Dead by Dinner Time

by Jeff Shelby

“I...I found it when I was on vacation,” I blurted out.

  “That’s a secret?” he asked.

  I felt the heat rise in my cheeks.

  It had been on the tip of my tongue to tell him the truth.

  But something held me back.

  I didn’t want another person involved in Denise’s cooked up drama, and I didn’t want Aidan to think, even for a second, that something malicious had happened to Arthur.

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “But I thought it was an interesting plant and I plucked some leaves and I sort of forgot that I’d been carrying them around.”

  “You think leaves are interesting?” The joy in his voice was unmistakable. “I could teach you whatever you wanted to know. Truly!”

  I was glad that he was so gung-ho about offering assistance but a part of me felt guilty that I was giving him the wrong impressions. Because I really didn’t care about plants at all.

  I just cared about this one.

  “I’m just wondering, since you know plants as well as you do...do you think you might be able to help me identify what it is?”

  “Can I see it?”

  I dug out the bag and handed it back to him. He held it up, squinting at the contents.

  “Yeah, I think so,” he said.

  “You think?”

  “I need to consult a couple pictures to be sure,” he said. “Can I take it with me?”

  I hesitated.

  “Or at least one of them? I can leave the other with you.” He was already opening the bag.

  “No,” I said. “It’s fine. Take the whole bag.”

  “You’re sure?”

  I nodded.

  He smiled. “Good.” He stuffed the baggie in his own pocket. “I gotta get going or I’m going to be late for class. I’ll let you know as soon as I find out something concrete.”

  “Thank you.”

  He shook his head, his smile turning a little more rueful. “Don’t thank me yet.”

  “You’ll make more headway than I would in this department.”

  “True,” Aidan conceded. “But I’m just worried you’re not going to like what I find out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Best not to say anything yet,” he said. “Not until I know for sure.”

  NINE

  I heard back from Aidan sooner than I thought I would.

  After giving him my cell number and grabbing the rest of my things, I headed home, and Megan and I had gone out for burgers and a beer. It was a nice night, the temperature comfortably warm and very little humidity, so we lingered on the patio, nursing our drinks and listening to the piped in music, and just catching up with each other.

  When we finished, I dropped her off back at the tiny bungalow we shared and then turned the car around to head to the grocery store to do some quick shopping.

  My phone buzzed just as I got to the checkout. It was an unfamiliar number, but with a local area code, so I answered.

  “Sunny, it’s me,” a guy’s voice said. “Aidan.”

  I blinked in surprise. “Oh. Hey.” I tucked my phone against my neck so I could continue unloading my basket. “Did you already figure out what it is?”

  He didn’t answer right away.

  “Yes,” he finally said. “At least I think so.”

  “Great.” I waited, but the line just hummed with silence. “Can you tell me?”

  “Can I talk to you in person about it? Either tonight somewhere or tomorrow at work?”

  “Tonight?” It was already pushing nine o’clock.

  My pulse quickened a little. What had he found that he didn’t feel comfortable telling me over the phone? He’d already hinted that I might not like what he might discover, but I had no idea what that meant. Did it mean I really did have a bag of marijuana leaves, and that Denise had been right to pawn it off on me as quickly as possible? I couldn’t believe Arthur was spiking his food with weed, but I guess it was possible. Did I perhaps have some exotic species that was illegal to have in the state of Florida? Maybe as a plant biology major Aidan was some kind of mandated reporter. Maybe he was required to fill out a report or call someone when certain plant species were found in the possession of regular citizens.

  I shook my head.

  I was being ridiculous.

  As ridiculous as Denise had been earlier that day.

  “There’s that 24-hour diner up on Valparaiso,” he said. “The one that serves breakfast all day. The Cracked Egg?”

  I knew the one he was talking about. They had a stack of sticky bun pancakes that were the most decadent breakfast I’d ever eaten.

  I swiped my credit card at the machine and waited while the cashier bagged my items. There was no reason I couldn’t meet Aidan right now. Nothing I’d just purchased needed to be refrigerated. And yes, I wanted to get home and shower and get to bed, but if he wanted to talk to me in person, I could spare fifteen or twenty minutes of my evening. Especially if he had answers, since I was already talking myself into a fit of anxiety over what he might have found.

  “Yeah, that works,” I told him. “I can be there in ten minutes.”

  “Perfect. I shouldn’t be too far behind you.”

  I tried not to dwell on this newest development, which was pretty much impossible. A strange sense of foreboding niggled at me, and I tried to tamp it down as I drove toward the diner. The traffic was heavy for a Tuesday night, but this wasn’t unusual for this time of year. It was summer, after all, and the streets were clogged with both tourists and residents.

  That didn’t mean it didn’t frustrate me, especially since I was sort of in a hurry. As much as I knew tourism was vital to the local economy, I would be the first to admit that I was ready for September. The days would still be beautiful, the water in the Gulf warm...and the population would plummet by about fifty percent.

  I finally made it to the diner. I found a spot toward the back of the lot and parked my car, then hurried toward the diner’s entrance. Two tall palm trees swayed in the warm breeze, and the white fairy lights strung along the wrought iron fencing used to designate the patio area winked in the darkness.

  I stepped into the diner, thinking I would need to wait on Aidan to arrive, but he was already seated in a booth near the hostess station. His face lit up when he saw me, and he beckoned me over.

  I slid onto the bench opposite him and set my purse down next to me. There was an empty mug waiting for me, along with a carafe of coffee and a small pitcher filled with cream.

  “They have the never-ending coffee carafe here,” Aidan said. “Feel free to order something else instead if you’re not in the mood for coffee.”

  “Coffee is fine.”

  He grinned. “It feels like I live on it some days.”

  I filled my mug. “On coffee?”

  He nodded. “With work and school and studying, I need something to help keep me awake.”

  I imagined that between work and school, his schedule probably was pretty full. I didn’t think he worked full-time at Oasis Ridge, but I was pretty sure he was putting in between twenty and thirty hours a week. If he had a full class load, too, then I knew exactly how busy he was.

  “You need anything to eat?” he asked me.

  “No, I just got done with dinner a little bit ago.”

  “This late? Did you have a date or something?” His eyes widened. “Oh, man, I hope my phone call didn’t interrupt anything.”

  “No, just dinner with my roommate.” I added cream to my coffee and then stirred it. “So, what did you find out about the leaves?” I didn’t want to sound too abrupt, but my curiosity was killing me.

  Aidan looked to his side and I noticed the backpack parked next to him. He pulled out a small, thick volume and slapped it on the table.

  Mabberly’s Plant-Book.

  Not exactly an inspiring title, but the size of it was impressive.

  Aidan thumbed through the pages, which looked fairly well worn.

  “Is that one of your textb
ooks?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, this is my own personal copy. Anyone who has a serious interest in plants owns this as a resource.”

  Of course.

  I drummed my fingers on the table and waited.

  “Can you tell me again where you got the leaves?” he asked. “And more importantly, why you got them?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Like, why did you decide to pick them?”

  I hesitated. “Is that important?”

  He gave me an odd look. “Well, kind of. Were they originally attached to the stem? Did you pick the flower that these were attached to and then they just fell off?”

  I seized on that idea. “Yes. That’s exactly what I did.” Inside, I was breathing a sigh of relief. If they were leaves from a flowering plant, one that he presumed I’d picked, it most likely wasn’t an illegal substance.

  He paled the tiniest bit. “And did you touch the plant with your bare hands? You didn’t have any open cuts or anything, right? Did the sappy stuff in the stem get on you?”

  My heart started pumping a little faster. “What kind of plant is it?”

  He let out a breath and turned the book around so I could see it. He pointed to an entry.

  “Aconitum Monkshood?” I said, pronouncing it carefully.

  “Commonly known as monkshood or wolfbane,” Aidan said.

  I scanned the entry, noting the information about its physical description and what zones it was commonly found in. It all pretty much read like a bunch of gibberish to me.

  “Where did you get it?” Aidan asked again.

  “I told you, on vacation.”

  His brow wrinkled. “Didn’t you go on a cruise? Like to the Caribbean?”

  I glanced back down at the book. And promptly saw that the plant was most frequently found in northern climates in the United States.

  “Uh, yes. Yes, I did. But my roommate went on vacation to...Michigan,” I said, naming the first northern state I could think of. “And she brought some flowers back. Beautiful purple ones,” I added, noting the pictures in the book.

  He gave a slight nod. “They are beautiful. They also happen to be incredibly poisonous.”

  I had not been expecting this. “The flowers?”

  “No, the entire plant.” Aidan tapped a paragraph in the book. “See? Every part of the plant is poisonous.”

  “How poisonous?” I asked. “Like poison ivy poisonous?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “More like, touch it and you’ll get sick, ingest it and you’ll die, poisonous.”

  My heart dropped into my stomach. “What?”

  Aidan nodded. “This plant has a long and storied history throughout the ages. It can be used as a tincture or as an ointment to relieve various ailments, but the plant itself is extremely toxic. People have died by accidental poisoning, possibly mistaking the plant for something else or growing it among their edible plants, and some people have been poisoned on purpose. There’s actually a story about how natives in the East Indies put the plant into a well to kill an enemy army.

  Denise’s words were on repeated in my head, and a shiver ran down my spine.

  She’d found the leaves on Arthur’s plate. A plate that had a half-eaten enchilada on it.

  “So, um, how much of it do you need to eat to feel its effects?” I asked.

  “I think it varies,” Aidan said. “But it doesn’t take a lot.”

  “And what happens? If you ingest it?” He frowned and I added, “Like, how does the poisoning happen?”

  “Well, I think it can manifest in different ways.” He thought for a minute. “Usually as a burning or tingling sensation in the fingers and toes. If it’s ingested, I suppose that could happen in the mouth, too. Then sweats, feeling cold. Death is usually a result of respiratory failure or cardiac arrest. Some people experience vomiting and diarrhea, as well.”

  I was beginning to feel like I was the one who might vomit.

  “Are you okay?” Aidan asked, an alarmed expression on his face.

  I tried to compose myself. “Yes. Sorry. I guess I’m just imagining all of the horrible things that could have happened with it.”

  He offered a reassuring smile. “Just touching it usually only results in skin irritation. Unless there’s an open wound, of course, which is why I asked about that. But I guess you would have already been sick or dead if that had been the case.”

  I knew he was trying to comfort me, to let me know that I probably hadn’t put myself in any real danger by touching it—which I hadn’t; Denise was the one who had collected them—but that wasn’t what I was focusing on.

  I was very much locked on to the fact that the leaves had been found on Arthur’s dinner plate.

  And he had died while eating his meal.

  It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

  And suddenly I realized that Denise’s crazy conspiracy theory about Arthur’s death just might not be so crazy after all.

  TEN

  I found Denise as soon as the breakfast meal was over. She was replacing the used grounds with fresh ones in the coffee machine when I entered the dining room.

  “There’s a little bit left in the reserves.” She motioned to the machine. “But if you can wait a few minutes, you can have freshly brewed coffee.”

  “I’m not here for coffee,” I told her.

  Her brow wrinkled but then her eyebrows shot high. “You’re not?” She glanced around the dining room. It was empty, but she lowered her voice anyway.

  “Did you find out what it is?”

  I’d debated whether or not to tell Denise what Aidan had discovered about the leaves found on Arthur’s plate.

  I’d debated whether or not to tell anyone, really.

  Bringing Anne in on the news was an absolute and obvious no. At least for now. If I mentioned to her that a poisonous plant had been found on the property, and that it might have been ingested and then caused the death of a resident, she’d bury that story faster than I could blink an eye. And probably find a way to blame me for the whole debacle. For her, Oasis Ridge’s reputation—and the ability to bring in more residents and shore up the company’s bottom line—mattered more than anything else.

  Besides, I told myself, even though Aidan had been able to identify the plant, there was no actual proof that someone had put it on Arthur’s plate or in his food. I mean, it was possible that perhaps Arthur himself had laced his own food with it. A suicide. I had no reason to think he’d been depressed or planning to kill himself, but I was fully aware that I hadn’t known him that well. Maybe he’d gotten an alarming medical diagnosis. Maybe he’d decided he wanted to be in control of his exit from this world. I’d read up a little more about the plant after I’d gotten home from the meeting with Aidan. One web site had said that the plant had a bitter taste to it, so if Arthur had wanted to make the poisoning more...palatable...he might have decided to add it to a meal. Not that Lola’s cooking make anything terribly tasty, but still. It would have been better to eat it that way than forcing it down on its own.

  I shook my head. I didn’t know that he’d committed suicide. And I didn’t know whether or not someone might have intentionally poisoned Arthur.

  But the possibility was definitely there.

  I just didn’t know who might do such a thing.

  If I could figure out that piece, I would feel much better bringing the information to someone else. To Anne, the police...anyone but me.

  Because I certainly didn’t know what to do with it.

  “Earth to Sunny.” Denise waved her hand in front of my face.

  I blinked. “Oh. Sorry.” I shook my head, more to clear my mind and focus on the present than as an answer to her previous question.

  “Well?” she demanded, her hands on her hips. “Any news?”

  “Not yet.”

  I felt bad for lying, but I wasn’t ready to share. Not right then. Not when there were so many unanswered questions, and not wh
en I knew that telling her the one thing I did know—that the leaves were from a poisonous plant—would set her off and confirm all of her worst fears.

  Her face fell.

  “I’m just curious, though,” I said as I followed her away from the coffee machine and back toward the kitchen. I could hear Lola singing in the back, a nasally version of some Broadway tune. “You said you’ve heard a bunch of gossip. Mentioned all kinds of drama.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You could say that again.”

  I leaned against the counter and watched as she pulled out a box of freshly laundered napkins. Anne was a fan of small touches that suggested a more refined living experience, and cloth napkins were one of these touches. Denise pulled out a stack of burgundy squares and began to fold them into triangles.

  “So, in your opinion, who might want Arthur dead?”

  Denise gasped out loud and clutched a hand to her heart. “What? Why in the world would you ask me that?”

  “You were the one who said he might have been poisoned,” I reminded her. “I’m just wondering by who.”

  “Lord have mercy.” She was still holding her chest, almost as if she were trying to physically keep her heart in place. “How would I know that?”

  “I’m not saying you know,” I said. “I’m just wondering if you’ve heard anything that might point to someone potentially being a suspect.”

  Her dark eyes rounded. “So now you think he was murdered, huh? Poisoned? You agree with me?”

  “I never said that.” She was beginning to exasperate me. Which wasn’t exactly a new experience. “I’m just exploring all the options. And you were the one who seemed to think someone offed him, remember?”

  She made the sign of the cross. “Don’t speak of the dead like that,” she hissed. “It’s disrespectful. Besides, they might hear you!”

  “Hear me?”

  She nodded. “Spirits.” She shivered. “Pretty sure this here place is full of them. All those souls who have died here...I’m sure there are a few who haven’t yet moved on to the next realm.”

  I wasn’t sure what religion Denise belonged to, or if she had developed her own set of religious beliefs. But I wasn’t about to ask.