he saw my expression, which I imagine must’ve been puzzlement combined with the impulse to swat someone.

  “Oh, wait, you don’t know how it got there yet?” he asked.

  I stifled my impatience. “No, Bob, I don’t. And I hardly think that card with both the copper thieves’ names and a handy phone number on it got dropped there by accident. They’re a pair of doofuses, those guys, but they aren’t that—”

  Dumb, self-destructive . . . whatever. At last Bob relented.

  “Okay,” he said, “so what happened was, one of those guys is getting a divorce.”

  The papers I’d seen on the counter at the guys’ camp . . . “Okay,” I said. “And?”