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

were asking that question. “It’s almost like
Murder on the Orient Express
.”
    “Only they don’t play well with others, these killers,” I said. “Since we have three or four separate attempts to kill her instead of one coordinated effort.”
    “Can we reconstruct a sequence of events from this?” the chief asked.
    “A hypothetical one,” Dad said. “Either Ramon or Bronwyn or both doctored her tea with what they claim was sleeping medicine—probably Ramon’s Valium. The order in which they did it doesn’t matter, since she’d have ingested both at the same time. Sometime later, after she had ingested some tea and presumably fallen asleep due to the Valium, she was injected with insulin. And sometime after that, she was hit over the head with the statue—an attack that would have been fatal if she hadn’t been already dead when it occurred.”
    “You’re forgetting one possibility,” the chief said. “We know these people claim to have put Valium in her tea, and we know there was Valium around for them to use, but what if one or both of them drugged her tea with something other than Valium? Señor Mendoza’s heart medicine, for example. Maybe the insulin was unnecessary too. Maybe she was already dead or dying when they gave her the insulin. We won’t be able to tell until the tox screen comes back.”
    “Not for sure,” Dad said. “But I’ll tell you what I bet we’ll find. May I show you something?”
    He had pulled out his iPhone and was waving it about.
    I cringed. Dad’s iPhone was a relatively new acquisition and he was still consumed with the zeal of the recent convert, always trying to find new ways to make use of his expensive little toy. But now was not the time to show it off to the chief.
    “If it’s relevant,” the chief said. “I mean, if there’s a reason I should not arrest Señor Mendoza for the murder of Professor Wright, I’d like to hear it.”
    “Are you serious?” Dad asked anxiously.
    “Of course not,” the chief said. “If I thought the old guy really had bludgeoned her with the statue, I’d have already arrested him, no matter how distinguished he is in Spain. Just because she wasn’t alive when someone hit her doesn’t mean it wasn’t attempted murder. Or if I really believed he was the one who poisoned her, I’d bring him back and question him some more.”
    “Poison doesn’t seem like his style,” I said. “A sword, maybe, or pistols at dawn, but nothing subtle like poison.”
    “And he’s probably the least likely of anyone here to have the inside knowledge that a potentially deadly vial of insulin was in her bag.”
    “He’s the least likely suspect for any of what went on,” the chief said.
    “He was hanging around the kitchen during the time someone drugged Dr. Wright’s tea,” I said. “He could have done that. Or seen it done, or just suspected someone used his pills. Ormaybe he confessed so implausibly to the bludgeoning because he put his heart pills in her tea and wanted to make himself look implausible as a suspect.”
    “Yes, but even if Señor Mendoza put his heart pills in her tea, that couldn’t possibly have killed her,” Dad said.
    “And just how do you figure that?” the chief said.
    “They’re not digoxin.”
    “Not digoxin?” the chief said. “How do you know? And if they’re not digoxin, what are they?”
    “They’re not any kind of heart medicine I’ve ever seen. Wrong size, shape, and color.”
    “Couldn’t they be the Spanish versions?”
    “Most common pharmaceuticals are pretty international these days,” Dad said. “And I did some research to see if these could be a variant more common in Europe, but they weren’t. So whether Señor Mendoza or anyone else put them in her tea is irrelevant. They’re almost certainly not what killed her.”
    “How can you be sure?” the chief asked. “I mean, even if they’re not digitalis, they could be something else toxic.”
    “Well, we won’t know anything for sure until the autopsy,” Dad said. “And until the analysis of those pills comes back. But I can hazard a guess. When I first went into medicine, it was pretty easy to tell what a pill was. Not that many meds and only a few manufacturers. These days, there are so many more drugs, plus all the generics—it can be impossible to tell for sure. That’s why I have this nifty little application on my iPhone that’s designed to help doctors identify meds in an emergency. Would you like