Arsenic and Ole

by Jessa Archer

  My feelings about the proposed bridge were mixed. Yes, it was necessary in order to ensure safe evacuation of the area during the hurricanes that seemed to hit harder and with greater frequency each year, and it would be a boost for tourism. On the other hand, it would bring more development, which was a mixed blessing. Local residents on the mainland would have a shorter commute to their jobs during the summer, and there would be more of those jobs, but the new construction would undoubtedly have an environmental impact on the wildlife in the region. The area north of Corolla was unpaved and restricted to four-wheel-drive vehicles, but houses continued to pop up along the shore like giant colorful mushrooms.

  That’s where I’d really wanted to go—another fifteen miles or so past the Playhouse, up to the area known as Carova, because of its location near the Carolina-Virginia state line. Much of that stretch of beach is a nature preserve, where you can spot a wide array of birds, and on occasion, wild horses. The Sonata isn’t equipped for off-roading, so I couldn’t take it up to the northernmost areas, but I’d often park in the lot at the edge of the four-wheel-drive area and hike up the shore for a mile or so.

  There was no time for that today, given everything else that had happened. The beach at Duck would do nicely, however. It wasn’t as secluded as the beaches farther north, but nowhere near as crowded as the shore around Caratoke or Kitty Hawk.

  I parked at the Playhouse. The wind had gotten stronger since I left campus, so I pulled my dark hair back into a ponytail. Then I grabbed my backpack and crossed Route 12, heading for one of the smaller access roads that led down to the ocean. It was only a few minutes’ walk, and once I reached the sand, I pulled off my shoes and stashed them in the front pocket of my bag. The sand wasn’t as warm as I’d have liked, but it felt nice under my toes, and I couldn’t help but think of what Sam Davies had said earlier. I’m sure Caroline will be with us in spirit.

  Unfortunately, I knew better. She would no doubt love a long stroll on the beach, but she didn’t seem to be capable of travel, at least beyond the wandering she’d done initially to traverse the slightly less than three miles between the stairwell at SCU where her body had been found and home. If there was some magic container—a genie’s bottle or whatever—that would allow me to bring her along for the ride, I’d yet to discover it.

  Maybe it was for the best, though. Would she be able to enjoy the beach as a ghost? I wasn’t sure. Even though she could hear and see things, she said that her sense of smell was almost nonexistent. Taste was entirely out of the question, as was touch. She couldn’t pick anything up. Couldn’t really feel anything. While she always sat at the window seat, she claimed it was because that was the only way Attila could join her. could just as easily have sat in the middle of the room, perched on nothing but air.

  Once I reached the shoreline, I spent the next half hour roaming the beach. A few people passed by, but it was largely quiet, and by the time I made it back to the Coastal Playhouse around one forty-five, I’d managed to locate my inner calm.

  And then I promptly lost it again when I recognized the white SUV that was parked between my car and the Ford Focus that belonged to Ben Baker.

  Alicia.

  My history with Alicia Brown, the Clarion’s lead reporter, stretched all the way back to high school. Alicia was Travis’s age, two years ahead of me in school, and she’d been under the impression that Travis was her personal property. As a result, she hadn’t exactly taken it well when he and I started “dating” my freshman year. My mom wouldn’t actually let us date for almost a year after that, but it was kind of a moot point. We were inseparable.

  From the moment that Travis and I got together, Alicia had set out to make my life as miserable as possible. It hadn’t worked, mostly because I’d never been one of those teens who worried about being popular or part of the in-group. Travis and I had a small cluster of friends we hung out with, and neither of us really cared about the opinion of Alicia and her clique. When I moved off to California a few weeks before my sixteenth birthday, after learning that the pilot they’d filmed for Private Eye High had been picked up as a series, Alicia had seen that as her entrance cue. But Travis and I actually managed to stay together for several years after that, despite the distance.

  Alicia had married and divorced twice in the years since high school. So had Travis. But she still had her eye on him. I guess he was the fish she never landed, and she blamed me very much for him getting off the hook. Now that I was back in Caratoke, she’d apparently decided that it was high school all over again. She’d done everything within her power to make sure I didn’t settle in peacefully.

  Since she wasn’t behind the wheel of her SUV, I assumed she must already be in the theater, probably harassing poor Ben and sowing discord with the handful of actors who had arrived early. I peeked through the passenger-side window and saw that she’d left her keys in the vehicle. Again. I was sorely tempted to snatch them from the ignition and toss them off the deck and into the water of the Currituck Sound.

  It was probably a good thing that I resisted that urge, since I’d have been caught red-handed. Alicia was sitting outside on the deck overlooking the water, drinking a Diet Coke while she read something on her phone. She didn’t look happy. But then…had I ever seen her looking happy? I’d seen her looking smugly satisfied when she got off a smart remark, and I’d seen her looking maliciously gleeful after finding a new way to twist the knife. But that really wasn’t the same thing as happy.

  “Well, look what washed up on the deck,” I said.

  Alicia lowered her sunglasses on her pointy nose so I could see that she was not amused. “Your assistant is as rude as your daughter. He refused to let me wait inside. This is a place of business—”

  “Which isn’t open,” I said cheerfully. “Callbacks and rehearsals are private. If you were planning to audition, you needed to be here for open call yesterday.”

  “I’m not auditioning. The show is going to be awful this year anyway. I’ve already written most of my review for the Clarion. I just need to fill in the specific details.”

  Ah, yes. There it was. Her maliciously gleeful, knife-twisting expression.

  “Wow. I’m so glad I started recording as soon as I saw you. I’m sure your editor will be interested to hear that you’re panning local productions before the curtain even rises.”

  It was a lie. I wasn’t actually recording her. But her face shifted slightly. Maybe it would make her think twice.

  “I’m here to ask you some questions about Rebecca Whitley’s murder.”

  “Which hasn’t been ruled a murder at all, but yes, please, do go on, Alicia.”

  “Someone called a tip into the Clarion this morning, claiming they overheard a heated argument between you and the deceased, in which you shouted”—she glanced down at her phone—“If you do anything at all to wreck my party, you will wish you’d never crossed me. Is that quote accurate?”

  “Close enough. And here’s a slight variation on that theme. If you, Alicia Brown, do not get out of my face and stop hounding me with your truly stupid accusations, you will wish you’d never crossed me. Now, go away.”

  “Is it also true that you placed an order for a food delivery to 107 Windward Court, which is the residence of the deceased?”

  That caught me off guard. How exactly had she gotten that information? Aside from Paige and Delaney, the only people who knew that bit of information were Travis and Sam. I was pretty sure I hadn’t even mentioned it to Ben. We’d talked about the catering order, but that was it.

  I pulled my keys from my backpack to unlock the door of the Playhouse. “I’m not answering your questions, Leash.”

  Her eyes hardened at the old nickname. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “I’m sure you will. But then you’ve probably got that story already written, too. You’re not really investigating, so why do you even bother to leave the office?”

  As I was talking, two cars pulled into the parking lot.
Bethany Tartt got out of one, and two of the male actors got out of the other. I’d been planning to head inside, most likely slamming the door behind me, but I waited to let them in.

  The wind picked up, whipping Alicia’s blonde hair into tentacles around her head. She tucked a strand behind her ear and said, “You do have to admit it’s a rather odd string of coincidences, Antigone. Whitley dies under mysterious circumstances the same day that you threaten her. And you ordered the delivery to her house from the very same restaurant that she accused of poisoning her dog last week. I think a solid case could be made that you colluded with the owners of La Costera to teach her a lesson. Maybe you only intended to make the woman a little sick, but then things took a tragic turn and—”

  “Unfortunately for your theory,” I said, “I placed the order with OBXpress three days ago, long before my argument with Rebecca Whitley. That’s something you could probably check, if you were actually an investigative reporter. But it really doesn’t fit the theme of this little Choose Your Own Adventure story that you’re spinning, does it?”

  Bethany and the two guys who had pulled up at the same time paused at the edge of the deck, listening. There was an amused look on Bethany’s face. I stepped aside and motioned impatiently for the three of them to come in. Then I closed the door behind me, leaving Alicia on the windy deck.

  John, the taller of the two guys with Bethany, was in my Theater and Society class. “Was she talking about Andrew Whitley’s mom?”

  “Yes,” I told him. “We’re neighbors. I found the body. I haven’t the slightest clue how she wound up in the pool, but I suspect the story in tomorrow’s Clarion will have me cast as the villain.”

  He laughed. “Well, that’s kind of disappointing, since it’s the role I was hoping to land. I’m already working on the mustache,” he said, running a finger across the faint shadow on his upper lip.

  “I guess it’s lucky for you that Alicia Brown isn’t casting this particular melodrama. So let’s get in there, and you can show us what you’ve got.”

  Just as I was about to follow them into the auditorium, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Sam Davies.

  Liquid sample contains small quantity of grayanotoxin, but green specks are negative.

  That seemed odd. Was there some other plant in my yard, or possibly in someone else’s yard in the neighborhood, that contained that same substance? As I was trying to puzzle this out, a second text came in.

  Might be pollen? Second sample strongly positive for sodium fluoroacetate.

  What second sample? After a moment, I realized he must mean the burrito. And a chemistry professor might know what sodium fluoroacetate was, I didn’t have the slightest clue. Just as I was about to look it up, a third text came in.

  Also called Compound 1080. Banned except for govt use in US. Still sold internationally as a rodenticide.

  That last word also wasn’t in my day-to-day vocabulary, but I definitely understood the meaning. Sam had found rat poison in the burrito from La Costera.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Four and a half hours later, I tacked the final cast list to the bulletin board in the lobby, and then held up my hand to ward off the rush. The previous tradition at the Coastal Playhouse had apparently been to call out the names from the stage, but that seemed a little callous to me. Truthfully, I’d have preferred to have them go home, and let me just post the list online. I’d lost out on enough auditions to know that it was nice to have a chance to hide your disappointment before you had to face the world again.

  “Once you check the list, take five and then come back into the auditorium,” I said. “For those of you who are not one of the six in the main cast, please keep in mind that everyone in this room tonight has a paid job in theater for the summer. Those are rare. You’ll all be paid the same, and you’ll all get at least one night per week on stage. My goal is for everyone to learn multiple jobs this summer, because if you actually want to work in theater, you need to be multitalented and flexible. There will be no prima donnas here. We are a team. If you’re not willing to do some of the less glamorous jobs, including things like taking out the trash and sweeping the aisles after the show, then you need to let me know that now, so that I can call in one of the alternates. And with that noted…” I stepped away from the list and headed back into the auditorium where Ben was waiting.

  “Really hope you don’t live to regret this,” he said with a wry smile.

  I didn’t have to ask what he meant. “As Melinda said, she was the best.”

  I’d conferenced Melinda in for the auditions via Skype. And even though I still had some worries about her attitude, it was very clear that Bethany was the best, not just of the two girls who were up for the role of the vamp, but of the entire cast. I think she had resigned herself to being the understudy, however, because she’d gone out of her way to push my buttons during the audition. That way, when she wasn’t cast, she could claim that I was biased. Her audition piece definitely wasn’t something that we’d be performing at the Coastal Playhouse, which billed itself as family friendly. We kept the language clean, although there were plenty of double entendres in the melodrama that made the adults chuckle and soared straight over the heads of our youngest guests. Bethany, however, had picked a rather risqué song from A Chorus Line—“Dance Ten, Looks Three”—for her vocal audition, and she’d stuck to the original lyrics for the refrain, rather than substituting the words “this and that” for specific body parts the way they did in the high school version of the musical.

  When the actors filed back in, you could tell instantly which ones were happy with the outcome and which ones were a bit disappointed. This was a gentle letdown, though. Most of the auditions I’d been to were all or nothing, with dozens of people walking away without a job. John, the guy who had wanted the role of the villain, seemed a little dismayed, probably because I’d cast him as the hero instead, which meant he’d need to shave off that mustache. Kendra was clearly delighted with her role as the heroine, Lorna Dune. In fact, Bethany was the only person who’d won a spot in the main cast who you wouldn’t have been able to identify from her expression alone. She looked confused. There was a touch of something else there, as well. Embarrassment, or maybe guilt. Perhaps she was feeling bad about the way she’d acted toward me over the past few months. And that made me feel a bit guilty in return, because she wouldn’t have gotten that role if Melinda hadn’t convinced me to give her a second chance. I’m not even sure that I would have included her in the callbacks.

  I gave my new team a brief overview of the upcoming rehearsal schedule and had them fill in a sheet with their email and phone numbers so that Ben and I could reach them if we needed. Then I distributed the employment forms they’d have to fill out and return so that we could submit them to the university.

  “Please bring these to my office at Muncey Auditorium within the next week,” I told them, “assuming that you’re interested in getting paid. The wheels of college bureaucracy turn slowly, and I want to make sure you’re all in the system before rehearsals start.”

  As everyone was leaving, I pulled Bethany aside. “Since you’re going to be part of my cast this summer, could we please bury the hatchet? If you have problems with me, I expect you to tell me to my face, rather than trying to make trouble behind my back. In other words, I expect you to be a professional. You’re very talented, and I’m happy to give you a chance. So is Melinda. The show will be much better with you than without you. But if you aren’t going to be a team player, then I will recast the role. Are we clear?”

  “We’re clear.” This was followed by a very grudging “Thanks.”

  Once the actors were gone, Ben and I began closing the place down. The texts from Sam had been weighing on me for the past several hours, popping to the front of my mind between auditions. Before we began, I’d sent Paige a text telling her to steer clear of the leftovers in the fridge and that I’d explain why when I got home. Then I’d messaged Sam to thank him for c
hecking Leo’s sample, and he’d clarified that the second result he mentioned was indeed the burrito. He’d also said that the symptoms of poisoning by sodium fluoroacetate and other rodenticides were similar to neurotoxins like the one found in azaleas, so it would have been easy for the vet to assume that the dog had gotten into some sort of commercial poison. And then he added that all of this was, of course, confidential.

  That last part was making me a little crazy. Ben was the one who had told me about all of this in the first place. If he hadn’t, Paige and I wouldn’t have had a clue going into her party. We’d all eaten the food the night before, and we’d been fine, so my text to Paige was really out of an abundance of caution. The whole thing seemed illogical, and I couldn’t help feeling that someone was trying very hard to set up Bill and Silvia Gonzalez. What really ticked me off was that they’d used the order I’d placed with OBXpress to do it.

  As we were about to leave, I turned to Ben and said, “You’ve worked at the restaurant when orders come in for OBXpress, haven’t you?”

  “Sure. We usually have two or three a night. And it can shoot up to a dozen or more during the tourist season, when people don’t want to deal with the traffic or the long lines. Why? Are you thinking about a second job this summer?”

  He laughed as he said it, but I’d actually considered it a few times. Being out of work for a few months before I took the job at SCU had left me with some credit card debt, and the bulk of what my mom had left was tied up in CDs and other longer-term investments that I was hesitant to cash out unless absolutely necessary.

  “No,” I told him. “I was just wondering whether the restaurant receipt shows the actual customer information. The name and address, I mean. I ordered something through them a few days ago, and my copy of the restaurant’s receipt just had an order number and the OBXpress info.”