Literally Dead (A Pepper Brooks Cozy Mystery Book 1)

by Eryn Scott

  I blinked, shaking my head. “No. I just spent hours with her. She could’ve killed me so many times if she’d wanted.” I decided not to mention the “poison” Earl Gray tea incident.

  There was so much I needed to catch Alex up on, but there was no time if the police were preparing to arrest Fergie. I needed to figure out this case, quickly.

  “What finally convinced your dad it was her?” I asked.

  Alex leaned in close, even though there was no one near. “She and Dr. C were having an affair. One he ended,” he said, punctuating the point with an eyebrow raise.

  “No,” I shook my head. I wanted to tell him they’d never gone through with it, how Fergie had been fine with it, relieved even. But something was bugging me too much to focus on explaining it to Alex. The letters were still in Fergie’s office. The police hadn’t taken them…

  “How’d you find out about that?” I asked, but right as the question left my lips, I knew the answer. “Oh my gosh. I know who killed Dr. Campbell.” My whole body tingled as everything clicked into place. Unlike the last time I’d said this sentence in front of Alex, this time I was sure.

  Alex nodded. “…Yeah…Dr. Ferguson… like I told y—”

  “No.” I dropped my coffee, ignoring the splash as it hit the ground as I grabbed onto his jacket with both hands. I rolled wild eyes at him as I said, “We need to go find Fergie. She’s in trouble.”

  20

  Alex didn’t respond in the action-man, let’s-go-save-her! way I’d hoped for. Instead, he stood there and blinked down at the spilled coffee dripping all over our shoes and puddling on the sidewalk.

  “I have to go to her,” I said as I let go of his jacket and walked backward. “I’m sorry.”

  Alex’s face was dark and his jaw looked so tight I was afraid he might crack a few molars. But after a groan and a quick pat to get some of the coffee off his previously clean jeans, he followed me.

  I wheeled around and started to jog. I heard Alex do so, too. My school bag bounced at my side awkwardly, making my already-out-of-practice gait even more ungainly.

  “It’s not that Evensworth guy,” he said, pulling up level with me. I noticed his coffee was gone, too. “His alibi checked out. Pepper, it’s Professor Ferguson. I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head. I already knew it wasn’t Evilsworth, but didn’t have time to tell him how. Right now, I needed to make sure I was right.

  “The poisonous plant used…” I said as I ran, pausing to suck in air — Liv was right, I really needed to work out more.

  “Yeah?” Alex asked.

  “I’m guessing it was something like Hemlock?” I glanced back at him.

  “Cicutoxin.” He nodded. “Western Water Hemlock.”

  I shook my head and laughed. It wasn’t a happy laugh, more like the “how could I have been so stupid and blind?” kind.

  We pulled up in front of the English building. The lights illuminating the facade gave the white stone an ominous appearance. A shiver raked its way down my back despite my slightly sweaty state. My chest heaved, painful after pulling in too much cold air, but I couldn’t wait any longer for my breath to catch up with us. Fergie needed me.

  “So you think it might be Danny? The sound guy?” Alex asked as we pulled open the doors.

  The warm air inside the English building washed over us as we pulled open the doors and headed down the hallway, our sneakers squeaking as we ran over the tiles.

  “No.” The hallways flew past us in a blur. “It had to be someone he knew well, whom he trusted.” I shot the words over to Alex. “I think the poison was in a tea made from the roots. Danny may have had access to the plants, but he couldn’t have gotten them into Dr. C,” I added, my side starting to cramp.

  Screeching to a stop outside Fergie’s office, I grimaced and leaned forward, trying to hear anything which might clue us into what we were walking into. When I couldn’t make out any sounds, I threw open the door — I’d seen the police do it in movies and figured it might give us the element of surprise.

  But the room was empty. My stomach plummeted.

  “No, no, no.” I walked forward. “She was just here.” I turned to look at Alex who looked unconcerned.

  “Maybe she’s in the bathroom?” He shrugged and then, under his breath, added, “Or running away because she knows she’s been caught.”

  I shook my head and turned away from him. That’s when my gaze caught on a piece of paper on her desk. Jumping forward, I grabbed at it.

  “Oh no.” My face flushed hot and cold as I read over the familiar handwriting.

  There is a willow grows aslant a brook,

  That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;

  There with fantastic garlands did I come

  Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples

  That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

  But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them:

  There, on the pendent boughs my coronet weeds

  Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;

  When down my weedy trophies and myself

  Fell in the weeping brook. My clothes spread wide;

  And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore me up:

  Which time I chanted snatches of old tunes;

  As one incapable of my own distress,

  Or like a creature native and indued

  Unto that element: but long it could not be

  Till that my garments, heavy with their drink,

  Pull’d the poor wretch from my melodious lay

  To muddy death.

  I shoved it toward Alex.

  His eyes scanned it, then he lowered the paper. “Again, your theory about the poison tea only solidifies the fact it was her. This sounds like she knew she was done for and she’s running away.” He checked the paper again and his forehead creased. “Or something more depressing.”

  “Yeah, like suicide.” I shook my head.

  For the first time, Alex’s jaw began to tighten in concern. I saw him straighten as I pulled the paper away from him again.

  “This is Queen Gertrude telling Laertes about his sister Ophelia’s death. Only this version has I and my in place of she and her. They wanted it to read like a suicide note. Just like Dr. C’s.” I scoffed. “What the murderer doesn’t know is Fergie is a literature purist and would never do such a thing, even if she were going to commit suicide.”

  Alex pressed his lips together and breathed out through his nose. “Which means?”

  “Fergie doesn’t have much time.” I closed my eyes and started listing things aloud, brainstorming. “Ophelia drowned after climbing the tree, the branch breaking, and then falling in. She gets caught and drowns.” I snapped my fingers and opened my eyes. “I think I know where they are.”

  I raced for the door, the fake suicide note fluttering in my hand, but I stopped, pivoted, and ran back to grab a letter from the pile on the floor. Then I ducked out from under the strap of my school bag and dumped it on the floor. Now I was ready to run. I nodded to Alex and we sped down the hallway.

  Alex’s forehead was forming deeper and deeper creases as he matched my pace. “So if it isn’t Danny, and you swear it wasn’t Fergie…”

  After accusing two people already tonight, I decided to ask one more question. “Who told your dad about the affair?”

  Alex’s eyes locked onto me in a way which made me worried he wasn’t looking where he was running. “Stephanie, but…” His brown eyes darkened as he finally appeared to be taking me seriously. He picked up the pace.

  We threw our bodies at the exterior doors of the English building and ran out into the cold. I led Alex to the path that would take us behind the science building. The botany greenhouses were close to there, too. At one point, I saw a light flash in Alex’s hand. We reached the bridge crossing over the creek by the willow and the sight that met me stopped me in my tracks.

  A body floated face up in the water near the bank. Long, draped blue fabri
c swirling in the water’s ghostly eddies.

  I gasped. “No.” The word was a whisper on my lips. Tears jumped into my eyes.

  A dark shape moved next to me in my blurred vision. Swiping at my eyes, I made out Alex’s form crossing the rest of the bridge and heading down the hill. Sniffling, I ran after him.

  The ground was slick from an afternoon rain, so he had to lean back and pick his way carefully down to the water. The creek trickled merrily in the background, bubbling by in a way that suggested it had no idea the sadness it held.

  Alex reached her first and plunged into the knee-high waters, wrapping his arms around the billowing blue fabric. He lifted and pulled her out until she was out of the water then bent down to check her pulse. I was by her side in a second, slipping in the mud as I grasped onto her cold hand, waiting. Alex’s dark eyes shone in the moonlight as they met mine.

  “She still has a pulse.” He smiled and then pulled out his phone. “I’m going to call for help.”

  “No. You’re not.” The chilling words made my spine straighten. I glanced up, gripping Fergie’s hand protectively.

  Stephanie’s small form was easy to miss next to the large willow tree. That same long, blue button-up she’d worn the first time we’d met flapped in the breeze. But while she looked like the same person I’d met in that hallway, her voice was different. Gone was the small bird, the delicate whispers.

  And then there was the gun she was pointing at us. That definitely hadn’t been there before either.

  “Step away from her.” Her voice shook with anger.

  My eyes cut back to Alex who still had yet to put his phone away. He didn’t look at me, though, his gaze was trained on Stephanie.

  “Please!” I cried out. “She’s dying. She needs help.” Tears spilled down my cheeks as I scooted closer to Fergie’s body, slipping on the muddy bank.

  Ignoring me, she said, “Put the phone away.” She didn’t yell, but there was a blood-curdling craziness distorting each word.

  As much as her tone sent a cold chill deep into my bones, it didn’t seem to faze Alex, whose voice cut through the darkness. “Just calm down. We can talk this through.”

  “Yeah, let’s do that,” she chided. “Talk it through. How might it go? Poor guilty Sharon knew she’d been caught when the nosy TA and her boyfriend started to figure things out. She couldn’t have any survivors, so she shot them before taking the same poison she fed to her lover.” Stephanie spat out that last part.

  My mind reeled. Of course. That’s why she’d done all of this. That’s why she’d put a warning in Fergie’s purse after Dr. Campbell had been killed. Stephanie must’ve found out about Fergie and Davis. But… found out what? They hadn’t actually gone through with any of it.

  “Stephanie, they didn’t do it. They didn’t have an affair!” I blurted out, hating how small my voice sounded, how it shook from fear.

  She snorted. “Sure they didn’t. And the two week trip he took to America before Mom died had nothing to do with that letter that home-wrecker sent him.” She shook her head. “She was dying and that lying bastard couldn’t wait until her body was even cold to go running to her.” She pointed the gun at Fergie’s prone body next to me.

  Each breath felt ragged as I pulled it into my lungs.

  “The trip didn’t have anything to do with her. Davis ended the affair before it even started.” I spoke fast, letting the words spill out. I could feel Alex stiffen next to me in warning, hoping I knew where I was going with this. “Stephanie, your mother wanted them to move on, together.”

  She laughed in response and stepped closer.

  I could see movement in the distance, lights from flashlights. The football game must be over. And while a crowd could mean hope for us, it could just as easily mean more victims for Stephanie to shoot.

  My heart hammered. I didn’t have time to explain everything. Fergie didn’t have time. I gripped the letter I’d pulled from the pile on the floor, having almost forgotten I had it. Maybe if she could hear it from her mother…

  “I have proof,” I called out, holding the letter up. “Your mom wrote to Professor Ferguson.”

  Assumption guided my trembling fingers in the silence that followed. I opened the letter, cursing the darkness and fumbling as my muddy fingers marred the white paper. Tipping it toward the light, I read her mother’s letter aloud in one breath, until I reached the quote at the end. “If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”

  I heard a small gasp.

  I remembered Stephanie saying how much her mother loved Emily Dickinson. After staring at the white paper, my eyes took a moment to adjust and Stephanie was a denim-colored blur as my eyes searched the darkness.

  “She asked for this?” Stephanie’s voice sounded crushed.

  Alex hadn’t been reading off a stark white piece of paper and didn’t seem to be having the same problem as me in the seeing-in-the-dark department. The moment a distraught Stephanie’s hands drifted slightly lower, Alex pounced forward. He had the gun in his hands before I could blink.

  Stephanie didn’t seem to care. She curled up and crumpled into a sobbing heap, mumbling words I couldn’t make out.

  Just then, flashlight beams cut through the darkness, making us throw our hands up to shield our eyes.

  “Alex, you okay?”

  I scolded myself for ever thinking Detective Valdez’s deep voice sounded harsh or cold. No, it was the most wonderful, comforting, warm sound in the world. I almost cried out in relief.

  There was an audible rush of air from Alex before he said, “Yeah.” I could tell he felt relieved as well. “Did you bring the paramedics? Professor Ferguson’s been given something. She’s alive, but in pretty bad shape.”

  Dropping the letter, one of my hands latched onto Fergie’s freezing fingers again while I pressed the other to her cold cheek. Was it the darkness or was her chest not moving anymore?

  “Boys, down here. Quick,” Detective Valdez barked.

  All around us bodies raced, orders were called out and followed, a big spotlight was propped on the bridge to help light the area as they worked. Alex’s dad walked down, taking the gun from his son and clapping him into a tight hug for a second before tipping his head to me and then handcuffing Stephanie.

  I watched with wide eyes and a worried heart as they took Fergie away on a stretcher, the red and white lights of the ambulance flashing as it sped away, over the campus grass and footpaths.

  My body began to shake in the cold, dark, let down. But right as I feared I might collapse, steady arms wrapped around me and a broad chest supported my head. I leaned back and closed my eyes. Safe.

  21

  Entering the library, I paused briefly in the foyer to close my umbrella and breathe in the calming smell. I usually didn’t use an umbrella, but it was pouring buckets outside and my jacket was still all muddy from the other night down by the creek. I sighed, propping the umbrella against the wall next to a few others, then strode forward, pulling the thin book out from under my wool sweater where I’d been keeping it safe from the rain.

  Ginger was sitting at the circulation desk and she smiled up at me when I slipped the book into the “returns” slot. The opening dumped into a cart hidden under the desk and I watched Ginger’s eyes flit down into the pile. Her eyebrows rose.

  “Are the rumors true, then?” She reached down and picked up the copy of The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark.

  My cheeks flushed. It had only been two days. I suppose things did spread quickly in this town, though. Detective Valdez’s stern voice repeated in my mind, warning me not to discuss the case or he’d toss me in jail along with Stephanie.

  “Um — what? I don’t know what you’re referring to…” I backed away from the counter.

  Ginger stood, mouth open as if she were about to ask another question I couldn’t answer.

  “Sorry, I — gotta go find something!” I spun around and bolted for the spiral staircase, fingers gr
asping the railing as I used it to pull myself up and away from her.

  Safely upstairs, I strode toward the Shakespeare aisle. After being so close to a real-life tragedy, I needed to read one of his comedies. Desperately. I wanted people joking, playing tricks on one another, and only pretending to be dead. A little romance wouldn’t hurt either, I thought as I rounded the corner.

  And stopped dead in my tracks.

  A familiar tall, dark, and serious — ly handsome — figure stood in front of the Shakespeare section, dark eyebrows furrowed as he paged through a book. He glanced up as I skidded to a stop, quickly shoving the book he’d been reading back onto the shelf. I grimaced as I watched one of the pages bend backwards, caught in the fast, careless movement.

  “Ah!” I shot forward, fingers reaching. Snatching the book, I smoothed its poor bent pages back into place and glared up at Alex. “I cannot believe you work here with the way you bully books.” I tsked and shook my head.

  Alex didn’t seem to take my scolding seriously, though, because he was grinning at me like some sort of fantastic-looking fool. “It’s good to see you.”

  I breathed through the tightness in my chest. “You, too.”

  We hadn’t seen each other since the other night. The past forty-eight hours had been some sort of cruel whirlwind, like someone had put my life on a super spin cycle.

  “I was going to stop by, but I figured you’d probably be with Fergie.” He cleared his throat and ran a hand through his dark hair.

  I nodded. I had spent the last day at the hospital, curled uncomfortably in a torturous chair, listening to the sweet, sweet sound of her breathing. She hadn’t woken up until hour thirteen, and by that time her kids had flown in and the room had gotten a little crowded, so I’d headed home.

  Maggie had called our mom after hearing from me that night. My lawyer mother had spun into town early the next morning, cutting her business trip a day short. I’d only been allotted a small window free from her litigious grasp to come drop off my library book because I’d told her it would be late otherwise — my mother was without-a-doubt the source of my ingrained sense of rule-following.