Chapter 23
Erin dreamt for a long time. She didn’t drift in and out of sleep like she did when she was sick or anxious. But she wasn’t exactly in a normal state of sleep, either. There were lots of dreams, the kind where she didn’t know whether she was dreaming or not until she woke up, but then she found out she wasn’t awake, but was really stuck in another dream after all. There were people coming and going, talking to her and touching her, and the various monitors the hospital had put on her got in her way and kept her from getting comfortable. She just wanted them off. Her stomach hurt. Her body hurt. Her head didn’t feel right.
Erin opened her eyes. “Why doesn’t someone shut that light off?” she demanded.
Terry moved into her line of vision. “Erin?”
“I’m trying to sleep; can’t they turn off the lights?”
He smiled. “I’ll ask them.”
Erin closed her eyes again. She lay there for a while, waiting to wake up again, or maybe to fall asleep.
“Willie has your truck,” she told Terry.
“I got it back. Thanks.”
“He’s a really bad singer.”
Terry laughed. “Is he? I’ve never heard him sing.”
Erin waited. Sleep still didn’t come.
“Can I go home? Is Vic feeding the animals?”
“I’m sure she is. You can go home when the doctors decide you’re well enough. What do you remember about what happened?”
“Nothing. I was sick. Willie brought me here, but he should have just left me home to sleep. Then I could get enough sleep and still get up in time for the bakery.”
“He did the right thing to bring you here. You would have died if he hadn’t acted as quickly as he did.”
Erin opened her eyes again and turned her head to look at Terry. “I wouldn’t have died!”
“You were poisoned. Something very fast-acting. Not digitalis this time.”
“I wasn’t poisoned.”
“You were. Can you tell me who would have had access to the tea and the jam?”
“Access?”
“Who could have contaminated them?”
“No one. They were just in my kitchen. No one touched them.”
“Adele.”
“Adele didn’t poison me.”
Terry raised his brows. “You’re a little more… oppositional than usual. Did you know that?”
“No, I’m not.”
He smiled. “I think you’re still a little confused. Adele was in the kitchen alone, with access to the tea and the jam, wasn’t she? Just for a few minutes?”
“No. I was in there with her.”
“But you came out to the living room when Vic called you. To watch the cat chasing the laser pointer.”
Erin remembered that. “She thought it was so funny. But Adele came out too. She said they used to get their cat to chase flashlights.”
Terry shook his head slowly. “No, Adele didn’t come into the living room with you. She was still in the kitchen.”
“I don’t think so,” Erin said firmly.
“Tell me about the jar of jam. Do you remember which kind of jam you were eating?”
“Jam Lady jam. That’s what we always get now.”
“I know that. But what flavor, do you remember?”
“Strawberry. The new batch.”
“The new batch?”
“Not last year’s strawberries. This year’s new wild strawberries. There was a really good crop.”
“Oh, I see. So you must have bought it recently.”
“Yes. Just…” Erin tried to narrow down the day she had bought the new jar. “A few days ago. I don’t remember. What day is today?”
Terry ignored the question. “You bought the jam a few days ago. Did you just open it yesterday? Or had you had some of it before?”
“It was new.”
“Unopened?”
“I hadn’t had any of it.” Erin frowned, concentrating.
Terry waited. “Is there something else, Erin?” he prompted.
“I hadn’t opened it. But it wasn’t sealed.”
“You’re sure?”
“Someone else opened it. Vic.”
“Vic had opened it already?”
“She must have. Had a midnight snack.”
“It’s possible. I’ll ask her. Could it have been someone else who had opened it?”
“No. It was Vic.”
“You hadn’t had anyone else in the house lately? And it was sealed when you got it?”
“Vic already had some.” Erin blinked at Terry, the bright light still bothering her eyes. “See, it wasn’t poisoned. Because Vic already had some, and she didn’t get sick. It must have just been the flu.”
“You were poisoned.”
“With what?” Erin challenged.
“They’re still testing to figure it out.”
“But I didn’t die, so I wasn’t poisoned.”
“You would have died if Willie hadn’t gotten you straight here. They were able to give you something to stop you from absorbing any more of the poison and started cleaning your blood and giving you fluids and medications to keep you from succumbing to it.”
Erin put her hand over her eyes. She couldn’t remember any of that. She could remember little of what had happened since Willie had driven her to the hospital.
“He drove like a maniac. I was afraid he was going to go off the road.”
“Good thing he didn’t. If he totaled my truck and kept you from getting medical attention, I would have…” Terry cut himself off and shook his head. Would have killed him, Erin finished in her head. But there had been enough violent deaths in Bald Eagle Falls. Terry didn’t want to say it aloud, even as a joke.
“Nobody killed Willie,” she told Terry.
“No. Willie’s fine. Everyone is fine, including you. Though you’re a little loopy right now.”
“Joelle isn’t fine.”
“No.” Terry nodded soberly. “Not Joelle.”
“Did they give it to her in the jam?”
“No. In her tea and the poultice on her leg.”
“Oh. Right.” Erin closed her eyes and waited for sleep.
“Who put it in the tea?” Erin asked, trying to remember the details.
“We don’t know yet. That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
“The Jam Lady. I like the Jam Lady jam.”
“We all do,” Terry agreed. His chair creaked as he sat back, stretching his back. He probably had a stiff neck after sitting there all night. Erin didn’t know how late it was, or if it was the next day, or even the day after that. “Is strawberry your favorite?”
“I like them all. The new-batch strawberry jam is so good. But I think there was something in that one. Something wrong.”
“In the jam, not the tea?” Terry asked.
“Yes.”
“What did it taste like? Was it bitter? Did you recognize it?”
“Don’t ask so many questions.” Erin rubbed her eyes with her fists. “That’s too many!”
“Sorry. Your brain is still trying to catch on to what’s going on. What did the jam taste like?”
Erin imagined she could still feel it on her tongue. The cloying sweetness. The soft, yeasty roll. The smell of the spiced orange tea in her nostrils. Maybe if the smell of the tea hadn’t been so strong, she would have been able to smell what was in the jam before she had tasted it and poisoned herself.
“It tasted… kind of… tomato,” she told Terry. She shook her head, trying to isolate it further. She’d barely been able to taste it under the sweet strawberry jam.
“Tomato?” Terry repeated. He leaned toward her, putting his hand on Erin’s arm. “Tell me about it before you fall back asleep,” he said. “It wasn’t bitter? It tasted like tomato?”
Erin shrugged. “Sort of. That’s the closest thing I can think of.”
“Okay. Why don’t you go back to sleep? I’ll pass that on and see if it’s something that w
ill help narrow down what you were poisoned with.”
Chapter 24
As luck would have it, that clue was exactly what the doctors and investigators needed to figure out what had been put in the jam.
“As soon as I told the doctor, his face kind of lit up,” Terry told Erin. “He said that there was a deadly poison in the same family as tomatoes, and that the fruit of that plant was said to taste a little sweet and savory, like a tomato. In fact, people used to be afraid to eat tomatoes, because they thought they would be poisonous like—”
“Deadly nightshade,” Erin filled in.
Terry grinned, a dimple appearing in his cheek. “Deadly nightshade,” he agreed. “Belladonna. One of the most toxic plants in these parts. Though luckily, the fruit does not carry as much poison as the root.”
Erin struggled to sit up, and Terry used an electronic control to raise the head of her bed until she was upright. Erin was feeling a little more like herself, her brain not running rampant down rabbit trails like it had been. She felt grounded for the first time since Willie had put her into his truck. Like she was actually held by gravity to the bed instead of floating or being in danger of floating away. Erin grasped the rails of the bed just to be sure, then let go again.
“So you think someone put belladonna fruit into the strawberry jam? Why would anyone do that?”
“You do seem to be a favorite target. Maybe someone thinks you are too close to knowing the truth. Maybe you’re just a distraction. Or maybe they wanted to make someone close to you look suspicious. I don’t really know why.”
“It wasn’t anyone close to me who poisoned me. You know that, right?”
Terry gave a little grimace. “I don’t want to think that either,” he agreed. “But we still need to investigate. Sheriff Wilmot needs to investigate, since I’m still off this particular case. I just have… a vested interest in finding out the details.”
Erin’s face warmed. She’d never been called anyone’s vested interest before.
“It wasn’t Adele and it wasn’t Vic. It doesn’t matter if they both had access to the jam, neither one of them poisoned me. You can tell the sheriff that too. This wasn’t my friends. My friends wouldn’t try to kill me.”
“I don’t like to think about it either,” Terry said, but Erin couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t agree that it was impossible either one of them had had anything to do with it. He was trying to keep her calm and happy, but he hadn’t agreed with her.
“Why would either of them poison me?” Erin persisted. “Neither one has any reason. No reason at all.”
“Unless one of them was the one who poisoned Joelle. Then it would make sense to poison you to keep you from finding out the truth. Being so close to both of them, you might know some little clue that would point to them, and they couldn’t be sure that you wouldn’t find it.”
“I don’t know who poisoned Joelle, though. I told the sheriff that. I tried to find out who… might have known something about poultices and folk medicine, but…”
“Why would you do that?”
“I wanted to know who might have helped Joelle with her poultice… to help to…”
“You’re not supposed to be investigating. You’re not supposed to be trying to solve this or to point the sheriff in the direction of the person who might have done it. You’re supposed to be staying out of it.”
“Well… I was,” Erin stumbled, knowing it wasn’t exactly true. She wasn’t trying to solve the case. Not really.
“You were not staying out of it. Not if you were asking people questions about who might have poisoned Joelle.”
“That’s not exactly what I did.”
“No. I’m sure. Erin… I don’t know how you can keep walking into these situations blindfolded. You know that asking questions leads to… people getting defensive and trying to get you out of the way. So why do you insist on doing it?”
Erin squirmed under his gaze. “I don’t know… I’m just curious. I like to solve puzzles. And I can’t just sit back and not do anything when I’m a suspect, or when my friends are.”
“If you’re going to keep it up, you’d better get some training and become a police officer or private detective. Just bumbling around as an amateur, with no idea of how to properly conduct an investigation…”
“I don’t bumble,” Erin said with irritation.
“Well, you’re not exactly unnoticeable.”
Erin frowned. “Is that a word?”
“It is now. If you’re going to keep getting yourself involved in crime investigations, then you should get some training. I hoped that with a burglar alarm, you’d be better protected, but so far, you’ve had someone disable the alarm and come after you with a gun, and someone else get right inside to poison you. We still don’t know how that was done. You do turn on the alarm during the day when you’re at the bakery, right?”
“Uh… no.”
The dimple in Terry’s cheek was long gone. His brows drew down in a fierce scowl. “What is the point in having an alarm system if you don’t use it?”
“I do use it… at night, when we go to bed.”
“I think that this shows you it needs to be on all the time. You can’t have people sneaking into your house while you’re gone and tampering with the food. You’re gone for twelve hours or more every day. There should be some kind of security in place during that time.”
Erin nodded, a little embarrassed. She should have thought of that. She should have known that her home needed to be protected just as much during the day as at night when she was sleeping. “Okay. Yeah.”
The scowl smoothed away. Terry touched Erin’s hand. “Okay,” he repeated. “All right, then.”
Chapter 25
Erin was happy to see Willie and Vic together again, apparently just as happy and natural as they had been before, as if there had been no breach between them at all. Erin and Willie sat in the living room, watching Vic play with Orange Blossom with the laser pointer.
But the cat didn’t seem quite as interested in the little red dot as he had the other day. He kept losing track of it and turning to look at Erin, meowing at her or jumping up on her to get pats and ear-scratches.
“He wants to make sure you’re okay,” Vic commented.
“I’m fine, you silly cat,” Erin told Blossom, patting him, giving him a little cuddle, and putting him back on the carpet. “You go play.”
Orange Blossom looked for the dot. Vic made it creep toward him, and then take a few dashes away. Blossom chased after it, swatting with both front paws, then pouncing to try to pin it down. No matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to catch it or stop it from jumping around.
“Have you seen Charley lately?” Vic asked.
Erin had only been away from the house and bakery for a couple of days, so she wasn’t sure why Vic was asking.
“Uh… she did come see me at the hospital once,” Erin said. “Other than that… our paths don’t cross a lot, even though it is a small town. Why?”
“I just wondered… I guess I’m hoping that she’ll give up this idea of opening The Bake Shoppe. I don’t know why she and Davis can’t just give instructions for the estate to sell the shop and divide the money between them.”
“For one thing, because they both want the whole kitty,” Erin said.
Orange Blossom, on his back with his head stretched out looking for the elusive red dot, lifted his head and looked at her.
“Not that kind of kitty!” Erin laughed. “Neither one wants just their half of the estate. They both think they should have the right to get the whole thing.”
“But the law says it’s half and half.”
“Davis thinks that he should get it all, because he’s the only legitimate child. Charley never even knew Adam, so why should she get anything just for being born? Especially since she wasn’t born until after he was dead. Charley thinks that Davis shouldn’t be able to get any of it because of his involvement in Trenton’s death. He shouldn�
��t be able to benefit from the commission of a crime.”
“Well, they’re both good points,” Vic admitted. “So maybe neither of them should inherit. Who would it go to then?”
“I think we run out of heirs at that point. Maybe some cousin somewhere. Maybe you, you’re a cousin. Is there anyone more closely related to Trenton who is still alive?”
Vic shook her head. “Me? I’m sure there must be someone closer. And if it goes to a cousin… it’s going to have to be divided about a hundred different ways!”
“I suppose that eliminates any motive for gain.”
“Oh…” Vic sat up straighter suddenly, startling Orange Blossom and making him leap to his feet. Vic laughed. “I was supposed to tell you Adele was looking for you. She said when you were feeling better and were back on your feet…”
“I should go over there.” Erin picked up her phone and looked at the time. “She’ll be up and around.”
“You shouldn’t be traipsing through the woods. Not when you’re just recovering from being poisoned.”
“The doctor said I’m fine. He said I can do anything I feel up to.”
“You don’t feel up to walking all the way over to Adele’s.”
“It’s only ten minutes. I’m not that frail.” Erin got to her feet.
“You could trip, or…” Vic trailed off, looking for some other terrible thing that could happen to Erin on the way to Adele’s cottage.
“Nothing is going to happen to me. I’ve been over to Adele’s plenty of times before and I’ve never lost a limb doing it.”
“Think about what happened to Joelle. She just tripped and fell…”
Erin gave Vic a stern look. “Do you want to come with me?”
“Well…” Vic looked at Willie. “I suppose I should.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll be just fine. You can stay and visit with Willie.”
Willie gave a very slight shake of his head, and that made Vic’s decision for her.
“I’ll come along. Maybe I can feed Skye some peanuts today.”
Willie and Vic got to their feet and said goodbye. Erin waited for them, shaking her head.
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