Shot Through the Hearth

by Kate Carlisle

  “No. I was talking about the food poisoning.”

  “Somebody got food poisoning?”

  “Yeah. Last night at the slow food event. Jeez, Shannon, everybody’s talking about it. They served a sautéed mushroom and zucchini roll that was apparently delicious, until an hour later when people started hurling in the parking lot.”

  “Oh, yuck.” I didn’t want that picture in my head. “Are they sure it was the mushroom roll?”

  “Yeah. They interviewed everyone who got sick. Plus the chef who made the food got sick, too. So that kind of puts a cork in it.”

  We started walking again and headed toward the group of workers standing on the other side of the foundation slab.

  “Maybe Sherman was right,” I murmured.

  “Sherman? You mean the dead guy?”

  “Yeah.” I frowned. “He said the conference was descending into chaos. I hate to give him any credit for being right about anything, but I’m starting to wonder.” I reminded Wade of Dillon’s death, the runaway mice, Sherman’s death, and now the food poisoning. “And if that isn’t enough, someone with a rifle took a shot at Rafe last night. From the top of the Ecosphere.”

  “Wait a minute,” Wade said. “This is all besides finding the body of that guy Sherman?”

  “Yeah. Add that to your list of coincidences.”

  He thought about it for a minute. “It could still be a lot of coincidences. But it kind of makes you wonder.”

  “Kind of.” It was too much, though. Too many things had gone wrong in too short a time. What were the chances that the gunshot was unrelated to Sherman’s death? Slim to none. More likely, whoever had taken a shot at us last night had used the Stephanie vine to strangle poor Sherman. “Think about it,” I said. “This conference is Rafe’s brainchild and his foundation is at the heart of it. You don’t think someone might be trying to destroy his reputation by causing havoc around here?”

  He scowled. “I really hope not.” He gazed out at the crowd in the bleachers. “But let’s not tempt fate. We need to make sure this barn is standing strong and straight by the end of the day.”

  “That’s the best idea you’ve had all day,” I said with a determined grin, and patted him on the back. “Let’s get to work.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Three hours later, all four side frames were standing straight and strong, and we were ready to start on the roof. Since Rafe wanted a classic, pitched-roof, stick-built barn with plywood sheathing, Wade, Sean, and I had designed the roof in an intricate crisscross configuration based on an Amish pattern.

  Several dozen extension ladders were lined up against the frame and my workers were standing by, waiting for the signal to get started on the roof. I was feeling the good energy and couldn’t wait to get up there myself, but I had one important thing to do first.

  “Some of you have heard my safety speech,” I began.

  I heard a few groans, but they were mostly good-natured.

  “I don’t care if you think it’s silly or makes you look weak or whatever. As long as you’re working on this job, you’ll wear the harness. I’ve seen someone fall off a roof and I still have nightmares. I don’t ever want to see it happen again. So, enjoy the job, and wear the harness, and we’ll all be happy workers. Deal?”

  There were shouts of agreement and I gave a brisk nod in response.

  “Let’s do this,” I said to Wade, and he gave the all clear for the guys to start climbing.

  “Yeah,” they shouted, and half the crew started scrambling up the ladders. The other half remained on the ground to pass the lumber up to the guys on top.

  I watched the progress for about an hour, then handed the supervising over to Wade and Sean, who clearly knew exactly what they were doing. “Call or text me if you need anything.”

  “You got it, boss,” Sean said. “Say hi to Mac.”

  “You bet.” I checked my watch and realized I still had fifteen minutes before I had to meet Mac at the air dome. I took the long way around, by the old barn, just to see what was going on over there.

  Along the edge of the barn, I spied a tiny speck of white and walked toward it. If it was litter, I would toss it away. But as I got closer, I realized the speck was alive. A small white fuzzy rodent nibbled on a piece of leaf.

  “Oh God.” I had to suck in a breath. “Mouse.”

  The tiny creature gazed up at me and its little eyes twinkled. It showed its teeth and I couldn’t tell if it was smiling at me or ready to attack.

  Shivers erupted over every square inch of my body and I hopped back, then ran in the opposite direction to the end of the barn and around the corner—and slammed into Julian Reedy.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, clutching my arms to slow my momentum.

  “I’m sure it’s my fault,” I insisted breathlessly, still in the throes of my stupid mouse phobia. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

  “It’s okay.”

  I stared at his pale face and realized how tired he looked. “Are you all right?”

  “Got food poisoning,” he whispered. “I was up most of the night.”

  “Oh, Julian, that’s awful. I heard about the food poisoning. Someone said it was the mushrooms, but that doesn’t make sense. Chef Rhonda is a world-class chef, and she’s vegetarian. She would’ve checked her produce. She would never use bad mushrooms.”

  “I had to cancel my private dinner with my ethnobotanist friends.” He rubbed his stomach, looking ashen and miserable.

  I hated to bring it up, but I had to make sure he knew. “Julian, did you hear what happened in the Ecosphere last night?”

  “I just found out this minute. I was on my way to check on everything.”

  “I’ll go with you.” The way he looked, I wasn’t sure he would even make it up to the second level, where we’d found Sherman’s body.

  We rounded the barn and I avoided walking anywhere near the site of that twinkle-eyed mouse. We headed across the field to the Ecosphere tower and found the area deserted. Yellow crime-scene tape was still wrapped around the doorway.

  “I don’t care if it’s off-limits,” Julian said, pulling the tape away. “I’m going inside.”

  “I’m right behind you.” I figured as long as he was the one doing the trespassing, I wouldn’t get in trouble, right? Sure.

  We hurried along the pathway across the ground-floor space to the first ramp and walked up to the second level.

  Julian stopped suddenly, at about the same spot I had almost fallen last night. Thankfully, Sherman’s body had been taken away, but a five-foot piece of Stephanie, Julian’s beloved vine, lay like an old, frayed rope strewn across the leafy plants near the pathway.

  “Stephanie,” Julian moaned, and reached for the piece of vine. “What happened? She’s tattered and torn in pieces. Who would do this to a helpless plant?”

  Somebody looking for a quick way to strangle someone, I thought. I knew that CSI Leo had taken the part of the plant that had been wrapped around Sherman’s neck into his lab to search for fibers and skin and whatever other evidence he could find. What was left of the plant was a distressed, stringy vine that had been thriving a day ago.

  “She’s so weak, so fragile,” Julian crooned as he stroked the vine to find the points that were the frailest.

  It occurred to me that the Stephanie vine couldn’t have been all that fragile if she could be used for a murder weapon, but I didn’t say anything.

  “I rescued her, you know.”

  I nodded. “Yes, I know.”

  He looked dazed. “I already told you?”

  “You did,” I murmured. Months ago when I first worked with Julian in the Ecosphere, I had asked him how he became interested in plants and especially Stephanie.

  I rescued her from a pharmaceutical laboratory, he had said.

 
“Rescued? That’s right. You told me you rescue plants.”

  I’d remembered seeing a television show about actual cops who rescued animals, but I’d never heard of people who rescued plants.

  Plant Police, I thought. It was an interesting concept.

  “I hunt down abused and neglected plants,” Julian said. “I have an anonymous tip line and I receive calls all the time from people who report plant abuse and any factories where plants are being subjected to violent or dangerous experiments, or treated with deadly chemicals or injected with viruses or diseases or radiation. I show up and rescue them.”

  “And Stephanie?”

  “She had received megadoses of radiation and had grown so overly large that they had her hanging on hooks all around the laboratory and out into the hallways. She was so big, yet she was so damaged, so strung out, that she was dying a slow death.”

  Now he caressed Stephanie’s limp leaves as if he were comforting a child. “I brought her back to life and she’s really been thriving here. She’s been happy. But now everything’s changed. She’s been abused again. She might not survive.” He buried his face in his hands and I watched his shoulders shake as he cried.

  I had the sudden thought that maybe the reason why Wesley had wanted to set up a meeting with Julian was because they were two of a kind.

  But they weren’t, I realized. While they were both definitely oddballs, Julian was a sweet guy. I wasn’t so sure Wesley had a sweet bone in his body.

  “I’m so sorry, Julian,” I said. “But she will survive. You can bring her back to health again.”

  He gulped back tears. “I think I can, but I don’t know if she’ll ever trust me after I allowed her to be terrorized like this.”

  “She’ll know it wasn’t your fault.” I put my arm around Julian’s shoulders. “She knows you would never hurt her. She’ll rally for you.”

  In that moment I realized that I needed to take a break from the conference. I was talking about a plant as though it were a human being.

  Julian nudged me out of the way and began to crawl off the path and into the leafy green plants, crooning, “Stephanie, Stephanie.”

  “Julian, you need to come back to the pathway,” I said in alarm. “You’ll hurt the other plants and you’re tearing up the crime scene. This is the spot where Sherman was killed last night.”

  He immediately straightened up. “Sherman?”

  “Yes, Sherman. The man who was killed last night.”

  He scowled. “Short guy? Wears a bow tie?”

  “That’s him. Do you know him?”

  “Of course I know him,” he snapped. “He’s the jerk who hurt Stephanie in the first place.”

  I felt my breath leave my lungs. “Sherman was working in the radiation lab?”

  “Yes.” Julian scowled. “The little worm. If he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him myself.”

  Chapter Eight

  If he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him myself.

  I’d been hearing that sentiment a lot lately. In fact, I’d uttered almost the exact same words when I’d been talking about Dillon Charles the other day.

  Still, it was odd to hear Julian say it. He’d never been the most easygoing guy, but I knew that he loved his job, loved his plants, and had been pretty upbeat during the time I’d known him. Apparently, though, he also had a bit of a bloodthirsty streak.

  I patted his shoulder. “You don’t really mean that, do you, Julian?”

  “Shannon!” Julian waved his hands for emphasis. “The man is a plant killer. Why should I care if he lived or died?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. It just seemed so cold-blooded.

  “But you didn’t kill him,” I stated, just for the record.

  “No.” He sighed. “More’s the pity.”

  * * *

  * * *

  I left the Ecosphere in Julian’s somewhat shaky hands and raced across the field to meet Mac on time.

  “There you are,” he said. He stood near the doorway to the air dome and greeted me with a warm smile.

  “Sorry I’m late.” I was breathless and feeling foolish when I realized I must’ve done something to my ankle on the run.

  “You’re right on time.” He frowned. “But what happened to you? You’re limping.”

  “I was in the Ecosphere and realized I was going to be late so I jogged over here. And I thought I saw a mouse.” I had wondered if it was the same mouse I’d spotted earlier or a different one. Naturally I had completely overreacted, jumping and flailing and hopping away. But I didn’t need to mention that part to Mac. I shrugged casually. “I thought it might be one of the ‘smart’ mice. It caught me by surprise and I tweaked my ankle. It was stupid.”

  “Can you put any weight on it?” Still frowning, Mac looked down at my foot as if expecting it to give a report.

  “Sure. It’s not serious. I’ll walk it off in a minute.”

  Running his hands down my arms, he cocked his head, puzzled. “I thought you were working on the new barn. How’d you end up in the Ecosphere?”

  “Wade and Sean are doing a great job on the barn so I left them in charge and came over to meet you. But I ran into Julian on the way. He was determined to check out the damage in the Ecosphere, so I went with him.”

  “How’d that go?” He took a look at my expression. “Not so good?”

  “He’s flipped out about Stephanie.”

  He looked puzzled for one second, then nodded. “Right. That big crazy vine of his.”

  “Yeah. He was really shaken. Crying, patting the injured plant, trying to comfort it . . .” I shook my head. “The same vine that was used to strangle Sherman last night.”

  Mac shook his head. “That’s really disturbing.”

  “It was definitely upsetting for Julian. I think he can save Stephanie, but it’ll take some serious nurturing.” I sighed. “He has this really strong connection to the plant. To all plants, actually. He rescues them, you know.”

  Mac glanced around, scratched his neck. “I guess it takes all kinds to save the world.”

  “Tell me about it,” I muttered. “Anyway, when I told Julian that the dead guy was Sherman, he went a little nuts. Turns out, Sherman worked in the drug laboratory where the Stephanie vine was being used as a guinea pig for all kinds of experiments, including radiation therapies.

  “And when he found out about the experiments, Julian actually broke into the lab and rescued Stephanie.”

  “Wait.” Mac shook his head. “Come on. We’re talking about a plant, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And I know what you’re saying, but Julian is really radical about these things. He holds Sherman personally responsible for Stephanie almost dying. So when he heard that Sherman was dead, he was actually happy about it. I think he figured it was karma that Stephanie was used to kill her torturer. Said if Sherman wasn’t already dead, he would’ve wanted to kill the guy himself.”

  “Almost sounds like a confession to murder.”

  “Julian is wound up a little tightly, but he’s usually pretty nice. It was weird to see him so angry.” I shook my head. “But he didn’t kill Sherman.”

  “You sure? Sounds like he has a strong motive.”

  “You would think so, except he didn’t even know Sherman was the victim until I told him just now.” I sighed heavily. This was really turning into a very weird drama. “Still, I’d better call Eric before the workshop starts.”

  “Good idea.”

  I pulled out my phone and punched Eric’s private number on speed dial. I chose not to consider what it said about me that I had the chief of police on my speed dial.

  When Eric answered, I explained what Julian had said about Sherman and told him that Julian was still inside the Ecosphere.

  “What? No,” Eric protested. “The Ecosphere is o
ff limits. It’s a crime scene.”

  “Yes, I know. But Julian was desperate to check on his plants so he, well, he tore down the crime scene tape.” I hated being a tattletale, but the police chief needed to know. I didn’t add that I followed right behind Julian.

  Eric huffed in disgust. “I’ll be there shortly.”

  “See you soon.” I ended the call and gazed at Mac. “Let’s go watch Sketch Horn in action.”

  Mac made a face. “Seems to me we already caught him in action the other night.”

  “Oh, jeez. Don’t remind me.” I thought back to that moment when we peeked into the barn. I still had to wonder how Midge and Sketch had found each other. Had they met before? At some other conference? Or were they suddenly struck with lust while standing on the conference stage the other night? And where were their respective spouses while the two of them were busy doing whatever they were doing in the barn?

  I brushed aside those questions because I really didn’t want to think about them, and we made our way into the air dome. The room wasn’t filled up with people the way it had been with Mac’s panel. We easily found two seats on the aisle near the back of the audience in case we wanted to leave before it was over. Mac assured me that it would be smart to plan our exit strategy in advance. He seemed pretty certain that we were going to want to leave early.

  A few minutes later, the workshop participants walked out on stage and took their seats at the long table. Besides Sketch, there were three other speakers, all writers of various types of books, including a nonfiction war memoir and a volume of poetry.

  Sketch Horn, looking admittedly handsome and groovy in a black sports coat over a white T-shirt with strategically bleached and torn blue jeans, picked up the microphone. “Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to my workshop. I know you’ll enjoy yourselves because I like to have a good time. And invariably everyone else does, too, when they come to hear me speak.”

  There were a few scattered laughs in the audience and Sketch looked taken aback. He hadn’t been making a joke, apparently.