"What are you going to do with these bugs?" Kelly glanced at the girls, who had moved on to the assassin caterpillar.
"He looks like a long, skinny flower!" Lauren pointed. "See those spiny things? They have venom that can make you bleed to death on the inside." She looked back at her cell. "But mostly if you come into contact with a bunch of them hanging out on the side of a tree."
The girls gathered around Lauren to take a closer look.
I answered Kelly, "Nigel said he'd look into zoos, but other than that, no clue."
"You could give them to Hilly," Betty suggested as she tapped on the glass separating her from the scorpion.
Hilly Vinton, a friend of mine, was an assassin for the CIA (who doesn't have assassins because that would be murder and wrong—a thing I'm required by law to say). She'd definitely have use for these things. And she bred beetles, so bugs were kind of her thing.
But how to get them to her? I doubted you could just mail someone an assassin caterpillar. Then again, there was a certain postmaster here in town, rumored to be Aunt June's beau, who I could ask.
This was an interesting dilemma. Was I required to keep these things alive and find them suitable, non-murdery homes? Were any of them endangered? I'd have to look that up.
The girls moved on, and I heard them squealing with glee. They'd found the golden poison frog.
"He's adorable!" Ava gushed.
A tiny yellow frog with big brown eyes hopped over to the glass and looked at the girls.
"How can something that cute be a killer?" Kaitlyn asked.
Lauren punched something up on her cell. "Oooh! Its scientific name is terribilis! I like that."
"What else?" Betty pressed her nose against the glass, fogging it up.
"Whoa!" Lauren's eyes widened. "The frog carries enough toxin at any one time to kill ten to twenty humans!"
The girls seemed stunned.
"You mean we can't cuddle it?" Kaitlyn seemed disappointed.
"Touching it is what kills you." Lauren squinted at the frog. "How can something so tiny and so cute kill so many people?"
Kelly stayed with the girls as I walked around the floor. It was one large, open area with the tanks embedded in the walls. There wasn't a bathroom. No rugs or furniture. If there were other clues, they weren't here.
"Let's head downstairs," I suggested. "I know you did this while I was gone, but I want to go over the second floor again. I don't think there are any clues up here but them." I waved at the displays.
The word clue seemed to send an electric current through the air, and the girls raced down the stairs, landing in a group on the second floor. Good thing too, because the third floor really gave me the willies.
The second floor was perfectly normal, with a master bed and bath, three guest rooms with bathrooms, and a dressing room adjacent to the master bedroom. I did a quick walk-through. Each bedroom had one queen-size bed. You could sleep a lot of people in this house.
Unlike the rest of the house, the bedrooms were kind of bland, with white walls, hardwood floors, and beds with simple headboards and chenille bedspreads. And they were as neat as a pin. Each room had a wardrobe, nightstand, and dresser. There were no closets. How strange.
"I think we need to split up," Ava suggested. "Kaitlyn, Inez, and I can take two guest rooms. Betty and Lauren can take the other guest room and master bedroom. You and Mrs. Albers can search the sitting rooms."
"That sounds pretty good," I agreed. "You know what you're looking for?"
Betty raised her hand. "Dead bodies, weapons covered with blood, and clues."
"Right. But I think you're more likely to find envelopes with my name on them than the rest of the stuff."
Kelly added, "And don't make a mess, please. This is Mrs. Wrath's house now. We don't want to trash it."
The girls went their own ways, and Kelly and I took the dressing and sitting rooms. They were, like the others, white rooms with simple furnishings.
"These rooms are so generic," Kelly said as she knelt down to look under a rocking chair. "Why don't they have the same personality as the first floor?"
"I don't know." I spun a floor-length mirror in its frame so that I could search the back. "There are no pictures on the walls, no personal touches. And how many visitors did she have? Basil said, as far as he knew, no one local had ever been in her house."
Kelly went through the drawers of a vanity table. "You said she was thinking of selling the property to become a river resort. Maybe she meant for the house to be that resort? The bland rooms would make sense in that case."
"That's a good point. It is strange that Nigel and the council would fight that. Tourists would bring big bucks here."
"Do you think the council did her in for that?" Kelly manipulated the drapes.
I stopped and looked out the window. "We sure do have a lot of suspects. The three suitors, jealous Nancy, and now the mayor and town council."
"This is going to be hard," Kelly said. "We'd have to be here a week to talk to all of those people."
I thought about this. "I've talked to Nigel, the mayor. Hal, who's on the town council, Dr. Morgan, who may be one of the suitors and sits on the town council, and Sheriff Carnack."
"That leaves the postmaster," Kelly said. "He's a potential suspect as one of the suitors, right?"
"I need to talk to him anyway about what he saw here when she was found. Maybe he's a suitor too?"
Kelly dropped the drapes. "Where do we go from here?"
"We need the other clues. Didn't Aunt June say there were three or four? I need to talk to the coroner, postmaster, and I'd like to visit the funeral home."
"Don't forget about
