“Thank you,” she said. “Lavender is my birthday color—November, you know.”
“Do you also have a birthday poem?”
“I never did until you wrote about the idea in your column. Now I’m going to adopt my husband’s favorite poem—Shakespeare’s thirtieth sonnet. Dell loved the last two lines!”
In the lobby of Ittibittiwassee Estates, he was hailed on all sides, thus adding to his acclaim as an important person.
When they arrived at the door of suite 400, Edythe gave him her keys. He unlocked it and pushed the door gently open. She walked in, and her knees buckled. Qwilleran caught her. Her face, which had regained its alabaster look at the dedication, turned gray again.
“Call the infirmary! Quick!” he said.
Medics arrived with a stretcher.
“I’ll go with her,” Susan said.
“Do you think I have her permission to call the police?”
“Absolutely!”
Only then did Qwilleran have time to assess the damage. The glass doors of the china cabinet were open, and all the miniature shoes—four shelves full—were gone. The only one remaining was on the floor, smashed.
Only the Meissen shoe on the bedside table was undisturbed.
Elsewhere, Qwilleran found Lish’s grungy duffel bag in a wastebasket. A closet door stood open, showing several small pieces of designer luggage, but no large fortnighter. That had been used to transport the loot . . . with towels? There were none in the bathroom and few in the linen closet. The porcelains could be layered between thicknesses of terry cloth.
Susan returned to the apartment. “The cardiologist is there. Are the police coming?”
“The sheriff is sending a deputy. He or she will want to know the number and value of the objects stolen.”
Susan said, “There’s a ledger in the desk drawer. Dr. Dell kept meticulous records. Edythe once told me it was almost ten thousand, and that was before inflation.”
Qwilleran said he’d stay until after the deputy’s visit. Susan said Dr. MacKenzie had ordered an ambulance from the hospital.
Qwilleran drove home via Indian Village to ensure that Polly had not drowned. She had just arrived, quite dry.
“I see you didn’t fall in,” he said. “How was it?”
“The boat ride was lovely, if you like boats. The company was congenial. The picnic lunch was superb. Janice gave me some crabmeat Roquefort sandwiches to take home. No crust. I don’t know whether you like that sort of tea-party fare.”
“Ask me!”
“We can have some celery sticks and iced tea and sit on the deck.”
He would have preferred iced coffee, but on a Fourth of July weekend, iced tea seemed more patriotic.
“Excuse me while I change into something comfortable.”
“Do you mind if I tune in the six-o’clock news?”
There were soccer scores . . . and a barn fire on Sandpit Road . . . and a fatal accident on Bixby Highway, south of the county line. A young woman driving south crossed the yellow line into the northbound lane and plowed head-on into the Bixby Airport bus. The victim had not been identified, but she was driving an out-of-state vehicle.
Polly came down the stairs from the balcony. “Did you hear that?” she demanded. “You’d expect that of an older woman having a heart attack.”
“She was calling her boyfriend on the cell phone,” Qwilleran said.
“Did your show go well today?”
“I wowed ’em! I’ll get you a ticket for next Sunday afternoon.”
“Did you attend the dedication, dear?”
“I was late for the presentation of the key, but I got there in time for the tea indoors. The cookies weren’t very good.”
There was more, but Qwilleran had to go home and feed the cats.
When Qwilleran drove into the barnyard, a furry blur in the kitchen window indicated that dinner was late. Both Koko and Yum Yum took supervisory posts on top of the bar while he arranged their food attractively on two plates, one serving larger than the other. In the midst of the chore the phone rang, and Qwilleran grabbed the handset on the wall, expecting a report from Susan.
It was Gary Pratt. “Qwill! Did you hear the six-o’clock news? Fatal accident on Bixby Highway. It was Lish Carroll!”
“How do you know?”
“A deputy I went to high school with came into the bar. We both knew her and thought she was a character.”
“How come she was driving? I thought she’d been denied a license.”
“Who knows? Nobody’s been able to figure her out since ninth grade. Well, I’ve got to get back to work. Thought you’d like to have the inside dirt.”
Qwilleran’s first reaction was: What happened to the porcelain shoes?
His second reaction was to phone Susan and tip her off about the accident. Edythe’s doctor might want to censor the news from reaching her bedside.
Susan had just arrived home from the hospital—exhausted. “I’ve been playing big sister to Edythe for twenty-four hours. I’ll call Dr. MacKenzie at once, about this new development. He calls her a brave woman. He wants her in the hospital for a week for observation. Edythe doesn’t mind; she says he’s charming. And he happens to be a widower.”
