“Good.” Steve took another sip of beer. “Are we done talking?”
I was, at least on that subject. “Unless you want to tell me about your evening.”
“Drunk kid versus tree. Tree won. End of discussion.”
Bad for the kid, but good for me if that’s all Steve had to say.
I pushed out of my chair. “Then I guess we’re done talking unless you’d like to tell me you’re hungry.”
“I’m okay. I had a bag of chips out of the vending machine a couple of hours ago.”
“Well, you should just be stuffed then. Gram has some leftover pot roast in the fridge. Want a roast beef sandwich?”
He stifled a yawn. “I never refuse your grandmother’s pot roast.”
No, he didn’t and Gram knew it. Probably why she often featured it for his standing Wednesday dinner invitation.
Steve looked too tired to move, so I handed him the television remote control. “Find us a movie to watch, and I’ll come back with room service.”
Two minutes later, I was in the kitchen listening to him channel surf when I heard my grandmother open the back door.
“You ladies must have been having quite a game.” I glanced at the clock on the stove. “It’s almost ten. You’re usually home from Mrs. Doolittle’s by nine.” And since Angela Doolittle lived several miles away on the south shore of Merritt Bay, and my eighty-year-old grandmother didn’t like to drive at night, often closer to eight.
Gram set her purse on the kitchen table and dropped into one of the hardback chairs like she was dead on her feet. “We got a late start. Estelle finally called Angela from the hospital to let us know that she couldn’t make it.”
“Uh-oh.” I remembered this morning’s commentary about Estelle’s driving and wondered if any of those sirens I’d heard were for her. “Is she doing okay?”
Gram blinked her hazel green eyes, slightly magnified behind her trifocals. “Is she doing okay? Honey, Estelle’s fine. It’s her great-grandson who was taken to the hospital. Poor little thing.”
Estelle had been a widow for so many years and had surrounded herself with such a menagerie of cats, I’d never thought of her as having anything but four-legged children, much less great-grandchildren. “What happened?”
“From what Estelle was able to get out of Phyllis—”
“Wait! Phyllis? Phyllis Bozeman?”
Gram nodded. “The boy’s granny on the mother’s side.”
That meant that this was Aubrey’s kid, and we were talking about Marty McCutcheon’s former girlfriend, which piqued my interest all the more.
“According to Estelle, Phyllis was babysitting the boys to let the parents have a night out. Then, while she was cooking their supper, the toddler slipped out through the dog door.”
I sucked in a breath, a twenty-year-old memory flooding back from when I had babysat Frankie’s little kids and the panic I’d felt when one of them pulled a similar disappearing act.
Gram shook her head. “I guess she found him eating some plant in the yard.”
“Oh, no!”
“The good news though is that she rushed him to the ER, and it looks like he’s going to be fine.”
“Thank goodness.”
“No kidding. A little kid like that, it wouldn’t take more than a couple bites of a poisonous plant to kill him.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if the same could be said for a man of Marty McCutcheon’s size.
“But thanks to Phyllis’s quick thinking, she saved him,” Gram said, pushing to her feet.
“She also gave him the opportunity to eat the plant, so I wouldn’t give her too much credit.”
Gram patted my shoulder and headed toward the refrigerator. “I give credit where credit is due. Sounds like the parents did, too. I guess Estelle’s grandson went on and on about how grateful he was that Phyllis was a master gardener and recognized that it was a poisonous plant.”
A master gardener who knows about poisonous plants and her former boyfriend’s penchant for hot sauce?
I shivered, my skin prickling with gooseflesh as my brain churned over the possibility that this was more than a coincidence. “Did Estelle mention the name of the plant?”
“I don’t know. Angela talked to her, I didn’t.” Gram pulled a juice glass out of the cupboard and filled it with milk. “Why do you want to know the name of the plant? It’s probably something so common that I have it in my yard.”
“Just curious. Stuff like that is good to know.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Since when do you take an interest in gardening?”
Ever since Phyllis Bozeman’s name had come up twice in the same day.
I shrugged a shoulder as I opened the jar of Dijon mustard that Steve liked. “I’m interested in lots of things.”
“Is one of them about to eat a sandwich?”
Gram knew I’d been making a lot of late night trips across the street to be with Steve, so there was no point in denying the obvious.
“He had to work late and missed out on dinner.”
She aimed a sympathetic smile at me. “Sorry.”
That made three of us.
“And on that not-so-happy note, I’m going to bed,” Gram said, rinsing out her glass. “It’s been a long day.”
It had been a long day. And since I’d barely spent any of it with the guy in the living room, I had a feeling it wasn’t close to being over.
I followed my grandmother out of the kitchen with a plate in my hand.
“’Night, Stevie,” she said with a wave as she headed up the stairs.
The detective on her sofa didn’t respond. For good reason, as I discovered when I set his sandwich on the coffee table in front of him and heard him snoring.
I tapped his foot with mine. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty.”
His eyes opened. “Hmmm?”
I took the remote control away from him and turned down the volume. “Dinner’s served.”
Yawning, he sat up as I joined him on the sofa. “I was watching that.”
“You were asleep.”
“Well, I’m not now, so—”
“Good.” I pointed at the sandwich. “Eat that and let me ask you about something.”
“Why do I have the feeling that I’m not going to like this?”
“Shut up and eat.”
He shot me a dirty look as he reached for his sandwich.
Since that look was accompanied by another yawn, I figured that I’d better skip the non-essential. “My grandmother just came home and told me a story about a friend’s great-grandson who was taken to the hospital after he ate a poisonous plant.”
“I was in and out of the ER following up on my guy when they were working on the kid,” he said, working around the bite in his mouth. “He’s okay, isn’t he?”
“He’s going to be. I guess Phyllis Bozeman saved the day by getting him to the hospital as quickly as she did.”
“Yeah, I saw her there with Aubrey. They both looked pretty shaken up.”
“That’s it, just shaken up?”
Steve stared at me. “What else would you expect?”
I’d heard news reports about parents and caregivers who would make children sick on purpose as a cry for attention. “I’m not sure, especially if—”
“If what?”
“If little Johnny’s grandma made him eat that plant.”
Steve set his sandwich down. “First of all, it’s Jordan.”
“Whatever.”
“Secondly, what you’re suggesting is child abuse—something that medical professionals are always on alert for, so if there had been any real concern about that I would have been notified.”
His implication couldn’t have been clearer. My concern was without merit.
“Still, it’s quite a coincidence that Jordan Makepeace had to be rushed to the hospital just hours after you told me that people around here don’t die from being poisoned.”
“Accidents happen.”
&nb
sp; “I’m just saying.”
“What exactly?” Steve took another bite of his sandwich.
It seemed almost ridiculous to say it aloud, but I had already jumped into this murky water. It was time to start swimming. “Since Phyllis Bozeman seems to know her poisonous plants, what if she decided to get some revenge after being jilted by her old boyfriend?”
Pausing mid-chew, he cast me a sideways glance. “And we’re back on the Marty McCutcheon murder train.”
“I know it sounds farfetched, but poison is supposed to be the female murderer’s weapon of choice, right?”
Steve looked down at the last half of his roast beef sandwich in mock-horror.
“I don’t have any interest in killing you.” I patted his arm. “I’m not quite done with you yet.”
“Very reassuring.”
“But vee have vays of making you talk,” I said, borrowing the bad Russian accent my mother had used in a Bond movie spoof.
“Sounds like an empty promise to me.” He took another bite.
Since some sweet torture with the man had barely registered a blip on my interest meter the last couple of hours, he had me there. “So, tell me straight. Do you think it would be completely crazy to think that Phyllis Bozeman could have slipped something into the bottle of salsa that she bought for Marty McCutcheon’s birthday?”
Smirking, Steve slowly shook his head.
I didn’t appreciate the smirk. “But if it’s at all possible that her grandson accidentally got into whatever she used—”
“The bigger question is whether it’s at all possible that you’re going to give this a rest anytime soon.”
I watched him pop the last of the sandwich into his mouth. “Like you said, crazy stuff happens on the weekend.”
“And I’ve had enough crazy for one night,” he announced with his mouth full as he rose to his feet. “Thanks for the sandwich.”
I followed him to the door. “But what if what happened was no coincidence?”
He kissed me on the forehead. “Good night, Chow Mein.”
Chapter Eight
After I woke up with birds chirping outside my bedroom window I brewed a pot of French roast and then joined Myron, Gram’s fat tabby cat lounging in the study, and fired up my grandfather’s old computer. The dial-up connection made searching the internet painfully slow, but the price was right and gave me access to a printer.
While I sat at the desk and waited for the ancient PC to yawn to life, I checked my phone for text messages. Nothing but a CALL ME! from Donna.
“Forget it.”
I had no news for her or anyone else on the Kyle Cardinale front. He was a charming flirt with impeccable manners, and he smelled great. Beyond that, I didn’t want to think about last night aside from the confirmation that Kyle had given me that Marty McCutcheon had gone into cardiac arrest almost immediately upon arrival at the hospital. Which led me to my question of the morning: Now that Marty’s ex-girlfriend’s name was linked to a poisoning incident, could she have had something to do with stopping his heart?
The internet couldn’t provide me the answer to that specific question, but I figured it should be able to tell me if a plant could kill a man twice my size.
After a two-minute wait in which Myron followed me around while I fetched myself another mug of coffee, I had my answer: over a hundred thousand results telling me variations of the same thing. Okay, I clicked on only five of them, but the answer was a resounding yes.
One website featured an article that listed a number of plants under the heading of Cardiovascular Toxicity. I’d heard of almost all of them—foxglove, oleander, lily of the valley, monkshood, rhododendron, azalea. Heck, based on the pictures in the article, Gram had several of these plants growing in her back yard.
Sipping my coffee, I skimmed the article, focusing my attention on the plants in the Cardiac Glycoside group.
In cases of acute toxicity symptoms usually show up within minutes to hours.
My pulse racing, I retrieved my interview notes from my tote bag and reread them. Marty had started to feel ill ten minutes after he had sat down to eat.
I scrolled down to the list of symptoms and compared them to what I’d written in my notebook. Diarrhea, vomiting, confusion, disorientation, irregular heartbeat, chest pressure, shortness of breath.
Almost every one of them matched the witness descriptions.
Under the heading of Aconitine group, I held my breath when I read the line: Late stage symptoms of poisoning include skeletal muscle paralysis, cardiac dysrhythmias, and intense pain. If untreated, death may result from ventricular dysrhythmias or respiratory paralysis within 1 to 6 hours after ingestion.
“Holy shit!”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Gram said, standing in the doorway in her robe and fuzzy slippers.
“Gram! Don’t sneak up on me. You about gave me a heart attack.” Especially after what I’d just read.
She leaned over to stroke Myron, who had immediately abandoned his least favorite human in the house to demand some attention at her feet. “I wasn’t sneaking up on anybody, was I, sweet boy? And what may I ask are you looking at that has you using such language?”
I pressed the Print key to show Kyle the article I’d just read. “Nothing.”
“You’re not the only one who can tell when someone’s lying.” She was at my side in an instant like she wanted to catch me in the act. “It’s not porn, is it?”
I pointed at the plant displayed on the monitor. “Does it look like porn?”
“No, it looks like lily of the valley. I have some planted in a container out back. I can show you if you want to see the real thing.”
“That’s okay. I know where it is. I was just…” I couldn’t very well tell her that I thought Marty McCutcheon had been murdered. “…researching plant toxins. As a deputy coroner that kind of information might come in handy.” Not for the job I was being paid to do, but since Gram had yet to help herself to a cup of wake-up juice, I was banking on the fact that her synapses weren’t yet firing on all cylinders.
“Oh. Good thinking.” She patted my shoulder and headed for the kitchen.
Yeah, you can tell when someone’s lying all right.
I looked over the pages that Gramps’s old inkjet printer had spit out. Not the greatest quality but readable. Tucking them into my tote, I went upstairs to take a shower. I had a coffee date with Rox. After that I needed to see a doctor.
Not even ten hours had passed since Kyle kissed me. Would it give him the wrong idea if I asked to see him?
If Marty McCutcheon’s death had been caused by a plant toxin overdose, I shouldn’t care how it might look if I called him.
Still, I knew I was playing with fire.
As a pastry chef I’d been trained how to prepare food over an open flame. I’d also been known to singe my fingertips a time or two. When that happened you bucked up; you didn’t let anyone see you sweat.
I couldn’t guarantee the sweat part, but it was definitely buck up time.
∗ ∗ ∗
I hadn’t expected to see so many cars parked outside Merritt Lanes when I pulled in behind Ernie Kozarek’s big-assed Buick at eight fifty-five.
“Good morning,” the white-haired septuagenarian said as he pulled a leather bowling bag from his back seat.
“Hi, Mr. Kozarek. A bunch of you guys must be starting early today.” Typically, Eddie and Rox didn’t open until nine-thirty during the weekend.
“Early? Nah.” He squinted against the sun’s glare reflecting off the cotton candy clouds above us. “The seniors’ league meets here every Saturday at this time. ’Fraid we’ll be hogging the lanes if you had hopes to get a game in.”
I didn’t. My only hope this morning was that Eddie would be keeping Mr. Kozarek and his bowling buddies happy so that I could have twenty minutes alone with Rox—something I was dreading, especially after the kiss with Kyle that she’d witnessed last night.
Heck! I’d m
eant to call Kyle to see if he could meet with me right after I was done here, and I’d been stressing so much over what I was going to say to Rox that I had forgotten.
Three feet from the door that Mr. Kozarek was holding open for me, I waved him on. “I have to make a call, thanks.”
I looked up Kyle’s number in my notebook, having collected it when he was a witness on my first assignment. Two seconds after punching it in I heard his voice, inviting me to leave a message.
Dang. That probably meant that he was trying to sleep in on his day off and didn’t want to be disturbed.
It also meant that I needed to leave him a message. I hated leaving messages, especially when I needed to choose my words carefully so he wouldn’t misinterpret them.
“Hi!” Good grief, I sounded like a breathy teenager. I needed to cool it, sound professional, colleague to colleague. “It’s Char. I was hoping to talk to you today about something I’m working on.” Not bad. At least I’d made it clear this was a work-related call. “I’m going into a meeting,” so don’t call me, “but I’ll try calling you later to see what your schedule for today looks like.”
Ending the call, I breathed in a big gulp of fresh air and slowly released it in an attempt to lower my blood pressure, because I knew that the next message I delivered wouldn’t be nearly as well-received.
I pushed open the front entrance and took the first door on the right, seeing nothing but empty tables and chairs and no Rox behind the bar. “Hello?” The aroma of coffee wafted from the kitchen, so I followed my nose.
“Hey!” Donna said with a bright smile, stopping me in my tracks as she stepped out of the ladies’ room.
“What are you doing here?”
She linked her arm with mine, reversing my course. “A little bird told me you might be coming here for a chat.”
A little bird with a big mouth.
Donna led me to a table by the side window. “I knew you wouldn’t want me to miss out on your gabfest.”
She couldn’t have been more wrong. “You don’t have any clients this morning?”
“I had a cancellation.”
Liar. She’d probably cleared her schedule the moment she got wind that I was coming over.
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