Matcha Do About Murder

by Eryn Scott

  The screechy cry of the hinges in the front door of the Geoduck ran up my back like a fingernail up a chalkboard. My heart sank. Chief Clemenson walked out just ahead of me. He gave me a quick nod and got into his SUV, moving the folder out of the way as he climbed in.

  I nodded back, staying on the sidewalk until I reached my car. Today was not my day for clues.

  19

  As things turned out, it wasn’t my day for clues or news. Before I even turned on my car, my phone buzzed with a call from my mom.

  I answered over my car’s speaker as Chief Clemenson pulled away in his SUV.

  “Hey, Mom. What’s up?”

  “Hi, honey. Not much. Just calling to say I finished researching your Mr. Benson.”

  My heartbeat ratcheted up. I leaned forward in my seat, grasping the steering wheel as if it might help me control the direction of this conversation.

  “Finished, as in you had a breakthrough and found new information that proves an entirely different story?” I asked hopefully.

  Mom exhaled. “Finished, as in the evidence that he was a deserter finally outweighed the weird instinct I had. It’s safe to say that we can’t predict how people will act in times of fear or stress. All the reports are true, honey.” She sounded sad and frustrated too, but not to the deep, cutting level that I was experiencing.

  “Right. Okay. I hear you.” It was almost as if a robot were saying the words, like I heard someone else say them.

  “I haven’t been stumped like that in a long time. What a fun project. If you have any more questions like that, definitely send them my way.”

  Even though Mom sounded remorseful about how the story had turned out, she was off looking for the next challenge. That was all this was to her. Unlike me, who had now officially run out of reasons not to be open and honest with Asher.

  “Mom, I’ve got to go. But I’ll call you later, okay?” I asked, hoping the wobble in my voice came off as a poor connection rather than my emotional world crumbling around me.

  Either my cover-up did its job or Mom dismissed the warning signs because why would I have such a connection to a long-dead deserter?

  “Okay, I’ll be around tonight whenever you have a minute to talk.”

  I croaked out a goodbye and hung up. And while the drive out to Tea by the Sea from downtown never seemed very long, this time it was done in the blink of an eye. Breaths shuddered through my body, and I wondered if it would always ache this much to exhale now that I knew the truth about Asher.

  I parked in front of the teahouse and adjusted my body to prepare for the hardest conversation I could imagine. I’m not sure how pushing my shoulders back and filling my lungs with fresh air would help me tell Asher the worst thing he would ever hear, but I went through the motions anyway.

  There was nothing standing in the way of me telling him now, no excuses that I could live with. Also, something about having just witnessed Lois confront the most difficult realities of her death made me hope Asher might be able to do the same.

  But the nausea settling in the pit of my stomach as I entered the teahouse reminded me it might go bad just as easily.

  Asher stood by the window, facing the ocean when I walked into the tearoom. He pivoted toward me. His expression dropped into a frown as he took in my body language. “What’s wrong?” he asked, moving forward.

  Wetting my lips, I shook my head.

  “Is it Lois or the case?” he asked, inspecting me.

  Heartbeat slowing, I remembered that I still needed to share the news about Lois. That was the polite thing to do and appealing because it gave me a little more time before I had to tell him. Futile, I know, but it was what I was working with.

  “Lois is back,” I reported with a smile. “And she’s okay.” A lightness fell over me as I relayed the rest of the story, paying close attention to the details from her walking away from the ghostly chief.

  Asher laughed, clapping his hands together once in celebration. “I wish I’d been there to see it. Good for her. And no more flickering?”

  “Not that I could see.”

  Asher frowned. “Then why do you still look so concerned?”

  I sucked in a deep breath, wishing my story had taken longer. Like, weeks or months longer. Why hadn’t I recited the speech Lois and I had practiced word for word? Now that he knew the ending, it wouldn’t be nearly as captivating, but it might be worth a try.

  My conscience scolded me to grow up and get on with it. I grimaced in response, spitting out the sentence, “I have unpleasant news” before I could stop myself.

  Asher moved forward and tried to lay a hand on my arm, but it wafted right through me. “Are you okay? Is it your mom?”

  My face must’ve been really grim for him to jump to such extremes, but it was also equally sweet the way he worried about me. The reminder of his friendship, what a wonderful companion he’d been to me over the past months, gave me the last push I needed. I owed him the truth.

  “Asher ...” I motioned to the nearest table. Even though he didn’t need to sit, I knew I would need to. “It’s about how you died,” I whispered. I meant for the words to come out at full volume, but when it came saying them, I just couldn’t.

  Asher scooted forward in his chair in excitement, but just like when I’d first arrived, his anticipation turned to dread as he read the signals my body and face must’ve be emitting.

  Clearing his throat, he squared his shoulders much like I had before walking inside. What was it about better posture that made one feel like we could handle giving or receiving bad news?

  Meeting his blue eyes, I said, “During your regiment’s last stint of leave before you were to deploy, between training and when you were set to leave, you disappeared.”

  I knew I was rushing, but it was like crossing a treacherous bridge that you’re not sure will hold up and you just need to get to the other side as quickly as possible.

  “I disappeared?” he said slowly, processing.

  “Because you didn’t show up, they put you on the deserter list.”

  Studying his face as he took it all in was a physically painful experience. I wanted so badly to look away, but that felt too akin to abandoning a friend in the stormy surf during a particularly savage riptide.

  “I wanted it to be wrong.” I exhaled slowly while letting the words fall out. Tears brimmed my eyes.

  “That’s why you did so much research; you were making sure it was true.” He rubbed his temples and met my eyes.

  “I even asked my mom to look into it. She’s the best researcher I know.” I gulped down the wishes of how differently I wanted this to have turned out. “For a minute, she thought the reports were wrong too, but in the end there was too much evidence—” I cut out, not wanting to say it again.

  He paced now, his feet hovering over the floorboards as he digested the facts in front of me.

  “Deserted? I—” He shook his head again. Pausing, his eyes flashed up to meet mine. “But I died right around that time. Doesn’t that mean I couldn’t have run?”

  Dread filled me at the thought of suggesting that he may have killed himself if the guilt was too great. But his eyes flicked back and forth, unseeing, as they followed the same line of reason. As much as it hurt for me to watch him realize that most deserters took their own lives rather than running off to live elsewhere, it would’ve been even harder to say it.

  His face folded in pain. “Rosie, I swear I wouldn’t ever …” He petered out as if thinking back through any scenario where he’d chosen the easy road instead of the valiant one. Rubbing a hand over the back of his head, he said, “It’s why my parents must’ve moved away. I disgraced them. Abigail moved on, married Sully.”

  I held in the snort I wanted to let out at the sound of her name, still mad at her for being the only one unsurprised by the news of his desertion. “Not an enormous loss, if you ask me.”

  He grimaced, like he wanted to smile but wasn’t sure how to anymore.

 
“The rest of the town was shocked as you and I are,” I added, hoping that would make things better.

  “The rest of the town?” he asked.

  Wrinkling my nose, I explained, “Abigail was the only person in town who said she believed you would desert your duty to your country.”

  And just as I said the sentence, I realized it was too much. This was the final straw, the piece that he couldn’t handle. Maybe because it was about Abigail or because he was overwhelmed thinking of everyone he knew and loved hearing the news. His posture broke. His face fell into a slack-jawed defeat.

  “I think I need some … time.” Even his words sounded fractured.

  He vanished in the same way he had each of the times he’d used too much energy all at once, disappearing like dust in the wind. But this time felt different.

  This time I wasn’t sure time could heal the blow he’d received.

  20

  Witnessing my friend learn such a complicated thing about his death felt like a kick to the gut. Having to be the one to tell him was the worst punishment I could imagine. I sat in my house, alone that night knowing he was out there suffering alone. It was almost unbearable.

  But there was nothing I could do for Asher now. Just as my mother couldn’t fight the disease in my blood for me when I was sick, I had to do it.

  Asher’s past was a terrible disease, and I feared it would infect his thoughts for much longer than the leukemia had inhabited my blood. But no matter what I might say, how much I could try to convince him he’d changed, that he didn’t have to be that person anymore, he would still have to decide he could move forward.

  Between the devastation that had etched itself deep into his face and the broken state of his will when he’d left, I didn’t expect my friend to heal quickly.

  The tea shop being busier kept my mind off obsessing about Asher. I felt guilty when a conversation or task took my thoughts from him, but he was never very far away.

  After I closed the shop for the day, I was about to drive downtown to see if I could find Meow or one of the other ghosts; I wasn’t used to living alone anymore and longed for someone to talk to. But before I’d cleaned up all the dishes from the day, a couple of ghosts came to me.

  Lois and Max showed up on my porch sporting mischievous smiles and sitting in my Adirondack chairs.

  I spotted them as I walked by to grab the last few teacups left on the tables from tearoom customers. At first, I thought the ghost couple wanted to be alone, but they saw me through the glass and waved me out.

  “Where’s your friend?” Lois asked, peering behind me as if Asher might be hiding.

  Discomfort wrapped around my throat like a too-tight turtleneck. “Uh, he’s taking a brief break to gather his thoughts.”

  Max clicked his tongue. “He found out how he died?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “How do you know about that?”

  “You’re terrible at checking behind your back when you’re researching. Tim told me all about what he saw. To be fair, he couldn’t read it all, but he said Asher wasn’t going to take it well.” Max shrugged, mentioning the other local ghost. “Really too bad. I enjoyed having the kid around more lately.”

  My lips parted in protest. I wanted to argue with Max that Asher wasn’t gone, that he’d be back once he got his thoughts in order. But then I remembered that until Grandma had been murdered, Asher had spent the better part of a century being a recluse. The Asher I knew, the social ghost, was the exception. Going off on his own and shutting out the world was his default.

  And that had been when he still believed he’d died valiantly in the war.

  I hated to admit it, but I had no idea how he would handle something like this.

  Max and Lois both wore sympathy in the soft expressions they considered me with. Their now forlorn faces reminded me they’d looked quite the opposite when they’d first arrived.

  “Did you want to tell me something before?” I asked, hoping to change to an easier topic. “You were so happy when I first came out here.”

  Lois perked up and Max grinned.

  “Oh! Just that I got you the information you wanted from the police station.” She clapped her hands together in excitement.

  “The files in Chief Clemenson’s SUV?” I asked, leaning forward.

  “No,” Lois said. “Those were just financial reports. I had to go inside the station to learn the good stuff.”

  Max nodded as if I might not believe her and would need confirmation.

  “Did you encounter …?” I trailed off before spitting out her ex-husband’s name.

  “Encountered Daniel and floated right on by.” Lois set her jaw in much the same way I pictured her doing as she passed by the man. “Funny how he spent most of our marriage telling me how he wished I wouldn’t talk as much and now that I’m keeping my mouth shut around him, it’s driving him crazy.”

  Chief Butler’s comment to Meow the other day about how women should be seen and not heard rang in my memory. And with it came the same angry frustration. But Lois’s excellent mood gave me hope.

  “And he didn’t retaliate when he realized you were there for information?” I asked, worried that he might use his energy to destroy something we needed if he was angry enough.

  “Hard to retaliate when he’s hiding in the corner like a naughty puppy.” She chuckled.

  Having seen the chief multiple times behaving in a way I can only describe as a blowhard, I couldn’t picture him being submissive. But after witnessing how he’d reacted to Lois yesterday, it was feasible.

  My brain clicked back in on the most important part of what Lois had shared. “So you found out what kind of poison killed Murray?”

  She touched the tip of her nose. “A plant called angel's trumpet.”

  I’d never heard of it before. Though I wasn’t an expert on plants, let alone poisonous ones, so it wasn’t much of a surprise.

  “Anything more on Mike Smith?” I asked hopefully.

  Lois nodded. “He was supposed to check in with his parole officer within twenty-four hours of his release. But they still haven’t heard from him. The parole officer even checked with his family in California, but they claim to have no idea where he is.”

  Which meant that Mike Smith was either involved somehow in what happened to Murray and was hiding out, or something went wrong and he was in danger too. Of course, if the police were worried about him sneaking out of the country, he could already be in Panama with the majority of his family.

  That mystery seemed too open-ended for my taste, so I focused on the poisonous angel's trumpet first. I waved to Lois and Max as they wandered down the beach.

  Pulling out my laptop, I researched. Just as Mom taught me, I searched for reputable sources first, made sure I could verify the information I found on at least three sites, and checked each site’s sources as well.

  An hour had passed before I knew enough to shove my chair back in frustration.

  While angel's trumpet originated in Central and South America, they were practically handing the plants out on the internet. Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but you could buy one on Amazon, for Pete’s sake. And without having access to checking each suspect’s financial records—or Amazon order history—I had to trust that Chief Clemenson would investigate that part.

  I gritted my teeth at that word, trust, and I had to admit I didn’t have a lot of it for the local chief these days. Will he even look into Tabby’s financial records? I wondered.

  Two consolations I came to during my research were that the plant wasn’t a good candidate for surviving in the Pacific Northwest, so it was unlikely someone had one of these puppies growing in their yard. The information I found recommended the plant be kept in a greenhouse or brought inside during the winter months.

  The other interesting tidbit was that the poison in the plant caused hallucinations. Many of the people who’d died were actually trying to get high, but had overdone the dosage.

  That made Murray�
�s last words about ghosts less confusing. He must’ve thought he saw someone as the intense drug kicked in. But it also meant that it would take quite a concentration of the flowers to kill a man, and as quickly as it had with Murray. I suspected Asher was right, that we were dealing with a tincture or other concentrate.

  Wetting my lips, I considered the implications of this new information. Here I’d thought knowing the way Murray had been murdered would open so many doors. Instead, I felt like I’d just had a whole hallway full of them slammed in my face.

  It wasn’t until I emerged from my researching bubble that I realized I’d missed two texts. Both were from Jolene.

  The first asked, You still planning on coming out to pick up tomorrow’s bakery items? And the second one, sent a few minutes later, said, Never mind, I need to talk to Carl anyway so I’ll bring them your way.

  Just as I checked the clock, a knock sounded on the door.

  Jolene stood on the other side of the etched-glass window that took up the top half of my front door. She waved with the hand that wasn’t supporting the box of pastries. In that moment, I realized the woman I thought had hated me at first, had become a friend.

  The notion put a smile on my face as I invited her in. After a few minutes of me oohing and ahhing over the baked goods, and Jolene smelling the new tea blends I handed over, we each rested our elbows on the tea bar.

  “What did you have to talk to Carl about?” I asked.

  Her relaxed expression pulled taut. “Just going over details for Murray’s funeral.” Her voice sounded just as tight, like I could walk across it, if I had any idea how to walk a tightrope.

  My eyes dropped to study my hands. “Sorry. I didn’t realize.”

  “It’s okay.”

  After a silent moment, I looked up at Jolene. She looked sad but also angrier than I’d seen her since we’d become friends.

  “Not that I should be doing anything, since Tabby’s probably got it covered.” She bit out the words.