Killer Confections8 Delectable Mysteries(550)

But possibly Melvin did. He got down on his hands and knees and picked up every one of the little shells and deposited them carefully in a small plastic bag he had brought with him.





Chapter 18





I waited until Melvin was quite done picking up the shells before I spoke again. “Now may I strip the bed?” I asked reasonably.

“Hell, no!” he nearly exploded. “There still may be more evidence.”

“Then you strip it yourself when you’re done,” I said calmly. I grabbed my still-moaning sister by the shoulders and steered her from the room.

Doc hung back a few minutes, then followed me. We headed downstairs to the parlor. "You know this guest well?” he asked.

“What?”

He gestured back at the room, occupied now only by Melvin. “The corpse, I mean. Did you know the lady well when she was alive?”

I shook my head. “Not really. Just two days. All I know about her is that she’s a vegetarian, and she was here to protest hunting season. Oh, and if the rumors are true, she’s the illegitimate daughter of the Congressman.”

"What Congressman?”

“Oops, sorry. Garrett Ream.”

“That young fart? Anyway, did you know if she was pregnant?”

“Linda? Pregnant?”

“Just a guess, like everything else, but maybe a good one. Of course we’ll have to wait until the autopsy comes back.”

I trusted Doc enough not even to bother asking why he suspected Linda was pregnant. But I asked him anyway.

Doc laughed, which, at his age, is likely to come out as a cackle. “Intuition, Magdalena. That and the fact that there was a bottle of prenatal vitamins on her night table. Although it’s possible, it isn’t likely that anyone who wasn’t pregnant would be taking them.”

“Well, I’ll be. Linda pregnant. But if that moron in there sees the pills, he’s liable to think she tried to commit suicide.”

“By swallowing vitamins?”

I reminded Doc about Melvin’s experience with the bull. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure even Melvin Stoltzfus couldn’t be that dumb. But then again, you have to be pretty stupid to get a story like that started in the first place.

Old Doc laughed until I thought he would have a coronary. “Unfortunately I don’t remember such an episode. But if it did happen, I’m sure Melvin was the one involved. Here,” he reached into his pocket and brought out the bottle of vitamins. “Even Melvin can’t misinterpret these if he doesn’t see them, Magdalena. I nabbed them when the fool was picking up all those sunflower seeds. No point in allowing him to muddy up the waters prematurely.”

“But Doc! Isn’t that illegal? Swiping evidence?”

“What evidence? No one is going to believe this young lady tried to kill herself by overdosing on a bottle of vitamins. No one, that is, except for young Melvin, who will eventually see the light anyway. So actually, I’m just speeding up the time it will take him to separate the evidence from the incidental. Incidentally, did you happen to notice that the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door was still facing out?”

“What ‘do not disturb’ sign? We don’t use those signs around here.”

“Yes, you do. Red letters, on a white background. About this big. Saw it myself. Plain as day.”

“Well, it isn’t ours.” I shook Susannah gently. “Did you notice a sign on the door when you first went in there?”

Susannah burst into tears and threw her arms around me. I hate it when someone does that. Even my own sister. My personal space is very important to me. Of course, Susannah didn’t notice my discomfort. “I shouldn’t have gone in there,” she wailed. “I should have started mopping right away, just like you said.”

“Nonsense,” I said comfortingly. “Your going after Shnookums’s binky had nothing to do with Linda’s death. Now was there, or was there not, a ‘do not disturb’ sign hanging on the door?”

Susannah nodded. “There was, Mags. But I swear I knocked first, before opening the door. I knocked real softly, too. I mean, I wouldn’t have gone in at all if there had been any kind of an answer.”

“Well, how do you like that? A bogus sign. You don’t suppose the killer—”

“Put the sign on the door so that no one would discover the young lady’s death for a long time, thereby giving him or herself extra time to get away?” old Doc finished for me.

“Does that mean that whenever the guests come back from the woods this afternoon, Mags, the killer will be the only one not to show up?” asked Susannah, with surprising sensibility.