“Do you know how much profit you could make from that place?” Cynthia said, looking up at the ceiling as if praying to the god of money.
“Were you really going to work with Harris?” I couldn’t keep the dismay out of my voice.
She shrugged. “Commerce makes strange bedfellows.”
I shuddered. “Did you make Blake drink his tea at gunpoint?”
I was firing every question I could think of at her.
Come on, Lupe.
“Of course not. No one is going believe I’d shoot a gun in a crowded hotel. Think, Ellie.” she tapped her temple. “I was going to open one of his gingko capsules and put the belladonna in there, but your little Larken had already brought Blake a nice tea to help him sleep. So I just added the belladonna to that when I helped him brew it up. Then, when the police decided his death was suspicious, I had a built-in scapegoat.” She rolled her eyes. “Until you decided to get involved.”
“So after dinner you left the hotel, but then you went back. Blake was expecting a good time, and got killed instead,” I said.
Joyous let out a small moan.
Cynthia ignored her. “I might have given him a good time if my partner could have convinced him to sell the land.”
“Your partner,” I said. “Not Harris, but Vaughn Newton. That’s what they argued about in the bar that night.”
Cynthia nodded. “But as persuasive as Vaughn can be, he couldn’t talk Blake into selling that land. Nor would Blake develop it with me. That was what I tried first, before he even came back to Poppyville. So I had to get my old beau here, so I could talk to him in person.”
“That’s why you told him about my tiny house?” I breathed.
She gave a very unladylike snort. “Tiny house. God. Only you would want to live in a garden shed.”
I bit my tongue.
She went on. “But Blake had grown remarkably attached to that family land over the years. He was quite unreasonable about it. So when Vaughn called me to let me know he hadn’t been successful, I knew there was only one thing to do.”
“Vaughn was in on it, too?” I asked, wondering about Harris.
“God, no. Vaughn is a good ol’ boy from Houston who’s willing to use a little intimidation, but that’s about it.”
“Unlike you,” I said flatly.
“You’re a woman. You know how hard it is for us to get ahead.”
I stared at her.
“You won’t get my land if you kill me,” Joyous suddenly said.
Cynthia sank into the other chair, gun still pointed at me. “I thought about making you sign it over, but that might look too suspicious. It will come up at public auction eventually. I can wait.”
“It won’t,” Joyous shook her head. “I already decided to take it off the market, and this afternoon I updated my will. The land will go to my next of kin.”
Our captor smirked. “Nice try. I checked. You don’t have any next of kin.”
Joyous smiled, and I saw Cynthia stop herself from opening her mouth in surprise. “Actually, I do have a distant cousin.” She nodded at me. “Ellie.”
Cynthia’s nostrils flared. “You have got to be kidding me,” she yelled. She raised the gun. “Drink the tea!”
“Don’t,” I warned Joyous. And to Cynthia, “Frankly, I’d rather be shot than die from nightshade poisoning. Hallucinations, vomiting, convulsions—and those are just a few of the things that happen before you finally lose consciousness.”
Joyous blanched at my words, but then her face turned stony, and she pushed away from the coffee table. “You did that to my brother?”
A flash of lightning lit the sky outside. Seconds later, thunder boomed overhead.
“Oh, please. I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” Cynthia said.
“It was,” I said. “And you unplugged the room phone from the wall so he couldn’t call for help.”
“Well, of course.” She sounded exasperated. “I hid his cell phone in his dresser drawer, too. Now, let’s face it: You’re both going to drink the tea,” Cynthia said, as if she hadn’t heard a word I said. “The police won’t be able to tell exactly what happened. In the meantime, I’ll think of some way to explain it to my advantage.”
“Oh, come on. We’re not all that incompetent,” Lupe said, stepping into the kitchen doorway. She was training a gun on Cynthia. “Put down the weapon.”
I would have been terrified, but Cynthia just looked furious. She hesitated, then looked toward the front door.
“I hate to sound trite,” Lupe said. “But we have the place surrounded.”
Finally, the leader of the Greenstockings’ shoulders slumped. Lupe stepped up and took her gun, then opened the door to let two uniformed police in. They quickly frisked Cynthia and put handcuffs on her. Lupe led Joyous into the kitchen.
As the uniformed officers were taking Cynthia out the door, I asked them to wait a minute. Standing in front of her, I considered telling her what a horrible, evil woman she was.
But condemnation would slide off her like warm butter, so I settled on, “Trying to kill me and then dumping Blake’s Cadillac in his sister’s garage was genius, but I still don’t understand why you took Blake’s vehicle the night you gave him the poison. Didn’t you drive your own car back to the hotel?”
She looked down her nose at me. “Of course not. Someone might have seen my Lexus. It’s rather noticeable, you know.” She sniffed. “I walked.”
I felt my forehead crease. “But why not walk back home then?”
She turned bright red. “I broke a heel.”
I stared at her. My lips began to twitch. “You broke a heel.”
“Yes. You’d know what that’s like if you ever wore proper business attire.”
“You stole the car of a man you killed because your heel broke and you needed a ride home.” A laugh snorted out of my mouth, and it was all I could do not to tip over into hysteria.
Outside, it was raining, steady but gentle. Thunder rumbled in the distance, but the storm was already passing.
CHAPTER 24
LUPE, Astrid, and I sat in rocking chairs on the Scents & Nonsense patio and looked out at the Enchanted Garden. Dash and Charlie gnawed on rawhide chews at our feet, while Nabby stalked the perimeter of the fence in the cooler weather. Yesterday’s rainstorm had knocked the heat right out of the atmosphere, and while the temperature would still climb considerably as the day went on, there was a feeling that the relentless swelter of summer was falling behind us. The plants in the garden appeared refreshed, and after the events of the last few days, I was feeling better than I had a right to.
After I’d arrived home the night before, I filled Astrid in on what had happened while she was binge watching Game of Thrones with Charlie. Then I finally took one of the painkillers that Dr. Scott had given me and tumbled into bed. I’d slept like a dead person for ten solid hours and woken after eleven in the morning. I’d hurried out of my house, only to find Astrid and Lupe sitting on the patio of Scents & Nonsense, nibbling on buttery anise-and-cinnamon bizcochitos, and sipping strong tea.
Maggie was keeping an eye on things inside the shop and insisted that I join them. Now I gratefully took another sip of steaming Darjeeling.
“You have to give me this recipe,” Astrid said. The bright blue sling that kept her arm and shoulder immobilized reminded me of the baby sling she’d carried Precious the teacup pig around in. Had that really been only four days ago?
“It’s my mother’s,” the detective said. She’d brought the cookies over, saying that Astrid being unable to bake gave her an excuse to cook in her tiny apartment. “She always made them for the holidays, but I figured this was a kind of celebration, too.”
I shifted the soft pillow on the right side of my seat and carefully stretched my leg out. Even my falling injury was less painful today, though it w
ould take a while to heal altogether.
“We might need something bubbly if we’re celebrating bringing a murderer to justice,” I said.
“A double murderer,” Lupe said.
I stopped my fussing and turned. Astrid was staring at her.
Now that she’d snagged our attention, Lupe gazed out at the garden and smiled a grim smile. I was glad it wasn’t directed at me. “Cynthia Beck had used deadly nightshade to kill before, when she lived in San Diego. Husband number one.”
“Holy moly,” Astrid breathed. “So one of her divorces wasn’t a divorce at all?”
“Oh, no. She had the two divorces, too. She didn’t advertise being a widow after she moved to Poppyville, I take it?”
Astrid and I shook our heads. She said, “I always called her a mantrap, but I had no idea she was a black widow.”
The detective nodded. “She got away with it for years. Probably wouldn’t have ever been caught if she hadn’t tried it again.” She looked pointedly at me. “And if you hadn’t known right off the bat what killed Sontag.”
“So that’s why she knew plant poisons were hard to detect in an autopsy,” I said. “She’d done her research a long time ago, and then she’d recognized the belladonna when she saw it on the land she wanted to buy.”
“Exactly.”
“But how did you find out?” Astrid asked the detective. “Her husband’s death must have been a long time ago.”
“Thirteen years ago,” Lupe agreed. A cat-who-just-ate-the-canary look settled on her face. “She confessed.”
I frowned. “You’re kidding. I mean, it just doesn’t seem like Cynthia to say or do anything that isn’t in her own best interest.”
“Ah. But I convinced her it was in her best interest. Once I found out she’d had three marriage licenses, I called the police in San Diego and found the guy who’d investigated her first husband’s death. He sent me her file online, and I spent all night going over it.”
I searched her face. Now that I wasn’t dwelling on my own posterior and had a modicum of caffeine in my system, I could see the dark circles under her eyes. Lupe hadn’t slept at all since I’d seen her last. A true professional. I couldn’t imagine Max Lang losing one second of sleep, or sacrificing one beer or ball game, in order to dig deeper into crime.
Not to mention then baking up a batch of yummy cookies.
She continued. “I found enough that I thought I could build a case.” She shrugged. “When I talked to Cynthia earlier this morning, I managed to convince her of that and told her the prosecutor would likely go easier on her if she came clean. It took some persuading, but eventually, she did just that.”
“Nice job!” I lifted my cup.
“To getting Larken off the hook,” Astrid said, holding her tea aloft.
“To good police work,” I said.
Lupe grinned and her weariness seemed to drop away. She lifted her cup as well. “To justice.” A wry expression crossed her face. “And to no more murders in Poppyville and never having to work with Max Lang again.”
“Amen,” Astrid and I intoned.
• • •
THE bell over the door to Scents & Nonsense jingled, and I looked up from where I was pricing a new shipment of scented drawer liners to see Tanner Spence silhouetted in the light from the street. It had been almost a week since Cynthia’s arrest, and he’d called a couple of times to check on how I was doing.
He strode in and stopped in front of the counter. “Lookie what I have.” He slid a folder across to me.
Raising my eyebrows, I opened it. Inside was a mock-up of the article on my tiny house.
“Oh, this is great,” I said, flipping through the pages. “Longer than I thought it would be, too.”
“Read it,” he said, and went over to pour a cup of coffee and grab a chocolate chip cookie.
Astrid might not want to have to make cookies, but as long as she could manage recipes that only required one hand and a stand mixer, she was determined not to stop. She was back at work at Dr. Ericcson’s office and still pet sitting, too.
I read through the article. It was informative, with a casual voice that was friendly and accessible, so the reader learned a lot while feeling like they were getting to know the author—and the subject, which in this case was me. It was a strange feeling.
The pictures were artful compositions that also conveyed the creativity and ingenuity of the man who had designed my tiny house. There was a mention at the end that he was interviewed elsewhere in the magazine.
After all that posing Spence had made me do, the only photo of me was a candid shot I hadn’t even known he’d taken. I was leaning over the alembic, and he’d caught the steam starting to swirl from it into the air. The expression on my face was as dreamy as any I’d seen on Larken.
I didn’t know whether to be flattered or dismayed.
“You like it?” he asked, and handed me a cookie.
Absently, I bit into it while flipping through the article again. “I love it.” Looking up, I said, “You aren’t required to show it to me, are you?”
“God, no. But I wanted you to see it before it comes out in the magazine.” He shrugged disarmingly. “I’m pretty proud of it.”
“You should be.”
He smiled.
I smiled.
“Is that why you’re still in town?” I asked finally.
His eyebrows rose in amusement. “Not exactly.”
I waited.
Spence’s grin widened. “I love small towns.”
I stared at him.
“I live here now,” Spence said. “Just signed a lease on an apartment on the west side of town.”
I blinked. “Because . . . ?”
“Like I said, I love small towns. And in the short time I’ve been here, Poppyville captured my interest.”
I couldn’t keep the skepticism out of my voice when I said, “Poppyville captured your interest.”
“Uh-huh. Along with some of its inhabitants. One in particular, but she’s not available. So it’s not like I’m moving here for her.” Then he dropped the teasing tone. “Listen, Ellie. I’m a freelancer. I work all over the place, and I live wherever I want to. For a long time, I was overseas for months at a time, but I’m done with that gig. Still, it never made sense for me to own a home.”
He took a breath, watching me as he spoke. “I’m on a month-to-month lease in Sacramento, but I’m tired of the city. I like Poppyville. A lot. And I like you.” He held up his hand as I began to protest. “I know you have a long-distance relationship going on, and I respect that. But we can be friends. Or not, if that somehow feels wrong to you. Either way, I’m going to stay here for a while.” He seemed to struggle for the right words, then shrugged. “It just feels right here.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay, what?”
“Friends.” I stuck out my hand.
He grinned and shook it.
After all, how could I argue about Poppyville feeling right to someone else, when my whole life it had been the only place I’d ever wanted to be?
• • •
I STOOD beneath the circle of willows and listened. Meadowlarks, red-winged blackbirds, and the cawing of crows. A breeze pushed the tree branches back and forth. Far overhead, a jet plane carried passengers to a faraway place.
The air smelled of sage and dust and sun-warmed clay. No bubble gum. Nothing weird.
But the weird was there, hiding. I could feel it.
The fences were all down, the gate gone, the edges of Miss Poppy’s original parcel of land left to the imagination. It all felt so much bigger as a result, even the shallow red cliff, the crumbling chimney, and half-fallen wall.
Leaving the trees behind, I joined Larken, Colby, and Joyous in the remains of the old cabin. They were discussing the partic
ulars of the agreement they’d reached. The ruins would stay right where they were, but Joyous would bring in an expert to make sure they were structurally safe. Ditto for the wellhead.
Joyous kept looking over her shoulder at the willows as if they were going to spontaneously generate a blanket of tule fog on a moment’s notice. Heck, for all I knew, they might. But I wasn’t worried, and I caught her eye to let her know that.
She smiled weakly and turned back to Larken and my brother.
My long-lost cousin had started seeing a therapist, and already seemed far happier. It made my heart glad every time she smiled. She’d decided not to sell her thirty acres, but she wasn’t ready to spend much time there, either.
So she and Larken had figured out a compromise. Joyous would give Larken a long-term lease for a pittance. Larken could use the money she got from her grandfather for off-grid systems like solar and wind power that could be moved if she ever wanted to relocate, and she and Colby were already making plans to build a straw-bale house to live in.
Like I said: crunchy.
And yes: Colby was on board.
Oh, he’d still have his Westfalia, and he’d probably still take off sometimes. But he and Larken had found a way to compromise as well.
Life was good.
RECIPES
AND
AROMATHERAPY
ASTRID’S LAVENDER SHORTBREAD COOKIES
Sweet but not too sweet, these cookies are pretty and delicate enough for a shower or wedding. They also pair well with a sharp cheddar for a snack or dessert course. Dried lavender buds can be found in many tea shops and are readily available online. If you use fresh from your garden, throw in an extra tablespoon. Other options are savory flowers from sage or thyme, or tiny pansies. You can substitute another ¼ cup of all-purpose flour for the ground nut flour but the texture won’t be quite as nice and crumbly.
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