Poisoned Pages

by Lorna Barrett

  Now that she was cooking on a somewhat regular schedule, Tricia found grocery shopping took a lot longer, but it was something she could enjoy. She had always been good about reading nutrition labels, but tried to stay away from processed food as much as possible. And now she cringed when she saw how much food was laced with corn syrup. She hadn’t eaten a carton of yogurt in months.

  It was nearly four when she arrived back at Haven’t Got a Clue with her little metal shopping cart in tow. She’d always cringed to see her grandmother tote such a device, but found walking several blocks with her arms loaded down with bags to be a terrific bore, as well as a pain in the biceps.

  Once she had unloaded her groceries, she left the shop in Pixie’s and Mr. Everett’s care once more and hoofed it over to the Stoneham police station. This time, she found Chief Baker in, although his receptionist, Polly, still gave her a hard time about seeing him. While standing right outside his office, she called him on his cell phone and this time got through. “Can we talk?” she practically begged.

  “Come on over,” he said.

  “I’m already here. Polly won’t let me see you.”

  The intercom buzzed. “Polly, Tricia has my permission to enter my office.”

  Polly sniffed and curled her lip, then turned away, and Tricia opened the door, letting herself in.

  “What is with that woman?”

  “She doesn’t like you,” Baker said.

  “No kidding. What did I ever do to her?”

  “Nothing. But she holds a grudge for you breaking my heart.”

  “I did not break your heart.”

  “She doesn’t know that.”

  “Well, perhaps you could mention it to her at some point,” Tricia said, taking a seat in front of his rather cluttered desk.

  “What’s up?” Baker asked.

  “I left a message for you this morning.”

  “And I’ve been busy. You’re not the only citizen in Stoneham with a problem, you know.”

  “Tell me about it. Ginny Barbero has had her windshield egged and a potato shoved up her car’s tailpipe, and Angelica’s being blackmailed. We’re thinking about hiring private security, since the local cop shop doesn’t seem very interested in the vandalism that appears to be running rampant in the village,” she said rather hotly.

  “I wouldn’t call three or four incidents rampant.”

  “More like five or six. And how many would it take for you and your force to take the problem seriously? We’re never going to get back our former title of Safest Village in New Hampshire at this rate.”

  “Well, that’s a given,” he said flatly.

  Tricia sighed and shook her head. “Did your office tell you about the graffiti on the back of my building?”

  “I heard. I saw the picture. It’s not gang related.”

  “I could have told you that. And how much malicious mischief do we have to put up with before somebody cares? Does one of us have to get hurt?”

  “I can’t do anything about Angelica’s problems until she makes a formal complaint. As far as I know, Ginny hasn’t filed any official reports with our department. It’s hearsay as far as we’re concerned. Will your insurance company pay to have the graffiti removed?”

  “I think so. But it won’t happen anytime soon if my experience waiting for a check to come after the fire in my shop is a prime example.”

  Baker just looked at her, his face impassive.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “Well, what?”

  “Should we hire private security?”

  He shrugged. “If it makes you feel better. But they can’t be everywhere—protecting you and the outside of your building.”

  “Angelica’s more worried about the threats to her—” She couldn’t say “granddaughter.” Baker didn’t know about Angelica’s connection with Antonio and his family. She assumed most people thought the friendship was based on Tricia’s connection with Ginny as her former employee. “Threats to her extended circle of friends,” she finally amended.

  “Until she makes a complaint, there’s nothing I can do. And you should encourage her to make that complaint, and the sooner the better.”

  “I’ve tried. She’s just—”

  “Stubborn,” he supplied. “I know; it’s a Miles trait.”

  That it was.

  Tricia stood. “Well, thanks for your time—if nothing else.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Let me know if you ever hear from the state lab about Ted Harper’s toxicology reports.”

  “That could be months. It’s only been a week.”

  Was that all? In some ways it seemed like a lifetime ago that Tricia had held her little cocktail party and the poor man had suffocated.

  “Have a nice Thanksgiving. And Christmas. And New Year’s, and probably Easter, too,” she said with more than a little sarcasm.

  “Aw, c’mon, Tricia. Don’t be like that.”

  She turned to leave. “All right, then have a good weekend. I probably won’t.”

  “Oh, no? I heard you’ve got a date on Sunday.”

  Tricia whirled around. “A date?”

  “With Marshall Cambridge.”

  “It’s for coffee. And how did you find out about it?”

  “Everybody’s talking about it,” he said enigmatically.

  Tricia let out a harsh breath. Everybody who? “Good-bye, Grant.”

  “Good-bye, Tricia.”

  Baker let Tricia see herself out.

  SEVENTEEN

  Not surprisingly, Angelica called that evening just as Tricia was peeling the potatoes to say that she was canceling their dinner date. “I just don’t feel up to company tonight.”

  “Do you want me to bring something over for you?” Tricia asked.

  “No. I have a lot of thinking to do, and I need some alone time to do it.” She sounded sad and utterly defeated.

  “Call me if you need me.”

  “Thank you. I will.”

  She wouldn’t.

  As Tricia hung up the phone, she thought about the little cooked bird sitting in her fridge that would never be warm again. Oh well, she liked chicken salad, and she was sure Miss Marple would enjoy a chopped chicken snack.

  After a light and lonely dinner, Tricia went up to her new sleep suite and went to bed with a good book, reading far into the night.

  The phone rang at 7:05 Saturday morning. Tricia opened one eye and reflected that calls that came that early never contained happy news, and she was filled with dread as she reached for the landline next to her bed.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh, Trish, why didn’t you tell me?” Angelica demanded, sounding terribly upset.

  Tricia allowed herself to relax, if only a little. “So you finally got a chance to see the latest issue of the village rag?”

  “Yes. Frannie gave me the mail last night at closing, but I didn’t bother to go through it until just now. Why didn’t you tell me at lunch yesterday or when I spoke to you last night?”

  “You’re dealing with enough. I wasn’t about to dump any more crap on you.”

  “Have you thought about consulting a lawyer over this?”

  “Why bother? What Russ wrote is all pretty much true.”

  “Yes, but it was his intent. It was vicious. I know he’s been worried about his newspaper’s bottom line; well, I’m going to make a definite dent in it by yanking all my advertising from that nasty fish wrapper. I’ll make sure he regrets his decision to smear the Miles family name.”

  “Ange—”

  “I’ve made up my mind.”

  “Okay,” Tricia said in defeat. “But please, don’t make a scene about it. He could make it worse for all of us.”

  Angelica said nothing for a long moment, and then, “You may be right about that. I’ll think about this for a while. But at the very least, I will not buy another ad from that terrible tabloid.”

  Tricia wondered if she should tell her sister what Russ said
about his marriage, or that he’d admitted his jumping into the Chamber race as a revenge tactic. Now didn’t seem the time.

  Tricia sat up in bed, and Miss Marple got up, too, coming over to rub her head on Tricia’s shoulder, reminding her that it was breakfast time.

  “Did you read the other story?” Angelica asked.

  Uh-oh. “What other story?”

  “About Bob’s trial.”

  “No. I was so angry, I could barely see straight to read the one on me. What did it say?”

  “Russ’s second hack job. He made it sound like Bob was some kind of victim, and barely mentioned Christopher’s death. He also pointed out that it was you who testified against him and who was responsible for him getting life without parole.”

  “I wasn’t the only one who witnessed his terrible crime.”

  “He forgot to mention that.”

  Tricia sighed. “I threw away my copy of the paper. I don’t think I want to read that article.”

  “That’s probably best,” Angelica said. “I have a second reason for calling.”

  What else could go wrong? “Oh?”

  “Yes. It seems that your vandal has decided to spread the misery around.”

  “How?”

  “By breaking all the lights on the buildings along the alley.”

  “All of them?”

  “From what I could see. It’s a good thing I was holding Sarge when I stepped outside, or else he would have sliced his little paws to ribbons on the broken glass.”

  “That’s terrible. But maybe if all the business owners that back up to the alley complain to the police, they might finally do something.”

  “What did Grant say when you spoke to him yesterday?”

  “That there was no crime wave. I got the impression he thought I was overreacting.”

  “And you defended him to me,” Angelica said flatly.

  Tricia didn’t want to argue about it. “I still think reporting these incidents to the proper authorities is the right thing to do.”

  “Hmmph.”

  “Are we on for lunch and dinner tonight, or have you got more thinking to do?”

  “I’m available,” Angelica conceded.

  “Did you come to any conclusions during your alone time last night?”

  “No.”

  Too bad.

  “I have a lot to accomplish this morning, so I’d better get started,” Angelica said.

  “Me, too. See you at Booked for Lunch around two.”

  “Bye.”

  Tricia put the receiver back in its cradle. Miss Marple reminded her that breakfast still hadn’t happened, so Tricia threw off the covers and got out of bed, willing, if not eager, to start the day.

  *

  • • •

  By the time Tricia fed her cat and herself, showered, dressed, and gave her e-mails a passing glance, it was almost nine thirty, which didn’t give her as much time as she would have liked to get the shop ready for the day. First on the list was to clean up after the latest episode of vandalism.

  As Angelica had reported, there was glass scattered all over the concrete pad that led to the stairs down to the Dumpsters behind Haven’t Got a Clue. If the light had been broken in the summer, Tricia could have climbed a ladder herself and changed the bulb, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to do it on a cold November morning. Still, it would only take a minute to sweep up the mess. Since Angelica—and all the other business owners—would need to have their lightbulbs replaced, too, maybe they could hire someone to do the job in one fell swoop.

  The dusting of snow that had fallen overnight had mostly melted when Tricia returned to the step with a dustpan and brush to sweep up the mess. She thought she’d have better luck getting all the glass if she took a position several steps below where most of the glass had landed, but she hadn’t counted on slipping on black ice. She went down hard, smashing her right forearm onto the cold concrete step, the hunks of glass instantly embedding in the flesh on her forearm.

  She let out a yelp of pain and said a very naughty word—or maybe four—before she stopped seeing stars and reached to grab her arm, chagrined to find it gushing blood at an alarming rate and ruining the sleeve of her pretty pink sweater.

  She’d dropped the brush and dustpan when she’d fallen, but left them behind as she crawled up two stairs until she could stand, and then stepped up to her feet and backed into Haven’t Got a Clue.

  The washroom was just inside the back door, which she used her foot to close, and she staggered inside. She sat on the toilet seat while blood dripped down her fingers, and she made a grab for the paper toweling, pulling out ten or more sheets, meaning to stanch the blood, but when she tried to wrap it around the wound, she ended up pushing the glass even farther into the deep cuts and howled in pain.

  “What’s going on?” came a voice from the front of the store—Pixie!

  “Help!” Tricia called, but found that her voice had no volume.

  “Tricia?” Pixie called.

  “In the washroom.”

  In seconds Pixie appeared before the opened door. “Oh my God! What have you done to yourself?”

  “I fell … outside … on glass … and got cut.”

  Pixie shrugged out of her coat, tossing it on the floor. “Let me look at it.”

  Tricia was grateful to relinquish her arm to her assistant, because the truth was her stomach was roiling and she felt light-headed enough to faint.

  Tricia watched through squinted eyes as Pixie plucked the largest pieces of glass from her soggy-with-blood sleeve and then gently peeled back the sweater to assess the damage. “Oh, Tricia. This is bleeding too much. It’s not an artery, or you’d probably already be dead, but we need to stop the bleeding, and paper towels ain’t gonna do it.”

  Tricia had already figured that out.

  Somehow Pixie managed to remain incredibly calm. “I’m going to pick out some more of the glass so we can wrap that up and get you to Urgent Care. I want you to hang on to the wall with that other hand and brace yourself, because this is liable to hurt.”

  “It already hurts,” Tricia managed, her voice sounding strangled.

  “It’s gonna hurt more,” Pixie promised.

  Tricia did as she was told and closed her eyes, wincing as Pixie pulled the worst of the glass from her arm.

  “You did good,” Pixie asserted. “Let’s get the long-sleeved sweater off and wrap it around the wound, and then I’ll run up to your bathroom and get some towels. Do you have old ones that you don’t care about ruining?”

  “Any towel you can find is fine,” Tricia said, feeling her muscles quiver.

  “Okay. Just sit here and don’t move,” Pixie commanded.

  Tricia had no intention of disobeying her.

  Pixie ran for the stairs, and it seemed like half of forever before she reappeared with a stack of towels and washcloths.

  Tricia began to shiver, and yet a rivulet of perspiration ran from her temple down her left cheek.

  “We’re going to make us a pressure bandage,” Pixie asserted, and wadded several washcloths before pressing them into the wound, which sent another wave of agony up Tricia’s arm. “You’re going to hold this while I wrap the big towel around it. There you go, and then we’re going to walk to the reader’s nook and you’re going to sit there until I bring the car around.”

  “Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?” Tricia asked weakly.

  “It’s a bad cut—but it’s not life-threatening,” Pixie asserted.

  “How do you know?”

  “Didn’t I ever tell you? I worked on a volunteer ambulance crew for a while—community service. I got a lot of great training, but I also had a weakness for my old way of life and kind of fell back into it, if you know what I mean. Then I ended up back in stir. You don’t want to go to the ER with this, because you’ll end up sitting there for three or four hours—if not longer—when you can be in and out in an hour or less at Urgent Care.”

  “Okay, I trust
you on this.”

  “Good. Now, let’s get you to the nook. I’ll bring my car around, but you sit tight until I come back in and walk you out. I don’t want you keeling over on the floor—because if you do, then we will have to call an ambulance.”

  “Okay.”

  Pixie helped Tricia to her feet and guided her to the reader’s nook, then went back to get her coat from the floor. Grabbing her purse, she headed out the door, hollering, “Stay right there!”

  Tricia had no desire to move. And she held her arm up, feeling her pulse pounding through the afflicted appendage.

  This was not how she’d envisioned starting her workday.

  And the question was, now that she’d gotten hurt, would Baker finally take this mini crime wave seriously?

  EIGHTEEN

  Pixie had been right. They were in and out of Urgent Care in just over an hour, and nobody seemed to notice that Haven’t Got a Clue opened just over an hour late.

  It had taken fifteen stitches—and a tetanus booster—before Tricia had been outfitted with a sling and advised to take it easy and “don’t get that arm wet!” Pixie had wrapped her own sweater around Tricia’s shoulders, but she only had to walk from the shop to the car, then from the car to the medical building, then back again, so she never really had a chance to feel the cold. Once they returned to the bookstore, Pixie had insisted Tricia sit in the reader’s nook while she made cocoa for both of them.

  “Too bad we haven’t got a shot of something stronger to put in it,” she muttered.

  “Whiskey in cocoa?” Tricia asked, holding her arm up so that it didn’t throb quite so much.

  “I was thinking more like crème de menthe.”

  “What are we going to do about lunch?” Tricia asked. “I don’t think I can woman the register by myself—at least not today.”