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“One second. Hi, sorry,” Peabody said when Roarke’s face came on, and she thought, “Gosh, pretty.” “Um, Dallas wonders if you could find out if Good Shepherd Productions is part of Jenkins’s church. She’s currently trying to keep from killing us both in morning traffic, so she’s kind of tied up.”
“If the lieutenant had managed to read the data I added to her case file, she’d find a complete list of the various arms of the Church of EL, which include Good Shepherd Productions.”
“I knew it. Thanks. Later.”
“Okay. Me, too.” Peabody added a smile. “Have a good one.”
“The church is going to make a mint from that feed alone. If we need an estimate, Nadine could give it round numbers.” Eve threaded through traffic, pushing south. “So you lose your figurehead, and the main source of revenue. But you lose it in such a way that brings you an instant spike in that revenue—there is no downswing, no potential loss. But there is the potential, if you’re smart enough, to capitalize on that for years. For, what was it, the next forever.”
“Hey. I said that!” Peabody took a moment to preen—then another to exchange shocked stares with the glide-cart operator they skimmed by with the skin of a soy dog to spare.
“You’ve still got the family, and you’re damn straight you’ve got a replacement already in mind. Plus, your figurehead’s drinking and screwing around. That gets out, the money train’s going to take a long, unscheduled stop. But this? It’s win-win more.”
She rode on that, turning the different angles in her mind until she reached the morgue. Striding down the white tunnel, Eve pulled out her ’link to check one of those angles. Then stopped when she saw Morris standing in front of a vending machine. With Detective Magnolia Blossom.
The detective spotted Eve and Peabody first, and brushed back a silky lock of melted butter hair. “Lieutenant, Detective.”
“Detective,” Eve said with a nod. “You got one in?”
“No, actually, I was just on my way out. Thanks for the coffee,” she said to Morris, with a gleam in her deep summer blue eyes that made it clear she was thanking Morris for a lot more than a crappy soy product.
“I’ll walk you out. One minute,” he said to Eve, then moved with Detective Coltraine side-by-side down the echoing tunnel. His hand reached out, skimmed lightly down her back.
“Wow. They’re, like, touching. Oh, and look. She’s doing the head-tilt thing. That’s a definite invite. I bet they’re going to share a big sloppy one at the door,” Peabody predicted.
“Gee, you think?” The idea of the big sloppy one made Eve want to do a quick check of Detective Amaryllis Coltraine’s on-the-job record. Because the urge annoyed her, Eve put it out of her mind. “He’s a big boy.”
“That’s what I hear.” Peabody grinned at Eve’s cool stare. “I can’t help hearing things. Yeah, big sloppy one was had,” she muttered under her breath as Morris strolled back. “He sure looks happy.”
He did, Eve realized. And that would be enough. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“Now, or when you red-flagged me?”
“Either or both.”
“Not to worry. Let’s go say good morning to Reverend Jenkins.”
“Were you able to start on him?”
“Yes, indeed. Some tests still pending,” Morris added as they moved down, then into an autopsy room. “COD was what I assume you’d expected. Cyanide poisoning. He’d also ingested a tad over eight ounces of vodka and approximately thirty ounces of spring water in the last hours of his life. He’d had fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, fried onions, collard greens, biscuits, and peach pie with vanilla ice cream about six P.M. And, if that wasn’t enough, about ten ounces of deep fried pork rinds with sour cream dip at around eight.”
“I’m surprised he had room for the cyanide,” Eve mumbled.
“I’m going to guess he ate that way with some regularity as he was about thirty pounds overweight. Carried most of it in his belly, as you see.”
It was hard not to as Jimmy Jay was currently splayed out naked on a slab.
“Unlike your previous entry, I’d say this one didn’t believe in regular exercise, and liked to eat, preferring his food fried, starchy, and/or full of refined sugar. Take away the cyanide, and it’s still unlikely your soul saver would have made his given one-twenty.”
“How much cyanide?”
“Nearly half again as was used for your priest.”
“Take him down, quick and hard. If he’d ingested it slowly, over the course of, say, an hour? If he’d had some laced in to his water bottles—multiple?”
“He’d have felt ill—weak, confused, short of breath.”
“So not that way. All at once. The first two bottles onstage were most likely clean. It’s about timing. Third bottle is consumed right around break time. Everything, everyone’s revved up, he’s in his groove. Sweating, preaching, pulls off his jacket. That’s routine—the audience loves it. Can’t risk it happening after the break,” Eve said half to herself. “Can’t risk even the slight possibility someone else might drink from that bottle, or that bottle is replaced. So it has to be before the break, when he’s still by himself onstage. But for the biggest impact, at the end of that period.”
