indignant that someone had tried to trick us into eating something unhealthy, but I was sure that with poisons being so hard to obtain, whatever was in the candy would prove to be something that might have caused us to have a few bad hours, but simply couldn’t have killed Mother or me.
Arthur seemed pretty grim about the whole thing, and Lynn Liggett asked us questions. And more questions. I could see the lapel pin on Mother’s jacket heave. When Detective Liggett bagged the candy and carried it out to Arthur’s car, Mother said to me in a furious whisper, “She acts like we are people who don’t live decent lives!”
“She doesn’t know us, Mother,” I said soothingly, though to tell the truth I was a little peeved with Detective Liggett myself. Questions like, “Have you recently finished a relationship that left someone bitter with you, Mrs. Teagarden?” and “Miss Teagarden, how long have you known Mr. Crusoe?” had not left a good taste in my mouth either. I’d never before been able to understand why good citizens didn’t cooperate with the police-after all, they had their job to do, they didn’t know you personally, to them all citizens should be treated alike, blah blah blah, right? Now I could understand. Jack Burns looking at me like I was a day-old catfish corpse had been one thing, an isolated incident maybe. I wanted to say, Liggett, romantic relationships don’t figure in this, some maniac mailed this candy to Mother and dragged me into it by addressing it to me! But I knew Lynn Liggett was obliged to ask us these questions and I was bound to answer them. And still I resented it.
Maybe it wouldn’t have bothered me if Lynn Liggett hadn’t been a woman.
Not that I didn’t think women should be detectives. I certainly did think women should be detectives, and I thought many women I knew would be great detectives- you should see some of my fellow librarians tracking down an overdue book, and I’m not being facetious.
But Lynn Liggett seemed to be evaluating me as a fellow woman, and she found me wanting. She looked down at me and found me smaller than her “every whichaways,” as I remembered my grandmother saying. I conjectured that since being tall must have given Detective Liggett problems, she automatically assumed I felt superior to her as a woman, since I was so short and therefore more “feminine.” Since she couldn’t compete with me on that level, Liggett figured she’d be tougher, more suspicious, coldly professional. A strong frontier woman as opposed to me, the namby-pamby useless stay-back-in-the-effete-east toy woman.
I know a lot about role-playing, and she couldn’t pull that bull on me. I was tempted to burst into tears, pull out a lace handkerchief-if I had possessed such a useless thing-and say, “Ar-thur! Little ole me is just so scared!” Because I could see that this had little to do with me, but much to do with Arthur.
Getting right down to the nitty-gritty, Homicide Detective Liggett had the hots for Burglary Detective Smith, and as Detective Liggett saw it, Detective Smith had the hots for me.
It’s taken me a long time to spell out what I sensed in a matter of minutes. I was disappointed in Lynn Liggett, because I would have liked to be her friend and listen to her stories about her job. I hoped she was a more subtle detective than she was a woman. And I had to answer the damn questions anyway, even though I knew, Mother knew, and I believe Arthur knew, that they were a waste of time.
Robin stayed the whole time, though his presence was not absolutely necessary once he’d told his simple story to the detectives. “I ran into Roe Teagarden in the grocery, and asked her if I could come over here to relax a little since my place is such a mess. When the candy came, she seemed quite surprised, yes. I also saw the hole in the bottom of the piece of candy when Mrs. Teagarden held it up. No, I didn’t know either Roe or Mrs. Teagarden until the last two days. I met Mrs. Teagarden briefly when I went by her real estate office to rendezvous with the lady who was going to show me the apartment next door, and I didn’t meet Roe until the Real Murders meeting last night.”
“And you’ve been here since when?” Arthur asked quietly. He was standing in the kitchen talking to Robin, while Detective Liggett questioned Mother and me as we sat on the couch and she crouched on the love seat.
“Oh, I’ve been here about an hour and a half,” Robin said with a slight edge.
Arthur’s voice had had absolutely no overtone whatsoever (Liggett was not quite that good) but I had the distinct feeling that everyone here was following his or her own agenda, except possibly my mother. She was certainly no dummy when a sexual element entered the air, however, and in fact she suddenly gave me one of her dazzling smiles of approval, which I could have done without since Detective Liggett seemed to intercept it and interpret it as some kind of reflection on her.
My mother rose and swept up her purse and terminated the interview. “My daughter is fine and I am fine, and I cannot imagine that my former husband sent this candy or ever intended to hurt either of us,” she said decisively. “He adores Aurora, and he and I have a civil relationship. Our little family habits are no secret to anyone. I don’t imagine our little Christmas custom of a box of candy has gone unremarked. Probably, I’ve bored people many times by talking about it. We’ll be interested to hear, of course, when you all find out what is actually in the candy-if anything. Maybe the holes in the bottom are just to alarm us, and this is some practical joke. Thanks for coming, and I have to be getting back to the office.” I stood up too, and Lynn Liggett felt forced to walk to the door with us.
My mother got into her car first, while Arthur and Lynn conferred together on the patio. Robin was clearly undecided about what he should do. Arthur throwing out his male challenge, in however subdued a way, had struck Robin by surprise, and he was squinting thoughtfully at my stove without seeing it. He was probably wondering what he’d gotten into, and if this murder investigation was going to be as much fun as he’d anticipated.
I was abruptly sick of all of them. Maybe I hadn’t been a big dating success because I was a boring person, but possibly it had been because I had limited tolerance for all this preliminary maneuvering and signal reading. My friend Amina Day loved all this stuff and was practically a professional at it. I missed Amina suddenly and desperately.
“Come have lunch with me in the city Monday,” Robin suggested, having reached some internal decision.
I thought a moment. “Okay,” I agreed. “I covered for another librarian when she took her kid to the orthodontist last week, so I don’t have to go in Monday until two o’clock.”
“Are you familiar with the university campus? Oh, sure, you went there. Well, meet me at Tarkington Hall, the English building. I’ll be finishing up a writer’s workshop at 11:45 on the third floor in Room 36. We’ll just leave from there, if that suits you.”
“That’ll be fine. See you then.”
“If you need me for anything, I’ll be at home all day tomorrow getting ready for my classes.”
“Thanks.”
The phone rang inside and I turned to get it as Robin sauntered out my gate, waving a casual hand to the two detectives. An excited male voice asked for Arthur, and I called him to the phone. Lynn Liggett had recovered her cool, and when I called, “Arthur! Phone!” her mouth only twitched a little. Oops, silly me. Should have said Detective Smith.
I watered my rose trees while Arthur talked inside. Lynn regarded me thoughtfully. The silence between us was pretty fragile, and I felt small talk was not a good idea, but I tried anyway.
“How long have you been on the force here?” I asked.
“About three years. I came here as a patrol officer, then got promoted.”
Maybe Detective Liggett and I would have become bosom buddies in a few more minutes, but Arthur came out of the apartment then with electricity crackling in every step.
“The purse has been found,” he said to his co-worker.
“No shit! Where?”
“Stuffed under the front seat of a car.”
Well, say which one! I almost said indignantly.
But Arthur didn’t, of course, and he and his confrere were out the gate with nary a word for me. And I’ll give this to Lynn Liggett, she was too involved in her work to look back at me in triumph.
To keep my hands busy while my mind roamed around, I began refinishing an old wooden two-drawer chest that I’d had in my guest bedroom for months waiting for just such a moment. After I wrestled it down the stairs and out onto the patio, the sanding turned out to be just the thing I needed.
Naturally I thought about the candy incident, and wondered if the police had called my father yet. I couldn’t imagine what he’d think of all this. As I scrubbed my hands under the kitchen sink after finishing, I had a new thought, one I should have had before. Did sending the candy to Mother imitate another crime? I went to my shelves and began searching through all my “true murder” books. I couldn’t find anything, so this incident wasn’t patterned after one of the better-known murders. Jane Engle, my fellow librarian, had a larger personal collection
