Stork Raving Mad: A Meg Langslow Mystery (A Meg Lanslow Mystery)

because Spike swallowed one, and we were worried about what it would do to him.”
    “He mentioned Spike might have swallowed something,” the chief said. “But just then Sammy came running in with Hawkeye, so I never heard the details.”
    “Anyway, there were pills all over the front hall and probably still are some. I hope Clarence keeps Spike until we can give the hall a thorough vacuuming. You might not know what they were—unless you talked to any of the dozens of people who saw what happened. But—”
    “Did the pills look something like this?” he asked. He held up a small yellowish-white pill.
    “Yes,” I said. “I didn’t know you had a heart problem.”
    “I don’t.” He tucked the pill back in his pocket. “I almost stepped on this in your foyer when I first arrived. So we make sure the tox screen looks for digitalis.”
    He glanced up and caught me suppressing a yawn.
    “You should rest,” he said.
    “If you’re finished with me, I could certainly use a nap,” I said.
    “Take care of yourself,” he said, shooing me in the direction of the door. “If you think of anything else, you let me know after your nap.”
    “Will do,” I said.
    I made my way down the long hallway, wondering all the while what it would take to install one of those rolling walkways they used in airports to move passengers from one end of the terminal to the other. Probably not very useful in the long run, so I returned to trying to figure out how we could install an elevator without ruining the look of the front hallway.
    I was still thinking about the elevator when I found myself at the bottom of the stairs. To my surprise, the siren call of my nice, comfortable bed wasn’t as strong as it had been a fewminutes ago. Okay, my eyelids were still drooping, but I was also dying to find out what all those witnesses, suspects, and innocent bystanders were up to in our kitchen.
    And also to my surprise, I was hungry. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten—breakfast? Had I had a midmorning snack? Even if I had, odds were it was time for lunch.
    I braced myself in case the kitchen still reeked of seafood and flung open the door.
    Dozens of anxious faces looked at me. And I seemed to have interrupted a migration in process. People were slowly filing out the back door, many of them carrying kitchen chairs. Sammy was standing by the door, holding a clipboard, supervising the departure.
    “What’s up?” I asked.
    “Chief’s orders,” Sammy said. “He said he wants everybody out of his crime scene until Horace has a chance to check it out, and until Horace says otherwise, the whole house is the crime scene. So we’re taking everyone out to the barn.”
    Wasn’t the chief worried that some of these people—including the poisoner—might begin to suspect that he had a particular interest in the kitchen?
    “He’s probably just tired of people sneaking out of the kitchen and coming to the library to bother him,” I said.
    Sammy chuckled slightly.
    “You could be right,” he said. “We’ll have an easier time keeping them out of his hair if they aren’t in the house.”
    I wasn’t sure how much evidence they’d find in the kitchen, though, even if the murderer had done something there to poisonDr. Wright. Clearly someone had made a start at cleaning it. Probably Rose Noire, who cleaned furiously whenever she had to get something out of her system—like Dr. Wright’s rude treatment of her.
    Though it would be interesting to see if anyone had insisted on helping her.
    “By the way, I was sorry to hear about Hawkeye,” I said to Sammy. “How is he?”
    His face fell.
    “He’ll be fine, thanks to Clarence and your dad,” he said. “But I’m worried that we won’t be able to catch the guy who did it, with all this going on. All our officers are here, and I’m not sure the state police are really taking the search seriously.”
    “Hey, if you got enough information for any kind of a search, that’s good, right?” I asked.
    “It was a dark blue SUV,” he said. “But I only got a partial license plate. Debbie Anne’s going to get the DMV to give us a list of possible vehicles, but the more time passes, the smaller our chances of getting useful evidence.”
    I didn’t know what to say, so I patted him on the shoulder. I understood why the chief was putting all his officers on the murder investigation. But I also understood how Sammy felt about his dog.
    Just then I spotted the tea