The Pinch of Death – a mystery by Alysse Aallyn

Chapter 26. A Midnight Grocery Run

Sanka and brownies stirred up a passion in Jacquetta for sprouts and bran that was simply irresistible. Luckily there was that all night grocery store out on Route 1.

Usually after Dinner with Mom Jacquetta spent the night on the sofa bed but after an hour’s dressing down she discovered herself to be insufficiently masochistic; yet another disqualifier for sainthood in her mother’s eyes.

But she was out and free. Free, free, free. Even the Datsun cooperated, starting up immediately when she really should have sprung for a new battery. Freedom was so seductive. No job, no boyfriend, no obligations really except those he gave herself. Thanks to Miss Rainbeaux, she didn’t even have the immediate specter of the money running out.

At the moment the long-term plan might be catching a murderer, but the short-term plan was helping Honey by contributing some groceries.

Jacquetta loved supermarkets at this hour. She adored the futuristic lighting making the few daring or sleepless shoppers look like visitors from another planet.

That must have been why she stared so long at the woman with the straggly pony tail without recognizing her. The woman filled her cart with Cornish game hens as bony and breastless as herself, a cart already packed to the brim with frozen food. Alerted by that magnetic sense shared by humanoids she lifted wild, unfocused eyes. It was Penny Dettler.

“Are you following me?” she challenged. This was a very different Penny from the open house attendee, this was a woman who’s rope-end was in full view. Husband said no to the divorce, Jacquetta wondered?

“No,” said Jacquetta and it sounded like a lie even to her own ears. Because in a way she was following Penny Dettler; wasn’t she following all of them, straining to see their private habits, to monitor them especially when they thought themselves alone? With the new table-turning aggression she struggled to master, Jacquetta demanded, “Have you been sending anonymous letters, Mrs. Dettler?”

It was the first thing that jumped into her head – she didn’t really suspect Penny of being D.L. LeRoi, but the response was galvanic. Penny’s eyes filled with tears and her mouth quivered.
“Those cruel, cruel letters!” she gabbled. “They said I couldn’t feed my baby but it wasn’t true – I had so much milk my breasts hurt.”

She rubbed her chest as if to make her point. “It was the doctors’ fault,” she wept, “They didn’t want the baby to get the drugs. Why’s that, if the drugs are harmless? They’re poison, that’s why! They were giving me poison!”

Openly weeping, she staggered toward the exit, abandoning her cart. Jacquetta was forced to trail after her, pushing both carts, and then to use her store card to charge all those groceries.
Some detective I am! She thought angrily. Who else believes the line, “You broke it, you bought it?”

“Mrs. Dettler!” she accosted the weeping woman struggling with a set of car keys, “You forgot your groceries!”

Penny allowed Jacquetta to load the back of her station wagon, while Jacquetta thought grimly about the humor of a minor legatee providing the estate executor with weeks of free food. In what universe did that happen? Oh well, she thought, you know who would understand? Beatrix Rainbeaux!

“Are you going to be all right?” she had to ask, helping Penny disentangle her raincoat from the Volvo door. Wasn’t it lawyers who warned, Never ask a question when you’re afraid of the answer?
But all Penny said was, “I think so.”

And so the accusation Penny made came true, and Jacquetta followed her to her door, thinking, “Some detective I am! Who’s in charge here?”

But once Penny stepped out of her car door Jacquetta drove away. She was NOT going to carry Neil Dettler’s groceries to his door!

But she had a lot to think about as she drove home. She was beginning to get a sense of the “personality” of this case. How likely was it that the anonymous letter writer and the murderer were different people? Not likely at ALL, she considered. It would be understandable to murder an anonymous letter writer who’d stumbled on a dangerous fact but look at who was dead. Only people investigating the letters! So the nasty, hidden personality of the killer was starting to emerge, all too clearly. She was looking for a monster.