by Cassie Page
“That’s the one. And, Tuesday, that’s it.”
“What’s it, Nancy Drew? You’ve lost me.”
“Let me spell this out and see if it makes sense. We have a dead man but nobody can find the cause of death. Greta’s doctor thinks it’s a heart attack after some kind of altercation and that’s why he gets stuffed in the armoire. Can’t figure out why he would be sent to me, yet, but let’s keep going. There are three other suspicious deaths. One is called an out and out heart attack, the others have no obvious cause of death. Hence, the curse.”
“Yeah, but where does the girl with a broken neck from a so-called fall down the stairs come in?”
Olivia drained her tea. “I’m working on my feet here, Tues. Just stay with me. Mr. Harmon and the shirt duo. Three deaths. All called heart attacks in certified healthy people.”
“Okay, I’m waiting for the punch line.”
“All of them have a connection to Blackman. All of them claimed that Blackman cheated them. The girl is an outlier, unless we can tie her into this mess.”
Tuesday tilted her head skeptically. “Okay. But the three who might have a motive for killing Blackman are, and isn’t this just too inconvenient for words, very dead. And if Blackman slipped them some puffer fish, which is what you are suggesting if I’m getting your drift, he is also very dead.”
Olivia stood up. “Grrrrrrrr. Why isn’t this easy? Want some ice cream? Salted Caramel Fudge from Paymoor’s or Massimo’s Limoncello?”
“Did I hear someone say fudge?”
“You got it, girlfriend. Oh, that reminds me. Mrs. Harmon. Don’t let me forget to get my laundry out of the dryer. I keep forgetting to get those towels. The mood she’s in about all the disruption around here? She’ll be on a rampage if I don’t grab them by the time she needs to use the dryer.”
Tuesday cleared the lunch plates while Olivia scooped ice cream into bowls and retrieved the whipped cream dispenser from the Subzero and jar of The Salted Caramel’s homemade hot fudge sauce.”
Tuesday’s face lit up. “That’s what I’m talking about. Going hard core.”
Olivia held up the fudge sauce. “This stuff is better than smack. Not that I’d know the difference. Just saying if I knew the difference, I know The Salted Caramel’s would come out on top.”
Tuesday laughed and said, “Your secret is safe with me. Hey, are you rationing that stuff? C’mon. One more scoop.” She lifted the all but overflowing bowl of goodness. “Just the thing for crime stopping.” She took her first spoonful. “Chocolate understands me.”
Olivia put the perishables away and headed for the living room, already digging into the gooey wonder. “You mean it feels your pain?”
“Yes it does.”
Olivia winked. “There’s more where that came from. But, I warn you, first bowl is free. Once you’re hooked, you’re mine for life. Now let’s get comfortable. Oh, wait.” She grabbed her iPad off the counter and tucked it under her arm before she followed Tuesday into the living room.
They settled on the couches and tried to pick up the thread of the conversation, but before long, they slid their empty bowls and spoons onto the coffee table, wiped their mouths and fingers with DVD&A cocktail napkins and slipped into ice cream and fudge-fueled comas.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Going Fishing
Olivia jerked awake first with a crick in her neck from sleeping sideways on the couch. While she was out, Tuesday had quietly folded herself into the fetal position in front of the fireplace. Olivia didn’t want to wake her friend; the sugar binge probably meant that the overindulgence in alcohol the night before still had a death grip on their metabolisms. She slipped off her shoes, stretched out on the couch and adjusted soft pillows under her head. She stared up at the beamed ceiling and allowed the CD conversation to fill her brain.
What did that all that stuff about drug deals mean for her? How could she use it? How could she hide the fact that she was an accessory to robbery? An idea popped into her head and she did some Googling, read Wikipedia for a few minutes, then went over what she remembered from the CD.
Blackman and Sabrina had a very close partnership that included sleeping together. There is a chance that the wife found out about it. Hell hath no fury and all that. Plus, Blackman was apparently smuggling dope. Who else knows about that? Was he hiding it from the wife to keep the proceeds for himself? Sharing the bounty with her? Or protecting her from the consequences if he got caught? Hmm. He was smuggling drugs. Did that involve Roger?
On top of that, Harmon and the shirt couple threatened to sue Blackman, which would not be good for Greta’s social standing. Olivia has heard from several sources now that she’s a social climber. Olivia continued to run the facts or pseudo facts through her head. From what Sabrina said, it looked like Blackman was dirty dealing in that biotech firm blowup. Tuesday groaned, interrupting Olivia’s thoughts. She rolled onto her back, then sat up.
“Oh,” she moaned, holding her stomach. “Why did you let me do that?”
“Water,” Olivia advised. “Gallons of it to dilute all that sugar. I’m going to get some. Want a glass?” She struggled up and out of the clutches of the soft, down cushions. Tuesday followed her into the kitchen and headed straight for the refrigerator. “I think I’ll have a little hair of the dog,” and snatched the fudge sauce before Olivia could grab it back.
“Tuesday, you’ll hate yourself. You know you will.”
“Maybe,” she said licking her spoon, “but it hurts so good right now.”
Olivia put her hands on her hips and pointed to Tuesday’s collection of pharmaceuticals on the counter. “Is this your idea of a cleanse?”
Tuesday nodded her head, a dreamy look of ecstasy sliding over her face. “You better believe it, Betty Crocker. What have you been up to?”
Olivia with her water and Tuesday with her poison slid onto stools at the island. “Just trying to make sense of it all. Here’s what I’ve been thinking. Stay with me because I’m making this up as I go. The widow’s beloved doctor raises deadly puffer fish and let’s say he has told his favorite patient how poisonous they are. So she gets a brainstorm. She has potential troublemakers in the shirt couple and Harmon who, for the sake of argument, are planning to sue her husband. Oh, think of all the party givers who will strike her off their guest lists if that comes out. So she feeds the sue-ers some puffer fish and their deaths pass as heart attacks. Then she finds out about Sabrina and her husband, and maybe the fact that he’s hiding drug millions from her, and she decides to off her husband, too, and slips puffer fish into his hot milk.”
“Or scotch.”
“Whatever. I’m just saying. According to Wikipedia, the coroner wouldn’t find the puffer fish toxin in the bodies without a special spectrometer. It doesn’t leave a trace and the effects mimic a heart attack. But this isn’t puffer fish country. No fishmonger sells it, no restaurant serves it, and so nobody suspects puffer fish or Greta. The couple accidentally fell into the lake and drowned with no other cause of death and Harmon was running too fast for his age and collapsed. Heart attacks? Makes sense to the ME. Then we find out Greta’s a sailor.”
Tuesday licked her spoon and said, “We do?”
Olivia pulled up the text from the New York Times news alert on her iPad and showed her the extensive story about Greta’s skill and impressive track record in races on San Francisco Bay. “Who would know how to tie those complicated knots that were around the armoire? A sailor. How’s that for a theory?”
Tuesday wiped the fudge mustache from her upper lip. “Well, I think that is brilliant, Sherlock. It ties everything up in a neat package. It really does.”
Olivia beamed.
“Except for 27,000 teeny tiny questions. Where does she get the puffer fish? How does she figure out how to use it? How does she get them to eat it? Why does she send the body to you? This has been my question all along, Dick Tracy. If it’s the perfect crime, and feeding puffer fish to a victim sounds like it could be, why d
oes she make it look like murder?”
Olivia put her head down on the table in frustration, then looked up. “You would have to bring that up. Okay. One thing at a time. Let me call Jesse, my favorite authority on sea creatures.”
Her smile faded during her conversation with him. “Thanks, Jesse. Sorry to bother you. Yeah, sure. See you soon.”
“So?”
“Jesse doesn’t know very much about puffer fish, except that you have to be very skilled at preparing it or it’s curtains. Therefore, outside of Japan, where it is a delicacy, no restaurant serves it. He had no idea where somebody would get hold of puffer fish around here. He could ask his suppliers, but doesn’t think it’s available locally. So,” Olivia’s eyes brightened again, “maybe she imported it?”
“But Ols. Why go to all that trouble? Why not make the deaths look like muggings or something and blame them on the drug trade in meth city?”
Olivia corrected her. “Meth park.”
“Whatever. I just don’t get sending the body to you where everybody will know it was murder. Once murder has been established, it’s always the spouse that comes under suspicion if there are no other suspects. Why would she take that risk? And why isn’t your darling detective, pun intended, going after her? I haven’t heard anybody mention her as a suspect. So nobody knows what we know, but also perp-wise, she seems to be clean. I mean, we still don’t know why they hauled your pretty butt in, but if they are down to looking at you as a suspect that must mean they have ruled her out.”
Olivia gave up. “Let’s do something counterproductive for a change. Let’s make new labels for furniture that isn’t going to sell at the sale that nobody in Darling Valley will be caught dead at. Metaphorically speaking.”
Two hours later, with only half of the showroom furniture tagged, Tuesday slumped into one of the wing chairs. “Olivia, why did you make me eat that ice cream?
Olivia opened a new package of furniture tags and undid the knot that held the strings together. “I warned you”
Tuesday closed her eyes, clearly suffering from her overindulgence. “You did not. You opened my mouth and stuffed it down my throat like I was a goose you were raising for foie gras. You probably could sell my liver for top dollar.”
Olivia walked over to her and rubbed her shoulders. “You don’t have to do this, honey. Why don’t you take a break, sit out in the sunshine.” She looked out the window. The fog was drifting in. “What’s left of it.”
Tuesday gave her a pitiful look. “I think I need your doctor. Seriously. I’ll even brave the puffer fish.”
Olivia shooed her out of the showroom. “Go, rest. I can finish up.”
Tuesday did as she was told. Olivia tagged a few more items and then threw down her red pen and tags. Oh my god,” she said to herself. Then screamed, “TUESDAY! I’ve GOT IT.”
She ran through the showroom, up the stairs to the loft and into the guestroom where Tuesday lay on the bed with her arms crossed over her eyes.
“Tuesday!”
“What?” she asked sitting up.
“It’s not Greta who does the murders. It’s the doctor!”
“What? A doctor is a mass murder?”
“It’s happened before. Who was that guy in England? Howard Shipman? Harold somebody? He killed hundreds of his patients. Anyway, Chandler’s got the puffer fish. He’s tight with the widow so he kills the couple and Harmon because, I don’t know why. Has something to do with that biotech deal. I’d bet on it. And he gets rid of Blackman because, oh, I don’t know. I’ve done this much. You come up with something, Tues.”
Tuesday lay back down, thinking. “Maybe we don’t have to come up with everything. If you go to Richards with your suspicions, he can have the ME sample Blackman’s tissues for puffer fish toxin. The doc has puffer fish and a grudge against Blackman. That should be enough. And one more thing, Olivia. Chandler’s receptionist made a huge point of telling me that he had a matched pair of those special puffer fish at home because he was breeding them. When we went to his house the other night and he was examining you? I was looking at all of his fish. He had a special tank just like in his office for the puffer fish. But there was only one fish there.”
Olivia said, “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. I can’t believe I even noticed it, but I didn’t want to stare when he was checking you out so I looked at his fish. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time, but I swear to you, babykins. There was only one fish in that tank.”
Olivia spoke slowly. “He fed the other one to the deceased.”
Tuesday nodded her head. “That’s what I’m thinking. Tell Darling Valley’s finest that when you saw Chandler’s puffer fish, you remembered seeing a customer die of what looked like a heart attack at the time, but later was determined to be puffer fish. Let police figure out the rest. This way, you won’t have to say anything about what we heard on the CD. What difference does it make whether Blackman was a drug dealer. You just need to find out who killed him. And why he was sent to you.”
Olivia went into the kitchen, dug into her purse for her cell phone and a business card, then dialed a number. A moment later she said, “Detective Richards, please.”
Chapter Thirty: The Catch
“Coffee?” said Richards. Without waiting for an answer he offered chairs to Olivia and Tuesday, closed the door to his office and took his seat behind his desk. “Now, what is all this puffer fish business about?”
Olivia explained her theory and then backed it up with more of her argument. “I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out how I’m involved with this man’s death. And I still don’t understand, but a big piece of the puzzle is what killed him. Your reports to the press are inconclusive, except there are no signs of violence. The easy poisons are traceable, so last I heard, poison was ruled out and you were looking at some kind of sex thing gone wrong that gave him a heart attack.”
Richards nodded. “Nothing’s conclusive, but it has been put forth as a theory.”
“Well, I never would have put two and two together if Tuesday and I hadn’t been in a West Hollywood restaurant last year when a customer collapsed and died of his puffer fish entrée. Huge scandal in the restaurant scene.”
Tuesday added, “Which, in LA, is not to be trifled with.”
Olivia continued without missing a beat, twisting her hair into a ponytail when she saw a tray of rubber bands on Richards’ desk. She grabbed one, “Do you mind?” He shook his head, no, and she got on with her tale while she anchored her hair.
“Well, it was hard on me because I’d never seen a dead body before. You know, in the restaurant. I mean,” she grimaced, “he was at the next table.”
Tuesday added a throwing up gesture.
“So when I got curious about the puffer fish, I checked out Dr. Chandler on the internet. I was flying blind, and it took some digging, but I found out that he was aced out of a juicy development deal with Blackman back when they both worked in Silicon Valley for a biotech company.”
Richards was busy making notes with his Bic and yellow pad. “What else?”
Olivia gestured with her hands. “Well I don’t have anything else.” She looked over at Tuesday for confirmation. “Except for this. I’ve mentioned to you that I had a stomach ailment.” She described the scene she and Tuesday had witnessed when Greta Blackman let herself into to Chandler’s house.
Richards’ shook his head. “Interesting. You’re sure it was her?”
“Detective, I’m sure I’d recognize a woman who has publicly accused me of murder.”
Richards whistled the air out of his cheeks. “I’m going to have to do some more investigating. But I can tell you this because it will be on the Internet before nightfall. We have pretty good evidence that Blackman was involved in smuggling drugs. Roger Hatfield, an employee of his, finally admitted to us that he found a stash of drugs when he unknowingly unpacked a table or something that he found in Blackman’s office. The guy threw a fit, threatened
to fire him and expose his drug use—Hatfield is an addict—if he didn’t keep quiet. Blackman kept his mouth shut by supplying him with drugs. You’re new here, but Darling Valley has just as much of a drug problem as any other city in the country. But we are on it and, while we have a small police force, it’s highly trained. When we heard that, we had Hatfield as a suspect. Plus, someone gave us a tip that he had done the murder.”
Curious, hot with suspicion, Olivia leaned closer. ”Who would that be?”
“A guy name Forrest Gotshalk.”
Olivia gave an I thought so look to Tuesday. “Yes, I know who he is. His mother is a client of mine.”
“Well, he overheard something at a club and wanted to do his civic duty. But we checked out Hatfield and it didn’t fit. Especially when he told us that he had swept the porch before he left work the night before Blackman was killed. He left the shop and never saw him again.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Well, we were careful to keep this out of the press, but we found two sets of prints where the chest, your amory was left on the porch.”
Tuesday was putting the pieces together. “Yeah, but lots of people work in that shop. I’d think you’d find many fingerprints.”
Richards spoke slowly, stretching out the suspense. “I didn’t say fingerprints. Prints. Footprints. Shoe prints to be exact. A man’s shoe and a woman’s.”
Olivia snapped her fingers. “My Jimmy Choos!”
“Exactly. Well, I was going over some of this with Tasmania, you remember meeting her at the auction, right?”
Olivia’s stomach didn’t know what to do with this information so she just let it flutter a bit. “Sure, we remember her, right Tues?”
Tuesday smiled at Richards. “How could we forget?”
“And she told me to check with Shoe Candy. That store on Darling Boulevard.”