Just Plain Pickled to Death by Tamar Myers Page A

close my eyes since yesterday morning. I guess I fell asleep and was dreaming. You know, I could arrest you for breaking and entering. And assaulting a police officer.”
    “No, you couldn’t.”
    “Want to bet?”
    I opened my pocketbook and whipped out a little pink book with a gold clasp. “You’d lose, dear.”
    His eyes took turns inspecting the pink book. “What’s that?”
    “Susannah’s diary. The unabridged version.”
    He sat down again as abruptly as if he’d been pushed.
    “What is it you want, Yoder?”
    “Your official cooperation.”
    “Are you blackmailing me?”
    “The diary is pink, dear. Inside, however, it’s red hot.”
    He tried bluffing, a mistake for male mantises. The female gets them every time.
    “So? Sex is the national pastime. Nobody’s going to care.”
    “The taxpayers will care.”
    He turned whiter than Cousin Sam had. “Get to the point, Yoder.”
    Allow me to assure you that I had not even skimmed Susannah’s diary, much less read it. I knew that she kept the book under a pair of black lace panties in her left bottom dresser drawer, but I had no idea where she kept the key. However, on more than one occasion, Susannah has let slip references to things that Melvin did, or places that he took her to, that he had no business doing in a city-owned car.
    “Like I said, I simply want your cooperation, Melvin.”
    “Details, then, please.” He said it almost politely.
    I pulled up a chair that had been wasting its time in a comer. “I know where there’s proof that Rebecca Weaver—Sarah’s mother—was killed. Proof that Sarah saw it happen and her life was in danger when she disappeared.”
    “Where is this proof?”
    “In a diary.”
    His mouth opened and closed, and he began madly mashing his mandibles. “This is ridiculous,” he said at last. “I may have had the hots for Sarah’s mother—all the boys did—but I never told Susannah that. And I certainly didn’t kill Mrs. Weaver.”
    Dawn came slowly to my aging brain, but it brought a smile with it. “I’m not talking about you, or this diary at the moment. I’m talking about another diary. One that belonged to our victim herself.”
    “I’m not in it?” He sounded almost disappointed.
    “I’m sure you are,” I said kindly. “But I’m also sure you are not the one she saw kill her mother,” I added soothingly.
    But was I? Jonas wouldn’t tell me who the killer was over the phone. But of course it couldn’t have been Melvin. The man was as irritating as a mosquito up your ear, but he wasn’t a killer. There wasn’t a violent bone in his body—or was there?
    Susannah had said once that he slapped her. There is never an excuse for hitting a woman—or any human being—but that’s only a fine and dandy theory when Susannah’s in the picture. Susannah’s talent for lying aside, that woman could provoke Mother Teresa into picking up an Uzi and spraying a roomful of sleeping babies. Melvin may have slapped Susannah, but even if he had, the man wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. I would stake my inn on that.
    “Where is this diary?” Melvin demanded. “It’s police business, and I want you to hand it over immediately.”
    I smiled patiently. “It’s on its way here from the Pittsburgh airport, dear. But, like I said, I want your cooperation.”
    He stared at me with both eyes, quite a feat of cooperation in itself. “Details, Yoder.”
    “The diary belongs to Sarah’s father now. Jonas Weaver. As you surely know, diaries can contain some very personal information, and this one does. Information that has nothing to do with the case. It—”
    “It’s up to me to decide that, isn’t it?” he snapped.
    I held up Susannah’s plastic-bound secrets. “Ah, ah, ah! No, you don’t. That’s why I brought up the subject of this little gem. It’s very important to Jonas that we read only the parts that pertain to the murder.”
    “We?”
    “You and I, of course. Who else is going to keep an