She pushed away from him, playfully splashing his face as she plowed past. Porky, still wearing an enigmatic smile, waited a sporting minute, and then plunged after her, past her, and then in circles around her.
For several minutes they splashed and swam together, and the only sounds were Miri’s giggles and the rush of the water as their bodies churned. The Sea Park lights made patterns on the dark water, but Miri was careful not to swim into the patches of light. Finally she swam close to Porky, and determined that he had reached the proper stage of excitement.
“Are you ready?” Miri whispered, pressing her wet face close to the dolphin’s smile. “Shall we do it?”
She rippled the water with her hands and then turned over on her back, floating, her pale body shining against the blackness beneath her. “C’mon,” she said softly, and then she made the clicking sounds that are dolphin speech.
Porky clicked back, bobbed a few times, and then swam on top of her. Miri held on, thinking that perhaps they should have discussed the precise acrobatics involved in such a union. She started to disengage herself, in order to be better prepared, but Porky showed no signs of stopping.
“Wait!” said Miri, before a slosh of salt water silenced her. If she could just get to the side of the pool perhaps, and position herself against the ladder. But Porky’s masculine sensibilities were signaling full speed ahead, and he used his flippers to anchor her to him as he drifted downward toward the twenty-foot depths in the center of the pool. Dolphins mate underwater.
Miri Malone’s last thought as she drifted into the chilling dark was that she had been right about men, but wrong to think that a change of species would make any difference.
12
BILL MACPHERSON WAS celebrating his client’s release from jail and his sister’s release from the hospital by treating the client, the sister, and the firm to a celebratory lunch at Ashley’s Buffet, a restaurant much favored by Bill for its all-you-can-eat policy, which catered to both his appetite and his income.
Elizabeth, still wobbly from her close encounter with the exculpatory evidence, was limiting her food to Jell-O and ice cream, for fear of causing a new bout of stomach cramps in her recently poisoned system.
A. P. Hill sat hunched over a plain salad, still brooding about the impending murder trial of her own client, but Edith, whose appetite was never affected by the troubles of others, was tucking into her second plateful of roast beef and mashed potatoes, with assorted vegetables piled around them for variety. “This is what I call a party,” she remarked, between mouthfuls.
Donna Jean Morgan chewed on a piece of fried chicken with mournful satisfaction. “This sure does beat the food they serve down at the jail.”
“That’s all over now,” Bill assured her. “You’ve tasted your last meal from the county jail. All we needed was the analysis of the well water, which came back from the lab yesterday. It contained arsenic. Elizabeth was right.”
“Of course I was,” she said.
“Once I took the water sample in to the district attorney, along with several affidavits explaining how arsenic from embalmed bodies in the church cemetery had contaminated the well water at the old house, he realized that their case against you was weak, to say the least. He even acknowledged that there was a chance that you could be innocent.”
A. P. Hill smiled. “They never actually admit that anyone is not guilty. District attorneys can’t afford to trust humanity. It would be bad for business.”
“They grumbled a bit,” Bill agreed, “but I pointed out that the county budget could be put to better use than staging pointless trials against innocent widows, in the face of overwhelming technical evidence. In the end they conceded the point, and the judge expedited the paperwork, and here you are.”
“It’ll be in the newspaper, won’t it?” asked Donna Jean. “I want the congregation and my neighbors to know I didn’t kill Chevry.”
“I called them myself,” said Bill. “They may want to interview you. Channel thirteen might come over from Lynchburg, if you want a press conference.”
“I’ll talk to them,” said Donna Jean.
“You’re not going to move away, then?” asked A. P. Hill, who had thought that the local notoriety might be too great, even for one proven innocent.
“No,” said Donna Jean. “I don’t know anywhere but here. Besides, Chevry didn’t leave all that much money. Reckon I’ll give some of it to Tanya Faith.”
“You are not required to by law,” said Bill. He blushed. “I mean, I could look it up, but-”
“No, I want to give her some,” his client replied. “I think she ought to go off to college. Maybe Chevry owed her that. Maybe she’ll get smart enough not to fall for some man’s line of talk if she gets educated.”
“Speaking of Tanya Faith,” said Edith. “There’s bound to be some unpleasant questions if you do hold a press conference. Are you sure you don’t want to skip the publicity?”
Donna Jean Morgan shook her head. “I welcome the chance to clear my name, and my great-grandmother’s, too.”
An awkward silence followed her remark. Bill and Elizabeth looked at each other. Finally Edith declared, “You might as well tell her. She’s got a right to know, being a descendant and all.”
“A right to know what?”
“The whole truth and nothing but the truth,” Edith sang out.
“Hush, Edith!” said Elizabeth. “Bill, I think I’d better tell her, since I’m the one who figured it out. Mrs. Morgan, you don’t want to mention your great-grandmother at the press conference. What they’re trying to tell you is that your great-grandmother, Lucy Todhunter, was guilty of murder. Technically, that is.”
“Technically? What do you mean?” Donna Jean Morgan wished these legal types would learn plain speaking. “Either she killed somebody or she didn’t.”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, who was wavering between sympathy for the murderess’s descendant and excitement over her discovery. “She did kill her husband, Philip Todhunter, but perhaps it’s just as well that she was acquitted, because the court would have had an awfully difficult time proving that Lucy had murdered her husband with a beignet. That’s a pastry covered with powdered sugar.”
“Oh, that old doughnut,” said Donna Jean. “I thought they tested a bit of the one she gave Great-Granddaddy Philip, and that they hadn’t found any trace of poison on it.”
“That’s true, Mrs. Morgan,” said Elizabeth. “The beignet contained no arsenic, which is why Philip Todhunter died. He had trusted Lucy to bring him his arsenic, and instead she brought him powdered sugar, and so he died.”
“But there was arsenic in his system.”
“Of course there was. Philip Todhunter was an arsenic eater.” Elizabeth had looked forward to this explanatory lecture during her own painful recovery from accidental poisoning, and now she was savoring the delicious triumph of having solved a mystery that had confounded researchers for more than a century. She had mentally rehearsed this summation of the case, and she intended to give it in fall.
“He took arsenic himself, habitually, just as a drug addict might take heroin or cocaine.”
“Why would anyone take arsenic?” asked Bill.
“It was considered a stimulant,” Elizabeth told him. “It was supposed to give one energy, and- probably more important to someone with a young bride-it was supposed to increase a man’s sexual prowess.”
“Oh,” said Bill. The four other occupants of the table, all female, were watching him with interest, so he directed his attention to the salad with rather more intensity than perhaps it deserved.
“It was not an uncommon addiction among nineteenth-century gentlemen,” said Elizabeth.
“It figures,” said Edith.
“The problem with taking arsenic is that it
