“That’s important evidence,” Nancy said. “You didn’t try Vlad’s squash, too, did you?”
“I wish I had,” Penny replied. “It looks so inviting. What kind of creep would do such a thing? What if somebody got sick?”
“I guess whoever did it didn’t care about that,” Nancy said. “Tell me about this morning. You and Lance brought the cartons over from Food Services. What then?”
Penny gave her a sidelong look. “You were there. We put everything in the fridge, remember? Then, about an hour ago, we went back and started heating the dishes that needed it.”
“ ‘We,’ ” Nancy repeated. “You mean, you and Lance?”
“No, a couple of other girls and me,” Penny replied. “Humera and Marie-Christine. That’s Humera over there, by the shish-kebob. I don’t see Marie-Christine just now.”
Nancy glanced over. Humera was short with wavy black hair and dark eyes. She had a brightly patterned scarf tied around her hips, over a pair of white jeans.
“In between, while the food was in the fridge, was the kitchen kept locked?” Nancy asked.
Penny frowned in concentration. “Well . . . most of the time, sure. But I can’t swear about all the time. When we were going in and out, we left it open.”
“So there were times when it was open and no one was there?” Nancy pursued.
“I guess,” Penny said reluctantly.
“One more thing,” Nancy said. “If somebody wanted to ruin Dina’s dish by pouring sugar in it, how easy would that be?”
Penny looked puzzled. “You lift the foil and pour it in, that’s all. What do you mean?”
“I mean, how easy would it have been to pick out Dina’s dish?” Nancy said.
“Oh. Got you,” Penny said. “Hmm . . . Pretty easy, I guess. All the trays were labeled. We needed to tell which was which. And Dina’s would have been especially easy. It was at the top of a stack.”
“Really? How do you happen to remember that?” Nancy asked.
“When we got the cartons to the kitchen, I counted the dishes,” Penny told her. “There were two missing. We had to go back for them.”
“Oh, yes. I remember,” Nancy said. “And Dina’s was one of them?”
“That’s right,” Penny said. She narrowed her eyes. “That’s funny—the other one was Vlad’s.”
Nancy asked more questions, but Penny didn’t have anything to add. She did give Nancy the names of those helpers she recalled. It was a short list.
Nancy thanked her and went over to speak to Humera. She told pretty much the same story as Penny. She had not noticed anybody’s doing anything out of the ordinary. She couldn’t imagine why anybody would do anything so mean. Whoever did it should be forced to eat every bit of the spoiled dishes.
As Nancy left Humera, she saw Ned wave and beckon and she went to him.
“I found that guy,” he reported. “His name’s Clay. He plays bass in a garage-rock group on campus called the Road Kills.”
“Yuck,” Nancy said, making a face. “Is their music as gross as their name?”
“Probably,” Ned said with a grin. “Anyway, I think we can cross him off our list of suspects. He doesn’t know anybody in the IFC and couldn’t care less about the organization, the festival, or much of anything except his group and his attitude.”
“Then why was he helping in the kitchen?” Nancy wondered.
Ned’s grin widened. “He wasn’t helping, just hanging out. There’s this girl he’s got his eye on . . . ”
Nancy groaned. “I can fill in the rest. Okay, he’s off the list.”
George joined them. “Dina is steaming,” she reported. “You can imagine. She swears the goulash was perfect when she gave it to Penny yesterday.”
“Penny confirms that,” Nancy interjected.
“Oh? Good,” George said. “That’s about it. The rest was all about sneaky Rethals. She’s a thousand percent convinced Vlad poisoned her dish. I pointed out that his dish got ruined, too. She said that was a typical Rethal trick to throw off suspicion. I got really tired of listening to all that stuff. Why can’t they work it out, instead of acting like a couple of cross four-year-olds?”
“She was brought up to hate those other people and blame them for whatever went wrong,” Ned said. “The same with Vlad, on his side. It’s hard to get away from something that’s been with you so long.”
“That’s not all,” Nancy said. “When Vlad says or does something Dina doesn’t like, that just proves she’s right about him and his people. And the way she reacts proves to him he’s right to suspect her and her people.”
“Life’s a lot simpler when you’re a detective,” George said with a straight face. “You get to suspect everyone, regardless of race, creed, or national origin.”
They all laughed.
Bess came rushing up. “Look!” she panted. “I just found this in the kitchen trash.”
She held out a crumpled brown paper bag. Nancy took it and looked inside. She saw two plastic shakers, meant for picnics or for keeping on the table. One was labeled Salt, the other had held a powdered artificial sweetener. The tops were pried off both of them.
Ned peered over Nancy’s shoulder. “Bess, you’re fantastic,” he enthused. “This could be the clue that cracks the case.”
Bess turned pink with pleasure. “Wait, there’s more,” she said. “This was in the trash, too.”
She produced a cash register receipt.
