Free Worst Case Scenario by Michael Bowen Page A

Wimbledon’s center court, not surrounding the sixteenth hole at Augusta, nowhere had Michaelson ever seen a lawn with the utterly level, glasslike smoothness and emerald perfection of the bowling green at Dunsinane Driving and Hunt Club in Chevy Chase. Four men in dazzling white flannels stood or bent or crouched at one end of the square of turf, contemplating with solemn gravity four solid black balls that looked to be about sixteen inches around, and one smaller white ball.
    With something less than solemn gravity, Michaelson watched them from the south patio immediately behind the larger wing of the clubhouse. He took a deliberate and substantial sip from a heavy tumbler that had started off with two fingers of undiluted Johnny Walker Black Label scotch.
    â€œI take it that at some point one of them is actually going to do something,” he said to Pilkington, who sat with his own glass of scotch on the other side of a white metal table.
    â€œDon’t be so provincial,” Pilkington said. “If this were baseball, there’d be just as much standing around and you’d be lecturing me about how it’s all part of the mental game.”
    â€œIf this were baseball, the sphere would be moving a hundred and thirty-five feet per second. Doing something with it would be intrinsically more impressive.”
    â€œIt’s a good thing you disregarded my advice about Sharon Bedford,” Pilkington said abruptly.
    â€œI took your advice, actually. I volunteered nothing, and if my profile had been any lower, I’d have been horizontal. But Gallagher still tracked me down and insisted on conversation. I enlisted only to avoid the draft.”
    â€œHowever your involvement came about, it’s a stroke of very good luck. I’ve spent a good part of the past week in contact with the Charleston Police Department. It’s gratifying how ready they are to help the State Department. We apparently aren’t quite as pushy as the FBI. At any rate, this thing is shaping up as a four-alarm shambles for several people, including some whose good opinion I covet.”
    â€œRather inconvenient for Ms. Bedford, too.”
    â€œShe’s past caring about it,” Pilkington said. “The people I referred to are not.”
    â€œI’m all ears,” Michaelson said.
    â€œPoison. Bufotenine. Ingested orally.”
    â€œIn English, please. You mean she swallowed a pill or took the poison in food or something?”
    â€œCandy, in all probability. It looks like the last thing she ate was a chocolate mint that the maid left on her pillow after she cleaned the room up, and the betting is that that’s what carried the poison. She was diabetic and nibbled frequently on sweets, as many diabetics do. She presumably ate the mint in one bite, climbed into the filling tub, and died.”
    â€œIt doesn’t sound much like accidental death,” Michaelson said.
    â€œI can’t argue with that. Unfortunately, the answer that makes the most sense to me is a bit complicated.”
    â€œSuicide?”
    â€œYes.”
    Michaelson gazed at the lawn-bowlers for a long moment over a contemplative sip of scotch as he considered the possibility.
    â€œIt strikes me as a lot of trouble to take just to push off, and a pretty unpleasant way to do it,” he said. “Besides that, I talked to the woman Saturday evening. She simply wasn’t in that frame of mind.”
    â€œIf you want to make her death murder, you have two choices,” Pilkington said patiently. “One is to figure out a motive for the maid who cleaned the room while Ms. Bedford was at breakfast Sunday morning. She left a pillow mint in every room she cleaned, and there’s no doubt the one Bedford swallowed was like the mints the hotel buys for that purpose. There was no mint when the police searched the room, and there was one and only one empty mint wrapper in the wastebasket.”
    â€œWhat’s