She nodded. “What about this Marta person? You knew her, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Well, sort of. Not well. I visited her a few days ago.”
“And you brought her popcorn,” she prompted.
She made it sound like it was something I had to confess. “I didn’t want to show up empty-handed.”
She rolled her eyes. “You are so Midwestern.”
“You’re saying that like it’s a bad thing.” I’d come to appreciate a few things about my Midwestern roots over the years. Showing up with food was a good thing as far as I was concerned.
She held up her hand. “Whatever. Go ahead.”
“That’s it. I brought her the hull-less popcorn so it wouldn’t upset her stomach.” I wasn’t sure what else to tell her about it.
Cynthia made a few notes on her tablet. “Considerate of you. Did you also lace it with some kind of poison?”
I shoved my chair back. “Of course not!”
“Easy there, champ,” Cynthia said. “So if you barely know this woman, why did you visit her and bring her popcorn? Dan says you hate that place. Loving Arms Retirement Community, is it? Something about a bad experience in your teens.”
“I’ve been trying to find out who owned the house my shop is in during the 1950s so I can figure out who might have written the diary that was hidden in the wall of my kitchen so I can figure out who the secret Nazi was and if something happened to the diary writer.” I didn’t see why it was relevant, but there was nothing to hide.
Cynthia blinked a few times before she responded. “Of course.”
“Marta owned the house before Allen Thompson. She inherited it from her father, but they never lived there. They used it as a rental property. The Brancatos lived there, and their daughter, Esther, supposedly went missing right around the time she graduated from high school.” I leaned forward. Maybe I could get Cynthia interested in Esther’s case and she’d help me out. “Her diary makes it sound like someone was threatening her before she disappeared.”
Cynthia tapped a few more notes into her tablet. “I still don’t get why you would poison Marta Hansen.”
I sat back. So much for getting Cynthia interested in a cold case. “Because I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”
“But you did bring her popcorn.” She made some notes on her tablet.
“Was it the popcorn that was poisoned? Are they sure about that?” I mean, the woman ate other stuff, didn’t she?
Cynthia sighed. “Yes. They’re sure it was the popcorn. Plus after she’d recovered, Marta told the doctor that she was sure that the person responsible was that meddling girl with the dog.”
“Why? Why would she say that?” I cried.
Cynthia shrugged. “You tell me. Maybe you were the only person to visit her.”
I nodded, feeling even more miserable than when we started. “Can I see the files now?”
She shoved the box over toward me. It was surprisingly full considering there didn’t seem to have been much time to gather that much information. I pulled the first folder out. It held transcripts of a series of interviews Dan had done. I felt the heat rising to my face as I read over them. He’d talked to every one of the people at Lloyd McLaughlin’s wake who had a reason to hate Lloyd. Every one of them. I hadn’t known. Of course, I suppose there was no reason for me to know. There might even have been a reason for me not to know. I guessed you weren’t supposed to fill one of the suspects in a case in on what you were doing in your investigation. One thing was very clear. I owed Dan an apology. I’d acted like he wasn’t doing his job when he was doing everything he could to solve the case and clear my name. Stupid Megan. It was all her fault. If she hadn’t started all those rumors about me, I would have been content to just read my found diary and let Dan do his work.
I pulled the next folder out. It held photographs of various pieces of evidence. It included the tin Lloyd McLaughlin’s poisoned popcorn had been in. I froze with it in my hand. It was one of the new tins. The ones that had just come in. The ones that I had only used to deliver popcorn to the city council members so far.
All that work Dan had done investigating who hated Lloyd McLaughlin had been for nothing. The only place he could have gotten that tin was from one of the city council candidates. It had never been meant for him. He wasn’t the intended victim. “Cynthia,” I said. “You need to talk to Dan.”
“What about?”
“The popcorn that poisoned Lloyd was from the batch that I made for Allen to give to the city council candidates. It was never meant for Lloyd.” A horrible thought occurred to me. “Cynthia, you’ve got to call Dan right now. Every person who’s running for city council got a tin. They could all be poisoned.”
“All?” Blood drained from her face. “You poisoned them all?”
“No! I didn’t poison any of them. That’s the point. I have no idea who put the poison in or when they did it or how many of those tins they could have poisoned. We have to get them back and we have to get them back now!”
Cynthia pounded on the door of the conference room. Huerta opened the door. He must have seen the look on her face and realized something was wrong because his eyes went from sleepy to alert in an instant. “What is it?” he asked.
“Get Dan. Get Vera. Get everyone. We have a potential mass poisoning on our hands,” she said. “Lloyd McLaughlin might not be the only victim.”
In minutes, everyone had mobilized. Phone calls were made. Officers were sent out to gather up tins of popcorn. I sat in the middle of it all feeling helpless. Finally, the hubbub died down.
“That’s everyone,” Dan said, looking at the list I’d given him. Every name was crossed off.
“Did anyone else eat it?” I asked.
He grimaced. “Pretty much everyone else ate it. Please, Rebecca, that stuff is like crack.”
My stomach lurched. “But no one else got sick? No one else . . . died?”
“You think I wouldn’t have mentioned it if someone else died, Rebecca?” He glowered at me.
Good point. “So only one tin was poisoned. That feels kind of Russian roulette-ish, doesn’t it? Spin the popcorn tin and see which one blows up.” Why would anyone only poison one of the tins? They weren’t marked. There wouldn’t be any way to know who was going to be poisoned.
“Kind of mixing your metaphors there, but yeah. It feels a little like that to me, too. Sort of hard to know who was going to get that tin. Anybody else get any of that special batch?” He rubbed his forehead.
Who else had gotten tins? It hadn’t been just the city council candidates, had it? “Oh, no.”
“Rebecca, what is it?” Dan asked.
“I gave some of that popcorn to Sally and Trina!” I leapt up from the table and ran out the open door, Sprocket at my heels. I ran down the hall, and burst into the city offices just as Trina raised a chunk of Bacon Pecan Popcorn out of the tin and to her lips.
I swatted it away from her and screamed, “Stop!”
She jumped back from the counter, stared at me for a second, then burst into tears.
Suddenly, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I bent over and rested my hands on my thighs like I’d seen Dario do when he took a break from running. It didn’t help. I collapsed onto the ground and panted. Sprocket, always ready to be helpful, licked my face. When my breathing finally returned to something that sounded other than like a monster in a horror movie, I looked up to see Huerta looming over me.
He crouched down next to me. “You run pretty fast when you want to.”
I couldn’t help but notice that he wasn’t breathing hard at all, although I thought I could see a little pink flush on his dark cheeks.
“Why?” Trina wailed from over behind the counter. “Why?”
“The popcorn.” I struggled onto my knees and let Huerta help me the rest of the way to my feet. There still wasn’t
quite enough air going in and out of my lungs to make full sentences. “Might be poisoned.”
Trina looked over at Huerta for more explanation. “Turns out the poisoned popcorn Lloyd McLaughlin ate was from the batch Rebecca made for the city council candidates. The same batch yours came from.”
“Didn’t want you to eat it if it was poisoned.” I stumbled over to the counter and leaned against it.
“You cared enough about me to run? Everyone knows you don’t run,” Trina said wonderingly. She brushed away her tears with the back of her hand. “I’m touched, Rebecca. Really, I am.”
“If you’re so touched, why did you cry?” None of this was making any sense to me at all.
She blushed. Hard. Like almost to a brick color. “I’ve, uh, gained a few pounds recently. I thought you were saying I shouldn’t eat it because I was fat.”
“You’re not fat,” I said. It’s a nearly automatic response. A woman says she’s fat and the call and response of femininity requires a “You’re not fat” in return.
“Easy for a string bean to say.” That sour look she got when she pressed her lips together was back on her face.
I’m not going to lie. I have been blessed with a good metabolism and come from a line of thin people. It didn’t seem the time to protest about my figure. “I know. I’m lucky. I still don’t think you’re fat.”
She sighed. “Well, at least you weren’t slapping snacks out of my hand as some kind of body-shaming ritual.”
I cringed. “Why would you think I would do something like that?”
She shrugged. “Megan’s always talking about how mean you are about her food. It didn’t seem like too far a stretch to think your Mean Girl ways might extend to humiliating me at my workplace.”
“Me? A Mean Girl?” Gobsmacked doesn’t begin to describe how I felt. I had never been a Mean Girl. You had to be part of the “in” crowd to be a Mean Girl, and I’d been so far from in I wouldn’t even know how to find the door to the outer lobby that led to in.
“Yeah. You know. With all your fancy education and your French husband . . .” Trina said.
“Ex-husband,” I corrected almost as a reflex.
She shrugged. “Whatever.”
Huerta tapped me on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get you back to our side of the building before Dan adds attempting escape to the things he’s planning to charge you with.”
We gathered up Trina’s tin of popcorn and went back to the conference room.
• • •
I practically danced my way back to my cell after we finished our conversation in the conference room.
“What’s gotten into you?” Cathy asked.
“A big old helping of truth, that’s what,” I said as I stripped off the bed. No way was I leaving those sheets there. I’m not sure what the thread count was, but Faith definitely hadn’t gone with the cheap stuff.
“Sounds like it was tasty.” Cathy stood up and walked over to the bars to watch me. “What flavor of truth was it?”
“The flavor that says Lloyd McLaughlin was never the person who was supposed to get the poisoned popcorn. So the way I see it, when I went to his wake and talked to the people there I wasn’t obstructing justice because he wasn’t the supposed to be the victim. If I wasn’t obstructing justice, then I did nothing wrong and Dan has to let me out of here.”
“Who was supposed to be the victim, then?”
“Still not one hundred percent sure. I just know it was one of the city council candidates. The poisoned popcorn came from the batch Allen commissioned me to make as their welcome-to-the-political-arena presents.” I clapped my hands with the sheer joy of it.
“Well, okay, then.” Cathy wandered back to her bunk, clearly unimpressed.
One thing still bothered me. Okay. More than one thing, but one thing most of all. “It’s weird. Only one of their tins was poisoned. Everyone else actually ate theirs and was fine. What a relief, right? Although there was a bad moment when I thought maybe Trina and Sally were going to get poisoned, but they’d eaten half of theirs and weren’t sick at all. Marta’s popcorn came from her own special batch.”
“Yes. A relief,” Cathy said. She didn’t sound relieved, though.
“There.” I’d stacked everything up. It wasn’t like I had a lot. “Vera,” I yelled out the cell. “Huerta! I’m ready to go!”
I sat down to wait.
I waited a long time.
Nine
I sat across from Cynthia and put my head down on the table. I’d spent another night in jail. I’d had to remake my bed, which isn’t easy with a bunk bed. I’d had to wash my hair with the icky shampoo that the jail provided and comb it with a comb that was not made for curly hair.
Cynthia had on trouser jeans with boots that made her legs look about three miles long. Over that she had on a white blouse and a cardigan. Somehow she made it look runway worthy. Her hair was smooth and her makeup was flawless.
My orange jumpsuit felt itchy.
“What do you mean Dan isn’t dropping the charges?” I asked.
I’d assumed that if the popcorn hadn’t been intended for Lloyd McLaughlin, I couldn’t be charged for obstructing the investigation into his murder. He wasn’t the intended victim. What could it possibly matter if I attended his wake, got a little tipsy, and bonded with all the people who hated him?
“I mean, he’s not filling out the paperwork that would drop the charges. He’s intending on going ahead with charging you.” She held her hands up and shrugged. “He has a point. Lloyd is still the victim, whether he was intended to be or not. You still went to his wake and questioned people. You’re still guilty.”
“But it was the wrong investigation!” My protests were futile. I knew that. I sat up. Enough with the whining. I wiped my cheeks in case a few tears had leaked out due to frustration. They do that sometimes. “Okay. What’s next?”
“Nothing’s next. We wait for your day in court and get you out of here. At least, for the time being.” Cynthia sat back in her chair, looking relaxed.
I was anything but relaxed. “Right. But shouldn’t we be looking into who wanted to poison a city council member?”
She stared at me, her big hazel eyes unblinking. “Do you remember why you’re here, Rebecca?”
“I’m here because I went to Lloyd McLauglin’s wake and talked to people to find people for Dan to investigate instead of me.” I was pretty clear on the concept.
“Right. You interfered in his investigation and he’s locked you up. Now you seriously want to interfere with the next phase of his investigation?” She gave me the kind of smile that Ms. Renfrew used to give me when she thought she’d given me everything I needed to solve a geometry proof. One thing I knew for sure was that I never had everything I needed to solve a geometry proof.
“Hey! There wouldn’t have been any next phase if it weren’t for me. Dan would still be looking into who wanted to murder Lloyd. Now he can look into who wanted to murder . . . Wait a second. Who was supposed to be murdered? Which city council candidate was that tin destined for? Do we know that yet?” I sat back in my chair.
“I don’t know and I don’t care and neither should you.” She pointed at me with her pen.
“It’s still my popcorn that was poisoned. It’s still blowing back on me until we figure out who really did this.” Megan would not let go of this because the person who was poisoned wasn’t the person who was supposed to be poisoned in the first place.
Cynthia leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Not we, Rebecca. Dan. Dan needs to figure it out.”
I thought about the file folders full of meticulous interview notes that I’d seen. Cynthia was right. Dan would figure it out. If he needed my help, he’d ask for it. “Fine. Did you find the diary? I could be thinking about that instead.”
“No. I looked. Haley looked
. Garrett looked. No one could find it in your apartment. Are you sure you left it there?” Cynthia packed her things away into her briefcase.
“I’m sure.” I chewed my lower lip. Where could it have gone? “Hey! I know. I made a copy of it for Barbara. Do you think you could get it from her?”
“I’ll give her a call and ask her to bring it by.” She clicked the case shut and knocked for Huerta to come let her out.
“Thanks.”
• • •
Cynthia must have been true to her word, because Barbara showed up a few hours later. Huerta came to retrieve me from my cell.
Huerta gestured for me to stick my hands through the slot in the bars so he could handcuff me.
“Is this strictly necessary?” Being handcuffed is surprisingly awkward. I’d already clunked myself on the cheekbone with the chain when I had an itch on my nose. I didn’t want to accidentally break a tooth.
“It’s a rule.” Huerta unlocked the door after I’d withdrawn my hands.
“Haven’t you ever heard that rules are meant to be broken?” I gave him what I hoped was a winning smile.
He shot me a look. “Only if you want to end up on your side of the bars instead of mine.”
He had a point.
Then he grinned. “Although with you in here, at least Cynthia is coming around more.”
“Have you two started going out?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I was, uh, hoping you would put in good word for me.”
“Do you think you need one?” I was pretty sure the word for Huerta was going to be yes.
“I don’t know. She’s so sophisticated and elegant and I’m . . .” He gestured down at his uniform.
“Handsome? Strong? Smart?” I suggested.
“I’m a cop. I have an AA degree from the community college. She’s a lawyer. She’s so smart.” He looked wistful.
I smiled. “Yes. She is. I think she’s probably too smart to pass up a guy because he doesn’t have an advanced degree.”
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