Dead Giveaway, page 2
part #0 of Lily Bard Series
“You smoked in my house while you were cleaning it?” Patsy shrieked, as if something much worse had not been done in her house at the same time. “You know how I feel about smoking!”
“Uh-huh, I know. And Nita and I got into it about that. But I also know what Jenna-Beale got kicked off the cheerleading squad for. If you think her room don’t already smel like cigarette smoke, you’re fooling yourself.”
Patsy flushed as deep a red as Gwen had, a color I’d never seen on Patsy before. “You know my daughter would never do such a thing,” Patsy said, her voice actual y shaking. “My daughter worked and worked to be a cheerleader, and just because that little bitch Heather lied about Jenna-Beale smoking at practice does not mean Jenna won’t get reinstated to the squad.”
I worked through that sentence with a little difficulty. “Heather—Nita’s daughter—was the one who told the . . . ?”
“The cheerleader sponsor,” Gwen supplied unexpectedly.
“Okay, the cheerleader sponsor. Heather was the one who told the sponsor about Jenna-Beale smoking at practice?”
Patsy nodded, short little jerks of her head.
“So what did you say to Nita today in this kitchen?”
“Nothing. She cleans my house,” Patsy said grimly. “Whatever that woman’s opinion may be, it has no effect on me or mine.”
6
“You and Nita didn’t discuss your daughters at al ?”
“Oh, I think Nita and her precious cousin were too busy talking about Gwen’s little light-fingered ways!” Patsy said viciously.
“That true?” I asked Gwen. The sooner we got to the bottom of this, the sooner I could go back to finishing the Winthrop house.
“Patsy complained that her pearl stickpin was lost the last time we worked here,” Gwen said, her broad, thin lips pinched together in misery. “Nita reamed me out al over again, though I’d promised her I’d quit. She hurt my feelings so bad!” Once again, tears began to flow down Gwen’s broad cheeks. “But it wasn’t true. The good Lord knows that.”
“Did Patsy say anything to you about her earring this morning?” I asked Gwen. Gwen shook her head, crying even harder than before.
“Did Nita come up to catch you smoking in Jenna-Beale’s room?” I asked Frankie. Her dark face impassive, Frankie shook her head.
“How’d you cut up the cheese?” I asked Patsy.
“A knife, of course.” Patsy eyed me like I was a moron.
“Where is the knife?”
Patsy examined the items spread out on the counter. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It was there.”
“The knife was there, but the whisk wasn’t?”
“Yes.”
I squatted by Nita’s body once again, examined her minutely. After a long and careful look, I straightened up and moved a little away from the three women. I took a step to my left. Now I was between them and the door.
“You weren’t working in Jenna-Beale’s room, you were smoking. Since Jenna-Beale smoked, too, you thought the smel of the room would mask the fact that you were breaking the rules,” I told Frankie flatly.
Frankie’s dark brown eyes met mine. She shrugged. That was Frankie, al attitude, just like Nita had told me.
“And you say you were cleaning the bathroom, but with the furniture polish,” I told Gwen. “You might not even have gone in there. You might have been down here instead, arguing with Nita.”
“But she would’ve heard me,” Gwen said, nodding at Patsy, whose hands were bal ed in unladylike fists.
“No,” Patsy said sharply, as if she were addressing particularly slow serfs. “I was in the bathroom. Understand? Al of us have to go sometime.”
“But you weren’t,” I said.
The room got very quiet, and in the distance I could hear the siren of a police car, final y on its way here. But not fast enough.
“I beg your pardon?” Patsy’s tone made it clear she was doing no such thing.
“You weren’t in the bathroom. There was stil foamy cleaner in the water in the bowl, and if you’d used the toilet, you’d have flushed it down. And the sink is dry. You, the fastidious one, didn’t wash your hands? I don’t believe that. What were you real y doing? Instead of being in the bathroom with the door closed tightly, I think you were standing in the pantry right by it, getting something you needed for your casserole. I think you’d heard Nita remind Gwen not to steal and that gave you the idea you could get away with kil ing Nita. A random stranger, Gwen and Nita fighting, maybe Nita and Frankie going at it about Frankie smoking on the job . . . al possibilities, but they couldn’t be thought al the way through because you didn’t have time.”
7
Patsy’s bronze lips pressed together and parted several times in a row as she began, then discarded, several things she wanted to say.
“Nita told me herself that she had a bad temper,” I said. “I think you said something to Nita about her daughter, and I think that pushed Nita over the edge. Nita was more aware than anyone that if this cheerleader incident kept festering it would degenerate into a she said/she said situation. And who would be favored in a situation like that? The girl from the family with the social standing and money. If there were a shred of doubt about Jenna-Beale’s breaking the rules, if it was only Heather’s unsupported word that Jenna-Beale had smoked at the school, Heather would be the one to suffer. What did you say to Nita that made her lose her temper?”
Patsy just kept shaking her head back and forth in silent denial, her eyes fixed on me as if I were a cobra.
“You know,” she began final y, “I could never have forced that whisk down her throat. She was a strong woman.”
“I think that’s why you were scared when she came at you. I don’t think you kil ed her by forcing that whisk down her throat.”
“Oh,” said Patsy, relieved. Her shoulders slumped as she relaxed. “Oh, thank goodness. Who did do it, then? Frankie?” Patsy’s eyes lit up with pleasure at the idea of Frankie getting into trouble.
“No one.”
They al three gaped at me.
“She done it herself?” Gwen’s eyes were about to pop out of her head. The police siren was even closer, but not close enough.
“No.”
“Tel us,” Frankie said, “Miss Muscles.”
“Patsy.” There was a long silence in the kitchen, stil immaculate—except for the corpse of the woman who’d cleaned it.
“You just admitted I couldn’t have rammed that whisk down her throat,” Patsy said, shaking her head as if I were an unreasonable child.
“You didn’t kil her with the whisk.”
Patsy edged a little toward her right. I didn’t budge. I knew I could keep Patsy Caplock from reaching the door if this was the door she went for. But there were a lot of other doors in this house.
“So what, pray tel , is that sticking out of her mouth?” Patsy asked sharply. If she expected me to look over to the corpse again, she was mistaken.
“That’s a whisk handle.”
“So what do you think kil ed her?” Frankie’s eyebrows were drawn together as she tried to fol ow my thinking.
“The missing knife,” I said. “Look at Nita’s chin. There’s a bloodstream going down, the way it would if she was standing up when she was bleeding. I think she came at Patsy while Patsy was cubing the cheese for the sauce. I think Patsy just thrust the knife at her, and it went in Nita’s mouth. I think Nita choked on the blood and the blade, and that’s what kil ed her. The whisk just makes the kil ing look crazy. And it would have had to be out already, to blend the cheese with the milk as the cheese melted.”
“Why would Patsy want to take the knife out?” Frankie asked.
“The knife was a dead giveaway. Who else would be cubing cheese for the sauce, except the cook? I’l bet there are traces of cheese left on the knife.”
8
“So where is this knife, Miss Know-It-Al ?” Patsy asked smartly.
“You carried it in your apron when you ran outside screaming,” I said wearily. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice that you didn’t have it on when you came back in? I guess you hung the apron up on the hooks in the little mudroom, thinking no one would recal you’d had it on.”
Patsy snarled at me. “There’s no knife in my apron!”
“Of course not,” I said, “I’m sure you hid it outside after I came in here. But I bet if the police know what to look for, they’l find it. And there’l be a blood smear inside the pocket of the apron.”
“That could be from where I stuck my hand in the pocket after I’d touched her to see if she was real y dead,” Patsy protested.
“That doesn’t explain the fact,” I said, hearing the police car pul to a stop outside the house,
“that your missing jade earring is in Nita’s right hand. You may try to blame the earring on Gwen, but I guess Nita grabbed it when you were struggling. I guess Nita pul ed it clean out of your ear.”
The other two women eyed Patsy with clear horror. No one had ever looked at Patsy that way, I was sure. She twitched under their regard. “Don’t you look at me like that!” she said shril y. Her perfect fingernails went back to scraping at her ear, where there just might be a tiny dot of blood at the pierced hole.
“I’m not going to look at you any way at al ,” I said thankful y. “I’m going back to clean the house next door.”
And as soon as the patrol officer had put the handcuffs on a shrieking Patsy Caplock, that’s what I did.
©2001 Charlaine Harris
First published in El ery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 2001
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9
SPINACH MADELEINE
2 packages frozen spinach
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
4 tablespoons oleo
3/4 teaspoon celery salt
2 tablespoons flour
2 3/4 teaspoons garlic salt
2 tablespoons chopped onion
6 ounces jalapeno cheese, cubed
1/2 cup vegetable liquor
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
Cook the spinach according to package directions and drain. Save 1/2 cup of the vegetable liquor. Over low heat, melt the oleo in a saucepan. Add the flour. Stir until blended smooth. Do NOT brown. Add chopped onion; cook until the pieces are soft, but not brown. Add the vegetable liquor slowly, stirring constantly with a whisk. Add the evaporated milk. Cook and stir until smooth and thick. Add the seasonings and the cheese, whisking gently until the cheese is melted. Combine the sauce with the spinach. Place in a glass dish, top with breadcrumbs, and bake at 350 degrees until bubbly. If you make this a day ahead of time, and refrigerate it overnight, the flavor improves. 10
Charlaine Harris, Dead Giveaway
