Page 75 of Wham Line
“Seriously?He’sso smart?I’m in the middle of explaining—”
“That’s why you had that scratch on your hand,” Jethro said.“And why the landscaping was all messed up.From where you hid the gun!”
I made a sound only dogs could hear.
“I didn’t have time to make it look perfect,” Larry said, “but I lucked out.The sheriff and her deputies were too focused on Indira; she had a gun, and it had recently been fired.”
“And once the scene had cleared,” I said, “You went back.You retrieved the gun.And you planted it—”
“I planted it here, in this room,” Larry said.“I was still in shock.I’d gone up to a man, right out in public, and shot him.And I’d walked away from it.I stood in the dining room at that restaurant, listening to everyone else talk about what had happened, and it was like waking up.I didn’t have to go find a spot on the beach and die.I didn’t have to do anything but walk away.I could spend the next six months enjoying my life.I could travel.I could spend those six months eating good food and drinking good scotch, and everything would be so much sweeter because Mal had finally paid for what he’d done.Because I’d done that; I’d made him pay.”Larry took a breath.“But I wasn’t sure.I didn’t know what kind of gun Indira had.I didn’t know if they’d think she was capable of killing him.All I knew was that I didn’t want to go to prison.And I didn’t want to die.And so I needed someone else to take the fall.Mal made it easy; he’d given me a built-in suspect: his secret son, who’d disappeared during the murder.Even Talmage didn’t know who Jethro really was; I could tell from how she talked to him.It was perfect.So, I waited for an opportunity, and Jethro gave it to me.He emptied his pockets on the bar; he was looking for cash because he wanted a drink.The key card was right there.”
“But it didn’t work out the way you thought,” I said.“You were going to call the sheriff’s office after Jethro came home.Instead, though, Indira came.And she went into Jethro’s room.”
“God, I couldn’t believe it,” Larry said.“I knew as soon as she came out of the inn that she’d found it—it was the way she walked, like she’d robbed a bank.If a deputyhadseen her, he probably would have arrested her on the spot and made my life a whole lot easier.I followed her back to that big old house, and I watched her go into her little flat, and I waited to see if she’d come out again.When she didn’t, I knew she’d kept the gun.She was trying to find a place to hide it.So, I called the sheriff’s office with an anonymous tip.”
“When did Sparkie contact you?”I asked.
“The next day.She said she knew what I’d done and that we needed to talk.I knew what that meant.I knew she wanted money.I told her I’d only talk in person, and she made a big deal about how it had to be somewhere with other people around.She always thought she was so smart, and she was sure nothing bad could happen to her if we met in public.”He gave me an unexpectedly curious look.“How’d I mess up?”
“Telling me she saw Jethro getting in her purse.”
Larry sighed and shook his head.
“I should have seen it earlier,” I said.“But I was fixated on the idea that someone had tried to poison me and that I’d only survived because Nalini had delivered my food to the wrong person.”
“Oh my God!”Nalini said.
“That was my ego.And to be fair, you’d planned it well.Everyone told me that Sparkie hadn’t touched anything while she’d been with you.Nothing to eat.Nothing to drink.Not until you left.The only thing she ate were my fish and chips, and so it seemed like it had to be someone with access to the kitchen—Talmage, who was angry at me, or Nalini, who had been acting so suspiciously, or Jethro, who had been lurking and spying on me through the window.”
“I wasn’t lurking,” Jethro protested, but he subsided when I gave him a look.
“If it wasn’t the food,” Bobby asked, “what was it?How did it get transferred to me?”
“It was her—” I began.
“Her lip balm,” Larry said over me.
More of those not-so-Julia-Child words.
“Tetrodotoxin can enter through abraded or damaged skin,” I said.
Larry nodded.“She was so particular about that lip balm.It wasn’t hard to find the brand she liked, mix in something special, and swap it in her bag when she wasn’t looking.”
“She poisoned herself,” I said.“And by the time it happened, you were long gone and in the clear.”
“I kept thinking I made a mistake telling you that.”Larry sighed again.“But I thought you needed a nudge.What about the rest of it?How’d you figure it out?”
“Sparkie took a picture of you after the shooting,” I said.“Your coat was wet, but—”
“But your shoes were dry!”Nalini bounced on her toes.“I knew something was weird about that picture.I just figured it out!”
Bobby gave me an evaluating glance, like he wondered if I was going to have a stroke.
“Not just dry,” I managed to choke out.“Clean.I was in that alley, remember?My shoes were filthy after only taking a few steps.”
“I figured if anyone saw the grime,” Larry said, “they’d know where I’d been.I wiped my shoes down before I came back inside—I guess a little too well.”
Downstairs, Peggy Lee was still singing.It was “Take a Little Time to Smile.”I wondered if Peggy Lee would have been so cheerful if someone had heldherat gunpoint.
