A Peach of a Murder Read online

  “It’s hot out here,” Mike pointed out. “Everybody’s sweating.”

  Determinedly; `Phyllis said, “Yes, but it seemed a little worse with Donnie. And he was drinking a lot from his water bottle, like he was dehydrated.”

  Calvin frowned. “Heatstroke, maybe.”

  From his kneeling position beside the body, Ted said, “Heatstroke victims are usually flushed. Look at his face, Calvin. It’s got a bluish tinge, not red.”

  “Blue?” Calvin repeated as he knelt at Donnie’s side, too. “That’s usually an indication of …”

  He didn’t go on, and Phyllis said, “An indication of what, Calvin?”

  The big EMT didn’t answer. He just looked up and said, “Mike, can you get some other cops and move all the people back? We’re gonna have to get an ambulance up here.”

  “Sure.” Several officers from the Weatherford Police Department were on the scene by now, and Mike relayed Calvin’s request to them. The officers spread out and began urging the crowd to step back and give the emergency personnel some room.

  “What about the contest?” Carolyn asked. “The judges hadn’t announced a winner yet. They hadn’t even tasted all the entries yet.”

  Harley Sewell said, “It looks like there won’t be a winner this year, Miz Wilbarger. I don’t see how we can go on without Donnie.”

  Carolyn looked like she wanted to argue, but then she clamped her lips tightly shut. Clearly she didn’t like the decision, but it would have looked awfully insensitive if she insisted that the contest go on even though one of the judges had just dropped dead.

  The terrible thing, Phyllis thought, was that she almost felt the same way. Of course she was song about what had happened to Donnie, whether it turned out to be a stroke or a heart attack or some other medical problem, but after all the weeks of preparation, it was a terrible letdown to know that there wouldn’t be a winner this year. She understood why the other judges didn’t want to continue, though.

  For one thing, they might be afraid that whatever had happened to Donnie would happen to them, too. They didn’t want to be taken down by a killer cobbler. Phyllis noticed that none of them had finished the samples in their bowls, but had instead placed them back on the table and unobtrusively pushed them away.

  Sam, Eve, and Mattie made their way to Phyllis’s side, although they had to go around quite a distance because of the large area directly in front of the tables that had been cleared by the police. When they reached Phyllis, Eve clutched her hand and said, “This is just terrible, dear.”

  “My cobbler didn’t do it,” Phyllis said. Eve stared at her. “What?”

  “I said, my cobbler didn’t kill Donnie.” Phyllis’s jaw tightened. “No matter what Carolyn says!”

  Sam said diplomatically, “Well, I don’t guess she meant it quite that way.”

  “You all heard her,” Phyllis cut in. “She accused me of killing Donnie Boatwright with my cobbler!” Phyllis knew her voice had risen a little, but she couldn’t seem to do anything to stop it.

  Sarah was still standing there holding Bobby. She said quickly, “Nobody thinks that, Phyllis. We all saw it with our own eyes. It was just a coincidence that.”

  “That Donnie fell over dead just as he finished eating Phyllis’s contest entry?” Carolyn asked as she came up. Phyllis’s eyes narrowed and she traded glares with Carolyn. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Sure, there was a rivalry between them over the cooking contest. An intense rivalry, a person could call it. Maybe even, on occasion, a bitter rivalry. But the two of them were friends for the rest of the year, and had been for a long time. For goodness sake, Phyllis thought, Carolyn even lives in my house! Why was she trying to hurt her and ruin her reputation by saying those terrible things about her cooking killing somebody?

  “Dear, perhaps you’d better not say anything else,” Eve told Carolyn.

  “I’m just saying what we all saw with our own eyes,” Carolyn said stubbornly. “Donnie ate Phyllis’s cobbler, and he dropped dead!”

  Mike stepped up and in an unusually formal tone said, “That’s enough, Mrs. Wilbarger. Everyone’s upset already, and there’s no point in making things worse.”

  Carolyn leveled a cold stare at him. “Are you speaking as a sheriff’s deputy, Mike … or as Phyllis’s son?”

  “Take it whichever way you want, ma’am.”

  Phyllis admired Mike for sticking up for her, but she didn’t want him to be rude and disrespectful to Carolyn-no matter how obnoxious Carolyn was being.

  The loud wail of a siren made all of them turn to look as an ambulance with its lights flashing circled the courthouse, bumped up over the curb, and came across the lawn toward the tables. When it came to a stop, more paramedics hopped out, and they all gathered around Donnie’s body, lifting it onto a stretcher and then placing it in the back of the ambulance. Calvin shut the doors and shook his head solemnly.

  He motioned for Mike to come over and join him and Ted. The three of them huddled together, and after a minute they were joined by Weatherford Chief of Police Ralph Whitmire, who had just reached the scene. Since Donnie’s death had taken place within the city limits-about as much in the city limits as you could get, Phyllis thought, since they were in the middle of the downtown square-Chief Whitmire would be in charge of whatever investigation was carried out. Phyllis assumed there would be an autopsy, since Donnie’s death had been not only sudden but also unexplained, but she was sure that would uncover the reason for his unexpected collapse. He had been over eighty years old, after all. Such things happened, sad though they were.

  The ambulance pulled away and with its siren still howling, headed down South Main Street toward the hospital. There was no real hurry, of course, since it was much too late to do anything for Donnie, but Phyllis supposed the driver was anxious to get there, anyway.

  She realized that the other three judges had wandered off somewhere. They had probably left deliberately so that nobody could pressure them to continue with the contest. She sighed and said, “I guess everybody might as well pack up their contest entries and go home.” She reached for the glass lid, intending to put it back on the dish that contained the rest of the cobbler.

  Mike saw what she was doing and stepped quickly away from Calvin, Ted, and Chief Whitmire. “Wait a minute, Mom;,’ he said. “You can’t do that.”

  Phyllis frowned. “Well, why in the world not? I don’t want to leave the rest of this cobbler sitting around uncovered.” “You can’t disturb any of that stuff.” He raised his voice

  and called to the people behind the tables, “Everyone just leave your contest entries right where they are, please.” Sam motioned toward the half-eaten samples that the judges had set on the table. “What about those?” he asked. “I was just about to gather them up and put them in one of the garbage cans.”

  Mike shook his head. “You can’t do that, either. Everything has to stay just like it is.”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed, and he studied Mike suspiciously for a few seconds before he said, “You know, Mike, it sounds to me a whole lot like you’re treating this as a crime scene.”

  “A crime scene!” Eve said. “But that’s ridiculous.” Phyllis thought so, too, but she knew Sam was right. Mike didn’t want them touching the food because it might be evidence, and you couldn’t have evidence without a crime. Well, you could, but that certainly wasn’t the way Mike was acting. For that matter, Calvin and Ted and Chief Whitmire were awfully grim-faced, too, as they came over to the table.

  The chief nodded to her and touched the brim of his hat politely, then said, “This cobbler right here was what Mr. Boatwright was eating before he collapsed?”

  “He had finished his sample,” Phyllis said. She pointed to the table. “There’s the empty bowl right there.”

  “Yes, ma’am. You’ll have to leave everything here until we’ve finished our investigation.”

  Phyllis felt a little dizzy herself, but not for the same reason Donnie had. She just c
ouldn’t believe what she was hearing. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think that the police chief was taking Carolyn’s crazy comments seriously.

  Forcing herself to remain calm, Phyllis said, “Why are you doing this, Chief? Donnie Boatwright was an old man. I know you have to find out what caused his death, but surely you can’t suspect any sort of … of foul play!” She hated the way that sounded, like she was on one of those police TV shows.

  Chief Whitmire just looked across the table at her and said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Newsom, but from what Holloway and Brady tell me, there’s a good chance Mr. Boatwright was poisoned.”

  And that, Phyllis thought as she struggled to calm her clamoring mind, would make it murder.

  Chapter 15

  An uneasy silence hung over the living room of Phyllis’s house later that afternoon as the four women-and Sam sat there. Mike had promised to drop by as soon as he could, to let them know how the investigation into Donnie Boatwright’s death was going, but they had no way of knowing when he would get there.

  Down on the square, the peach festival continued. One tragic death, even that of someone as well-known as Donnie, wasn’t enough to make the festivities come to more than a temporary halt. Once the ambulance was gone, everybody had returned to what they were doing before the commotion broke out. The only indications that something had happened were the yellow police department tape strung around the site of the cooking contest and the presence of an unusual number of officers in that area.

  Finally unable to stand the awkward silence any longer, Phyllis declared to the room at large, “I didn’t poison him, you know.”

  “Of course you didn’t, dear,” Eve said quickly.

  “I’m not a murderer.” Phyllis leveled a glare in Carolyn’s direction.

  Carolyn glared right back. “I never said you were a murderer. I never even thought that. It must have been an accident. You put something in your cobbler you shouldn’t have.”

  “There was nothing in that cobbler that could kill anybody!” Phyllis insisted.

  Mattie spoke up, saying, “All this fussin’. It just doesn’t make sense. Donnie was an old man. His heart gave out, more than likely. No sense in fussin’ over it.”

  “That makes the most sense to me, too,” Sam put in. “You’ll see. When Mike gets here, he’ll tell us they’ve decided that Mr. Boatwright died of a heart attack or something like that.”

  Carolyn gave a dubious snort.

  Phyllis tried to ignore her. “I don’t know. Donnie was acting awfully strange just before he keeled over. And not once did he grab his chest or anything like that. Isn’t that what you do when you have a heart attack?”

  “That’s what people do on TV,” Sam said. “It might not always be like that in real life.”

  “There’s not really any point in speculating,” Eve put in. “We’ll just have to wait and see what the police and the doctors find out.”

  Phyllis knew Eve was right, but waiting was hard. Especially when, no matter how much she denied it, deep down a part of her worried that she had somehow caused Donnie’s death. As she sat there, she went over in her mind again and again the steps she had taken and the ingredients she had used in preparing the cobbler that morning….

  There was nothing, she finally decided, nothing in it that could have hurt anybody. The other judges had eaten it, too, and they hadn’t died. At least, they hadn’t gotten sick there at the festival, and she hadn’t heard anything about any of them falling ill later.

  A heart attack, a stroke, things like that were the only possibilities that made any sense, no matter what color Donnie’s face had been.

  The sound of a car door slamming outside made everyone look up. Phyllis got to her feet and went to the front door, opening it to look out. It was late afternoon by now evening, really, and shadows had started to gather under the big trees in the front yard. There was still plenty of light, though, to reveal the worried expression on Mike’s face as he came up the concrete walk toward the house.

  Phyllis pushed the screen door open as Mike climbed the steps to the porch. “Come in,” she said. “Can I get you something?”

  “No thanks, Mom,” he said as he stepped into the living room. “Sarah will have supper waiting for me by the time I get home. I just wanted to stop by, like I told you I would, and let you know what we found out.”

  “Sit down.” Phyllis realized just how nervous she really was as she steered Mike toward one of the sofas and then perched on the front of the cushion next to him. Everyone else in the room leaned forward, anxious to hear what he had to say. Phyllis couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Was it a heart attack?”

  Mike shook his head. “No, the autopsy ruled out a coronary. Dr. Lee said Mr. Boatwright’s heart was in good shape for a man his age. It wasn’t a stroke, either.”

  “Then what was it?” Carolyn demanded.

  Mike sighed and said, “Poison, just like we thought. Cyanide; to be precise. That blue tinge to his face was a strong indicator of cyanotic poisoning, and that turned out to be right.”

  Phyllis closed her eyes for a second and felt dizzy again. But when she opened them, she took a deep breath and forced herself to remain calm. “There’s no way I put any cyanide in that cobbler,” she said. “I know every ingredient that went in it, and cyanide just wasn’t one of them!”

  Mike let himself smile a little. “No, the poison wasn’t in your cobbler, Mom,” he told her. “You can stop worrying about that. We gathered up all the, contest entries and tested them, and there was no cyanide or anything else bad in any of them.”

  Phyllis turned her head to look at Carolyn, as if to say See?

  Carolyn got the message, because she said indignantly, “Well, what did you expect me to think? The way Donnie fell over as soon as he finished that cobbler of yours, any reasonable person might think that it killed him.”

  “I didn’t,” Sam said, and Phyllis could have kissed him for it. “The thought never crossed my mind.”

  Eve added, “I never believed it, either.” Mattie just shook her head solemnly.

  “I see,” Carolyn said. “You’re all ganging up on me, are you?” She got to her feet. “Well, I don’t have to sit here and take it.” She started to march toward the stairs.

  Phyllis wanted to stop her. She felt a little vindicated, of course, but she didn’t want it to ruin her friendship with Carolyn. Even though she was still a little mad at her for saying those things, she had seen the hurt in Carolyn’s eyes and knew that to her, at least, it did seem like they were all turning on her.

  But before Phyllis could say anything, Mike spoke up again. “Uh, Miz Wilbarger, if you could sit back down, please? I still need to talk to all of you.”

  Carolyn paused at the bottom of the stairs and asked, “What about?”

  “About Mr. Boatwright’s death. It’s going to be officially declared a murder, and everybody who was there has to be questioned.”

  “Everybody at the peach festival?” Phyllis said. “That’s going to be an awfully big job!”

  “No, not everybody who was at the festival. Just the folks who talked to Mr. Boatwright or were around him when he died.” With a rueful expression on his face, Mike shrugged. “And yeah, even that is going to be a big job. But I told Chief Whitmire I’d take statements from the five of you. The Weatherford police and the sheriff’s department will be working together pretty closely on this.”

  Reluctantly, Carolyn went back to her chair and sat down. “I don’t see why you need to question me,” she said. “I can’t tell you anything that will help. Donnie was past my place in the contest before he collapsed.”

  Sam leaned forward and clasped his big hands together between his knees. “Let me ask you a question, Mike, if that’s allowed.”

  “Sure, Mr. Fletcher, go ahead.”

  “You said the poison wasn’t in any of the contest entries. If that’s true, how did it get into Donnie Boatwright?” Phyllis’s eyes widened as a thought o
ccurred to her. “His water bottle!” she exclaimed.

  Mike turned his head to look at her and nodded. “That’s exactly right. We found amygdalin in the little bit of water that was left in the bottle.”

  “I thought you said he was poisoned with cyanide,” Eve said.

  Mike nodded again. “It was hydrogen cyanide that killed him, all right, but that was because he had ingested a lot of amygdalin. That converts to hydrogen cyanide in the human digestive system.” With a humorless chuckle, he spread his hands and continued, “I’m no chemist or forensic scientist, you understand. I’m just repeating what Dr. Lee told us.”

  Phyllis knew that Dr. Walt Lee was the county coroner; as well as being in private practice. He was Phyllis’s doctor, in fact, as well as Mattie’s and Eve’s. She had faith in whatever conclusions he drew.