Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [37]
Maybe it wasn’t plastic. It was off-white and looked like a small tube or joint or something. She looked closer.
It was a bone. A small bone like from the leg of a bird or a frog. A delicate ivory bone.
She felt the urge to pick it up and feel it, but she resisted.
It might mean nothing. It might have been dropped from the tree that was above the cart in the park. Those cottonwoods were notoriously messy. Maybe a bird cleaning out a nest. The remains of a fledgling that didn’t make it.
When the woman deputy came running up to ask them about the lemonade, she asked who was the owner of the stand. Dot looked her over. Pretty woman, nice dark hair, great teeth. Probably smart, too, weighing well within the normal range. Dot hated her on principle.
Dot stepped forward. “I am.”
“Did you make the lemonade?”
“Yes, I made it last night.”
“Could it be contaminated in any way? Did you leave it sitting out overnight?”
“I didn’t. And I don’t think lemonade contaminates. I follow the rules that the state told me to follow. I do everything just the way it should be done. You can ask anyone. I’ve been doing this all summer and never had a problem.”
“Where did you keep the lemonade right before you were serving it?”
“Out behind the trailer.” Dot pointed to the refrigerated area that attached to the back of her trailer.
“You don’t keep it in the trailer?”
“There’s not enough room.”
“So anyone could have had access to it?”
Dot realized what the woman was saying. “I guess.”
“Shit,” the woman said.
Dot was surprised to hear a deputy sheriff swear, especially this pretty woman. Dot decided that she should tell her what she found. “I don’t know if this means anything, but I found something on the lid of this particular canister.”
“What?” The deputy lifted her head.
“A small bone.”
Stewy had been pretending to watch TV with his eyes closed. It was too early to go to bed, only nine o’clock, still light outside. But probably he was tired because he had gotten up early to mow the lawn. Really, he should blame it on the three beers with dinner. He didn’t drink much anymore. Just couldn’t keep functioning when he did. A couple of beers made him fall asleep. Sad state of affairs.
But a sharp, insistent ring kept nudging him awake. As he opened his eyes and saw someone shoot someone on TV, he realized that he was hearing his cell phone. Where was the blasted thing? What could be so important on this summer night that work would call?
Then he remembered the pesticides, the letter. He bolted up in his chair and the thing folded up on him, the footrest sliding under him and the back pushing him down. Couldn’t move fast in that chair. It could kill you. He managed to extricate himself from it and he looked down at a pile of newspapers and realized the phone was in there someplace. Scrambling through them, he could still hear the ringing.
Hold on; I’m coming, he thought.
As he stirred around in the newspapers, the phone popped out of the comics section. He grabbed it and pushed the right button the first time around. He hated having a cell phone, but the sheriff insisted.
“Hello,” he said.
“Stewy, it’s Claire. We’ve got several poisonings down in the park at Fort St. Antoine.”
“Bad food?”
“I’m not sure. I think there’s a chance it might be the pesticide guy using some of the stolen goods.”
He hated to ask the next question. “Any fatalities?”
“Negative. Not so far. But the ambulance from Maiden Rock just took two people out of here, and the ambulance from Pepin is loading up. Five people in all were affected. A little girl is one of them.”
“What happened?”
“I think something was put into a vat of lemonade that was being served from a refreshment stand here.”
“Why do you think that?”
“All the victims had just consumed the lemonade.”
She paused. He didn’t like the way this incident sounded. Then she added what turned out to be the clincher for him. “A small bone was found on the lemonade container.”
Stewy caught