Larkspur

by Sheila Simonson

  "Tomorrow I close the store," I said grimly.

  "We're making money hand over fist." We were both at the checkout counter. Ginger was enjoying herself.

  "That is the point."

  "Oh. Exploitation." Ginger is not dumb. She rang up the paperback edition of a low-cholesterol diet book for a teenaged girl who tittered when I looked her in the eye.

  "Did Dennis say how his mother was?" Dennis had called two hours before, and Ginger and I hadn't had a minute to discuss what he'd said.

  "He took her to the hospital."

  "Really?"

  "Just nerves."

  "No, we have no more copies in stock, madam." That to a woman in her fifties who looked like the stereotype of an English teacher. She wanted Llewellyn's poems. "Try the public library."

  Ginger rang up a map of Portugal. Portugal? "You were going to leave at six."

  "I won't desert you. No, sir, that's out of stock." I told the man, who looked like the stereotype of an accountant, that we might have copies of Llewellyn's poems by the end of the week. I recommended H.D. if he liked imagist poetry. He left without H.D. I wondered whether he'd have bought Ma's latest if he'd known she was Llewellyn's literary executor.

  So it went. We didn't have time to eat. The TV camera and its auxiliaries left by three, the better to make the five o'clock news, but they were replaced by a dozen assorted children on bikes and skateboards. Two teenaged girls rode up bareback on a roan horse, and sat and stared. The horse crapped on the asphalt. Dozens of cars drove by, some with bad mufflers, all with gawkers. The reporter's camper stayed. The "customers" kept coming.

  None of the intruders who entered the store had anything intelligent or even kind to say, but about half had enough shame to think they had to buy something. One non-buyer handed me a tract about the wages of sin. I told her the Bible Life Bookstore's address on Main Street. She called me a jezebel, on what grounds I know not, and flounced out, having exercised her First Amendment rights.

  Ginger stayed with me. At five minutes to nine I dimmed the lights, and by nine-fifteen I had rung up the last sale, a school-year calendar boosting the Monte J.C. Women's Athletics Program. I yanked the shades down and locked the front door.

  Ginger and I looked at each other. "Phew," she said.

  "Let's total out the register. Can you take the money to the night deposit?"

  She nodded. "Dennis is picking me up."

  "Thanks. Thanks for staying, too. I'm going to have to put in an emergency order with the supplier in Sacramento." And hope he could get me a dozen copies of Llewellyn's Collected Poems at $29.50 retail.

  "Were you serious about closing the store tomorrow?"

  "Absolutely. It's Sunday. All the religionists in the county would come in and lecture me and feel righteous about not buying anything. Besides, I think I ought to close. Staying open isn't respectful."

  She raised her eyebrows. "How about Monday?"

  "Monday will be business as usual. Well, not quite. You'd better count on a one to nine shift all of next week, though I'll close again for a half-day if the funeral is held here. I don't imagine it will be. Llewellyn lived in San Francisco."

  She tried not to lick her chops. Ginger was attending classes full time, but she needed as much work as she could get. Her kids were in college, too. "I'll drop my one o'clock."

  "The art history class? I thought you liked it."

  "Sure, but they teach it every semester, and besides I need more time to study." She looked virtuous.

  I had to laugh. "Don't do anything hasty. This flurry of business will probably peter out in a couple of days."

  I let Ginger out the front door when I saw Dennis's pickup pull in. That was a ploy to distract the Chronicle reporter, while I escaped out the back. I set a record shutting off the backroom lights and locking up and zipped out the alley. I took the back way in to my apartment.

  My telephone answering tape was full of urgent messages from members of the press looking for exclusive stories--and a somber request from my mother to call her whenever I got in, even if it was 2:00 a.m. in New York.

  I dialed home, and Mother answered on the fourth ring. My father had heard a news story around three their time, and they'd been worrying ever since. I should have called them from the lodge. I knew that, and my bad conscience made me defensive.

  When I'm defensive I wise-crack. Understandably in the circumstances, Mother didn't appreciate my flippancy, and we almost quarreled. Then she found out I hadn't eaten since 8:00 a.m., forgave me, and told me to call again the next morning.

  Jay let himself in the door as I was scrambling eggs. I added three to the bowl and grated some cheese. "You look beat."

  "You, too. Was it bad?"

  "The store? A circus." I told him what had happened and that I wasn't opening Sunday. He approved. We ate all the eggs and were still starving--he hadn't eaten either--so I made a stack of sourdough toast and broke out a couple of cold beers afterwards. Haute cuisine.

  We sat on the couch, sort of leaning on each other, and sipped our beers. After a while I said, "Are you going to shut me out of this one?"

  He straightened and looked at me without smiling. Jay's eyes are the color of Glenlivet. When's he's feeling good they have gold lights in the depths. They were dark as a peat-bog. "You know I'm not supposed to discuss criminal cases with you."

  I nodded, watchful.

  He sighed. "But I'm going to, of course. It's inevitable. The thing is, Lark, you've got to promise not to blab."

  "Thanks a lot."

  "You told Dennis Fromm Llewellyn was murdered."

  "Dennis is a friend!"

  "Dennis's mother is a suspect."

  I made a rude noise.

  "It's unlikely she's the murderer. She doesn't strike me as a planner, and this crime took elaborate planning. Still, she grows her own herbs and flowers, and she brews up salves and teas all the time. She could have stewed the damned delphinium. And her relationship with Llewellyn struck me as very murky."

  That was interesting. "Murky, how?"

  "Murky as in puzzling. Are you going to promise me to keep your gorgeous mouth shut?"

  "As far as is humanly possible," I said with dignity. "I know the people involved, so I can't pretend absolute ignorance, but I won't say anything to them you don't want me to. And to the press I guarantee I will make No Comment. It will give me great pleasure."

  "Do you include Bill Huff in there with the press?"

  I took a sip of beer.

  "Huff filed his story from the lodge--on the UPI wire."

  "I'll read it and decide."

  "Cut it out, Lark."

  "You always say that." I relented. "I promise I will keep my lip zipped. You would have been proud of me at the bookstore. One of the Twinkie brains even asked for my autograph."

  That amused him and the tension eased a little. "Who has a motive?" I asked casually. "Angharad Peltz, obviously."

  "Not so obvious. Nobody's seen the will." He rolled his beer bottle back and forth between his palms. "I don't even know the law firm he dealt with."

  "Didn't you ask the Peltzes?"

  "The Peltzes weren't giving me the time of day." His mouth quirked. "Especially after Dan Cowan confiscated a stalk of larkspur, roots and all, from the middle of their flower garden."

  "Cowan," I said, awed. "You have this vindictive streak I never noticed before." Deputy Cowan was not exactly suave. Jay always insisted he was a good cop, but I wasn't so sure.

  "I figured I owed Peltz." He took a swallow of beer. "When I've talked to the lawyers I'll have a better idea of motive, though greed isn't the only reason for murder."

  "Miguel."

  He frowned. "I don't think Miguel was Llewellyn's lover, if that's what you're suggesting. I talked with the kid, of course. Kevin wanted me to take him in. Maybe I should have. Miguel was at the bar, so he had a better opportunity to poison the drinks than anyone else."

  "Drinks?"

  "Two."r />
  "How about the Campari bottle?"

  "It was okay. We found the poison container, by the way. In the garbage can. No prints."

  "Did anybody see...?"

  "For Godsake, Lark, you know damned well the murderer could have disposed of half a dozen bottles that size while you and I were administering CPR. Everybody was milling around."

  I sighed. "I suppose it was an ordinary bottle, too."

  "It was a flavoring bottle, the kind you buy vanilla or lemon extract in."

  "Small."

  "It would fit in a small woman's palm."

  "Are you looking for a small woman?"

  "No, damn it. I don't know who I'm looking for. That's the point. It had been rinsed out, probably run through a dishwasher or boiled before the poison was poured into it."

  "Is the poison hard to extract?"

  Jay snorted. "The toxicologist said you could puree a plant in your Cuisinart and strain the juices through cheesecloth."

  "Easy."

  "Yeah. He said the mess was boiled down to concentrate the poison. That could have been done on a kitchen stove. Probably was."

  "Then it's going to be hard to prove..."

  "Anybody at the party could have done it--maybe weeks in advance. There was no trace of a label or flavoring, though there was a bit of the poison left in the bottle."

  "Easy to smuggle into the house."

  "Dead easy."

  We drank beer.

  The flavoring bottle made me think of the cook. "Did you get old Domingo to talk?"

  Jay sighed. "Yes. His English is better than Dan's. He knew nothing and saw nothing and was watching a videotape of The Sting when the crime occurred."

  "I didn't see any TV sets at the lodge."

  "He has a small color set, a large VCR, and a library of old flicks my brother Freddy would kill for. I believed him--provisionally. As far as I know he didn't stand to gain anything from Llewellyn's death, and he'll be losing an easy job."

  "Easy!" I was thinking of the elegant meals Domingo had produced.

  "Ordinarily he only had to cook for Llewellyn and give the other servants their orders. He was well-paid, had posh quarters in the San Francisco townhouse, and Llewellyn dined out a lot. Of course Llewellyn may have insulted his crème fraiche or seduced his baby brother, but I don't think so. It's not going to be that easy. Domingo refused to discuss his employer's private life. He had nothing to say about Miguel, either, though I gathered he was jealous of the kid."

  "Aha!"

  "Not necessarily jealous sexually. Miguel is a newcomer. Domingo started working for Llewellyn right after World War II. He said the kid did his job."

  "Where does Miguel come from?"

  "Baja. I know the town--it's a scabby place outside of Mazatlán. Miguel says he was parking cars at the Casa Miranda last year. Llewellyn hired him to drive around the resort, and offered him the chauffeur's job later. Miguel jumped at it."

  "Naturally."

  Jay didn't smile. "Naturally. According to him, he's supporting his grandmother, his mother, five brothers and sisters, and an ailing uncle. He showed me his green card and said he was going to apply for citizenship. I believed him. I wasn't so gullible when he denied a sexual relationship with Llewellyn. He was bound to do that. The culture looks down on homosexuals."

  "He was very demonstrative--sobbing and wailing a lot."

  Jay shrugged. "That's culture, too. He was grateful to Llewellyn, and he's afraid he'll have to go back to Baja. He thought we were cold fish."

  I finished my beer and set it on the coffee table. "What about the others? Did you turn up anything interesting?"

  "Janey Huff doesn't like her step-mother."

  I hooted. "The great detective."

  Jay grinned. "The Huffs were very cooperative, even if Bill was mentally writing leads for the National Enquirer the whole time I was questioning him."

  "The National Enquirer? Be fair. The Huff Press is a class outfit."

  "Yes, but that side of it's Lydia's doing, according to Janey. Bill goes along but he's a newspaperman at heart. Worked for the Chronicle until his father died and left him the local rag."

  I digested that. "Well, okay. What about Denise? Dennis took her to the hospital, according to Ginger. Did you use your rubber hose on her?"

  Jay shuddered. "I'm the one who should've been sedated. That woman is an emotional shark."

  "The kind that eats its young."

  "I don't think sharks do that." He put his arm around me. "Just swimmers and surf bums and unwary prime ministers. Come to bed, Lark. We won't solve the case tonight." We didn't try to solve anything else, either. We were both too tired.

  At 7:00 a.m. my mother called. It was ten for her, so I may someday forgive her. She talked, sadly, about Llewellyn and what his influence had meant to her, and I eventually woke up. Jay did, too. He glowered at the ceiling for five minutes of uh-uh and unh-uh, and apparently decided the phone call wasn't going to go away.

  When he came back from the shower we were still on the line. I had given Ma a full account of our rescue attempt and talked to my dad, too, and cried on his shoulder, and gone back to Ma. She was speculating about what being literary executor would mean when bells went off and lights flashed.

  "Hey," I interrupted. "I bet you know the name of Llewellyn's lawyer."

  "Well, yes."

  "Jay needs to know. To ask about the terms of the will." I waved Jay to me. "Here he is."

  "Hello." He listened. "Yeah. I'm doomed to meet Lark's family under inauspicious circumstances."

  "You could have come home with me at Christmas. That was auspicious," I said, but quietly because he was listening to Mother.

  "Paper."

  I rummaged in the bedside table and produced a pad and pencil.

  "Okay. Davis and Wong." He scribbled. "Do you have a phone number? I know the area code. Thanks. I'll talk to D'Angelo again, probably today." Mother said something. "Yes. Me, too. Nice to talk to you." He handed me the phone.

  Ma said, worried, "Do you think I ought to fly out? Maybe I have to be there for the reading of the will."

  "I dunno, Ma. You should talk to the lawyer."

  "Surely not, if D'Angelo will be there. I'm supposed to spend next week in West Virginia."

  "The Mountain Poets' Workshop?"

  Mother sighed. "I wish I could learn to say no. Keep us posted, darling. I'm sorry you didn't have a chance to know Dai."

  I swallowed. "I'm sorry, too. I liked him."

  Jay was dressing.

  I set the receiver on its cradle. "Sorry about that. We always overlook the time difference. Are you going to cook breakfast?"

  "Cream of wheat?"

  "Aargh."

  "I'll think of something."

  He made not bad omelets and even brewed me a pot of coffee, which was pure altruism since he can't drink it himself.

  I said pensively, "Can't we go out to your house and have a day to ourselves?"

  "You're joking."

  I sighed. "More like wishful thinking. I have to track down the book supplier and feed yesterday's sales into the inventory control. And I suppose you're going to grill suspects."

  "I'm going to have another talk with D'Angelo."

  "Didn't he tell you he was literary executor? He and Ma."

  Jay dolloped marmalade on a slice of bread. "The question didn't come up. What's a literary executor?"

  "I think they see to it that unpublished material is brought out in a decent edition, and that nobody does anything rotten to the works already in print. If there's anything to sell, they're supposed to do that in the interests of the heirs. Ma said Llewellyn kept a journal, and there are bound to be letters. They might find a biographer who'd be interested in working on the personal stuff. Choosing a good one could take a lot of time. They're supposed to protect Llewellyn's literary reputation, basically."

  "Doesn't sound very rewarding."

  I finished off a bite of toast. "If you mean di
d D'Angelo--or Ma--have a motive for doing Llewellyn in, no. They don't profit." Not directly. I brooded over my coffee cup. "Of course, if D'Angelo does a good job, it will enhance his reputation in academic circles. He might even get hired by a good school."

  "He's head of the English Department at Monte, isn't he?"

  I took a bite of omelet. "A dead end, believe me. Nobody's reputation is enhanced by teaching at a community college."

  "Sounds like snobbery."

  "Sounds like? Is. My mother would never be rude enough to say so directly, but as far as she's concerned, community colleges are a few millimeters above the kind of school you enroll in on matchbook covers."

  "That's dumb," Jay said reasonably. "Long Beach J.C. salvaged my brains. I slept through high school. If it hadn't been for junior college I'd be driving a pizza wagon."

  "Believe me, that doesn't matter."

  He blotted his mustache. "Your mother sounded downright human."

  "She is, on a personal level. But she scaled the heights of the prestige pyramid before I was twelve, and she doesn't question its validity."

  "You're depressing me." He stood up. "I've got to go. Where are the keys to the Blazer?"

  I pointed at my purse, which was lying where I'd left it on the kitchen counter. "You and Win D'Angelo got along like a house afire. That surprised me. What's the big attraction?"

  "We'd met before. That job at the college," he said vaguely, slapping his pants pockets. "Left my wallet in the bedroom." He disappeared.

  "Job?" I asked when he came back.

  "I interviewed for the vacancy they had in Police Science. D'Angelo was on the selection committee."

  "Oh, yeah, the director's job." The job had been advertised about the time of my big basketball tournament. Jay had told me he was applying. "Who did they give it to?"

  "Me."

  I think I gasped.

  Jay grinned. "I have until the fifteenth to refuse it."

  "Are you going to?"

  He grabbed his keys, relented, and returned to give me a kiss. "When I screw up this investigation they'll probably withdraw the offer. Go order books, Lark. Stay away from the press, and I'll see you tonight."