four to spill the beans. You want to come?”
“Unfortunately, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment.”
Dr. Menke finished his examination. He scooted back on his stool. “I figured they might be the culprits,” he said.
It was not what I wanted to hear. “They’re that big?”
“A couple of beauts. You should have them removed.”
“Absolutely not.”
“It’s a relatively simple procedure.”
“Absolutely not.”
He stood up. Deposited the tongue depressor in the wastebasket. “Like I said, your test results show that you have obstructive sleep apnea. Which is often caused by enlarged tonsils. And like I said-”
“A couple of beauts?”
“More than likely your swollen tonsils are the result of an allergic response to something,” he explained. “Your body has ordered immune cells to take up residence in your tonsils to fight off the infection. That’s what puffs them up.”
I slid off the examination table. “I thought allergies made you sneeze.”
“They can cause all sorts of interesting reactions,” he said. “And given that your snoring is a relatively new problem-or so you say-then I’d say you were only recently exposed to this allergen.”
I rewound my memory tapes and played them fast forward. “Can you be allergic to a man?”
He chuckled. Let me know that my time was just about up by grabbing the doorknob. “Have you recently exposed yourself to one, Mrs. Sprowls?”
I sure wasn’t going to answer that. “How about a dog?”
“A much more likely culprit,” he said.
15
Saturday, August 5
Ike was not happy. Not with the Cream of Wheat I’d made for our breakfast. Not with my refusal to have my tonsils out. “I’m not mad at you,” he assured me as we sat in the breakfast nook watching a pair of squirrels plunder the birdfeeder outside. “I’m just pointing out the inconsistency of your stubbornness.”
“The inconsistency of my stubbornness?”
“That’s right,” he said, wagging his spoon at me. “We’re choking down this tasteless gruel because of your bad cholesterol-”
“The male species comes with good and bad cholesterol, too, you know.”
“-But you don’t care one iota how many times a night you stop breathing!”
“If I make you eggs will you shut up about my tonsils?”
“Good try.”
“I’m just trying to be consistent, Ike.”
“And I’m just trying to keep you from falling over dead.”
“Good! We’ve met each other half way. Now eat your gruel so I can read the paper.” I snapped the paper open and read the headline across the top of page one:
Stunned Police Say
Slain Woman Born A Man.
I’d already read the story twice that morning-once on the trunk of Ike’s car, where the paperboy had graciously thrown it, and once sitting on my front step-but how can you not read a story like that over and over?
By Dale Marabout
Hannawa-Union Staff Writer
HANNAWA-The autopsy of 72-year-old antique dealer Violeta Bell revealed that she had undergone a sex change operation earlier in life, Police Detective Scotty Grant said.
“We debated long and loud whether to release such a personal detail about the deceased,” Grant told a hastily called press conference yesterday. “But given that Miss Bell’s murderer is still at-large, we decided that public disclosure might facilitate our investigation.”
While Grant refused to discuss what he called the “more intimate details” of the coroner’s examination, he did say that the autopsy report “shows unequivocally that Bell had been born male.”
“Makes you wonder if the other Never Dullers knew,” I said.
Ike scraped the last lump of Cream of Wheat from his bowl. He spooned it into his mouth and pretended to enjoy it. “How could they not know? Every time I see a person of that variety I know it.”
“And how do you know that?”
He laughed at his foolishness. “I guess I wouldn’t, would I?”
“Still, you’ve got to wonder if the killer knew.”
“Yes-you do have to wonder that.”
The phone rang. It was Bob Averill. He was in a tizzy. “You’ve seen the paper, I assume?”
“That, I have, Bob.”
“Did you know?”
“I learned the same time Dale Marabout did. Give or take a couple of hours.”
He hesitated just long enough to take a drink of something with ice cubes in it. “Well, I just want you to understand that this doesn’t diminish my interest in the case.”
“Mine either, Bob.”
Ten seconds after I hung up, the phone rang again. This time it was Gloria McPhee. After inquiring about my well being, apologizing for bothering me so early, and then rattling my eardrum with one of the most agonizing sighs I’d ever heard, she got to the matter at hand. “Well, I guess you know what was in the paper this morning.”
“Quite a surprise. But I suppose you already knew.”
“Actually, I didn’t know,” she said. “The possibility never dawned on me. She was as much a woman as you or me. I’m absolutely flabbergasted.”
Her bewilderment sounded genuine. Which meant it was either real or beautifully played. “I imagine it came as a surprise to Kay and Ariel, too.”
“It was. Which reminds me why I called. How would you like to go garage-saling with us today?”
That, I wasn’t expecting. “Well-”
“I could have Eddie swing by and get you in a hour.”
“Eddie?”
“It’s no fun without Eddie.”
A day with those three could be very profitable. It could also be deadly. I twisted the receiver toward Ike, so Gloria could hear my every word: “Ike, dear? Do we have any plans for today?”
And so she could hear Ike’s very manly voice: “For crying out loud, Maddy! You know I’m working today!”
Having established that it would be a bad idea to drive me out to the middle of nowhere and knock me in the head, I accepted the invitation. Fifty-seven minutes later Eddie French pulled into my driveway. Ike had already left for the coffee shop but when I came out, I yelled, “See you later, honey!” anyway. Eddie invited me to sit up front with him but I sat in the back. Harder for him to strangle me while he drove.
I was acting like a paranoid fool. I knew it. Oh yes, garage-saling with Eddie and the surviving Queens of Never Dull was a dangerous thing for me to do. But not physically dangerous. The danger was that I’d be seduced out of my objectivity.
