Killer Confections8 Delectable Mysteries(562)

It wasn’t until Susannah was in high school, and she found out from her guidance counselor that she had an I.Q. of 142, that the light began to dawn. If Susannah was that smart, I reasoned, so was I. If not smarter. But by then I had lost confidence in myself and had long since put the idea of college behind me. Still, one day in an argument with Mama, the truth had come out. Just between you and me, Mama deserves a couple of extra turns in her grave for what she did.

Anyway, like I said, I love to read. My books have taken me far beyond the limits of my natural world, and I don’t think I could survive my life here at the PennDutch Inn without them. Unfortunately, Hernia doesn’t have a library, even a tiny one. Old Doc Shafer does, though. When I was a child he used to bring books by the bushel basket for me to read. Mama didn’t mind at all, providing she got to sort through them first.

Nowadays, even the library in Somerset offers slim pickings when it comes to books I haven’t read. Fortunately old Doc has a niece in Pittsburgh who visits him almost every other week, and she doesn’t seem to mind at all making trips to the Carnegie Library for me. Occasionally she even stops at the Mystery Lovers Bookshop in suburban Oakmont and picks up a good whodunnit or two.

I had just started a book by Paul Theroux, my favorite travel writer, when the phone rang. I answered the phone on the seventh ring, but perhaps I should have waited longer. Even then I must have sounded crabby. “Miss Yoder?” asked a timid voice.

“That depends on who wants to know.”

“This is Melvin, Miss Yoder. Melvin Stoltzfus.”

“Speak up, Melvin. I can barely hear you.”

“Miss Yoder, I just got a call from the coroner, and there’s a couple of questions I’d like to ask.”

“Ask away, Melvin.”

“Did you know that Linda McMahon was pregnant?”

“She never breathed a word to me about it,” I said quite honestly.

“Well, she was. Just about to enter her second trimester, as a matter of fact. Which brings me to my second question. Would you have any idea who the father might be?”

“Why, Melvin Stoltzfus, you should be ashamed!” I said with righteous indignation. “This is a Christian establishment, and I don’t allow any hanky-panky. And anyway, you just said yourself that she was three months pregnant. If that’s the case, it surely didn’t happen here. For all I know, Billy Dee Grizzle is the father.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Melvin, dear, I was being flippant.”

“I’ll have to question Mr. Grizzle about that in the morning,” said Melvin, quite seriously. “In the meantime, there’s something I think you should know.”

“Go on, Melvin, I’m listening.”

“Both Heather Brown and Linda McMahon were definitely poisoned.”

“I said, go on, Melvin. I already suspected that.”

“Both women were killed by the same type of poison, but the killer used two different poisons on Linda McMahon.”

“Two poisons?”

I thought I heard Melvin take a deep breath. “Yes, two, but only one of the poisons killed her.”

“Come again?”

“You see, Miss Yoder, the poison that killed the women was a very fast-acting type of digitalis. It causes respiratory failure within a matter of minutes. Respiratory failure is when—”

“I know, Melvin. Go on.”

“Well, Harrisburg plugged their computer into Washington’s and came up with the interesting fact that this particular form of digitalis is found only in one species of plant, and that plant is native only to Morocco.”

“Morocco?”

“The lower slopes of the Atlas Mountains to be precise. The Arabic name for the plant is gouza. It’s a very unusual plant in that it produces green flowers. It’s these flowers that are the most toxic part of the plant. Although they are more lethal if consumed fresh, when dried and put into tea they also remain deadly.”

It sounded like Melvin was reading a pamphlet the C.I.A. had faxed him. Perhaps he was. “And what about the second poison, the one that didn’t kill her?”

“Ah, that. That was just common old Aethusa cynafium."

“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.”