Something Buried, Something Blue

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “I thought he broke your heart.”

  Calla shrugs, cuddling the kitten as he burrows into the crook of her neck. “It happens. Especially when you’re young.”

  “What about Jacy?”

  “Jacy,” she says almost curtly, “will be fine. Trust me, he’ll welcome this—whatever you want to call it. Break.”

  “You mean breakup?”

  “People outgrow each other, Bella. It happens all the time. One minute, you think you’re with the love of your life and the next . . .” She shrugs.

  It’s true, Bella knows. And it might happen all the time, but not to everyone. It didn’t happen to her and Sam.

  Would it have, eventually, if they’d had more time?

  The thought is so distressing that she wraps her arms around her middle as if she’s been seized by a horrible ache.

  You and I never would have left each other, Sam. We were meant to be, and it isn’t fair that we didn’t have a chance or that people who have a chance can’t make it work.

  “Are you okay, Bella?”

  “Yes, I’m just . . . cold.”

  “Do you want him back?” Calla holds out the kitten. “Nothing like snuggling with a little bundle of fur to warm you up.”

  “No, keep him.”

  “Can I really?”

  “Sure. You can play with him for a bit—all of them,” Bella adds, gesturing at her room. “I feel like I’ve been neglecting these guys, but I need to get downstairs.”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant, but of course I’ll play with them. Gladly.”

  “What did you mean?”

  “He’s the one I want to adopt.” Calla runs a gentle finger along a fuzzy spot between the kitten’s ears. “He’s here for a reason. He’s a Blue. Spirit is telling me to open my heart to Blue.”

  It’s what Calla wants to believe.

  “If you got to know him,” she goes on, “you’d see that he’s a good guy.”

  “I didn’t say he’s not.”

  “But you don’t trust him. You think I’m making a mistake.”

  True, but Bella shakes her head.

  “Come on, admit it. I’m sure Gammy told you all about him. She means well, but she doesn’t always have the best judgment.”

  It’s almost exactly what Odelia said about Calla.

  Bella isn’t in the mood to smile, but she finds one trying to sneak over her face as she hands Calla the key to her room. “Just make sure the door is closed and locked when you leave the room, okay?”

  Heading down the stairs, she decides that Blue Slayton, for all his faults—real or imagined by Odelia—is no threat to anyone’s safety, and wasn’t to Johneen’s.

  Maybe it’s Bella’s turn to believe what she wants to believe.

  Maybe, sometimes, that’s enough.

  As she heads down the stairs, Virginia calls her name from the parlor.

  So she didn’t go up to bed. Bella must have been hearing Calla’s footsteps overhead earlier.

  “Parker’s back.” Virginia pokes her head into the hall. “Come see him for a second while I pour him some coffee.”

  “Are you sure he wants me to?”

  “Of course.” Virginia heads into the kitchen.

  Bella finds Parker sitting on the sofa in a desolate posture: elbows on his thighs, forehead propped on his hands. She calls his name softly, and he looks up, his handsome face etched in misery and exhaustion. His wedding suit is rumpled, his tie unknotted.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “There’s nothing anyone can do.”

  “It’s really hard to watch someone you love suffering so terribly.”

  “I just don’t understand why.”

  “Did they tell you what happened?”

  “They said she had some kind of—I don’t know, a medical emergency. She just stopped breathing. It was a freak thing.” His voice breaks, and he stares down at his hands clasped on his lap.

  She swallows hard.

  “Do you know what caused it?” he asks, and she looks up, startled.

  “Do I know?”

  “Aren’t you . . . you know, psychic? In touch with Spirit? Not that I believe in any of that,” he adds hastily. “Daisy doesn’t either. We both thought it was a bunch of bull—I’m sorry.”

  She shrugs. “It’s fine. And no, I’m not in touch with Spirit, and I’m not psychic. I don’t . . . do that.”

  “Do you think someone here can tell me what the hell happened?”

  “The doctors can tell you, can’t they?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. But that’s not what I meant.”

  “Parker, if you want . . . spiritual guidance—then you should talk to Calla about it, or Odelia.”

  “Maybe I will.” He exhales heavily and looks around. “Where’s Virginia?”

  “She was going to get you some coffee. I’ll go check on it.”

  In the kitchen, Bella finds Virginia putting away the clean salad plates from the dish rack.

  “You don’t have to do that. I thought you were going to get Parker some coffee?”

  “I am. In a minute. How is he?”

  “He’s . . .”

  “I know. Not good. Stupid question. Did he ask you if you know exactly what happened to Johneen?”

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  “Because I told him to. I thought some kind of answer might be comforting for him, even though he doesn’t believe.”

  “Do you?”

  “Not really.” Virginia puts the last plate into the cupboard and turns on the water. “But I might as well keep an open mind since we’re here, right?”

  “I guess so. But I’m not a medium.”

  “You’re not? I thought y’all had to be one to live here.”

  Bella quickly explains the Dale’s real estate regulations. Only members of the Spiritualist Assembly can own a house within the grounds. The houses, being built on land that belongs to the Spiritualist Assembly, are effectively leased to their residents.

  “Well, that is just fascinating.” Virginia reaches for the dish soap. “Is it hard for you to live here, though? Being a widow?”

  She cringes.

  Widow may be accurate, but it’s always been such an ugly, uncomfortable word.

  As Bella weighs her answer, Virginia thrusts her hand under the tap, then yanks it back again. “Oh, my goodness! That is just ice-cold!”

  “I forgot—there’s something wrong with the water heater. I need to go look it up online. Be right back.”

  She heads into the study and settles in front of the computer again. She quickly checks her e-mail to see if Grant has responded, but he hasn’t.

  She opens a search engine, positions her fingers over the keys, and begins typing.

  W-A-T-E-R H-E—

  A list of results appear, prompted by a recent search—which is strange because Bella has never before looked up information on water heaters.

  But then, she isn’t the only one who uses this computer. A guest must have conducted the same search, and the search engine remembered it.

  She clicks the top link and sits back, hoping that whatever is wrong with the heater will be an easy fix. It can’t be a simple matter to find an available plumber on a stormy Sunday morning. And the guests won’t be pleased by the prospect of cold showers after a traumatic night in a chilly house—although the touchiest guest of all is no longer a problem, she realizes with a speck of guilt.

  A website pops up, but it has nothing to do with water heaters.

  Bella finds herself looking at a photo of . . . lacy, white flowers?

  Oops. That must have been triggered by her many recent online investigations into wedding bouquets and centerpieces. She must have somehow clicked the wrong link.

  She hits the back button and again scans the search results for water heater.

  Wait a minute. That’s not what it even says.

  She typed in water he—and the search engine returned pages for a flower ca
lled water hemlock.

  A guest must have conducted a recent search for water hemlock.

  Again, she hits the remembered link and takes a closer look at the images.

  Water hemlock is identical to Queen Anne’s lace or . . .

  No. Not identical.

  The flowers are different!

  Where has she heard that before?

  She closes her eyes.

  You have to pay close attention to the details!

  That’s right—the strange dream about the mirror. She was a bride, but her reflection was different. Her face was different, her dress was different, her bouquet was different . . .

  She shudders at the eerie coincidence.

  No coincidences!

  Her eyes snap open. One thing at a time. This isn’t about a dream, and it isn’t about flowers. It’s about a water heater.

  Bella is about to hit the back button again when a word jumps out from the page just as radiant did from the book in the kitchen.

  Seizures.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Heart pounding, Bella stares at the screen.

  Water hemlock, an herbaceous perennial native to North America, is one of the most toxic plants in the world. Merely brushing against its stem or blossoms can make a person sick. Ingesting a tiny amount of the root, with its potent concentration of cicutoxin, violently stimulates the central nervous system, leading to seizures and, in sufficient doses, almost instantaneous death.

  “Bella?”

  She screams.

  Virginia is standing in the doorway. “I’m so sorry! I just wanted to tell you the hot water is back on.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes. So you don’t have to bother with that. I’m filling the sink now, and it’s nice and steamy.” Virginia peers intently at her, and a familiar edge creeps into her voice again. She’s back in cop mode. “Are you all right?”

  “No. I need to show you something. I know . . .” She pauses, taking a deep breath. “Look, I know about you.”

  Virginia’s blue eyes narrow. “What do you know?”

  “That you’re a cop.”

  She doesn’t deny it. Nor does she ask how Bella knows. She just nods, looks over her shoulder, and then steps into the study and pulls the door closed behind her.

  “What’s going on?” she asks in a low, urgent voice. “What did you find?”

  “I don’t think Johneen’s ‘illness’ was an accident.”

  Virginia’s eyebrows rise, but she doesn’t seem stunned. She, too, has been thinking someone tried to kill the bride.

  In a rush, Bella tells her everything, right up to, and including, the water hemlock search on the computer.

  Though Virginia says very little, Bella can see the growing alarm in her eyes.

  “I knew it,” she finally says, shaking her head. “I just knew it. I knew I saw him.”

  “Saw whom?”

  “Johneen’s ex.”

  “Here? In the house?”

  “No, I thought I saw him yesterday, out on the lake in a boat, watching the guesthouse. I pretended I was going out for cigarettes, but I was really trying to track him down. Needless to say, I didn’t find him. But it looks like he found Johneen.”

  “Does Parker know?”

  “Not the whole story. And he’s so distraught right now that I can’t tell him until I have more information. I need to run upstairs for a minute, all right? Don’t do anything, don’t go anyplace, don’t say anything about this. Not to anyone. Got it?”

  “But . . . what should I do? I can’t just . . . I need to do something.”

  “Wash the dishes,” Virginia suggests. “Come on. Let’s go into the kitchen.”

  Bella follows her, thoughts racing. Is she going upstairs to call for help? Or to get her gun? Was she, too, lulled into a false sense of security now that Johneen is gone?

  Virginia turns on the tap at the sink.

  “There. Nice and hot. I’ll be right back,” she says. “Go ahead. And I promise everything is going to be okay. I’ve got your back.”

  The words are perhaps the most comforting Bella has heard in ages.

  I’ve got your back.

  Sam always had her back.

  Of course, Millicent thinks she has Bella’s back, and Max’s, but she’s misguided. And Odelia—

  Forget it.

  I’m on my own, Bella thinks. Thank goodness for Virginia.

  Left alone in the kitchen, she plunges her hands into the sudsy water, searching for a sponge among the dishes, barely noticing or caring that it’s scalding her skin. The air is heavy with the scent of flowers.

  There are no coincidences.

  Terrible thoughts gyrate as she viciously scrubs a mason jar that doesn’t need scrubbing.

  She’d been looking for a would-be murderer. What if she herself might have been responsible for Johneen’s collapse?

  She’s the one who picked the poisonous flowers . . .

  Because Pandora told me to.

  She can hear the woman’s voice, trilling into the morning air, “If you need delicate white blossoms, I’ve scads of Queen Anne’s lace.”

  The woman is obsessed with horticulture. Wouldn’t she have known that it wasn’t Queen Anne’s lace?

  Of course she would have. She’d lured Bella and Parker into her garden and steered them straight to the water hemlock. Poor Johneen wore it in her hair and carried it in her bouquet. No wonder she wasn’t feeling well. She was being slowly poisoned.

  But wouldn’t Bella, too, have been poisoned? She had bare hands when she picked the flowers and arranged them.

  Plus, the seizure came so quickly and violently. Would that happen to a person who didn’t even eat the toxic root?

  Unless she did . . . in the salad.

  Bella herself had served that course, along with Odelia. The greens had been plated in the kitchen by Millicent—and Pandora.

  How could a stalker—a stranger—have gotten past them to intercept the salads and deliver the poison only to Johneen?

  He couldn’t have. Not unless he, or she, was hiding in plain sight.

  Any one of the three women could have looked up water hemlock on the inn’s computer. That makes a lot more sense than Johneen’s stalker breaking in to do research. And any one of the women could have smuggled a bit of the poisonous root onto the bride’s dish.

  But what possible motive could they have had? Johneen is unlikeable, but she isn’t evil. It couldn’t have been revenge . . . could it?

  She does have a history with Odelia. Maybe she also has one with Pandora, who claimed she was a stranger. Or even with Millicent.

  People hide things. People lie.

  Had Millicent made up the ridiculous cover story about a religious cult to mask her true reason for coming to the Dale this weekend?

  Okay, that’s insane, Bella tells herself. Paranoia is taking hold, and her imagination is running away with this outlandish plot in which Sam’s mother is a cold-blooded murderess.

  But what about Odelia? She was acting strange.

  Yes, because she was worried about her granddaughter and was trying to figure out what her visions meant.

  Living in Lily Dale is like playing an endless game of telephone with a paranormal spin. Indirect communication should never be accepted at face value, and yet . . .

  The bride’s shoes standing in a puddle, the bottom of her white gown, a locked door . . .

  Lock!

  Hemlock.

  The bottom of the gown—the hem.

  A puddle—water.

  The clues drop effortlessly into place like the last few pieces of a jigsaw. Only one remains.

  The spider.

  What could it have meant?

  Bella has to talk to Virginia right away. The wedding flowers are here in the house. If Johneen was poisoned, they’re the evidence.

  Bella turns off the water and heads for the parlor, drying her hands on her sweat shirt. Prepared to act as though nothing is out of the o
rdinary, she finds Parker still sitting morosely on the sofa.

  She sneaks a glance at the centerpieces lined up along the mantel, in front of the mirror.

  “Are you all right?” she asks, and then cringes at the words.

  Every time someone asked her that, as Sam lay dying, she’d had to hold back rage.

  “I know you’re not all right,” she says quickly. “It was a stupid question. And I’m not going to say that I know how you feel, because I know that’s the other stupid thing people say to you at a time like this.”

  “Did people say it to you when your husband was . . . sick?”

  “Yes. I wanted to strangle them every time.”

  As soon as the sentence leaves her mouth, she wishes she could take it back.

  “What I mean is, no one can possibly know how you feel.”

  “You watched your husband die.”

  “Yes. It was different.”

  “How?”

  “It wasn’t . . . sudden.” And he wasn’t Johneen. He was a good man, a wonderful man, the perfect man . . .

  Except, he wasn’t.

  Not in real life. He was good and wonderful, yes. But Sam had flaws, just like any other human being. It’s so easy to sanctify the dead.

  And just as easy to vilify the living. If Millicent—

  “Did you get a chance to say goodbye?”

  Startled by Parker’s question, Bella nods. The last few months of Sam’s life were one long, agonizing goodbye.

  “See, I won’t have that with Johneen, if she—if she doesn’t make it. It would be easier to know it’s coming and get to say goodbye.”

  “Get to say goodbye?” she echoes incredulously. “It’s not easy either way.”

  “I didn’t mean easy. Easier.”

  She says nothing to that.

  Again, she looks at the flowers.

  They’re reflected in the mirror, just like in her dream.

  Was her subconscious mind already aware, somehow, of the poisonous blooms? Had she perhaps glimpsed that page on the computer when she was checking the weather and then forgotten about it?

  Even the floral scent could have been psychosomatic . . .

  Except Jiffy smelled it, too.

  “What?”