by Harper Lin
“You mean that’s—someone put eye drops—you’re joking, right?”
Mike slowly shook his head. “I wish I was.”
I leaned back on the couch, trying to wrap my head around it. It was so bizarre to think of someone doing that—slipping eye drops into the food. And then to think of something so common, so innocuous, making so many people so sick. “Could it have been an accident?”
“Have you ever accidentally added eye drops to food at a party?”
“Of course not.”
He bobbed his head. “Exactly.”
I shook my head as much as I could without sending pain radiating up through my skull. “You’re sure about his?”
“Unfortunately.” He pulled his notebook out of his pants pocket and flipped it open. “Tetrahydrozoline.” He pronounced each syllable separately as he stumbled through the unfamiliar word. “Anti-redness drops. So I take it we’re not going to find any of those?”
“Nope.” At least I hoped not. I never used them, but I wasn’t completely certain that my mother or grandparents hadn’t used any and tucked the bottle in some forgotten corner. I hoped the long-past expiration date would be enough to convince the investigators the drops weren’t mine.
“Didn’t think so.” Mike rested his head against the back of the chair again and let out a slow, deep breath. “I’m sorry to be putting you through all this. You had the most access to all the food, so I have to rule you out before I can move on to other suspects.”
“You have other suspects?”
“Only about a hundred of them. How many people did you have at this shindig anyway? It was an open house, wasn’t it? Do you even know how many people showed up?”
“Not exactly. We had sort of a sign-in sheet, but I don’t know who signed in or didn’t.”
Mike’s eyes lit up with interest. “Can I get a copy of that?”
“It’s back at the café, but you’re welcome to it.”
He scribbled something down in his notebook. “I’ll need you to look it over and see if you notice anyone’s missing, but I don’t expect you to get it a hundred percent.”
He said it, but I didn’t necessarily believe that he meant it. Mike could be a little snippy when things didn’t go his way. I was sure he thought he meant it anyway.
Mike drummed the end of his pen on his notebook. “You notice anyone acting suspicious last night? Doing anything unusual?”
“Like putting eye drops into the food?”
He shrugged. “If that’s what you saw.”
I shook my head before remembering how much that hurt. I winced and held my breath until the wave of pain subsided. Holding my head in my hand, I finally got out an answer. “I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of anything, but I can’t. I can’t think of anything unusual at all.” Out of the blue, the image of Ephy lurking by the food table, sipping her glass of water, came to mind. But drinking a glass of water wasn’t a crime. There was no reason to mention that to Mike.
“I think that’s the tetra—” He looked down at his notebook and blinked hard. “The eye drops wracking your brain.” Mike chuckled weakly.
I managed something like a smile. “What about you? You were there. Did you see anyone acting suspicious?”
“Fran, I’m not at liberty to discuss—”
“Mike, you’re literally discussing an active investigation with me right now. Besides, I’m not asking you as the detective investigating the case. I’m asking you as my friend who came to my birthday party.”
Mike shifted in his chair and looked at me like he wasn’t sure if my motives were entirely pure. He was probably worrying that I was going to try to solve the case myself. It wasn’t a completely unfounded concern, but I was way too sick to be thinking about that. All that was on my mind at that moment was a nap, some ibuprofen, and the current tenuous state of my stomach.
He finally sighed and shook his head slightly. “I wish I did.” He pressed his lips together. “I’m just hoping something clicks into place during this investigation. Something that seemed insignificant suddenly becomes the key to the whole case.”
Like Ephy and her water. But that was ridiculous. People were allowed to drink water at a party. And her objection—that she didn’t like sweet stuff—made sense. There were a lot of sweets at the party. But she gave you that sugar cookie recipe. Knowing a great sugar cookie recipe didn’t mean anything. Everybody liked a cookie now and again, didn’t they? Plus, maybe she just didn’t like to drink sweet things. Between the sorbet, the pineapple juice, and the soda, the punch really was on the sugary side. That was probably all she meant. It had to be.
“So what comes next?” I asked.
“Well, unless these guys find a receipt for a major eye drop purchase around here, I’ll move on to the next most obvious suspects.” He glanced at me and saw the question on my face. He took a deep breath. “I’m going to need to talk to your employees.”
If it was possible, I sank farther into the couch. I hated my girls being dragged this, even if I understood why they were his next targets. “Then what?” I asked, wondering whether it would get better or somehow worse.
“Then—” He hesitated. “Then we go through the guest list.”
“And what? Search everyone’s houses until you find someone who has a problem with their eyes getting red?”
He gave me a look that I could only describe as disdain. I knew why. I was being sarcastic when he was just trying to do his job.
“We’ll try to identify who might have had a motive.”
“What kind of motive would someone have to poison a hundred or so people? Can there even be a motive for that?”
He sighed. “There’s always a motive. Even if it’s just because they think it would be fun to cause havoc.”
I was incredulous. “Seriously? You think someone could have done this just for fun? What kind of sick person would poison one hundred people just for fun?”
He shrugged. “We don’t know if that was what it was, Fran. It could be anything. It could have been just a way to cause trouble, or they could have been targeting one person and everyone else was collateral damage. We just don’t know. But that’s why we’re investigating—to find out who would have done this and why.”
It made sense, but it was torture. I wanted the solution to be simple and easy. I wanted there to be an obvious suspect—someone who wasn’t one of my nearest and dearest—and I wanted them to have a good reason for having done it, although I couldn’t imagine what kind of good reason anyone could have for pouring eye drops into the food at my party. Or maybe it was an accident. It would have to be a pretty crazy accident, though.
I took a deep breath. It hadn’t even been a day, but I was ready for this to be over and for everything to get back to normal. I wanted to forget that it had ever happened.
“When can I reopen the café?” I asked. There would be a ton of cleanup to do before we could get back to business as usual, and I was anxious to get it started as soon as possible.
Mike made a face. “Not until we get all the test results back and figure out what food the poison was added to. We may have to come back for more samples of the ones we took for the tetra—uh, the eye drops.”
“So I can’t even go clean up?”
“Sorry, Fran. You’re just going to have to be patient until we get all our loose ends tied up.”
I made a face. I was good at many things, but being patient wasn’t one of them.
Mike caught my eye and chuckled. “I know that’s not your strong suit, but I believe in you.”
Before I could think up a saucy comeback, one of the techs stuck her head around the doorframe. “Detective? We’re ready for you.”
Mike moved to get up, stopped, and then started back up more slowly. He followed her around the corner.
One advantage of having a small house—one I definitely hadn’t appreciated growing up there as a teenager—was that you could hear almost everything from anywhere.
>
“Find anything?” Mike asked, quietly but definitely still within earshot.
I held my breath, worried even though I knew I’d had nothing to do with the poisoning.
“Nothing at all out of the ordinary, sir,” the tech replied.
I let out my breath and rested my head on the back of the couch. I was in the clear. Now I just had to hope Mike found out who the real culprit was—and fast too. I still felt terrible, but I wanted to return to work the second I was back on my feet. The very moment he told me I could go back in the café, if possible. Yes, that was what I wanted. But until then, a nap sounded like just the thing.
Chapter 11
I was feeling better by the time I woke up from my nap. Not good, mind you, but better than I was. My head only ached a little, and my stomach had calmed to the point where I could almost stand the thought of eating something. Almost. As appealing as a cup of coffee sounded in theory—especially given my headache—my stomach still turned at the very thought of swallowing anything. But at least I could sit up straight and think clearly.
Of course, that meant my brain could now form coherent thoughts about the party and the poisoning. And the first one was that I needed to know what food had been poisoned. Maybe if I figured that out, I could figure out who had done it. Not that I had any intention of getting involved with Mike’s investigation. I was more than happy to leave that up to him. But since it was my food and my café, I was the best person to spot anything out of the ordinary. I wouldn’t do any investigating, just some observing. And I’d report anything out of the ordinary to Mike immediately. What could possibly be the harm? I’d go to the café, take a look around, and see if anything stood out. He told me I couldn’t clean up or open up, but he didn’t say I had to stay out.
But first, I needed to call Matt. And then I needed to take a shower. For one thing, I knew I could really use one—and a good teeth-brushing. On top of that, I felt like it would be a good test of how much better I was actually feeling. After all, my mother had always said that if you could make it through a shower, you could make it through the day and, for the most part, I’d found that she was right. If I could get through my shower, I could get through my day.
I grabbed my phone and called Matt. He grunted hello just before it went to voicemail. “You okay?” I asked.
He groaned.
“Did I wake you up?”
“Uh-huh,” he said with a moan.
“Do you want me to let you go back to sleep?”
“Uh-huh.”
I said goodbye and let him go back to sleep then headed up the stairs to get cleaned up. I checked my closet and drawers to see what kind of damage the crime scene techs had done. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, all things considered. I could tell someone had rustled through the clothes, but everything was still sort of folded and roughly where it had been. I opened my underwear drawer and reached for a clean pair then pulled my hand back. Someone—I didn’t know who—had been digging through it only a couple of hours earlier. Who knew what they’d touched just before or if they’d washed their hands? What if they’d just opened up the toilet tank or checked the cleaning chemicals under the vanity? I scooped up every last scrap of fabric in the drawer and dumped it all in the hamper. I’d figure something out, but I wasn’t going to put on anything that some stranger had just had their filthy hands on.
I survived my shower and scrounged up some clothes that hadn’t obviously been pawed over. Latte was over at Matt’s, probably curled up next to him on the bed, keeping Matt’s legs warm whether he wanted him to or not. I would have enjoyed those snuggles during my own nap, but Matt had sounded like he was worse off than I was, so I didn’t mind. I locked up the house and headed for the café.
This time, I went in the back door instead of the front. It was a slightly shorter walk to go that way, and I wanted to conserve my energy just in case the positive effects of my nap wore off. Plus, it wasn’t as easily noticeable from the street if I used that entrance. Mike might not have told me to stay away from the café, but I didn’t want to tempt his wrath by strolling down Main Street and through the front door. He’d probably claim I should have known to stay away, but I didn’t see how he could really blame me if he hadn’t told me to keep out. I was allowed to be in my house, wasn’t I? Why not also the café? Even so, it seemed safer to sneak—I mean to go in through the back.
It was eerily quiet inside and not just because I was alone. I spent a lot of time alone in the café. There were many times that I stayed late after closing to bake or get some paperwork done. It was plenty quiet then, but somehow this was different. I found myself peeking under every table and behind every closed door in the place—even the bathrooms’ closed doors, which I immediately wished I hadn’t looked behind. My stomach turned, and I had to stand stock-still for a minute until the wave of nausea the smell brought on had passed. I’d have to see if I could hire someone with a stronger stomach to clean it up for me—when Mike granted permission, of course.
I walked over to the tables that were still half full of food from the party—food that had now been picked over by party guests and crime scene techs. For the most part, it looked... fine. I’d been around food enough in my life to recognize that the puff pastry dishes had gotten a little soggy, the cookies weren’t quite as soft or crisp as they should be, and the punch had been untouched and uncovered for too long, but nothing gave me any visual indication that anything had been poisoned. I don’t know what I expected poisoned food to look like, of course—maybe a skull and crossbones or Poison Control Mr. Yuk imprinted on them—but whatever it was, I didn’t see it.
I leaned down to get a closer look at everything, on my guard like the food was a spider that could see me coming and jump at my face. Fortunately, nothing moved.
I reached out and picked up one of the Italian sausage canapés to examine it more closely. I even sniffed it, but it just smelled like cold, day-old sausage and butter. I put it down and moved on down the table, picking up one or two pieces from each tray, looking them over, and smelling them. Aside from being stale, nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the slightest. Even the plates, cups, and napkins—one of which someone had taken the time to fold into an intricate design—that had been left behind all looked like perfectly normal trash.
I sat down in a chair at the front of the café to figure out my next move. Almost immediately, I was jolted out of my thoughts by someone knocking on the window next to my head. Instantly, I knew it was Mike. I was caught, and now I’d have to endure, at best, a dirty look and, at worst, a lecture on how I needed to stay out of police business and mind my own. Of course, in a quite literal sense, I was minding my business, but I didn’t think Mike would appreciate that argument.
I took a deep breath before turning to face his judgement.
But instead of Mike’s eyes glaring down at me from beneath his crew cut, I saw Melissa with a big smile on her face as she waved at me. I hopped up from my chair and unlocked the door to let her in. She threw her arms around me as best she could with her pregnant belly between us.
“I heard what happened! It’s terrible! I’m so sorry! Are you okay? How are you feeling?” She had each of my hands grasped in one of hers and looked at me with genuine concern in her eyes.
“I’m okay. A lot better than I was this morning, that’s for sure.” It suddenly dawned on me that that as miserable as I’d been, Melissa would have felt so much more miserable than I did—not to mention how bad the drug in the eye drops would have been for her baby. “But what about you? How are you feeling?”
“Oh, I’m fine!” she said, her blue eyes sparkling. She really looked the part of the glowing expectant mother. “I don’t know how, since I’m pretty sure I had at least two of every single thing on the table, so I must have eaten some of whatever was bad. This little girl’s a hungry one!” She patted her belly and laughed. “But maybe she gives me some kind of protection from food poisoning.”
I realize
d then that she didn’t know about the poison—only that people had gotten sick. But still, she hadn’t gotten sick. “You ate some of everything?”
Melissa nodded, setting her dark curls bouncing while she eyed the food still on the tables. She looked like she was barely holding herself back from heading over and loading up another plate. “It wasn’t like this at all with Emmy. I barely ate anything with her. Pretty much everything grossed me out. I’m like a bottomless pit with this one. First time in my life my eyes haven’t been bigger than my stomach!” She giggled, rubbing her belly affectionately.
“And you didn’t get sick at all?”
She shook her head. “Nope, not at all! Like I said, I guess the baby must have given me some kind of food poisoning protection or something.”
“Melissa—” I stepped closer and lowered my voice, even though I knew we were completely alone. “I don’t want to freak you out or anything, but it wasn’t food poisoning.”
Her unlined forehead wrinkled. “What do you mean? What made everyone sick if it wasn’t the food?”
I took a deep breath, still not sure if I should really tell her what had actually happened. Mike hadn’t said I couldn’t, but he hadn’t said I could either. Of course, I hadn’t let that ambiguity keep me out of the café, so why should I let it keep me from telling Melissa about the poison? “It was the food,” I said quietly. “But it was something someone put in the food on purpose. It was poison.”
She looked at me for a moment, blinking, her forehead still wrinkled. “It was—it was poison?” Both arms wrapped protectively around her middle. “What—who—why—what?” Her lower lip began to tremble.
I put my arm around her and pulled her toward me to comfort her. “I know. It’s crazy. They don’t know who did it yet or why, but the police are investigating.”
Her eyes welled up. “But poison! We’re lucky no one died! Oh my God, someone could have died. I could have died! My baby—!” She covered her face with her hands as she dissolved into tears. I put my other arm around her, too, and held her until her tears had calmed and she wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. I stepped over to the table and grabbed a couple napkins for her to use.
