Old Poison by Joan Francis Read Free Book Online Page B

stuck his head through the curtain to
the front of the booth and asked, “Judy, we still have some Number
Ten on ice?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where?”
    “In the ice chest, of course.”
    “Ah, which one?”
    Through the opening I could see Judy’s face
and almost laughed out loud. Her expression was one of both
exasperation and resignation. “You want me to come and do it?”
    Ken gave her a little boy grin.
“Please.”
    She came into the back to find the juice,
and I was again introduced as Evelyn’s “acquaintance,” this time to
Dr. Judith Hoffman, M.D. She was a tall woman who radiated an
intelligent, calm control. The football hero had not married the
cheerleader but the valedictorian. As she started rummaging around
through the ice chest, Gill turned on his inquisitor voice and
asked, “Miss Hunter, how exactly is it that you are acquainted with
Professor Lilac?”
    I hesitated as I considered truth or lie. My
people-reader pegged Gill as an investigative professional of some
sort. Revealing information to another professional when you have
no idea whether he is a good guy or bad guy is dangerous.
Sometimes, however, it’s helpful to reveal some of your information
in order to see what sort of response it draws. Here I had three
people I could watch for reactions, and I already knew that one of
them had a hard time with a poker face.
    “We met on the river bike trail yesterday.
Some guy had pulled her off her bike and was trying to shove her
into a waiting boat. I sort of ran over the guy with my bike and
knocked him into the boat instead.”
    I had hoped for a reaction and got both more
and less than I had hoped for. All the color drained from Judith’s
face and air hissed past her teeth as she drew a sudden startled
breath. She lost her grip on the bottle of green-colored juice and
it dropped to the cement floor. The glass exploded like shrapnel,
and the fragrant green juice splashed in a 360-degree radius. Ken
cursed and all of us instinctively jumped away from the disaster.
For the next few minutes all conversation about Evelyn Lilac
ceased. We busied ourselves sopping up the liquid and picking
dozens of sharp little diamonds of glass from the floor and our
clothing. Judy was apologizing, Ken was reassuring, and Gill was
very, very quiet.
    As we were finishing the cleanup, Gill said,
“Judith, Ken, it’s almost time for you two to make your
presentation to the pharmaceutical committee.” For a split second I
thought they both looked at him a little confused, but as he issued
instructions, they checked their watches and seemed to catch his
sense of urgency.
    “Judith, you show Miss. Hunter to the
exhibitor’s powder room so she can get all the glass and juice
stains out of her clothing. Work quickly, Miss Hunter, because that
will stain if it dries. Ken, you and Judith go to the trailer and
change into your presentation clothes, and I’ll clean up the rest
of the mess here.
    “Miss Hunter, we all want very much to know
more about this incident on the bike trail. If you have time, we
would be grateful if you could meet us at the Costa Rican
restaurant in the food court in about one hour. If you will be so
kind as to be my guest at dinner, we can have time to talk.”
    I was hustled off to a spacious and
well-equipped powder room and spent almost thirty minutes shaking
my clothes, rinsing the spots out of my skirt, and drying it under
the hand dryer.
    Once finished, I still had a half hour to
kill, so I ambled slowly toward the food court, looking at some of
the exhibits I had missed earlier. When I passed the booth where I
had bought a video of one of Evelyn’s speeches, it occurred to me
that I no longer had it and assumed I must have set it down in the
Enviro-Medic booth.
    I circumnavigated the food court twice, and
though there was a wide selection of food, no booth said Costa
Rica. I then sought out an employee and asked for directions to the
Costa Rican restaurant. He told me flatly that there