The Year's best mystery and suspense stories, 1990 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Detective and mystery stories, English
Publisher: New York : Walker
Published: 1990-12-14T23:00:00+00:00

They had then gone down to the front desk, where he turned in their key and received an itemized bill.

"The next day when I read in the newspaper that a guest who had come to that room after me had drunk poisoned

orange juice and died, I was, of course, flabbergasted. In fact, I could only think how close I might have come to dying myself."

After that, he had known he should come to the police with his story, but he was very busy at work on Wednesday and by evening he was exhausted, so he had put it off until the next day. On Thursday morning he wasn't feeling well, but still he planned to stop by the police station on his way home from work. By noon, though, he was feeling nauseated and weak, and his arms and legs were leaden. He had gone to a nearby hospital with his symptoms and was told he was experiencing a slight muscle paralysis.

"Thinking about what had happened, I decided to ask the doctor about it. I said that two days previously I had drunk a mouthful of bad-tasting orange juice and asked him if that could have some bearing on my symptoms. The doctor said it was possible that that was the problem. He said that, depending on the quantity consumed, a deadly poison can show up as muscle paralysis after two or three days."

That day and Friday Takei had stayed home from work, and now he was feeling recovered.

"I realize now," he said, "that if I had only raised the question of the orange juice when I checked out, the next guest may not have been sacrificed. A terrible crime has been committed and I'm here now to help see justice done if I can."

He concluded by saying in a low voice that he hoped he could keep his name from being mentioned publicly in the matter.

The snack-bar hostess who had accompanied Takei to the motel was brought in for questioning. She confirmed the details of his story—he had taken a drink of orange juice in his mouth, made a funny face, and gone to the bathroom, where he had spit it out. Both at the motel and later in the car, he had complained of something wrong with the orange juice, but he had asked her not to say anything about it because he didn't want any trouble from the police.

The desk clerk at the motel remembered Takei's face and that of the girl.

Homicide next checked all the empty juice bottles that could

be found at the Castle Motel. The cleaning maids rounded up all the empties that had been gathered from the various rooms and packed them in a box. From among these, the police lab found one that contained minute traces of Malthion. Because the bottle had not yet been washed, traces of the poison remained. The police were able to lift fingerprints from the bottle and when these were compared to Takei's prints, two of them matched. In this fashion, it was determined that the bottle had indeed come from Room 305.

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