“Omar. Yeah. He was in the Master Sommelier prep course with me. I’m sure whatever wine he recommends will be terrific.”
“You know anything about his background or his family?” Val watched Gunnar’s ex give the café a sneering glance on her way to the club exit. Same to you, Petra.
“His parents were immigrants. I don’t remember where from. They died when he was young. He started as a busboy and climbed the restaurant ladder. That’s all I remember, and the cab’s about to let me off. How’s your cookbook coming, Val?”
Slowly—thanks to a murder last month and another this month. “I’m still working on it. Thank you for your help.” And for being too rushed to ask why she wanted to know about Omar.
“Let me know when you’re back in the city.” He hung up.
What little she’d learned from him suggested Lillian had lied about knowing Omar’s father. There had to be a reason for that lie.
Her phone rang again. This time it was her grandfather calling to ask when she’d be home.
“I’m meeting Junie May at six-thirty, Granddad. You can either wait until I get back to make dinner or microwave the chicken casserole that’s in the freezer.”
“I’ll zap the casserole. I don’t want to wait for you. Lillian and I are going to a movie tonight.”
“I was thinking about her friend Omar. If it turns out someone poisoned Scott at your dinner, we’ll need to find out as much as possible about every guest. See if you can get some information about Omar from her. She’s the only one who knows him.”
“I’d just as soon forget about that chowder dinner for a few hours.”
Val couldn’t blame him. After hanging up, she went to the locker room, showered, and changed her clothes. She looked forward to her meeting with Junie May. Maybe the reporter had dug up something new on Granddad’s dinner guests.
Thanks to her aborted tennis match, Val had almost an hour to spare before driving to the reporter’s house. She could spend the time poking around secondhand shops, where—according to Junie May—you might find old bottles containing poisonous substances now banned. Maybe Scott’s poisoner had acquired arsenic locally.
Val didn’t bother visiting the upscale antique shops in Bayport’s historic district. They offered jewelry, coins, and decorative items made of precious metals. She’d have a better chance of finding toxic heavy metals at the secondhand shops on the outskirts of town.
The first two she tried, Old ’N Things and Must Haves, didn’t carry vintage glassware or any apothecary items. The third shop, Cobweb Corner, had blue, green, and amber bottles with POISON embossed on them.
The grandmotherly shop owner watched her examine bottles. “A lot of folks like old poison bottles for the unusual colors and shapes. We have some three-sided and five-sided bottles. Now this here is one of my favorite shapes.” She pulled a clear bottle off the shelf.
Val didn’t recognize the contours until the woman laid the bottle on its side. “Oh, it’s shaped like a coffin. That’s appropriate.”
“You see all the bumps, lines, and swirls in these bottles? The idea was that a person reaching for a bottle in the dark would know by feeling it that it contained poison, not cough syrup or a tonic, which came in smooth bottles.”
The poison bottles at Cobweb Corner contained nothing except air now. “Do you ever sell antique bottles with the contents still inside?” Val asked.
The woman shook her head. “We clean everything first.”
With no interest in clean, empty poison bottles, Val moved to a shelf displaying cooking vessels, including the copper pans and cast-iron pots that resembled her grandmother’s. The ones in good condition had high price tags.
Her cell phone rang as she left the shop. Althea called to say her friend in Annapolis had been doing title searches today and researched the house Val had asked about. Lillian owned it free and clear, with no mortgage on it and no other obvious liens.
Granddad’s sweetheart might have other debts not secured by the house, but at least she didn’t have a mortgage company threatening foreclosure.
Val called her mother while she had good news to share. Waiting longer might mean she’d have to deliver bad news. She left a voice mail message, telling her mother not to worry about Granddad losing his money to his sweetheart. Based on the value of the property he and Lillian owned, he looked more like a fortune hunter than she did.
While Val tried to allay her mother’s fears, she couldn’t get rid of her own suspicions about Granddad’s girlfriend. Owning an expensive house didn’t mean Lillian wasn’t after Granddad’s money. Nor did it mean she wasn’t a murderer.
Val drove to Treadwell and located secondhand shops more down-market than Bayport’s.
She peered in the windows of several small stores, where the windows were clean enough that she could see they had no old bottles for sale. A shop named One of a Kind had dingy windows and assorted objects on shelves, tables, and the floor. Pictures and purses hung on the walls. Frying pans and suitcases were suspended from hooks in the ceiling. She went inside.
A Casablanca fan churned up musty air barely cooler than the outside temperature on a hot July afternoon. The only air-conditioning came from a single inadequate window unit. The shop had few customers—two middle-aged women examining teacups and a younger woman peering at jewelry in a glass case. A heavy, red-faced man stood immobile behind the counter. Wisps of his thinning brown hair fluttered in the breeze from the fan.
Val spotted glassware on the built-in shelves along the shop’s back wall. Two shelves held dusty bottles, many with faded labels on them. After shifting three rows of glassware, she found a clear bottle of rat and mouse poison with a label listing the active ingredient as 1.5 percent arsenic trioxide. The bottle, embossed with a rat on the side opposite the label, had no cap on it and was empty. Behind it was another rat poison bottle, three-sided and containing liquid. Its yellow label listed the contents as 2.5 percent arsenic trioxide.
“Can I help you, miss?” the man behind the counter called out.
She turned to see him staring at her. She took the bottle with the yellow label to the counter. “This looks like something a friend of mine recently bought. I’m wondering if she got it here.”
“Doubt it. Most of our stuff is one of a kind, just like the shop name. Except for candlesticks and such. You want to buy that bottle?”
“I don’t think you should have this for sale. It’s labeled poison, and the bottle isn’t empty.” She pointed to the contents listed on the label. “It says here that it contains arsenic.”
He eyed her with suspicion. “It says on the cap that it’s fifteen dollars. I’m not lowering the price.”
“You’re selling poison.”
He shrugged. “Everybody’s got poison under the sink and in the garage. That bottle will cost you fifteen dollars and ninety cents with tax. You want to buy it or not?”
A week ago, she’d have bought it as her good deed for the day, to prevent an accidental or a deliberate poisoning. She’d have put the bottle in the locked shed where Granddad stored dangerous items until the next hazardous-waste collection day. But now, after Scott’s murder by poison, she wouldn’t put arsenic in Granddad’s shed. Nor would she even carry it. She had no way to dispose of it without arousing suspicion.
“No, sir, I don’t want to buy it, and you don’t want to put it back on the shelf. If I see it on the shelf again, I’ll notify the police. Your fine for selling a banned and dangerous substance will be way more than the fifteen dollars you’d get for selling that bottle.”
The man’s face grew redder. “All right, I’ll pour out the liquid. Will you buy it then?”
“No, and you won’t pour it out because it isn’t safe to dispose of arsenic that way. Keep it locked up until you can take it to the hazardous-waste collection site.”
The man muttered something about her being a nut job.
One of the women looking at teacups approached the counter. “She’s
right. You can’t leave poison sitting around.”
The man fished a key from his pocket and put the bottle in a locked cabinet behind the counter.
Val checked her watch as she left the shop. She’d killed too much time checking out poison bottles. Even if the traffic was lighter than usual, she would keep Junie May waiting.
The rat poison occupied Val’s mind as she drove south on the highway. She had no idea if the bottle she’d seen at the shop contained enough arsenic to murder anyone, but it hadn’t been hard to find. With patience and determination, a would-be poisoner could accumulate enough to do the trick.
Val turned off the highway onto a country road flanked by fields. Another turn took her to a lane where mailboxes at driveways provided the only clues that houses existed beyond the trees and bushes.
She found the address Junie May had given her on a mailbox and drove down a long gravel driveway toward a ground-hugging, one-story frame house. Junie May’s silver compact car was parked in front of a detached garage. Val pulled up behind the car. The reporter had exaggerated in saying she lived in the woods. Though if she didn’t get the bushes and undergrowth trimmed, she could soon say she lived in a jungle.
A paved path led from the driveway to the front door. It ran along the length of the house, under the roof overhang. Val approached a picture window. An armchair upholstered in a bold flower print was near the window, a lamp table between the chair and a powder blue sofa against an interior wall.
On the other side of the sofa, facing the window, Junie May was slumped in an armchair that matched the one near the window, her eyes unblinking, a hole in her temple.
Chapter 16
Val’s heart thumped so loudly she could hear nothing else. She squeezed her eyes shut, convinced that they were playing tricks on her. When she opened them, the tableau framed by the window hadn’t changed, but now she took in more details. The blood on Junie May. Her limp hand hanging over the chair’s arm. Her fingers pointed toward a gun on the beige carpet.
Someone had shot her. Someone who might still be in the house or lurking around it.
Run! Val tried, but couldn’t budge. Her knees locked. Her feet went numb. Trying to flee and getting nowhere—that happened in her nightmares. But this was real. A crow cawed in a tree behind her. Suddenly her legs worked.
She ran to her Saturn, put it in reverse, and zigzagged back up the driveway to the lane. Across the lane, a woman emptied her mailbox. An SUV nosed out of a driveway in front of Val. A station wagon entered the lane from the country road.
Junie May’s neighbors were coming and going, like people in most neighborhoods at this time of day. These signs of ordinary life calmed Val. The car she’d seen at the house had been Junie May’s. It didn’t belong to her killer, who’d probably already driven off, the job done. Val didn’t trust her own conclusion enough to return to the house, but she felt safe pulling over six houses from Junie May’s, near where the lane intersected the country road. She reached for her phone and punched 911.
When the dispatcher answered, Val described what she’d seen at Junie May’s house. The dispatcher took down her name, asked for her location and a description of her car, and told her to stay where she was. The emergency responders would arrive shortly. The sky was darkening by the minute.
Val hugged herself to keep from shaking. If she hadn’t stopped at the secondhand shops, she would have arrived here early. In time to prevent a murder? Or would she have walked in on the murderer and be lying next to Junie May now? Val shuddered.
Her relief at being alive turned to anger as fast as the lightning forking in the distance. Junie May didn’t deserve to die. Scott didn’t deserve to die either, but Val had wanted to uncover the truth about his death only to prove her grandfather innocent. Could anyone possibly think Granddad had murdered Junie May?
The arrival of a county sheriff’s car interrupted her churning thoughts. The car stopped across the lane from hers. A middle-aged deputy approached her Saturn. He confirmed that she’d made the 911 call and told her that he or a colleague would come to interview her shortly. In the meantime, she should stay in her car.
An emergency medical vehicle arrived next and more sheriff’s cars. Some of Junie May’s neighbors stood near her driveway. Val rested her head on the steering wheel. Junie May was going to dig up information today about the guests at Granddad’s dinner. Did her search for the truth about Scott’s death threaten his murderer and lead to her own death? Someone who’d murdered once had no reason to hold back a second time. Or a third. Val had asked a lot of questions about the chowder dinner. Did that put her next on the hit list?
Thunder rumbled, raindrops fell, and the neighbors near Junie May’s driveway scattered.
A tap on the window startled Val. A deputy stood outside in the rain, tall, spruce, and broad-shouldered in a black-and-gray uniform. She cracked the window open.
He introduced himself as Roy Chesterfeld. He asked for her driver’s license and took it to a sheriff’s car. He must be checking whether she had a criminal record. Five minutes later, he appeared at her window again. His wide-brimmed hat did a good job of shielding his face and head from the rain, but the rest of him was getting wet.
He handed her the license. “Thank you. I’d like to ask you a few questions where neither of us will get rained on. We can use the sheriff’s car, I can sit in your car, or we can meet at—”
“Please sit here.” She gestured to the passenger seat.
He climbed into the seat next to her and took off his hat. His tousled blond hair contrasted with his otherwise neat appearance. “You mind putting on the air-conditioning?”
“Not at all.” She hadn’t noticed the heat in the car until he joined her. She turned on the motor and put the AC on full blast.
“Your car has a weird smell.”
“From a rotten fish. The AC will bring in fresh air from outside. If it bothers you, we can talk elsewhere.”
“I’ll get used to it.” He gave her a reassuring smile. “What you saw at that house must have spooked you. Try to relax. From here on, it’s all routine.”
Maybe for him, but not for her. In answer to his questions, she told him where she worked and described what had happened from the time she turned into Junie May’s driveway until she called 911. He was polite, respectful, and attractive, totally unlike Deputy Holtzman from the sheriff’s office near Bayport . . . and therefore more dangerous. She’d never let down her guard with Holtzman, but with Roy, she felt herself melting, even calling him by his first name, at least in her mind. Holtzman had given her only his last name.
Roy took notes as she talked. “A deputy recognized the victim as a reporter for a local TV station. We don’t want news of this to go public until we’ve contacted her next of kin. I’ll ask you not to tell anyone what you saw here until we issue a statement.” At her nod, he continued. “Were you a good friend of Junie May Jussup?”
“I barely knew her.” Val wouldn’t have met her except for the chowder dinner. Hard to believe only four days had passed since then. “The first time I talked to her at length was yesterday. We met for a drink in Bayport. She invited me to stop by her house this evening.”
He looked up from his small notebook. “Why did you drive away when you saw her through the window? You could have called 911 from her place.”
Val hoped she wouldn’t be charged with violating a Good Samaritan law. “She was obviously dead. There was a gun on the floor. I was afraid the person who shot her might still be there, so I bolted.”
“That’s the right thing to do if you suspect a crime. But you can stop worrying about a shooter on the loose. It looks like she committed suicide.”
Val flashed back to the tableau in the reporter’s living room. It did look like suicide, as her killer intended. Junie May, seeker of the truth about Scott’s death, deserved to have the truth known about her own death. “She didn’t kill herself. She wasn’t the type.”
“The family and f
riends of people who commit suicide often say something like that. You can’t always tell.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Especially if you barely know the person.”
“Family and friends need to convince themselves they couldn’t have done anything to prevent the suicide. As a relative stranger, I’m more objective.” When he didn’t disagree, she continued talking. “Junie May was enthusiastic about her work, looking to get ahead in her profession. Why would she invite me to her house if she was planning to commit suicide?”
He shrugged. “Who says she planned it? Even if she did, she might want a relative stranger to find her instead of someone who knew her well.”
Good reasoning, but Val still believed Junie May had been murdered. “She was an investigative reporter. She vowed on TV to find out the truth about a suspicious death at Treadwell Hospital early this week. She knew the man who died. He was providing information for a story she was researching.”
“A story about what?”
“She wouldn’t say. She told me even her boss at the TV station didn’t know about it.” Val remembered how Junie May had held her briefcase close while talking about the story. “You may find her research for the story on her laptop or in her briefcase.”
“We’ll look for those at her office.”
That probably meant the deputies hadn’t found the laptop or briefcase in Junie May’s house. “She told me she didn’t leave her research lying around the office. If you can’t find it here, Deputy Chesterfeld, it’s because her murderer took it.”
He cocked his head sideways, his green eyes twinkling. “You sound like a lawyer. You use every fact to support your case against suicide.”
“One fact would change my mind. A suicide note, in Junie May’s handwriting. Or a selfie video. Find anything like that?”
He opened his mouth, shut it, and put his notebook away. “I can’t talk about what we found, uh, or didn’t find.”
Val took that as a no. She wouldn’t get any more from him, and she’d told him all she could about finding Junie May. “Deputy Chesterfeld, do I have to stay here? If there are more questions, I’m happy to tell you where you can reach me.”
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