I threw up my hands. “A few seconds after that I was scared half out of my wits by the recently deceased, unnormal Normal, and the Dorothy and Cabot show. I can’t give you anything verbatim, just the idea I got that Normal had been involved with something at the meadery and Dorothy had cut him off.”
“They saw you? So you’ve had contact with both Normal and Jakie more than once.”
“I didn’t mean to. How did I know they’d even be at the meadery? They’re not involved with the place in any way, from what I’ve been told.”
He sighed. “Just like you didn’t expect them to be at the run-down, piece-of-crap house you thought Iris lived in.”
“Hey!” I already felt pretty stupid about that.
“No wonder Jakie got upset when you showed up on his doorstep,” Barr said, leaning forward.
Erin took a couple of steps forward. “I can tell you what they said. I wrote it all down.” She turned and ran down the hall to her bedroom.
“‘Stop asking. We’ve made other arrangements for shipping to Canada.’” Erin read in a stilted monotone. She looked up. “I don’t know if I got the very beginning or not. You were already down the hallway by the time I got out of the restroom.”
“You found me very quickly.” Meghan would not be pleased.
“I figured you’d be snooping somewhere.”
Barr’s low sigh was barely audible.
“I’m sure that was Dorothy speaking,” I said.
Erin nodded. “It was a woman.” She continued to read from her notebook. “‘You don’t understand. I haven’t been able to make other arrangements.’”
“Normal?” Barr asked.
I nodded. “Go on, Bug.”
“‘Good. You need to stop that foolishness and simply stick to your other activities. Aren’t they sketchy enough? I swear, Normal, I live in fear that someone will find out about all that nonsense. Do you even realize the position you could put this business in? Or do you simply not care?’ And then a man again. ‘Ah, Sis.’ Then the lady,” Erin said, getting into the dialog and changing the timbre of her voice. She had a knack for the dramatic. “‘Don’t you ‘ah, Sis’ me, old man.’”
Now her voice went low. “‘He should be the one running this outfit, anyway. He loaned you the seed money to start this place. And now you’ve got the nerve to tell us we can’t be part of the Canada runs?’”
“That last bit was Jakie,” I said, vibrating with revulsion. Erin’s newfound instinct for voices extended even to Gigantor.
“And then the other lady yelled to stay away from a chair and they all came out into the hallway.”
Barr’s lips pressed together, but he didn’t comment.
“The other lady was Cabot, the assistant. She was pushing Dorothy’s wheelchair.”
“Bug,” he said. “Would you do me a humongous favor?”
She nodded her enthusiasm. “Sure.”
“It would really help me out if you’d write the stuff you just read to us down on another piece of paper for me to take to work.”
“It’s in my computer. I’ll print it out.”
“Perfect.”
“Did I help?”
He got up and walked to her. Hugged her against his waist. “You sure did.”
She scurried back to her room to do his bidding. He returned to the sofa.
“Did that mean anything to you?” I asked.
“It does.” The gloom that had dominated his mood since coming home that morning had lifted. “I believe it confirms that Normal was using Grendel’s delivery trucks to bring marijuana in from Canada. Dorothy caught wind of it and nixed the whole deal. That’s when he started up the meth lab.”
“But what about the new influx of pot in the area?”
“One, there could be a new player in town. Or two, Normal found a way around his sister that she doesn’t even know about yet.”
“Then why was he trying to get her to let him go back to whatever he was doing before?”
“If he didn’t protest, she might get suspicious, don’t you think?”
I pointed my finger at him. “You’re right. But what about the new system? Do you think it still involves the meadery?”
“I’d bet on it,” Barr said.
“Wouldn’t that be a little risky?”
“Hon, the whole shebang is risky. But I’m guessing his new setup isn’t as secure as the one his sister stopped.”
“So Dorothy knew all about Normal’s antics,” I mused. “And so did Cabot. In fact, I bet she knew most of the things Dorothy did—about Glenwood’s business failings, for example, and the lawsuit against Quentin.”
Barr closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the sofa cushion.
“Say, what’s her first name?” I asked. “I haven’t heard anyone call her anything but Cabot.”
Eyes still closed he said, “That is her first name.”
“Really? Who names their child Cabot, for heaven’s sake? What did they call her when she was five? Cabbie?”
One side of his mouth turned up. “I’ve only met her once, but I’m pretty sure she’s not the sort of woman who has a nickname—certainly not one like that.”
I snorted. “You’re right. So what’s her last name?”
“Reyes.”
“And what was Jakie’s last name? Don’t tell me Jakie was his last name.”
“Nope. It was Owens.”
“Jakie Owens and Cabot Reyes. Sounds like a couple of short stops.”
A small snore escaped Barr’s throat. Since he was sitting up like that, I wasn’t surprised. I made my way over and cleared the pile of books from the sofa beside him. Laid a pillow on the end and started to ease him over. He woke with a start, realized what I was doing, and settled into a horizontal position.
As I tucked an afghan around him, he mumbled, “Wake me in an hour.”
I scrambled fresh eggs for Erin and heated up the potatoes and bacon. When I left her to go upstairs and take a shower, she had a piece of bacon hanging out of the corner of her mouth and was doodling pictures in the now infamous red notebook.
_____
I reveled in the hot water splashing across my bare shoulders. After receiving copious amounts of arnica salve, my ankle seemed to be improving already. The bruise had already gone from purple to mottled purple and yellow, and the swelling had decreased despite working most of the night and getting only an hour’s worth of sleep. Turning the water a notch hotter and inhaling the steam, I shampooed my hair and reflected on how resilient the human body was.
Unless someone shot you in the chest, of course.
Jakie was dead. Barr thought Normal did it. That felt like pretty straightforward police work to me. Physical evidence and all that. Clean and fairly simple to prove one way or the other.
But what about Quentin? And Elizabeth? Barr had said himself he hadn’t been able to focus on that investigation as much as he’d like. And his partner, Detective Lane, might not even be on the Cadyville force much longer.
Sheesh.
Too bad none of my earlier ruminations, in bed or in my ducky slippers, had brought clarity to what I more and more considered “my” case.
I inhaled deeply of the Winding Road Wake Up soap I’d developed for early mornings. The essential oil blend was the same as for the bath melts I’d made earlier in the week: equal parts rosemary, eucalyptus, tea tree, and peppermint. A few whiffs of that and my brain kicked into overdrive.
Wait a minute. Reyes? Cabot Reyes?
Holy cow. I’d been going at this from the wrong direction.
_____
“Wake up.” I shook Barr’s shoulder. “You said an hour. It’s eight thirty.”
“Mmmph.” He grabbed me and pulled me down to him. Nuzzled my neck. “You smell good.”
I giggled. I hate it when I giggle, but I’m horribly ticklish, and his scratchy beard was too much. Then he gave me a gentle little nip, and I squealed.
I hate it when I squeal.
; Pushing him away, I said, “Well, you smell like a goat. Personally, I have nothing against goats. I rather like them. But I think you’d better shower before meeting up with your police-y cohorts.”
“Fine.” He swung his feet to the floor and stood.
I did, too, immediately shifting weight from my ankle and trying not to wince. Improved, yes. All better, no.
Erin was outside feeding the chickens, making sure they had fresh water and plenty of oyster shell to peck at. After gathering the morning eggs, she’d offered to weed one of the raised garden beds. I would have thought it entirely altruistic but knew in truth she thought of it as harvesting treats for the hens. Their fondness for chickweed and the like accounted for the deep orangey yellow of the yolks in their eggs.
So I followed Barr upstairs and made the bed while he scrubbed and shaved in the shower. I dusted and picked up the bedroom, and made a quick pass through our sitting room and the kitchenette off the office area that we pretty much used for bills and personal correspondence. I preferred to keep Winding Road paperwork confined to the storeroom, and Barr liked to work on his laptop while sitting in bed.
Should I tell him what I was thinking about Cabot Reyes?
He came into the bedroom and dressed in clean clothes as I was separating the dirty ones in the hamper to wash. He still looked tired, but the nap and shower had obviously refreshed him.
“Remember when I told you about the file box that was missing from Elizabeth’s office?” I asked, tossing a T-shirt onto the pile of darks.
He grabbed his favorite silver steer’s head string tie and snugged it up under the collar of a light blue shirt. “Uh-huh.”
“It contained the letters Q through S.”
He stopped and looked at me, waiting for the punch line.
“And Cabot’s name is Reyes.”
His eyebrows slowly rose. “So it is.”
“And Elizabeth never actually said on the tape that her client was a Swenson. She only said that she was going to warn the others in the Swenson family against one of their own. Don’t you think Nurse Reyes would qualify as one of their own?”
Barr perched on the side of the freshly made bed. “Why would Cabot want to kill Quentin? Isn’t it a lot more likely that Victoria was seeing Elizabeth on the sly about her addiction to pain medication? At least she has a monetary motive to kill her brother.”
“True …” I said.
“And according to your own photographs—did you e-mail those to me? Thanks. Anyway, she’s growing the poison hemlock that probably killed her brother. Damn it,” he exclaimed. “I need to get the warrant for the meadery garden this morning and get that tea over to the lab, too. Hon, I’ve got to go.”
I waved my hand. “Go. And don’t forget the warrant for the mead at Elizabeth’s house.”
“Things won’t be this crazy for much longer,” he said. “We’ll get everything sorted out and back to normal.”
“I know. At least Meghan is coming home this morning.”
He kissed me, grabbed his briefcase, and went downstairs. I followed at a more leisurely—and less painful—pace.
I rubbed more arnica salve into my ankle, then tidied up after Erin’s KP duty. Wiping down the counters and putting the raspberry jam back in the fridge on autopilot, I thought about what Barr had said.
I wasn’t convinced Victoria had killed her brother. Her grief had been quietly evident at the family meeting at Willa’s house. Maybe I was wrong, though. Perhaps she was an excellent actress.
Cabot, on the other hand, hadn’t seemed all that upset about Quentin’s death. Of course, he wasn’t her brother, either. And I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d learned over the years to keep her feelings regarding her employer’s family to herself. She’d oozed distanced professionalism every time I’d seen her.
But she had just as much opportunity and ability as Victoria to kill Quentin. She was at the meadery with Dorothy nearly every day. She knew all the ins and outs of the place, and after fifteen years was bound to know as much about mead making and Grendel’s business affairs as any of the Swensons. She was a nurse, too. It was quite possible she knew a thing or two about plant-based poisons. She and Dorothy had both been in the garden the previous morning. Dorothy’s nurse companion had free run of the place. She was almost like a member of the family.
And surely she got a break from Dorothy once in awhile. A day off. Time alone, time to run errands, shop, have a bit of a life.
Time to go to a therapist. To brew up a batch of poison hemlock. To spike a bottle of mead and reseal it with a shrink-wrap band.
But Barr was right about Cabot’s lack of obvious motive. Maybe there was something a bit less obvious though. I reached for the phone.
Tootie picked up on the second ring.
“It’s Sophie Mae. I’m sorry to call so early,” I said by way of greeting. After all, Emily Post said phone calls before the hour of nine a.m. were rude.
“Nonsense. We’re early risers around here.”
I heard a voice in the background. Felix already there in her room, probably to take her down the hall to the dining room. Only … she’d said, “We’re early risers.” Maybe Felix was still there. Did Caladia Acres allow sleepovers between residents?
That thought hurt my brain, so I hurried on. “Last night you said Dorothy talked about her will with some of the people there at Caladia Acres.”
“I didn’t mean to make it sound like she was bragging about her money. Wills tend to naturally crop up in conversation in a place like this, where our happy hunting grounds are just around the corner.”
A sound of protest from Felix.
“Oh, now, you know I’m right,” she said, apparently to him. “We talk about things here that simply aren’t discussed out in the real world. Like that whole conversation Edna and Ruby had the other day about laxatives.”
“Ahem,” I said.
“Sorry, dear.” Tootie spoke back into the telephone handset.
“I’m not worried about whether Dorothy bragged about her money or not,” I said. “I was wondering whether she had ever mentioned leaving anything to Cabot Reyes.”
“Reyes? I thought Cabot was her last name.”
That made me feel a bit less stupid. “Me, too.”
“Well, Dorothy never said anything to me about it, but hang on, and I’ll check with Felix.” Indecipherable murmurs for a few moments, and then she came back on the line.
“He says Dorothy did allude to Cabot being taken care of after she was gone.”
“Do you know if Dorothy was going to leave her a share equal to the grandkids’?”
More murmurs.
“Felix doesn’t know,” she said. “Hang on. He wants to talk to you.”
“Sophie Mae?”
“Hi, Felix.”
“How are you, darlin’?” He barreled on without waiting for an answer. “I don’t know about the share that Cabot gal will get when ol’ Dorothy kicks off, but they’re supposed to be here for lunch today. Do you want me to try and find out?”
“No! I mean, thank you, but I don’t want her nurse to know I’m asking about the will.”
“Okey dokey.”
“But Felix? When Dorothy said that about taking care of Cabot, did she say it in front of her?”
“Hmm. I don’t recall … nope, I’m pretty sure the big one had gone to get Dorothy a cup of tea or something. She runs that gal around pretty good, you know.”
We said goodbye. I gimped my way downstairs to get the UPS Pick Up sign. Brodie waddled out and lifted a leg when I attached the sign to the front fence, then we both toddled back inside. I wrapped up the few oatmeal molasses cookies Erin hadn’t eaten yet and put them outside the basement door with the boxes I’d loaded in the middle of the night. As long as UPS Joe was willing to go around to the alley to pick up the boxes so I didn’t have to lug them upstairs, I was happy to provide him with sweet treats.
All the while, my mind gnawed at the notion of Cab
ot as murderer. If she did get an equal portion of Dorothy’s estate, then her motive would be the same as any of the other siblings: fewer pieces of the money pie equaled bigger pieces for those left. But what if she didn’t? Well, she was a nurse, and Quentin had been a pharmacist. Maybe there was some kind of connection there.
Great. A whole new drug connection.
Or not.
Back in my storeroom, I tidied items on the shelves and tried to decide what I still needed to make more of. I’d shipped many orders out to the natural food store chain but still had several more to fill. I had to get rid of Penny, and quick, so I could get some real help. I was too old to pull any more all-nighters.
I yawned.
The last time I’d seen Cabot, she’d been in the herb garden. But she’d also been at the family meeting at Willa’s house after Quentin died. She knew I’d tried to warn Willa, and that Willa had told others in the family. She knew I was interested in how Quentin died and suspected foul play. She’d known everything Dorothy had. She was involved with the family and the family business more than Quentin himself had been.
And she’d told me how to get to Iris’s house. I sank into my desk chair as I considered that. Naturally, I’d assumed my horrible sense of direction had been responsible for ending up at Normal’s meth lab. Now I wasn’t so sure.
What if Cabot had sent me there on purpose? What if she knew Jakie and Normal were manufacturing methamphetamine? Which then begged the question of whether Dorothy knew about that aspect of her brother’s illegal conduct.
But why would Cabot send me to a drug lab? Did she think it would distract me from Quentin’s death? To throw me off her trail? Because frankly, I hadn’t been on her trail.
Or did she intend for Jakie to hurt me, or worse? Everyone—even good old Felix—knew Jakie was dangerous. Perhaps she’d hoped he would take care of me, and she wouldn’t have to.
Well. That just made me mad.
“Sophie Mae? Where are you?” Erin called from the kitchen.
“Down in the basement.”
Her footsteps clattered down the wooden steps, and moments later her elfin face popped around the edge of the door frame. “Whatcha doin’?”
Wined and Died: A Home Crafting Mystery Page 17