Deadly Appearances Read Online Free Page B

reality behind wasn’t such a bad idea. Howard had called at five o’clock that morning sounding tired and worried.
    “Jo, I’m at Prairie Hospital – all hell’s about to break loose here. How long would it take you to get over here?”
    “Howard, I was sleeping. Can’t it wait?”
    “Would thirty minutes be all right? If you don’t want to drive, Dave’ll come over and pick you up.”
    I looked at my clock. I had slept for three hours. Obviously, Dave and Howard hadn’t slept at all. They didn’t need a prima donna.
    “No, I’ll walk. I could use the air. Why doesn’t Dave meet me in the park and he can fill me in on the way to the hospital.”
    “Yeah, okay. I’ll tell him to meet you at the flowers.”
    “Howard, the park is full of flowers.”
    “The red ones. You know, the weird little ones – the ones that bite,” he said and hung up.
    In the shower, it came to me. The ones that bite were snapdragons; there was a bank of snapdragons on a little hill past the bandstand. Sure enough, when I came over the hill, Dave Micklejohn was waiting. He was still wearing the white shorts and the Sartre T-shirt he’d had on at the picnic. He must have been at the hospital all night.
    I put my index finger in the middle of his chest, right on the bridge of Sartre’s nose.
    “Existence precedes essence,” I said.
    “Never truer than today,” said Dave, straightening his shoulders. “Oh, Jo, this thing just gets worse and worse.”
    “What now?” I said.
    “Well, there’s no doubt at all that Andy was murdered. The pathologist is ninety-nine per cent certain Andy ingested potassium cyanide seconds before his death. They think it was in the water that he drank at the podium. You know, the stuff in the black Thermos that I filled myself and then put the little note on for good measure.”
    I felt a coldness in the pit of my stomach. Cyanide in the water. My instincts had been right.
    Dave waited for reassurance. “Oh, Dave, the police will know the note was a joke.”
    “Well, for the moment they’re entertaining that possibility, hence I’m still a free person. You, incidentally, are a hero, Jo. When you decked that bigwig Spenser, you saved his life. If he’d managed to get the water down, there would have been two of them dead instead of …” He swallowed and looked toward the marina. The striped windsocks on the poles around the deck of the restaurant hung limp in the hot stillness of the morning. Dave swallowed again.
    “Speaking of heroes, Dave, you’re not doing too badly yourself,” I said, touching his arm gently. “What’s happening at the hospital?”
    “It’s full of media people. Jo, you wouldn’t believe the mess and the confusion in that lobby. They’ve already got a crew setting up a live feed to Good Morning, Canada . Andy’s murder will be coast-to-coast by 7:05. Great coverage, kiddo.” And then, smiling ruefully, he gave me the final piece of news. Eve Boychuk was insisting that she would take Andy home to their place in Wolf River and handle the burial herself. That was where I came in.
    “Jo, for fifteen years we’ve managed to smooth over the fact that Andy was married to a person who, to put it kindly, is unusual. Now, when we’ve got every media person in Canada here, Eve is going to throw our leader’s body into a bag, pitch him into the back of her half-ton, drive down the Trans-Canada and bury him in the garden next to her cat.”
    As we walked across the parking lot to the emergency entrance, we were both laughing. We must have sounded crazy, but the laughter helped. Suddenly, Dave pointed to the emergency room door.
    “Well, how about that?”
    I looked. There, bigger than life, left arm in a sling, was Rick Spenser. The doctors must have kept him in the hospital overnight for observation. His beautiful cream suit was filthy, and there was a nasty cross-hatch of cuts on his forehead, but as a taxi pulled up to the door, his wave was imperious. He settled