Page 40 of A Rose of Steel
“Who?”
“Everyone who was around him, up in that gazebo.”
“That’ll work,” I said.
“So someone put a slow-acting poison into that inhaler he had?” Auntie said.
“Or even in several inhalers. There were so many floating around, and that way they could be sure he got the poison inside of him.”
“Is that possible?” she asked, looking at me. “For it to be several of them? Wouldn’t that mean it was more than one person who killed him? That people were acting in concert with each other?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that would match my theory,” she said. “Coach Buddy and Shane Blanchard is who I think did it. And maybe even LaJay was involved with them.”
“I don’t know that they had access to Bumper’s inhalers, though,” I said. “They weren’t even at the wedding.”
“LaJay had access, and he was at the wedding,” Auntie said. “They could have planned it together and assigned him to be the one to carry it out.”
“I thought you liked him,” I said, and scrunched up my eyes. She could turncoat on a friend in five seconds flat. “You were nice to him when we went to see Mrs. Hackett.”
“I like him fine. He’s a good football player. But he’s still a scoundrel.”
I chuckled. “How so?”
“Going after your friend’s girl is how. I told you he did that, remember. I heard even some say that he might be the father of Jorianne’s baby, and that’s why she was in such a rush to marry Bumper.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said, and sucked my tongue. “That would be hard to hide. LaJay is black. Bumper and Jorianne are not. The baby would tell the story as soon as it arrived.”
“I’m just telling you what I heard.”
“Rumors are just that for the most part, Auntie. Can’t rely on them.”
“Maybe not, but they give you something to go on. It helped me to form my opinion about who might have killed Bumper.”
“But we’re going to follow the facts,” I said. “We’re not going to pick a person who you think did it and try to make the facts fit them.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” she said. She pursed her lips and frowned, her feelings evidently hurt.
“That’s what you did on the last murder we tried to solve.” Her sad face wasn’t going to alter the truth of the matter.
“We didn’ttryto solve it,” Auntie said. “We did solve it.”
“That we did.” I smiled at her. “Still we are going to go about this the right way.”
“Okay, so what do we do?”
“First things first,” I said. “I have to finish up here—get the labs sent off and type up a report for Pogue.”
“Don’t tell him what we found out,” Auntie said.
“I have to,” I said. “Remember we’re playing fair. And anything significant we find out we share.”
“I’m not telling him about my theory,” she said.
“That’s okay,” I said. “Because your theory is waaay out there. I think he’d appreciate me not telling him about that.”
And, I thought,he’d have a conniption if he knew Auntie had a hand in any of this.
