A Cereal Killer (A Sibyl Potts Cozy Mystery, Book 1)

by Morgana Best

  My eyelids closed on a straight stretch of road, opening just before a sharp turn. I slammed on the brakes too late, crashing through the barricade and barrelling off the side of a cliff. The last thing I saw was the ground rushing up to meet me.

  “Don’t Stop Believing” was blaring from my bedside radio. My eyesight was still blurry, but I knew I was at home. Had that been a vision? I turned the radio off and tried to stop shaking. The vision, as usual, had been so real that I’d thought it had actually happened.

  I had a shower, got dressed, and began to make a pot of coffee, all the time thinking about my vision. I had been so tired, but why? It was an unnatural tiredness, nothing at all like just being sleepy. I made the coffee and poured milk into bowl of cereal, but then I remembered from my vision that both had tasted funny, I decided to forego the coffee and cereal, and just take the drive, albeit more carefully than normal.

  I drove along, remembering the countryside in detail. I saw the same horses, cows, and sheep as I did last time. In my vision, I was already feeling tired by the time I’d reached the base of the mountain. This time I felt fine, as alert as ever. The only difference this time was my breakfast, but coffee and cereal couldn’t do that, unless, of course, they had been tampered with. Poisoned, perhaps?

  More than fear, I felt an intense surge of frustration. Somebody had tried to kill (or at least, seriously injure) me, and I had no way to prove it. But who could have done it? They must have wanted this to look like an accident.

  I turned the previously deadly corner of the mountain without even a second thought to my vision. My mind was elsewhere now, wondering who could have done it. There was no way to narrow it down to a single suspect. Anybody could have broken in, and there was a master key kept in the main house. If somebody had access to it, they could have easily broken in and poisoned me. Of course, anybody could have broken in without it, or just stolen the key itself.

  I spent the rest of the uneventful trip pondering these possibilities. I collected and paid for the dryer without incident and made my way home.

  As I pulled into my driveway, I saw Blake Wessley pounding on my front door. I pulled up and called to him. “Sibyl!” he yelled, running toward me. “Are you okay? What’s happened?”

  I didn’t know what to say. How could he have known something was wrong? Why was he here? I froze to the spot, my mind whirring.

  “Alison found your note in the daily mail and called us immediately. You need to tell me what’s wrong.”

  “What note?” I asked, though I was beginning to have a pretty good idea where this was going.

  “You mean you didn’t write it?” Blake frowned. “Sibyl, we found a suicide note. It said that you’d been depressed since your divorce, and, well, that you were going to kill yourself.”

  I should have been upset, or frightened. Yet all I could think was this was evidence – key evidence. Someone had tried to set up this attempt on my life to look like a suicide, and the note itself was a clue. Perhaps the police would even be able to identify who wrote it from the handwriting.

  “Blake, I didn’t write that note. I think somebody poisoned my coffee or cereal, maybe both, this morning and tried to make it look like a suicide. Where is that note now?”

  Blake looked shocked. “It’s in the main house; we’ll go collect it now. If somebody really did intend you harm, that note’s going to be evidence.”

  We walked to the main house without saying a word to each other. Blake seemed to be worried about me, but my mind was racing. There wasn’t enough evidence here to figure out who could have done this – after all, anyone could have written a note and left it in the mailbox – but the note itself could give away the identity of the attempted murderer, who was almost definitely the same person that killed Tim Higgins.

  When we arrived, Mr. Buttons was standing at the reception desk. “Hello Mr. Buttons,” Blake said. “Have you seen Alison? She was holding a note for me.”

  “Ah, yes,” Mr. Buttons replied. “She gave it to me a few minutes ago and asked me to hold it, but I, ah…” he trailed off. “I seem to have misplaced it.”

  “You what?” Blake asked, clenching his fists. “You misplaced it? That note was key evidence in a case!”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Sergeant Wessley, but I’ve been forgetful lately. I’m sure it will turn up somewhere around here. After all, I haven’t left the room since Alison gave it to me and told me to wait. I have no idea where it could have gone!”

  Blake sighed deeply and turned back to the door. “Come with me, Sibyl. I just have to ask you a few questions.”

  We went back to my cottage and sat in the dining room. “I’d offer you a coffee or bowl of cereal, but, well….” I was half joking, but Blake didn’t see the humor.

  “Listen, Sibyl. I need you to tell me exactly what happened. How do you know your food was poisoned? Did you drink any coffee or eat any cereal? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Blake, really. Thank you, but I’m okay. I didn’t eat any of it.”

  “Then how do you know it was poisoned?” He gave me a stern look, and suddenly I felt much less at ease. How was Blake going to react when I told him that I have visions? It made matters worse that his ex girlfriend had been some sort of new age hippy type, to quote Alison, so he wasn’t going to take kindly to the fact that I had visions. Not that I was thinking of him as potential boyfriend material, of course.

  I let out a long sigh. “Look, Blake, I know this will be difficult to believe, but I had a vision. I had a vision that I drank the coffee and ate the cereal, and then my car went over the cliff. I think it must have been laced with sleeping pills, or some sort of drug with a similar effect.”

  Blake stared at me, clearly not believing a word of it. I figured he was skeptical – I supposed good police officers have to be – but it seemed to me that he was not even entertaining the possibility that I’d had an honest-to-goodness premonition.

  “You’re kidding, right? You had a vision that you had deadly coffee and cereal, and then you died in a crash? That’s not any kind of evidence, Sibyl. That’s nothing.” He sighed again and leaned back in his chair, shaking his head.

  “But what about the suicide note?” I said, doing my best to keep calm despite the fact that I was angry. How could he not believe someone was trying to kill me? “You saw the note yourself, and you know I didn’t write it. Why would somebody write something like that if they didn’t want me dead?”

  Blake shook his head again. “Look, I’m not saying there’s nothing here. I saw the note, and it’s suspicious beyond a doubt. I also think it’s quite likely that you’re in serious trouble. However, you have to understand why I can’t accept a ‘poison coffee and cereal vision’ as evidence of any kind.” Blake had eased up a little now, and I sensed a little empathy in him.

  “Is there anything you can do for me?” I asked.

  “Well, we’ll have the coffee and cereal analyzed for you. Unfortunately, we’ll have to take all of it, of course.” He smirked just a little.

  “Oh, no, I’d rather just die than have you take away all my coffee and cereal.”

  Again, he failed to see the funny side.

  “I’ll cut you a deal. You let me take all this coffee and cereal and have it analyzed, and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee, maybe even a bowl of cereal, tomorrow morning.” He said this so sincerely that I wasn’t even sure if he was flirting. While I wasn’t especially interested in Blake – I’d had enough of men to last me a lifetime, thanks to my ex-husband - I was certainly interested in coffee.

  “It’s a date.”

  "If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then give him only two of them."

  (Phil Pastoret)

  Chapter Nine.

  Blake had taken me to a quaint – a word which I use here to mean “unattractive” – little café in the middle of town. Initially, I certainly wasn’t impressed; the exterior was run down and ancient. Some would
call it “rustic,” but I again I think “unattractive” is a perfectly adequate word for it. I was certainly surprised at the interior, which boasted a more modern décor.

  A waitress came over to take our orders, and she had a wide smile. In fact, it seemed to me that she was trying not to chuckle. "Well, hello, Blake," she said. "Who's your friend?" She winked at me.

  I wanted to say, "I'm not his friend," but couldn’t, so just sat there. I noted that Blake flushed red.

  "This is Sibyl Potts, one of Cressida's new boarders," he said. "She's renting the cottage."

  I had the urge to give the waitress my shoe size as well. Was there no privacy in this town?

  The waitress smiled at me. "Oh yes, you have that mobile dog grooming service, don't you?"

  I returned her smile. "Yes, but I groom cats as well. I do a good powder pack on a Persian show cat and I also clip all types of longhair pet cats."

  The waitress promptly lost interest. "So, what are you having?"

  I ordered a latte and a cheese croissant and Blake ordered a long black and French Toast with maple syrup and bacon.

  I felt like I had gone to hot beverage heaven. It was some of the best coffee I’d ever had, and the cheese croissant with creamy béchamel sauce only added to the delectable meal. Good restaurants made food less appealing than this. Blake ordered me a second round and I ate as if I were starving. It was all so good. No wonder locals crowded this place.

  Blake and I got to chatting about different things, both of us awkwardly dancing around the subject of murder and suicide, as one does on these social occasions. Inevitably the conversation turned toward the sad fate of Tim Higgins, as well as the man himself. Blake explained to me – probably in more detail than he was allowed – that Tim Higgins had once been a shady antique dealer. While Higgins had never had a criminal record, he had been a person of interest for the police force for quite some time. He also had more than a few criminal acquaintances, which alone was enough to warrant suspicion. However, they had never been unable to prove anything.

  “Do you think his death was related to this somehow?” I asked. It was a genuine question, but I was more concerned with Blake’s answer. He was being open and honest today, and I was hoping to learn more about the case, as well as about Blake himself.

  “We really don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “Like I said, it’s been hard to pin anything on him. His death could have been totally unrelated, and of course, it still may have been of natural causes, regardless of what you believe.” He looked at me quite sternly as he said this.

  I sighed. “It must be hard, trying to solve a case like this with such a small police force here. When did Tim Higgins actually arrive in town?” I actually didn’t think it was particularly relevant, but wanted to make sure we stayed on this topic.

  “Actually, that’s even more suspicious. Cressida Upthorpe appeared on a television show – oh, I can’t think of the name, it was something like Antique Roadshow - with a particularly valuable antique only two weeks before Tim Higgins arrived here as a permanent boarder. Like I said earlier, though, as far as we know, he’s never actually done anything.”

  I bit my lip. “So I don’t quite understand why you and the other police are so suspicious of him.”

  Blake looked at his coffee for a while before answering. “It’s mostly because of his acquaintances, and how his antique dealings appeared on the books. There were some suspicious numbers, and things didn’t quite add up. It could have just been poor book keeping, but combined with the people he knew, it was enough to arouse some serious suspicion.”

  I nodded. “The kind of people he knew?”

  “Yes, mostly people who dealt with similar things, although they had criminal records. People who had been caught stealing antiques, melting down stolen gold jewelry, that kind of thing. Relatively speaking, it’s nothing major such as homicide, but it’s enough to land them some serious jail time.”

  “Do you think he actually did anything?” I asked. At this point I was sure that Tim Higgins had been up to some seriously shady behavior, but I was hoping to get more out of Blake.

  “Personally, yes, I do. I think he was just as crooked as his friends, only better at covering his tracks. Since the police couldn’t pin anything on him, though, it’s a moot point. Even more so now, I suppose.” Blake narrowed his eyes. “Sibyl is an unusual name.”

  I laughed. “You think Sibyl is unusual. My sister’s name is Phyto. Don’t ask,” I added, with a wave of my hand.

  “Were you named after a relative?”

  I sighed, both at his abrupt change of subject away from the topic of murder, and at the personal question. How on earth would I explain? Blake was staring at me fixedly, so I took a deep breath. “It’s a family tradition. Every firstborn daughter in my mother’s family has been named Sibyl, right back to ancient Greek times, or so they say. We were named after the priestess of Apollo who could foretell the future in visions.”

  “Oh, the Delphic Oracle.”

  I shook my head. “No, everyone thinks that, but the Sibyl and the Delphic Oracle were two entirely separate things.” I could have gone on, but Blake didn’t appear at all interested in ancient history; he seemed more interested in the here and now.

  “Are you trying to tell me that you have visions of the future?” He asked somewhat half heartedly as if he wasn't expecting me to answer in the affirmative.

  I fidgeted nervously and looked around the café. “Well, yes, I do,” I said. “And they come true,” I added firmly. “Well, at least if the person doesn’t do something to stop them.”

  Blake appeared to be confused. “How do you mean?”

  “Well, in my premonitions, the future isn't set. I had a vision of me drinking coffee and eating cereal that had sleeping pills or whatever in it, and then falling asleep and driving over a cliff. Then I was able to avoid drinking the coffee and eating the cereal. You see?”

  “Yes,” he said, but it was clear he didn’t. He took a long drink of his coffee and looked at his watch. “Look, I have to get back to the station,” he said, looking at me sternly. “Promise me you’ll stay safe. I may not believe that you had a magical dream, Sibyl, but I do believe you’re in real danger. Just say the word and I’ll organize to have an officer watch your place.”

  I smiled at him. “I would have thought you’d have an officer on watch anyway, given the circumstances.”

  “Well, I’d like to, but without a specific request, it’s better to keep them on other tasks. This isn’t the most exciting town in the world, but it does have its fair share of trouble. I don’t like to waste manpower if I can help it.” Blake narrowed his eyes, and I figured he considered that he had just been a little too honest. “Look, I’m happy to provide an officer if you want one. Nothing’s more important than the safety of the townsfolk here.”

  “It’s fine, Blake, but thank you. To be honest, I don’t think anyone would try to hurt me again so soon, especially if they know the police are involved.”

  Blake shrugged and it seemed as if he intended to say something else but then decided against it. “Well, it was good to see you,” he said, standing up. “I’ll check on you later, okay? Just stay safe.” He left with a wave.

  “If you eliminate smoking and gambling, you will be amazed to find that almost all an Englishman's pleasures can be, and mostly are, shared by his dog.”

  (George Bernard Shaw)

  Chapter Ten.

  I watched Blake leave, and wondered if I should order a second coffee. I stood up to look around for the waitress, and saw Mr. Buttons reading, or rather, hiding behind, a newspaper at the booth just behind my seat. How long had he been sitting there? Had he heard everything Blake had said?

  When Mr. Buttons saw me watching him, he waved me over. “Sit down, Sibyl; we need to talk.”

  I did as I was asked and sat down opposite him. “What about?”

  Mr. Buttons leaned forward. “I heard Blake tell you all about Mr. Higgins.
I was suspicious of that man, right from the time he arrived. He was always looking too hard at the antiques, and asking Cressida questions. The Moon was always coming up when I did a tarot spread about him.”

  "Do you always do tarot spreads about everyone you know?" I asked, picturing him sitting in the privacy of his room, finding out information about others from his cards. "Have you done tarot spreads about me?" I added.

  Mr. Buttons shook his head. "No, I've only pulled a card about you, not a full spread. It’s always the same one: Two of Swords. There's something you’re not seeing, Sibyl, and you need to figure it out."

  I shuddered, but at that point the waitress walked over and I ordered coffee, before turning my attention back to Mr. Buttons. “You said Tim Higgins was always asking Cressida questions; what kind of questions?”

  Mr. Buttons shrugged. “He asked the sort of questions that only someone who knew about antiques would ask. I did wonder if he was looking to steal something, and his body was found in the storage room which is usually locked. That adds up as suspicious to me.”

  “Here, I brought these,” he said, pulling two pairs of latex gloves from the pocket on the breast of his shirt, and handing me a pair.

  I looked at him, aghast. I knew he was OCD about cleanliness, but this was carrying it a bit too far. Before I could speak, he continued. “Put those on. I have some evidence to hand you.”

  I did as I was told, and Mr. Buttons pushed a folded piece of paper across the table at me.

  I opened it with my gloved hands, and there was my suicide note. “Why didn’t you give it to Blake just then?”