Swan for the Money: A Meg Langslow Mystery

pointing to Mrs. Winkleson’s fallen old fashioned glass. “And the food, too.”
    “Can do, chief,” Horace said.
    I backed away to let the experts do their job. Both sets. Dad and Dr. Smoot were soon joined by the two EMTs, one of them hastily stuffing a last crab croquette into his mouth. Chief Burke, assisted by Horace and Sammy, bagged the food, glass, and plate Mrs. Winkleson had dropped and cordoned off the bar. A few people protested about the bar closing until they heard the sound of Mrs. Winkleson vomiting again, and then one by one people began peering at their glasses and sidling over to tables and sideboards to put them down.
    “Looks like she ate quite a few of those crab puffs,” Horace remarked. Since the only way he could have known that was if the crab puffs were once again visible, I deduced he was bagging the vomit for evidence. Better him than me.
    Chief Burke came over to me.
    “Can you stop the food service?” he asked. “And stay in the kitchen to keep the caterers and staff there till I can get some more officers here to help process the scene?”
    “Roger,” I said. I gathered I wasn’t quite the prime suspect. I looked around for help.
    “No thank you, dear,” Mother was saying to one of the waiters. “They were lovely, but I think I’ve had enough.”
    “Yes,” I said, strolling over to them. “I think everyone’s had enough crab puffs for now. Chief Burke wants them and all the wait staff in the kitchen. Can you help?”
    “Of course, dear,” she said. She sailed off to gather the rest of the waiters. It wasn’t hard to spot them. People were beginning to back away from the hors d’oeuvre trays as if they were radioactive. I led the puzzled waiter toward the kitchen. Our path went by the fallen Mrs. Winkleson, and I caught bits of the conversation between Dad, Dr. Smoot, and the EMTs.
    “—the telltale bitter almond scent,” Dr. Smoot was saying.
    “I don’t have the gene to smell it,” one of the EMTs said. “But if you have—”
    “Yes, definitely,” Dad said. “Margaret, you weren’t serving crab almondine, were you?”
    “No, dear,” Mother said. “If you smell almonds, don’t blame my poor crab croquettes.”
    “It’s very strong,” Dr. Smoot said.
    “I’ll take your word for it. Oxygen, then?”
    “Stat.”
    “Cyanide,” I said, nodding.
    “What’s that?” the waiter asked.
    “She was probably poisoned with cyanide,” I explained. “It smells like almonds. I gather they suspect the hors d’oeuvres.”
    The waiter looked askance at his tray, and held it a little farther from his body.
    I held the kitchen door open for him, and then stepped into the room myself. I blinked in surprise for a moment. The room was about the size of my high school auditorium, and looked about the way the auditorium had looked when decorated for a Halloween dance. Of course Mrs. Winkleson would continue her color scheme into the kitchen, but since it permitted white as well as black, why on earth had she felt it necessary to haveblack painted walls, black tile floors, black cabinets with black granite tops, and gleaming black appliances? I more than half expected to see Grandma Addams stirring a bubbling cauldron in the corner while Morticia looked on approvingly.
    But now was not the time to gape at the latest evidence of Mrs. Winkleson’s lunacy.
    “Everyone stop what you’re doing, and take a seat,” I said, projecting from the diaphragm again. “Police orders.”
    “What do you mean, stop what we’re doing?” A woman in a Caerphilly Catering uniform strode over and planted herself in my path, hands on hips. “If we don’t keep the hors d’oeuvres moving—”
    “There’s been a poisoning,” I said.
    “Oh, my.” Her mouth dropped open and she pressed her hands to either side of it, in a fair imitation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream .
    Silence fell over the whole room— at least until someone at the far end of the kitchen dropped a tray full of champagne glasses. The noise seemed to snap the head caterer out of her shock.
    “You’re not accusing us of doing it,” she said. “I won’t stand for—”
    “Don’t worry,” Mother said, appearing in the doorway. “I’m sure no one here has any such idea.”
    “And I know Chief Burke wants to do everything by the book to make sure no one who’s innocent falls under suspicion,” I said. “So everyone please stop doing whatever you’re doing and wait until he gets