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narrow it down
to four thousand or so others."
    "Cy, you should become a
medical examiner. The gunshot wounds and knifings are easy. And you can always
guess at the other stuff. You don't have a problem seeing internal organs and
sniffing smells that would turn a skunk away, do you?"
    "No. Lou has ridden in my car."
    "I'll tell him you said that.
And I didn't know you've seen Lou's internal organs."
    "Just one of them. I can't
remember if it's a Wurlitzer or a Yahama."
    "You need to take up playing
the bagpipes and the accordion, so you can offend more people."
    "You mean you haven't bought
any of my CDs?"
    "I need to talk to someone
more intelligent. I'm going back to the corpse."
     
     
9
     
     
    I hung up and called Lou.
    "Lou, it's official now.
We're going back to work."
    "You mean Dan and Heather
quit already."
    "No, I mean Frank called. It
was murder. Someone poisoned Portwood."
    "I hate it when my Portwood
has been poisoned."
    "Am I going to have to put up
with you for the next few days?"
    "Are we going through this
again?"
    "No. Let's leave early so we
can get a good bit done tomorrow."
    "Maybe we won't have to.
Maybe the first person we see will confess."
    "Has that ever happened
before?"
    "No, but this is only our
second murder since we retired. Maybe the guilty are turning over a new
leaf."
    "They are. A table leaf. And
they are using it to bat someone over the head."
    "I thought you said Portwood
was poisoned. Did someone hit him over the head in order to get the poison to
go down."
    "Say goodnight, Gracie. And
I'll pick you up much too early in the morning. How does 8:00 sound?"
    "It has always sounded better
to me than it has to you."
    "You got that right. I always
was the smart one. See you at 8:00 ."
     
    +++
     
    "Herb. Cy. It turns out both
you and the Doc were right."
    "How could we both be
right?"
    "Well, he died of carbon
monoxide poison, but if he had lived a little longer he would have died of the
other poison in his body. Anything you might want to tell me before I get
started?"
    "Have you read the journal
yet?"
    "Yes. I went ahead and read
it in case Portwood was murdered and we needed to get busy. There was nothing
in there that pointed toward a particular person. It was pretty much an
itinerary of what he planned to do that week."
    "Did Frank have any idea
where and when he was poisoned?"
    "Sometime between late Friday
afternoon and Saturday night. So, more than likely it happened at the book
fair, but it could have happened after he got home. But if it did, whoever
poisoned him poisoned him in the garage, or before he got to it. His body
wasn't moved after he died."
    "Well, I don't know who might
have done it in Frankfort . I guess you will have to find
that out. But I know about the people around here. It looks like you might have
to work in a trip to Frankfort and one down here into your
schedule. And let me know when you're coming this way. Maybe we can do lunch.
Like I said, Cyril Portwood had a lot of money. Start with his lawyer, Bert
McHugh, who incidentally is in Frankfort where Portwood is from, not down here. He can tell you who will inherit. I
assume you'll talk to anyone who might have seen Portwood during the last week.
And I don't want to tell you how to run your investigation, but don't forget
his girlfriend down here. I still think she saw him on Saturday night. Whether
he was already dead or dying I don't know. But I guess it's possible she could
have poisoned him when he got home, and that's the reason she didn't report him
dead until Sunday morning. I do know that someone turned off the car ignition,
and it had to have been her or the neighbor across the road. It's too far out
to think Portwood did it just as he died. So, I would think that if you don't
solve it in Frankfort then you at least need to talk to
both of his neighbors. Under the circumstances I don't think anyone else down
here could have done it."
    "Give me their names. He
didn't mention either one of them in the