Deadly Housewives by Marcia Muller

Deadly Housewives by Marcia Muller

Author:Marcia Muller [Muller, Marcia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-07-27T13:58:56+00:00


V

Alvin and Lettice had spent the whole morning discussing Karin’s arrest, and how she’d managed to plant the bomb. When Temple finally arrived at the lab, a little after noon, they pounded her with questions.

“My mother did not put a bomb in that building,” Temple snapped at them.

She pulled a couple of specimen bags from her canvas briefcase and laid them on Lettice’s desk. One held the distended plastic jug, the other a newspaper. “Can you analyze these?”

Alvin came over to look down at the bag. “Hmm. Small print, lots of words, a screed about liberals in the media, must be the Wall Street Journal.”

“Please don’t joke about it, Alvin—these might help with Karin’s defense.”

“What are they?” Lettice asked.

“The Wall Street Journal and an empty water jug,” said Alvin, unrepentant.

Lettice picked up the specimen bags. “What am I looking for?”

“Yes, what is she looking for, and why are you giving her the assignment?” It was their boss, Sanford Rieff, who had materialized in the doorway.

“Oh, sir, it’s—you know, the Spadona building, my mother was arrested, they planted false evidence in her green house, I’m sure of it, and I want—”

“Slow down, Temple. I can’t follow you. Give me a step-by-step picture of what this is about.”

Temple shut her eyes. Where Karin chanted for harmony, Temple saw her to-do list, laid out in her head like a spreadsheet. It was so clear to her that she had trouble putting it into words, so she went to her computer and typed it all out.

Sanford Rieff looked at it and nodded. “And who is the client? Who is going to pay for time on the mass spectrometer, and for Lettice’s time?”

Temple swallowed. “I guess that would be me, sir.”

Sanford looked at her for a long minute, then walked over to her computer and typed a few lines. “Okay. I’ve added you to the client database. You can finish Lettice’s tests on the water in the Lyle township pool—you know enough chemistry for that, right? And do you know what you expect Lettice to find?”

Temple took a deep breath. “I don’t know if these are connected to the explosion, but—I’d look for ammonium nitrate, to see if the stuff they found in the green house is on these, and check for acetone in the jug. I knew it smelled funky when I took it away from the baby yesterday, but it was only just now I realized it was nail-polish remover, I mean, I never use it, and I’d forgotten, I had a college roommate who was always doing her nails, but what I ought to do is go back to the Spadona building and get samples.”

“You’re not making sense again, Temple,” her boss said, “but what you ought emphatically not to do is go back to a closed-down explosion site to get samples. You could be arrested, or even worse, injured. Someone has taken samples and we’ll see if we can find their reports.”

Sanford Rieff pushed her gently toward the door. “You have the makings of a forensic engineer, Temple, but we need the swimming-pool analysis this afternoon.



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