by Mary Bowers
Another silent nod.
“Only the frosting she added to the cake had a little something extra that she didn’t put in.”
I waited, but he just watched me. That wasn’t the deal, but I went ahead and finished the thought anyway. “She had added ipecac, or something to make herself mildly sick. And then somebody else added . . . was it cyanide?”
An imperceptible nod.
“Who else handled the frosting?”
No reaction. Oops – I broke the rules. You can only play confirm or deny with yes-or-no questions. I rephrased it.
“Did anybody besides Vanessa usually handle the frosting?”
No.
No, I repeated to myself. She had probably made a sacred rite of the whole thing. “The frosting was homemade, by Vanessa herself.”
A little nod.
“So technically, she poisoned herself. Only she had no idea there were two poisons in the frosting.”
I waited for affirmation, but Jack was looking over my shoulder now. I turned, and Detective Frane, he of the creepy gray-green eyes, was coming toward us.
He looked at Jack instead of me. “She got any ideas?”
I looked at Jack, but no way was he a spy-traitor. Frane had simply trapped him. So I saved Jack the embarrassment by speaking up and telling Frane what I’d worked out.
Naturally Frane wasn’t going to play confirm-or-deny with me, but I could see he was impressed.
“Any idea who might’ve done that?” he asked instead.
I hesitated. When you’re just gossiping with your friends, you can throw murder accusations around with a happy heart, but when you’re talking to the cops it’s another matter altogether.
“Hypothetically speaking,” he murmured when I hesitated. He slowed his speech and stared with his glassy eyes like he was trying to entrance me. “It goes no further if you come up with something that’s just . . . silly.” He smiled. Anyway, his mouth smiled. His eyes didn’t change.
“Gavin Lovelace,” I said.
“Why?”
“Opportunity. He brought the cake. We only have his and Pixie’s word for what happened to it after that, and I don’t trust either one of them.”
“Motive?”
“He was losing control over Orwell Quest. Until Vanessa Court showed up, he was running the show. Vanessa was edging him out. That’s the scuttlebutt, anyway. Don’t quote me on that, and don’t go arresting anybody. It’s just loose talk I picked up, that’s all. Also – and you should take this into serious consideration – I don’t like the guy.”
“Okay, thanks. Anybody else?”
I tried to think. I’d been going on the theory that Vanessa was the intended victim, but what if it was Orwell Quest? He was a rock star to the kind of people who attended paranormal conferences, and if it was one of them, just some unknown Factor X looking to make himself famous, there would be no way to puzzle it out with logic. So I tried to think back to anybody who knew Orwell on a more personal level. I let the whole cast of characters play across my mind, thinking hard.
Sparky? What for? Orwell had made an appearance on Sparky’s short-lived TV show, so they actually knew one another, and Orwell had done him a favor. He seemed to know all about the arrangement whereby Vanessa tasted the cake first, but would he have even taken a chance that Orwell would die instead of her? She was the one everybody blamed for getting his show cancelled, but he hadn’t shown any more animus toward her than anybody else. Less, in fact. His group hadn’t interacted with Orwell’s group much before the speeches, when the frosting must have been poisoned, and I don’t know how he would’ve managed that. Finally, Sparky was a prankster, not a poisoner. He’d have been more likely to hack Gavin’s Questian Society website than plot a murder.
Phineas and/or Ricky? I shook my head. In my mind, they were secondary characters in the grand scheme of things. I didn’t know much about them, but they always seemed to follow Sparky’s lead. Unless all three of them were in it together, I couldn’t picture it.
Pixie? She was more complicated than she liked to let on, but I was trying not to hold that against her yet. A girl’s gotta get by in this cold, cold world, and some do it by attaching themselves to rich guys. She had no motive to kill Orwell and many good reasons to keep him alive. On the other hand, she didn’t seem to like Vanessa, and she knew darn well Vanessa would eat the cake before Orwell did, but from what little I knew about their relationship, Vanessa seemed to view Pixie as a harmless tick. Pixie didn’t like Vanessa, but seriously, murder?
Orwell? He would have had plenty of opportunity to poison the frosting, and committing a murder that particular way seemed to fit in with his twisty personality. But why would he bother? He always had Gavin do his dirty work. If he wanted Vanessa out of his life, all he needed to do was tell Gavin, who would have been delighted to get rid of her.
Except . . . Vanessa was no weedy little thing who would simply hang her head and go. I don’t think the Orwell Quest entourage had ever had a member quite like Vanessa before. If it came to a battle of wills, my money would’ve been on Vanessa, against any one of the others, including Orwell.
And something else had been bothering me: why did Orwell leave ParaCon after his speech, when he knew that Vanessa was waiting for him somewhere with the cake he wanted, which Gavin said he knew about. Why go out for dessert? And why did he show no interest in where Vanessa was when nobody could find her? In fact, he seemed eager to get away from ParaCon before anybody could even look for her.
Finally, exactly what was the real relationship between Orwell and Vanessa? She had changed her hairstyle for him, and Pixie had hinted she was willing to do more – much, much more. I didn’t sense a sick vibe between Orwell and Pixie, but I got nothing but sick vibes from Vanessa.
But seriously – Orwell Quest as a poisoner? That absent-minded, benign, grown-up kid who wanted to relive his childhood birthday parties at least once a day? I just couldn’t picture it. I tried to think of who else was around yesterday that might have had a grudge against Orwell, since the cake had actually been meant for him, as far as most people knew.
Who else had access? Purity had had a workshop that day in a room that had an adjoining door to the kitchen (locked), but even if she thought Vanessa was messing with the Wee Folk, I didn’t see her mixing cyanide into that container of frosting. As an insider in the paranormal world, she probably knew about Orwell’s obsession with cake, but she didn’t seem to know about Vanessa’s role as “taster.” Anyway, Purity had a different way of dealing with people, and it usually involved spell books, chanting and incense, not cyanide.
And finally, just because he had access, knew everybody involved, knew about the cake thing and presumably could get into the kitchen, Edson Darby-Deaver. To that I said oh, hell no. Ed chases ghosts. He doesn’t make them.
“No,” I told Detective Frane. “I can’t think of anybody else, but keep in mind I barely know these people.”
“That hasn’t kept you from figuring things out before,” he said quietly.
He continued to stare at me until I broke off eye contact with an effort, said good-bye to Jack and turned to leave.
* * * * *
Something about the frosting still nagged at me. The more I thought about it, the more I believed the poisoner could only have been someone in Orwell’s group. They were the only ones who really had an opportunity. The thought made me feel a lot better. I didn’t know these people well, and if they wanted to kill one another, it was no business of mine. I quickened my steps toward the door, feeling twenty pounds lighter.
“Leaving so soon?” said a little voice. She was back in wood-elf mode, but there was a suggestion of “don’t let the door hit you in the behind on the way out,” in her sing-song voice.
“Yep.” I’d meant to pass her without so much as a glance, but at the last second I twirled, stared at her, and said, “Hey, Pixie?”
“Yes?”
I got closer to her and lowered my voice
. “You know, the poison was in the frosting, not the cake. Did the cops tell you that?”
“The cops ask questions, they don’t give answers. Why would they tell you that?”
“Oh, you know, I’m a local, I know them all. Anyway, I think if you’re going to find the poisoner, you need to look closer to home. In fact, you need to look at home. Vanessa’s dead. I don’t think Orwell did this. So it’s either you or . . . .”
“Gavin,” she said, her big brown eyes wide and shocked. I was sure she was actually surprised.
“Nobody here could’ve poisoned it. There just wasn’t any opportunity. It had to have been done before you guys even brought it here.”
She stared at me, blurted, “But, but,” and looked up over my head.
He was behind me. Gavin Lovelace. Silently staring.
I turned and stared back.
“She says the poison was in the frosting,” Pixie said.
He shifted his gaze to her, then looked back at me. “It couldn’t have been.”
“Why not?”
Pixie piped up behind me. “Because he was eating the frosting on the way here!”
“What?” I twirled on her again, then looked back up at Gavin. “What’s she talking about?”
He gave me a slow smile. “She’s reminding me that Orwell was eating from the frosting container yesterday morning before we got here, and he was fine. While I was driving, Orwell persuaded Vanessa to let him have a few spoonfuls in the car on the way here. I said no, but of course nobody listened to me. His cholesterol . . . .”
He stopped, because the same fact hit all three of us at once.
“If the frosting was poisoned, it was done here. At ParaCon,” he said. He looked all around slowly, then brought his eyes back to mine and stared. “By one of you.”
“Or one of you,” I countered. “Just making sure there was a longer list of suspects.”
* * * * *
It wasn’t until I was driving home to Cadbury House that I thought of something else I should have said to Gavin: that since the kitchen was locked until Vanessa went in, only somebody with access to Orwell’s dressing room could’ve done the poisoning, which brought the list of suspects back down to two. Actually, three if you counted Orwell, which for some reason I kept forgetting to do.
When I’d gotten to ParaCon the day before, Ed told me that Orwell’s group had arrived at about 8:50 and were in the dressing room. Gavin left some time before Ed and I began to set up Purity’s workshop, and given the driving time to and from Tropical Breeze, he probably got back a little after 10:30. He gave the cake to Pixie, who had it taken away from her by Vanessa. She went back into the kitchen as the speeches were beginning – say 12:10 – and never came out again. Michael said she had to unlock the door to get in, so she had locked up when she left it the first time. That gave about a 3-hour, 20-minute window for the poisoning to be done, and during that time the frosting was either in the dressing room or in the kitchen, both places with restricted access. So it had to have been done by either Gavin or Pixie. Or Orwell.
But I forgot all about that when I realized something else: I had left Michael off my mental list. He had been there, at ParaCon, in time for the speeches. If Vanessa had invited anybody into the kitchen to be alone with her, it would have been him. And even though I’d circulated around ParaCon throughout the morning, I hadn’t seen him.
I just couldn’t even consider it. It was too ridiculous – and terrifying. I decided I’d better think about it anyway, even if it did give me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Just what was there against Michael when it came to Vanessa?
He had known her since high school, longer than anybody else on the list by decades.
He had broken up with her back in the day, but it seemed as if she’d been carrying a torch for him ever since.
The first thing she did upon coming back to Tropical Breeze was break into his house and take his old yearbook, with her song-of-the-stalker inscription.
When informed that she was back in town and climbing through his windows, Michael had reacted by flying to her side, leaving me wet, naked and forgotten in the shower.
That last item, in my mind, was enough for arrest and prosecution, but not on a charge of murder. Never murder. Michael simply wouldn’t harm a fly, let alone kill off an old girlfriend who was being a nuisance. No, it was impossible.
Still, I began to wonder just what it was that Vanessa had wanted from Michael, anyway.
* * * * *
Back at Cadbury House, I was strangely reluctant to see Michael. I felt guilty for even including him on my private, unspoken list of suspects. It was as if I thought he’d be able to see it in my eyes. But Michael had gone to the links that morning and when I got back, he was still out, so I was relieved. The one I found myself facing was Bastet.
As soon as I walked in the door and put my purse down, she was there, posed like an Egyptian canopic jar, staring at me through weirdly lifeless eyes.
“What?” I said, staring at her.
She remained motionless, poised on the back of a sofa so that her eyes were nearly level with mine. She wasn’t being a normal cat and demanding her dinner. She was being that weird creature she became from time to time, whenever she wanted to control me. No, not control. Possess. That’s the word. Much as I hate that word, much as I have argued with Ed about the tie between Bastet and me, with all the pop-psychology implications of the word, it was the right word. It was possession: she had something for me to do and I was going to do it.
Chapter 15
I don’t remember driving to Girlfriend’s that night. I’ve never told anybody that. I don’t think I saw Michael during the time I was at Cadbury House, and from the way he acted when I saw him again, I’m pretty sure I’m right. Anyway, he knew nothing about Operation Wee Folk until I told him about it later, and when I did, he was amused, nothing more. But from the time I saw Bastet posing like an ancient artifact until the time I put the SUV in Park in the alley behind Girlfriend’s, I have no memory of what happened.
When I arrived it was dark out, I was wearing different clothing, (dark cargo pants and a black sweatshirt), and Bastet was with me – NOT in her cat carrier, which I would never have allowed if I’d been in charge.
When I opened the door of the Escape, she preceded me into the back door of the shop and passed by Wicked without even glancing at him. For his part, Wicked leaned back, lowered his eyes, and after she had passed him, he hung back and didn’t even greet me.
Purity was pleased to see her. So was Florence.
Bastet had formally entered my life almost a year before, by presenting herself to Florence at the shop and waiting for me to arrive. When I came in that day, she adopted me and let it be known that I was taking her home. But since Florence had her first, she’d taken the honor of naming her, and by some strange coincidence, she’d named her Basket. She only became Bastet later, but Basket is close enough. It made me uneasy then, and it still does. Anyway, Florence still tended to call her Basket, and she greeted her by that name that Saturday night.
Ed was there, too, setting up some equipment on the shipping desk, and when Bastet and I entered he jumped to his feet and gazed glassy-eyed as the cat walked past him. The cat ignored him and found a stack of packing boxes, then leapt weightlessly to the top of them and settled down to watch over us. Only when she settled did Ed look at me and nod, then go back to his tinkering.
“What have you got there?” I asked. “A video camera?”
He looked at me pityingly. “Every cell phone is a video camera, Taylor. I’ll be using mine that way tonight if it becomes necessary. No, I’m setting up surveillance on this laptop from a spycam I placed outside, over the back door. Have a look,” he said, motioning me around the desk with a move of his head.
I walked around and looked at the laptop’s screen. It showed the alley behind Girlfriend’s. It was already dark outside and the moon had not yet risen, but I was surprised to see that
everything on the computer screen was showing up as if it were still light outside. Maybe there was just a hint of violet to everything.
“Wow. Nice picture.”
“Night vision,” he said proudly. “And sound, of course.”
“Night vision? Shouldn’t everything be green?”
He gave me another pitying stare. “Once upon a time. These days that’s mostly in the movies, because it looks cool, and it makes it clear what’s going on without one of the characters having to say, ‘Oh, look! It’s dark, but we can still see! These must be night vision goggles!’ These new cameras work in very low light, and even no light. The street light at the end of the alley is giving us all we need, and later the moon will be more than sufficient.”
“And it’s recording too, of course,” I said quickly, trying to recover from the green thing.
“Of course. My cell phone will only be for if we give chase.”
“You won’t be giving chase,” Purity said calmly from the dark corner where she sat motionless. “If we see or hear anything, I will give chase, not you.”
“But . . . alone?” Ed asked.
“I’ll be fine.”
I said, “Did you bring the, you know, presents?”
She smiled at me. “They have them. But what they really crave is retribution. That’s why we are here.”
I looked at Ed, concerned. I’d seen Purity go into trances in her professional capacity as a medium, and even in a trance she’d been livelier then she was now. Before our eyes she became less of herself, slipping away from her body somehow, blinking eyes as blind as a doll’s. There was a stillness about her that was jarring, as if she might jump up suddenly and scream, or let her head loll to the side and quietly die. I didn’t like it, and I could see that Ed didn’t like it either. Florence didn’t seem to notice. It should have made things seem more normal that she was fussing around with an electric kettle, trying to make tea or something, but somehow it made things worse. There’s an innocence about Florence, and her lack of awareness that anything was different seemed to emphasize it. I wished with all my heart that she wasn’t there. There was something in the air that was working its way through me like an icy mist, and though Florence seemed completely unaware of it, I didn’t want it near her.
