The Corpse in Oozak's Pond by Charlotte MacLeod Page B

didn’t win last night, eh?”
    Shandy intervened. “You were also at the bingo last night, Miss, er?”
    “Just call me Flo. You married?”
    “Very happily, thank you.”
    “Well, any time.” Flo didn’t put much enthusiasm into her invitation, if such it was. “What’s up?”
    “We are having a private discussion.” Miss Mink was probably too refined to snarl, but she came pretty close.
    “Get her,” said Flo. “She’s still mad as hell ’cause I wouldn’t stay for the last game.”
    “How late was this, er, Flo?” Shandy asked her.
    “I dunno. Eleven o’clock, ha’ past, maybe. Min don’t ever want to leave till the last gun’s fired an’ the smoke’s cleared away. Me, I gotta get my beauty sleep. Anybody spare a cigarette?”
    Nobody could. Edna Mae had made Ottermole quit smoking because he was setting a bad example to his sons. Shandy had been too poor to afford bad habits back when he’d been callow enough to have acquired them. Miss Mink only sniffed. Flo didn’t look as if she’d expected to be given one, anyway. Shandy noticed she hadn’t even bothered to remove the red knitted gloves she was wearing. In contrast to the rest of her garb, they looked new and clean. Maybe she’d just bought them out of her bingo winnings and wanted to show them off.
    “Was it you who drove Miss Mink to the hall?” Shandy asked her.
    “That’s right. I got my friend’s car. He’s away.” Flo glared at Chief Ottermole.
    “Oh, yeah?” he replied with understandable interest. “What did they get him on?”
    This, Shandy felt, was hardly the time for professional chitchat. “What time did you pick Miss Mink up, do you know that?”
    “Right after Doctor Who. Maybe twenty minutes to eight.”
    “Did you see Mr. and Mrs. Buggins at that time? Were they all right?”
    “Sure. They come flappin’ an’ squawkin’ like a pair of old hens, same as always, wantin’ me to come in an’ set a spell. But Min here had her coat an’ hat all on, an’ I knew she was champin’ at the bit to get goin’, so I says we didn’t want to miss the first game an’ we went. You get free coffee if you go early, see.”
    “You didn’t expect the Bugginses to be sitting up for you when you got back, Miss Mink?”
    “Oh, no, never. They went to bed every night at half past nine on the dot.”
    “Didn’t have much to sit up for,” Flo put in.
    Shandy turned to her. “Did you come to the house with Miss Mink when you dropped her off after the bingo?”
    “Hell, no. I was scared I’d wake up ol’ Pop Buggins. Then he’d come down an’ I’d have to listen to him tellin’ them same ol’ yarns without his teeth in. They was bad enough when you could understand what he was sayin’, but when he talked like a bowlful o’ Wheatena, forget it. I just sat there with the motor runnin’ till Min got inside, then scrammed.”
    “Miss Mink, did you happen to look in on Mr. and Mrs. Buggins before you went to bed?”
    “I am not in the habit of bursting into the bedrooms of married couples without their express permission,” Miss Mink replied in a tone of chilling reproof.
    “Gawd, ain’t she got class,” cried Flo. “Too bad she’s come down to bummin’ rides offa the likes o’ me. Well, see you around, fellas. I gotta go. They’re havin’ a Gilligan’s Island festival on.”
    “It ain’t till tomorrow night,” said Chief Ottermole, but Flo was already gone.
    “Where does she live?” Shandy asked.
    “In that blue cottage just as you turn off the county road,” Miss Mink told him. “The regular occupant is, as she puts it, away.”
    “Mike Woozle,” exclaimed Ottermole. “I knew it would come to me. Mike got eight to ten for robbin’ the Petrolatorium over to Lumpkin Upper Mills.”
    “Wasn’t that rather a stiff sentence for holding up a filling station?” Shandy asked.
    “Yeah, but this was the fourteenth time he’d hit it. Besides, it was what you might call a special case. What