A Body at Book Club: Myrtle Clover #6

Chapter Six

That night, Myrtle set out more canned cat food in the backyard. She was sleepy enough to fall asleep straight away, but by two o'clock, she was staring at the ceiling, completely awake. What was there that was so familiar about mushrooms? Why the odd sense of déjà vu?

Her eyes opened wide. She knew exactly where she'd heard it before. She shoved herself out of the bed, stuck her feet into a pair of tennis shoes, and threw on her robe. Surely Miles was awake tonight. After such a stimulating day, who could sleep?

She was right. Miles's lights were on. She hurried up his walkway and rapped on his door. Miles, dressed in plaid pajamas under a navy bathrobe, opened the door right away as if he'd been expecting her. "Hi, Myrtle," he said calmly.

"Hi, Miles."

Miles led the way to his kitchen where he already had two cups and saucers out and a coffeepot carafe sitting on a trivet on the kitchen table. He was already pouring exactly the right amount of half-and-half in her cup and putting in a loaded teaspoon of sugar before pouring coffee on top, stirring, and passing it wordlessly her way.

Myrtle took a couple of sips and nodded in approval, waiting as Miles fixed his own cup. "Got any cookies?" she asked, glancing around his kitchen.

He reached for a plate that was hiding behind the coffeepot. Myrtle took a chocolate chip cookie. She raised her eyebrows. "Homemade?"

Miles shook his head. "Just like homemade according to the package. Homemade by somebody, I guess."

Myrtle nodded. She said, "Miles, I made a discovery."

"I rather thought you might. You seemed deep in thought on the way back from the vet."

"I'd heard from Rose that the latest garden club meeting featured a speaker from the county extension office who talked, among other things, about poisonous mushrooms!" Myrtle sat back in the chair and beamed at Miles.

Miles seemed slow to take this news in. "So, do you think that Rose is responsible...?"

"No, no. At least—well, she might be. She was at the garden club meeting, after all. But so were other suspects in this case. Claudia is a garden club member; Maxine goes to garden club ..."

"Aren't you a garden club member?" asked Miles, wrinkling his forehead.

"Officially, I'm on the roster," said Myrtle with a shrug. "I'll go if there's nothing else to do. Although I've gotten rather discouraged with my situation and haven't felt like hearing all the wonderful things I could do with my yard."

"What's your situation?"

"Erma Sherman and her crabgrass. I'm in the trenches, fighting a war with crabgrass, and can't devote any of my time to frippery like impatiens or gardenias," said Myrtle.

"But you weren't at that meeting," said Miles. "So you don't know exactly what took place."

"No, I'll have to ask people about it. You see, there were a couple of meetings that I missed. One was the regular meeting with the speaker from the extension office. The other was the annual luncheon. So the murderer could have found out about Destroying Angel mushrooms at the meeting and then had the opportunity to poison Naomi with them at the luncheon. And it makes me very irritated that I didn't make it to either one," said Myrtle, now feeling grouchy.

Miles took a sip of his coffee. "Lena Fowler wouldn't have been at that garden club meeting though, right? She'd mentioned being out of town."

"She did," said Myrtle. "But she also told us that she was familiar with Destroying Angel mushrooms because of her research into poisons that affect family pets. Remember? So this is something she could have come up with on her own without having attended garden club."