by Rae Davies
Stone took a bite out of the bulb.
I didn’t like the man, but seriously... I jumped to my feet. “Spit it out. Don’t swallow—”
He swallowed. Then he took another bite. “A bit strong. Next time, you might want to pick them earlier.” Then he dropped the remains in the trash and muttered something I couldn’t decipher in Peter’s direction.
When he turned on me, his face was colder than I’d ever seen it. “Who have you been talking to, Ms. Mathews? Both Detective Blake and Officer Pearson say they haven’t given you any information about this case, but you did visit your brother recently, didn’t you? Did he encourage you to stage this farce?”
“Farce?” The man was insane. I came in with a legitimate lead and he—
He leaned forward. “I don’t know who the two of you planned to frame, but it won’t work.”
Peter took a step forward. His face was grim, but his attention wasn’t on me. It was on Stone. His hands were loose at his side, but I could see the tension in his body.
George must have seen it too. He stepped between the two men, his arms held out.
Stone shot another ugly look my direction and stalked out of the office.
I moved to race after him, but Peter put his arm across the doorway, cutting me off.
“You can’t let him leave. Not after eating—”
“Onion. That was a wild onion.” Peter plucked the remains of the plant from the trash and held it out to George. “Show her. Then send her home. I have...” He looked down the hall where Stone had disappeared. “...work to do.”
o0o
I hadn’t just slunk home after Stone and Peter’s dismissal. I’d stood my ground for as long as it took George to look up wild onions on the Internet and show me a picture.
The plant Eric Handle had picked for me was most definitely wild onion. I based that not just on the pictures George showed me but also the fact that Stone was, when I left, still very much alive and very much not showing signs of falling victim to anything more deadly than heartburn.
Even the heartburn wasn’t for sure. It was more something I was hoping for.
Back home, I mumbled and grumbled and felt sorry for myself. Stone had treated me like I was an idiot, and Peter hadn’t stayed around to hear my entire story.
Okay, yes, I had apparently been wrong about the onion, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t on to something with my theory.
Eric did forage, and there were plenty of poisonous plants that grew in the wild. Plus there was the recipe card, and Eric’s connection to both Tiffany and Hope.
He had to be the killer.
Tomorrow, I would get a recipe card from the Antlers and take it to Peter. And maybe I’d call my mother too. There might be more she could get from FriendTime...
Mulling this over, I got ready for bed and, dressed in my favorite flannel jammies, crawled under the covers.
What felt like only minutes later, I woke up to the sound of water running and a malamute howling.
“What the...” I sat up, groggy and disoriented.
The distinct odor of cocoa tickled my nose. I rubbed at my eyes and flipped on my bedside lamp.
A steaming mug of cocoa sat on the table beside me. Beside it was a note.
Sorry your day was so rough.
It was signed, Peter.
My heart constricted.
How sweet was that? Peter had made me cocoa. The mug was warm against my skin, and the first sip of cocoa was rich and sweet and comforting.
I had the best boyfriend in the entire world.
There was a thump from the laundry room.
I sat up a little straighter. “Peter,” I called.
Another thump and then the woo woo sound of my dog’s righteous indignation.
Kiska was not happy. Not an unusual occurrence, but he should have been beside the bed by now, yelling at me in clear uncertain terms.
I looked down at the mug in my hand. Peter’s offering.
Except Peter wasn’t here when I went to sleep, and he didn’t have a key to my house. And while I was sure he was capable of getting past my 100-year-old locks, he, rule-follower that he was, would not do that.
In the bathroom, a faucet squeaked, and the sound of water running stopped.
The cocoa still coating my mouth curdled. I set the mug back on the table and jumped out of bed.
The cold floor beneath my feet jarred me completely out of sleep. I leapt forward, intent on getting out of the bedroom before whoever was in my bathroom realized I was awake. My covers fell as I moved and tangled around my legs. I made it to the door only to fall through it and onto the floor of my living room.
“Don’t tell me you don’t like cocoa?”
Eric Handle, dressed all in black, stood over me with a pistol in his hand.
“I really don’t want to shoot you,” he said.
Then don’t, seemed the appropriate response, but I kept the smartass response to myself.
“Why don’t you come back to bed and drink your cocoa?”
Like a good little girl.
Instead, I glanced around for a weapon, but the living room was dark and the light spilling in from the bedroom was not enough to reveal a Bazooka that I had somehow forgotten that I’d left lying on the floor behind the couch.
He cocked his gun. “Bullets hurt.”
Desperate, I found my voice. “They’re also hard to make look like an accident.”
He shrugged. “Contingency plan. Robbery. Single woman alone in the woods. It was only a matter of time.”
Except, as I’d told Leslie Danes, Helena wasn’t a high crime area—but then again, thanks to him, it was a lot more high in the crime area than it had been.
“I have a dog,” I offered.
“That you unfortunately left locked in the laundry room,” he replied. “Bad decision.”
The laundry room had gone eerily silent. No howling. No throwing of a malamute body against the door. Under normal circumstances, this would have been cause for investigation, but considering the gun pointed at me, I let it slide.
“I guess this means you killed Tiffany.” It was an unusual conversation opener, but I wanted to know, and I wasn’t in any hurry to go back to bed at the moment.
Handle, however, didn’t seem inclined to answer.
“Why Ben?” I asked. “He’s a good guy. He supports your cause. Why would you want to frame him?”
The HA! founder sucked in a big, apologetic breath. “It wasn’t personal. Just convenient.”
In other words, the damn Lemon and its damn Lemon non-starting ways had created an opportunity to tie Ben to Tiffany’s death, and Handle took it.
“And Hope? She was HA! to her core.”
Regret flickered over his face. “True, but she wouldn’t leave Tiffany alone. She’s why I had to kill Tiff in the first place. All those posts on FriendTime and then the protest on Tiffany’s opening night... Tiffany freaked and threatened to—” He closed his mouth, apparently thinking better of confessing all.
From my position on the floor, I tried to look sympathetic. “She had something on you, huh? Old girlfriends, they can be the worst.”
He didn’t buy my act, or maybe he was just getting impatient; he stepped closer and motioned with the weapon. “I’m losing patience. Back in the bedroom.”
Figuring I’d stalled with words as much as I could, I moved my feet to make it seem as if I was trying to stand. In reality, I was just buying more time, grasping for an idea of how to get the hell out of the situation.
Unfortunately, none came.
I moved to my feet. Eric waited for me to come close, then stood back as I shuffled past on my way back to the bed.
“Drink the cocoa,” he ordered again.
Sitting on the mattress, I wrapped my hand around the still-warm cup and sucked in a breath. This couldn’t be it. I couldn’t be meant to die at the hands of a crazed animal rights activist. I loved animals. He loved animals. How could he kill me?
A little sob forming in the back of my throat, I picked up the cup and took a drink, and then with Handle’s prompting, a few more.
I was staring at the cup and feeling even more morose when Kiska and Pauline barreled into the bedroom.
Eric jerked, his attention moving from me to my dog. Kiska, his limited patience in the negatives, took two steps back for increased volume and began to yell in the biggest, loudest woo woos any malamute could hope to produce. Pauline, apparently intent on making her own point, flew onto the bed and flapped her wings in a display so impressive, I could feel the wind moving my hair and pushing me into action.
I staggered to my feet. Eric turned, the gun in his hand raising and his mouth opening to yell... I didn’t know what and I didn’t care. I smashed the oversized ironstone mug into the side of his head with every bit of strength I could muster.
Cocoa splattered everywhere. Eric fell sideways. Rage flaring, I shoved him hard and knocked him to the ground. Then I picked up the now-empty mug and bashed him in the head again. Finally, unsure if he was alive, dead, awake, or unconscious, I scrambled over his cocoa-soaked form and picked up his gun.
o0o
It took Peter a lot less time to get to my house than I’d expected. Uniformed police weren’t far behind, and Stone arrived a few minutes after them.
Three a.m. and my small ghost town was hopping. My neighbors even came out of their houses for a while to see what was happening.
George apparently handled them.
I stayed inside with Kiska on one side of me and Pauline on the other. They’d stayed that way since I’d hung up from Peter, Pauline with her gaze glued to Eric, Kiska grinning and just happy to be free from the laundry room.
Eric wasn’t unconscious, but he wasn’t exactly alert either. He sat with his hand pressed against the side of his head as if worried that his brains might leak out.
I did my best to follow Pauline’s lead and kept my hand and gaze steady.
I might not have shot him to save myself, but I sure as hell wasn’t risking Kiska or Pauline getting hurt or him escaping and Stone claiming everything that had happened tonight was of my own invention.
Peter announced his arrival with an official “Police,” appearing in my bedroom seconds after I responded that I was as fine as I could be and had the situation under control for the moment.
His revolver pointed at Handle, my boyfriend-to-the-rescue took the activist’s weapon from me.
While uniformed officers put Handle in handcuffs and led him out the front door, Peter holstered his weapon and looked at me.
I hadn’t moved from my position on the bed and neither had my companions.
Honestly, I was a bit afraid if I did move, my knees would buckle.
Before Peter could say anything, I heard the front door open again.
Peter took my hand and pulled me to my feet. “You’re fine. Don’t let him get to you.”
The words were barely vocalized before Stone stood in my bedroom doorway. Something about seeing him there in my house, in the place where I should have felt most safe, brought everything that had happened home.
I bent forward, ready to crumble, but Peter placed a wide warm hand on my back, reminding me that I wasn’t alone.
“Why don’t we talk in the living room,” he said, his voice strong and assured.
Stone stepped back, giving me a moment alone with Peter, Pauline, and Kiska. It was all I needed. Gaze straight ahead, I walked into my living room.
Stone started. “Can you tell me what happened?”
I could and I did, complete with the cocoa, the note that Handle had wanted me to think was from Peter, and Kiska’s newly found talent for opening the laundry room door.
More uniformed officers came in and disappeared into the bedroom. A few minutes later, one came back out and spoke in low tones to Stone.
He looked at me. “There was water in the bathtub.”
“Eric did that.” The world went a little fuzzy. I took a step back, hitting Peter’s reassuring form.
His hand moved from my back to my waist. “How much of the cocoa did you drink, Lucy?”
I didn’t know, and I couldn’t answer. My lips were thick, and my eyelids seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. I turned, landing in Peter’s embrace.
He was warm and welcoming, and he smelled like cinnamon.
Cinnamon would have been good on the cocoa.
“Lucy?”
The world shifted. At first I thought I’d fallen, but then I realized Peter had picked me up. My head rested on his shoulder, and his arms were under my legs.
Then we were moving, fast. I wasn’t sure where we were going, and I didn’t like that we seemed to have left Stone alone in my house with Kiska and Pauline, but Peter wouldn’t listen to reason... or maybe he didn’t understand my reason. I placed my hand on my mouth, checking to see if it was open.
“Lucy... stay awake...”
o0o
I woke up in the hospital, feeling like a towel that had been rung out one too many times. My stomach felt hollow, and there was a bad taste in my mouth.
I groped around on the rolling tray for a pitcher of water and drank straight from its plastic spout.
“She’s awake.”
Betty, Phyllis, and Rhonda crowded around my bed. Peter was there too, but in the back. I could see his hat above Betty’s crocheted silk beanie.
“He was going to drown you!”
“A tree-hugger. Put more stock in cows than he did people.”
They continued babbling their indignation and offering bits of information on Eric Handle, what he’d done to Tiffany and Hope, and what he’d tried to do to me.
Betty pushed her way to the front. “HA! had tapes of animal abuse at factory farms owned by...” She named one of the top fast food companies in the country. “Tiffany convinced Handle to back off in exchange for some moola.” She rubbed her fingers together. “He used his part to start his food company, and Tiffany used hers to go to culinary school.”
Rhonda piped up. “Their relationship couldn’t survive the lies.” Always the romantic, she made the loss of the two’s love sound like a Shakespearean tragedy. Never mind that they’d sold out their cause for cash.
I glanced from one eager face to the other. “How do you know all this?”
The three turned to stare at Peter, who raised one eyebrow and smiled.
“No thanks to him,” Betty grumbled.
Rhonda continued, “Daniel told us most of it. Once you found out who the real killer was and Handle was arrested, Daniel was able to get some worthwhile information out of the other HA! members.” She patted my hand. “He really isn’t half the investigator that you are.”
I appreciated that she was giving me credit and stroking my ego, but at the moment, I was more interested in learning the details, whether supplied by Daniel or not.
I looked back at Betty, who picked up where she had left off before. “Tiffany called Handle that night threatening to tell all if he didn’t call off HA!”
That explained the phone call Carl had claimed Tiffany was waiting on.
Not to be outdone, Phyllis elbowed her way into the front. “Instead, he fed her...” She looked at Peter too.
This time he answered. “Death camas.” His gaze moved to me, knowing. “The bulbs look like onions.”
Onions. I wasn’t sure whether to gloat or feel sick. “But what he gave me...”
“Were wild onions.” Peter confirmed.
Which explained Stone’s confidence that I’d known something that I hadn’t. Not that I was going to be forgiving him any time soon for not listening to me.
“Part of Eric and Tiffany’s relationship was based on their mutual love of food,” Rhonda explained. “Daniel guesses that after everyone had left, Eric came by ‘to talk things out,’ and suggested they cook, like they had done in the past.”
“Except this time the ingredients included death camas,” I added.
Bett
y nodded. “He fed her the plant and probably planned on that being the end of it, but she wandered out onto the street.”
Where Daniel had seen her.
“Rather than try and get her back in the building, we think he just took her to where he knew Ben had left the Lemon. With Ben owning Pauline, and Tiffany serving goose liver, Ben made a perfect patsy.”
“Then he left her there.” No one responded to my statement, but then I hadn’t expected them too.
After a moment, I swallowed and asked, “What about Hope?”
Peter shrugged. His way of saying he wasn’t telling. I looked at Rhonda.
“I think when you asked her about the flowers that they’d found in Ben’s Egg, she guessed that they weren’t flowers at all. She’d been with Eric for a while. Long enough to have taken his foraging class. She must have realized that Eric killed Tiffany and how.”
And stupid, starry-eyed girl that she was, she’d probably asked him, never suspecting that he would kill her too.
”The paper said this morning that there were sedatives in her system,” Phyllis chimed in.
We all looked at Peter. He looked back, giving us nothing.
“He must have knocked her out and then dropped the hay on her,” Phyllis mused. “That fits, since the doctors said you had sedatives in your system too, and he was going to drown you,” she added, a little too clinically for my taste.
Rhonda jumped in. “You didn’t take anything on your own, did you?”
I shook my head no. “He was making me drink cocoa. That must have been why.”
“And drawing you a nice warm bath to fall asleep in and under...” Phyllis added.
Betty muttered something and elbowed her in the back.
The two of them turned on each other, but Peter stepped in immediately, ushering them out of the room.
A few seconds later, he was back, holding a phone. “Someone wants to talk to you.”
I glanced at Rhonda, but she shook her head and stepped back.
“Lucy? Oh, my goodness, are you okay? Ben called. He’s been released, but then he said you were in the hospital, and some crazy man tried to kill you.”
Ben walked in the door, looking none the worse for wear for his time in jail. Seeing me on the phone, he grinned.