“You told Cat and I not to investigate, and we promised we wouldn’t!”
“You can’t seriously expect that I believed the two of you, though.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Well, for one thing, you’re not at all subtle when you cross your fingers behind your back. I swear, my seven-year-old niece is better at hiding that than you.”
A small blush crept up my face, along with an embarrassed smile. “Oops. But, so if you knew Cat and I were going to investigate, why wouldn’t you stop us?”
“What’s the point?” Chase replied. “I’ve tried to stop the two of you before. It just doesn’t work. So at least this time, I’m keeping a closer eye on you. So what have you found out so far?”
I told Chase what we’d found out about Iris, and also about the cyanide in the dresser drawer. When I finished, he nodded, just as my name was called out; our food was ready.
“Hold that thought,” Chase said as he got up to get it; he came back a minute later and placed my pancakes on the table in front of me, along with a knife and fork, and the two of us dug in.
“We found the cyanide as well,” Chase said. “I’ve sent it away for prints, but it didn’t look like there were any on it. You didn’t get your fingerprints all over the bottle, did you?”
I shook my head. “No, Cat and I thought to bring gloves.”
“Good.”
“So what do you think about the cyanide? Cat and I can’t figure out if she killed herself, or if someone planted it there to just make it look like she did. I mean, it has to be the same vial, right?”
“The odds are in favor of that, yes. The lab reports came back and showed it was potassium cyanide that killed her, and I think it’s way too much of a coincidence for our victim to have had that vial among her things.”
“That’s what Cat and I decided too. I don’t know. I still don’t want to rule out the idea that she killed herself.”
“I think it’s unlikely,” Chase said slowly. “However, it’s not completely outside the realms of possibility.”
“Can you confirm that the poison was in the coffee?” I asked, and Chase nodded.
“Yes. There were traces of it left in the coffee that was left in the cup.”
“And what do you think about the whole Iris thing?”
“It is interesting,” Chased mused. “She didn’t mention anything about knowing Vanessa when we spoke to her that night.”
“That’s suspicious, isn’t it?”
“It could be,” Chase replied. “But on the other hand, sometimes in difficult situations, people panic. They forget things that they ordinarily would have remembered, or, when speaking to the cops, they think that if they mention knowing the victim they’ll be considered a suspect.”
“I imagine you’d have to have a pretty cool head to be a ski patroller and a bike park patroller. There are bound to be some pretty nasty injuries in that job.”
“True. In which case we’re left with the second option: she’s worried that if she mentioned that detail she’d become a major suspect.”
“Maybe. Or maybe she was the killer and was hoping to get away with it.”
“That’s the other side of it,” Chase replied. “So now we have to work to get to the bottom of which one it was.”
“Do you have any other super awesome secret insider information for me?” I asked, fluttering my eyebrows at Chase, who laughed.
“You do realize I was a marine, right?”
“And that my womanly charms are so great that even a hardened military man like you can’t resist spilling all your secrets?” I said with a wink.
“Yes, exactly that,” Chase replied, breaking into a smile. “No amount of torture could get me to talk, but those eyelashes broke me instantly.”
“So speak!” I mock ordered. “Give me all of your intel.”
Chase spread out his hands. “To be totally honest, there isn’t much to tell. We know the poison came from the coffee, which is one of the reasons why I don’t think it was suicide. Cat said she made the coffee herself, and that there was no one else in the shop when she made it, then brought the container over to your place. So it had to be one of the people at the book club who slipped the poison into the coffee.”
“Do you know of a relationship between anyone else and Vanessa?” I asked, and Chase nodded.
“Polly obviously was best friends with her. That Victoria girl knew her to say hi, since she and Polly worked together at the elementary school. Now you’ve told me about Iris and her having a confrontation that led to Iris being fired. And Olivia, the older woman? She teaches at the community college, where Vanessa had been taking a couple of classes. She was her professor in an introduction to economics class.”
“Vanessa was taking college classes? That’s new to me.”
“Only a couple. Apparently, she wanted to get a certificate in business, or something.”
“Maybe she was tired of not having a job. I don’t know how she supported herself.”
“Could be. I’m digging more into the lives of the people who were at your book club.”
“I can’t believe how many people actually have links to Vanessa. This should have been a much easier case to solve.”
“Welcome to small towns, city girl,” Chase teased. “Everyone always has a link to everyone.”
“So I’m discovering,” I said. “Hey, are you going to go vote today?”
“I’m going to do it later,” Chase said. “After all, my voting station is right at city hall, so I’m just going to do it while I’m at work.”
“Good plan,” I nodded. “Mine is at the conference center, where Frank is having his party tonight. I’ll be going to that, but I assume you’re going to be too busy?”
Chase nodded. “Sadly, yes. No time off when there’s a murder investigation. And speaking of, I have to get going.”
“All right, I’ll see you later,” I said, standing up to give him a quick kiss. He squeezed my hand.
“If you find anything out, call me. And for the love of all that is holy, if you figure out who the killer is, do not go after them alone. Call me! You have to promise me that.”
“I promise. But I’m telling you, Cat and I are nowhere near figuring it out either.”
“While that’s a bit of a relief, a part of me wishes you were,” Chase said with a smile. “I’ll see you later.”
Chase left and I finished off the rest of my breakfast and coffee, thinking hard. I really didn’t know where to go next with this investigation, other than I knew I wanted to talk to Iris again. I should have asked Chase for her address.
I checked my phone for the time when I was finished: it was only eight-thirty, which meant the polls had opened a half hour earlier, and I still had ninety minutes to go before I had to open the bookshop. That was plenty of time to go down to the conference center and place my ballot for the election.
Chapter 11
The sun was already high in the sky and beating down on me as I made my way through town. Even though it was early September, it definitely still felt like summer was in full swing. I had to admit, I was kind of looking forward to the change of seasons; I had never seen the leaves change colors in the fall, having grown up in Miami.
By the time I made my way to the conference center, there were a handful of people waiting outside, having a chat either before or after casting their ballots. Instead of focusing on the people, however, I quickly took in a gorgeous German Shephard, whose tail wagged at all the people, never mind that none of them were paying him any attention. Just being around people was enough to keep him very happy, and as he bounded with energy I made my way over to him and gave him pats.
“Hey, boy,” I said with a smile as the dog leapt up on me, obviously super pleased to meet me. I was equally pleased to meet him, I had to say.
“Oh, sorry,” I heard a woman say above. “Down, Lewis!”
“It’s fine,” I said, looking up at the owner. Only then did
I realize it was Vicky, one of the women from the book club. “Oh! Hi, sorry, I didn’t, uh, notice you,” I said awkwardly. How do you explain to someone that you were really only focused on their dog?
“That’s all right,” Vicky said with a smile. “To be honest, I was just texting a friend and didn’t see who you were either. How are things?”
“Ok, considering,” I said. “How about you?”
“About the same,” she said with a small smile. “Lewis here is actually Kyle’s dog; I offered to take him out this morning because I figured he could use the exercise.”
“I can imagine going out and walking is probably the last thing Kyle wants to do right now. That’s very nice of you.”
“Well, it’s the least I can do. He told me he went to Vanessa’s place the night he found out what happened. He just wanted to be near her aura, he said.”
“Did he now?” I asked, my eyebrows rising.
“Yeah. He said he never went in, though. Figured no one would really appreciate a knock on the door at two in the morning.”
“I can understand that,” I said with a wry smile. “How is he holding up?”
“About as well as can be expected, I suppose. I know Polly has been a wreck. She wasn’t at school the rest of the week, and I’m sure she’s going to spend the weekend feeling awful too.”
“Absolutely. Well, it’s good to see you’re doing all right.”
Vicky shrugged. “I only really knew Vanessa to say hello. Besides, I teach the third grade. Kids are pretty easily kept entertained at that age. A few weeks ago I told them my parents named me after Queen Victoria and they’re still calling me ‘Your Majesty’.”
I giggled. “Sounds like a good ego boost.”
“That’s why I let them keep doing it,” Vicky said with a wink.
“So how do you know Kyle, anyway?” I asked.
“Oh, I’ve known him forever. We went to school together. We sort of vaguely kept in touch afterwards, the way you do in a small town. But to be honest, this has definitely brought us closer together. After all, he was engaged to Vanessa and I was there when… well. I brought him over some food, and I’ve been taking Lewis over here out after school. Since it’s Saturday, I figured I’d take him down to the lake and let him have a swim.”
“Nice, it sounds like you’ve got an awesome day planned,” I said to Lewis, giving him a big rub on the belly that sent him into another frenzy of energy.
“I should have known that a dog named for a race car driver would be a handful,” Vicky laughed. “He’s a good boy, though.”
“That he is.”
“Hey, just one more thing. Do you know why Vanessa and Kyle weren’t living together?” I’d been meaning to ask Polly, but maybe Vicky knew. After all, it came to me last night that it was kind of strange for an engaged couple in this day and age to be living separately.
Vicky shrugged, giving me an apologetic smile. “Sorry, no idea. Polly would know though, you should ask her.”
“Ok, thanks. Take care.”
“You too.”
As I made my way past the crowd and into the conference center, I was so caught up in what I was doing that I almost forgot to show my ID as I wandered aimlessly toward the room where the ballots were being given.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I need to see your proof of address,” a man told me, making me snap out of my reverie completely.
“Oh. Right, sorry,” I said, so flustered I dropped my wallet and all of my cards spilled out of it and onto the floor. The man immediately knelt down to help me pick them up.
“I knew it!” an accusatory voice leveled from somewhere nearby. I took a deep breath as soon as I heard it. I knew it belonged to Denise. “I knew you were trying to rig this election!”
I picked up my cards and stood up, glowering at Denise. With her grey hair and stern face, she looked like the kind of librarian I had always been terrified of as a kid. Luckily, now that I was an adult, I was only a little bit scared of other people sometimes, and Denise was not one of those. She was just a bully, and I was old enough to know you had to stand up to bullies.
She was only confronting me because there were about twenty other people milling around in the main lobby area, some of whom probably hadn’t gone in to vote yet.
“Right. I forgot clumsiness is a form of electoral fraud,” I said to her, rolling my eyes as hard as I could as I handed the man my driver’s license.
“Clumsiness, right. You’re trying to get in and vote multiple times.”
“I assure you, I’m voting once. The people of Sapphire Village are going to pick the next mayor, and I’m going to vote just as often as the rest of them.”
“Right. I’m going to alert security to your presence. They should know that once you’ve left here, you shouldn’t be allowed back into the building.”
“Is that your tactic for when you lose?” I couldn’t help but retort. “Claim that the election was rigged, and refuse to accept the fact that you’re just a bitter old hag who’s not remotely suitable to run the town?”
At this point the crowd had mostly stopped their chit-chat to watch the unfolding conversation between Denise and I. I didn’t know what had gotten into me. Normally, I preferred to ignore Denise, and let Cat be the one to taunt her until the she eventually stormed off.
Maybe it was the frustration of not really knowing where we were going with the murder investigation.
“You… I should… You’re so…” Denise spat, trying out about four different sentences before giving up on all of them, letting out a rather animalistic screech, and turning on her heel and storming out of the conference center.
“You can go in now, ma’am,” the man said, handing me back my license. His face had gone white; I had a feeling the two-day course he had taken on election procedure didn’t have a chapter about candidates antagonizing voters and leaving in a huff.
I thanked him and went in and voted for Frank. I had never felt so strongly about an election result in my life. And as much as I really disliked the woman, I knew Denise did have a following in town. After all, she was in favor of continuing the Renaissance plan for Sapphire Village, which was mainly a large expansion project planned by the mountain’s parent company that had divided the town. Some were in favor of the expansion–it would bring in more tourism, and the money that went with it, after all–while others were opposed to the project, determining that Sapphire Village already had some capacity-related infrastructure issues and that this new project would only make those worse.
Denise was on the side of the Renaissance, and Frank was against it. I knew that was what this election was going to come down to; I just didn’t know which side was going to win. After all, the town seemed pretty evenly split on the issue.
One thing was certain: tonight, I was going to be here, and hopefully celebrating Frank’s victory.
Chapter 12
As I made my way back to the bookshop, I stopped suddenly. Something had been nagging at me ever since I left Vicky–it was what I had been thinking about when I was stopped by the election worker, and it suddenly came back to me.
Kyle, Vanessa’s fiancé, had been at her place that night. He had told Vicky he didn’t go in, but what if he was lying? And after all, it was two in the morning. Security didn’t seem to be a high priority at that house, what if someone had left the door unlocked. He could have easily slipped in, planted the vial of cyanide in her room, and left.
Then, I let out a sigh of frustration. There was only one problem with that theory: Kyle hadn’t been at the book club at all. And the one thing we absolutely, one hundred percent knew beyond all doubt was that the coffee had to have been spiked at the book club. Cat hadn’t seen anyone after she had made the coffee before she brought it to the bookshop.
Great. Back to square one. And that had seemed like such a promising lead, too.
I opened the door to the bookshop to find Archibald floating around the room, muttering to himself, deep in thoug
ht.
“Hey, Archibald,” I greeted him. Muffin, the little grey cat that lived in the shop, didn’t even move from his spot on the beanbag chair. I supposed the beam of light shining through the window and directly onto him must have been incredibly comfortable.
“Do not interrupt a master of the linguistic arts when he is thinking!” Archibald said.
“Oh, sorry,” I said. “Is this like a Coleridge thing, where now you don’t remember the rest of your poem?” Coleridge had famously left his poem Kublai Khan unfinished when, after waking up and immediately writing it down, he had been interrupted, and by the time he got back to the paper he had forgotten what he was going to write.
“Please,” Archibald scoffed. “Sam was a genius, but a genius who was drugged to the hilt all the same. It’s his own bloody fault he forgot the rest of that poem; he could have tried not being knee-deep in opium, that would have helped.”
“Yeah, well, if he hadn’t been on that crazy trip he never would have written the rest of Kublai Khan anyway.”
“I much preferred The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, myself. It was unbecoming of a man of his intellectual gifts to waste so much of his talents by succumbing to the Oriental drug. But alas, the man was sick, and had been his whole life.”
“All right, well, now that we’ve had this conversation, do you remember what it is you were muttering when I came in?” I asked with a smile.
“Of course I do!” Archibald answered pompously. “And in fact, if you were to grab a pen and a piece of paper, I would happily dictate to you the words of the first poem which will comprise my latest work.”
“All right, but if any customers come in, I’m ignoring you and helping them,” I warned him. “It’s Saturday, which is our busiest day of the week.”
“Well, if you must. But I assure you, the works I present to you will change the path of human literature for years–nay, decades–nay, centuries to come.”
Pride and Premeditation: A Cozy Mystery (Magical Bookshop Mystery Book 5) Page 6