“We need an ambulance out in the field behind Miss Annabel Lee’s house,” I said.
“Where the bird people are camping?” the dispatcher asked.
“Yes,” I said. “One of our volunteers has collapsed and is having convulsions.”
“I think Fred’s been poisoned,” Dad said over his shoulder.
“The doctor on hand thinks he might have been poisoned,” I relayed.
“Let me talk to them.” Crystal rushed up to me and took the phone.
I let her have my phone and hovered nearby to reclaim it when she was finished. And wondered if maybe someone should mention to the dispatcher that poison was a hobby of Dad’s, and that he had been known to be just a little too eager to diagnose it.
“Nothing to see here! Let’s clear out!” Sherry was still trying to shoo people away, not entirely successfully. Did the rest of the brigade find her as annoying as I did? But I decided to cut her some slack. She kept turning to stare at Fred and then jerking her head away. She was obviously quite shaken by what was happening.
“Let’s give him air, folks!” Grandfather shouted. “The food trucks will be serving in a few minutes. Clear the mess tent! Today’s lunch will be a picnic.”
At Grandfather’s urging, the crowds left. I hoped not too many of them had heard Dad’s comment about the possibility of poison, or lunch could be something of a bust, even though the coffee hadn’t come from the newly arrived food trucks.
One of the volunteers scurried in with an armload of medical equipment—from Dad’s tent, I assumed.
I heard a siren in the distance. I glanced back at the patient in time to see him vomiting copiously.
“Excellent!” Dad exclaimed. He was hooking up an IV. From his triumphant expression, I deduced that vomiting was something he’d been trying to bring about, not a sign that his patient was deteriorating.
Crystal handed me my phone and rushed back to her patient. I decided to make sure someone was clearing a path for the medics. I headed toward the sound of the ambulances.
Just outside the tent, I ran into a woman who was scrubbing at her blouse with a paper towel. Scrubbing what looked like coffee stains.
“Well, at least I wasn’t scalded,” she muttered when she saw me looking at her stains.
“Were you sitting next to Fred?” I asked.
“Just in front of him,” she said. “He’s not usually this bad.”
“What do you mean, not usually this bad?” I asked. “You mean he’s had convulsions at brigade outings before?”
“No, that’s new,” she said. “I mean he usually gets a little tiddly around the campfire in the evening, but not this early, and not like this. Do you think it’s DTs?”
“You think he’s drunk?”
“I think he’s been drinking,” she said. “More Scotch than coffee in that cup of his. Smell this.” She held out the paper towel. I took a hesitant sniff and detected a faint odor of coffee overlaid with a much stronger smell of Scotch.
“I should go and change,” she said. “And find a plastic bag to stow this blouse in, or my tent will smell like a distillery for the rest of the week.”
“How about if I take it off your hands for the time being?” I asked. “If Dad is right and Fred was poisoned, your blouse could be evidence. We should turn it over to the police.”
“Poisoned?” She pulled the blouse away from her body as if afraid the poison would seep into her skin. Which some poisons could do, of course. “In the coffee?”
“No idea,” I said. “Dad can’t necessarily be sure it’s poison at this point. But since your blouse is saturated with the coffee Fred was drinking just before his collapse—”
“My tent’s this way. Let me find something else to put on and you can keep the blouse.” She set off at a fast pace.
I followed her to her tent and stored her blouse in another of Annabel’s paper bags. And then I went back to the mess tent and spotted a coffee mug that had fallen on the ground near where Dad and his crew were working on Fred. I was pretty sure it was Fred’s mug, because it, too, gave off a strong odor of Scotch. I hesitated for a moment. Should I leave it where it had fallen? No, all too likely that the cleanup crew would whisk it away. And if Dad was right about Fred being poisoned—and if it turned out to be intentional rather than accidental—the cup would be evidence. Not a good idea to leave it where the poisoner could find and dispose of it. I bagged it and stowed it and the blouse in my tote. It was getting bulky. But surely the police would arrive soon to investigate the suspected poisoning, and I could turn everything over to them. Should I hunt down Stanley first and show him the contents of the tote? Or—