I kept my eyes closed, afraid that if I opened them the horror would somehow return.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, not Billy’s, that much I knew. “Magdalena?”
I forced my eyes open and could hardly believe what I saw. “Doc!” I screamed.
The hand on my shoulder patted me gently.
“There, there, Magdalena, it’s all right now. The son of a bitch is out like a prizefighter. Of course I gave him twice the dose I gave Susannah.”
“What?”
Old Doc waved the syringe proudly. “I’m just glad the bastard didn’t hear me sneaking in and turn around. Anyway, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, like they say. When you hung up on me, I knew something was terribly wrong. Would have gotten here even sooner, but I had to wait two minutes until it was time for my damn cake to come out of the oven. Of course I didn’t get a chance to frost it.”
“What?”
Doc smiled magnanimously. “No big deal. It’ll be nice and cool by the time I get back. Best time to frost it anyway. Shall I make it chocolate or vanilla? Which do you prefer?”
“Caramel,” I said, just to be difficult.
Chapter 24
By tacit agreement, we waited until our second piece of cake before we brought up the previous night’s events and the circumstances leading up to them. The first piece of cake, both Doc and I understood instinctively, was to be savored. One can’t pay proper attention to aroma, texture, and taste when one is talking.
Having swallowed my first bite of the second piece, I felt free to fill Doc in on some of the missing pieces of the story.
“It was the quilt,” I said. “That was the main thing. It kept bothering me in the back of my mind, but I was just too stupid to see it. I should have known right away, of course, when I saw Linda clutching Mama’s dresden plate quilt.”
It is permissible to talk with cake in your mouth, if you’re on your second piece, so Doc did. “What’s so damn special about that quilt? As I recall, you keep quilts in all the rooms.”
“But that’s it exactly! Every room has a quilt in it, but it’s a particular quilt. Each room has a quilt with a different pattern on it. The quilt, the dresden plate quilt that Mama made, belongs in Billy Dee’s room, not Linda’s.
“So you see, when I saw it in Linda’s room, I knew something was out of place, but it just didn’t register.”
“Couldn’t Mr. Grizzle simply have loaned it to Linda?”
I shoved in a bite of Doc’s incredibly moist cake. “As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what happened. Linda had mentioned to Billy Dee that she was feeling chilly, and so he offered to bring her a cup of herbal tea and an extra quilt. Of course, that was the perfect opportunity for Billy Dee to administer the poison.
“As soon as the poison started to take effect, Billy Dee grabbed the teacup and extra quilt and got out of there.”
“I see,” said Doc, “except that Mr. Grizzle, being your average, insensitive man, grabbed the wrong quilt.”
“Well, they do look sort of alike,” I surprised myself by saying in Billy Dee’s defense. “Linda’s original quilt was also a dresden plate pattern, but it wasn’t the one Mama made.” I swallowed hard and let the truth out. “Mama’s quilt isn’t nearly so nice.” Sorry, Mama, about that extra spin.
“More coffee, Magdalena?”
I nodded. “The weird part is, Doc, that Billy Dee seemed like such a nice man. He was always so polite to me, of course until last night.”
“Never fully trust anyone, Magdalena,” said old Doc sagely. “Want some more cake?”
I shook my head. “But Lydia, that was even more of a surprise.”
“Do tell,” Doc urged. “Melvin was rather cryptic when I called him this morning. Seems he’s not happy about having to share credit with you.”
“Ah, forget Melvin. He’s going out with Susannah tonight anyway. That’s payback enough.
“But back to Lydia. She too made a complete confession last night. I hate to say it, but Billy Dee was right on the money. Well, sort of. It was she who took the potshots at me. She’d stayed home that morning while Delbert attempted to take Garrett to the clinic. Apparently the Reams had had a fight that morning, because Garrett refused to clear some things up before his admission. Garrett, I mean the Congressman, changed his mind on the way there, but that’s another story.
“Anyway, when Lydia saw me set out for Freni’s across the field, she assumed it was Jeanette, possibly even meeting Garrett on a secret rendezvous. When she figured out it was me in the woods, she backed off. It was on her way back to the house, out by the barn, that she walked through some fool’s parsley, and the idea of poisoning Jeanette popped into her head.