Digging Up the Dead (24 page)

“Hello, Karma, keeping up with things?”

“Oh, hello, Tosca. Yeah, so many bills to pay. What happened to your face?”

“Just a little accident at the beach,” she said, waving a hand airily around and sitting on the chair opposite Karma. “Was the fundraiser a success for your Sanderson Library project?”

“Not as much as I’d hoped, but it all helps.” Karma, her face wan, sighed and pushed the papers aside. “What can I do for you? A hanging basket? We have several on sale right now.”

“As a matter of fact I was interested in your giant milkweed plants.”

Karma stood up, brushing back her long hair. “Sorry, they’ve all been sold.” Her tone was curt, leaving Tosca to wonder if it indicated a guilty conscience.

“I’m rather surprised they were sold rather than burned, considering the police told us all that it was the sap that killed Sally. Did you know it was poisonous?”

“Of course not! What a terrible accusation. The police believed me, and that’s why I was released. Poor Sally. I’ve known her since I was seven years old, and Grandfather took me to her office. I didn’t know the sap could be fatal.”

“Yes, you did. You knew it could kill.”

The voice came from the corner. Tosca swung around to where Sam was sitting on an upturned wooden tub. The bandage was still on his arm and dirtier than ever.

“Karma,” he said, “you were the one that told me to be careful when I weeded there. I know I only got a rash, but you were darn definite about the sap being deadly. Look at your own arm. Remember you joked I shouldn’t lick it? ‘Course, no one in their right mind would go around doin’ that. But you knew.”

“Sam, those yellow rose bushes need mulching. Right now.”

Karma’s expression was ugly, but Tosca saw confusion there, too.

Sam got up stiffly and slowly from the tub and went out the door, muttering and shaking his head. Karma smiled brightly at Tosca and asked again if she wanted anything else, offering to show her some plants similar to the giant milkweeds.

“I have two pots of swallow-wort, if you like vines,” she said.

“Karma, you’re the gardening expert, so you must have known the sap’s harmful properties. Did you tell anyone besides Sam about the sap? It would be perfectly understandable if you did. I know I’d warn as many people as possible about the potential danger. I mean, did you tell the people you sold the plants to? Was there someone you mentioned it to just in passing, perhaps?”

Karma appeared to have difficulty finding an answer. She propped her elbows on the desk, cupping her head on her hands, and closed her eyes. After several seconds she opened them and shrugged.

“Yes, I did know. I admit that, but I can’t think of anyone I told except Sam.”

“Not even at the party? You were wearing a blouse with very long sleeves that covered your fingertips, but when you were pouring my White Russian, your sleeve fell back, and I could see the rash on your hand. Did anyone remark on it?” Tosca paused, cocking her head to one side. “No, you couldn’t have told anyone at the party because the killer had to have known days earlier to have brought the poison with her or him to add to Sally’s cocktail.”

Karma regarded Tosca balefully. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. So Sally was poisoned with giant milkweed sap. A complete coincidence. Wait a minute.” Her expression changed. “Yes, yes, I remember now. I was talking about it a couple of weeks ago and ...” Her words trailed off into silence. She shifted her eyes back and forth as if considering what she’d just said.

“You look as if something has just dawned on you,” said Tosca. “What is it? When was this?”

“We had an argument at lunch a several days before my party. Sally had noticed the redness on my hand. It was much worse then, and she asked about it. I explained I’d cut the stem of a giant milkweed by mistake when I was trimming it to fit into a pot. I got the sap that oozed out all over my hand, and I told her it was some kind of poison that could be fatal.”

“Were Oliver Swenson and Graydon Blair there, too?”

“Yes, they all sympathized with me.”

“But what were you arguing about? Come on, Karma, don’t clam up. What was the problem?”

“It was Oliver. Graydon had just told him he wasn’t going to get as much of the royalties as he was promised for the books he’d ghostwritten. Oliver hit the ceiling. He was real angry and asked why not. Graydon said we were going to scrap the whole idea.”

“Meaning there’d be no fake Sanderson books, no announcement that you’d found some unpublished works?”

“Right. It wasn’t true, of course. Sally then jumped in and said two of the fake books were ready for the printer, plus she was going forward with the tell-all, and Oliver had completed the final draft. She didn’t think it would harm my grandfather’s reputation if it was revealed my dad had a mistress and a child. That’s what readers still wanted, tabloid news, she said and reminded us all that the public’s hunger for juicy, sexy stories hadn’t changed since Madame Pompadour and King Louis XV.”

Karma went on to tell Tosca that then Graydon had said that part of the scheme was cancelled, and he was going to take the newly discovered novels to another publisher. Sally was extremely upset. Blair told her to sue him, “which of course was impossible, because she had no money. So that’s what we were all arguing about.”

“I can imagine Sally’s reaction. She was probably counting on the new books to get her out of her financial problems,” said Tosca.

Both women sat lost in thought but got to their feet when they heard a police siren. As it got louder a Newport Beach squad car drove up and parked. Detective Parnell got out of the passenger seat and came into the garden center office.

“Karma Sanderson, we’d like you to come along to the police station with us, please.” Although holding handcuffs, he approached her slowly and spoke politely.

“Are you arresting her?” said Tosca.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What’s the charge?”

“Murder.”

Tosca followed behind the police cruiser on the way to the station. Once there, she used the public telephone to call Thatch and tell him of the turn of events.

“Does Karma have an attorney?” he said.

“I asked her that when Parnell took her away, and she told me there was a lawyer friend of the family. She gave me his name, and I said I’d call him, which I am going to do now. It could be hours before she’s allowed to get to a phone. He’s Charles Carter. He was at her fundraiser party, the chap with the cane and the young wife with pink hair. Remember him?”

“No, but I’m glad Karma is getting representation. That’s a hell of a charge. Sally’s murder, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“Thank you,
keresik
.”

Tosca consulted a directory to find Charles Carter’s office number. She called and explained the situation. Carter promised to come by the station within an hour.

After another half-hour had passed, Detective Parnell came out to the reception area and told Tosca she might as well go home. There was nothing she could do for Karma. Carver arrived as they were talking, and a cop escorted him back to the room where he could meet with his client.

The detective turned to return to his office when Tosca asked if she could have her tote bag back.

“Of course, Mrs. Trevant. I’ll have it brought out to you right away. Good day to you.”

“Um, would you mind waiting a moment, Sergeant Parnell? There’s something I’d like you to hear.”

“Hear?”

“It’s on my cell phone, in my bag.”

“Not another of your tape recordings? You said cell phone, not tape recorder.”

Tosca made the smile she bestowed upon the puzzled man as sweet as possible.

“Yes, I do mean a recording. It’s on my phone. Surely you’d like to listen to Graydon Blair confessing to both Sally’s and Swenson’s murders?”

“When and how did this happen?”

Clearly irritated and skeptical, Parnell’s tone indicated he thought Tosca was pulling a fast one. He picked up the phone on his desk and spoke into it. Within minutes a policewoman came into the reception area, carrying the tote bag, and passed it to Parnell. He reached inside, felt around and brought out Tosca’s phone, which he handed to her.

“All right, let’s hear it.”

She touched the phone to begin playback. As soon as Blair’s voice was heard, Parnell asked her to turn it off and come back to the same room where he’d talked to her a few days earlier. He called a stenographer, who brought a tape recorder, and the three sat and listened to Blair boasting about how he found out about the giant milkweed sap from Karma and went around the island at night with a torch to find the plants. He said slashing the plants to collect the sap was “just like collecting syrup from a maple tree.”

A small noise was heard in the background of the tape, and Parnell asked about it. Tosca stopped the recording.

“Blair took his cigar holder from his shirt pocket to show me the cap that covered it and how he scooped the poison into it,” she said. ”While he was explaining it to me, he dropped the holder, and that’s the sound you hear. And, oh, here is that very same item. He’d left it in the cabin.”

She brought the plastic bag containing Blair’s cigar holder out of her pocket and gave it to Parnell, pointing out the cap that covered the opening for a cigar and the tape covering the other end.

“Hope he hasn’t missed it,” she said. “Perhaps you’d like to get it tested for giant milkweed sap and fingerprints? Yes, yes, I know mine will be on it, too, but I don’t walk around with evidence bags in my purse, so I had to handle it until I got home and put it in this bag.”

Tosca restarted the recording. They heard Blair telling her how he went around the island, gathering the giant silkweed sap into his cigar holder, then adding the poison to Sally’s White Russian cocktail at the party while he was getting her a fresh drink. He had smiled as he told Tosca that he emptied the entire contents of his cigar holder into her glass, and it blended in perfectly with the cream and vodka. Then Parnell heard Blair’s last words to Tosca and the thunderous sound of the waves at the Wedge. Barely heard above the pounding noise of the water was the gunning of the boat engine as he sped away, leaving her to drown.

“How come Blair didn’t see you recording him?” said Parnell.

“He couldn’t. The phone was still in my bag under my seat on the flybridge. When I reached down to steady the bag to make sure nothing had fallen out because Blair was going so fast, the one thing I touched was my phone. I realized I could turn on its recorder. I felt around, knowing where the icons were, and tapped the Voice Memos one. Luckily, it worked. So can you release Karma now? She didn’t have anything to do with the murders.”

“She’s a witness, at least, to the argument and the fake books scheme, but yes, she can go home. I’ll tell her lawyer and have her processed out. Here’s your phone, Mrs. Trevant.”

“Thank you, Chief Inspector. I’m glad to have been of help.” She paused before adding almost under her breath, “Again.”

He got up to usher her to the front door but Tosca wasn’t finished. She continued to sit in the chair.

“There’s something else you might like to know. You happen to have undeniable proof right under your nose here at the station that Blair killed Swenson.”

Parnell let his head fall forward. “Don’t tell me. What kind of evidence? Another tape recording, I suppose?”

Ignoring his sarcasm, Tosca said, “No, not this time. Something just as concrete, though. Something that is already in your evidence locker. It’s the guitar string you said had been used to strangle Oliver Swenson. You do remember you claimed it was from Karma’s guitar because one of the strings was missing, don’t you?”

Parnell sat up straighter, pulled a file toward him and opened it. “Yes, of course. It was a logical conclusion.”

“Chief, your evidence is not the kind of guitar string we usually think of but a custom-ordered catgut replacement for a musical instrument called a chitarra battente that Blair owns. I’m sure you can find the receipt for the strings he ordered from Denmark. When I touched the plastic evidence bag you showed me to prove the string came from Karma’s guitar, I could feel right away I was touching double strings.”

Parnell’s expression changed from interested to skeptical.

“I guessed they were from Blair’s harp,” Tosca continued. “Guitars use single strings, but his chitarra battente uses pairs. Some use triples. Guitar strings are usually nylon or metal, but Blair uses custom-ordered catgut—not from cats, of course, that’s just their common name. The strings are made from the small intestines of sheep or goats.”

When Parnell’s frowned, she added, “Don’t worry, I researched the subject thoroughly in the
Encyclopedia Britannica
, the pinnacle of intellectual reference, don’t you agree? The catgut is what you will find when you inspect your evidence more closely. So you see, you have nothing against Karma but plenty against Blair.”

After Parnell dialed a number, muttered a few words and hung up, a policewoman came into the office and handed him the evidence bag containing the string from Swenson’s throat. He opened it and removed the contents. He looked at it quizzically.

Tosca leaned forward. “You can see how easily the medical examiner could have mistaken the two strings for a single strand,” she said. “It looks as if stretching and squeezing them so tightly around Swenson’s neck caused them to bind to each other so that they looked like just one string. Catgut is a lot more pliable than nylon. It is extremely tough. That’s why musicians who play harps, lutes, violins, guitars and cellos often prefer them.”

“It may be more pliable, but I’m sure it would break if it was used to strangle someone.”

“On the contrary, Inspector. Think of your own intestines and the terrible abuse they must take from what you send down there, especially if you don’t chew properly.”

The detective ignored her remarks and said nothing, appearing deep in thought and staring at the length of catgut on his desk.