French Polished Murder (28 page)

I nodded. That E knew the rats on sight didn’t surprise me at all. “He was gonna feed me, too. He put Ratfink in the glass box to play, an’ Ratley was runnin’ round in circles. With his tail sticking out. An’ I thought it was funny an’ Ben did, too. An’ he gave me a muffin and milk, an’ . . .”

“Yes?”

“He left the kitchen. He said he had some work to do. An’ . . . an’ when I went after, he was walkin’ round the table.”

“Yes?”

“He yelled at me. He said I was a bad boy ’cause I was spying for them.” E started bawling again. “He yelled at Peegrass, too, an’ Peegrass jumped on my lap an’ ”—he paused to breathe—“an’ then, and then you got home.”

It was the longest and most correct speech I’d ever heard E make.

“Ben is going to be all right. They’re going to take good care of him.” I patted his knee with my free hand, as I drove. “And we’re going home, and I’m going to give you a bath, put you in clean clothes, and find you some lunch.”

At the mention of lunch, Pythagoras, proving that there was still enough oxygen left in his brain for him to understand essential words, said, “Meeeeeewwwww?”

“Yes, of course, Pythagoras. We’ll get you lunch, too.”

But at the back of my mind, I was thinking of Ratley, running in circles with his tail sticking out.

As soon as we got home, I opened a can of food for Pythagoras, but I asked E to wait a minute while I looked in the aquarium.

Ratley was still running around, steadily, in circles around the aquarium, always in the same direction. His tail was sticking straight up, rigid. I picked him up—and his legs continued moving. I looked into his eyes and met with the same mania that had shone in Ben’s. Right. I smelled Ratley. Why did I do that? Because I caught a faint whiff of something quite unrodentlike about him. Closer up, he smelled pleasant like . . . some sort of beauty product? I dropped him back in the aquarium, and grabbed the phone. “Cas, Cas, I think I know why Ben was acting the way he did. I think there was something in one of the skin products he used this morning.”

“What?”

“Ratley is acting just as weird, his tail is stiff and sticking straight up in the air, his little hair is standing on end and he smells . . . perfumy. I think Ben fed him first, right after he did his morning moisturizing routine, and . . .”

“Dyce, I’ll come right over, but before I do, call this number. It’s Nick’s cell phone. Tell him Ratley’s symptoms. He needs to know about this.”

Right. I called Nick, who sounded somewhat startled at hearing my voice over the phone, then said, “Oh . . . Okay, look, I’m going to get a pharmacologist on the phone, tell him again Ratley’s symptoms.”

I did, explaining in detail how he was—still—running in circles with his tail right up in the air. He had to have been doing that for three hours at least. I wondered how long his poor little ratty heart could hold out. I asked the man. He said, “um,” then, “um,” again and then. “This sounds very familiar. Let me consult my online database.”

Moments later, he said, “I think he was given topiramate,” And to my silence added, “It’s an anticonvulsant. Acute intoxication presents as psychosis. Seeing things, hearing voices. Paranoia. Anxiety. Mania. And it will have that effect on rats, too, I know because I worked in a lab where we tested it.”

“What is it used for?” I asked, wondering where Ben could have got hold of such a substance, much less how he’d confused it with his moisturizer.

“To stop convulsions in epileptics,” the man said. “Or seizures in someone who had had a stroke. Probably topically applied, in case the person is not able to swallow. The presentation of an overdose is similar to schizophrenia.” He said, “He ought to be started on a course of clozapine, which is indicated anyway since it’s an anti-psychotic and bicuculline, which blocks GABA receptors. The research seems to indicate that topiramate toxicity is due to its GABA-like properties. If the treatment is started now, we can see how he reacts by morning. If it’s acute topiramate intoxication, he should be normal in twenty-four hours or less.”

I wanted to cry with relief. “What about Ratley?”

“The rat?” the man sounded surprised.

Nick on the phone again. “I’ll call a friend who’s a vet and send him over to look after Ratley. Okay, Dyce?”

“If you can.”

“Of course I can. And then I’m going to call Cas and have some of the squad come over. I might come myself, if Ben seems to be settling down. We’re going to do a thorough work-up on your house, and anything Ben might have touched.”

“Uh . . . why?”

“Because if it is topiramate intoxication,” he said, gravely. “It sounds an awful lot like he was poisoned. Remember your missing key, and the fact that the aquarium was broken and Pythagoras let out of the bathroom?”

“Oh.” I said. Something was bothering me, something deeper than the fact that my son was covered in now almost day-old raspberry stains, which at a guess I wouldn’t get a chance to wash off any time soon. I asked Nick, and there was almost a smile in his voice as he answered, “No, it would be better if you don’t use the sinks or bathtubs or anything Ben might have used.”

“Uh, then you’d better hurry up, because sooner or later the kid or I are going to need to pee.”

The smile in his voice became broader as he said, “I’ll get someone there as soon as humanly possible.”

The vet appeared before anyone from the police,
though. He was a slim young man who seemed nonplussed, but nonetheless firm about what needed to be done.

He squeezed my hand in a handshake and said, “Hi, I’m Doctor Zed. Or at least that’s what they call me. My name is Zebadiah Smith, but all my patients—or rather their owners—call me Zed.” He looked a little nervous, delivering himself of this speech, and even more nervous as I took him to the aquarium and he looked at Ratley. He picked him up while Ratley’s little legs continued pumping away.

“I have to say this is a very unusual case, but I’ve learned to trust Nick’s hunches. I have specific instructions on how to treat the rat. I’d like to wash him immediately, but Nick wants me to take a scraping first and then to wipe him with tissue that we save. Is that all right with you?”

“Of course,” I said. “Just so long as you can take care of Ratley before he has a stroke or something.”

“Oh, he’s at no risk of a stroke,” the vet said. “He’s much more likely to have a heart attack.”

But Ratley didn’t have, either. Instead, he continued frantically pumping his legs while the vet took as good a scraping off his fur and skin as he could, then wiped him with a paper towel—because our tissues had lotion—and finally with baby wipes, leftover from E’s potty-training days. Finally he gave Ratley two shots, talking all the while.

“Working on very small animals is difficult because of the dosage,” he said. “But fortunately the doctor in charge of your friend’s case knew how this substance affected rats. So he knew what the dosage of the antidote should be—or he did after he consulted some of his old course notes.”

“Right,” I said.

“So when I stopped by the hospital they had the syringes all ready. They have your friend on an IV drip.”

I nodded while I watched Ratley slowly stop moving his legs and relax, then eventually fall asleep in the vet’s hand, I hoped that things were going equally well for Ben.

“I’ll come by tomorrow,” the vet said, putting Ratley back in the aquarium. “Just to see how he’s doing. This is my card. Call me if you think that anything looks wrong, all right?”

“You do house calls?” I asked.

He grinned. “Not exactly, but I owe Nick a few. No, don’t bother paying. He told me he’s going to be adopting the little fellows.”

He put fingers in the aquarium and petted the rats one at a time. “I must say you’ve done a fine job with them. Orphan rats are notoriously difficult to bring up but these little fellows look great. Tomorrow I’ll bring you some chow to start weaning them to, all right?”

I nodded again and he left. Only to be replaced seconds later by the crime-scene investigation team from the good old Goldport Police Department, led by Nick.

“Ben seems to be doing much better,” he told me as he took pictures of various things, from the place where Ben had slept, to the area in the bathroom where he kept his toiletries, to the kitchen and the dishes on the sink, to the apparatus for feeding the rats, which had been left strewn about the counter. Which was only one more sign that Ben hadn’t been—Ben. “After less than an hour on IV. Of course, he could be responding to the antipsychotic, but the doctor doesn’t think so. He really seems to have been poisoned. Now, tell me which of these he uses,” he said, throwing back the lid of Ben’s beauty products case with gloved hands, while his technicians fanned out over the house, dusting for fingerprints and doing heaven only knew what.

“All of them, I assume,” I said. “Otherwise he wouldn’t cart them around. Though it’s perfectly ridiculous. He has Irish skin. It will be years before he starts looking his age.”

Nick grinned. “Yes, but which ones does he use every day?”

“Uh . . . I don’t know. The moisturizer for sure. I’ve seen him when he’s really hurried, and he always puts at least the moisturizer on. He calls it slapping on some grease.”

Nick pulled the plastic from the case he was carrying around into which he’d shoved the paper towel used to wipe down Ratley. He smelled the towel, then smelled Ben’s moisturizer. “I think that’s it,” he said, closing the baggie again and collecting the moisturizer. He put it into a separate baggie. Then for good measure, he went over the whole case and the mirror and the sink taking fingerprints. I am probably the only woman ever who, while watching a criminal investigation, was embarrassed by the number of prints the fingerprint powder revealed all over the bathroom mirror.

The police left, and I’d just managed to get E into a warm bath and wash the raspberry stains off him at last, when the phone rang. I picked it up expecting it to be Cas or, on the outside, Ben.

It was Mrs. All-ex, sounding brisk and businesslike. “Candyce, I was wondering if we could have Enoch back today, and then we’ll keep him for three weeks if you wish, or just till Tuesday in the normal schedule if you prefer, and save the extra days for when you need them?”

I normally hated giving E up, though I had been planning to let them keep him for three weeks during which time I could get the piano done. But that had been before Ben had gone psychotic and scared my son half to death. Besides, there was Peegrass. I really couldn’t swear the cat wouldn’t go—more—neurotic without the presence of his favorite boy.

The fact that he was walking back and forth across the bathtub ledge while E played with his rubber ducky in the soapy water didn’t reassure me. What Pythagoras was saying was, “meow, meow, meow,” but what it managed to convey was, “Was that bathtub properly disinfected? Good God, woman, do you know how many carcinogens might be in that rubber ducky
and
does the soap have any dangerous chemical components.”

I figured if I let E spend too much time at All-ex’s, Pythagoras would worry himself to death over what kind of treatment E might be getting. A brief, fleeting fantasy of sending Pythagoras to All-ex and Mrs. All-ex was discarded. They would probably take him to the Humane Society and I’d gotten somewhat attached to the neurotic fool. He could keep me company while E was gone.

“No, that’s fine, you may pick him up and keep him till Tuesday,” I said.

E looked up stricken. “Mom! Peegrass. And rats.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll take good care of them while you’re gone. And you get to take Ben’s gift with you. You know what a big backyard Daddy has.”

If there was some hesitation in Mrs. All-ex’s voice as she said she would be here in two hours, I gave her time to neither back off nor ask me what Ben’s gift to E had been. Instead, I hung up the phone on E’s jubilant shout, dressed and combed my son, and gave him a very late lunch of hot dogs. E’s secret recipe for hotdogs means that the weight of the mustard must exceed that of the hot dog and the bun combined. Fortunately I had learned from past experiences, so he was swaddled in an old towel before I sat him down to eat, and when he was done the damage was limited to his hands and face. Which I’d just washed when Mrs. All-ex arrived to pick him up.

The look of shock on her face when she saw Ben’s gift—both the electric motorcycle and the miniature leather jacket—will warm the cockles of my heart when I’m old or even possibly in hell.

However, she couldn’t complain without feeding into E’s mulish insistence it was either the motorcycle or Peegrass and the rats. She thought she was getting the least evil of the options, the poor fool.

As for me, I saw E stowed away—apparently the big reason for his needing to go to his father right then was that his father was hosting a dinner for his boss, who liked families and liked to know that his employees had, as the man put it, an interest in the future through their children.