by K. J. Emrick
"Well, I'm not a doctor like your boyfriend is, but I have my skills."
"Josh isn't a doctor," she started to argue, then realized it didn't matter. She was being foolish. "Forget it. Didn't you have news for me?"
"Right. Well, the police have the name of the woman. Evelynn Whipple."
She racked her brain. There was no one in town with that last name. "Who was she? How did they find out who she was?"
"They ran her fingerprints through the state database. Turns out Miss Whipple had a criminal history."
"She'd been arrested before?" Rysen didn't know much about police procedures but she'd watched enough shows on television to know what they could do with fingerprints. "The murder victim was a criminal?"
"That's right. Convictions for assault and extortion. It's worse than that. She was suspected of being a gun for hire. A contract killer."
The words he was saying didn't make any sense. A killer for hire. A professional murderer, killed in her friend's shop. "Why? What was she doing there?"
"Police suspect she was here to kill someone. Seems to make sense to me."
"Who would she be here to kill?"
"There's only one person who she might expect to find there, don't you think?"
Beatrice. He meant Beatrice.
But…
"Two people," Rysen corrected him. "There were two people who would be there. Beatrice, sure, but remember Josh was there too. Not every morning, but if this woman had his work schedule then she could have been there waiting for him."
Her throat closed off. Someone could have been trying to kill Josh. Her Josh. It could have been him lying there dead on the floor of the shop. She chewed the inside of her lip and forced herself not to picture that.
"Rysen, I'm sorry," Brandon said to her. "It's all conjecture, after all. Maybe we're wrong. Maybe Miss Whipple was planning on killing someone else entirely."
"But you think Bea or Josh were the most likely targets."
When he hesitated, the world narrowed through her tears.
He put his hands on her shoulders, and she let him, and when he pulled her up tight against his chest to hold her in a gentle embrace she didn't stop him.
There in his arms, her mind picked at details like loose threads in a sweater.
It could have been Josh.
But…
"There's still two things that bother me," she said, resting her head against his shoulder, blinking away the tears and grateful to have someone to hold her when she needed it. "Arsenic isn't a fast acting poison, is it?"
This close to him, his voice thrummed in his chest. "If someone ingests a large quantity of it they'll die relatively quickly, but not immediately, no."
"Then how does it make sense that a killer broke into Beatrice's shop to kill someone with a slow acting poison? Wouldn't a gun or a knife or even a frying pan have made more sense?"
"I suppose you're right." He pushed her gently back until he could see her. "Not to mention how she would have had to practically force feed Beatrice or Josh the arsenic. Good point. What was the other thing that bothered you?"
She wanted to snuggle herself back into his arms. Instead, she made herself step away from him, reminding herself she was with Josh. "The big question to this whole thing. That's what bothers me. Who killed Evelynn Whipple? If it wasn't Josh—and it wasn't—then who did? Was it her intended target? Was it an accomplice? Who? When we know that, maybe we can figure out the why."
"You're asking all the right questions. That's the first step in solving any problem. Especially," he added, "for anyone who wants to become a detective."
He had moved in close to her again, and his eyes told her what he wanted, and she felt her lips part and felt her heart beat faster and knew that a second kiss from him could be just as good as their first all those weeks ago.
No. She couldn't let that happen.
Rysen put a hand on his chest, and used it to brace herself and push away from him. "I'm with Josh," she told him.
"So you keep saying."
She so wanted to wring his neck right now.
After she kissed him.
Maybe before.
Something that sounded like "urngh" came out between her clenched teeth. It was the most coherent thought she could put together.
From the living room, they could hear Christina mutter something about pineapples.
Brandon's face darkened with a scowl and he stepped past her to go down to the living room where Christina was laying curled up on the couch. He knelt down next to her and felt her forehead, rubbing his fingertips together with her sweat. He gently lifted one eyelid with his thumb, and Rysen could see how bloodshot her sister's eyes had become. Finally, he held up one of Chris's hands and looked at each fingernail.
Christina pushed Brandon's hand away without really waking up. Her voice was drowsy. "Bad dog."
Brandon stood up quickly and pulled a cell phone from the front pocket of his pants. "We need an ambulance. She needs to be at hospital," he explained. "Now."
"What? Why? She's just sick." Even as she said it, Rysen knew that wasn't true. "Isn't she just sick?"
"No," he said. "She's been poisoned, and I'm betting she was poisoned with arsenic."
Chapter 5
There was no hospital in Cambria. As small towns went, it had its share of charm and beauty to draw in the tourists, and it had residents who had lived their whole lives there, but things like hospitals and strip malls were left to the bigger towns nearby.
Grace Community Hospital was a half hour away in Thornsburg. Rysen had been here once as a little girl when she'd sprained a wrist while trying to fly a kite from the top branches of a tree. She remembered it more as a bunch of doctor's offices crammed into one building than an actual hospital, but there was an imaging suite with x-ray and MRI machines, and laboratory facilities to test blood, and even a new ambulatory surgery wing. It was big enough to serve the communities around Thornsburg. Serious problems got transported to San Francisco.
Rysen really hoped that Christina didn't need to go to San Francisco.
It was well after ten at night now. She really wasn't sure what time it was, exactly. She just knew it was after ten. That was when the doctors had changed shifts and that had been the last time someone had come to talk to her.
Christina was doing well, they said. There was definitely a poison in her system but her levels were evening out and whatever it was had been caught in time, they said. No word from the blood draws yet, they said.
In other words, the doctors knew something was wrong. They just didn't know what that something was.
She was curled up in a chair in the waiting area down the hall from her sister's room on the second floor. Her feet were tucked up underneath her and she had her head pillowed on her hands. The chairs had looked so comfortable, until she'd been sitting in one for a few hours.
"Hey."
She looked up to see Brandon standing there with two cups of vending machine coffee in his hands. Sitting up, hooking her feet together under the chair, she took one of the cups from him. "Thanks."
"Figured you could use the caffeine. I still think you should get some sleep."
"I can't sleep." It was true. Christina was sleeping peacefully with an IV fluid drip in her one arm and a bunch of monitors connected everywhere. Rysen really should take the opportunity to get some rest herself, but she just couldn't do it. Every time she closed her eyes her mind just started running through the same questions, over and over. Who would want to poison Christina? How was it connected to the murder at Bea's shop?
She took a sip of the coffee and tried to focus her thoughts. "Do you think what's happening now has anything to do with the people who were stealing my sister's shipments last month? I mean, we caught that one guy, but he was working for someone and we never found out who. It could be the same person doing this, couldn't it?"
"Maybe," he agreed, slowly. "I know this much. My friend on the police force finally got me
a scanned copy of that paper the victim had hidden on her. Came through to my phone a few minutes ago. I recognized it immediately."
"You did? What was it?"
Brandon looked at her very intently, like he was trying to decide whether to tell her or not. She leaned across the arms of the chairs and gave him her best glare. "You have to tell me," she said. "I promised to find out who was doing this. For Josh. Now that my sister's involved I'm even more committed. Tell me what the paper was!"
"Okay, okay," he said gently with a rueful smile. "I've created a bloody monster. You know that, right? You'll be the most aggressive private detective ever."
Rysen put her hand over his wrist. "Thank you. Now stop trying to flatter me and tell me what the paper was."
"It's not what the paper was. It's what was on it. Numbers."
"Huh? I don't follow."
"I didn't at first, either. Numbers. Zero through nine, written over and over and over. Then a word at the bottom."
He was giving her pieces a little at a time and it was starting to drive her nuts. "Word? What word? Come on, tell me!"
"Wine. Just that one word written five times. Each of them looked exactly the same. Someone was practicing. Thing was, I recognized the handwriting. The police wouldn't because they don't know you."
That made her blink. "Me? Why would that matter?"
"I recognized the writing because I know you, and your sister. I would recognize Miss Christina's handwriting anywhere."
Rysen gasped. "It was a page of Christina's handwriting?"
He was close enough that she could see the lighter streaks of gray in his deep blue eyes. His words were a low murmur, meant only for her. "It looked like her writing," he explained, "but only enough to fool someone without my training. This was someone practicing your sister's writing. Someone trying to copy it."
"Someone was copying Christina's handwriting? But why? What does that mean?"
He rolled his head to the side, a little shrug that meant he didn't know.
His eyes held her in his orbit. Thoughts jumbled up in her mind as the two of them got closer by slow increments. His warm breath caressed her cheeks and drew out a deep flush that made her skin tingle. Her heart was a drum in her ears. When his soft, strong mouth brushed over hers, she trembled.
And she let it happen.
The kiss drew her in deep. Sensuous and full, it brought out the feelings she'd had for him almost from the very first moment they'd met. The ones she'd tried to bury. She'd tried to make it be over between them. In her mind, she knew this was wrong. She and Josh were together.
Not now, Brandon had pointed out to her. They weren't together now.
Right now, in this moment, she was with Brandon.
His fingers brushed along the line of her cheek as the kiss ended and they parted. Rysen's eyes were still closed. The feel of his lips against hers was still a very vivid sensation and she didn't want it to be over just yet.
When her eyelids fluttered open again she saw Brandon sitting there, his smile tentative, like he needed to know from her that he hadn't taken things too far.
Then, over Brandon's shoulder, she saw Josh standing in the hallway, just looking at the two of them.
Oh, no!
"Josh. Uh, hi." She stood up immediately, wanting to put as much distance between her and Brandon as she could. Maybe Josh hadn't seen…
"Unbelievable," he said, turning on his heel to stalk back the other way.
Yup. He saw.
With an apologetic look at Brandon and a muttered promise that she would be right back Rysen started off after Josh. He got held up waiting for the elevator to open. Rysen made it to him and followed him in and then stood there, panting, stupidly wondering what she was going to say to him.
"Josh, I know how that looked—"
"It looked like you were kissing another man."
"Um. Well. I was, I know, but you need to understand I was just so upset over you and the murder and now Christina being in the hospital and I don't know how it happened, Josh, it just happened and I would take it back if I could but I can't." She stopped for a breath, hearing the doors close behind her and feeling the elevator beginning to move them down. It gave her a sinking feeling.
"Rysen, I ain't blind. You were kissing him. Brandon. I thought he was just someone who worked for your sister?"
He was dressed in the same clothes that he'd had on yesterday morning when she saw him, before the police took him away, and it finally hit her that he must have been let out by the County Sheriffs. They had freed him, and now he wasn't under suspicion of murder anymore, and his first act of freedom had been to run to her side because her sister was in the hospital.
Then, when he got here, he'd basically seen her betraying him.
The doors opened on the ground floor and Rysen reached back to the button that closed them again. She couldn't leave it like this.
"Josh, I'm sorry. I know that doesn't cover it, not really, but I am. Please. Forgive me? Please?"
His face softened. Not completely. Not the set of his jaw or the hard look around his eyes. Still, he sighed and nodded. "I guess so. It's not like we were being exclusive, I guess."
That caught her off guard. They may not have set a wedding date or anything close to it but Rysen had considered them exclusive. If she hadn't said the L word to him yet it had always been just a few heartbeats away. He was her boyfriend, and more than that.
Then why had she kissed Brandon?
She was so confused.
"I'm sorry," she said again. "I didn't mean for it to happen. He was telling me something about all of this and it upset me and we got so close and I just don't know why it happened."
"So you tripped into his lips?"
"Josh!"
"Ry, don't worry about it. It happened. That's all."
It was such an annoying guy thing to say that she wanted to belt him one in the stomach. Here she was pouring her heart out to him and all she got in return was typical machismo. She settled for folding her arms over her chest and leaning against the wall instead of smacking him. "I said I was sorry."
"I said I forgive you."
She stuck her tongue out at him.
He winked at her.
A little smile broke across her face and she tried to hide it but he saw it and then he was pulling her into a warm hug and things were better. Not perfect, not fixed, but better. His hand combed her hair the way he did that made her feel warm inside. Their bodies fit together perfectly and she nestled in tighter.
The doors to the elevator opened again. They waited. No one got on, and the doors closed with her still in Josh's arms. She looked up at him, blinking, wondering what would come next.
It was a kiss.
He swept her up into it quickly, not gently and slowly like Brandon had done. This kiss was needy and forceful, not the deeply sensual caress that she had just experienced upstairs. It left her breathless. Brandon had left her wanting more.
It was hard not to compare the two.
***
How had her sister been poisoned?
Around four in the morning, Josh had finally convinced her to go home. He'd driven her back to Christina's house because her own car wasn't at the hospital. She felt bad leaving Brandon there, but he only smiled and shrugged when she explained it. From the expression on his face Rysen could tell he knew what had happened between Rysen and Josh in that elevator. At least part of it.
Well, let him guess. Rysen wouldn't apologize to him. Not for making up with her boyfriend. If anything, he should be apologizing to her for kissing her like that. In that soft and sultry way that had replayed itself in her dreams during the three hours of sleep she'd gotten in her own bed.
Ahem.
Anyway, Josh had offered to stay with her when he dropped her off. The puppy dog eyes he gave her were almost too cute to turn down, but she did it anyway. She wasn't ready for that. Not yet, anyway. For all their talk of maybe love, she didn't want to take things
too fast.
After another long kiss, Rysen had told him she was tired, and needed to go to sleep. It wasn't a lie. The kiss was nice. She was just sort of all kissed out. Not that she told him that part, but she needed sleep and she needed to focus on the mystery that she and her sister had gotten swept up in.
So after her three hours of sleep she had driven here, in the early morning hours, to stand behind the counter in Christina's store. The sign on the doors to the Spirit and Soul Wine Shop read "closed" so she should have lots of time to herself to think.
The poison had to be here. Christina wasn't a very social person. She had a few friends, like Beatrice, but for the most part her life was split between home and here, and Rysen was sure Christina hadn't been poisoned at home. They both drank the same water, ate the same food, breathed the same air. If the poison had gotten into Christina at home, Rysen would be poisoned, too.
She stood there, trying to place herself in her sister's shoes. Now that they knew someone was trying to imitate her sister's handwriting, it was plain that Christina had been the target in this. It scared Rysen to even think that. The poison had been intentionally slipped to Chris. But how? What did her sister do here, in her shop, that had gotten her poisoned and no one else?
A little research on the internet had revealed that one of the most common sources of arsenic poisoning was polluted water. Neither of them drank tap water, though. The water in Cambria was treated, and it tasted horrible. They both drank bottled water. The only thing they drank from the shop was the occasional glass of wine to sample the stuff they sold. Christina had explained to Rysen how important it was to know what the different flavors and types tasted like for when customers asked. It made the long afternoons here more fun…
The wine.
In a rush she pulled out the three bottles that were behind the counter, each one having been opened and then recorked with plastic stoppers. They were cheaper wines, a red, a white, and a blush from local winemakers looking to have Christina carry their stock. Rysen had tried the white and the red wine herself.
But she didn't remember seeing the blush.
Half of the bottle was gone. It must have been there for a few days, given to Christina when Rysen was out of the shop. Her hands started to shake as she examined the bottle. She might be holding a weapon in her hand that had been meant to kill her sister.