“Wait. It’s true though.” Taylor waved her hand at the bag. “I’m not attention-seeking, I swear.”
Reg laughed. “You were attention seeking the first time, but it worked in my favor. Hey, you know what, speaking of favors, I owe you one. Is there something I can help with here?”
Reg sat.
Craig filled him in.
Reg frowned at the bag. “That’s not much to go on, and to be honest, if the kombucha had been poisoned with salicylates I doubt there’d be enough in the residue on the lid to prove anything. But don’t toss it out. Let me think about this and I’ll call you as soon as I have something we can work with, okay?”
Taylor nodded.
“And hey, why didn’t you ask for me about your mom? I would have helped you in a heartbeat.”
Taylor looked at her hands and shook her head. She could never admit she’d forgotten he existed. “I guess…I just didn’t really think of it. I had a lot on my mind.”
He gritted his teeth, then nodded. “I can understand. Finding out who killed a friend’s dog is a very different thing than what you dealt with when you lost your mom. Craig, did you get her number?”
“She’s about to write a statement for me.” He pushed a paper and pen across the table. “Are you good to do that?”
Taylor nodded and began to write.
“Add your phone number when you sign it,” Reg said. “And I’ll call. Probably later tonight.”
* * *
Taylor went to the shop and found Roxy and Hannah going through the motions of opening. It wasn’t ten yet, they still had an hour, but it felt like it might as well be midnight. Taylor’s mind was spinning with ways she could catch the killer. It was desperately searching for tricks to snatch a confession from him so she wouldn’t need evidence. She paced the floor, ignoring her employees and their not so subtle looks of confusion.
Eventually Roxy couldn’t take it anymore. “Taylor, may we speak privately?”
“What?” Taylor stopped in place, her gaze fixed somewhere in another dimension. “No, not right now. Sorry.”
“Please? It’s sort of an emergency. Can we go upstairs?” Roxy tugged her sleeve.
“Roxy, I’m just, I’m preoccupied.”
Roxy cleared her throat and leaned in to speak more quietly. “Yes, that’s what we need to talk about.”
“Fine.” Taylor led the way upstairs.
Roxy shut the door with a click. “What’s the matter?”
“I know who killed Reynette, and my friend Reg who’s a deputy is going to help me catch him, but I don’t know how.”
“Sit down.” Roxy opened one of the folding chairs.
“No, I can’t. I have to get to the bottom of this.”
Roxy opened a second chair and sat. “Please?”
Taylor sat, but the heels of her feet drummed the wood floor.
“Anniversaries are hard. Especially the first year.”
“Roxy, I really don’t have time for this.”
“The holiday season is especially hard as well.” Roxy smoothed the wooly cuffs of her sweater with her slim fingers. “You’ve just had your first Thanksgiving without your mother, and I don’t think you’ve really processed that yet.”
“I have. Sort of. I mean, I did a little bit on Thanksgiving Day, with Dave Kirby’s daughter.”
“That’s wonderful.” Roxy smiled, but her eyes were sad. “But hon, you’ve lost more than just your mom.”
“It feels like it, right? But I didn’t even know Reynette. I never said one word to her, but after these few weeks it really does feel like a loss.” Taylor pictured driving to the big house while Monty was throwing out family heirlooms and poking him verbally with taunts about Reynette, getting him to talk about how bad she was.
“Being around Sissy so much must be hard. Her grief rubs off on you, but I’m thinking of Clay. He’s been here. He’s been bothering you. For the first time since your mom died, you’re really facing up to the divorce.”
“We weren’t married.”
“I know. But you lived together for four years. That’s basically a marriage, but without the gifts. The pain of the breakup is the same.”
“But it’s not a divorce. I’m not divorced, I’m just single. That’s what the census will say next year.”
“Your brain says that’s true, but it’s not. Wedding ceremonies are very special, but those years living together, that’s what marriage is, and yours broke up because your partner wasn’t willing to go through a hard time with you.”
“This isn’t helping me catch a murderer.” Taylor stood and began to pace again, her feet moving almost against her will, like they wanted to walk away from what Roxy was saying. Maybe Taylor could take Monty out drinking tonight and, when he was sloshed, he’d admit how much he hated Reynette, or how much he wanted her money. The money was the only logical motive anyway. It’s all about the money.
That’s why it didn’t make sense for Clay not to come to Comfort with her last year. There’s so much more money in owning a successful shop than in managing someone else’s store. “Why wouldn’t he come with me?” Taylor stopped and stared at Roxy. Her face seemed to break into a million pieces, collapsing as angry tears spilled from her eyes. She lifted a hand to smooth her face back into place, but her fingertips found the hot tears. They were there, but they weren’t real. They couldn’t be. None of this was. Not the half empty apartment, not the sister in college, not the dead mom, not the murder investigation. It had to be one very long exhausting nightmare that was getting closer to its one-year anniversary.
“Christmas, New Years, Valentine’s Day, birthdays, yours, your mom’s and Clay’s will all be really painful for a while. Some for a long while. I know you’ve been dating and I’m glad you get out, but please don’t rush yourself into anything. Let yourself feel your pain and grieve.”
“Rushing is the last thing I’m doing.” The private rose-petal strewn room upstairs at John Hancock’s brother’s pub flashed through her mind, the fragment of an embarrassing memory.
“And don’t take Clay back.”
“He’s long gone.” She wanted to pace again, to walk, to stop talking, but her feet felt sewn to the floor. To pick them up would rip something, tear something, break something she didn’t want broken.
“I saw him this morning at Cuppa Joe’s coffee shop.”
“It’s been weeks. Way longer than he said he’d stay. He must have quit his job.”
“Don’t let him stay with you. He has family in the city. He can go to them.” Roxy’s voice was firm and motherly.
“That’s what I told him.”
Roxy nodded approval. “Taylor, you’re a wreck. I don’t know what happened or why you couldn’t come in this morning, but I thought it might have had something to do with Clay. For most of this year you’ve worked twelve hours a day six days a week, and a solid six hours on Sunday. And then, he gets here, and suddenly your schedule is erratic.”
“It’s all been to help Sissy.”
“Are you sure? Are you sure it hasn’t just been to distract you from the pain of him being around?”
“Oh…” She sat, letting her feet come away from the floor, wanting it to hurt, but it didn’t. Because she’d just been standing and now she was sitting and all the boiling raging feelings inside her had nothing to do with the room, or the apartment, or even Reynette Wood’s death.
“Take today off. Go home. Rest. Cry. Call a counselor and set up some appointments. Do whatever you need. But…let your heart feel what you’re feeling. Please.”
“You’re right, Roxy.” Taylor looked at the seated figure of her petite employee. A woman with her own tragic backstory of loss. Then she bolted down the stairs and rushed home.
It would be much easier to figure out a way to trap Monty if she wasn’t distracted by the store.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Taylor didn’t go home.
That’s not exactly true. She went home. And then sh
e kept going. The college was only a mile down the road. She kept going till she was at the office where her friend Isaiah sat at the front desk immersed in a literary looking magazine.
“Good morning, Taylor.” He closed the magazine with care. “How can I help you?”
“Did you ever get another dog?” She was panting from her run, but she took a moment to center herself and slow her breathing down. Now was not the time for another panic attack.
First Isaiah’s face was sad, possibly reflecting on a loss he hadn’t been thinking about at that moment. Then it lightened. “Yes, indeed. A beautiful golden lab. But she passed away this summer. Old age comes so very quickly for larger breed dogs.”
“I’m so sorry.” Taylor stood at the desk not sure what to ask next, and yet feeling so strongly that the answers lay here, in this school. The place where she had first stumbled on a crime, and the place where Reynette Woods had been about to launch yet another facet of her varied career.
“Was there something else you needed?”
Taylor scratched her head and thought for a moment longer. “You wouldn’t know if Gilly from the glass department is in, would you?”
“Oh yes, she’s here constantly. A very faithful employee.” His face wasn’t warmed by the thought. Almost like being a faithful employee was the best thing he had to say about her personally.
“She’s down in her little outbuilding?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks Isaiah. Let’s, um, let’s do coffee sometime, okay?”
“I’d like that.” He opened his magazine again.
Taylor attempted to look like a model alumni as she went back to the space where the artists created sculptures from glass. Glass seemed like such an unforgiving material.
There were several people in the studio, and Gilly was at her desk on the phone. Taylor waited till she hung up, then approached her.
“Yes?” Gilly showed every sign of recognizing Taylor, though she didn’t seem glad to see her.
“I’m still trying to figure out just what happened to Reynette. Do you have a minute to talk?”
“Fine, but only for Art’s sake.”
“I’m glad. See, whoever attacked Art must have killed his wife.”
They went outside but stood by the door so Gilly would have a view of her students.
“Has Jason ever met Reynette’s son-in-law, Monty?” Taylor asked.
“Once or twice. We really didn’t have much opportunity to associate with the family before she died.” Gilly faced her studio, but her eyes held a glazed and distant expression.
“What’s his general impression?” Taylor needed to get Gilly invested in the conversation, ease her into it.
Gilly didn’t move a muscle. “I’d say he wasn’t impressed.”
“How much time was Monty spending at Art and Reynette’s place after they moved in?”
“They hadn’t moved in. Not really. They’d come to town, found the place, delivered their belongings, and then went away. Fawn stayed at their place to run the shop and Monty was here doing repairs.”
“But Reynette wasn’t there with him?”
“Let me think for a moment. I wasn’t really paying much attention to what they were doing. Neither was Jason, to be honest.”
“Understandable, I suppose.” Taylor did her best to imitate Gilly’s cool, distant tones.
“After Art and Reynette arrived with their van of belongings, they immediately went to Catalina for a weekend. Then they came back and did a bit of work for her online shop, I believe.” Gilly turned to face Taylor. “Then they went to the coast to spend some time with Gracie and Una. Then back home. It went on like that, back and forth, for about two weeks. The day Reynette died I think they were headed out again. Something about a quilt fair in British Columbia.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“Yes, very much, but Reynette was a healthy woman. I know it didn’t look like it. Some metabolisms are just like that. But she’d been devoted to eating organic, to her essential oils, and kombucha. She’d swing back by the house and load up on everything before they travelled.”
“They let her fly with a jar of kombucha?”
“I think she packed it in her checked luggage, but yes, she was able to take it with her. And the oils.”
Taylor didn’t care about the oils. She only cared that Reynette refused to travel without her own kombucha. Kombucha Monty had access to all the time Reynette was away. “She had some in the fridge still. I wonder if she had some more brewing somewhere.”
“Likely in the summer kitchen. Once while Jason and I were over, she said she was looking forward to making sauerkraut, pickles, kimchee, kombucha, etc. in the summer kitchen.”
Taylor had to force herself to keep breathing normally. If Reynette had already started brewing in the summer kitchen, and Monty had poisoned that…No. He’d have to have poured it all out by now. Right? If he was smart.
Was he smart? “Gilly, you’ve been a true help. Thank you.”
“Hmmm.” That was her version of “Don’t come back,” but Taylor pretended it was a “you’re welcome,” gave her a bright smile, and left.
When Taylor was half-way home, she stopped and texted Sissy. “Are you still at Art’s?”
“Yes”
“Get to the summer kitchen, find the kombucha and sneak it to your car.”
Sissy responded with a thumbs up.
“First take pics of it in place please. And try not to get fingerprints on it or wipe it off.” As she wrote she realized she ought to have just called.
“Why don’t I lock the summer kitchen instead?”
“How?”
“I’ve got Cooper’s gym lock in the van.”
Taylor sent a thumbs up this time. At some point Reg was going to call her and she was going to have his evidence.
Up the street she could see her driveway and the red rag top parked there. A light mist was falling, but she was protected by her rain jacket. What wasn’t protected was her heart, and it was mad.
Maybe Clay was asleep in the car, chilly and hoping she’d come by and invite him in. Maybe he was already in, trying to make Grandpa Ernie fall in love with his boyish charm.
She hustled past the house and the car.
Clay wanted to win this relationship battle he had embarked on.
Taylor wanted to catch a killer.
Supposing Sissy had managed to lock up the summer kitchen, Taylor stood a decent chance of having access to the poisoned kombucha. And that kombucha might have Monty’s fingerprints on it.
As she rounded the corner that would take her to the house where the action was, she paused. Was it enough?
Monty had been given access to the house. A case could be made that he helped his mother-in-law with her home-brew. If so, then of course his fingerprints would be on the jars. She needed something that would tie him to the aspirin too. Taylor sent another text to Sissy. “got it done?”
Sissy sent another thumbs up.
“Meet me”… Taylor paused the text. Where could they talk? The house was out. Public was a bad idea. Maybe upstairs at Flour Sax?
No. She didn’t need Sissy. She needed someone with a different set of skills.
She found Cooper’s number and sent him a text. “Meet me upstairs at Flour Sax as soon as schools out.”
Then she sent a text to Belle. “how soon can you be at Flour Sax?”
Belle replied quickly. “About an hour, why?”
Taylor checked her watch. “Can you hack?”
“Hack what?”
“computers.” Taylor stared at her phone willing her to be an expert.
“You want Dayton”
“OK.”
Mercifully, Belle didn’t ask for an explanation, but did send Dayton’s number. Taylor sent the same text she had sent to Cooper, then hustled back to Flour Sax. It was already 2:20, they’d be out of school any minute.
When the teens arrived, Roxy ushered them upstairs. Taylor wa
s beyond anxious and it felt like hours, though her phone said only twenty minutes had passed.
They stood in the doorway, watching her with suspicion.
“Come in. Sit. I’m in desperate need for your help.”
“About Reynette?” Cooper asked.
“Yes.”
He sat and poked around on his phone a bit. “Aviva’s on her way. Don’t want to leave her out.”
Dayton wandered over to the window and looked out. “She’s headed over. I see her.”
“Is she any good with computers?” Taylor asked
Dayton shrugged.
“Belle says you could probably help me out with some, um, hacking.” Taylor felt like an idiot. She knew that computer hacking was a thing, but she didn’t know if that was what kids this age called it.
“Sure, probably.” Dayton sat in the other folding chair Taylor had waiting.
“I think I know who killed your great Aunt.” Taylor swallowed, nervously. She didn’t know what Cooper thought of his cousin-in-law Monty. She didn’t want to have to prove her case to him, but she didn’t feel like she had time to explain, so she plunged ahead. “I need you to get Monty’s computer for me. Whatever means necessary. And I need Dayton to find evidence that he’s been ordering aspirin, or whatever else might have salicylates in it, online.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard.” Dayton shrugged and checked the window again.
The door to the apartment opened and Aviva rushed in. “What’s up, what’s wrong? Have you cleared my name yet?”
“Sit,” Dayton ordered.
Cooper stood and offered Aviva his chair. He ran his hand through her ponytail as she sat. So that’s what’s what with the kids this month. Taylor glanced at Dayton but saw no shifting of emotion. Dayton and Aviva were cousins. If there was a rivalry for Coopers affection, Taylor couldn’t tell.
“I’m sure I know who’s responsible for Reynette’s death, and I’m positive I know how. I just need the evidence. Sissy has some of it under lock and key. The rest has got to be on Monty’s computer.”
“What computer though?” Cooper asked. “He doesn’t run around with a laptop in a messenger bag or anything. And they use an iPad and a Square as a cash register at the thrift store.”
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