THE HERBALIST (Books 1-5)

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THE HERBALIST (Books 1-5) Page 42

by Leslie Leigh


  She picked up the wine bottle and looked at it. It was a bottle of Elderberry wine. It would almost be funny—if it weren’t so tragic—since Elderberry wine was the vehicle for the poison in the play “Arsenic and Old Lace.”

  Her next thought was to wonder about the origin of the bottle. Elderberry wine didn’t seem like a standard for a bar or restaurant. She looked at the label again and saw that it was a local winery which was famous for its wines from various fruits and herbs along the San Pedro River. She made a mental note of that.

  As she looked up and down the bottle, she could only discern one set of fingerprints. That made sense, she guessed. If the bottle had been opened and brought to the room, but not touched by Jack or Clay, it would likely only have the server’s fingerprints.

  She handed the bottle to the forensic expert. “Be sure to run the fingerprints on this,” she said. “It could be a very important clue.”

  The assistant nodded. “What about the glass?”

  “It doesn’t appear to have any prints, but you can and should certainly check.”

  Flora came in, then, and Clay came to stand in the door. Both women stood and looked at the body, and each had to suppress her maternal instincts to touch him.

  “Does he have family?” Melissa asked.

  “His parents are both gone,” Clay said, “but he does have siblings. They haven’t been on good terms for years, but I do have contact numbers for them.”

  Flora stepped back under the crime scene tape and hugged Clay. He squeezed her and tears began to flow from both of them.

  No solid alibi for two of the four hours. Although she certainly had no reason to suspect Jack herself, she knew the police would go hard on him if he couldn’t find some way to prove his whereabouts. But then, even if he did, what difference did that make? He may have been the last one to see Jack alive, and that wasn’t good, either.

  Clay turned to Melissa. “What kind of wine was it?” he asked, tipping his head toward the room.

  “San Pedro Elderberry,” Melissa said. “You didn’t order it?”

  “No. There was no wine when I left. Jack always had a fondness for elderberry wine, and we made our own. But where he would get a bottle of San Pedro in the middle of the night, I have no idea.”

  “I think that’s something we need to check out,” Melissa said, looking at Flora. “Clay, can you tell us what your argument with Jack was about?”

  He averted his eyes from Melissa, looking down. “I’d rather not say.”

  “I can understand that you don’t want to air your dirty laundry, but I would ask you to consider if that information could in any way help the investigation of Jack’s death.”

  He nodded, slowly.

  “Clay,” Flora asked, still holding him by the arms, “what or who do you think might have been the cause of Jack’s death?”

  “I wish I knew, Aunt Flora. I wish I knew.”

  “Had Jack been despondent, lately, or ill that you know of?” Melissa asked him.

  “If you mean despondent in a way that would cause him to commit suicide—no. I’m sure not. Not even with what we fought about. He was an artist, so he was often morose, but I never got the idea that Jack had any intention of killing himself.”

  “Thanks, Clay.”

  Melissa stopped to talk to Detective Muller again. “Can you keep me updated on what you hear from the lab?” she asked.

  “Better yet, I’ll have you come in when I get the results.”

  “Thanks, Detective. I really appreciate that.”

  “No problem. I’m glad to have a second pair of eyes, Ms. Michaelson.”

  Just then a shrill cry went up from the floor beneath them, followed by loud voices—all sounding panicked.

  Chapter 5

  The four of them, Melissa, Flora, Clay and the detective all rushed down to the next floor to see what was going on. There were a half dozen staff members gathered there, several of which looked glazed and panicked.

  “What’s up?” the detective asked.

  The staff members all looked at one another, and at last one of them spoke. “It’s just too weird, Detective. The unpoured bottle and the clean glass—if Burroughs didn’t commit suicide, then it had to be the work of John Dawes.”

  “What’s your name, young man, and who’s John Dawes?” Muller asked.

  “I’m George Walsh and—”

  One of the women interrupted in a distressed voice and said, “Injun Killer John Dawes.”

  “Oh, my god,” Muller said, turning to Melissa. “They think Burroughs was killed by a ghost.”

  Melissa whipped her head toward the staff members, narrowing her eyes and scrutinizing the group as a whole. She knew people still believed in ghosts, but somehow, she just didn’t expect to be confronted by such a theory. “Why would you say that?” Melissa asked.

  “That’s the room where John Dawes was killed. He’s been haunting this hotel for over a hundred years.”

  “And it makes sense,” another young man said. “Burroughs was Native American.”

  “Part-Native American,” Clay said.

  “Don’t matter. Dawes is dead, and he can smell an Injun.”

  “Good god!” Flora said. “I thought I was hallucinating for a second there. I thought I was dreaming about some incident back before the Civil Rights Movement. How old are you people?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” Walsh asked, defensively.

  Melissa stepped in. “Look. I know that the ghost gimmick has kept the tourism alive in Bismuth for a long time, but surely you don’t think…?”

  “Why not?” Walsh asked. “Most of us have seen and heard him.”

  “Seen and heard who?” Muller asked. “Dawes?”

  They all nodded their heads. Muller rolled his eyes.

  Melissa thought fast because she could see that a couple of the women were becoming agitated. “Okay,” she said. “Let me set some things straight here. You say you’ve all seen and heard Dawes—in that room, I presume?”

  “Or thereabouts,” Walsh said.

  “How often does anyone stay in that room?” Melissa asked.

  “It regularly occupied, especially by ghost hunters.”

  “And I suppose they all see and hear him, too?”

  “Most of them,” he said.

  “Is there any history of Dawes killing anyone in this hotel?”

  The staff members all looked at each other again. One girl shrugged her shoulders while looking at Walsh, as he said, “Well, no, but….”

  “Well, then,” Melissa responded.

  “But maybe none of them have been In—Native American,” he said.

  “You really think that with hundreds of guests having stayed in that room over the last hundred and twenty-five years that none—not one—of them has had any Native American blood? Jack Burroughs just happened to be the first.”

  No one spoke.

  “Here’s the thing,” Melissa said. “I concede that there may be ghosts. I practice energy medicine, so I do know that there are things beyond this world than no one can explain. But I also know that other than a few spurious and unverifiable tales out of history, the only people who were ever ‘killed’ by a ghost, died because they worked themselves into a frenzy of fear and died—either of a heart attack or an anxiety attack—the latter of which is also unlikely. John Dawes had nothing to do with the death of Jack Burroughs.”

  “We’ll see,” said George Walsh.

  “Just how do you plan to support your theory, Mr. Walsh?” Flora asked.

  He shrugged. “When you don’t find anything else wrong with Burroughs, you won’t have any place else to go, will you?”

  The women looked less panicked now, and Melissa felt there was nothing else to be said.

  Just then, the bartender from last night showed up, wearing slacks, a shirt, and a tie. “I heard what’s going on up here,” he said. “Get back to work all of you. And Walsh, I want you in my office, now.”

&n
bsp; The bartender headed back down the stairs, and Walsh trooped down right behind him. The rest of the staff scattered.

  Melissa looked at Clay. “The bartender handles the staff?”

  “That’s Eli Varner,” Clay said. “He only bartends when he wants to; he’s part owner in the Grand Bismuth Hotel.”

  Melissa felt like she needed to be taking notes and decided to write some things down when she got back to the market. That way, she could sort everything out.

  As they stood there, the medics from the coroner’s office wheeled the covered body out on a gurney. The forensics assistant walked right behind them, carrying a black case.

  Melissa stopped him. “Did you get the bottle and glass?” she asked.

  He nodded and patted the case. “You were right about a single set of prints on the bottle and none on the glass, but I’m taking them both back to the lab.”

  “Good,” she said.

  Clay and Detective Muller conferred with the coroner, then Muller turned to Clay. “Don’t leave the county, son. That’s all I ask.”

  # # #

  As soon as they were out the door, Flora looked at Melissa. “Was that true what you said about no verifiable cases of ghost killings?”

  Melissa stopped dead and looked at Flora. “Flora! What has happened to your rational mind?”

  “Well, was it?” she demanded.

  “I’ve never researched it, but it makes sense. Besides, it appeased them.” She started walking but turned to Flora again, “Surely you don’t think…?”

  “Of course not,” Flora said, waving her hand in a gesture of dismissal. “I just wanted to know, that’s all.”

  “Mmhmm,” Melissa said.

  # # #

  Detective Muller asked to see Eli Varner before he left and was directed to his office. George Walsh was still sitting in Varner’s office when Muller arrived, so Muller asked to speak to Varner alone.

  “We’ll finish this conversation later,” Varner said to Walsh. “You’d better get home and get some sleep. You have the late shift again tonight, don’t you?”

  “I do,” Walsh said on his way out the door.

  Muller replaced him in the chair. He looked back through his notes. “I understand you were bartending and closed down the bar last night, is that correct?”

  “I did,” Varner said.

  “Can you verify,” Muller asked, “that Clay Barnett was in your bar until closing this morning?”

  Varner looked up at the ceiling then back at Muller. “I recall him coming back in for a drink at some point, but he didn’t stay long,” Varner said.

  “At some point,” Muller repeated. “Can you hazard a guess as to what time it was, Mr. Varner, and for what duration?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say it was sometime between eleven and midnight, but he was only there for about twenty minutes.”

  “You’re sure?” Muller asked.

  Varner nodded.

  “All right, then, thank you. That will be all,” Muller said, as he departed.

  Chapter 6

  Brian called that afternoon, but Melissa let it go to voicemail. She was sure he was just checking in with her, and she just had things happening on too many fronts to talk to him at the moment.

  The store stayed busy till almost closing time. Melissa sat down to look at the receipts for the day after the last customer had departed and decided to listen to Brian’s voicemail. When she looked at her phone, she had two missed calls and two voicemails—all from Brian.

  She listened to the first one. “Hey, girl. Where are you? I guess the guys are at your place with the new hot tub and they need to know where to put it. I’ll try to give them an idea, but let give me a call back quickly.”

  Oops. How had she missed the big truck? She could see right down the street to her house from the east windows in the front of the market. She pressed to hear the second message.

  “It’s delivered. They said they had no problem putting it on your patio. I’m not exactly sure what they meant by that since you have a big porch and a small patio, but anyway, they say it’s there, plugged in, filled, properly treated with unchemicals, and will be ready for you to try out when you get home.”

  She thought the bit about the patio was odd, too, but perhaps there had just been a miscommunication. She would check it out when she got home.

  As she headed down the street, she was getting more excited. With the evening temperatures in the forties now, that hot tub would be a welcome way to relax. She looked forward to trying it out tonight—maybe she could relax enough to do some hard thinking—both about Jack’s death and about the possibility of a life with Brian. An odd juxtaposition of subject matter, but a simple recognition that both were part of the cycle of life.

  She bypassed the front door when she got home and went directly to the backyard. She stood and looked around, confused at first, but then realizing that there was no hot tub anywhere in her backyard. Another disappointment!

  She went in through the back door. Sweet Pea met her and ran straight to her dish, reminding Melissa of her first order of duty. She absently went through the motions of feeding Sweet Pea, who immediately gobbled up the food, then purred, rubbing up against Melissa’s leg.

  As Melissa dropped down on the couch, Sweet Pea jumped up besides her, standing with her back feet on Melissa’s stomach and her front paws on Melissa’s chest and purring in her face. Melissa laughed. “You know how to get what you want, don’t you?” she said. She pulled her down to her side and began to stroke her as she brought up her phone and punched in Brian’s speed dial number.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hello?” she responded. “I’d like to report a missing hot tub.”

  “Missing?”

  “Yup.”

  “What the…?”

  “I dunno. I got your second message and rushed home in a dither to see it.”

  “It’s not in your back yard?”

  “Uhhh—nope!” she said.

  “I—I don’t know what to say,” he said. “Except good grief, maybe.”

  “This is turning out to be a comedy of errors.”

  “I’m thinking back through my conversations with them. I’d like to hope they found another hitch and took it with them, but no. In the last conversation I had with them, they said that they set it all up for you and it was ready to go—heating up as they spoke.”

  “What should I do? Call the Sheriff’s department?”

  “I hardly think it was stolen.”

  She laughed. “I guess that would be kind of absurd, wouldn’t it? The weird thing is, Brian, that with all that activity—unstrapping, unwrapping, and moving the hot tub from the truck—I’m sure some of it would have caught my eye. I saw nothing out the window, and I spent most of the day at the checkout looking that direction.”

  “This is too curious,” he said.

  “For sure.”

  “Well, I’ll call them back in the morning and see what I can find out.”

  “Sounds good. Brian…”

  “Yes?” he said, apprehensively.

  “I’ve got another murder on my hands.”

  “Another murder? Good god! Who now?”

  “Sadly, very sadly, it’s Flora’s nephew’s partner.”

  “And he was murdered?”

  “I haven’t had a minute to think it through yet. I was really looking forward to relaxing in that hot tub tonight so I could get my head around some things. Flora asked me to go with her, and Detective Muller was there, so he let me look at the scene. There’s no outward sign of violence, but Flora’s nephew, Clay, insists that he was in no way suicidal.”

  “And here I am stuck in California.”

  “It’s okay, Brian. Flora is highly invested in this one, so I think she, Detective Muller, and I can figure it out. Muller was kind enough to say he’d call me and have me meet him at the coroner’s office as soon as he gets word from the lab.”

  “That’s good. Tell me more.�
��

  She filled him in on all the details—everything she knew about Jack Burroughs, the details of the evening, the morning, as well as all that Clay had told them. She even told him about the staff panic over the ghost of John Dawes. He got a belly laugh over that.

  “I need to do a little research on that,” she said.

  “You’re not serious?” he asked.

  “Leave no stone unturned, isn’t that what we always say?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Besides, I want to have something more concrete in my basket of tricks should the staff ask me more questions. I’m a little rusty on my paranormal stuff.”

  “You? You—who consults the tarot and has dreams and intuitions—are a little rusty on your paranormal stuff?”

  “You know perfectly well what I mean.”

  “No, no. I really don’t.”

  She felt her face burning as she blushed. “It’s not the same thing,” she protested. “Besides, I may be well-versed in some things, but not all. I just went with what I could recall, what I’ve experienced, and what made rational sense. But I do want to acquaint myself with a few other aspects—in case I’m asked.”

  “Since you don’t watch TV, you may also want to check out all the crap that’s out there, so that you know what people are being spoon-fed these days. Just don’t get overwhelmed—there’s a lot of it. But if you confine yourself to ghosts, that should narrow your search. Most of what’s out there right now is werewolves, vampires, zombies, and Shadowman.”

  “Shadowman?”

  “Yeah, and he’s been responsible for a few murders.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll see exactly what I’m talking about when you Google him.”

  Just then, Melissa’s phone signaled her that another call was coming through. Melissa looked at her display and saw that it was Detective Muller. “Muller’s calling me on the other line,” she said. “Let’s talk again tomorrow.”

  “I’ll call you when I find out where the hot tub is.”

  “Okay, then,” she said and switched to the second call.

  “Detective Muller, this is Melissa.”

 

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