Killer Confections8 Delectable Mysteries(549)

Anyway, I’d asked old Doc to come, not for what he might do for the stiff, but for help in controlling Melvin Stoltzfus. It was one of Doc’s patients who kicked Melvin in the head, after all, and it was Doc who undoubtedly patched both of them up. At any rate, everyone in and around Hernia knows and respects old Doc. Doc was my insurance card for getting through the ordeal still sane.

I ushered everyone in and led the way up the stairs to the victim’s bedroom. By this time Susannah had returned from the laundry room, without the borax, and was standing by the bed moaning. From within the nether reaches of her blouse Shnookums was following suit with tinny little yowls of his own. I decided that everyone needed a contingent of mourners, even unintentional ones, and to just let them be.

To his professional credit, Melvin appeared to notice the corpse before he noticed Susannah.

“Is this exactly the way you found her?” he asked.

“Naw, she must have gotten up and combed her hair.”

“Very funny. Now you and Susannah stand back so I can examine her. This might be rather gruesome.”

“No more gruesome than what we can see now,” volunteered Doc. “She’s been poisoned.”

“How the hell do you know that?” snapped Melvin. Quite frankly, I was surprised to hear him swear.

Doc sighed. “Professional instincts, man. Just look at her. It’s obvious she died in a great deal of pain, and too quick to call out for help, or to have anyone hear her. Although it’s possible, I’d say it’s not likely she died of a coronary, given her age.”

“How old was she, anyway?” asked Melvin, turning to me.

“Linda is twenty-three.”

“Poison then, for sure,” said Doc.

“How can you be so sure?” asked Melvin, a little less belligerently.

“Can’t be absolutely positive,” said Doc, “not until there’s been an autopsy. But my best guess is she was poisoned, and at least twelve hours ago. No more than fourteen.”

“Twelve hours?” Melvin and I asked at once.

“By the looks of it. Maybe an hour or two more, like I said. Again, the autopsy will take care of that. You sending her right down to the county coroner?”

For a moment Melvin looked wildly around the room. It was obvious that this was his first solo murder, maybe even his first corpse. Perhaps he expected to see a set of instructions flashed against a wall. “Yes, yes, of course. God, I hope he’s back by now.” He nodded to the two men who had come with the ambulance. They had remained just outside the door and even now seemed reluctant to cross the threshold. It took a couple of sharp words from Melvin to put them into action.

“Be careful of Mama’s quilt,” I admonished them.

Of course they didn’t pay me any attention. They slid the corpse, quilt and all, onto their stretcher. With the very first step he took, one of them stepped on a dragging edge of the quilt, almost pulling the body off with it onto the floor. The quilt pried loose from the clutching hands, but I was sure I heard it rip.

“Now see what you’ve done!” I said. “I could never make stitches as neat as Mama’s.” I scooped up the quilt, soiled though it was, and laid it on the bed. That’s when I noticed that both on the bed and on the floor, where the quilt had touched down briefly, there was a sprinkling of sunflower seed shells.

“Help me strip the bed,” I snapped at Susannah.

“Don’t touch a damn thing,” said Melvin sharply.

“Why not?”

“Because you might be disturbing evidence, that’s why.”

Clearly Melvin Stoltzfus watched too much TV. “There aren’t any fingerprints on the sheets, Mel.” I started to tug at a corner of the bedding.

“Hello, what’s this?” asked Melvin. He reached past me and picked something brown and wrinkled-looking from the bed.

“Oh, it’s just a sunflower seed shell,” I said as nonchalantly as I could. “Linda ate them all the time.” Melvin hiked his pants up over his hipless pelvis with one hand, and with the other practically shoved the stupid shell up my nose. “Trying to hide evidence, were you, Magdalena?”

“Get a grip on it, Melvin,” I said as calmly as I could. “If I were trying to hide evidence, wouldn’t I have picked up all the shells before you got here? It’s not like they’re not obvious, after all. There’s a blue jillion of them scattered around.”

“Ah, but in The Purloined Letter,’ ” said Melvin pompously, “it was obvious too.”

Somehow that rang a bell. I thought back and then remembered my eleventh grade English class, a story by Edgar Allan Poe, and something about a letter that was hidden by being placed in plain sight. “Melvin,” I said slowly, so that he could read my lips if he needed to, “nobody was trying to hide these sunflower seeds. You can’t possibly think that they’re poisonous. Can you?”