8
Jim Bob was not a happy camper by any means. He sputtered threats and cursed steadily as Plover and I rounded up all the shoppers, ordered them to abandon their carts in mid-aisle, and sent them away bereft of bargains. The four employees gathered near the office door, awed equally by Plover's commando tactics and Jim Bob's command of the viler side of the King's English.
Once the door was locked, I went over to Jim Bob and said, "Go right ahead and call the sheriff. I've told you I cleared this with him beforehand. He's busy having his men question everyone who called to report nausea and pins, but he'll be here shortly. You can't keep selling merchandise until we figure out what in blazes is going on."
"I cannot believe this shit," Jim Bob groaned. "We open Saturday at two o'clock and at three we're closed down tighter than a rabbit's ass. We reopen not even twenty-four hours ago, and now we're closed down again. Is this some kind of friggin' conspiracy to keep the SuperSaver closed until we go broke? You working for somebody, Chief? Somebody who doesn't like the competition, for instance?"
"Shut up," Plover said as he came around the corner of the office. He looked at the huddle of high-school boys. "You all came to work yesterday afternoon and again this morning at seven, right?" They nodded. "Anyone missing who worked yesterday?" They shook their heads. "Go wait at the picnic tables in the pavilion. Someone from the sheriff's department will be there before too long to take your statements."
They reluctantly went toward the back of the store, leaving Jim Bob to grouse without an appreciative audience. When he lost momentum, I told him we'd have to question the night staff, too, since Kevin had bought the cupcakes and sponge cakes on his way out the door shortly after seven o'clock that morning.
I followed him into the office enclosure and waited impatiently as he threw papers here and there and made several graphic comments about my lineage, among other things. He at last found a notebook, opened it to the page with the schedules, and tossed it to me. "Are you saying one of these people diddled items on the shelf to try to kill half the town?"
The list was distressingly short: Buzz Milvin and Kevin Buchanon. I frowned at it for a minute. "No one else came into the store last night after it closed at nine o'clock?"
Jim Bob sat down at the desk and took a bottle of whiskey out of a drawer. "Nobody had any cause to. You'll have to ask Milvin.
"I will, but he can wait for the time being. According to the schedule, he's supposed to total the receipts and count the cash. Is there a safe here?"
"It hasn't been installed yet. I came by at ten-thirty to verify the figures and take the cash to the night depository at the bank in Starley City," he said, his face turning pale. He took a drink from the bottle, but it didn't seem to help. "I ended up sending Milvin to the bank because I was in a hurry."
"In a hurry to get home?"
Pale turned to outright pasty. "I had an appointment somewhere else. In Farberville."
"At eleven o'clock at night?"
"Yeah," he muttered. "Business."
"With Lamont Petrel, perhaps?" I said, wondering why he looked as if he was about to pass out. "As you know, he disappeared three days ago and the state police are conducting an investigation. In your statement to Sergeant Plover, you said you had no idea where Petrel is. If you had some sort of secret meeting with him last night, you'd better say so now."
"It wasn't with Petrel. I was…interviewing a checker." Several inches of whiskey gurgled down his throat.
"Oh, were you? She must be some potential checker to warrant the drive to Farberville that late at night. I'll have to have her name and address so I can verify this."
"This doesn't have anything to do with sticking pins in cupcakes-and you damn well know it!" he roared, a little of his customary charm returning along with his circulation. "If you know what's good for you, Chief Hanks, you'll just worry about whoever it is trying to ruin my store and stop pestering me. I got every right to do interviews when and where I choose."
"And I have every right to question everybody involved and verify stories," I said, taking an inordinate pleasure in the sweat popping out on his forehead like crystal zits. "Her name and address?"
"I don't reckon I recall offhand."
"I reckon you'd better try harder."
A loud rapping on the glass door interrupted any reckoning about to take place. I stuck my head out the office door, saw Mrs. Jim Bob arguing with Plover, and turned back with a bright look. "It's your wife. I suppose we could wait until she comes into the office, but it's your choice."
The whiskey bottle went back into the drawer. "Cherri Lucinda Crate, and she lives in that apartment house across from the airport. Top floor at the far end." Jim Bob tried to give me a nice smile, but his heart wasn't in it and the curl of his lips reminded me of an animal that'd been dead in the woods for several weeks. "Ain't no cause to go bothering her, though," he continued in a low voice. "She doesn't know anything about this."
"I should say not!" Mizzoner snapped as she came into the office. "I explained at great length to Eula Lemoy and to Dahlia O'Neill's granny that I for one cannot be held responsible for whatever funny business is going on in this store. Although I must say I fail to see anything funny about it." She turned on me with the fury of a goose defending its nest. "I want you to arrest Lamont Petrel, and I want you to do it before he poisons the remaining members of the missionary society. This has got to stop." I agreed, pointed out the slight difficulty in arresting Petrel at the moment, and left the two alone for a cozy chat. Plover was unlocking the door for Harve, Les Vernon, and two other deputies. We went down to the far end of the checkout counters, where Mrs. Jim Bob's shrill voice was less deafening.
Harve gave me a disgruntled look. "We talked to this last bunch of victims. All the tampered products were purchased this morning from the display by the register next to the office."
He scratched his head as he consulted a tattered stenographer's notebook. "We've had six reports thus far, and I'll call the dispatcher shortly. There haven't been any complaints on cupcakes and sponge cakes or anything else purchased yesterday evening, but that may not prove anything. The puke-provoking packages could have been put on the shelf last night or this morning."
"Kevin left the store at seven-fifteen," I said. "That narrows the time frame just a bit."
"There were a lot of folks in the store last night. As soon as we've interrogated the checkers, I'll get the list to you and you can start working on it. Les, you check the cake packages on the shelf for prints."
I felt slightly better that the perp list was now expanded to include more names, especially since I'd eliminated Kevin from contention and couldn't come up with a motive for Hizzoner, despite my best efforts. I suggested we examine the remaining stock for suspicious seals, and we fanned out for what became a tedious two-hour marathon of studying the underside of candy bars and corn-chip bags for telltale smears of glue-all without putting our own prints on top of someone else's, and as it turned out, all for naught, since none of us found anything.
We regrouped at the last register to listen to Deputy Vernon. Three packages of cupcakes had been pierced through the cellophane with straight pins. Two packages of cream-filled sponge cakes had been resealed, and sloppily at that. To our collective disappointment but not our great surprise, there was nary a print on any of the items.
Harve pointed at the beads of glue on one of the packages.