by Emma Lathen
“My God!” ejaculated Robichaux, awed.
It was clear that, by now, Captain Johnson’s knowledge of Chicken Tonight was almost as exhaustive as Frank Hedstrom’s. “There’s no question about that, I’m afraid. We’ve got some of the doctored boxes, and they were very carefully resealed. That was done at home with plenty of time in hand—not in the back of the truck. I know what’s bothering you. You want to know how our joker got hold of mixes to use in the substitution. Well, we’ll clear that up in due time.”
“I must say it sounds reasonable to me,” Thatcher remarked as the frown remained fixed on Hedstrom’s face. “I’m already bothered at how much was done right here in the middle of the parking lot. It seems a very public and dangerous place for such an operation, Captain.”
“Not as dangerous as you think. In the first place, the truck itself blocked the view from the back window of the Akerses’ store.”
“Yes, but what about all the other windows? Or what about other people driving up and parking? This lot seems to service all those stores.”
Thatcher waved around the little compound. In addition to the Akerses’, there were a bakery, a hardware store and a shoestore in immediate view. Not only personnel but customers also used the lot. As they watched, a woman came out of the bakery with two boxes tied together, entered her car and drove off.
“It didn’t matter. Anybody but the Akerses could see what was going on. In fact, several people did. We’ve questioned the whole block till they’re sick of us. They saw a man in the orange-and-yellow uniform loading and unloading boxes. Naturally they paid no attention. They see that sort of thing all the time. Our boy simply brought the doped boxes in his own car. When the coast was clear, he substituted them. Then he drove away with the good boxes.”
“Christ!” Robichaux exploded. “That’s a damn simple way to ruin a million-dollar company.”
The captain interrupted him. “It’s more than that. It’s a damn simple way to commit murder!”
Robichaux was taken aback. Thatcher, however, had seen this coming. “Of course, with what you’ve uncovered, Captain, that death in Elmira has become murder. There’s no question of a mishap any more.”
Captain Johnson grunted. In his own way, he turned out to have some of Mr. Denton’s spark. “I don’t know if you know how your stuff is unloaded and loaded, Mr. Hedstrom?”
“Four deep, four high, and as much as they need across,” Frank Hedstrom repeated his litany.
“Yes, but that’s not exactly what I meant. The drivers are told to unload from right to left in each bin. It’s got something to do with your first-in, first-out system on inventory.”
Hedstrom nodded, waiting for Johnson to continue.
“As nearly as we can tell, the damage was done by substituting the top front row. That way every sixteenth box to be unloaded would be poisoned.”
Frank Hedstrom began to curse bitterly.
Captain Johnson was almost sympathetic. “Now, that could be coincidence. But I don’t believe it for a minute. A lot of your franchises take multiple orders on the popular flavors. And your Mexicali was going over big. There were two to five boxes going out at each drop. With this system, our boy managed to spread the damage as far as possible. He wasn’t taking any chances that all his poison would end up in one or two places, where it would be caught after a couple of people went to the hospital. He wanted a mass epidemic.”
As Hedstrom seemed beyond speech, Thatcher marked time. “I suppose that’s why he chose the Mexicali.”
“Sure thing. That chili powder would cover the taste of almost anything. Not to mention that a lot of people wouldn’t be sure of what it was supposed to taste like.”
Hedstrom had recovered himself. His voice was now very hard and adult. “All right, Captain. A couple of times you’ve said we’d get to something later. I suppose I can see what’s coming. You haven’t even mentioned the fact that the truck was probably locked while it was unattended.” He paused aggressively.
The captain contented himself with a silent nod.
With a twisted smile, Hedstrom continued. “So let me list the points for you. Whoever pulled this stunt had access to boxes of mix available only in Chicken Tonight warehouses. He knew the schedule of our drivers. He knew about coffee breaks and instructions in case of breakdowns. He knew which was our most popular, strongly flavored mix. He could get hold of a uniform and a truck key. He knew the physical layout in this parking lot. And, if your first theory is right, he knows how the trucks are unloaded. I don’t have to be a mind reader to guess your conclusion. This was done by one of my employees.” Hedstrom paused for a deep breath. “You see where this leaves me, don’t you? Ordinarily, once the source of contamination was spotted, I’d expect the Public Health people to let me open up. But, hell! Even if they let Chicken Tonight open—and don’t think for a minute they will—how can I prevent this from happening again in a week, in two weeks? I’m helpless until I know who did this. And that’s as big a mystery as ever!”
This was the moment for which Captain Johnson had been waiting. “I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Hedstrom. I think I can name the man right now.”
Hedstrom’s face went blank. “You can?”
“Not that it’s going to do you much good. You’ve been laying people off at your warehouses, you know. One of the men you let go was a driver called Clyde Sweeney. In fact, he was the driver on this route until almost two weeks ago.”
“Are you telling us someone poisoned over one hundred people because he was fired? But he’d have to be insane!” Robichaux, the gourmet, was genuinely indignant. “After all, he’d have no trouble getting another job these days.”
“It’s not that simple,” Johnson replied. “If it was, we could find Sweeney, and then your problems would be over. This is what we know so far. Clyde Sweeney got his pink slip about four weeks ago. A week later he suddenly deposited a thousand dollars in cash at his bank. The next day the pilferage in your warehouse started. It went on for about a week. It stopped when Sweeney left. By that time, ten boxes of Mexicali mix were gone. Incidentally, he never turned in his uniform. The day after he left, the substitution took place in this parking lot. He’d already arranged to sell his car. That afternoon, Sweeney delivered his car, cleaned out his bank account, packed his bags and left town. Incidentally, his landlady tells me that he got a fat envelope, registered, in the mail that morning. The way I see it, somebody else planned the whole thing and paid Sweeney to do the dirty work.”
For a moment they all stood silent. It was not a pretty story.
“You’re looking for Sweeney now, of course?” Thatcher finally asked.
“Looking!” Captain Johnson barked. “We’re about to send an alert across the country. His picture will be blasted across every television screen from here to Frisco. But in the meantime we’re working on leads here. Somebody had to make contact with Sweeney, hire him for the job, give him his thousand. And, of course, there may be something in Sweeney’s background that will tell us where he’s likely to bolt.”
“A thousand dollars! It’s not much, is it?” Robichaux commented.
“It is in some circles, Tom. And don’t forget the registered envelope,” Thatcher advised.
Hedstrom was grim. “It looks as if someone’s out to destroy me—or Chicken Tonight. I’d like to think that Sweeney rated the job as worth more than a thousand dollars.”
“That’s jumping to conclusions,” the captain intervened. “From what I hear of him, this Sweeney may not have known what it was that he was pulling.”
Hedstrom looked at him sharply, but said nothing.
Thatcher was interested. “Oh, you have some idea of the kind of man he was? Have you been talking to people who knew him?”
“Sure. Some of them are right here. The Akerses took it pretty hard.”
“Clyde Sweeney! It’s unbelievable,” Dodie Akers repeated to them when they entered the kitchen by the back door.
“They’ve
just about proved it, as far as I’m concerned.” Vernon Akers no longer looked bewildered or defeated. He looked alarmingly angry. “And I remember all that gab of his about being on to something new.”
“But he must have been planning it even when he was sitting here the last time! And he always seemed so friendly.”
The visitors were tactfully silent. Not so her husband.
“Sue never liked him,” he replied with clenched jaw. “Did you, Sue?”
“No, I didn’t. And I’ll tell you something, Mother. That last time he was trying to date me. He didn’t really think I’d say yes. He was getting a good look around the parking lot.”
Dodie Akers stared at Sue in something like horror. For Mrs. Akers, Thatcher realized, the greatest shock was that a mass poisoner had been near her daughter.
Robichaux was not the man to let a pretty girl speak in vain.
“Why didn’t you like him?” he asked.
Sue Akers was thoughtful. “He was always so pleased with himself. And not for any good reason that I could make out. He was full of big talk. I don’t say there’s anything wrong with that. But it was all very dull.”
Neither Dodie nor Vern was inclined to quarrel with this assessment.
“From what you say, he sounds gullible,” said Thatcher, happy with their witness’s youthful frankness. “Do you think he could have been persuaded to do this—the substitution of mixes—without realizing how serious it was?”
Suddenly Sue Akers sighed with a depression beyond her years. “Clyde thought he was so smart. That would make him very easy to fool, wouldn’t it? I suppose you could say it would make him very dangerous.”
CHAPTER 7
STRAIN THE INGREDIENTS
THE AKERSES were not the only source of. information about the kind of man Clyde Sweeney was. After seeing the New Yorkers on their way, Captain Johnson drove swiftly to a rooming house on the other side of town. Here his men were already busy searching the room that had been rented to Sweeney, but before Captain Johnson could join them his path was barred by an angry landlady.
“This is a respectable house,” she screeched at him. “But today it’s nothing but one squad car after another. What do you think the neighbors are saying when they see all these cops?”
But Johnson had done his homework. “Well, Mrs. Menotti,” he said calmly, “I suppose they’ll say the same thing they said in April 1966, in November 1968, and last August.”
“These men!” Mrs. Menotti moaned, extending her arms passionately. “Is it my fault? I do everything but X-ray them!”
“Let’s see,” Johnson continued. “The first time it was a convict jumping parole, the second time it was a guy pushing reefers, and last time one of your boys got beered up and tried to pull a bar apart.”
Unexpectedly Mrs. Menotti softened. “Ah, that!” She dismissed the incident with an airy wave. “That was Joey Dorfman. He’s a good man. A little excitable when he drinks, yes. But a heart”—again she extended her arms generously—“a heart like this.”
“Mmm,” said the captain noncommitally. The report had listed an astonishing amount of personal injury and property damage for one man with a heart like that. “Well, never mind about Dorfman. I want to know about Sweeney.”
“Him!” Mrs. Menotti snorted. “Such a fuss about a little nothing. That’s what he was—a nothing. What do you want him for? I can tell you right now—if it was anything big, then Clyde Sweeney didn’t do it. He was small, through and through.”
“And if it wasn’t big?”
“Then he probably did it all wrong!” the landlady snapped vindictively.
Johnson nodded thoughtfully. At least he couldn’t complain that his witness was biased in favor of the suspect. “How much did you see of Sweeney? I suppose you did his room, that sort of thing?”
“I cleaned his room and changed the sheets and towels. That’s all, absolutely. I’ve got enough to do. Just the bathrooms and stairs can keep you going all day.” Mrs. Menotti’s brows drew together in a fierce scowl. “No meals!” she said sharply, as one who has seen a trap and evaded it. “No meals served and no hot plates in the rooms either!”
“Then I suppose he had a tavern somewhere he used?” Captain Johnson knew these rooming houses with no home comforts. Inevitably the men drifted to some nearby commercial establishment and adopted it as a clubhouse. It was where they ate, where they drank and where they fraternized.
Mrs. Menotti’s answer was prompt. “The bar and grill two blocks down on the corner of Lake Street. Not that they have to go there to drink. I’ve got a nice little refrigerator in the hall upstairs for them to keep their beer in.”
She must have noticed the look of surprise on the captain’s face, because she hurried into justification. “It makes it nice for them. Most of them have these little TV sets. Weekends, they like to watch the ball game and drink a can of beer. There’s no harm in that. A little beer keeps a man sweet.”
It occurred to Johnson that all of Mrs. Menotti’s rare moments of indulgence seemed to center around beer. Sternly he kept to the issue at hand.
“He went to this bar most nights?”
“Yes, he ate there regular, except on Wednesdays.”
“What happened on Wednesdays?”
Mrs. Menotti brought out another surprise. “Wednesdays he ate with his mother. She lives over in Bellsboro.”
After extracting an address for Mrs. Sweeney, Johnson moved on to his critical question.
“Now, Mrs. Menotti, I want you to think back. Did anything unusual happen with Sweeney about four weeks ago?” The captain paused hopefully. Four weeks ago Clyde Sweeney had deposited a thousand dollars in the bank. Johnson knew that the Sweeneys of this world want cash down when they agree to do a job.
“You mean that phone call,” she sniffed. “I knew no good would come of it. Sweeney had just come in from work when this call came for him. I’d seen him come in. So I stood at the bottom of the stairs and shouted. But nothing happened, so I finally climbed all the way to the third floor. And never so much as a thank-you. But I heard what he said. He was going to meet someone. It must have been someone he didn’t know, because he described what he’d be wearing and asked about the other guy. Sweeney went out about ten minutes later. And he didn’t come back until late. He was all excited, and he’d been drinking. Said he was celebrating.” Mrs. Menotti became sarcastic. “I can see he had a lot to celebrate—getting in trouble with the police!”
“Did you hear the other man’s description?”
“Sure. At least what he was wearing. An orange-and-brown sport shirt, tan slacks. Oh, yes, and he’d be carrying a windbreaker.” Mrs. Menotti paused, curiosity getting the upper hand. “Say, what is this? Do you mean Clyde Sweeney is really mixed up in something big?”
“Big enough for a coast-to-coast search.”
“Oh, my God! Who would have believed it?”
When Johnson finished at Mrs. Menotti’s it was still too early, he judged, for the regulars to have arrived at the local bar and grill. Accordingly he headed for the neighboring town of Bellsboro. Pulling up before Number 53, he noticed that the name on the mailbox was Gallagher, not Sweeney.
This was soon explained. Mrs. Sweeney was living with her daughter and son-in-law. “That’s why Clyde comes on Wednesdays. Ray goes to his lodge and Ellen goes to the Guild. I baby-sit and Clyde keeps me company,” she said.
“He comes then to avoid me,” said her son-in-law truculently. Ray Gallagher was a salesman in Trenton.
“There, dear,” soothed Ellen. “You and Clyde never hit it off.”
Her husband’s jaw tightened. “We don’t get on because Clyde is a good-for-nothing.”
Ellen leaned forward and squeezed her mother’s hand. “Don’t mind Ray, Mother. He doesn’t mean that the way it sounds.”
Mrs. Sweeney took a firm grip on her handkerchief and sat up straighter. “I’m sure there’s some mistake. I don’t understand why the police should be looking fo
r Clyde.”
At the rooming house, Captain Johnson had been prepared to be mysterious. The evening papers would have the story and Mrs. Menotti would enjoy them thoroughly. But here it was only common decency to break the bad news. In a neutral voice, he announced the suspicions of the police. Three startled faces stared at him.
“Poison!” gasped Ellen.
“Oh, I know there’s some mistake,” Mrs. Sweeney wailed.
“Christ!” muttered Ray. “That doesn’t sound like Clyde.”
Johnson pounced. “What do you mean by that? I thought you said he was a good-for-nothing.”
“That’s what I mean. Clyde never does anything.” Ray Gallagher struggled to express his frustration with his brother-in-law. “Year after year goes by and he isn’t getting anywhere. He just drifts from job to job, from rooming house to rooming house. He can’t even manage to get married. Hell, he isn’t that much of a drifter. I don’t think he’s ever lived more than twenty-five miles from home.”
Mrs. Sweeney ignored irrelevancies. “He’s waiting to meet some nice girl.”
“Well, he isn’t going to meet one in those joints where he hangs out.”
“But he met one where he worked,” said Ellen, a born peacemaker. “He told us so himself.”
“But I know Clyde wasn’t planning to go away for good,” Mrs. Sweeney protested. “He said six months. That shows he didn’t poison all those people.”
“He told you he was going away?” Johnson asked alertly. “When was that?”
Mrs. Sweeney was indignant. “Of course he told me! Whatever can you be thinking of? After he lost his job, he said he had a chance for something out of town. Then, the day he left, he stopped by and asked me to keep some of his things. He said if his chance worked out, he’d be away for about six months, that he’d write me his address as soon as he was settled.”
