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cone.”
    “Vanilla?”
    “Of course. She’s too young for chocolate. I’ve written down all the specifics on the pesticides and I can fax that to you.”
    “You’ve included the antidotes?”
    “Yes, but let me just tell you. For Caridon atropine sulfate is antidotal. For Parazone it would be a little more difficult. It would have to be done in a hospital because they would use charcoal or clay to bind the material in the stomach, removing the main ingredient, paraquat, from the blood by cleaning out the blood. Because it can burn tissues, you wouldn’t want the person to throw up.”
    “It sounds like either way, get the victim to the hospital as quickly as possible.”
    “That would be my recommendation.”

CHAPTER 5
    Meg climbed out of the bathtub, rubbed her body dry, and stepped into her new summer pajamas. Her mother had bought them for her—shorty pajamas with bunnies on them and a pink ribbon at the neck. Meg wished she could go stay at someone’s house for a sleepover just so she could show them off. Maybe she should visit Aunt Bridget and her cousin, Rachel.
    It was only a little after nine o’clock and Mom was letting her stay up later in the summer, but she didn’t even care tonight. Meg was tired. Since her mom had worked most of the day, Meg had gone over to the Daniels farm and played with their kids. She had helped them get the eggs away from the chickens. There was one chicken that tried to attack them, but they had managed to escape her sharp claws.
    They let Meg bring a dozen eggs home with her. The eggs were not the normal white, but soft brown, as if they had been dusted with dirt. They seemed more real to her; they looked like they actually came from the earth. When Mom fried them, the yolk was a bright orange color.
    “Mom, I’m going to bed,” Meg shouted at her mother, who was sprawled on a wicker chair on the front porch, reading.
    “You going to read for a while?” Claire asked.
    “Maybe. I’m kinda tired.”
    “I’ll be up in a few minutes to tuck you in.”
    Meg stood on the middle stair and yelled down, “Is Rich coming over?”
    “I think so. We left it a little vague.”
    “He should just live here, he sleeps over so much.”
    Her mother didn’t say anything for a moment, almost as if she hadn’t heard Meg; then she yelled back, “Everything in its time.”
    “What does that mean?”
    Her mom lifted her head from her book, turned, and gave Meg a look. “When we get good and ready.”
    “I’m ready right now.”
    “Noted.” Her head dropped back down to her book.
    Meg walked the rest of the way up the stairs. She knew her mom was working on another case. It didn’t sound that exciting to her. Someone had stolen weed killer out of a store in Durand. What a weird thing to steal. It just sounded like shoplifting. Kids did it all the time. What was the big deal?
    Meg climbed into her bed. Clean sheets. She loved the feeling of clean sheets. In the summer Mom hung them out on the line and they carried some of the outdoor smell in with them. She smoothed her hands over the sheets and remembered the one time she had shoplifted.
    It had been at the grocery store in Pepin. She had slipped a candy bar into her pocket when she was shopping with her mom. Then she had to wait while her mom had gone through the checkout line. She had almost thrown up, she was so sure that Peggy, the lady who ran the cash register, would catch her. When she got home, she had run upstairs and eaten half the candy bar and then thrown the rest of it away. It hadn’t tasted as good as she had expected. She had decided then and there that a life of crime was not for her. Probably just as well with a mom as a deputy sheriff.
    But then Mom had told her tonight at dinner that someone had ruined all the flowers in front of the sheriff’s department. Meg had only seen them once a few weeks ago, but she thought they had looked real nice. She didn’t get why someone would do that. Was it a message