by Tamar Myers
“Sounds common enough to me.”
“You know, ‘fool’s parsley.’ ”
“Fool’s parsley! That stuff grows everywhere you don’t want it to. I’m forever trying to get it out of the garden.”
“Exactly. So that one at least was easy to come by.”
“How toxic is it?”
“Well, let’s see. It contains something called cynafine, and cicutoxin."
“Speak English, Melvin.”
“It’s apparently not nearly as toxic as that Moroccan plant. People have been known to die from it, but sometimes the symptoms don’t even show up for as much as three days. Although they could show up in a few hours, depending on how much the person ate and their general state of health.”
“I see. What are the symptoms, Melvin?”
“Well, the coroner didn’t say too much about that one, since it isn’t the one that killed her... no, wait, he did say something about the first symptoms being a general tiredness, a gradual weakening of the muscles.”
I tried to remain calm. “Melvin, if it takes a while for the poison in fool’s parsley to kick in, isn’t it possible that others besides Linda might have eaten some? That the poison might be slowly working in some of us right now?”
I thought I heard Melvin scratch his head. “I suppose that’s possible, Miss Yoder, but it doesn’t make any sense, does it? The killer used two poisons, remember? If any of you had been given the Moroccan poison, you’d be dead as a doornail by now.”
“But Melvin,” I foolishly persisted, “what if there are two killers? What if the one who used the Moroccan poison only wanted Miss Brown and Linda dead, but the second one wanted to kill more than just the two women? What if there are two independent killers, with two different agendas, Melvin?”
I’m sorry to say this, Mrs. Stoltzfus, but your son laughed just then. “Magdalena! Susannah was right. You do have an active imagination. Two killers in one place at the same time, with different motives? Do you know what the odds are of such a thing happening?” What did odds have to do with anything? What were the odds of anybody dying in the PennDutch Inn to begin with? I mean, even Mama and Papa didn't die here, and as for Grandma Yoder, she was ninety-seven and should, by rights, have died in a nursing home. What were the odds that Miss Brown would check in, and then “check out” before she even had a chance to check out? So, what did it matter what the odds were, when Susannah walked in and found Linda dead, clutching in her hands a quilt that wasn’t even supposed to be in that room to begin with.
“Forget odds!” I practically screamed. “Use your noggin. Why on earth would someone give a person a slow-acting poison if they were going to give them a fast-acting poison later on? And how come Miss Brown got only one poison when Linda got two?”
“I didn’t appreciate your comment about my head,” Melvin snapped. “And as you are a civilian, Miss Yoder, I don’t think we need to carry this conversation any further.” He hung up.
“But, Melvin, I think I know who one of your killers is,” I said anyway.
Immediately, I tried to call Melvin back, but the line was busy. I called at least six more times in the next ten minutes, but it was always the same.
Finally I gave up and rang old Doc instead. He picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Doc?” But I never got to say any more than that. Because at that very second the door to my bedroom opened and Billy Dee Grizzle stepped in. In his hand he carried the same hunting knife he’d used to skin the buck.
Chapter Twenty-three
“Put the phone down,” he said softly.
I obeyed.
“Now come here.”
I got off the bed, where I’d been sitting, and tried to take a step in his direction. But I found that my feet had suddenly been rooted to the floor. I willed them to move, but they would have no part of it.
“I said, get over here.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out.
Billy Dee took a couple of steps forward, the knife plainly in view. “I’m sorry to say this, Miss Yoder, but if you don’t cooperate, I’m going to have to slice you wide open like that buck this afternoon.” He ran the tip of the knife lightly across his clothing, from his throat down to his groin. “Then I’m going to gut you.”
I screamed then, at least in my mind, but no sound came out that I could hear. Like Susannah, I had become a silent screamer.
Billy Dee sprang forward and grabbed me by the hair with his left hand. Then he spun me around and slipped his right arm around my neck. The tip of the knife now rested against that soft spot between the back of my left ear and my skull. “Walk!”
I commanded my feet to walk. Like reluctant and disorganized troops, my feet at last obeyed, and I lurched forward. With each step, I could feel the tip of the knife prick into my skin. With each breath I took, I could smell Billy Dee’s breath, which was saturated with alcohol. Like a monstrous pair of mating beetles, we staggered in tandem to the door.
“The kitchen,” he grunted.
Maybe it was Billy Dee’s breath, or maybe simply because my mind was no longer able to sustain such heights of terror, but I felt a sort of awakening. A tap had been turned back on, and energy that had been temporarily dammed up was flowing back through me. I no longer had to command each foot to move, remember to take each breath.
As soon as the kitchen door closed behind us, Billy Dee let go of my hair. With his left hand, he pushed me toward the center of the room.
“Now turn around,” he ordered.
I turned.
“Don’t even think of running, Miss Yoder. I can hit a stump at fifty yards with this thing.”
I just looked at him.
He seemed almost embarrassed. “You know, I kinda liked you, Miss Yoder. It’s a pity you had to go and get yourself involved.”
I thought of one or two smart things to say, but bit my tongue.
“Course, now that you are involved, I ain’t left with any choice, am I?”
I tried to look motherly, but apparently Billy Dee was beyond guilt. “And it was such a damn good plan, too, Miss Yoder. Letting Jeanette feel just what it’s like losing a daughter. Much better than killing her, herself, don’t you think?”
Thankfully, after what seemed like an interminable pause, even Billy Dee decided it must have been a rhetorical question. “I didn’t mean to kill my only kid,” he said quietly. “I sure as hell didn’t deserve to go to jail for it. And I sure as hell ain’t going again.
“You know, I ain’t much of a thinker, but this was one hell of a thought-out plan. Ever since that bitch told me six weeks ago that we was coming down here to protest the Congressman, I knew I had me my chance. We can’t afford to let chances pass us up, now can we, Miss Yoder?”
I shook my head. Anything to encourage him to keep on talking. His knife was a lot sharper than his tongue.
“And I’ve been doing my homework the whole time, too. When I found out that the Congressman had taken him a trip to Morocco, I knew just what I was going to do. You see, they have this wildflower there. Kind of a strange-looking green thing they call—oh, what the hell, I can’t remember the name of that damn thing. Some damn Arab word like—”
“Gouza," I said.
"Yeah, that’s right.” He seemed almost to welcome my interruption. “Anyway, I got me a buddy, still in the merchant marines, who puts into Tangiers every now and then. He owed me a favor. A big one. And he’s got connections, the kind you wouldn’t know anything about. So I had him send me some of the stuff. Of course it ain’t as potent when it’s been dried, but as you can see,” he chuckled morbidly, “it’s still strong enough to do the job.”
“It sounds like you went to an awful lot of trouble,” I said. I tried to sound admiring, not critical.
Billy stared at me.
“I mean,” I hurried to explain, “there are probably a whole lot of poisons you could have gotten closer to home. Without sending off to Morocco.”
He burst out laughing. “But don’t you see? That’s what I mean about it being one hell of an idea. I knew Jeanette and the Congressman had it in for each other. No siree Bob, that was no secret. Not on Jeanette’s part, anyway. She was always making out how she’d been wronged by him. Called him a sleaze. Right in front of Linda.” He tapped his forehead with a finger. “Didn’t take no genius to figure out that she had been blackmailing him neither.”
“Blackmail?”
“Yes, ma’am. Even poor Linda knew about it, and she hated her old mama.”
“Linda told you that?”
“A little sweet-talking goes a long way, if you know what I mean.”
I wanted to slap the smirk off his face. “That’s absolutely disgusting, Billy Dee. Linda was just a child.”
“Anyway, once I knew the Congressman was being blackmailed, I knew I had me the perfect scapegoat. What with his drug habit and all, he couldn’t afford no blackmail. Coming up with the Moroccan thing was the easy part.”
“You knew about the Congressman’s drug abuse too?”
“Like I said, Miss Yoder, I did my homework. Then I made sure that another interested party knew just as much as I did. Kinda gave her a motive to match her husband’s.”
“Not Lydia!”
“Hell, yes. And that’s a damn shame too. Pretty woman like that shouldn’t have to hear such things.”
“But why would Lydia go after Linda? You’d think it would be Jeanette or Garrett she’d want to punish.”
“And what better way to punish them both, Miss Yoder?”
“But what about the baby, Billy Dee? You knew Linda was pregnant, didn’t you? How could you kill your baby? Especially after having lost Jennifer Mae?”
For a few seconds Billy Dee’s upper lip quivered. “Leave Jennifer Mae out of this, Miss Yoder! I didn’t know Linda was pregnant until just a week or so ago. By then it was too late, of course.”
“How was it too late?”
“The wheels of justice had already begun to turn, Miss Yoder.” He laughed. “You see, justice must be served, Miss Yoder, at all costs.”
“Even at the cost of your own flesh and blood?”
Billy Dee responded by plunging the knife into my kitchen table. The blade seemed to penetrate about an inch into the hard, aged wood. For a split second I considered bolting for the door, but in that split second Billy Dee pulled the blade out again. It gleamed, just as wicked and sharp-looking as ever.
“Any more questions, Miss Yoder?”
I swallowed the cantaloupe in my throat. My prognosis did not look very good. If I was going to check out, I might as well go with all my questions answered.
“Yes, actually, I do have another question. What did Miss Brown have to do with all this? Why did you kill her? You did kill her, didn’t you, Billy Dee?”
A big smile crept across his face, the kind of smile that signals smug satisfaction. “Ah, Miss Brown. Yeah, I killed Miss Brown, or whatever her name was. Only it sure as hell wasn’t Brown. That bitch was a Fed.”
“What is a Fed?” Look, there isn’t any point in worrying about appearing stupid when you are about to die.
Billy Dee’s smile softened and appeared almost benevolent. Perhaps the man had a knack for teaching, particularly slow learners. “A Fed is a Federal Drug Enforcement Officer. Miss Brown, or whoever the hell she was, was one busy woman. She had a line on my buddy’s connections back in Morocco. One of them was an American who liked to ship stuff back home.” His smile slipped into a laugh. “It’s a small world, ain’t it, Miss Yoder?”
“I don’t know. I’ve seen too little of it to tell.”
“Then that’s a shame,” said Billy, and it sounded like he really meant it. “But take my word for it, it’s a real small world. Real small. Turns out Miss Brown, or whoever, also had a line on the Congressman. And guess what? Them two lines was tangled. Seems that good old Garrett was buying from my Moroccan supplier on a regular basis. Not too dumb a move on his part, either, because them South American sources are too closely watched these days.
“Anyway, this woman comes here to see if she can catch the Congressman with his fingers in the sugar bowl, before he can check into that clinic—uh—”
“Grossinger-Beechman.”
“Yeah, that’s the place. Y’see, if she coulda done that, she’da had leverage. Might have been able to pull in a whole handful of lines; most of them with one end tied to Morocco.”
“And one of them yours?”
He looked surprised, and then amused. “Hell, no! I don’t do drugs.”
“You just buy deadly poison?”
“Yeah, you might say that. Real deadly poison. The best. Anyway, I wasn’t afraid that Miss Brown would arrest me—it’d take a lot more than her to put me in the slammer again. What I didn’t want, though, was her mining it all by reeling in the Congressman before I had a chance to pin Linda’s death on him. So, I took me a vote and decided that Miss Brown would take a nice trip down them stairs, after she had a taste of gouza.”
“I’m sure you’d make a good cruise director, but I’m also sure Miss Brown didn’t swallow your gouza willingly.” He laughed surprisingly loud. Surely someone had heard him. “She was a feisty little woman, for her age, I’ll give her that. Course, I set me up a diversion, just in case there was any noise, by putting that spider on Linda’s bed. Anybody who knew Linda, knew how she felt about bugs, specially spiders. And finding one here was a piece of cake. Face it, Miss Yoder, you ain’t much of a housekeeper.”
Even while sitting in the lap of death, I felt my face sting at such an accusation. “It was Susannah’s room!”
His eyes twinkled cruelly. “This one I found in the dining room, on one of them corncobs you got there. Stuck him in that jar you let me have for them night crawlers. Honestly, Miss Yoder, I don’t mean no disrespect, but a farm woman like you oughta know don’t nobody go fishing in November with worms.”
“But Papa...” Then I remembered that February was the off-season month Papa fished in, only it was ice-fishing, and he used smoked bacon for bait.
“Yes siree Bob! This here spider was a nice, plump little critter. And I wouldn’t have had no place to keep him if it hadn’t been for that jar you so kindly gave me.”
“That jar! I—uh—I saw it in Miss Brown’s room.”
“Did you now? Well, it ain’t there no more. Didn’t get me a chance to go back that night to get it. Woulda been too noisy with that room sealed up like it is. But I finally got it. Of course I shoulda figured a snoop like you, with all the time in the world, would beat me in there.”
“I am not a snoop,” I said. If I was going to die, I at least wanted to set the record straight.
“And I suppose you figured out it was me who broke into the old bag’s trunk?”
“Not soon enough, I’m afraid.”
“Of course there weren’t nothing in there to worry about. What a waste of time and energy. No papers or nothing mentioning me or the Congressman. Tweren’t nothing at all in there, as you know.”
“Except for a sunflower seed. You should be ashamed of yourself for trying to pin everything on a nice young kid like Joel.”
Billy Dee shrugged. “Somebody’s gotta take the rap, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna be me. But how did you know it wasn’t Teitlebaum who opened the trunk?”
“You left your calling card at the scene of the crime. Tobacco kills, you know.”
“So do knives,” said Billy Dee softly. It took only a glance at the knife to drive the point home.
I tried to think of a stalling device. “I could fix you a cup of coffee, if you want. And a bacon and tomato sandwich. It won’t take any time at all.”
Billy Dee pulled a vial of pale emerald-colored liquid out of his shirt pocket.
“Speaking of time, Miss Yoder. Just a few drops of this stuff on the tongue, and you’re a goner. Of course, Miss Brown didn’t open her mouth voluntarily, but it weren’t really no harder than giving a
cat or dog a pill. You ever done that, Miss Yoder? Given an animal a pill?”
“Some cats scratch pretty bad,” I said. “They also make a lot of noise when they die. Why don’t you just take off, Billy Dee? You got what you came for. Why don’t you just cut the phone cords, let all the air out of our tires, and take off? It’s six miles into town, and you could be halfway to Maryland before I got that far.”
In response, Billy Dee began scraping at the stubble on his cheeks with the knife. The blade was obviously razor sharp; little bits of whisker fell like pepper from a mill.
I could think of nothing further to say.
“Well, now, Miss Yoder,” said Billy Dee, filling in the silence, “we’ve done far too much talking tonight. It’s time for a little action, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I struggled to say.
“Sure, you do. You’re a fine-looking woman. A whole lot prettier than that Miss Brown. It’s time you and me had a little fun before we have to say good-bye.”
I knew that if I didn’t sit down then, I would probably faint. I tried to speak, but what come out wasn’t words.
“What was that?”
“Please, Billy, may I sit down?” I managed to say.
“Sit.” He kicked a chair under me and slowly moved the knife back up to my throat. With his free hand, he began to stroke my hair. “When you catch your breath, Miss Yoder, you and me are going for a little walk.”
I tried to catch my breath, but it seemed like I had rocks in my lungs. “Where are we going, Billy?”
His hand left my hair and slid to my face. “I seen you looking at me when we was in the barn, Miss Yoder. It was you put the idea in my head. That’s a mighty fine barn, Miss Yoder, so I figure you and me are going to put it to good use.”
“But Mose will be there,” I said. “One of the cows is ill, and he likes to stay the night when that happens.” It was of course a lie, but one of which even Mama would have been proud.
“I ain’t afraid of no old man,” said Billy. He sounded almost happy at the thought of a confrontation with Mose. “Now, it’s about time we head on out for there. I got me a lot to do yet before the night is over.”
