by Harper Lin
And Eddie. Martin didn’t even need to point out Eddie. I knew him right away.
He looked about nineteen and sported a nose piercing and two big hoops through his earlobes. Not earrings, which I had long since learned to accept on men, but those discs kids are putting in their ears now to make giant holes in their earlobes. They looked ridiculous. Maybe that’s why Eddie radiated a bad attitude.
Now, don’t think that I judged him by his piercings and the tattoos I could see poking out from under his shirt. I had learned not to judge from appearances. You don’t judge someone by the clothes they wear or the flags they wave or even the weapons they’re packing but by their eyes.
And Eddie’s eyes, frankly, scared me.
They were hard, with a confidence beyond arrogance and the flat, predatory look of a reptile.
I’d seen those eyes before—on drug barons, terrorists, career violent criminals—and they always meant trouble.
Those eyes passed over us with barely a glance. We were beneath his notice. I almost let out a sigh of relief that he didn’t recognize Martin. I suppose thirteen-year-olds were just as invisible to nineteen-year-olds as seventy-year-olds were.
The next thing I noticed was the small crowd of young men and women lounging about with him. They looked as if they were in high school and a little older, all sporting defiant fashions of one kind or another. I couldn’t keep track of the latest trends, and it didn’t matter. I’m old enough to remember the beatniks, and then the hippies, the punks, the metalheads, the ravers, the grunge kids, and whatever it was these days. The looks changed, but it was all the same. The look always said, “I don’t care what my parents and society think.”
Actually, they cared what their parents and society thought more than most kids, which was why they were so obsessed with defying them.
A quick scan of their eyes revealed no murderous reptiles among them, just a Visine salesman’s dream come true. All of these kids were high.
In a pet store.
Since when had that become trendy?
So, if these were Eddie’s customers and not fellow gang members, I didn’t have to worry about them much. I wondered if Eddie even had a gang or operated alone. I hoped for the latter, because I never liked being outnumbered.
Martin headed over to the kittens and peered in through the cages.
“What kind do you want, Grandma?”
“Um, I’m not sure,” I replied, trying to focus on my purported reason for being here.
Normally, I find kittens distracting. They’re cute and funny, and kitten memes are Facebook’s only redeeming feature.
And these kittens were especially cute. Eddie might have been a dangerous drug dealer, but he did know how to take care of animals. The cages were spacious, and each held a couple of kittens, along with simple squeaky toys and rubber balls that the little darlings chased around. As we watched, one little tabby thwacked a rubber ball into the side of the cage, making it ricochet off the side and straight into the back of another cat’s head.
The victim, a lovely animal of nearly pure white, blamed the tabby and leapt on him. The next moment, they were a rolling mass of fur until their fight knocked the rubber ball on a high arc and straight into their water dish. Both kittens got soaked and fled to opposite sides of the cage, staring wide-eyed at their invisible assailant.
We both laughed.
The cats weren’t so cute that they distracted me from the trouble in the room. I noticed the kids were on the move. A few of them left, the bell on the door jangling. An important detail—I couldn’t enter or leave the store without Eddie knowing. Some of the other kids went over to the terrariums.
We browsed the kittens for a while, and once we had overdosed on cuteness, I led Martin through the rest of the pet store. Eddie remained behind the counter, tapping away on the computer but really paying attention to everything going on in the shop. He had that slightly tense poise, that purposely turned-away face, that showed he wasn’t actually focusing on the screen but rather on everything else.
I noted with interest that Martin avoided the terrariums. While any boy his age would be fascinated with snakes and spiders, he obviously didn’t like the crowd over there. That reassured me. Much as I love Frederick and Alicia, they weren’t giving Martin enough attention, and I feared he could go down the wrong path. It looked like he had some native common sense, though.
We went into the side room with the aquariums. It had dim blue lighting to highlight the under-the-sea theme. Seashells and netting and fake ship’s anchors adorned the ceiling. A bit hokey, but the selection of fish more than made up for it. Giant tanks lined all four walls. Some held common fish like goldfish, while others held brilliant tropical fish with unreal colors.
Martin stopped to look at a navy-blue fish that looked a bit like a vertical pancake. Its tailfin was yellow, and it had two orange stripes along its body, as well as a white strip around its gills. Its lips were orange too, and it made little kissing motions as it swam lazily around the tank. The label told me it was a Scribbled angelfish. It didn’t look much like an angel to me, but it definitely looked scribbled.
“Cool,” Martin said. “You sure you don’t want some fish?”
“There’s a big aquarium in the city. You want to go sometime?” I asked, hoping for a field trip with my grandson. Anything to get him away from the Xbox.
My hopes were dashed the next moment.
“Nah, we went on a field trip there a couple of months ago.”
We continued our circuit of the room, studying all the various fish. They were really quite remarkable. I had no idea that Cheerville had such a well-stocked pet store. It looked as if Eddie was good at something other than just selling drugs and looking menacing.
I paused in front of a small tank that contained only one mottled yellow-and-brown fish. The label said it was a pufferfish.
“Check this out, Martin,” I said and tapped on the glass.
The fish immediately ballooned out to four times its original size and poked out spikes in all directions.
“Whoa! Cool.”
“Can I help you?”
I jumped and spun around as fast as my old bones allowed me. Eddie stood right behind us.
No one sneaks up on me. No one.
But he had.
I put on my best little-old-lady face.
“Oh, we were just admiring all the lovely fish. What I’m really here for is one of those adorable kittens.”
Eddie fixed me with a pair of eyes that really belonged in one of the terrariums in the other room. He had a suspicious, predatory look.
“Shall I show you some?” he asked, his voice tense.
“Sure!” I chirped.
He led us to the other room. The front door jangled as the last of the stoner kids left. We were alone with him.
“This for you, little man?” Eddie asked Martin.
“No,” my grandson mumbled, not looking at him.
“It’s for me. I get so lonely at night, and I think a kitten would be the perfect thing.”
“Weren’t you in here earlier?” he asked, staring at me curiously.
“Um, no.”
You must have mistaken me for some other little old lady, I thought. I wonder which one?
Eddie was wearing a loose, long-sleeved shirt and those baggy pants that kids liked to wear nowadays. It was the perfect ensemble for hiding a firearm. I didn’t see any obvious bulges at the waistband or the tops of his boots, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a gun hidden there. If he could sneak up on me, he could hide a gun from me. My own firearm was back home.
Martin stared at the kittens, edging a little away from Eddie.
“How about that one?” he asked, pointing at a little yellow guy.
“Sure, let’s take him.”
“Oh, wait, maybe that one,” Martin said, changing his mind.
“Sure, that’s fine.” I wanted to get out of there.
But Martin couldn’t make u
p his mind. He forgot his nervousness around Eddie as he played with all the kittens. After what seemed like forever, he finally settled on a lovely little tortoiseshell. With a profound sense of relief, I bought the cat and a carrying case and paid in cash. I didn’t want to use a credit card and let Eddie discover my name.
At last we left the shop and got back out into the open air. I allowed myself to sigh in relief.
“Cool kitten, Grandma,” Martin said, carrying the plastic case and grinning.
“What shall we call her?” I asked my grandson.
“How do you know it’s a her?”
I smiled.
“Do you really want to learn the facts of life from your grandmother?”
Martin looked like he was about to have a seizure. I let him off the hook.
“Tortoiseshells are almost always female. Males are very rare, so rare that I’m sure the store would advertise the fact so they could charge extra.”
“Oh. How about Dandelion?”
“That’s an odd name for a cat of this color.”
“It’s the familiar in the Dragon’s Fire books.”
“Dandelion it is then.”
“Mission accomplished,” Martin said in his best Call of Duty voice. “Let’s go get a burger.”
I nodded. Yes, mission accomplished. Now I knew how Lucien had been poisoned.
Chapter 9
It’s called tetrodotoxin, and it’s deadlier than cyanide. It can cause death in a healthy adult within two hours, often as quickly as twenty minutes. Almost immediately after ingestion, the victim feels a tingling sensation in his lips and mouth, as well as his extremities. This is quickly followed by dizziness and vomiting. Lucien never got to the vomiting stage because the dizziness made him fall over and crack his head on the floor. That either caused a brain clot or, perhaps, a heart attack.
So the fall was what actually killed him, but it was the tetrodotoxin that made him fall in the first place.
And where does one get tetrodotoxin? In pufferfish. That little guy we saw swimming around the fish tank in the Cheerville Pet Shoppe had enough tetrodotoxin to kill thirty people.
Pufferfish are famous for being a poisonous fish that’s considered a delicacy in Japan, where it’s called fugu. Chefs have to take a special course on pufferfish preparation before they are legally allowed to serve it, and even so, around a hundred people die from eating the fish every year, usually at hole-in-the-wall restaurants or from home cooking where the chef doesn’t have a license and is breaking the law.
I’ve never understood why people risk their lives to eat fugu, but perhaps I’m just not a gourmand. James and I tried it once in Tokyo. We didn’t want to, but the yakuza we had to make an arms deal with insisted. We were unimpressed. The sushi was a bit rubbery and had little flavor at all. The fried fugu that came later was tasty, but so was everything else on the menu, so why bother?
The next table had told us why. It was full of drunk businessmen eating fugu and speaking to each other in loud, boastful tones. This wasn’t a food to eat for enjoyment; it was a food to eat for the bragging rights.
So I had my murder weapon. Someone, almost certainly Eddie, had killed a pufferfish and extracted the poison. This is a fairly basic process, and I was sure Eddie was up to the task. Contrary to popular belief, besides your low-level street dealers, most drug dealers are actually quite intelligent. They run a high-risk, high-profit business, and the stupid ones don’t last long. Eddie, for example, kept a large pet store with a wide variety of animals well kept and well stocked. He was also clever enough to include lots of snakes and spiders to attract the kids so he could then sell them drugs. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Eddie’s self-trained knowledge in animals and chemicals was equivalent to bachelor’s degrees in zoology and chemistry.
Another thing about successful drug dealers—they never sampled their wares, at least not on the job. Eddie had been quite sober when I saw him in the pet store.
That made him all the more dangerous.
I would have to be careful when I showed up at closing time and confronted him.
Yes, he was the key. If I could get him to confess, I’d have my murderer and I’d have my accomplice. Assuming I didn’t make myself another victim.
The shop closed at eight. I’d already dropped off Martin, and it was now a quarter past seven. I was back home caring for Dandelion, who had taken to her new home as any kitten would—the instant I’d let her out of the box, she’d bolted under the couch and hadn’t been seen since.
Ah well, I’d grow on her. At least she wasn’t stuck in a cage being stared at by stoned kids anymore.
In the meantime, I had some preparations to make.
I removed my 9mm automatic pistol from its lockbox and checked it. I’d cleaned and oiled it right after visiting the shooting range, of course, but when you were entering a potential combat situation, it was best to double check everything. The last thing you needed was a jam at a critical moment.
Everything looked in top condition, and I made sure I had a full magazine. I placed it in my purse. Carrying it like that was illegal, but sometimes you had to break the law to uphold it. I knew Eddie was dealing drugs, and I felt ninety-nine percent sure that he had supplied the poison that had killed Lucien. Now all I had to do was prove it.
At gunpoint.
Just as I zipped up my purse, there was a knock at the door.
A cold prickling ran down my spine. Could Eddie have tailed me? That meant he knew where Martin lived, too.
I moved out of the line of sight of the door.
“Who is it?” I called, unzipping my purse and gripping the gun.
“Gretchen.”
Okay, that wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, but it was still plenty bad. I took a peek through the door’s spy hole. She was alone, and she looked mighty cross. I put the purse strap over my shoulder and left the purse open so I could keep my gun near.
Taking a deep breath, I opened the door.
“Why were you at my house earlier?” she demanded before even stepping inside.
I had been expecting this question but had hoped to find the murderer before having to answer it. As it was, I didn’t have a decent answer.
“I was worried about you, and so I came to visit, and then I decided to leave you alone at the last minute.”
I prayed she hadn’t noticed her garbage was missing.
“Why did you go in my garage?”
She stepped inside as she asked this. I did a quick check of her stance. Her hands were balled into fists, knuckles white in anger. If she was holding any sort of weapon, it would have to be a small one.
A vial of poison, perhaps?
Otherwise, I saw no physical threat from her. Despite her boasts of being healthy, I knew I could beat her in a fight unless she had an ace up her sleeve.
And I knew I had an ace up mine. Or in my purse, rather.
As my eyes did their work, my mind did its own. She had demanded to know why I had been in her garage, not why I had stolen her garbage. Either she was hiding the fact that she knew that, or she didn’t know why I had entered her garage.
But if she knew I had stolen her garbage and didn’t want me to know she knew, she wouldn’t have mentioned the garage at all. She would want to lull me into a false sense of security and poison me when the opportunity arose.
I put on a contrite face.
“I’m sorry, Gretchen. I listened at the door. I didn’t want the neighbors to see me snooping at the front door, so I went into the garage and listened there.”
“You were spying on me?” Her voice came out shrill.
Taking a gamble, I said, “I was worried about knocking on your door, so I listened to hear if you had other company. Instead, I heard you crying. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to be left alone or not, so I got cold feet and left.”
“Nonsense! You were mooning over Lucien. Can’t you people leave us in peace now that he’s dead? I am so tired of women flirting with my
husband. Oh, I expected it with some of these bored housewives, but I thought more of you. You had a career. But no, you’re just like the rest of them. Lucien always tried to be patient with you silly old girls, and I did, too. And this is the thanks that I get?”
Gretchen blinked and focused on the floor behind me.
“I didn’t know you had a cat.”
Dandelion had chosen this moment to peek out from under the sofa. As soon as the kitten saw Gretchen notice her, she disappeared back beneath the furniture.
Gretchen’s eyes roved around the room and noted the cat carrier by the door and the free brochure for new pet owners the Humane Society gave out with each purchase that sat on my coffee table.
“Oh, you just got it.”
Then she turned and glared at me.
“Well, at least you’ll have some company. You’re certainly not welcome at my house ever again.”
With that, she stormed out the door. Well, “stormed” is a rather grandiose term for walking slowly but angrily out of my house. That’s the problem with spending most of your time with senior citizens. Everything takes longer, including the awkward moments. Especially the awkward moments.
My mind and emotions were in a whirl. I didn’t know what to think of her visit or her reactions, but I was becoming more and more convinced that she wasn’t the murderer. Whoever killed Lucien had acted in cold blood. Gretchen wasn’t acting cold at all. Plus her comments about Lucien being a loyal husband despite years of temptation sounded like the truth.
As she left, I made excuses about having to see my son and drove out, too. Luckily, her house was in the opposite direction of the Cheerville Pet Shoppe, and so we soon parted. I watched her through my rearview mirror as she rounded a corner and disappeared from view.
Even though I was pressed for time, I made a slow circuit of my block and came back to my own house. She was nowhere to be seen. Good.
Then I made a beeline for the pet shop and made it just in time to see Eddie turn the sign from Open to Closed.
Acting like a flustered and dotty old lady, I shuffled out of my car, waving my hand frantically over my head at him. He frowned and waited for me.