Gin and Toxic

by Alana Ling

  Everyone looked at me, shrugged and ignored me, continuing with their chatter.

  I was about to repeat myself when Colton stepped up on the other side of the room and I felt the urge to go and give him a big kiss for helping the situation.

  Only he didn’t say a thing. Instead, he grabbed his throat and tried to speak. When it didn’t work, he coughed and stumbled forward. Everyone went quiet, looking at Colton, who staggered from guest to guest grabbing his throat, his voice wheezy.

  ‘I think someone’s had a bit too much to drink,’ Sam murmured next to me.

  I squinted and inspected him. His eyes were normal, not dilated. He seemed aware of his surroundings and his balance, although shaky, was measured as he walked from Valentino Bianchi to Henry Bulet, both big winemakers in their countries.

  ‘I don’t think he’s drunk. I think something’s wrong,’ I said and stepped in to help him stand, but before I could reach him, he collapsed.

  I bent down to check on him. His eyes were coldly staring back at me. I slapped him a couple of times, but he didn’t respond.

  ‘No, no, no.’ I panicked, looking for his wrist under the suit jacket and shirt he was wearing.

  When I found it, I also found no pulse. I checked his neck and heart, but it was the same.

  Colton was dead.

  * * *

  Detective Daniel Anderson and his chocolate peanut butter brownie flavour greeted me as soon as his car pulled up outside the pub. He approached me and put his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Jo, are you okay?’

  I nodded and showed him in. Nick, his assistant and partner in crime, followed behind us, his flavour of onion and chilli soup hitting me right up in my sinuses.

  He climbed the stairs to the first floor and Sam opened the door of the private room from the inside. The guests looked at Daniel, a lot of them cowering away as he approached Colton’s body.

  He bent down and checked his pulse.

  ‘Hello, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Daniel Anderson and I’m Haven-on-Sea’s Detective Inspector. I appreciate your patience while we await the coroner, but if you please follow my colleague downstairs, he will start taking your statements about the incident this evening.’

  A mutter echoed around the room and the first few guests started to make their way down under the guidance of Daniel and Nick until Sam and I were the only ones left inside.

  I kneeled in front of him and checked again for a pulse.

  I was disappointed. My hand grazed his chest as I said a small prayer for him, but my hand was distracted by the thickness of something under his jacket.

  Curious to find out what it was, I lifted the jacket with the back of my finger and saw a beige envelope protruding from his inner pocket.

  ‘Now, Nick, I want you to interrogate everyone and they’re not allowed to leave until I see them too. Understood?’ I heard Daniel outside the door.

  Before I could think about it, I pulled the envelope out of his pocket and looked around for my bag. Then I remembered it was behind the bar. Sam extended her hand, urging me to pass the envelope, and I did as she asked. A moment later it was nowhere in sight and I was still kneeling in front of Colton’s body.

  Daniel walked in, seeing me like that and froze, a questioning look on his face.

  ‘He appears to be dead,’ I said.

  ‘No kidding.’ Sam chuckled.

  Daniel furrowed his brow at both of us and I stood.

  ‘What happened, Jo?’

  ‘He was fine and then he started stumbling. I have no idea,’ I said, a tad too defensively.

  It wasn’t as if we hadn’t done this twice before, but it dawned on me how it must look on his end. His ex-sister-in-law ending up with dead bodies every other month.

  Daniel squatted in front of Colton’s body and with surgical gloves lifted the collar of his shirt and inspected the body.

  ‘It doesn’t look like asphyxiation,’ he said after a few moments of silence. ’Do you know if he had any medical conditions?’

  I shook my head. ‘I really didn’t know him that well. I don’t think so.’

  A man opened the door and looked inside.

  ‘Detective Anderson, if you may?’ he asked, pointing at the threshold and I looked from him to Daniel to Sam, realising that we had managed to slip through a crime scene. Yet again. Daniel stood and approached the coroner, walking him and the forensics team through the trail of the scene.

  We let Daniel do his job, both Sam and I standing as still as the dead body in front of us, not wanting to disturb the scene any further than we had already.

  Five minutes later the doctor stood up and declared Colton dead.

  ‘We need to do a full toxicology report. He seems to have suffered a heart attack, but seeing as he is such a young man there might be some foul play here. There’s more than a few suspect poisons which can induce a heart attack. I will know more once the tests are complete,’ he told Daniel.

  Daniel nodded and the medical team put Colton’s body on a stretcher, ready to carry him out.

  ‘Please, sir. You are not allowed in,’ someone shouted from outside.

  ‘This is my pub, mate. I need to know what’s going on,’ Kit said. Forgetting the game of standing soldiers we were playing for the benefit of the investigation, I moved across the room to get to him, but the stretcher with Colton’s body got there first.

  ‘Is-is this a dead body underneath? Did someone die in my pub?’ By the time I reached him the stretcher was going downstairs and Kit’s face was whiter than the sheet Colton’s body had been covered with. The apple pie flavour of Colton mixed with Kit’s raspberry cheesecake and the contents of my stomach—it all made me feel sick.

  ‘Jo.’ He lit up as soon as he saw me. ‘Are you okay? What happened?’

  I looked at him and twitched in an attempt to smile, but all that did was make my cheeks hurt and my stomach even more upset.

  ‘There’s been a…’

  What did I even call it? Murder? We didn’t know if it was. Incident? There was a dead body so that was a no.

  ‘Who was that?’ he asked.

  It was a punch in the stomach. How did I tell him? How did I find the words to tell him Colton was no longer in this plane of existence?

  Two

  I put the saucepan on to boil and watched as the sugar started to bubble. Leaving it to do its work, I picked up my phone and dialled my mum’s number, waiting for her chirpy voice.

  I still couldn’t believe what had happened and even more unbelievable was the fact she hadn’t called to check up on me.

  The phone went to voicemail.

  I looked at the screen as if it was going to tell me why my mother hadn’t picked up. Effie never missed a call from me. Usually, I was the one avoiding her calls day and night. But I still hadn’t heard from her and Colton’s death had already broken the evening news, as well as the morning-after news.

  I turned the gas knob down to let the sugar mix simmer and dialled again.

  This time when it went to voicemail I decided to leave a message.

  ‘Hey, Mum, where are you? Are you okay? I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s been another death. Can you please call me?’

  Before I hung up, I realised it was almost ten in the morning so decided to add, ‘Have you opened the shop yet? Are you still sleeping? Wake up.’

  I tried to put anything that could have gone wrong in the past twenty-four hours to the back of my mind and continued with my baking.

  I drizzled the sugar mixture over the apples, covered the pie dish with pastry and popped it in the oven.

  Instead of catching up with work or getting an update from Sam, I sat on the floor, in front of the oven, and watched the apple pie bake.

  What had happened last night? Was he poisoned and by whom? Why do it so publicly?

  My heart-rate slowed as I watched the pastry turn brown and my eyes finally managed to relax. I hadn’t slept last night, thinking things over.r />
  This was the third of my events where a client of mine had died. Was I cursed?

  That was one thought.

  What did Colton’s death mean for my business? Should I close up shop and find something less dangerous to do?

  That was another.

  Which of the eight guests wanted Colton dead? As soon as I’d got home last night, I’d opened the envelope to find a letter inside. A poison pen letter put together by magazine and newspaper clippings.

  What did it all mean? I reached for the letter currently resting on the marble-top surface of my kitchen and unfolded it.

  I know your dirty little secrets and they will all come out, one by one. B.

  What secrets did Colton have and why would someone want to expose them?

  Like we had discussed with Daniel, over and over again, I was no detective. So why on earth did I get giddy at the thought of investigating yet another murder? And what on earth was wrong with me?

  A buzz brought me back to my senses, and looking in the oven, the light had switched off. I grabbed my mittens and took the apple pie out, I brushed the pastry with maple syrup and Demerara sugar and put it back in the oven for an extra couple of minutes.

  As soon as the apple pie was ready and a tad cooler, I put my shoes on and walked across Culpepper Mews and entered the Oak Tavern, pie in hand.

  Jamie was serving behind the bar and Kit was standing at the end looking blankly at a sheet of paper. Jamie kept throwing glances in his direction while pouring a good, old, traditional pint of English ale for a pensioner, and when he saw me he pointedly stared at Kit before he realised what I was carrying.

  Kit didn’t even notice me until I put the dish in front of him.

  ‘Jo, hey, I didn’t see you there.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’ve made you an apple pie. I know how much Colton meant to you and I thought you might need something to sweeten you on such a sour day.’

  I failed to tell him the reason I had made an apple pie was because of my silly synaesthesia. Which was besides the fact that he didn’t know about my strange condition. The only people who were aware of it were Sam and Jamie.

  Jamie rushed over to us and leaned forward to smell the pie.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve made apple pie before, have you? That smells delicious!’

  ‘No, I haven’t and hands off. Kit gets first dibs,’ I replied with a chuckle.

  Kit was staring at his sheet again, not reacting to our banter.

  ‘Are you all right, Kit?’ I said, placing my hand to the small of his back.

  He jerked and turned to look at me. ‘Yes, no, I’m fine. Thank you for the pie. I can’t wait to give it a try.’

  ‘Kit, go home. I’ve told you already. You’re not needed,’ Jamie told him.

  He looked at Jamie and then to me and shook his head. ‘I’m fine, guys.’

  Jamie put his hands on his hips. ‘You’re not though. You keep spacing. You’re not here. You’ve been counting stock for the last three hours—’

  ‘Counting stock takes time,’ Kit said.

  ‘Three hours to count one fridge?’ Jamie said; no hint of sarcasm in his voice. ‘You’re not well. You’ve lost someone you were really close to. You need some time off.’

  ‘I don’t.’ Jamie was about to interrupt, but Kit continued, ‘If I take time off, then I’ll be sitting in a bed with my thoughts, and I don’t want to go to that place. At least if I’m working, I get to interact with people. Get a chance, however small, to get distracted and not think.’

  I rubbed my hand on his back. ‘I understand. We’re here if you need help.’

  ‘Oh, don’t mother him, you. He needs a good talking-to,’ Jamie said.

  Kit gave me a sad smile as a response and took the pie to the back of the bar. Jamie helped him cut a slice and they both tried it.

  ‘Can I sell this?’ Kit asked with a full mouth.

  ‘You can,’ Jamie said, ‘but why would you want to? It’s so bloody good.’

  Seeing Kit in a moment of normality again made my heart flutter. If my baking had managed to give him some semblance of peace back, I was a happy woman.

  I decided to leave the boys to work and returned home.

  * * *

  As I headed back home and opened the door to let Alfie out, my phone rang.

  I hooked Alfie onto his lead, picked up his doggy bags, closed the door again and answered the call.

  ‘Joanna, we need you at the hotel,’ someone said on the other end.

  I paused for a moment and checked my caller ID. It gave me the information I needed.

  ‘Hi, Mr. Brown, is everything all right?’

  ‘Everything is most definitely not all right,’ Stephen said in a whiny voice that didn’t really suit him.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Where do I start? Is it the murder that took place last night, or the fact we have had to extend our stay in this damn town a minute longer, keeping us away from our business?’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s not much I can do about police business, Mr. Brown.’

  Alfie trotted along, oblivious to the whack of a man on the other end of the phone.

  ‘Well, that’s ridiculous. We need someone to sort this mess out,’ he said, spurring into the abrupt and direct man I had come to know and not love in the last week.

  ‘What mess?’ I asked, not expecting to get a valid answer. None that would give me enough reason to give up my day off for a rude man.

  ‘What do you mean what mess? Which part of my sentence did you not understand? We’ve been asked to extend our stay in Haven-on-Sea and have to cancel our flights and find a hotel which can accommodate us. The detective said you’d be able to help. And I don’t see why not, as a matter of fact. You were planning this event. You need to sort this out.’

  I looked up to the sky and cursed Daniel a million times over before I answered.

  ‘I’ll be there shortly, Stephen,’ I told him. If he thought it was okay to talk to me in that way, then I would call him by his first name. I had no time for rudeness.

  I dropped Alfie off at the house and called Sam who picked up straight away.

  ‘Hola, boss, what’s up?’ she said in a high-pitched, sing-songy voice.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ I asked her. My assistant was always weird, but she had her moments of uber-weirdness and this was one of them.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Um-kay,’ I said. ‘Where are you? Can you meet me at Hotel Margot? We’ve got Stephen Brown being a right princess and Daniel has told him we could help with his problems.’

  ‘Personal problems?’

  ‘Well, no, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he asked us to solve his existential crisis too.’

  Sam laughed. ‘Okay, I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes. I’m at Ollie’s, so it’s more convenient if I just get a cab. See you soon.’

  Three

  Half an hour later I was waiting at the side of the hotel, out of view of the lobby, for Sam to turn up, while fiddling with my phone.

  Sharon, my client for the winter bazaar, the town’s Christmas fair, needed to get a response on a change of suppliers for the ice rink and I put a reminder on my phone to get quotes from another company.

  A yellow taxi stopped in the lobby entry and spilled Sam out, who was holding two cups of what could only have been Bean Therapy coffee. She looked in both directions and I waved at her from the corner as her cucumber flavour refreshed my palate. A flavour I was going to need when dealing with the wacky dinner guests from last night.

  ‘Are you hiding?’ she asked, passing me a cup of the best brew, Bali coffee.

  ‘No,’ I said almost too fast.

  Not that I could hide anything from her. Seven months of working in proximity and being friends had made me almost transparent to her.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to have to deal with any of them before you got here. Besides, Sharon called and we nee
d to find a new ice rink supplier for Christmas so I was doing some online research.’

  ‘That’s going to cost a fortune,’ Sam replied. ‘We only have one in town.’

  I headed for the entrance and the valet standing at the door opened it for us.

  Before we got a chance to acclimatise to the indoors, a tall, suited figure with dark features pounced on us and the taste of passion fruit hit my palate, deeming my coffee undrinkable.

  ‘Stephen,’ I said.

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘I didn’t realise we had an appointment,’ I started. ‘I came as soon as I could.’

  ‘This way,’ he said and walked back to reception.

  ‘Thanks, Joanna. Your free help is appreciated, Joanna,’ I muttered under my breath.

  We came to stand opposite a girl who tasted of dark chocolate with a name-tag that read Rosalind. She was looking at all of the people standing in front of her desk, waiting for someone to speak.

  Stephen and his wife, Harper, the lady with the Sauvignon Blanc flavour, and another woman, who tasted of grapes and who was wearing a pair of expensive and deeply unsettling glasses, were staring back at me.

  The staring contest continued for a second too long and I turned to Stephen.

  ‘Do you actually want to tell me what I need to do, or are we going to keep staring at each other?’ I asked him.

  ‘Well aren’t you a bit rude?’ he said. ‘We need you to make arrangements for our stay here.’

  I took a deep breath and walked over to Rosalind.

  ‘Do you think you can explain what is required of me, because I don’t think I’ll get a straight answer from this lot,’ I said.

  She nodded and with a smirk she replied, ‘Most certainly. Mr. and Mrs. Brown are due to check out today, but due to the unfortunate incidents last night they have to extend their stay. The problem is we’ve got another five guests who have had to do the same and we don’t have any space left. We’re at full capacity.’

  ‘Okay, then we can accommodate them in another hotel, surely.’ I turned to Stephen.