by Harper Lin
I nodded. “That was why I asked if you were sure you ate some of everything. If you didn’t get sick, the poison must have been in something you didn’t eat.”
She nodded and turned her red, swollen eyes towards the table. Wordlessly, she crossed to the far end of the table with the non-alcoholic punch and started walking down it, pointing at each tray and nodding as she went. She got to the end and turned toward me, looking like she was ready to burst into tears again. “I had some of everything.”
I sighed and rubbed my hands up and down my face. “So much for that theory,” I muttered. If Melissa had some of everything and didn’t get sick at all, that meant the poison might have been added to individual servings. And if the poison had been added to individual servings, it was possible that none of the samples the crime scene techs had taken would turn out positive for the poison. And who knew what that would do to the investigation? Probably blow the whole thing up. Or make them turn on me again.
“I’m so sorry.” Melissa wiped her eyes again. “Everything just looked so good! I couldn’t help myself!”
I went over to comfort her again. It wasn’t her fault, of course, and I felt bad for making a pregnant woman cry. As I put my arms around her, my eyes fell on the punch bowl on this end of the table. Spiked on this end, non-alcoholic on the other. “Wait! Melissa! You didn’t have some of everything!”
“Yes, I did,” she said, sniffling.
“No, you didn’t.” I turned her around gently and pointed at the bowl of the spiked punch.
“Yes, I—” She stopped, and her eyes grew wide. “No, I didn’t! I didn’t have everything. I didn’t have the alcoholic punch.”
Her voice came out in a squeal, and she clapped her hands a couple of times. She had a massive grin on her face as she bounced up and down on the balls of her feet. She’d gone from happy to devastated and back to happy again in a manner of minutes. The wonders of pregnancy, I assumed.
“That’s right,” I mumbled, more to myself than to her. “And neither did Becky or Amanda, and they didn’t get sick either. Or Ephy.” I met Melissa’s eyes. “It was the punch. Someone poisoned the punch.”
Chapter 12
I had my phone out to dial Mike before Melissa even had time to swing from excitement about our discovery back to distress about what had happened.
“Yeah?” Mike said by way of greeting.
“Well, hello to you, too, Officer.” As eager as I was to tell Mike what Melissa and I had figured out, I wasn’t about to let him get away with being rude.
“It’s ‘Detective.’” He would have sounded stern if he hadn’t chuckled quietly first. He must have been feeling better. “What’s up? I was just on my way to see you.”
My heart skipped and not in a good way either. It was in a bad way. A very bad way. “Oh. Um, where?”
“Where?” He sounded genuinely confused. “At your house? You’re at home, aren’t you? Or did you go back to Matt’s?” His turn signal clicked in the background. He was already on his way to my house, and I wasn’t there. I was at the café, which was the worst possible place I could be if Mike was looking for me.
I thought fast, trying to decide whether it was best to meet Mike back at my place or Matt’s. I wanted to check up on Matt and could have really used some of Latte’s kisses, but I was afraid Matt would accidentally give it away that I hadn’t been there all afternoon. Not that I thought I’d done anything wrong by going to the café. I just didn’t want to have to deal with explaining it to Mike.
“Oh, yeah, my house. I just wasn’t sure if I was supposed to meet you somewhere.” I chose my words carefully to keep from straight-out lying.
Melissa’s head jerked up, and she looked at me curiously. I pressed my lips together and gave her a little wave to let her know I’d explain in a minute.
“Can you just give me ten minutes or so to let me get cleaned up a little?” Again, not a lie per se. It would be good to run a cool washcloth over my face and neck. I wasn’t sure whether it was the lingering effects of the eye drops or if someone had turned the café’s air conditioning off, but I was starting to feel warm and a little clammy.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I could use a cup of coff—” He stopped and groaned. “I forgot you’re closed. I’m going to have to get gas station coffee.” His disgust practically walked through the phone to shake hands with me.
“I can make you some when I—when you get to my house.”
Mike sighed. “I’ll see if I can hold out.”
He didn’t sound sure that he could, and to be honest, neither was I. This morning while he supervised the search was the longest I’d ever seen him go without pouring hot coffee down his throat. I didn’t know if he’d gotten a hold of any since then, but I did know that ten minutes was a long time for him to wait after he’d decided he needed a cup. I’d have to think about whether to have mercy on him if he showed up at my house carrying some gas station sludge. It was usually an easy decision to give him as much coffee as he wanted as often as he wanted, but he didn’t usually spend the morning searching my house and business.
“Okay! I’ll see you soon,” I chirped. Then I hung up.
Melissa looked at me like she thought I’d lost my mind.
I smiled weakly. “That was Mike Stanton. From the police department. I’m not sure if he’s okay with me being here while the investigation is still ongoing.”
She nodded knowingly. She was a sweet girl, but I had a feeling she had her rebellious side too.
“He’ll be at my house in ten minutes, so I need to get out of here and get back home.”
“Are you going to tell him about the punch?” she asked, moving toward the door.
I was almost afraid to let her out through the front in case Mike drove by, but it didn’t seem fair to ask her to go out the back and have to walk all the way around the building to get back to the sidewalk and the street.
“Absolutely. Hopefully it will help them solve the case.”
Maybe knowing it was the spiked punch would help them identify who had the most access—other than me, of course. I didn’t know how it would help them, but I held out hope that it somehow would.
“I hope so. I hate even thinking about someone doing such a thing and still being out on the streets where they could hurt someone else.” Melissa shuddered and held her pregnant belly again.
I opened the door for her.
“Let me know if there’s any way I can help. I can’t do much of anything physical lugging this little one around, but I’m still good at sitting and eating if you need me to eavesdrop on anyone.” She giggled, making her eyes sparkle and her dimples pop out.
“You’re welcome to come over and volunteer your services anytime.” I laughed at first, but it faded as something came to mind. “Actually, you didn’t see anything suspicious last night, did you?”
Melissa thought for a moment, inclining her head and pursing her lips. She shook her head and shrugged. “No, I don’t think so.”
“What about someone hanging around the food or the punch bowl? Did you see anything like that?”
She thought again, started to shake her head, then stopped with her forehead wrinkled. “Well, actually…” She trailed off, still looking thoughtful. “Never mind, it was probably nothing.”
“Anything you saw could help. The way Mike was talking, anybody could be a suspect.”
“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
Fearing I’d spooked her, I rushed to smooth it over. “No, no. You wouldn’t be getting anyone in trouble. The police are going to talk to everyone who was here last night anyway. Anything you saw would just be helping them know who to start with.”
She still looked uneasy. “I was up there a lot, you know. That’s what other people might have been doing too.”
I nodded. “Of course. Like I said, it’s just to help the police figure out who else might know something.”
She hesitated then took a deep breath. “There was a
girl. I don’t think I’ve seen her before. She had dark hair. Kind of purplish? She was standing right over there against the wall by the punch bowl pretty much the whole time.”
Ephy.
“And Todd from Todd’s Gym was up there with Karli. You know her, don’t you? She works the front desk at the gym? They were having some kind of really intense-looking conversation for a while. They were right there, on the other side of the table.” She pointed at the far side of the table, close to the counter. “And then that guy from the jewelry store—you know, the one who always wears his hair slicked back?”
I nodded. “Dean Howard. He’s the owner.”
“Yeah, him. He was lurking around there some. I don’t really know what he was doing. I just had to scoot by him a few times.”
I glanced over at the big wrought-iron clock on the exposed-brick wall and realized I would have to hustle if I was going to make it home before Mike arrived on my doorstep. “I don’t want to rush you—”
“Oh, no, I get it,” she chirped, waving me off. She started back towards the door.
I thanked her for coming by and gave her a quick hug before she headed out. I let her have a few seconds to get a little ways down the sidewalk to make sure she didn’t think I was desperate to get rid of her. Then I shut the door and locked it. I hesitated for a second, wondering if I should grab the guest list, but decided against it, since doing that would be a dead giveaway that I’d been there. I hustled out the back and across the parking lot behind the buildings on Main Street.
I needed to get home as soon as possible, but I also needed not to kill myself in the process. If I pushed too hard, I’d probably collapse in somebody’s yard and have to take another nap before I could finish making my way home. I could just see myself waking up to Mike’s less-than-happy face staring down at me sprawled out on a neighbor’s grass. He’d want an explanation for sure, and my eye-drop-addled brain wouldn’t come up with anything other than the truth—that I’d been at the café, literally sniffing around. And that was the last thing I wanted to tell him.
Even though I did have Melissa’s comments about seeing Ephy hanging around the punch bowl ringing in my ears.
Chapter 13
I took my old childhood shortcut across the backyards on my street, hoping it would give me enough of an edge to beat Mike. It felt a little odd to be a fully grown, very almost-thirty-five-year-old woman tramping through people’s yards—especially since I’d found a body the last time I did it—but I was willing to risk feeling silly to avoid having to explain my trip to the café.
I was just crossing over into my backyard when I saw Mike’s car pull up in front of my house. I broke into a jog and immediately regretted it. Before I’d gone five feet, I was panting and lightheaded. Somehow, I still managed to make it to and through my back door just as Mike knocked at the front. As much as I wanted to collapse on the couch, I forced myself to the door and pulled it open with a big, fake smile on my face.
I regretted it as soon as I did. That kind of smile would make Mike immediately suspicious. He would know something was up, figure out what it was, and find a way to prove it if I tried to deny it. It would have been better if I’d just been late.
“Hey, Fran. Mind if I come in and sit down?” Coming from a police officer who was investigating a poisoning case I may or may not have been a suspect in, those words should have been intimidating. But between Mike’s glassy eyes and the way he swayed slightly on my doorstep, intimidation was the last thing I was feeling.
“Yeah, of course, come in.” I stepped back and held the door for him to get by.
He sank into the closest chair, put his head back, and closed his eyes.
“Are you okay?” I was relieved he hadn’t noticed my fake smile or that I was still out of breath from my brief jog, but I was also concerned. For one thing, he hadn’t noticed either of those obvious things. He also looked somehow worse than he had that morning. Probably because he’d been running around all day, trying to solve the case, instead of taking a three-hour nap like I had.
Mike grunted and waved his hand. “I just need a minute,” he muttered. “I’ll be fine.”
I went to the kitchen to make some ginger tea.
Tea wasn’t exactly my thing. It hadn’t been my mom or my grandparents’ thing, either, which was why I’d had to spend days researching different brands, varieties, and brewing techniques before I was comfortable serving any tea other than what came from some dusty old grocery store teabags after a lovely old British couple asked me for some one day. Now, although I could talk for a solid fifteen minutes on proper brewing temperatures, I still didn’t really drink tea. The same way some poor souls inexplicably weren’t coffee fans, I couldn’t fall in love with tea, no matter how much milk, sugar, syrup, or honey I did or didn’t add to it.
But ginger tea was a different story. Both my mother and grandmother had been devotees of ginger tea for all sorts of things but upset stomachs especially. Any time I’d so much as mentioned my stomach bothering me while I was growing up, a cup of ginger tea would appear as if by magic beside me. I hadn’t been much of a fan of it—its warm, spicy flavor had been too much for me as a kid. I’d gotten used to it, though, and now I found it comforting, especially when my stomach was bothering me.
I pulled my ginger out of the refrigerator, grabbed a hand grater, and started grating it. Ginger tea the way the famiglia Amaro made it wasn’t a true tea, of course, since we didn’t use tea leaves, just grated ginger steeped in water with a touch of honey for sweetness. Normally, I would let the tea brew for about ten minutes before serving it, but I didn’t think I could stand that long and doubted I’d be getting up anytime soon once I sat. So, I put the ginger into a couple of tea balls, plunked them into mugs, filled them from the water tap on the espresso machine, added a couple drops of honey in each, and carried them to the living room. I put one on the end table next to Mike and curled up on the couch with the other.
He opened his eyes just enough for me to see them flick over at the mug. “No. No coffee.”
I was suddenly even more concerned. “Do you need to go home and go to bed?”
“No, I just—” He made a disgusted face. “I stopped at the gas station. Their coffee’s gotten worse since the last time I was there. I don’t think they clean the pots. Maybe I should send the health department over.” He closed his eyes and rested his head back on the chair.
“Well, it’s not coffee anyway. It’s ginger tea.”
If it was possible, he looked even more disgusted. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
“It’ll help your stomach. Trust me.” I made a show of taking a big sip from my mug, even though the ginger hadn’t steeped enough, and I wasn’t sure Mike’s eyes were open to see it. In fact, based on the way his breathing was slowing, I was pretty sure he was asleep.
I let him be. He clearly needed the rest, and I could use the time to think. Unfortunately, the first thought that crossed my mind was Ephy standing by the punch bowl, sipping her water. Was she hovering so that she could dump eye drops in the punch bowl or for some other reason? What other reason could she have? Maybe she just didn’t enjoy big social events and preferred to hang out on the edges. Maybe. Or maybe she was as mad at the world as her clothes suggested. I sighed.
Mike stirred in his chair but didn’t wake up—or at least didn’t let on that he was awake.
I sipped my tea. It was perfect. I swirled the tea ball around in the mug, pulled it out and laid it on a napkin on the end table, then did the same for Mike’s cup.
“That stuff will really help my stomach?” Mike opened one eye and turned it towards me.
“Yup.” I took a sip from my mug to make my point.
He heaved a sigh and looked at the mug on the table next to him. He looked skeptical but picked up the mug and brought it to his lips. He made a face but didn’t complain, so I took it as a win. “So, I managed to pull some strings over at the lab, and we have the preliminary results b
ack on the food from the party.”
“It was the punch, wasn’t it?” The words exploded out of my mouth before I realized what a bad idea it was to say them out loud.
Mike’s right eyebrow went up. He stared at me silently, which of course made me nervous.
“I saw Melissa,” I blurted out. “I think you know her. She was at the party last night. The pregnant one?”
Mike’s face didn’t so much as twitch.
“Anyway, I talked to her, and I was worried because of the baby, but she was fine, not sick at all, even though she ate some of everything. Everything except the punch. The spiked punch, I mean. She had the regular punch, which is how we figured out what it was.”
Mike took another sip of his tea without taking his eyes off me. “You just happened to run into Melissa.” It was a statement, not a question, even though his disbelief was clear.
“Yes, I did,” I said, more than a little proud that I wasn’t just telling Mike what he wanted to hear but also being completely truthful.
“Here in the house?” Now both eyebrows were up, and he was looking at me the way he probably looked at his kids when they tried to tell him some far-fetched lie about how it hadn’t been them that climbed on top of the dresser and dumped out Mommy’s jewelry box—it had been the dog, yeah, the dog.
“No, I, um—I went out for a little bit. To get some fresh air.”
“Whe—” He stopped, shut his eyes, and shook his head. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath then a sip of his tea. “I’d say you missed your calling, but I’ve had your coffee, and I’m not sure you did.”
I snapped my hand to my heart and gasped. “Was that a compliment, Mike?”
“Don’t get excited. I’m sick. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
I chuckled to myself. It was the closest thing I’d get to a compliment on my detective skills from him. He barely even gave them out for my coffee and baking, and I knew he enjoyed those.