Henry Hoopengartner, the coroner, arrived and showed some mild interest in what we'd discovered. “Looks like we caught ourselves a rat,” he remarked.
“We didn't catch anybody, Henry,” I retorted. “The man is dead.”
“I can see that,” he said. “Question is how?”
“Why don't you examine the body and find out?” I snapped.
“Good idea. Wish I'd thought of that.” He grinned and slowly moved toward the still carousel.
I stayed behind while he took his camera over to the carousel and snapped flash pictures from different angles. “Okay,” he announced. “I'm ready to examine him. Luscious, can you give me a hand?”
I could sense Luscious's reluctance, but he knew his job and was up to it. Choosing not to observe the coroner at work, I concentrated on picking up the scattered gutta-percha jewelry and daguerreotype cases and rewrapping them in the crumpled newspaper pages, torn from the Chronicle. At least one of our subscribers had recycled!
Having finished my tidying up, I peeked out to see what was happening and wished I hadn't. I sat down on the high stool and surveyed the workroom. Darious and I had had one thing in common: We both survived on junk food. The worktable was covered with the remnants of former meals: two pizza boxes, a bakery box, half a dozen Chinese food carry-out containers, and many soda cans, as well as pieces of the carousel in various stages of repair. A horse's jeweled bridle lay waiting for Darious's hand to restore it to glory. Next to it was the picture of me from the Chronicle that Darious had framed, and I decided to take it with me. I wasn't really removing evidence, I told myself, because it didn't have anything to do with the crime. I slipped the cardboard back off the frame, and as it came out, so did a picture. Only it wasn't of me; it was a snapshot of Gloria Zimmerman, the animal control officer who lived with Moonbeam Nakamura. And it was signed LOVE ALWAYS, GLORIA. I folded it along with my picture and stuck both of them in my pocket. I had some questions to ask Gloria the next time I saw her.
Absentmindedly, I pushed aside the overflowing ashtray that offended my senses of sight and smell, and as I glanced at it, I realized where I'd seen similar cigarette butts recently. On the floor of Ethelind's parlor, where they had ignited a pile of my clothing that should not have been there. I hadn't thought much about it at the time of the fire, but now I recalled that Ethelind smoked only ugly brown cigarettes that resembled miniature cigars, not common American filter cigarettes like these.
I searched the workroom like a crazy woman, looking for flammable liquids, and of course I found many. I eliminated turpentine as being too smelly. Ditto lighter fluid, gasoline, and kerosene. The fire chief would have identified any of them immediately. Finally, I came upon a large drum containing seventy percent solution hydrogen peroxide, with a warning on the label saying it was an oxidizer, which would initiate combustion in other materials by causing fire through release of oxygen. I was afraid to open it, but as far as I knew, peroxide had no recognizable odor.
Darious was not only a common thief-there was also the strong possibility he had tried to murder me!
I frantically pulled open drawers, dumping contents of the desk and file cabinets on the floor. I found what I was looking for jammed into a box on a shelf, hidden behind a carved rooster head. A long blue skirt, blouse, white apron, and a white cornette, its angel-like wings crushed and sagging. Now I was sure Darious had not only set fire to my house, he'd also shoved me over the bannister at the college. Only by dumb luck had I survived either attempt to kill me.
But why? Why me? What had I ever done to him? The questions spun through my head, but the answers did not come.
CHAPTER 19
CASSIE HAD RUSHED OVER TO BE WITH ME AFTER I called her from the mansion. She intercepted the visitors who arrived in a constant stream bearing offerings of casseroles and cakes. In Lickin Creek, misery was a magnet, pulling people I'd never seen before to my back door.
“Let's put it on the dining room table,” she suggested, surveying the quantities of food that covered the kitchen counter. “That way you can serve a buffet lunch.”
“To whom?” I asked, following behind her with my arms laden down with Pyrex dishes. “Just who do you think is going to be here for lunch?”
“You never know,” she said cryptically, making a small pile of paper plates near the edge of the table.
The first to arrive was Luscious Miller, accompanied by a stranger, a small man in an ill-fitting gray suit who reminded me of a mourning dove-no chin, pouffy chest, and scrawny legs.
“Like you to meet John Strainge,” Luscious said once they were inside.
“That's spelled S-T-R-A-I -N-G-E,” the man said as he shook my hand.
“Strange spelling,” I said. He didn't smile. I guess he'd heard that one before.
Before Luscious could tell me why the strange Strainge man was there, the door swung open and Henry Hoopengartner entered.
“Please come in,” I said.
“I already am in,” Henry said, not getting it. Cassie wiped the smile from her lips and removed a dish of baked lasagna from the oven.
“Everything's ready,” she announced.
“Would you like to have lunch?” I asked the three men.
Of course they would. In fact, they followed Cassie like the children of Hamelin following the Pied Piper.
As the men loaded their plates with food, I heard knocking at the back door. “That would be Chief Yoder,” Luscious explained. “I asked him to drop by.”
The fire chief was already inside by the time I reached the kitchen. And, “Yes, I would like a bite to eat, thank you.”
The six of us sat down in Ethelind's large front parlor, the one that had been recently refurbished due to fire. Henry and Mr. Strainge sat on the modern couch that Ethelind had unwillingly bought to replace the charred Empire sofa. It was much nicer to lie on but not nearly as elegant-looking. Cassie and I sat side by side on the piano bench, while Luscious and the fire chief took the carved rosewood chairs that I knew from experience were even more uncomfortable than they looked.
I picked at my food and waited for the men to tell me why they were there. Surely they hadn't just dropped in for lunch! They appeared to be in no hurry as they all went back for second helpings.
After a long, quiet interval, where the only sounds to be heard were the sounds of chewing, lip smacking, and an occasional dainty belch, Cassie asked if anyone would like to have dessert.
“What do ya got?” Chief Yoder asked.
“Pumpkin, apple, shoofly and Montgomery pie, molasses cake, cornstarch cake, cracker pudding, cherry fritters, and sticky buns. Shall I continue?”
“No sticky buns for me,” Henry Hoopengartner said with a shudder. “That's what that poor bastard was eating when his throat was cut.”
Luscious shook his head solemnly. “Just imagine, you're sitting there, quietly minding your own business, when zap…”
“Looks like he tried to grab the guy behind him. All he managed to do was yank out a big hunk of his own hair. It was right there in his hand.” Henry smiled at me as if talking about a man's death throes was normal at mealtime.
“Please!” I screamed. “I don't want to hear this.”
“Sorry,” the two men said in unison.
“Why don't you tell me who Mr. Strainge is, and what he's doing here today,” I said.
Luscious nodded. “Okay. But first, let me explain how he got here.”
“Whenever you're ready,” I said.
“After I got back to the office, I got to thinking that a working merry-go-round was a real peculiar thing to find in a barn. And because all them things in the boxes was stolen, I thought maybe the merry-go-round was stolen, too. So I called my nephew Sam and asked him to check the Internet and see if he could find something out.”