Read A Catered Birthday Party for Free Online Page B

appetite.”
    “That’s absurd,” Bernie cried. “No one would do something like that.”
    “Not true,” her father said. “Back in the early nineteen hundreds women used to swallow arsenic to make their skin glow.”
    “But they don’t do things like that now,” Bernie objected.
    Clyde shifted position. “Ellen Tarbrush did it five years ago. Of course, she was trying to frame her husband for murder.”
    “Well, in this case Annabel’s husband probably is guilty. Her husband probably put the Malathion and flee and tick spray in her wine. He was the one who was opening the bottles,” Libby said. Then she added, “Or it could have been one of her friends. Although ‘friends’ is a misnomer. Everyone at the party seemed to have a real grudge against her. And she knew it, because she was getting ready to kiss them all off.”
    Bernie nodded her agreement. “Maybe that’s why they felt that way. Maybe they knew or at least suspected what she was going to say.”
    Sean shrugged. “That’s all very well. What you say may be true, but you have to prove it. That’s a bit more difficult.”
    Libby raised her coffee mug to her lips and put it down again without having any. “What is Malathion anyway?”
    “It’s a pesticide,” Clyde informed her. “People don’t use it that much anymore, because it’s so toxic.”
    “Evidently,” Bernie observed.
    Clyde continued, “But it used to be fairly common and people still have bottles of it around their houses.”
    “So,” Libby mused, thinking aloud, “a ruling of accidental death means no homicide investigation.”
    “Exactly,” Sean and Clyde said simultaneously.
    “And they’re cremating the body tomorrow,” Clyde said.
    “That was quick,” Sean said.
    Clyde nodded. “That’s my thinking too.”
    Sean paused for a moment to eat the last bit of his pancake. Then he said, “Almost too hasty, unless you’re an orthodox Jew, if you ask me.”
    “It’s downright unseemly, to my mind,” Clyde agreed.
    “Well,” Sean rejoined, “I hate to state the obvious, but it is hard to run a tox screen on ashes.”
    “Yup. Can’t exhume a body when there’s no body to exhume,” Clyde said.
    “Can’t someone stop Richard?” Libby asked.
    “On what grounds?” Clyde responded. “There’s no legal basis. We need a reason.”
    “But that’s going to end the possibility of any investigation,” Bernie observed.
    “Not necessarily,” Sean said.
    Clyde nodded. “Back in the day we used to get a fair number of convictions without any of that fancy equipment they have now.”
    “Yes,” Sean agreed. “It’s amazing what one’s powers of observation and a little common sense can produce.” He looked at Bernie and Libby. “I’ve found that funerals can be especially interesting places to people watch. Deaths do not necessarily bring out the best in everyone.”
    Bernie nodded. “That’s what I was just thinking.”
    “Me too,” Libby agreed. “We should probably offer to take a plate of something over to the grieving widower as well.”
    “If he’s not too busy to eat because he’s being consoled by another member of the fairer sex,” Bernie replied. “I’ve been told by reliable sources that on occasion sex is seen as the antidote to grief.”
    Libby threw up her hands in feigned horror. “Why, Bernie,” she cried. “What a wicked thing to say.”
    Bernie grinned. “I know. I’m truly repentant.”
    Libby turned to her dad. “You were right. A promise is a promise. We swore to Annabel that we’d find her killer and we will.”
    Sean beamed. He felt blessed to have two such wonderful daughters. Not that he would ever say that to them. At least not in those words. But he suspected they knew how he felt anyway.
    “Mom would have had a fit,” Libby said suddenly.
    “This is true,” Sean agreed. His wife had never approved of his career in law enforcement and would certainly never have sanctioned her daughters’ involvement in