Page 144 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Airtight

“I can believe that,” opined Blanche. “I know you and your boost
for Cyborganics when you joined the team. Your NASA contacts
were as valuable as your leadership skills. You had nothing to gain by
ending the project in disaster. And I just can’t believe it’s in your
character to kill somebody like that.”
“Thank you, Blanche. I appreciate that. I hope I won’t need
character references in the near future, but it’s nice to know I can
count on some of you.” Blanche beamed, and the rest of us
squirmed. “Lt. Gramercy may need more convincing. She wondered
if Laurel had discovered my secret and threatened to expose me. Of
course she hadn’t, but how can you prove that something like that
didn’t happen?”
“You’re not under arrest, are you?” Larry was having trouble
maintaining his cool again. “I know a good lawyer. Don’t say
anything more without a lawyer present. It’s your right, you know.”
This proved a kind of comic relief for Waldo. “Really, Doctor: do
you think she would have let me back in here if she were going to
arrest me? I might attack the rest of you, or try to escape, and how
would that make her look? No, I think the thing that saved me, oddly
enough, was the same thing that implicated me in the first place: my
fingerprints on the poison bottle. Circumstances being what they are,
I would have to be very stupid to leave fingerprints on a murder
weapon which couldn’t be disposed of and couldn’t otherwise be
traced to me. And Lt. Gramercy has to credit my intelligence, if not
my scruples.”
“Yes,” Blanche pointed out, “you might not be quite devious
enough to throw suspicion on yourself as an alibi, but the fact
remains that someone put that powder in her drink.”
Ray pounced. “Powder? Who said anything about powder? How
would you know if it’s a powder?”
Blanche made a face and rolled her eyes. “Get real, Ray. Waldo just
said he was going to dust the crops, not spray or paint or gas them.
Anyway, I’ve used BugOff myself. It’s not an uncommon pesticide.
You can get it in any hardware store or nursery.”
Waldo raised one hand. “Please. You missed my point. If any of us
could have laced her beverage, so could she have done it herself. I
don’t think Lt. Gramercy has ruled out suicide yet, so she has to go
carefully with us.”

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