Dos Equis by Anthony Bidulka Read Free Book Online Page A

there’s alcohol around?
    “So you and Hilda were good friends?”
    “Oh, I don’t know if I’d say that,” she answered when she’d returned the bottle to its hiding place and sat back down. “But
    she was our nearest neighbour. Has been all my life. Her place is just over the hill to the north. Big place. She pretty much owns most of the land around here. Something like seventy quarters or more.
    “We weren’t best friends or nothing like that. But we were friendly. Like neighbours are friendly. At least in the country. We look after one another out here. She’d buy eggs from us every now and then. Our hens have always been better layers than hers.
    Don’t know why. They just are. So if she needed extra, for baking or company at Christmas or something like that, she’d call and ask if she could buy an extra dozen or so. I’d take them over there and we’d have coffee and talk sometimes.”
    “What was it about her death that made you think you needed to hire a detective, Millie?”
    “It’s what that doctor said. And the police. That she’d died from that food poisoning thing.”
    “Botulism.”
    “Another thing that country folk know about is that botulism. Used to be that people were afraid—city people, that is—they
    were afraid to eat home-canned food, because they thought they’d die from it if the canning wasn’t done right. But that was
    years and years and years ago. All you have to do is boil everything long enough and hot enough. It’s not hard. And let me tell you, if anyone knew how to preserve safely, it was Hilda Kraus. She would never make that kind of mistake. I’d stake my life on it. And besides, they say it was a jar of canned asparagus that did her in. There’s no way.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “Can’t grow asparagus around here. Comes up all reedy and woody. Must be the soil, I don’t know. But in all my days, I’ve
    never known Hilda to grow asparagus. Never mind can it.”
    “I suppose she might have bought it somewhere else. Like maybe at a Farmer’s Market or something like that.”
    Millie swigged her coffee/cocktail. “I suppose, but I doubt it. Besides all that, I had another reason for calling in Jane.”
    Excellent. “What was that?”
    “I know who killed Hilda.”
    Chapter 4
    “I saw the car.”
    “You saw the murderer’s car?” I asked, a little gobsmacked.
    “You see, I have to pass right by Hilda’s yard on my way to town. I go into town at least once a day. It was strange, the first time I saw her car…”
    “Her?”
    “Lynette. Hilda’s daughter.”
    Okay, wow. Millie was accusing Hilda’s own daughter of killing her. Matricide. Tsk tsk tsk. It was shocking. Unbelievable.
    So much so, that I wasn’t sure I believed it. And I certainly couldn’t begin to connect how a daughter killing her mother in Muenster could lead to Jane Cross being shot to death in Regina.
    “The first time I saw her car, it wasn’t even in the yard. She’d left it on the side of the road, just short of the driveway into the yard.”
    “Like maybe it had broken down or had a flat tire?”
    “Well, I suppose so. The next day, when I passed by, the car had been moved. It was in the yard, next to the house. Probably plugged in on account of how cold it was. The day after that it was gone. So I pretty much forgot about it. Until we heard about Hilda being found dead over there.”
    “What did you do then?”
    “Well, I told the police what I thought. But they couldn’t care less. They probably thought I was just another crazy old farm woman scared about her own imminent death from poisonous asparagus.” She chuffed at that and took a healthy swallow of
    coffee-flavoured Kahlúa.
    “What exactly did you tell the police, Millie?”
    “I told them everything I just told you. And I told them about Lynette, and how she and her mother never got along much. I
    know Lynette Kraus. Known her all her life. She was as spoiled as spoiled comes. They gave that child