The Odd Job by Charlotte MacLeod

reality of the situation. Two people were dead, and a third close to it. She was an art forger. If her name had been made public, she’d have had to choose between going to jail as an accomplice to theft and murder or being branded a gullible old fool, which would have been even worse. So she kept mum and went on dusting the majolica and doctoring the peacocks, never once uttering even the hint of a complaint about how unmercifully she’d been deceived and exploited.”
    By this time, Sarah was pretty well choked up. Heaven only knew how many tears must have been shed across this banged up old table; Harris passed an open box of tissues and waited while she blew her nose and repaired her lipstick.
    “Thank you, Lieutenant. So what I’m supposed to do now is claim the body and arrange the funeral. Is that right?”
    Harris made a noise in his throat. “Er—there’s more to it than that. The medical examiner’s not ready to release the body because he’s still not sure how she died. She was found in the courtyard, but there’s some evidence that she might have spent some time in one of those sedan chairs on the first balcony. Know what I mean?”
    “Oh yes.” Sarah was making her voice sound brisk and businesslike to keep the tears from coming back. “I fell asleep in one when I was supposed to be lookout the night Max and Cousin Brooks caught two overage hippies trying to steal the big Titian, not realizing it wasn’t a Titian but a Tawne. Poor Dolores always considered that painting her chef d’oeuvre, and well she might. It really is a remarkable piece of work.”
    “You never got back the original, though.”
    “We never say ‘never.’ The Titian was almost the last to be lifted, as Dolores used to put it. After the bomb went off, so to speak, she became a real help in providing information as to when certain paintings were taken from the museum, which has been a great help in tracking them down. I simply can’t think of her as being dead. Doesn’t the medical examiner have any idea at all as to what killed her?”
    “He did say something about possible brain damage, but that’s as far as—”
    “Brain damage?” Sarah felt an ugly prickling of her own scalp. “Did he happen to notice a tiny wound, not much bigger than a pinhole, at the base of her skull?”
    “Wait a minute! What are you getting at?”
    “This.” Sarah reached into Theonia’s tote bag and pulled out the plastic bag that contained the hatpin and its envelope. “It was left at the reception desk while I was out to lunch. As you see, the envelope’s sketchily addressed, but we’re used to getting odd communications.” She shook the hatpin out of the torn envelope. “What do you think?”
    Harris was unimpressed. “All I’m seeing is a piece of wire.”
    “Look again, but don’t touch the point.” Sarah gave Harris a brief rundown on Theonia Kelling’s quest for the perfect hatpin. He remained unstirred.
    “So she wanted one, now she’s got it. Offhand, I’d say one of Mrs. Kelling’s friends was trying to do her a favor.”
    After the day she’d put in, Sarah was not to be talked down. “I do not believe this pin was sent as a goodwill gesture, Lieutenant. To begin with, it’s unattractive and in poor condition. Second, what’s left of those tiny black beads suggests that the hatpin was meant for a widow in mourning, which isn’t something to joke about. Third, that stuff smeared on the shank of the pin looks to me like—I thought at first it might be ketchup or something, but—ugh!”
    Harris knew an “ugh!” when he heard one, he got out of the way in a hurry. “To your right and around the corner.”
    Sarah made it to the washroom, but not by much. She emerged seven or eight minutes later, trembly and still a trifle green around the mouth. Charles was ready and waiting, a paper cup in one hand and an opened can of cola in the other.
    “You’d better sit down, moddom. I know you hate this stuff, but it