Murder Meringue Pie by P.D. Workman

Author:P.D. Workman [Workman, P.D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: P.D. Workman

CHAPTER 24

They all considered this, staring down at the barometer.

“There wouldn’t be enough mercury in there to kill a person, would there?” Erin asked the obvious. “And you wouldn’t be able to just put straight mercury in someone’s food. You’d have to… do something with it, wouldn’t you?”

Terry nodded slowly. “I would think you would notice little silver balls of liquid rolling around in your food. I don’t know if eating elemental mercury would have the same effect as methyl mercury in your food. I assume you’d want to process it somehow if you were going to feed it to someone. But… if you have elemental mercury to start with, I imagine you could find out on the internet how to process it into something you could sprinkle into someone’s food without it being detected. And there are enough people in his company with knowledge of chemistry who probably wouldn’t need to look it up.”

“Who would even know that there could be mercury in a barometer? I didn’t know that. I didn’t even know what a barometer was until this thing showed up.”

“He had it in his office, if this is the same one,” Willie pointed out. “People ask about it as a part of small talk. Or he brags that his great-grandfather was a pirate and this was his barometer. Who knows. But anyone who visited his office would probably learn what it was and could look up how it worked.”

“Nobody is saying this was the murder weapon,” Terry added. “It may have stopped working years ago. It may or may not have mercury in it or ever have had. The police lab will have to check. But maybe it was supposed to make you think about mercury being used to poison Fontainebleau. That whoever sent it to you knows something about how he was killed.”

“So now my secret admirer is the killer?” Erin asked. “Is that what you think?”

“I think that someone wants you to know what is going on. Or to get involved.”

“Or they want to make you look guilty,” Vic said, pointing to the barometer. “Put the weapon into your hands.”

And Erin had blithely played into his hands, taking the barometer home with her. Putting it under her bed. What if she hadn’t said anything about it and Terry had found it there? Would he have suspected her? Would he have known that it had come from Fontainebleau’s office?

“Did you see it there?” Erin asked him. “At the Homestead when you went up after Mr. Fontainebleau died? Was it in his office then?”

Terry nodded. “I told you I saw it there.”

“Then you know I didn’t have anything to do with it. I hadn’t ever been to the Homestead before today. I didn’t… I don’t know, bring it home with me after visiting him a few months ago, get the mercury out of it, mix it with something that I could put in his food, and then give it to him a little at a time.”

Terry blinked at her.

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