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I gulped down the rest of my coffee, knowing that doing so was a bit disrespectful to the quality of the brew — even while I also knew I needed all that caffeine to get my day started — and got in the shower. It would be a quick one, since I’d washed my hair the day before, but at least it served its purpose. By the time I was dressed and had stepped back out in the hall, Archie was nowhere to be seen.
Just as I was getting a container of yogurt out of the fridge, my cell phone rang from within the depths of my purse. Since I’d planned to head into the dining room next anyway, I quickly grabbed a spoon, and then went and dug out my phone with my free hand.
Josie.
It was a little odd that she would call this early, since she generally followed the “10/10” rule and it was now only a bit past nine. Still, that was office hours for her — she opened at eight-thirty and closed around five, although her workdays tended to be longer than that because of all the times she had to show houses or go over contracts with people after they were off work.
“Hi, Josie,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I have some information for you,” she replied, then added before I get too excited, “or at least, I have information that there isn’t any information.”
“Come again?” I replied as I settled into a chair, then scrunched the phone between my shoulder and my ear so I could pry the lid off my container of boysenberry yogurt.
She let out a theatrical sigh. “Well, I know you’re helping any way you can, but I thought I should pitch in, too, since poor Danny’s murder happened in my own house. So, yesterday I called everyone who’d attended the party and asked if any of them had seen anything unusual, like if they’d noticed someone hanging around the table where Danny had left his glass of wine.”
“And?” I asked, although I thought I already knew the answer.
“And no one saw a darn thing!” she exclaimed, clearly disgusted with the surveillance capabilities of her party guests. “To be fair, by that time of the evening, quite a few of them were slightly impaired, but still, you’d think something like that would stick out in their minds.”
While this news disappointed me, I couldn’t say I was overly surprised. After all, if you were attending a Halloween party and having a good time, you probably wouldn’t be sending beady-eyed glances at all your fellow partygoers, wondering if they were up to something nefarious.
And also, Danny had left his wine glass on the table that held the punch bowl and a bunch of wine bottles. People would by necessity congregate there to refresh their drinks. Even if someone had been loitering in that spot, waiting for an opening, their behavior probably wouldn’t have looked all that suspicious.
“Well, at least you tried,” I said, figuring it couldn’t hurt to attempt to cheer her up.
Josie let out another exasperated breath. “For all the good it did me — or any of them. My friend Mavis called me this morning to let me know Chief Lewis grilled her for almost ten minutes yesterday about what she saw at the party, and she heard from other people that he’d called them, too.”
It appeared Henry Lewis had been a busy bee. Was he irritated at having to put in all that work on a Sunday? I could see why he might be, although anyone in law enforcement should know crime didn’t exactly wait for a convenient day of the week to occur.
And I couldn’t help but be secretly amused that the police chief had thought it worth his time to spend that long talking to Mavis Jones, who was probably one of the most innocuous people I’d ever met. She was a widow a few years younger than Josie who had put her husband’s money into buying property around town and who now owned several Airbnbs, as well as a duplex she let out to long-term renters. The idea that Mavis would have anything to do with Danny Ortega’s death was almost ludicrous.
“But Mavis didn’t see anything,” I said, and I could almost hear Josie shaking her head.
“No, and neither did anyone else. It’s like someone snapped their fingers and just made that poison appear in Danny’s drink!”
Somehow, I found that scenario highly unlikely. Not that such an enchantment was completely implausible — maybe Lucien Dumond might have been able to manage such a feat — but I had a feeling we were dealing with something far more prosaic here. It seemed a lot more realistic to figure that everyone at the party had been absorbed in their own conversations…and probably a bit tipsy, if not more…and the perpetrator had taken advantage of their distraction to do the deed, and then step back and wait for the outcome.
“I don’t think so,” I said gently. “I think this is one of those situations where we just have to let the investigation run its course. Have you heard anything from Henry Lewis about the poison that was used?”
Josie let out an irritated snort. “Hardly. That is, I asked him point-blank if he knew what it was, and he would only say it was still under investigation. Which I suppose makes some sense. Are crime labs even open on Sundays?”
Good question. Not being an aficionado of police procedurals, I couldn’t hazard a guess. We already knew the toxicology tests were going to take a while, but as for the rest, I had no idea. And yes, a couple of days had passed since Danny had collapsed at the party, but still, if they’d lost twenty-four hours because the lab wasn’t open on the weekend, I could see how things might have gotten backed up.
“I don’t know,” I said. “And I know better than to try asking Henry Lewis myself. I can only imagine the look on his face if I try to ask him point-blank about when the test results are going to come back.”
Josie chuckled. “I’d like to see that! But couldn’t you have Calvin make a few inquiries?”
The thought had crossed my mind, although I’d shot it down immediately. Calvin was way too professional to butt into an investigation that hadn’t taken place in his jurisdiction, and so Henry Lewis would know right away that any questions along those lines must have come from me.
“I don’t want to put Calvin in the middle of this,” I replied. “It’s not really fair to him.”
That comment got me a disappointed silence for a second or two. But then Josie said, “It sounds as though you’re doing your own investigating, though. Arlene Porter told me you stopped by Corinne Newbury’s place to talk to her, although she wasn’t home.”
I had no idea who Arlene was, although I guessed she must be the elderly woman who lived in the duplex next to Corinne’s. Even after living in Globe for more than half a year, I was still astonished by the speed at which news traveled in this town.
“I did stop by,” I said. “But it turned out to be a dead end. There was no reason for Corinne to fly into a jealous rage and murder Danny, because she’s seeing someone over in Mesa and is actually thinking about moving in with him.”
“Oh, really?” Josie responded. “I hadn’t heard about that.”
