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

kettle on the stove and realized I hadn’t told the chief everything I knew.
    I ducked out into the hall, fished my cell phone out of my pocket, and called the chief.
    “I thought of something I should have told you,” I said. “Idon’t know how I overlooked it—except when I was telling you about what happened, I thought Dr. Wright had been killed with the statue. So the tea didn’t seem important.”
    “What tea?”
    I glanced up to make sure there was no one in the living room and cupped my hand around the cell phone.
    “The weak tea Dr. Wright drank, along with her dry toast. Rose Noire made it for her,” I said as softly as possible. “I think that might be how she got the poison.”
    A pause.
    “You think your cousin poisoned Dr. Wright?”
    “Good heavens, no! She wouldn’t poison a fly. At least not deliberately.” I thought, briefly, of all those noxious healthy drinks she kept bringing me. But that didn’t really count.
    “Then why do you think I should know about the tea?”
    “She was making it in the kitchen,” I said. “Weak tea and light toast. I wasn’t there the whole time she was doing it, but when I was there, she was fussing nonstop about how rude and obnoxious Dr. Wright was and making it clear how much she resented having to take a tea tray to her.”
    “And there were other people in the kitchen?”
    “There are always other people in the kitchen,” I said. “The kitchen and the library are where people hang out, and just then Dr. Wright was tying up the library. So anyone could have been in the kitchen. And Rose Noire wasn’t just brewing tea and slopping it into a mug; she was running from the kitchen to the pantry, arranging the sort of gracious tea tray Mother always insists on.”
    “Yes, I saw it in the library,” the chief said. “The black china made a nice, gruesome touch in the crime scene photos. Did anyone help Rose Noire?”
    “Not that I saw,” I said. “But everyone would have known who it was for, and anyone who wanted to spike the tea or the sugar bowl would have had plenty of chances while Rose Noire was fussing over the napkins and arranging the flowers.”
    Another pause. A long pause.
    “So if the poison is in the tea—” he began.
    “Or the toast, or the sugar bowl, or anything else on the tray.”
    “—you want me to know that Rose Noire didn’t do it.”
    “I want you to know that Rose Noire isn’t the only one who could have done it,” I said. “That’s all. And that she might have some idea about who was hanging around and had the opportunity.”
    “Thank you,” he said. “Anything else?”
    “All I can think of for now,” I said.
    “Thank you,” he said. “Now get some rest.”
    It sounded like an order. And, while he probably wouldn’t believe it, an order I planned to obey.
    As soon as I figured out what the loud voices in the kitchen were all about.

Chapter 13
     
    I stuck my head back into the kitchen. The last few of its former occupants were filing out—Ramon Soto, Bronwyn Jones, and Dr. Blanco, supervised by Sammy and a deputy I recognized as one of Randall Shiffley’s cousins.
    “I insist that you present my request to Chief Burke immediately,” Blanco was saying to the deputies. He could have used some speech lessons. His voice, normally rather high and thin, had a tendency to squeak when he tried to raise it in emphasis.
    “I’ll do that, sir,” Sammy said. “I’m sure he’ll get to you as soon as possible.”
    “I have a very busy day,” Blanco said. “And this disruption is intolerable!”
    Ramon muttered something in Spanish. Bronwyn tittered. Blanco shot him a dirty look but didn’t reply. He strode out the back door, presumably to join the rest of the suspects in the barn.
    “What a jerk,” Ramon said. “Thinks he’s more important than everybody else.”
    I’d have diagnosed Blanco as having an inferiority complex myself.
    “Mr. Soto?” Sammy said. “Chief’s waiting.”
    “Right,” he said. Head down, shoulders hunched, he stumbled toward the door to the hall. Sammy followed him.
    “See her out to the barn, will you?” he said over his shoulder to Deputy Shiffley.
    The door closed. Bronwyn turned to stare at me and the deputy with arms crossed and a frown on her face.
    “Don’t look at me,” I said. I looked longingly at the refrigerator. I’d intended to rummage in it for something suitable to eat. At the moment, suitable meant anything my temporarily picky appetite