Whitman nodded. It had taken all of Grace’s charm to convince them he was teasing. “Grace smoothed it over. Why would those two do anything to her?”
“I’m reaching here, Whitman,” he said sharply. “Just trying to find any rational explanation. Chris opened the wine and served it. Who else could’ve slipped penicillin into it?”
Whitman pulled away from the curb. “Maybe Grace herself did,” she said, not believing it for a moment.
“In front of Chris? All of us? You saw her—that woman fought for her life.”
“Maybe she changed her mind. Maybe it was just a ghastly accident.” Whitman scowled. “Look, Doc Phillips took care of Ralph and Grace—”
“So? He’s the only doctor in town.”
“Exactly.”
Doc Phillips sat hunched over his desk, rolling his fountain pen between his thin fingers. “Grace’s allergic reaction is called anaphylaxis,” he explained in a resonant rumble. “Antibodies called immunoglobulin E, or IgE, cause blood vessels to leak and tissues to swell, blood pressure to drop—”
Whitman was not about to let him ramble on. “Why didn’t she have epinephrine on hand to give herself an injection?”
His bushy eyebrows rose in apparent surprise at her knowledge. “Prescription-strength penicillin isn’t a naturally occurring substance. People know when they ingest it, and it does have a smell. But a strong red wine would mask a small quantity of it, and that’s all it would take. She did wear a Medic Alert bracelet ...” He stared down at his desk.
“The bracelet didn’t help her that time in the hospital when they gave her penicillin anyway,” Whitman said tartly.
His head jerked up. “I apologize for my profession,” he snapped. “Once in a while we do fall off our pedestals.”
His lined face looked haggard, his white hair disheveled; and Whitman understood his anger, understood that he had, in the space of a week, lost two long-time patients. She asked, “Who among our group have you given penicillin prescriptions to, Doc?”
“You know I can’t divulge that information.”
“Grace is dead,” Dickinson argued, “and it seems—”
“But I prescribed penicillin for you, Whitman, last February.”
As Whitman stared at him in outrage, Doc Phillips said, “Over the years I’ve prescribed penicillin for everyone in this whole town. Fontaine could easily get penicillin from a former patient. The truth is, the cops have all six of you under suspicion.”
Doc Phillips tossed down his pen, laced his hands behind his head and leaned back wearily. “As far as I can see, nobody has any motive.”
“Could Grace have done this to herself?”
“Sure. But I saw her just a few days ago—no sign of depression. Yes, she still felt guilty over Ralph finding out about her and Chris, but Ralph had given her his blessing. Chris’s the odd man out, the one we know the least about. To be honest, if he did have something to do with this, then I have to wonder if he also hastened Ralph’s death.”
“Good heavens,” Dickinson uttered.
“Doc,” Whitman asked, “how much penicillin would it take for Grace—”
“Precious damn little. The more episodes, the higher the sensitivity. She’d had two serious exposures, one as a child, and the one in the hospital was damn near fatal. A minute amount would kill her unless she had an injection of epinephrine immediately.”
“You know,” Whitman said, “I’ve been thinking about something Deputy Bannon said to me. She was absolutely right.” She got to her feet. “Thanks, Doc.”
Dickinson leaped up and followed her out with more energy than Whitman had seen from him in almost a year. “I know who did this,” he said.
Dickinson and Whitman marched into Seacrest’s small, clapboard police substation. Deputy Bannon looked up from the report she was fastening into a folder. As the two of them seated themselves in the chairs matching her gray metal desk, she said with a trace of exasperation, “Have a seat.”
“Thank you,” Dickinson said, and plunged right in: “Of our poker group, only one of us had a real motive for killing Grace. The real killer had opportunity, too, access to penicillin—”
“All of you had easy access, and Christopher Fontaine served the wine,” Bannon returned. “The victim was dealing with the death of her husband. It’s possible she’d changed her mind about Fontaine and told him.”
“Balderdash,” Dickinson said.
“For the sake of argument, preposterous as it may be,” Whitman said, “let’s say Chris actually did kill Grace. How could he be stupid enough to incriminate himself in front of five other people?”
“Lots of criminals are stupid. It’s why we catch them.”
“Chris isn’t stupid.”
“Granting that,’ Bannon said easily, “Fontaine had access to penicillin, and we’re taking a close look into his background and history with other patients. But,” she conceded, comfortably shifting her bulk in her desk chair as she sat back, “I’ll listen to anything you have to say.”
“First of all,” Dickinson said, “the real killer got the penicillin from treatments for the aftermath of the flu.”
“Regardless of where your candidate got it, it had to get into the victim’s glass.”
“There were lots of hypodermics around, Chris gave Ralph injections—”
“No, Dickinson,” Whitman said, placing a hand on his arm, “he didn’t inject it into the bottle. Grace always used the same glass for special occasions. It was in her glass before the wine was even poured.”
“For heaven’s sake, Whitman,” Dickinson protested, turning to her. “As soon as she took the glass out of the breakfront—”
“She wouldn’t see anything. It wasn’t visible. He coated the inside of the glass with liquid penicillin and put it back in the breakfront, ready for the next time she drank wine. She wouldn’t even think to look for anything on her glass. Doc Phillips told us it would take the tiniest amount to kill her—”
“If you’re right, there’s one way to find out,” Dickinson said. “Test the bottle. Fingerprint the glass—”
“Ahem, you two junior detectives,” Bannon said, “may I have your attention?” She tapped the report in front of her. “We cops aren’t quite the dumb gumshoes you think we are.”
“So what do your tests say?” Dickinson said eagerly.
“They’re a confidential part of a police report.” She held up both hands against their protests. “If there was no penicillin anywhere except in the victim’s wineglass—and I’m not saying that’s the case—it doesn’t matter. It would only confirm that Fontaine simply dropped a pill into her glass.”
“What about fingerprints?”
Bannon did not reply.
Looking into her face, Whitman crowed, “I’ll stake my teacher’s pension that somebody else’s prints are on that glass—”
“A somebody not Christopher Fontaine,” Dickinson exulted.
“Our reports are confidential,” Bannon repeated firmly. “But I can tell you that we’ve released Mr. Fontaine.” She looked from Whitman to Dickinson, and said slowly, “We’ll file a case when we can demonstrate probable cause.”
“There’s probable cause, all right,” Dickinson said, his face grim. “Sick as he was, that bastard got himself out of bed and over to that breakfront and poisoned her glass—”
“—and set up that obscene scenario where Grace would propose a toast to him,” Whitman added vehemently, “and then—”
“—went off to his grave knowing Grace would die and all the rest of us would be under suspicion,” Dickinson finished.
Bitterly, Whitman quoted Francis Bacon: “‘Revenge triumphs over death.’” She said to Bannon, “You were so right when you said somebody had to be skeptical about Ralph Pinckney. He was a son of bitch, and he was a vengeful, murdering son of a bitch when he died.”
Dickinson muttered, “‘That I should after death invisibly return ...’”
“Shakespeare?
” Bannon asked, folding her arms across her ample chest.
“Whitman. Walt, I mean.”
“Well, I’m a simple woman,” Bannon said, “and all I know is, my scumbag of a brother-in-law got worse with his cancer, and leopards don’t change their spots. But,” she cautioned, “we’re still checking out Mr. Fontaine.”
Dickinson leaned forward, jabbing a finger at the report on her desk. “You can’t seriously suspect anyone but Ralph Pinckney.”
“We need to be careful. We need to check everything.”
“You know the truth. I can tell by your face,” Whitman said. “Ralph Pinckney spent the last days of his life figuring out the cruelest possible revenge on his wife and on his rival and on his friends. That’s what you really believe.”
“Believe,” Bannon repeated. Fingering the report in front of her, she took in a deep breath and let it out unhurriedly.
Whitman knew she was making a crucial decision. Seacrest was not San Francisco nor Los Angeles, and police procedures would not be as formal here, but it was Bannon’s choice as to how informal they could or should be.
“Well,” Bannon said finally, “I think your theory might explain why, on that wineglass, up near the rim—where a person might hold it to carefully place it back in a cabinet—is a partial fingerprint belonging Ralph Pinckney.”
Dickinson said to Whitman, “I told you—”
“In all my years of police work,” Bannon said as if Dickinson had not spoken, “I’ve never seen anything like this. The bottom line is, a man’s committed murder from the grave. Unless you believe in God, he’s got clean away with it.”
Whitman and Dickinson stared at her.
“Think about it. The evidence is totally circumstantial. It rests on a single fingerprint and a leopard’s spots.”
Dickinson and Whitman exchanged glances, then Whitman said, “It’s enough. It’s probable cause.”
“To the three of us, maybe. But not enough to file a case.” Bannon spread her hands. “So, I guess if you believe in God, then, ‘In His will is our peace.’”
Whitman guessed: “Francis Thompson?”
Bannon smiled ruefully. “Dante.”
O CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN
Lieutenant T. M. Harper applied her fingertips to the print-reader at dock area 43, and boarded Scorpio IV. A tone sounded within the craft, signifying entry; there was no other acknowledgement of her presence.
Disappointed, she realized that of course Captain Drake would be off-ship, taking advantage of the remaining hours before departure. Moon Station 13 might not be Earth, but it had Earth comforts and was staffed with bored military personnel who would welcome the august company of a civilian transport captain. And it was incomparably closer to home than either the captain or herself would be during the next four lonely months. Still, she was puzzled. Transport captains were by nature iconoclastic, and Captain Drake had earned a reputation for extreme reclusiveness.
A few of the readout screens lining the brilliantly lighted command cabin radiated data which Harper ignored, knowing it to be standard orbital information for spacecraft scheduled for departure. She glanced at the chronometer to determine what division of night and day would be operative on Scorpio IV, Greenwich mean time. The captain, Harper remembered, was European born. There were four command chairs, regulation for a class one transport, even though only two were needed for the voyages of this particular craft. She had not expected Scorpio IV to be different, and it wasn’t.
Moving through the galley she looked into the computer room at the standard module and backup, then continued on toward the sleeping cubicles, directing her gear bubble in front of her. She shook her head over the unnatural brightness everywhere, knowing she would have to adjust to it. It was understandable that any transport captain spending months away from the sun’s golden warmth would be greedy for bright light ...
She knew the Captain’s more spacious quarters would be at the end of the corridor; she would choose among the remaining three. But she halted at the first doorspace. Its portal was labeled LIEUTENANT HARPER.
Harper gazed in amusement down the corridor. She had been installed the maximum distance from Captain Drake’s quarters. Considering all the time the captain spent trapped with unchosen company in this tiny craft, an obsession with privacy was also understandable.
Harper had good reason to doubt that she herself would retain her sanity for very long in such circumstances. She had won her officer’s commission on a twelve-person battle cruiser surveillance mission to the Orion sector, had been enthralled by the challenge and adventure of those nine months, had passed the psych probes both during and after the assignment. But back on the solid footing of Earth, for months afterward she had felt disconnected, her mind—or perhaps her soul—somehow still adrift in those spectacular reaches she had floated through like a weightless seed on alien winds. And she knew from the oblique comments of other members of her officer corps that her experience had not been unique.
She steered her gear into the cubicle, then programmed the doorlock to open to four arhythmic taps of her fingernail. She too would have her privacy.
She stretched tiredly, wishing she could relax on the wide, inviting bunk. Sex with Niklaus last night had been exhausting, as if the two of them had been frenziedly trying to build a storehouse against the parched months ahead. She began to stow her gear.
“Lieutenant Harper, welcome aboard.” The low voice resonated like a cello.
Turning, Harper stared, transfixed.
The tall, pale figure in the doorway—dark-haired, clad in black trousers and a high-collared gray shirt—possessed a dramatic beauty so androgynous that Harper could not have guessed her sex unless she had known beforehand.
“Captain Drake,” she managed to say, fascinated by the heavy-lidded dark eyes which seemed weary with their burden of intelligence.
“My apologies,” Drake said. “I did expect you around this time, it’s just that my diurnal rhythms are turned around.” The smile was fleeting, but Harper was astonished by its magnetism. “I was resting in my quarters when you came in.”
The captain crossed her arms and scrutinized Harper with open interest. “I trust you brought more comfortable garb. I accept your necessary military presence, but I detest military trappings.”
Harper glanced down at her Space Service uniform to conceal her ire. The forest green jacket had been hard won and she was proud of it, she was proud of her Lieutenant’s silver bar. But if her training and the mission to Orion had taught her nothing else ... “I brought a few jumpsuits,” she conceded.
“Good. I’ll look forward to seeing you in them. Departure is confirmed for twenty-one hundred hours. I’ll expect you on the bridge for final check at sixteen hundred.”
Harper caught herself as her hand began its automatic upward flick toward salute. “Yes, Captain.”
Again the brief, magnetic smile. “Call me Drake.” And she vanished, moving soundlessly down the corridor.
Drake. So much warmer than Captain. Sourly, Harper pulled a green standard-issue jumpsuit out of her gear. If she doesn’t have a first name then neither do I.
As Scorpio IV made its leap into hyperspace, Harper slumped exhaustedly in her command cabin chair.
“Get coffee, whatever you like,” Drake told her in a tone of dismissal, shutting down all but a dozen of the readout screens. “You’ve been well trained, Harper, I’m pleased with your technological grasp of my ship.”
Harper nodded, watching Drake check course trajectory, her strong, long-fingered hands moving surely over the console, entering data, changing the pattern of the templates.
For the past three hours Harper had been fully absorbed in all the readout screens, occasionally verifying and detailing a status problem for the imperious woman in the command chair beside her, observing with increasing awe Drake’s total comprehension and manipulation of swiftly changing computer analyses. Well-versed in the lore of civilian transport captains and their extr
aordinary hands-on knowledge, she had suspected the stories to be at least somewhat exaggerated—especially the claim that some of these individuals could actually direct a Robomech-four. All military spacecraft were checked and cross-checked by teams of specialists, and specialists had been involved in final systems check of this civilian craft. But Drake had ignored them. She had been as one with her ship, her glance penetrating every analysis on every readout screen simultaneously, and she had directed her own robot repairs and adjustments.
Some military craft had gone out and never returned, their final communications the stuff of legend and nightmare in the Service. Harper knew that if any problem developed on Scorpio IV Drake would know in an instant where it was and how to correct it.
This assignment was a prize. Other officers had been equally qualified to be the military presence on this spacecraft, but hers had been the lucky number to come up. She would be the one to reap all the tangible and intangible benefits when Scorpio IV returned with its priceless cargo from the Antares asteroid belt.
She rubbed her eyes; they ached and burned from staring at the readout screens in this too-bright cabin. She smiled, remembering her psych training, all those exercises in negotiating basic incompatibilities during extended space travel. There would be no negotiating with this autocratic woman. Drake possessed irreplaceable ability and the emotional components necessary for remaining sane while she expended the prime years of her life in space. Scorpio IV was Drake’s home. Harper would be the one to adjust.
But the compensations were handsome. As each day of these next four months passed, credits would be deposited to her account, and when this tour of duty ended she would have three years hazard pay, tax free. When her military obligation was completed she would retire and pursue an Earth-based career, perhaps settle in with the devoted, patiently waiting Niklaus.
She unfastened her restraint and got up. “May I bring you something, Cap—uh, Drake?”
Drake looked at her then, and Harper backed away in recoil from dark eyes that seemed haunted by grief, as empty and blasted as a dead star. The voice was soft, and flat: “Nothing, Harper, thank you.”
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