Beeline to Trouble (10 page)

Fifteen

Before noon, Sally Maylor had a warrant to bring
Patti Dwyre into the police station for questioning. She asked Hunter for assistance. According to the acting chief, either Patti had made up a pack of nasty insinuations, or she knew something that needed to be shared. That hadn’t been exactly what I’d hoped for. The last thing I wanted was a thorough investigation into my family members’ lives. I’d really thought they’d just throw Patti in a jail cell and leave her there.

I spent my lunch break planted out in front of her house, wanting a ring-side seat as she was taken into police custody. I hoped for some graphic police brutality to go with my peanut butter and honey sandwich.

I was still flaming mad. Of all the nerve! Hadn’t I befriended that woman? Grudgingly, okay, but I’d made an effort way beyond what I had to. When she finally came into view now, it was all I could do not to rush over and throttle her.

“I’ll never reveal my sources,” Patti said from the top step of her porch right before Hunter and Sally steered her toward Sally’s squad car. “You can’t arrest me. I’m with the media. And besides, you’re hurting my arm. Ouchee.”

Hunter didn’t seem to hear her. I could tell he was angry, too, judging from the steam rising from his collar.

“Patti,” I called out. “When I get my hands on you, I’m going to hurt more than your arm!”

“Story, is that you? Help!” she said, too dense to realize we were on opposing sides this time. “Don’t let your boyfriend torture me,” then to him, “I’ll hold out until the bitter end. My lips are cemented shut.”

Speaking of cement, I wanted to bury her under six feet of it.

“You made a promise, Patti,” I said, getting close enough that only Sally and Hunter could hear. “Off the record, you promised, remember? And talk about embellishing!”

“I found another source,” she said, talking low, too. “Not you. Someone else came forward.”

So what did that mean? It was okay to break my confidence since someone else told her the same thing? That certainly sounded like Patti logic. As for the other source, I’d bet my best pair of flip-flops it was Lori Spandle.

Watching them drive off, I imagined a few effective torture techniques I’d like to use on Patti—boiling in oil, toilet dunking, de-nailing those stubs she calls fingernails. Not that she could ever give up any real information, because she didn’t have a real source. She’d made the entire thing up.

Within another two hours, the
Reporter
had issued a statement retracting the entire article, claiming a disgruntled employee had sabotaged the printing process, and ended by saying that said worker’s employment had been terminated effective immediately.

But the damage had been done. That one stupid article would have serious consequences.

In the meantime, business at the store had never been better. I’ve never seen so many customers run out of milk before.

I silenced my cell phone because it was ringing off the hook and caller ID told me there was only one determined caller—Mom, the last person I wanted to talk to. Hopefully, Holly was too busy with her remaining guests to read the paper or pay attention to incoming calls from Mom. The longer Holly didn’t know, the better.

One of Stu’s Bar and Grill regulars came in to let me know that Stu’s canoe and kayak rentals had gone way up since somebody at the bar suggested that gawkers could tour the actual location of the latest town crime scene.

That particular spot being the riverbank in my back-yard.

“Don’t you think everybody is being ridiculously outrageous?” I said at one point.

But people love drama. They don’t care if it’s true or not, and our small town in particular seems to thrive on digesting, regurgitating, and spewing the stuff back out.

Mid-afternoon, the twins arrived to take over for me, a very good thing, since I couldn’t take one more sideways glance or barely concealed outright stare. Pretending nothing is wrong when everything is going down the tube isn’t easy.

I took off for my street, and the one chance I might have to do a little digging of my own. And it wasn’t going to be in my backyard, even though I had ideas about where to place a Patti-sized shallow grave.

I wanted to creep around to the back, but one of the gawkers in a canoe happened to be passing as I peeked around. Instead, I decided to be bold.

I walked right in Patti’s front door.

Just the kind of luck I like (but don’t find too often), Patti had forgotten to lock up in all the excitement of her arrest.

Why, I asked myself, had my neighbor been in the river at the exact same time that Nova Campbell keeled over dead? And why was she hiding that fact, refusing to answer when I confronted her? Now she had gone out of her way to misdirect attention toward Holly and me, making us appear responsible for Nova’s murder when she knew we weren’t.

Patti Dwyre had to be after more than a killer story. And mad as I was at her, I knew she wasn’t a dummy, either; she had to realize what she’d written would put her in big trouble with her boss. And with the cops. And with me.

So she must’ve been operating out of desperation. I was going to find out why.

I’d been in Patti’s house before but never upstairs. Now I headed right up the steps, toward the room where she snooped with her telescope. She had a brand-new one, judging by the shininess of the scope and all the cardboard packaging scattered on the floor.

My neighbor is a true minimalist, nothing nonessential anywhere, which made my mission that much easier. Or it would have, if I knew exactly what my job here was or what I was looking for. But I told myself I’d know it when I saw it.

I took in the contents of the room—the telescope, the bare closet, unadorned walls, a few pieces of electronic equipment (a camera, video camera, high-powered binoculars)—all on the top of a desk.

Inside the desk, I found a stack of letters. They looked old; even the rubber band binding them together had seen better days. It broke when I tugged on it. The letters were all addressed to a Patricia Bruno at a Chicago, Illinois, address. And the return address came from the Southwestern Illinois Correctional Center.

“What are you doing?” I heard behind me. A voice out of nowhere. The letters went flying to the floor, scattering, while my heart skipped a row of very important beats.

I whipped around.

“Patti! What are you doing here?” I tried to look nonchalant, a failed attempt on my part due to the setting and circumstances.

She bent and gathered up the letters. “We should be real honest-to-goodness partners,” she said. “You’re better at snooping than you think.”

“Thanks,” I managed to mumble, wishing Hunter had had the foresight to inform me when they let Patti go.

“But you know too much,” she continued, moving closer, eyes narrowed, suggestion in her tone. “Now I’ll have to kill you.”

I’m sure all the blood drained out of my face.

Then Patti said brightly, “Just kidding. Boy, are you touchy.”

I started counting, sure that ten numbers (no matter how slowly I counted) weren’t going to help this time, they never did when it came to my neighbor. Maybe a thousand would work but even that was doubtful.

“Come downstairs,” she said, putting the letters back into the drawer. “And I’ll explain everything. This is all my fault. I underestimated your snoopiness.”

Look who was talking!

Just to be on the safe side, I made her go downstairs first.

“My married name was Patricia Bruno,” she said, plopping into a chair. “In that life, which seems like a bad dream, I made a big mistake and married a guy who wasn’t who I thought he was.”

Patti? Married? Wow! I never would have guessed.

“Okay,” I squeaked, sitting down, too, and clearing my voice before saying, “I can understand that.” The whole town knew that my ex-husband had turned out to be a creep and a total womanizer.

“Your jerk wasn’t in the same league as mine. The guy was older than me and he’d been in prison more than once, but I only found that out later. Which wasn’t the worst of it. The minute we were married he started mistreating me. You don’t need the details, but it was ugly. Right away, I’d had enough and tried to leave. He told me he’d kill me if I did.”

“That’s awful,” I said. “But obviously, you got away.”

“The next time he landed in jail, I made my escape. Divorced him, moved here.” Patti leaned forward in the chair. “You might have heard of him. His name is Harry Bruno.”

I actually
had
heard of the guy. “The Chicago mobster?”

“That’s the one.”

For the second time in a matter of minutes, I was speechless. First, when Patti had threatened to kill me. Now, after hearing that the woman sitting across from me had been married—and to the mob at that.

“Does he know where you are?” I asked, thinking he must not since he hadn’t killed Patti yet.

Patti gave me a weak grin. “I’m sure he does. He’s in organized crime. He can find anybody, eventually. Besides, we actually talk on the phone now and again. Anyway, I made sure I kept tabs on his actions when he got out of jail, and I got really lucky. Because he met somebody else right away and married her.”

“That must have been a relief,” I said.

“You bet it was.”

I felt for Patti. I really did. But she still had some explaining to do. “I’m really glad you confided in me,” I said, “but your personal problems don’t explain why you wrote that horrible article about my family. That doesn’t have anything to do with your past.”

“I’m so sorry that happened. I panicked,” she said, “and felt I had to divert attention away from myself. I wish I’d never followed you home yesterday and never went into the water to try to save Nova Campbell. If this gets out, I’ll be put away for life. Once you hear me out, you’ll understand.”

Oh, yeah, right. “This better be really good, because I’m totally out of patience with you.”

“Oh, it is good.” Patti sank back. “I was Harry Bruno’s first wife. Nova Campbell was his second.”

That hit me like a ton of bricks. I hadn’t seen it coming at all. I blurted without thinking, “So did you kill her?”

Patti jumped up, clearly upset. “See, even you think I did! What would everybody else say? The same thing. But I didn’t even know she was in town until I saw her in your backyard and recognized her from their wedding pictures I’d seen online. When she doubled over and fell into the water, I should have turned and run away.”

She had that right. She should have. “Instead you went to see if you could help.”

Patti nodded. “She was already stone-cold dead.”

“Okay,” I said. “This isn’t the end of the world. Just because you found her first, doesn’t mean you killed her.”

Patti snorted. “Yeah, right.”

Then I thought of something else. “Won’t Harry Bruno show up for retribution once he hears about her death? They might have been divorced, too, but from what I’ve heard these families protect their own.”

“What do you think this is,
The Godfather
?
He hated the woman.”

“How do you know?”

“I told you, we still talk once in a while. He’s asked me to come back to him, but no way is that going to happen.” I saw worry cloud her face. “I hope he finds somebody else quickly again, because I don’t want him around here bothering me.”

“I just wish you hadn’t dragged my family through the mud.” I got up and headed for the door, not sure that her story and her point of view justified what she had done. Although I did feel a little sorry for her.

Patti’s whole situation haunted me as I walked down the street.

Unfortunately, when I got back to the store, a new rumor was making the circuit.

The carrot juice in Nova Campbell’s water bottle had been loaded with poison.

Sixteen

“Water hemlock,” Hunter said from a metal chair in
the back room of my store. Ben and I were in the process of completing our standard greeting. Me, rubbing the top of his head. Him, giving me several warm love licks. Hunter and I had already greeted each other in a more traditional way, though my skin still tingled from his touch. “I don’t know how this news got out on the street so fast.”

The latest tidbit really was spreading faster than a flash flood.

“Water hemlock is common around these parts,” my man continued. “The stuff grows in wet open areas, along shorelines for example. It could be growing along the river behind your house for all we know.”

I noticed it was now “my” house, not “our” house.

“It’s the most toxic plant in the United States,” Hunter kept going. “Just rubbing up against it, getting any on your skin, can cause seizures or even death.”

If it grew around here and was that deadly, how could I have no idea what the plant even looked like? I needed to look up a picture of this killer plant and eradicate it from my property if I found any. Hunter waited while I used my computer to search for water hemlock. An image popped up of a tall delicate plant with wispy greenish white flowers in the shape of umbrellas.

“That’s it,” he said. “Like I said, poisoning can even occur through contact with your skin. Also, the plant has a hollow stem. Kids have been poisoned from blowing whistles with the reeds. That’s how deadly it is.”

“Geez,” I added, amazed that water hemlock had never been on my radar. Poison ivy, yes. Hemlock, never.

“And get this,” he said, “according to the ME, the plant smells just like a carrot! Probably tastes like one, too, although I’m not about to test that out.”

I cringed. Spiked carrot juice was the worst of all the available possibilities. How could this have happened?

“Please tell me the rumors about it being in her carrot juice are wrong,” I said. “That she really died from touching it, or from blowing on it, or something?”

“Nope, apparently the roots were pureed and added to the juice in the refrigerator.”

I must have given some kind of clue to the emotion swirling around inside me, because Hunter said, “What’s wrong? You don’t look so good.”

“I’ve had better days.”

“So whoever supplied that juice is the one I need to find.”

I gulped.

Hunter gazed at me, his expression patient. “Anything you’d care to add at this point?” he asked.

I’ve known Hunter Wallace long enough to read him. Not that he’s exactly an open book. More like a classic with a hidden theme that you have to dig deep to discover. But I knew that look, the one he was giving me.

Hunter already had my name stamped on the juice.

I didn’t have much of a choice. “Fine,” I admitted. “The carrot juice came from The Wild Clover. I’ve already taken the rest of that shipment off the shelf.” I pointed to a box in the corner with my hand-scribbled warning label. “Take the whole box and test every single one. I won’t be surprised if the whole batch is contaminated.” I brightened a little. “That would be good, right? That would mean no one we know is responsible.”

“I’ll have it checked out.”

My man was in interrogation mode. “So why’d you bring carrot juice over to the Paines’ in the first place anyway?”

See, this was the part I didn’t want to tell him. I was used to being in the middle of controversy, having an uncanny knack of showing up in the worst possible place at the worst possible time, but I hated that my sister was the one in Hunter’s scope. “Holly asked me to,” I said reluctantly, but quickly added, “but Nova asked for it in the first place. Holly was only accommodating her guest.”

“That doesn’t look good for her. You know that, right?”

“Holly doesn’t know a thing about plants,” I reasoned. “Unless it’s a dozen roses. And she isn’t devious. She wouldn’t have plotted something out in advance like that.” Which was true. My sister never planned ahead for anything. This whole carrot-flavored toxic plant mixed with carrot juice was way beyond her range of abilities.

“I tend to agree with you,” Hunter said. “But that’s only my personal opinion and doesn’t count.”

At least he’d made that admission.

“What else aren’t you telling me?” Hunter asked next.

I thought about that question. Honestly, I couldn’t think of another secret . . . oh, wait, time to come completely clean. Besides, anything to get him off my sister’s trail. “Patti was wading in the river when Nova died.” There! Let him go after crazy Patti Dwyre instead.

Hunter leaned back and studied me. My eyes wanted to dart away, but I forced myself to maintain eye contact. “Let’s hear it,” he said.

I told him the story—leaving out the part about snooping in her house. I have to hang on to what little pride I have left. About Patti’s past marriage, and how Nova was wife number two, and how Patti said she went into the river to try to save her. Finally, I repeated the lame reason she gave for writing the damaging article, which was to divert attention away from herself. I finished with, “Patti’s trouble.”

“That’s what I keep telling you,” Hunter agreed.

“So I suppose you’re going to say you told me so.”

“I told you so.” Hunter stood up. “You’ll have to tell Sally what you know about Patti’s past, since she never said a word about her connection when we took her in.”

“Can’t you tell Sally?”

“It better come for you. Want me to come along?”

“No, I’ll finish up here then stop down at the station.”

Right after Hunter and Ben left with the box of carrot juice jars, Patti called my cell phone.

“I’m taking a little vacation,” she said, “until this blows over.”

“It’s not going to blow over until you tell the cops the truth. I just told Hunter.”

“They aren’t my biggest worry at the moment. I did some serious thinking about Harry. He might actually come looking for me, and I don’t want to be found by him. The man turns ugly on a dime.”

She hung up before I could reply.

A little while later, Holly pounded into the back room. “Where is that evil witch?” my sister shouted, too upset to care that the door was still open and our customers couldn’t help but overhear her at that pitch and volume.

Patti couldn’t have picked a better time for a little R&R. If she thought her mobster ex-husband was scary, she hadn’t gone up against my sister.

I jumped up and closed the door. “Relax,” I said, ignoring my own advice.

Holly proceeded to rattle off a string of text acronyms. I caught some of them, mostly the ones that had an
F
in them. After that, she popped back into regular speech again. “Where
is
Patti?”

“Gone,” I told her. “She can’t do any more damage.”

“There isn’t any more to do!” she exclaimed. “And now the police are saying that Nova was poisoned! With carrot juice from
my
refrigerator. Max is totally ticked off. He’s calling his attorney, and we’re suing that stupid paper
and
Patti Dwyre.”

I heard voices and commotion in the main part of the store. “Stay back here until you calm down,” I told her. “I have to go see what’s happening out front.”

Holly slumped into my chair. I left her there.

The store was hopping busy. And my banished mother had materialized behind the cash register.

I tried not to march on my way over.

“We have to stick together,” she said to me before I could open my mouth. “It’s time for damage control after that slanderous article hit the paper. You and I should have a nice chat soon about the other things that are on your mind, okay? But right now we have to unite.” She didn’t wait for my response, just went on checking out the next customer as though nothing was amiss between us.

I saw Mom had put out a tip jar next to the register.

“Patti Dwyre had a mental breakdown,” she brightly informed each customer. “We’re taking donations to help with her recovery costs.” There were several bills poking out of the top of the jar. “Did you see that crazy article? Patti clearly wasn’t herself when she wrote it.” Several customers added more dollar bills and change to the jar in just the few minutes I was there.

I ducked outside to arrange my scattered thoughts and plan my next move regarding Mom. Most of the females in my life share the same traits:

• Assertive . . . no . . . change that to aggressive
  
• Overly confident in their own abilities
  
• Competitive
  
• Controlling
  

I could go on, but I was distracted by the one female I knew who was the exact opposite of most of the other women in my world: Grams, who was sitting outside on the bench with Dinky. Grams is patient, loving and not afraid to show it, accepting of others just the way they are, and totally easygoing. I hope I’ve inherited at least a few of my grandmother’s good genes.

“Your mother is sorry,” my grandmother said.

“Then why doesn’t she just say so?” I plopped down beside her. Dinky crawled into my lap and up to my chin and we played dodge the stinky tongue.

“Your mother has apologized in her own way. By coming here today, she’s showing her love for you and her commitment to our family.”

“A simple ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so mean’ would have done it.”

“She can’t, sweetie. Helen just doesn’t have it in her to verbalize an apology.”

I conceded that Grams was probably right about Mom, and we sat together for a long time, chatting up neighbors and customers as they came past, Grams spreading the story Mom had concocted about Patti’s breakdown. I figured that mental part really wasn’t too far from the truth.

After a while Holly came out and nestled next to Grams. My sister and I gave each other a look over our grandmother’s head that said we were in this together and we would stay strong. My sister was back from the brink.

Then Holly actually went back in to help Mom at the register, Grams wandered away, snapping pictures, and I settled back into my office to catch up on paperwork. Except my mind kept straying.

Known facts (according to my wandering mind):

• Nova Campbell had been intentionally poisoned with water hemlock.
  
• I had delivered the catalyst (carrot juice) that turned out to be part of the murder weapon.
  
• Holly was the one who had asked me to bring the carrot juice.
  
• She knew Nova was making a play for her husband.
  
• Holly was the perfect suspect—motive, opportunity, means.
  

Only my sister wouldn’t know a toxic weed from a prize flower. She couldn’t tell the difference between a black cat and a skunk. She thought nature was something you viewed through paned windows, or at least from behind screens and shutters so that creepy critters couldn’t attack you. And if she
had
ventured into the great outdoors with the sole purpose of procuring a poisonous plant, something as innocuous as a squirrel would’ve sent her screaming. I knew that for a fact.

In short, if Holly had really wanted to poison Nova, her MO was more likely to have been dissolving a load of sleeping pills into a wineglass and then offering it to her. But poison really wasn’t Holly’s style—rather than such a desperate option, my sister would have taken her opponent to the mat, both verbally and physically. Then she would have sent her packing.

Holly wasn’t a sneaky little wimp.

But our murderer was.

So, who was he or she?

If I discounted my family members (which was a given) and Patti Dwyre (who was crazy, but I didn’t really think she was a killer), I was left with only two very viable suspects: Gil Green and Camilla Bailey. Could they be any more obvious? Two flavorists. Talk about people who knew how to mix and match and come up with a deadly floral dose.

Nova’s death must have had something to do with that project they were all working on, that thing about turning vegetables into some kind of candy. And judging by my own first (and second) impressions, Nova Campbell couldn’t have been a pleasant coworker. So the only real question was, which one of the two had done the deed?

I called Hunter. “Have Max’s guests left town yet?” I asked, hoping I could grill them before takeoff.

“They aren’t going anywhere. Not with one of their coworkers murdered. They’ve been ordered to stay put.”

So, the police weren’t putting all their eggs in the Holly basket, either. “Perfect!” I said. “I mean . . . uh . . .”

“You’re so transparent,” Hunter said, amusement in his tone for a change. “You want to protect your family. I understand that. But you really need to stay away from the case, Story.”

“Don’t make me lie to you about not getting involved. You know I already am.”

After all, this was my family we were talking about. My sister, her husband, me, all of us. Hunter is a great investigator and I’m sure his team is, too, and I have all the faith in the world in Sally Maylor. But still, I couldn’t just sit back and watch.

“You’re impossible,” Hunter said.

“So are you.”

“I’ll make sure you’re locked up.”

“Promise?” I replied, putting some suggestiveness in my tone.

We disconnected.

I went out to the front of the store, where Milly Hopticourt arrived with her wagon full of flower bouquets. By now, late in the afternoon when people were thinking about evening meals, we were extra busy. And for once, we were fully staffed—the twins, Carrie Ann, Mom, Stanley, me, and even Holly, although she rarely counted as a full staff person.