Bone Appétit by Carolyn Haines Page A

the police chief was not beyond her.
    At the hotel, Hedy had been assigned a new room, which she had all to herself. The other girls refused to share space with her.
    We left her there to prepare for another night of the competition. Hedy needed the title for financial reasons, and now she was more determined than ever to win. Her secrets would come out one way or another, and she was like me: She’d spit in the devil’s eye just to spite him.
    Tinkie made a quick trip to see the lawyer, while I decided to find the county coroner, one Marlboro Tanner, also a preacher. In most Mississippi counties, coroners are elected and require no medical training. In cases of homicide, the state crime lab performs autopsies, and that’s where Janet’s body had been sent. Brook’s too, I supposed. But Marlboro Tanner would be a good place to get an idea of what evidence, if any, Janet’s body had revealed.
    Marlboro’s appearance was in direct contrast to the imageof the tough cowboy his name brought to mind. The clean-cut young man with kind eyes was in the Church of Redemption office working on a sermon. He appeared to be no older than fifteen. When I told him my business, he waved me to a chair.
    “This coroner’s position isn’t the job for me,” he said. “Those poor girls. What awful ways to die. Burning and then poison. I’ll never get that out of my head. The last coroner served four years and never sent a body to the crime lab.”
    “You’re certain it was poison?” There’s no denying Brook’s fate, but it could have been accidental. That was a thought I intended to plant deeply in the young coroner’s subconscious.
    “Chief Jansen says he can’t be certain about Miss Oniada. The autopsy isn’t back yet on her. Probably a couple of days, and more time for Miss Menton. The state lab is backlogged, from what I hear. Bodies are stacked on top of each other.”
    Not exactly the kind of image one wanted floating about in one’s head. But it gave Tinkie and me time to find out what was really happening with the beauty contestants.
    “Prior to Janet’s . . . death and Brook’s . . . accident, there was an incident with Babs Lafitte.”
    “The pepper thing.” Marlboro leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, an appropriate gesture for a minister. “Chief Jansen said something about sending samples off to the lab. He did take some cooking things from the school for testing. But I have to say, what appears to be a practical joke, while unpleasant for Miss Lafitte, isn’t the chief’s highest priority right now.”
    Good to know. I felt an obligation to tell the coroner, who appeared to be an open book, that Jansen wouldn’t appreciate his candidness with me. But why mess up a good source? “What do you think happened?”
    “That young woman this morning . . .” He went to the window to look out over the churchyard, a vista of carefully clipped centipede grass highlighted with flowering shrubs. “I thought at first it was a heart attack. My mind doesn’t normally run to murder. But I do think poison killed her.”
    “Could she have taken something? Not on purpose, but . . .”
    He arched an eyebrow. “I guess that depends on what type of poison was used.”
    “I mean, could she have been taking a prescription drug and had a negative reaction to it? There are a lot of ways to unintentionally kill oneself.” Doubt was the crop I was trying to harvest. The coroner in rural counties relied on the findings of the state crime lab, but he might raise some questions.
    “Anything is possible,” he agreed. “But not likely. What’s interesting is the absence of her roommate, Miss Blackledge. Had she been in the room, she might have been able to get help for Janet in time to save her.”
    That was an angle I hadn’t thought about. Had someone lured Hedy out of the room . . . but she’d left because she couldn’t sleep and wanted to play her violin? “It’s possible Hedy is alive only