Mom Zone Mysteries 02 Staying Home Is a Killer (14 page)

“Hi,” I said. Georgia’s vivid blue eyes narrowed as soon as she recognized me. “I’d like to ask you a few questions,” I continued awkwardly. “Would you like to go get a cup of coffee with me?” Even though I didn’t drink coffee, I’d choke some down, if that would get Georgia to talk to me.

She surveyed me without moving an inch. I felt like we were kids playing freeze tag and someone had shouted “Freeze.” She wore aerodynamic running shoes, cherry-colored leggings, and a blue Air Force Academy sweatshirt. She’d obviously been working out. She sure looked healthy for someone recovering from an attempted poisoning. I’d expected her to be resting on the couch. With a click, she pushed the key over and said, “You might as well come in. I make better coffee than anything you can buy.”

She left the door open, so I followed her inside the kitchen and shut the door. I glanced around the large kitchen. When the house was divided Georgia’s side got the original kitchen. Harvest-gold appliances showed the house had been remodeled, but not recently. “Have a seat.” Georgia indicated a counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. I scooped up a bundle of pink yarn bristling with knitting needles and sat down.

“Sorry,” Georgia said as she shoved the knitting down the counter to a pile of junk mail, keys, phone books, and a cordless phone. It was the typical “drop everything here” area that most people have somewhere in their house. I mentally sorted and rearranged the clutter at the end of the counter, putting the phone on a shelf with the phone books underneath and the mail in a hanging basket on the wall. But I wasn’t here for an organizing consultation, so I focused on Georgia.

“Does your roommate knit?” I asked once the coffee grinder fell silent.

“No. I do. That’s for my sister. She’s having a baby in May. It helps pass the time, especially when I’m TDY.”

Not what I would have thought of as one of her pastimes. She strode back and forth across the kitchen, grabbed milk and mugs. I frowned. She looked extremely healthy and physically fit for someone who’d recently checked out of the hospital. “You were working out?”

“Yeah. The faster I get back into my routine, the faster I’ll get back where I was.”

“Is that a good idea? Shouldn’t you take it easy for a while? Give your body time to recover?”

She gave an impatient snort. “I’m running in White Falls. I don’t have time to go slow.”

I raised my eyebrows. Vernon’s unofficial kickoff for spring, the White Falls Run was a demanding race that began in town, wound up through the foothills, and then twisted back to end at the historic bridge over White Falls in downtown Vernon. It was a huge event. Thousands of people turned out each year and there were several classes of participants. I’d definitely be in the “Walkers.” Georgia probably got a place in the timed 10-K race.

We were both silent as Georgia started the coffee. A little question prodded its way into my mind. Could Georgia have poisoned Penny and then eaten some of the poison herself, so she wouldn’t be under suspicion? She’d made an excellent recovery if she was already training for White Falls.

As the silence stretched I began to wish I hadn’t come. Georgia wasn’t in a confiding mood. “Let’s go in here,” she said after she handed me an oversized yellow mug and led the way into the living room at the front of the house. The wood floors creaked under their layer of worn shag carpeting, just like our floors did, but this house had a different feel to it than ours. Both houses were old, but ours, an art-and-crafts style bungalow, had a sturdy, bulky feeling, like a stout matron. This house was even older and it seemed more delicate, like a fragile Victorian spinster.

Georgia took a Papasan chair. I sat down on the wicker couch with floral cushions. An exercise bike angled in front of a massive entertainment center and a drafting table stood in the dining area. I recognized a few of the framed snapshots on Georgia’s walls. Most were from her TDYs and deployments around the world. In one picture, she wore her flight suit and smiled with a bare Middle East landscape in the background. I noticed the poster of the man’s backside that had caused such an uproar propped against a far wall behind the drafting table with some other prints.

I turned back to her, realizing she was going to let me do the talking. I’d try the head-on approach like I had with Aaron. “Georgia, I’m sorry about what happened. I had no idea about the espresso beans.”

She shifted in the shallow bowl of the chair, tucking her feet up under her. “Yeah. Well. Okay.”

She sipped her coffee and studied me for a moment before she spoke. “You know I was really mad at you in the hospital. But looking at you.” She scanned me up and down and shrugged. “You don’t look like you’d be able to do anything that vicious. You look too much like…a mommy.”

Did I look like a frumpy housewife or bland and perfect like June Cleaver? Probably frumpy.

“Hey, don’t take that the wrong way. I mean it as a compliment.”

“Oh. Well, thanks.”
I think
. Maybe I was a tad defensive about being “just a mom,” but I could sort that out later. I focused on why I was here. “Did you know Penny?”

“No. I’d seen her around the base, but never talked to her.”

“What about Clarissa Bedford?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The wing commander’s wife.”

A spurt of laughter erupted from her lips. “Bedford’s wife? Why would I know her?”

“Just asking.”

This line of questioning wasn’t getting anywhere, so I asked about the poisoning. “It was pretty bad?”

“You don’t want to know what they did.”

“What kind of poison was it?” I asked.

“Ricin.” Her aloof manner dropped way. “It comes from a castor bean.” She leaned over to a stack of books and papers on the floor and pulled out a set of papers stapled together. I studied the color printout of several large dark brown beans, each covered with unique white designs. I gripped the coffee mug tighter in my hand as I realized it was quivering. These looked exactly like my necklace. And the other necklaces I’d seen recently. “A tiny amount can kill an adult. I was very lucky to survive. They think I only ate one bean.”

And I had that stuff in my jewelry box? Thank goodness I didn’t let Livvy play with my jewelry. Scratch the idea of Georgia trying to poison herself to cover up murder. I doubted she’d be stupid enough to use something as powerful as ricin. “So not every bean in the bag was poisonous?”

“No. A few chocolate-coated castor beans were mixed in with the rest of the espresso beans.”

Penny carried that little gold bag in the side pocket of her backpack all the time. It wouldn’t be hard to slip a few extra beans into the bag. Anyone who’d spent time with Penny knew how much she loved chocolate-covered espresso beans. But it would take time to get the beans ready. Someone had to find the beans, coat them with melted chocolate, then mix them in with the other beans.

“When did you eat them?” I asked.

“Monday, but I didn’t start feeling sick until Thursday.”

“Wait. Castor beans? The caption on this photo says ‘prayer beads.’”

“Well, they’re made into necklaces, earrings, rosaries, bracelets, all that kind of stuff. Pretty common around here. There’s a woman down at the mall, a real granola-and-Birkenstock type. She grows the plant so she can make them into necklaces and bracelets. Her whole shop is beans, seashells, and wind catchers.”

“They must be pretty common,” I said and felt relieved since that fact probably lessened my chances for arrest.

“I’ll say. Now that I’ve started thinking about it, I’ve remembered a lot of women wearing them. You. My roommate. Bree. Irene. Of course you were the first one I thought of. Mitch has that picture of you and him on his desk. You’re wearing them in the picture.”

“Our honeymoon.”

“Sorry to sic the police on you like that.”

So that’s how Thistlewait got his search warrant. I looked at the picture again and said, “But surely not many people would know they were poisonous. I didn’t.”

“The OSI tells me there was a report on the news about a month ago. A little girl down in Yakima died after chewing on a necklace. Of course, the newspeople had to go into detail about how poisonous it is, what plant it comes from, the whole thing.”

“So anyone who watched the news could have known.”

“You got it.”

An Everything In Its Place Tip for Organized Closets

Once you’ve sorted your closet items take a look at the “Keep” pile and assess what you have and what you need in your closet. You might even draw a rough draft of where you want to put everything in your closet. Here’s a few ideas to use as you put things back in your closet:

• Use shelf separators, baskets, or crates to keep sweaters and purses where they belong.
  
• Use an over-the-door shoe holder with clear pouches for sorting small items that tend to get lost on shelves or on the floor: belts, scarves, hose, ties, even jewelry.
  
• Shoe caddies are an easy way to organize shoes, but if you like to keep your shoes in shoe boxes simply write on the end which shoe is in the box or put a photo on each box.
  
• For belts, purchase a hanger with small hooks spaced across the bottom bar.
  
• If you don’t have a clothes hamper make room for one in your newly organized closet. A hamper can be as simple as a large laundry basket. You can even get a jump on your laundry if you’ve got room for a three-compartment container. Some models also come with wheels.
  

Chapter Fourteen

B
allard Nova looked distinctly monklike in her rough black tunic, loose pants, and sandals over thick socks. Did she really wear those outside? Surely she changed into boots before tromping out to her house located a few yards away from this building. Her reading glasses, suspended on a chain, clinked against strands of plastic beads as she shifted in the rocking chair. I checked her necklaces, but she wasn’t wearing castor beans.

Her body language reinforced the religious associations. With her elbows propped up on the arms of the rocker, she placed her palms together and murmured, “I sense a turbulence, a disturbance, here. Does that speak to anyone?”

Her pose looked meditative, but it reminded me of a boss I’d had. Now it seemed like an eon ago, but it was only a few years ago at my first PR job. He’d lace his fingers together and look like he was about to pray, but then he’d ask why such-and-such client was complaining. After a few months I’d cringe when I saw that fake prayer pose because I knew “the team” was in for a royal chewing-out.

But no one else in the rough circle of folding chairs and cushions seemed to notice anything off with Ballard’s pose or words. Soft classical music floated down from speakers hidden in the rafters, the only sound as the people closed their eyes or stared intently at the no-frills industrial carpet.

“There’s no one with any turmoil in their lives?” Ballard asked again.

Pretty general question. In a group this big there’s got to be something bothering someone. Or actually, there’s probably something bothering every one of us.

“Yes, I have a disturbance,” said Irene. She sat cross-legged on a pillow beside me. With her eyes closed she said, “There’s tension in our house?”

“Let’s all concentrate. Send soothing thoughts to Irene and her house,” said Ballard.

I watched as the people, mostly young women, closed their eyes and furrowed their brows. When I’d arrived with Irene I’d been surprised to recognize another squadron spouse, Bree Reed, Aaron’s wife. Her hair was still shocking red. Today she had the beret on again with a red fringed sweater and orange velvet pants belted with an orange-and-red-patterned scarf.

I watched her out of the corner of my eye to see if she’d speak up. Having the fact that your husband flew naked on a military flight broadcast on the news had to be disturbing, not to mention the punishment aspect. Mitch said the rumor was that the guys were getting an LOR, a Letter Of Reprimand, sort of a slap on the hand. I bet that would get Georgia fired up again.

“Anyone else?” asked Ballard. After a pause, she continued, “Well, does anyone want to share?”

I twisted my wrist to see my watch. I’d been here for an hour. First Ballard read passages from the Bible and the Koran. After a meditation time, she read a poem about snow written by one of the group members. I wiggled my toes and felt pinpricks trickle across the soles of my feet. Great. My feet were asleep.

“I have news,” Bree said. “I’ve sold two more paintings.”

A chorus of congratulations greeted this announcement. I tried not to grimace as I moved my feet an inch. How much longer would we sit here? I began to compose what I’d say to Irene when the meeting was over because I knew she was trying to sign me up as a member.

“I’m leaving for Turkey next week,” said the only male in the group, Rory Tyler, the boom operator, also from the notorious naked flight. He was another surprising face to see here. He pushed up his round glasses that magnified his eyes as he scanned the group.

“You’re
always
off to Turkey,” said Ballard with a smile. “We’ll concentrate on good travel and a safe journey. Now, let’s have a few moments of meditation. Empty your mind and let the stillness flow into your body.”

I leaned over to Irene and whispered, “Bathroom?”

She pointed to the door we’d come in. I slipped out of the circle as unobtrusively as I could, but I probably drew some attention as I limped to the door with sharp needles piercing my legs. This had turned out to be a waste of time. Ballard was another aspect of Penny’s life and I’d hoped to find out if anyone knew anything about Penny and her death, but so far all I’d gotten were pins and needles in my feet.

As my circulation returned, I left the new prefabricated aluminum building and entered a small attached store, the way we’d entered. I suspected this building, a large shed with cement floors and wood siding, had stood on the property as long as the small frame house we’d passed on our way up the ridge. Ballard’s property, a cherry orchard, was located northeast of Vernon where ridges and foothills of the Rocky Mountains began. On the drive up, our headlights had picked out several faded signs that read
CHERRIES
.
BING
.
RAINIER
.
U-PICK
. Under the crude lettering, wavy arrows pointed down rutted lanes.