A Berry Baffling Businessman

by A. R. Winters

  “If Seb told the truth about coming back here when he did, why would he lie about whether or not he killed his father?” Zoey said.

  I stared at her.

  “Oh, shut up,” she told me.

  Her leap in logic was nonsensical, and she knew it.

  My mind raced. Per what William had told us about Lara’s behavior with Sebastian, the case for her innocence was looking worse and worse. It was clear that she was guilty of something—but was she guilty of murder?

  We’d just found out that her feelings for Ollie were less than genuine with a strong insinuation she’d been in the relationship for the financial gain it would offer. But how much did she stand to gain financially with Ollie dead? She’d no longer have unfettered access to the man with the keys to the kingdom. That was now Sebastian.

  Sebastian...

  I slammed the mental door on where that line of thought was about to take me.

  It had to be Lara. She was a vile, conniving manipulator. Now she’d donned the persona of the black widow. But still, why didn’t she wait until after they were married?

  I thought a bit more. I was missing something super obvious. I could feel it on the periphery of my thoughts, nagging me and giving me a big ol’ juicy raspberry with its tongue stuck way out. But then I hit it with an imaginary baseball bat and took a good look at it.

  “You know the one thing we don’t have any leads on? Why was Ollie behind my café in the middle of the night? The police are pretty sure he was still alive prior to midnight. That means his body ended up in that spot after midnight. And, if Sebastian is innocent—if,” I emphasized, “and he was in back of the café from midnight until at least 2 AM, that means Ollie was out running around in the middle of the night.”

  “But he was here with his fiancée,” Zoey said.

  “Exactly! If I was on a business trip with my fiancé and he went out in the middle of the night, I think I might notice.”

  “We need to talk to Lara,” Zoey said.

  “This is the B&B where Sebastian’s staying. It makes sense that Ollie and Lara would be staying here as well.”

  “Let’s go find Myrna.”

  We found her in the kitchen, and it was a huge kitchen. Even with my café’s kitchen and the apartment kitchen I had upstairs, I was envious. Mrs. Myrna didn’t miss a beat, literally, while whipping a meringue.

  “That poor man. It’s just awful what happened to him. And his fiancée! She’s been destroyed by this, just destroyed.”

  “We need to talk to her,” I said. “Do you remember what room she’s in?”

  “The last door on the right.”

  “Do you know if she’s here?”

  “She’s been so distraught, I’d be more concerned that she’s taken an overdose of Xanax. You girls go check on her, but knock. Don’t go in. If she doesn’t answer, come back and get me and we’ll check if she’s in.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Back upstairs we went, all the way to the end of the hall. We knocked on Lara and Ollie’s door and heard nothing from inside—except a sneeze.

  “Lara,” I called out. “It’s Kylie… Kylie from the café? We attended Chef John’s cooking class together. Could we talk a moment? I… I need your help.” I held my breath, hoping I’d played on her sympathies rather than put her into a state of defensiveness.

  Her door jiggled, then her knob turned. The door opened, and I tried not to gasp.

  She was a sickly pale. Not so much washed out, but rather like the off-color hue of pus. Her hair was sleep-matted and wild, there were tiny beads of sweat on her upper lip, and her hands had the barest tremble. The last time I’d seen her, I’d thought she was slender, but now she looked positively gaunt. I didn’t know how that could be since it had only been a few days since then.

  “Lara, sit down,” I said, when I realized that her knees were trembling as much as her hands. She looked ready to fall. This was the woman I hated—for a myriad of reasons all having nothing personally to do with me—but looking at her, instead of being filled with hate, I was filled with pity.

  I stepped into her room and guided her to sit on her bed—right next to her open suitcase.

  “Going somewhere?” Zoey asked in a dead, monotone voice.

  “I have to get out of here,” she said. “I can’t stay. Ollie’s dead.” Tears filled her eyes.

  “Honey, you have to stay in town. The police”—and me and Zoey—“are still investigating. Maybe Mrs. Myrna could move you to another room? One just for you.” I didn’t say the other part of that, which was maybe Mrs. Myrna could move her to a room that she hadn’t shared with the man she’d planned to marry.

  “No, no… You don’t understand. I can’t be here. I have to leave. I have to.” She pushed up off the bed but almost went to the floor when her legs failed to hold her. She persevered with a steadying hand on the bed that helped her stand. She went to the closet, opened it, and started pulling her clothes off their hangers. Ollie’s clothes hung right next to hers, but they might as well have been invisible for all the notice she gave them.

  “You can’t leave,” Zoey said. “The killer hasn’t been exposed yet.”

  I noticed Zoey didn’t say that the killer hadn’t been found and instead said, “exposed.” There was no sympathy in her eyes as she watched Lara, and I realized she now suspected Lara was the killer.

  I had thought that someone else being sure of Lara’s guilt would make me happy, but instead I was cold and hollow inside. There was no joy in it.

  “Lara,” I said, “Zoey’s right. You can’t leave town.”

  Lara whirled on us. With her arms overflowing with her clothes, she screeched, “Nobody tells me what to do! Not you, not anybody!” Spittle foamed at the corner of her mouth, and her bloodshot, glassy eyes didn’t seem to want to focus on any one spot.

  “Lara,” I said, using my gentlest voice, “did someone tell you what to do? Was it Ollie?” I hadn’t gotten a control-freak vibe from him when I’d met him, but maybe he only let that side of himself come out to play when he was alone with his chosen toy. “Was Ollie being mean to you?”

  “Shut up! You shut up!” She lunged to stomp her foot, but her legs buckled and she ended up sitting on her knees on the floor. But that didn’t stop her mouth. “Don’t you speak his name! He was too good for the likes of you. He was too good for me.” Great sobs came next as she hung her head and cried.

  I wasn’t sure what to do, but crying jags like the one I was watching tended to run their course pretty fast. At least that’s what I’d thought. Rather than easing up, her sobs got worse. They turned into retching sobs. She cried so hard that it seemed hard for her to get in a breath.

  Then she clutched her throat. She sucked in air as hard as she could, but I only heard a terrible, gargling wheeze.

  “Lara?”

  It was Zoey who spoke up in concern, not me. That alone had me scrambling for my phone.

  I dialed 911 and gave directions to the operator as I watched Lara fall backward.

  Zoey had to hold Lara’s hands to keep her from digging deep grooves into her distended neck.

  “Please hurry!” I begged. “Please!”

  They were the longest eight minutes of my life.

  Never had I felt so helpless before, and I hated every second of it. I pleaded with Lara to hold on and reassured her that help was on its way, all while wanting to get up and run out of the room and never look back.

  When the paramedics stormed into the room, Lara’s lips were blue and most of the fight had fled her body. Their quick work got her stabilized, and they had her outside on a stretcher moments later.

  “Yes!” Mrs. Myrna hissed into her cell phone as she paced in front of her front door. “They tried to kill one of my guests! ... You’re right. I should call the police!”

  If glares could kill, she should be calling the coroner. From the way she was eyeballing me and Zoey, I knew she wished it were us being carted away and not one of her p
atrons.

  “We didn’t do this,” I mouthed to her while pointing in the direction of where they were loading Lara into the back of an ambulance.

  Mrs. Myrna did some pointing of her own—straight up in the air with her middle finger. She slammed the door behind her and disappeared back into her house.

  “Do we have any idea what happened to Lara?” I asked Zoey.

  Zoey shook her head. “Xanax wouldn’t cause this.”

  “Any ideas what would?”

  “Too many to narrow it down. We’ll have to wait ‘til we can talk to her.”

  I had serious doubts Lara was going to survive. “I’m not doing a seance,” I blurted out.

  Zoey grinned. She threw an arm over my shoulders. “I knew there was a reason I liked you. You’re wrong inside.”

  I sucked in a breath of air and jabbed Zoey in the ribs. “I am not! Take that back.”

  Chapter 14

  “Hey… It was a compliment,” Zoey teased.

  “What do we do now?” We were running short on leads, and we’d never gotten around to asking Lara why Ollie had been out and about in the middle of the night.

  “I’m going to follow them to the hospital,” Zoey said. “Want me to drop you off at the café?”

  Go back to the café and walk away from the only active lead we had? My stomach knotted in a cramp, I felt short of breath, and my heart raced in my chest. “I… I don’t feel so good. I think maybe whatever happened to Lara, maybe it’s happening to me.”

  Zoey pulled away and looked me up and down. She put her fingers against my throat beneath my jaw. “Nope. You’ll be fine. Eventually.”

  “How do you know?” The world was starting to swirl.

  “You’re having a panic attack.”

  “Again?” I wheezed.

  “This has happened before?”

  I nodded. It had happened when I was talking to Detective Gregson. I remembered what he’d done. He’d covered my mouth and nose with his hand so that I couldn’t breathe. That wasn’t an experience that I wanted to relive, but that didn’t mean there weren’t options.

  I sucked in as deep a breath as I could, then I held it… and held it… and held it. I stared at a wild daisy that had bloomed in the middle of the B&B’s lawn and looked at nothing else. My heart continued to race and my head lost its sense of what was up or down, but my mind stilled as it filled with the image of Detective Gregson’s smoky eyes. Staring at me. There was nothing else that existed. Only his eyes.

  “You okay? Doing better?” Zoey asked.

  I was pretty sure that I’d have been on the ground if it weren’t for her steadying presence at my side.

  I nodded. I was feeling better. My heart had slowed, the world wasn’t off its axis, and my brain was no longer filled with an avalanche of tumbling, out of control thoughts.

  I sucked in air, forcing myself to breathe slowly. “I’m okay,” I said.

  “What brought that on?”

  That was an excellent question.

  “You’d said you were going to the hospital but that you could drop me off at the café. I do need to go back to work. Everyone’s depending on me. If it’s not me showing up to keep the place going, everything’ll fall apart. I’ll lose everything.” And I did mean everything. I’d been living at a women’s shelter before stealing my ex-husband’s car to drive down to Kentucky from Chicago. Owning the café had saved me. I couldn’t throw that away just to… to… solve a murder.

  I felt as though one half of me was being pulled apart from the other half, and what was left in the middle was stretched too thin to continue to exist. There was no way I could hold up against the demands of the world—not like this.

  Everything tilted again, but I forced myself to calm down. I took control. I made a choice of which side of myself to stand with and stilled my mind with the image of Gregson’s eyes.

  “I want to go to the hospital,” I declared. My heartbeat slowed even more. The air became more plentiful. It didn’t only fill my lungs—it actually fed me oxygen.

  “And the café?” Zoey asked.

  “Brenda’s at the café,” I spoke with great, deliberate care. “Everything with the café will be okay.” It was a declaration. An absolute.

  The café would be okay.

  I would be okay.

  That would be my new mantra: I will be okay.

  My world would not fall apart.

  Zoey had us at the hospital a few minutes after the ambulance had arrived. We quickly came to the conclusion that we weren’t going to be able to learn anything until Lara was out of crisis and the hospital had had a chance to figure out what was going on with her.

  “Lunch. I’m buying,” Zoey said.

  We headed for the hospital cafeteria. I was immediately disappointed. While the hospital might have been a place of healing, they sure didn’t offer healthy food for those there to support of the sick. But we stayed, we ate, and then we lingered for a couple of hours. I did my best to keep my anxiety-driven blood pressure under control and Zoey fielded a couple of emergency tech calls. I overheard her ask one client if the power was on in the building. I supposed they said no, because she told them to call her back when it came back on and then hung up.

  Eventually, we went back to the emergency room check-in. I posed as Lara’s long-lost sister, and we learned that she had been transferred to the Intensive Care Unit.

  “Could you tell us how to get there?” I asked the receptionist.

  “Ah, honey, the ICU won’t let you in to see her until they get her stabilized. It’s best to go home and get rest. The hospital will call her contacts as soon as they’re a change in her condition.”

  “She takes medication,” Zoey said. “The doctors will need to know what she’s on. She lies a lot. Doesn’t want the stigma that comes with being on that many…” Her voice trailed off and she looked at me. “What would you call them?”

  I was going to kill her. “Antipsychotics?”

  Zoey shrugged. “I was going to say home-grown herbal remedies, but same difference.”

  “Uh… yes,” the receptionist said with uncertainty and then again gave us directions on how to reach the ICU.

  It was a winding maze of corridors and elevators, but we made our way there. A row of chairs lined the wall outside the double doors leading into the ICU. A phone hung on the wall, and a woman dressed in a summer dress held its receiver to her ear. She stated who she was there to see and her relationship to that person. The door buzzed, then there was the distinct click of a lock releasing. She disappeared through the doors without a glance back.

  Zoey and I looked at each other, then we took a seat and stared at the doors. We watched a few nurses go in and only one visitor leave. The place was locked down pretty securely.

  “I’m not sure we should be here,” I said. “There are really sick people in there. Maybe we shouldn’t mess with it.”

  “Do you think that Lara tried to take her own life?”

  “No,” I answered, shocked. Zoey’s question seemed to have been from left field.

  “Lara was packing to leave town when we got to her place. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t packing for the afterlife.”

  “And that would mean that whatever attack she suffered, it probably wasn’t self-inflicted,” I said. “If it were, she would have known she wouldn’t be going anywhere and wouldn’t have bothered to pack.”

  “Bingo.”

  “So somebody did this to her…” I said.

  “Somebody who could do it to somebody else.”

  I sat back and crossed my arms over my chest. “No, that woman in there is our killer. We just have to get her to confess.”

  “What do you have against her?”

  My head fumed while I considered answering. “She slept with my ex… before he became my ex.”

  “Oh…” Zoey shrugged. “Well, maybe she’ll die.”

  I went from leaning back in my chair to full on slouching. I didn’t know if Zoey w
as making fun of my anger or not, but when she put it in such blunt terms, some of for the hatred I felt toward Lara ebbed away. I wasn’t ready to declare Lara and me best friends or anything, but I wasn’t willing to go so far as to wish her dead.

  One of the ICU’s double doors pushed open, and a very familiar figure appeared. He started to breeze past, but I jumped to my feet.

  “Brad!”

  He did a double take, put on his foot brakes and backed up. I never was going to get past how incredibly handsome he was in uniform. Seeing him and talking to him at the café had become comfortable. My safe place. It was that bubble in the fabric of the universe where someone who looked like him could have eyes for me. But here, in public, I felt unnerved when his blue-green eyes focused on me and his usual sly, knowing grin pulled at his lips.

  My heart pitter-pattered, but at least I knew that this time it was not from the onset of yet another panic attack.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. Then his smile fell. “Ohhh, you two are the ones who called the ambulance. Why didn’t I guess that from the start? You’re both always at the center of it all.”

  “Can you tell us anything?”

  Brad looked to his right and left. There was no one around. “They got some bigwig doc here on loan, someone who was a student of an even bigger big deal somewhere else. A poison specialist. Personally, I think they’re seeing what they’re used to looking for, but the doc thinks that Lara was poisoned. It’s why I’m here. They called the police, and I came out to make the preliminary report.”

  “We were in her room at the B&B when the attack hit. She wasn’t eating anything. I didn’t even see a glass for something to drink.”

  “That’s the thing. The doc don’t think it was something done to her recently. He thinks she was poisoned two to three days ago and that it took that long for the poison to shut down her organs and then for her to get sick from her organs shutting down. The doc said that if she hadn’t had the anaphylactic shock reaction when she did, she probably would have slipped into a coma during her sleep and been past saving. You two meddling and nosing around where you shouldn’t have been saved her life.”