Physics Can Be Fatal (25 page)

     “And I think I know what the smell was at the Carriage House,” she continued.  “I smell it every time I get a hair cut.  It’s the smell of hair salons.  It’s the mixture of chemicals and sweet-smelling additives they put in to mask the acrid smell.  Stuff like propylene and dimethicone.  Chemicals used in hair conditioners.  I think our killer poisoned Professor Sidebottom by adding in a chemical of her own, something that would trigger a heart attack.  I think she mixed the poison in with a heavy dose of shampoo and conditioner. She probably had a special little bottle of it at the ready, hidden away, waiting and hoping Alan Sidebottom or Helen Mann would show up for a haircut one day.  She would have worn gloves to massage it into his scalp.  The poison would have worked its way into his system, and then it was just a matter of time until lights out.”

     “And why would she want to kill Alan Sidebottom or Helen Mann?”

     “Remember the conference in Brussels where Professor Sidebottom and Helen met?  Do the math, Will.  Leah Block is their daughter.  Their crazy, vengeful, daughter.”

Chapter 20

     The forensic unit discovered a minute amount of poisonous substance on a hand towel inside the salon.  The towels had all been laundered, but astonishingly, a tiny trace of the deadly mixture had remained behind on one fluffy, pale pink hand towel.

     Chief Burnstein contacted the police and FBI in New York City.  It took them a week to find Leah Block.  She had dyed her hair blond, and was hiding out in a friend’s apartment from the last salon where she had worked.  They arrested her on suspicion of murder, and drove her back to New Guilford.

     Will and Chief Valerie Burnstein were finally sitting across a table from Leah Block in an interview room at the New Guilford Police Station. 

     Their suspect, whose real (adopted) name was Penny Crawford, seemed largely unconcerned by her arrest for the murder of Alan Sidebottom.  If anything, she relished the attention.

     “I’m sure my mother, once she learns of my existence, will fly to my aid.  We’ll probably become very close, you know.  She must have missed me terribly all these years,” Penny sneered.  “She can hardly allow her only child in all the world to go to prison.  Think of the publicity for good, old Cushing.”

     “So your birth mother, Helen Mann, knew nothing of your presence in New Guilford?” asked Will.

     “She knows nothing of me at all, except that she tossed me out like last year’s fashion thirty-three years ago.  What a delightful surprise all this should make,” Penny said.  “Kind of an early Christmas present.”

     “Why the name ‘Leah Block’?” Chief Val asked.

     A hateful expression crept over Penny’s face.  Her long mouth twisted into a baleful grin.

     “Why not?” she said.  “I came into this world from a black hole.  So did you.  And we’ll all disappear into the eternal misery of a black hole some day.  All of life eventually goes the way of black holes.  There’s simply no getting away from them.”

     Will was trying to get the measure of this strange personality Penny Crawford presented, so different from when he interviewed her in the salon.  She had seemed friendly, and cooperative, and
normal
then.  In the interview room her demeanor slithered from resentful to coy to threatening, and back again in an instant.  

     “You’re a clever girl,” Chief Val said.  “You obviously inherited your parents’ brainpower.”

     “So true.  Wouldn’t they be proud of me?” Penny deadpanned.

     “Would you like to tell us how you came up with your plan?” Chief Val asked.

     “I thought you’d never ask,” Penny said.

     She shifted in her chair and asked for a glass of water.

     “I did a search and found out who my birth mother was a few months ago, when I was feeling at loose ends, and finding myself in need of a substantial cash infusion and a change of scenery,” Penny said.  “It was time for me to try my luck elsewhere, so I moved up here to the green pastures of New Guilford,” she said.  “All this fresh air does a girl a lot of good.” 

     Chief Val and Will remained quiet, wishing to reinforce Penny’s feeling that the spotlight was all hers, for as long as she wanted it.

     “I tried to find out about my birth father, but he wasn’t listed in the birth records, so I began looking into Helen Mann’s background.  I learned she had been at a physics symposium in Brussels the summer I would have been conceived.  Naughty, naughty Helen.”

     Penny paused to take a sip of water.  She shot a wink at Will.

     “I was able to find a list of academics who attended the symposium, but that’s as close as I could get to figuring out who my father was.”

     “Then, when I read in the wonderfully quaint college newspaper about the famous Professor Alan Sidebottom coming to teach at Cushing this semester, I remembered his name from the list at the symposium.  I figured it couldn’t be a coincidence.”  She locked eyes with Chief Val with an expression of self-satisfied superiority.

     “When I saw a picture of him on the Internet, I knew for sure.  The resemblance between us is pretty striking, wouldn’t you say?  And then when I started to read about him, I found out he was not only famous, but stinking rich, and not only stinking rich, but estranged from his kids and ex-wives.  What a tragedy.  I figured I had a good shot at some money.  So I wrote to him, explaining who I was, and asked for money.  He wrote back a very rude and angry letter, basically telling me to piss off.  That made me mad.  That made me extremely mad, because I felt he really owed me, you know?  That’s when I hatched a plan to lure him into the salon.”

     “How do you mean, he ‘owed’ you?” Chief Val asked.

     Penny regarded Val with a cold stare.

     “What could you possibly not understand about that statement?” Penny asked.

     “Did you mean he owed you in terms of money, or attention, or time, or . . .?” Chief Val answered calmly.

     “My dear Mrs. Small-town-Chief-of-Police, it should be obvious even to you that he owed me all of those things,” Penny said slowly and distinctly, as if to someone who was just learning to speak English.

     “Back to my story,” Leah continued.  “I was overjoyed that night when he stumbled into my salon.  Really, I could hardly believe it.  Unfortunately for him, he not notice the obvious resemblance between us, and he made a pass at me.  That was it.  He had to go.  Right then, right there.”

     “Why didn’t you leave New Guilford after you killed Professor Sidebottom?” asked Chief Val.  “You must have worried about getting caught?”

     Penny Crawford laughed.

     “What, me worry?  Besides, the score was only one down and one to go.  I’m a very patient girl, you know.  I was just biding my time ‘til I came up with a plan to get money out of that old whore of a mother.  If Dad wouldn’t give me my allowance, I sure wasn’t going to leave town until I got it from Mom.”

     “One thing about me you really should know,” Penny continued, “is that I don’t like being ignored.  I really don’t like it.  You might want to remember that, big guy,” she said to Will, uncrossing and re-crossing her legs.

     “Were you a hairdresser in New York?” Chief Val asked.

     “Funny thing about that.  The clientele can be so finicky,” Penny said,” always complaining to my bosses about me, for no good reason whatsoever.  Just a lot of blather from a bunch of rich Park Avenue bitches, pardon my French.  Eventually all the salons had to let me go, just to satisfy the customers.”

     “So, you set up shop in New Guilford, and sent out flyers to the Physics Department?” Will said.

     “Yes, indeedy.  I had seen a recent photo of Papa Sidebottom.  He looked absurd with that ridiculous hair of his.  I figured by offering a fifty percent discount, I had a chance of reeling him in––English people are so cheap, you know?  I was going to make it seventy-five percent, but I thought that might look suspicious.  As I say, I could not believe my luck when he showed up that night.  I was all ready to be patient and wait it out, but like a moth to the flame––voilà––he came.  And the rest, as they say, is misery!”

     “How did you know about that particular poison?” Chief Val asked.

     “Elementary, my dear Watson!” Penny said.  “I was raised by a, rather dull, extremely fat woman named Betty, and her even duller husband, Hank.  Betty taught me all sorts of useful things on the farm, like how to grow vegetables and flowers––some of them poisonous––how to milk cows and kill chickens––all sorts of neat stuff.”

     “But, alas, I’m a city girl at heart, and the bright lights beckoned me away from our idyllic life on the farm,” she added, suddenly bursting into the first few bars of
Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

    
Chief Val and Will waited, stone faced, for her to finish.

     “When you were with Alan Sidebottom at the salon, why didn’t you tell him who you were?” Chief Val asked.

     Penny grinned.

     “Oh, I wanted to––in fact, I was dying to––but I decided against it.  I was afraid it might scare him away if I confessed my true identity, and then I wouldn’t be able to do my magic.  The folks back on the farm would have been so proud of me.  I remembered to wear gloves so the poison wouldn’t get all over me.”

     “Are you absolutely sure you wish to continue this interview without a lawyer?” Will said.

     “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it, sport,” Penny laughed.  “I expect Mom can afford the best defense lawyer around.”

Chapter 22

     On the way downstairs to afternoon tea, Edwina knocked on Mitchell Fender’s door.

     “Come in!”

     “Hi, Mitchell, do you have a minute?”

     “Sure.  Come in.  Sit down, Edwina,” Mitchell said affably.

     Edwina sat uncomfortably for a moment, fidgeting, unsure how to begin.

     “I owe you an apology, Mitchell,” she started.

     “Is that so?”  Mitchell said.  “What for?”

     “I got a little carried away with all of this Alan Sidebottom business––you know––with the investigation and everything.”

     “Looks like you made a darn good job of it,” Mitchell said.

     “The thing is, I was riding my bike one morning and I saw you and Nedda going into the clinic.  I don’t know what possessed me––my curiosity got the better of me, I guess.  I went into the clinic and said I was your niece, just so I could find out what you were doing there.”

     Mitchell sat silently for a moment.

     “What did you find out?” he said.

     “That you were seeing a neurologist, Dr. Elizabeth Swisher.”

     “What else?”

     “That’s it.”  Edwina looked down at her lap.

     “I guess you’d like to know what I was doing there?” Mitchell said.

     “Oh, no!  You don’t owe me an explanation, Mitchell.  I feel terrible about snooping like that, and I just hope you’re not angry with me.  It goes without saying, I hope your situation isn’t serious, and if there’s ever anything I can do to help, I’ll do it.”

     “Thank-you, Edwina.  That’s very kind,” Mitchell said softly. 

     “As it happens,” he continued, “I have a benign brain tumor.  The doctor seems to feel comfortable keeping an eye on it for now, so nothing has to be done for the time being,” he said.

     “Thank goodness it’s benign,” Edwina gushed.

     “Yup.  I’m just trying to keep my mind on other things.  No good dwelling on it, and no use worrying too much,” Mitchell said, trying to disabuse himself of worry.  “Things will work themselves out, one way or another.”

     For a few moments the only sound in the office was the watery tinkle of bamboo wind chimes near the open window.

     “Let’s go down to tea, shall we?” Edwina said.  “Being around friends is always the best thing.”

*

     Word got around fast that it was Edwina who had cracked the case. She was the center of attention at tea that afternoon, besieged for details by everyone.  Only Helen Mann was absent.