Assault and Buttery

by Kristi Abbott

  “How’d that turn out?” he asked.

  “Not fair, Dan.” Sometimes it was a drag when people knew you too well.

  “Whoever said life was fair?” He held up his hand to stop me from answering. “Fine. We can start small, with you giving Garrett a cinnamon roll. After that, though, we need to figure out where along the delivery route your popcorn got poisoned. You free today?”

  “Unless you lock me up again, I’m all yours.” I gave him a sickly sweet smile.

  He ignored the dig. “Excellent. We need to trace the route the popcorn tins took. I know the general outlines, but we have to dig down more,” Dan said, sitting down and taking out his notepad. “Start at the beginning.”

  I sat down across from him. “I loaded them up in Haley’s fold-up wagon to take to City Hall.”

  He made a note. “Where were they before that?”

  “In my apartment. I made them and boxed them up the day before. They didn’t leave until I left.”

  “Were you out at all that night?”

  I thought for a moment. What had I done that night? “No. Garrett came over for dinner.”

  He looked up. “So they were never out of your sight?”

  I started to reply in the affirmative, but then thought I should be specific. “Well, technically they weren’t in my sight when I was asleep. My eyes were closed.”

  Dan tapped his pen against the table. “How deep do you sleep?”

  “I don’t know. Like a normal person.”

  “Do you think you would have woken up if someone had let themselves into your apartment?”

  That didn’t seem possible. “How would they do that? I locked the door after Garrett left.”

  “Yes. I’m sure you did. Still, everyone knows you leave a key in the watering can by the front door.” He frowned.

  “How do they know that?” I asked.

  He laughed. “There really isn’t another reason for the watering can to be there. You don’t garden.”

  “It’s decorative.” I could garden if I wanted to. I just didn’t have time.

  “And handy for hiding keys.”

  So maybe it wasn’t exactly high security. “Fine. Someone could have let themselves in with the key. I suppose there’s a minute possibility I wouldn’t have woken up, but Sprocket definitely would have.”

  “What if he knew the person?” Dan tapped his pen again.

  I paused. Sprocket was notoriously friendly. The only person he growled at was Antoine, and he’d even stopped doing that if Antoine had cheese with him. Sprocket will do nearly anything for cheese. “I don’t know. I think he would make some kind of noise. At least enough to wake me up. Even Garrett gets a yip or something when he walks in, and Sprocket loves him.”

  A smile quirked at Dan’s lips. “Yeah. Sprocket does. I’m sure he’s the only one, too.”

  I ignored him. “So let’s say that the popcorn was safe when it left my apartment.”

  Dan shook his head. “I’m not sure it would hold up in court, but it should be okay for our purposes at the moment. It seems highly unlikely that anyone snuck into your apartment and poisoned one tin of popcorn. Where did you go next?”

  “After your house?” I asked.

  “Yes. After my house. I’m pretty much crossing Haley, Evan and Emily off my suspect list.” Dan shot me a look.

  I tsked. “Nepotism rears its ugly head.”

  “Rebecca, this is serious.”

  “I know. Sorry.” I thought for a moment. “Sprocket and I walked over to the lake to go by the lighthouse. We saw Dario. He was out running.”

  “Did he touch the popcorn?” Dan made more notes.

  “No. He was all sweaty from running. Plus, why on earth would he be carrying poison out on a run?” Wasn’t running poisonous enough on its own?

  “Maybe it wasn’t random that he ran into you,” Dan suggested.

  I stared at him. “Dan, we’re talking about Dario here.”

  “That’s the problem, Rebecca. There’s really not anyone involved in this situation that we don’t know. Everyone is someone we think we understand. Everyone is someone we would never suspect.” He rubbed his face, a sure sign that he was frustrated or tired.

  He had a point. “Dario didn’t touch the popcorn.”

  “Good. Then?” he asked.

  “Then directly to Allen’s office, where I turned the tins over to Otis. Well, except for the ones I took to Trina and Sally.” I’d taken those over right away, though.

  “Good. Then our first stop is Otis.”

  “Our first stop?”

  “Yes, Rebecca. Our first stop.”

  Sprocket growled, then there was a knock at the door. I looked at Dan. “Are you expecting anyone?”

  He shook his head. “You?”

  Sprocket growled again and the pit of my stomach tightened. Then a very French accented voice called out, “Hello, is anybody at home?”

  I ducked down so I wouldn’t be visible from the kitchen window. “It’s Antoine,” I whispered.

  “I got that. What are you doing down there?” Dan crouched down to talk to me.

  “Hiding.” I made a shooing gesture. “Go get rid of him.”

  “My pleasure.” Antoine had never been Dan’s favorite person, and since I came home and he had made it his calling to win me back, he hadn’t risen in Dan’s estimation one bit. He’d probably been waiting for a while to have permission to get rid of Antoine.

  “What do you want, Antoine?” Dan said from the front door.

  “I am looking for Rebecca. She did not answer the door at her apartment and I smell from here the scent of cinnamon rolls. It is one of her specialties. She makes them when she is happy. I think she is here,” Antoine said.

  I pulled Sprocket toward me and held my fingers to my lips to shush him. He still growled, but very quietly. Then he licked my nose.

  “Sorry. No. She’s not,” Dan said. “Not here at all.”

  “May I ask where she might be? It is imperative that I speak to her.” Antoine used the tone he used to order camera people around. Under the best of circumstances, it wasn’t the right way to approach Dan.

  “Nope. No idea,” Dan said, his voice bland.

  “Vraiment? I would have thought you would be keeping track, what with her recent release from incarceration.” There was a sly tone to Antoine’s voice.

  “Not my job.” Dan’s voice didn’t sound sly at all.

  “I see.” There was a pause. “Please tell her that I am looking for her when you see her.”

  “I’ll try to remember.”

  I heard the door shut with a bit more of a bang than Dan usually caused. It wasn’t quite a slam, but I think the message came across.

  Dan came back into the kitchen. “He’s gone.”

  “I didn’t hear his car leave,” I said from my spot on the kitchen floor.

  Dan looked out the window, then made the “I’m watching you” gesture with two fingers pointed to his eyes and then out the window. A car engine started.

  “So is this the very mature way you’re going to be dealing with your ex from now on?” Dan slid down and sat next to me on the floor.

  “Maybe.” I leaned my head on his shoulder.

  “I can support that. Now go finish getting ready so we can figure out who the hell poisoned your damn popcorn.” He gave me a little shove. The kind of shove that he used to give me back when we were best friends.

  Both Sprocket and I had a spring in our step as we walked out of the house into the crisp morning.

  • • •

  “You don’t have an appointment.” Otis didn’t even look up from his computer when we walked into the mayor’s office in City Hall.

  “We don’t need one.” Dan tapped his badge.

  “You always
need one. Mayor Thompson is simply too busy to talk to anyone who walks in off the street.” Otis kept typing.

  “What makes you think we want to talk to Allen?” Dan impressively did not mention that he wasn’t just anyone off the street.

  Otis stopped typing and looked up. “Then what do you want?”

  Dan smiled. “We want to talk to you about the day Rebecca dropped off the popcorn tins to be delivered.”

  “Sure. I remember that.” Otis nodded.

  “Were the tins ever out of your sight from the time Rebecca dropped them off to the time the messenger service picked them up?”

  “Nope.” Otis finally turned away from his computer to face us.

  “You’re sure?” Dan asked.

  Otis nodded emphatically. “Yep.”

  “Care to elaborate?” Dan pulled a chair over from the waiting area and sat down. I followed suit. My phone buzzed. I took it out and checked the caller ID. Antoine. I put the phone back in my pocket.

  Otis made a face. I didn’t think he loved the idea of us rearranging the furniture. “Not really.”

  Dan sighed. “Humor me.”

  “I had already notified the messenger service. The messenger arrived less than ten minutes after Rebecca dropped off the tins. She took them away. I was here the whole time.” Otis crossed his arms over his chest, clearly resigned to the questioning.

  “You didn’t leave to go to the bathroom?” Dan asked.

  “No.”

  “You didn’t walk away to get a cup of coffee?” I asked.

  “No.”

  Dan turned to me. “Then it happened after it was here.”

  I had a thought. “Otis, did you mark which tins were supposed to go to which candidate?”

  Otis kept casting sidelong glances at his computer. Whatever he’d been working on, he wanted to get back to it. “No. Why would I? They were all the same, weren’t they?”

  They had been when I’d dropped them off, but that had changed eventually. Eventually one of them had been laced with poison.

  • • •

  Otis had used pretty much the only messenger service in Grand Lake. In a town that was barely five miles across, not too many people had need of one, but when they did they called Janine at XTra Speedee Deliveries.

  Janine had pretty much had a need for speed from the moment she left the womb. Maybe even before. Her mother claimed that she’d almost had Janine in the backseat of her husband’s Subaru because Janine had been in such an all-fired hurry to get out.

  When Janine wasn’t biking or snowmobiling items around and across Grand Lake, she was training. She’d completed two Ironman Triathlons in the past year and was getting ready for number three. We’d clearly interrupted a workout. She answered the door wearing way more spandex than anyone should wear anywhere, even in the privacy of her own home, her face dewy with sweat and a towel over her shoulder.

  “Sheriff Dan! Rebecca! What can I help you with?” She even spoke fast. Everything came out staccato. Nor did she waste any time with small talk.

  “We want to talk about the deliveries you made for Mayor Thompson last week,” Dan said, not wasting any time himself.

  She motioned us into the house, ponytail swinging. “Oh, the poisoned popcorn deliveries.”

  I cringed.

  “Sorry, Rebecca. I guess it’s a sore spot for you.” Janine plopped down on the floor into a hurdler’s stretch.

  I waved it away and sat down on the couch. “Whatever.”

  Janine stretched her arms up over her head and then slowly lowered her nose down to her knee. “So what is it that you want to know?” she asked the carpet.

  “Were the tins ever out of your sight?” Dan asked.

  Janine straightened up and shrugged. “Probably. I didn’t know at the time there would be a whole chain-of-custody thing.”

  Neither had I. Someone had, though, and I wanted to know who.

  “Do you remember when? Where?” Dan asked.

  She switched legs and stretched again. I wondered what it would feel like to be able to do that. “Why?”

  “We’re trying to figure out who might have put the poison in it,” I said. “Knowing where someone would have that opportunity might help us figure out who did it.”

  “Wouldn’t that someone be you?” Janine looked confused.

  My face went hot. “No. Of course not. I would never poison anyone.”

  “Well, not intentionally, I’m sure, but . . .” Janine had that look on her face that said exactly what she thought I might do by accident.

  “No, Janine. Someone else put the poison in the popcorn. I swear it. I need to figure out who it was for just this reason. If everyone thinks I’m a poisoner, especially an accidental poisoner, I might as well never even reopen POPS. My business would be a failure. Just imagine how you would feel if XTra Speedee went out of business because everyone thought you’d done something you hadn’t done.” Darn it. Why did my throat feel all clogged up like that?

  Janine pulled her legs into the tailor position and leaned forward, back straight as a rolling pin. “Yeah. I see your point. So what is it you want to know?”

  “We want to know exactly what order you delivered the tins in, where you might have left them unattended and who might have been around when you did,” Dan said.

  “Let me get my logbook.” Janine bounced up from the floor as if her legs had springs in them. She came back into the room a few minutes later with a small bound book. “Okay. Ready?”

  Dan nodded, pen poised over his notepad. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I ignored it.

  “I picked up the tins from Otis at City Hall. It was dry out that day, so I was on my bike. I loaded the tins into my panniers. It took two trips. While I was getting the second set, someone could have messed with the ones I’d already put in the panniers.”

  “They don’t lock?” I asked.

  “They do,” she said. “But I didn’t think anybody would be stealing popcorn from my bike in the time it took me to go back and forth from the mayor’s office, especially with the sheriff’s office in the same building.”

  “How long did it take?”

  Janine looked in the air and thought for a moment. “More than two minutes. Less than four.”

  Dan arched a brow. “That’s pretty accurate.”

  She shrugged. “I spend a lot of time trying to shave a few seconds off how long it takes me to bike, run or swim a mile. I’ve got a pretty good sense of seconds passing these days.”

  It wasn’t scientific and it might not hold up in court, but it would do for what we needed here today. “So if someone was going to put the poison in there, they would have had to have it ready and be watching. It would have taken some pretty split-second timing,” I said.

  “Where was the bike parked?” Dan asked.

  “At the racks by the east door,” Janine said.

  “Excellent. We have some cameras there. It’s possible we can check the film and be certain if someone messed with the popcorn then. All right. What did you do next?” Dan tapped his pen on his pad.

  “Next was Geraldine’s tin.” Janine tapped at her logbook in return. “Her place was the farthest from my place. I figured I would start there and work my way back in.”

  It made sense. “So Geraldine’s. Did you bike straight there?”

  “I did. I went along Magnolia and then out to Greenhaven and cut over to Alderwood,” Janine said.

  “You have that written there?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I like to keep track of my mileage. Just a personal thing. Geraldine was home. She answered the door when I rang the bell. My bike was with me the whole time. Did you know she wears pantyhose and heels when she’s at home for the day?”

  I hadn’t, but I wasn’t terribly surprised, either. You didn’t look as put tog
ether as Geraldine did on a regular basis without practice.

  Janine continued. “After I went there, I went to Taylor’s office, over on Spruce Street. She wasn’t there. I left the tin with her secretary. My bike was outside unattended for the five minutes or so it took to go in, drop off the tin and get a signature, but I locked the panniers that time since I didn’t know how long I’d be gone.”

  “How secure is the lock?” Dan asked.

  Janine thought for a moment. “It probably wouldn’t be that hard for someone to break it, but I’d know if they had.”

  “Where next?” Dan asked.

  “Sheri’s house.” She smiled. “Are her kids cute or what?”

  “Very cute,” I said, remembering how Ada had shared her crackers with Evan. “Very sweet.”

  “Great kids. They wanted to know all about my bike and what it was like to be a messenger and how long it took me to swim a mile.” She paused. “That Ada could totally be a great runner. Have you seen how long her legs are?”

  “And then?” Dan asked.

  “Then I went over to Brixton Accounting.”

  “Which of the candidates was there?” I asked.

  “None of them. I’d gotten a call on my cell phone about another delivery. It wasn’t a rush, so I figured I could work it in. Their office was only a little bit out of the way, so I detoured a little.”

  “Okay. Was the popcorn out of your sight at all then?” Dan asked.

  She grimaced. “You know, it was. I left my bike in the lobby. They have a security guard. He was there when I went in, but when I came back down he wasn’t. I was a little pissed. I mean, that bike is expensive. Was it so much to ask for him to watch it while I went up two flights of stairs and back down?”

  No. I didn’t think so. “Why do they have a security guard?”

  “They were having some vandalism problems. Some folks aren’t crazy about their work for the banks,” Dan said. “Did you lock your panniers there?”