Toxic Attack: Spirit of the Soul Wine Shop Mystery (A Rysen Morris Mystery Book 2)

by K. J. Emrick

  Tall racks of wine bottles made uneven rows while casks and crates were stacked up in between. Rysen could imagine getting lost down here. For a moment she closed her eyes and pictured she was alone, hiding from Christina I those fields, waiting for her sister to come find her.

  When Brandon shifted into a more comfortable crouch next to her, she remembered this was a different game altogether.

  They were staking out the wine shop. Just the two of them. Her and Brandon. She had taken a long time debating whether to just do this herself, but she had to face reality. She wasn't the one with a permit to carry a gun. She wasn't the one who was a licensed security consultant.

  She was, however, the one who had figured out how Christina had been poisoned. She was the one fighting to save her sister's shop. That was all well and good, but she could not do this alone. Not this part.

  She needed Brandon's help. Just like before. She had needed his help when they took down the guy stealing wine shipments from the store. She needed his help again now.

  Of course, her dad wouldn't approve, she thought as she bit her lip. Not that she was doing this for him. She was doing this for Christina. She was doing it for herself, too, because Josh had been right. She was good at this. And she enjoyed it.

  So here they were, alone in the dim lighting of the cellar, waiting for something to happen upstairs.

  "Are you sure he'll come tonight?" Rysen asked Brandon.

  "No, I'm not," he answered at the same whispered volume. "I'm not even sure it is a him. Might be a girl, too. This is the fun part of a stakeout. You never know what will happen."

  She frowned and watched through one of the few empty slots of the winerack they were concealed behind. "You and I have a very different definition of what fun means."

  "I doubt that."

  She quickly looked over at him. Did he mean anything by that? He'd promised to let her figure things out with Josh. Still, here they were again, alone together. Fate or planning or something else had done it again. It was hard not to think that every word he said or every glance her way was flirtatious and laced with hidden meaning.

  "What?" he asked, noticing her watching him.

  "Nothing. Just, well, thanks for being here after I sort of blew up at you."

  "You did call me a blazing jerk."

  She winced to think of it. "Did I?"

  "Too right. Pretty impressed at the way you can turn a phrase, I have to say."

  His voice was so soft, and strong at the same time. She loved listening to him talk with that barely-there accent. It was easy to understand why she had been so attracted to him.

  Why she was still attracted to him.

  "Brandon, do you mind if I ask you—"

  A noise above them caught their attention. A squeaky floorboard. Again, and then again. Footsteps.

  "Get ready," Brandon said to her.

  Rysen's heart hammered in her chest. No one had a key to the store except her, Christina, and now Brandon. Christina was still in the hospital. Whoever was up there, it was someone who shouldn't be in the store. Their little trap had worked!

  A push of a button on her watch showed her it was just three o'clock. A sign she had taped to the window of the front door said she was gone and wouldn't be back until five. After making a show of leaving, locking up, standing in front of the store and whistling, Rysen had gotten into her car and driven away. Brandon had picked her up at Christina's house in his car and driven them to the next block over so they could sneak around to the back door of the shop and hide in the cellar. Anyone watching would think the place was empty.

  They had given the killer a window of opportunity as bait. Looked like it had worked.

  From the holster tucked at the back of his pants Brandon pulled a heavy automatic that fit his hand like a glove. He flourished it easily, still staring at the ceiling above, tracking the intruder's movements by the sound of footsteps.

  Squeak, squeak.

  "Next time," Rysen told him in a whisper, "I want a gun, too."

  "If you think you're ready for it, sure. Be happy to teach you."

  Above them, something crashed to the floor. It sounded like the cash register, or something just as heavy.

  "Oh yeah," she told him, settling herself closer to him. "I'm definitely ready for a gun."

  He smiled at her, and winked.

  Maybe their definition of fun wasn't that different after all.

  Chapter 8

  "Shouldn't we get up there?" she asked, her hand on his shoulder now, so close to him that she was whispering in his ear.

  "No. We wait," he said. "If he doesn't come down here, then we'll rush upstairs after him. He'll hear us coming if we go now. Don't want to spook him off."

  Good point, Rysen decided. The floorboards upstairs weren't the only things that were squeaky in the shop. So they waited while more things crashed upstairs and then a man's muffled voice was added to the noises. Then everything went silent.

  The intruder was at the top of the cellar stairs.

  Before pretending to leave, Rysen had made sure to bring her sister's ledger down here. That was the real bait, after all. It sat on an upright oaken barrel not far from the bottom of the stairs just on the other side of the wine rack they were hiding behind. It was open to a random page, resting in such a way that it looked like it had been left there accidentally. Like Christina had been using it when she got sick and then left it where it was.

  Which should be exactly what the intruder expected to find.

  The man from upstairs started down, slowly, one step at a time. At the fifth or sixth step he threw aside his caution and came rushing down. He'd seen the book. Thinking he was alone, he figured he had nothing to worry about.

  He was very, very wrong.

  Reaching up to squeeze Rysen's hand, Brandon left her where she was and came around the end of the shelved wines with his gun in hand. "Stay where you are," Brandon told the man in a loud, stern voice, his Australian accent coming out heavier in the excitement. "Do not make me use this."

  The look of shock on the man's face nearly made Rysen laugh. It was comical. He was a heavy man, with definition that showed he used to be all lean muscle in his younger days before gravity had gotten the better of him. He was balding, and his bare scalp wrinkled up as his eyebrows rose and his mouth hung open and he spit and sputtered trying to form a coherent sentence.

  "Wha…who? What are you…this isn't…wait, wait, wait!"

  He was holding the ledger book. Rysen squinted through the empty spaces in the rack, staring at his hands. They were a pasty white. No. Those were gloves. The man was wearing gloves!

  Now she knew her guess had been right. All the clues pointed to this. The page of writing in the dead woman's secret pocket. The fact that the only one poisoned had been Christina. It all added up to the ledger book.

  Pages of the ledger book had been replaced, copied over in ink laced with arsenic. That was how Christina had been poisoned. Intentionally, maliciously, and very craftily. She would have missed it entirely if she hadn't had that fit over Josh storming out of the store. When that heavy leather book had fallen off the counter…uh, when she'd pushed it off…everything had clicked together in her mind.

  Detective Rysen Morris. Apparently she really was good at this stuff. She couldn't wait to tell Josh!

  The man was still being held at gunpoint by Brandon. The moment seemed to hang in the air as Rysen came out from around the wine rack, smiling, thrilled that the two of them had done it again. "I'll go call the police," she told him. "Can you keep him here?"

  "Shouldn't be a problem. It's all aces. Go ahead. We'll be down he—"

  When Brandon turned his head to talk to her, the pudgy man snapped forward with a lot more speed than Rysen would have thought possible, leading with the ledger. The book flashed forward to slam the revolver sideways and out of Brandon's hand.

  Then it came back in a reverse arc that took him in the side of the face.

  Rysen
heard herself yell out Brandon's name, watched him lose his balance and fall sideways into the cement wall of the cellar, heard the crack of his skull as it hit hard. When he slid to the floor in a heap, she thought her heart had stopped.

  Then the man turned to her with a menacing smile. "I don't think anyone's going to be calling the police, missy."

  Something came over her. Some calm decision that she was only aware of at the edges of her mind. A single thought formed and took hold of her.

  She was not going to let this man get away.

  Reaching behind her she grabbed the very first wine bottle that she touched by its long, skinny neck. She was aware of the smoothness of the glass, the grit of the dust that coated it, the weight of it in her grip. Sliding it from its angled shelf she bladed her body to the man holding the book.

  "Hey," he growled. "What are you doing?"

  She didn't answer him. Not in words. Still thinking of how this man had struck Brandon down, she swung the bottle as hard as she could.

  Too surprised to even defend himself, the guy took the bottle squarely across his right ear. A hollow tink sound echoed around the cellar. Blood leaked from a cut along his cheekbone. His eyes rolled back and his head crumpled over to his left shoulder before he fell backward onto the cellar floor.

  The bottle didn't break.

  Rysen stared at it in her hand. Wow. Strong glass.

  Had she really just done that? She had just acted without giving it much thought. The crazy thing was, she enjoyed it. Her heart was racing a mile a minute and she knew, if she could see herself, that she would hardly recognize the woman standing here.

  It was a rush. Something she definitely wanted more of in her life.

  Watch out world, here comes detective Rysen Morris. Yes. That had a nice ring to it, didn't it?

  Over near the wall, Brandon moaned and stirred, holding his head in both hands. She dropped the bottle—it bounced once against the floor and then spun on its side still unbroken—and rushed to him. Gently, she helped him sit up.

  "Brandon? Brandon are you all right?"

  He looked up at her but his eyes wouldn't focus. Her fingers found a huge lump just above his one ear, and came away sticky with blood.

  "Wait here," she told him, thinking she must sound really stupid. Where else was he going to go?

  Running upstairs where she could get cell phone reception she hastily dialed 911. It felt like it took forever for the dispatcher to answer after the very first ring. "Hello, my name is Rysen Morris. I'm at 242 Main Street in Cambria. I need an ambulance and the police."

  Then she caught herself smiling. "We just caught a murderer."

  ***

  The police asked a hundred different questions. Sometimes the same ones twice. By the time she had given a statement and signed three…no, four…official forms, the emergency responders had bandaged Brandon's head and loaded him into the ambulance with its red and blue flashing lights and taken off.

  The bad guy was led out of the wine store in handcuffs between two Sheriff's Deputies. Everyone on the street was watching and staring. She recognized a few faces but most of them were tourists who had gotten more than they bargained for by walking down the streets of Cambria today. Rysen felt her face heating. This was more attention than she was used to. Especially in her home town. Detective Rysen Morris wasn't ready to make her debut appearance. Not yet.

  The ledger book was handled like it was toxic. Which in a way, she supposed, it was. Crime scene detectives in heavy rubber gloves placed it into a plastic sleeve with a red seal and the big black word EVIDENCE across the front. Poor Christina, Rysen thought. She put her whole life into that book. What would she do without it?

  Officer Richards was the last Deputy there. Rysen remembered him from the murder scene at Bea's flower shop. She still couldn't see what he was thinking behind his sunglasses, but there was something in the way he spoke to her. Almost like he was impressed by what had happened here. "You're going to be all right?" he asked before leaving.

  "Um. Yes. I think so."

  "Not every day you catch a murderer in your place of business, is it?"

  "I certainly hope not," was her immediate response.

  He actually smiled at her when she said it. She couldn't help but smile back. It might not be every day that something like this happened, but things were definitely not boring in her life. Cambria sure wasn't the sleepy little town she remembered from her childhood, either.

  After Officer Richards left she stood in the wine shop, looking all around at the frescoes on the wall and the bottles of wine in their displays and remembering what her life had been like in the big city. Had she ever really been happy out there in San Francisco? That had been her dream life, or so she thought. A promising career, a man to hold her tight, her whole future within her grasp.

  Or so she had thought.

  Now, she considered that just maybe her life had been waiting for her here in Cambria all along. What had she been running away from, anyway? Her father? Her limitations? What she had right here, in this moment, was pretty sweet. What could be better?

  She turned around and around with her arms spread out wide, imagining herself basking in the light of a full life.

  On her third rotation she saw Josh standing and watching her, an amused smile playing over his lips.

  She startled and nearly lost her balance, recovering very ungracefully with her feet crossed and strands of her hair falling across her face. "Josh! Um, how long have you been standing there?"

  "If I say not long will you do that little dance again?" He came right over to her and to her surprise, wrapped his arms around her.

  "Wow," she said, her words muffled into his shoulder. "What's this for?"

  "Because I was worried about you. It's all over town how you caught the killer here in the shop."

  Of course it was. News in a small town travelled faster than even the internet could manage. Hmm. This was so nice. Josh, holding her and stroking her hair. Murmuring soft words of comfort. This is how every day should end. Not just the ones that involve crimes and danger and trips to the hospital.

  Oh, right.

  Nestling into the crook of Josh's arm she tapped a finger against his chest. "I need to get to the hospital. Want to drive me?"

  "Yeah, that's right. You'll want to check on Christina and tell her about this. I know the charge nurse working the afternoon shift. You want me to call her and get an update on her condition?"

  "That would be sweet. I'm not talking about Christina, though. They just took Brandon to the hospital from here. He got a pretty bad bump to his head. Not as bad as the one I gave that guy with a wine bottle, though. You should have seen it…"

  She stopped. Josh had stiffened up around her.

  "What?" she asked. "What is it?"

  "You didn't tell me you were here with Brandon."

  "I thought you knew."

  "How could I know?"

  "You said you knew!"

  "I knew that you were in danger. Again! I did not know that you called Brandon to help you instead of me!"

  They were shouting, and Rysen didn't understand how the conversation had gone so bad so quickly. "Josh, it wasn't like we were out on a date! We were here on a stakeout!"

  "A stakeout? Rysen, this ain't some detective movie! You were here. With him."

  "We were trying to catch a killer. Remember? The murder you got arrested for? I was doing this for you, Josh! Someone had to do it!"

  "You are not," he said slowly, "a detective!"

  Her arms folded themselves across her chest and she glared at him. "The detective thing was your idea. Remember?"

  "Whatever. If I'd known you were going to use it as an excuse to do stakeouts with other guys I never would have said anything!"

  "Josh! Stop it!" She couldn't believe how mad she was at him. Why couldn't he understand this? "Brandon promised to stay out of the picture."

  Well, she thought, biting her lip. That wasn't the compl
ete truth. It was close enough for now.

  She hoped.

  He threw his hand in the air and turned around. "I can't do this anymore. Every time I open up to you, there's Brandon. You know what? You want him so bad, have him. I'm going home."

  "Josh, don't walk out again!"

  The words hung in the air as the door slammed shut.

  Chapter 9

  Christina was asleep when Rysen drove out to the hospital. She couldn't help but be disappointed because right now, she needed her sister's advice. Did she and Josh just break up? She wasn't sure how she felt about it, one way or the other. She and Christina had always been able to talk about boys. She really needed that right now.

  Especially since her next stop was to see Brandon.

  He was in a room on the first floor, the rooms set aside for patients who weren't staying long. When she saw him laying there with a gauze pad wrapped to the side of his head she felt like a vise had just wrapped around her heart.

  "It's okay," he told her. "They want to observe me for a few hours. Apparently I wasn't exactly coherent when they brought me in."

  "You got hit with a book. I understand hospitals take that very seriously."

  Shaking his head, he laughed, then winced. "I can't believe this has happened to me twice."

  "This is the second time you've been hit in the head with a book?"

  "No," he said. "This is the second time you've stopped the bad guy after I let myself get taken down."

  Yeah, she thought, it kind of was. Huh. The first time had been with a crate of wine. This time with a ledger book. "You do lead an interesting life."

  "I try to. So. I spoke with my police contact a little bit ago. He told me that our killer is pretty well known to them. Long rap sheet. Including, I might add, forgery charges. Now he's going to be facing a murder wrap. They think that lacing ink with arsenic is a new trick for him but they're going to interrogate him more to be sure."

  Rysen sat down on the edge of the bed as she listened to him talk about what the police knew. The alarm had been bypassed, just like at Bea's shop. Brandon wasn't surprised. A good criminal knew how to bypass even the best alarms and this guy was definitely an experienced criminal.