Adele gazed at Erin, sighing. “I didn’t gather the comfrey myself,” she said. “It was in with the herbs you gave me from Clementine.”
Chapter 14
All of the oxygen went out of the air around Erin, and she could suddenly not breathe. Nor could she talk. She just stared into Adele’s deep, dark eyes for an eternity, unable to believe it could be true.
Erin swayed on her feet, opening her mouth but still unable to find the words. Vic and Adele had both gotten to their feet without Erin being aware of it, and they took her, one on either side, and escorted her over to one of the empty deck chairs, murmuring to her and lowering her into the seat.
“It’s okay,” Vic said. “Just take a few deep breaths. It was a shock, but it’s going to be okay.”
Erin tried to push air in and out.
“Do you want a drink of water?” Vic suggested. “Tea?” She bit her lip, aware that tea was maybe not the best thing to offer on the heels of Adele’s revelation.
Erin shook her head.
Adele sat in the chair across from Erin and waited. She didn’t say anything else. She just waited.
It was some time before Erin was breathing normally again and thought that she could talk, even though her heart was hammering so hard in her chest that it hurt. Maybe some digitalis was just what she needed to slow it down.
“The comfrey in Joelle’s tea was from the herbs of Aunt Clementine’s that I gave you?” Erin asked.
It wasn’t like she thought she had misunderstood. She just didn’t want it to be true.
“Yes.”
“And… it was labeled comfrey?”
“It was labeled boneknit,” Adele said. “One of the folk names for comfrey.”
“And boneknit… it wasn’t used as the name for more than one herb?” Erin asked. “There are some names that are used for more than one herb, because they have similar properties…”
“No,” Adele said. “Boneknit is only used for comfrey. Not for foxglove. Foxglove is never used for healing bones.”
“Is it… used for anything?”
“Edema. A heart tonic. But you have to be very careful.”
Erin was at a loss. She didn’t know what to say. Her voice was echoing in her head and she felt removed from herself.
“So you think that Clementine collected foxglove, thinking it was comfrey, and labeled it wrong?”
“I’m not sure,” Adele said slowly. “I didn’t see anything that would suggest to me that it wasn’t comfrey. It had the smell and look of comfrey. No damp or mustiness. It was all similar in color and texture of the leaves. I wouldn’t have guessed, looking at it, that it was more than just comfrey.”
Erin rubbed her forehead. “I can’t believe it. I never would have given you Clementine’s herbs if I had thought there was anything wrong with them. Clementine was careful. I never would have expected her to pick the wrong thing like that.”
Adele nodded. “I’ve gone over it and over it in my mind. But there was nothing to indicate that it was contaminated. All of her herbs were carefully bottled and labeled. She seemed like a very competent herbalist.”
“I thought she was.”
“Anybody can make a mistake,” Vic comforted. “Even someone who has handled herbs for years. Or maybe someone else collected it for her and she didn’t realize they had made a mistake.”
Erin frowned, thinking about Clementine’s last days on the earth.
“Someone else could have brought it to her,” Vic insisted, misinterpreting Erin’s expression.
“Yes. You’re right. She wasn’t able to get around the last little while. She had to close up the shop and just stayed at home. Even just trying to get around here, she took a fall and broke her hip. So then she was confined to bed. She could have asked someone else to collect boneknit for her, to help her hip heal faster.”
Vic’s eyes widened. “And if someone collected foxglove instead of comfrey, they might have poisoned Clementine too.”
“She hadn’t been well. It’s not unusual for people who are old and frail not to recover from a broken bone. Their bodies can’t take the abuse. No one would think her death was suspicious. It wasn’t like with Joelle, where a woman who had been vibrant and healthy a few days earlier passed away suddenly. She was already faltering.”
“We don’t know that Clementine ever took foxglove,” Adele said firmly, “and there’s no way to find out. You’re only making yourself miserable thinking about it.”
Erin shook her head slowly. “I can’t believe it. What if she was poisoned?”
“If she was, it was by mistake,” Vic said. “No one intentionally hurt her. She didn’t have any enemies.”
Erin didn’t know of anyone who held a grudge against Clementine. But that didn’t mean Vic was right. They couldn’t know for sure. None of them had been living in Bald Eagle Falls when it happened. They didn’t know anything that might have been going on below the surface, things that no one had known about or that no one had shared with Erin.
“At least this helps your case,” Erin told Adele. “You weren’t the one who collected the herbs. You just went by what the bottle said. They can test it. And you don’t have any previous connection with Joelle, so you don’t have any reason to intentionally poison her.”
Adele’s eyes cut to the side. A tell.
“What?” Erin asked, running through what she had just said in her mind. “You didn’t know Joelle, right?”
Adele didn’t answer.
Erin had assumed, since neither Adele nor Joelle were from Bald Eagle Falls, that they didn’t know each other. Adele had definitely given Erin the impression that she didn’t know Joelle, asking about what she was doing there and what had happened with Trenton and Davis when Joelle had been there previously. But Erin couldn’t remember Adele actually saying she didn’t know Joelle.
“You know Joelle?” Vic demanded, her eyes wide. “Well, don’t that beat all. How do you know her?”
Adele folded her hands in her lap. “I don’t know if I’m ready to discuss that.”
“It isn’t any of our business,” Erin admitted. But that didn’t stop her from being curious. Adele knew Joelle. The fact that she didn’t want to talk about it probably meant they weren’t best friends. Adele was back to being in hot water. She had been the one to make the tea, and she had some kind of grievance or past with Joelle. She could tell the sheriff that she hadn’t been the one to pick the comfrey or foxglove for the tea, but she couldn’t prove a negative.
“If the sheriff doesn’t call on you, you’d better go see him anyway,” Erin suggested. “It will look better if you’re up front about everything.”
Adele nodded. “I’ll have to tell him that the herbs came from Clementine…”
“Yes. Go ahead. Tell him everything.”
Vic and Adele both looked at Erin.
“What? What is it?”
“You’re already a suspect,” Vic said. “Now we’re going to tell the sheriff that you had access to herbs from Clementine’s collection.”
“But I gave them to Adele. That’s what she’s going to tell him.”
“You might have kept back foxglove. Or mixed it with the comfrey.”
“I didn’t. And how would I know to do that? I’m a city girl, I don’t know what medicinal purposes the different herbs have. I can pick out ginger or comfrey by smell, but I can’t tell you their properties.”
“But the books you gave me from your aunt could,” Adele said. “Both comfrey and foxglove are in the handwritten book. Maybe in others too, I haven’t looked through them all. It would have been easy for you to figure out.”
“Well, I didn’t,” Erin said flatly. “There’s no point in trying to hide the details from the sheriff, he’s going to ferret them out sooner or later anyway. If I try to cover it up, it just makes me look more suspicious.”
“Sheriff Wilmot knows you didn’t kill Joelle,” Vic asserted.
“Whether he thinks I did or not, he
’s still got a job to do. Hopefully, Joelle died of natural causes and all of this is just academic.”
Adele had left, and Erin had rounded up the animals to take them back inside. Orange Blossom was looking wild-eyed and was reluctant to go back into the house, but a few shakes of his treats can eventually convinced him, and he slunk into the house, looking at her reproachfully when she shut the door behind him.
“Sorry, you can’t stay outside all night,” Erin told him. She firmly believed that pets, even cats, should be kept indoors and didn’t want to risk any mishaps with cars or cougars or other hazards. Besides which, she was pretty sure that he’d end up yowling outside the door to be let back in at the most inconvenient time, and with his volume, he would be waking the neighbors.
Vic said her goodbyes to the pets and headed back to her apartment. Erin watched her across the yard and then set the burglar alarm. She was going through her usual nightly rituals when there was a knock on the front door. Firm. A knock she recognized. For a moment, she just stood there, uncertain what to do. Then she went to the front door, disarmed the alarm, and let Terry in.
“I know it’s late for you,” he said. “I promise I won’t keep you long.”
He stood there awkwardly, K9 at his side, waiting for her approval. Erin motioned to the armchair.
“Help yourself.”
He did. Orange Blossom had finished his treat and approached warily. He sat in the kitchen doorway and started to wash, staring at K9 the entire time. K9 settled at Terry’s feet.
“Erin… I passed the case to Sheriff Wilmot so that you and I would still be able to see each other without there being any accusations of bias or conflict of interest.”
Erin nodded. “Yes, I know.”
“But somehow, it meant that we stopped seeing anything of each other. I don’t know why. But it’s not what I wanted. I thought we could just go on like we were before.”
“Maybe that was naive. For both of us.”
“I don’t like things like they are. Is there any way we can get back on track? Anything I could do for you? Can I just… come see you again like I was before? Or we could go out for dinner?”
“Are you sure that wouldn’t reflect badly on your reputation? Even if you have passed the investigation off to the sheriff, people will still think you’re in a position of conflict.”
“I…” He gazed off, considering the matter. “I’m okay with that if you are.”
Erin sat down on the couch. She patted the cushion beside her for Orange Blossom to jump up, but the cat stayed stubbornly in the doorway, looking daggers at K9.
“I miss you,” she admitted. “But I think it’s also good that I’m spending more time with Vic, because she doesn’t have Willie anymore… or not for now, anyway. If it’s the three of us, she might feel like a third wheel and not be comfortable.”
“But we can still see each other.”
“I don’t see why not. I’m not the one who changed my routine.”
He smiled. Erin was happy to see the familiar dimple appear in his cheek. Nothing like a strong man in uniform with a cute little dimple. Erin suppressed a giggle, trying to remain serious.
“I need to get to bed. Do you want to get supper together tomorrow? Can you manage that on your shift?”
“Sure. You know I could get called away, but I won’t leave you in the lurch if I can help it. I’ll pop in at the bakery around closing and we’ll decide where we’re going.”
“Okay.”
They both stood up. K9 got to his feet and shook himself. Terry leaned over slightly to give Erin the whisper of a kiss, and then he was heading out the door.
“Sweet dreams, then, Erin.”
Erin held the door, watching him go, before she shut it and secured it.
“Sweet dreams,” she echoed.
Chapter 15
The day was a blur. Erin kept busy, so the day flew by quickly, and she wasn’t left with a lot of time to worry about Terry or their upcoming date. Everything seemed fine between them. They would reconnect, and everything would go back to normal.
She was more worried about Adele meeting with Sheriff Wilmot. Would he treat her okay? Would he believe what she had to say? How would her confession that she had known Joelle before coming to Bald Eagle Falls impact the investigation? The last thing Erin wanted to hear was that he was arresting Adele and as far as he was concerned, it was all over. He wouldn’t just jump to conclusions, would he? Just because Adele had been the one to prepare the tea, that didn’t mean that she had poisoned Joelle, either intentionally or accidentally.
Knowing Joelle didn’t mean she had poisoned her. The two might have been close friends. Why else would she have gone to Joelle’s house with the tea? They were friends. Adele wanted to help out and had taken her the tea to help her to heal faster. She didn’t know the comfrey was mixed with foxglove.
“Erin,” Vic called. And then, “She’s in outer space today.”
Erin came back down to earth and saw Terry watching her. She flushed. “Sorry,” she said. “I was just thinking about something. Easy to do when you’re lost in a repetitive task.” She motioned to the dishes she had been washing. “You’re ready to go?”
“I can help clean up.”
“You don’t need to help,” Erin protested. But he did, and pretty soon Erin was ready for dinner. “I’ll see you later tonight?” Erin asked Vic. “There are frozen dinners in the freezer if you want, and—”
“I know where everything is. Have a nice time.”
“Okay. Sorry—”
“Go with Officer Piper. I’ll take your car home. I’ll see you tonight.”
Erin let Vic go, and she and Terry decided on the Chinese food place for their supper.
By the time they worked their way through hot and sour soup and dumplings, Erin felt like they had broken through the awkwardness and everything was back to normal. Yes, there was an investigation ongoing, but Terry wasn’t directly involved in it, and the sheriff hadn’t yet turned his attention back to Erin. She didn’t know how things had gone with Adele’s interview, but at least the sheriff hadn’t immediately dropped what he was doing to arrest Erin. Every time thoughts of Joelle’s death reasserted themselves, Erin pushed them away. She was going to enjoy her date with Terry, no matter what else was happening.
That is, until Terry’s phone rang and, looking down at the screen, Erin saw it was Sheriff Wilmot. Terry hesitated, but Erin nodded.
“Go ahead. He is your boss.”
Terry made a face as he picked it up, apologetic. “Piper.”
The sheriff apparently went straight into whatever instructions or report he had for Terry, since Terry just sat there listening to the phone, occasionally nodding, but not answering or interrupting. Frown lines appeared between his brows. Eventually, he gave a more emphatic nod, and spoke.
“Yes, sir. I’ll think on it and see what I can come up with. Uh… I’m with Erin Price, do you mind…?”
Erin could just hear the sheriff’s tinny voice assert, “we’re going to need as much help as we can get,” before hanging up.
Terry put his phone down on the table slowly and deliberately. Erin waited, trying not to show her curiosity. The silence drew out, and Erin finally cracked. “Well? What was that all about?”
Terry startled, as if he had forgotten she was even there. He focused his gaze on her.
“There wasn’t enough digitalis in the tea to poison Joelle. The concentration was quite low, so unless she’d had several cups of it, it’s not likely what killed her.”
Erin blinked, taking this in. “It wasn’t the tea.”
“Apparently not.”
“So it doesn’t matter who made the tea or where the comfrey came from.”
He gave a little frown. “No. It doesn’t matter.”
Erin gave a sigh of relief. That took the heat off of her and Adele. Sheriff Wilmot might still consider Erin a suspect, because she had a motive, and who knew whether Adele had a motive
for harming Joelle? There was no way for any of them to know what had happened in their past if Adele wasn’t talking about it. But at least the murder weapon had not been provided by one of them.
Terry was still watching her. Erin thought about what he had said so far. “So what was the cause of death? It wasn’t just a blood clot?”
“What makes you think it wasn’t a blood clot?”
“Because you have to think about it and the sheriff said he could use all the help he could get. That doesn’t sound like a random occurrence. It doesn’t sound like an accident or natural causes.”
“You’re too smart for your own good,” Terry said, the dimple making an appearance.
Erin smiled back.
“So here’s the thing. She did have toxic levels of digitalis.”
“But you said she couldn’t have gotten enough from the tea.”
“She couldn’t have. There was only a token amount in the tea. Like someone wanted to mislead us into thinking that was the source of the poison.”
“Then how was she poisoned? Was it a pill or injection? In something she ate? You can’t accidentally get digitalis by walking past foxglove in the woods.”
“You know how Joelle had hurt herself. How she’d tripped and hurt her leg.”
“Right.”
“Well, she’d applied a poultice to the wound on her leg to make it heal faster.”
Erin waited for Terry to go on, and then realized that was the entire story. He didn’t have anything else to add.
Erin finally connected it up. “There was foxglove in the poultice?”
“It was almost entirely foxglove.”
“And she absorbed it through her skin?”
“Apparently, applying foxglove to broken skin speeds the absorption process significantly.”
“Poor Joelle! Did she make the poultice herself? Maybe she’s the one who contaminated the tea, because she’d handled the poultice. Maybe it was all just an accident.”
“It’s possible. The sheriff will need to explore the possibilities further. But right now… we don’t know. The people who knew Joelle—and no one has claimed to know her very well—have said that it seemed unlikely she would know anything about poultices herself. It’s something of a dying art. Generally, it’s only the grandmas or great-grandmas that know anything about applications like that.”
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