Brewing Death

by P. D. Workman

  Erin didn’t imagine that things had been easy for Vic, growing up with a transgender identity. She didn’t know what age Vic had started to transition at; she had presented as female when Erin had met her at seventeen. She must have felt like an outcast in her small community.

  Erin also felt empathy for Joelle, poor and awkward, trying to look like she fit in. Growing up in a series of foster homes, Erin had worn mostly odd hand-me-downs, faded, shapeless, and out-of-date. She had not been neglected, exactly, but new clothes had not been in the picture.

  Joelle did the best she could with what Melissa had called ‘thrift store chic.’ Good enough to fool Erin into thinking she had plenty of money, but she hadn’t fooled everyone and, as a teen, Joelle had obviously been aware of her failure to impress.

  “But that’s not a motive,” Vic said. “You don’t kill someone because you grew up together, whether you ran in the same circles or not.”

  “No,” Adele agreed flatly. “You don’t.”

  A couple of moments passed.

  Adele shifted, looking uncomfortable. Not quite her usual poise. “Like I said. We weren’t friends.”

  “Did you have something against her?” Vic asked. “Or… she had something against you?”

  “She had a chip on her shoulder. She had something against anyone who she thought was getting ahead of her. When I first saw her in Bald Eagle Falls, I thought maybe she had grown up. She seemed pleasant, more comfortable in her own skin. But…” Adele trailed off.

  “But maybe she wasn’t actually so nice,” Erin said. “Maybe she’d just learned a few new tricks.”

  As a teenager, maybe Joelle hadn’t yet learned how to present herself. As an adult, she had played her part very cleverly, becoming Trenton’s girlfriend and then giving him the cupcakes that would end his life. In the beginning, no one had suspected that she had done it all intentionally.

  Adele was clearly reluctant to discuss the details. She nodded slowly, focused somewhere past Erin and Vic, avoiding their gazes. “She wanted me to give her money. Money to keep quiet.”

  “She tried to blackmail you?” Vic gaped.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought that with Alton out of the way, everybody could relax and rest easy again,” Erin said. “I never thought that Joelle…!”

  She remembered Alton confronting Joelle at the Founders’ Day Fair. Too far away for Erin to hear their words, but Erin had been sure that Alton had been trying to blackmail Joelle just as he had tried to blackmail Erin. But Joelle had shoved him away. She was having nothing of it. Had his attempt at blackmail inspired her? Or had she already been involved in such activities before?

  “She’s no innocent little lamb,” Adele said dryly.

  “No, I know that. Believe me, I know that! I just didn’t see it coming. I can’t believe that she would try to blackmail you! What did you ever do to her?”

  “I don’t think it would have mattered whether I’d done anything to her or not. She wanted money and she figured I was her meal ticket.

  “I’m sorry she treated you that way.”

  But something wasn’t right. Something was niggling at Erin’s brain. It wasn’t that she was worried about what Joelle might have been blackmailing Adele about. The fact that Adele was a practicing witch was enough. If word about that had gotten out, she would have been run out of town. But there was something more.

  She heard a voice in her head. It took a while to identify whose voice it was and where it had come from.

  Why would you take soup to a person who had tried to burn your house down?

  Sheriff Wilmot had asked her that during her interview with him. Erin had been surprised at how suspicious he had been of her motives. She had just taken soup to someone who was hurt. There was nothing sinister about that. But faced with Adele’s confession, it was suddenly easy to see why he’d been so persistent about it.

  Why would Adele take boneknit tea to someone who had, just days before, been trying to blackmail her?

  Adele could see the suspicion in Erin’s eyes. She sat back in her chair, looking tired. “And… there it is. Now you see why they’ve arrested me. I was doing something nice for someone I knew could use my services. And obviously, Joelle wasn’t suspicious of my motives, or she wouldn’t have drunk the tea. But to an outsider… I had motive to see her on her way.”

  “Yeah,” Erin agreed, nodding. “It was the same with me. Sheriff Wilmot kept asking why I would be nice to Joelle when she had tried to hurt or kill me. And I guess… I can see his point.”

  “Only you don’t have the expertise to make the tea or the poultice. And I do. If the poison had been in the soup…”

  “That can’t be grounds to arrest you. There have to be other people in town who know about poultices.”

  “And who had the opportunity? And who had a motive?”

  “There must be.”

  Adele sighed. “Your loyalty as a friend is admirable. But even you have to see that it looks suspicious. I didn’t poison Joelle, but I can’t prove I didn’t.”

  “There must be something we can do,” Erin told her. She could hear footsteps coming down the hallway and knew they didn’t have any more time. “We’ll try, Adele, okay? We’ll do whatever we can.” Seeing Vic’s skeptical look, Erin amended. “Well, I will, anyway.”

  The door opened, and the sheriff was there with a uniformed man that Erin didn’t recognize. The officer in charge of the transportation, Erin assumed.

  “Sorry, we’re going to have to break this up,” Sheriff Wilmot said. “Mrs. Windsor, you just stay where you are. The rest of you need to go.” He made a flapping motion to hurry them on their way. Erin and Vic got up, giving Adele waves and sad little smiles, walked out of the room and left her to the men.

  When they got outside, Erin took a deep breath and blinked quickly, trying to banish the tears stinging her eyes. Vic gave a sigh as well. Then she looked at Erin.

  “Mrs. Windsor? Did you know that Adele was married?”

  Chapter 27

  They were getting into the car, but Erin wasn’t ready to leave. She knew she needed to talk to Melissa before she could go home.

  “I… think I dropped something,” she told Vic, patting her pockets. “I’ll be right back…”

  Vic frowned, but didn’t object or insist on going back with her. Erin moved slowly, making sure that the sheriff was back in his office and Terry hadn’t shown up. Melissa was sorting through some reports. Erin went through the motions of checking the conference room for whatever it was she had dropped, and walked slowly by Melissa’s desk. Melissa gave a frown and shook her head, acknowledging Erin’s sadness over the arrest.

  “Melissa,” Erin approached the topic uncertainly. “I know you don’t want to talk about what happened when you and Davis were young, or really anything about Davis…”

  “That’s right,” Melissa gave Erin a stern look. “It’s none of your business.”

  “I know… but I’m trying to help Adele out. You don’t think she’s really the one who poisoned Joelle, do you? She just isn’t that type of person.”

  “I don’t know what kind of person Adele is. I know she keeps herself to herself. I know she isn’t from these parts and she doesn’t go to church.”

  Erin opened her mouth to object, but Melissa shook her head. “She doesn’t go to any church. Don’t think I don’t know that. I don’t expect everyone to be Baptist, of course, but it does help me to know what kind of person someone is if I at least know what kind of church they go to. If they do. I just don’t know what to think of you atheists.”

  “I know you’d rather we were your faith. But you’ve known me for almost a year, now. And you don’t think I’m a bad person, do you?”

  Melissa gave a little laugh and ran fingers through her wild, curly locks. “Of course I don’t think you’re bad, Erin… but I really don’t know what to think of you. If you are a good person, then what do you have against being a Christian?”

&n
bsp; Erin tried to steer the conversation back away from her faith—or lack of it. “Melissa… Adele didn’t do anything to hurt Joelle.”

  “Maybe not.” At Erin’s look of reproof, Melissa amended. “No, of course not. Though in his report, the sheriff said…”

  Erin waited for Melissa to finish, but Melissa gave her a teasing smile. “Oh, you’re a tricky one! You thought you could get me to tell you what was in a police report. You know I can’t do that.”

  “It’s pretty obvious what the sheriff thinks.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is. I don’t have to tell you.”

  “So if you could help me out, just a little… I don’t want you to do anything that’s against the law or unethical. I just want to know… What Davis has had to say about Joelle, I guess. Not if she committed a crime or helped him with anything, but just… the kind of person she was. We didn’t really get to know her very well here in Bald Eagle Falls. She didn’t really have anything to do with anyone else.”

  “Davis hasn’t said anything about her,” Melissa said immediately.

  “Not even when he heard that she was dead? He wasn’t shocked? He didn’t say what kind of person she was? That’s he’d miss her—or that he wouldn’t miss her?”

  “I’m glad she’s gone,” Melissa confided. “I don’t know how he feels about it, but I really didn’t like her… slinking around here. She was a shady person. Not the kind of person you want hanging around Bald Eagle Falls. I know it was your sister, Charley, who invited her to come back here, but I can’t understand why she would. You just don’t want someone like that… always lurking around.”

  Slinking and lurking. Shady. Erin played a hunch.

  “Does that mean she was trying to blackmail you too?”

  Melissa’s mouth dropped open and her eyes got wide. “Why would you say that? I never said anything like that. Exactly what would she blackmail me for? I don’t have anything… nothing she could blackmail me about.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t blackmail. Maybe she just asked you for money. Maybe she said she’d leave town if you gave her money, so she wouldn’t be lurking around here anymore.”

  “You don’t know what she was like. You only ever saw her at the bakery, and what would she do there? She couldn’t exactly make trouble in front of all of the other customers. So you think she’s just little miss perfect. You don’t see that the whole thing is just a facade. She’s about as genuine as a three-dollar bill.”

  “I believe it.” Erin nodded encouragingly. “What did she do? What did she say to you?”

  “She was all… lording it over me that she’d been with Davis. Like I wasn’t good enough for him. Like I wasn’t worth anything but her cast-offs. I’d never have talked to anyone that way! She was acting like she was ‘all that’ and I was nothing.” Melissa leaned forward. “I told her that we’d been an item back when we were just kids, so if you wanted to get right down to it, she’d had my cast-offs, not the other way around. Hoo-boy!” Melissa puffed out her cheeks and rolled her eyes. “You should have seen her face at that! She was red as a rooster and mad as a wet hen! Then she started threatening.”

  Erin held her breath, not wanting to make any movement that would distract Melissa from telling her story. But once Melissa got going, it was like trying to stop a freight train. Nothing was going to deter her.

  “She was threatening to tell everyone all kinds of lies! That I got pregnant by Davis and had to have an abortion! That I’d helped him to get drugs, because I was older than him. That I called him to tell him that Angela was dead, and that Trenton was here, and if he wanted to get anything out of the estate, he’d better come right now.” Melissa shook her head in disbelief. “I never! Why would I do such a thing?” Melissa drew herself up as tall as possible. “I work for the police department!”

  “Wow.” Erin shook her head as well. “The nerve! And she thought she could squeeze money out of you by making these false allegations?”

  “Can you believe it! I was never so angry in my life! I could have put my hands around her neck and strangled that woman!” Melissa mimed the gesture.

  Erin swallowed. Melissa seemed to suddenly realize what she had done and dropped her hands to her side.

  “Not really, of course. I’ve never harmed a soul in my life.”

  “And you didn’t pay her anything.”

  Melissa’s lips pressed together. She shook her head tightly. “Of course not.”

  Erin had her doubts. While Melissa might be a shameless carrier of gossip herself, she would have been horrified to have her reputation tarnished in front of all of Bald Eagle Falls. To have her virtue and uprightness challenged would be unendurable.

  “Did you tell Davis what she was saying?”

  Melissa nodded, still pressing her lips closed.

  “What did he say about it?”

  Melissa gave a tight shake of her head. Barely a twitch. But her eyes were blazing. “He laughed! Said she was just up to her old tricks. He said what does it matter what people think? Like my reputation didn’t matter!”

  “I guess that made you mad.”

  “You’d better believe it! I couldn’t believe that he would tell Joelle anything about me. I wondered what I was even visiting him for, if he didn’t care a lick for me and my good name. I was risking criticism every time I went to see him. What if word got around that I was visiting him in prison? I would be blacklisted. A pariah.”

  “For visiting someone in prison?”

  “Yes! Oh, I’m not talking about you going to see Charley, of course. She was your sister and she needed your help. But with Davis and I… well, people might misconstrue it. You know what I mean?”

  “I really don’t know that it would be that bad, would it? People must know that the two of you used to be…” Erin hesitated. She had been about to use the word sweethearts, and suddenly knew it wasn’t right and would just send Melissa off the deep end. “…Uh, friends. People must have known that you were friends when you were in school. So they wouldn’t think anything of you checking in on him now…”

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” Melissa said. “You don’t know how people would be. I would be ostracized.”

  And if they would ostracize her for visiting an old friend in prison, what would they do if they were told she’d gotten pregnant outside of wedlock and then had terminated the pregnancy? Erin didn’t have to talk to Vic or any other advisor to know how the Bible-thumpers would feel about that. They didn’t have any compunction about telling Erin she was a sinner for being an atheist, or Vic that she was going to burn for being transgender. They would definitely not have been gentle with Melissa, someone who had grown up in their midst, if they thought she had strayed and had kept it a secret all the years since.

  “Davis said Joelle was up to her old tricks?”

  Melissa nodded. “Something like that.”

  “So he wasn’t surprised. She’d done this kind of thing before? Trying to blackmail someone?”

  “Yes, that’s what I thought. That’s just the kind of person Joelle was. Someone who would say anything to get a few dollars.”

  Erin strongly suspected that asking how much ‘a few dollars’ was would not go over well. She was curious about what kind of numbers they were talking. How much had she asked Adele for? How much had she asked Melissa for? Were they talking a hundred dollars? A thousand? Ten thousand? Did a person like that start low, and then increase the demands as the payments were made? Or did she start high, and negotiate down according to what the victim could pay?

  “Did he say who else Joelle had blackmailed?”

  Melissa thought about it. “No… I don’t think so. I was so mad, he might have, and I would have just kept shouting. What right did she have to ruin my reputation? I hadn’t done anything to her.”

  “Of course not,” Erin agreed. “What would you have done to her?”

  Other than to supplant Joelle as Davis’s friend. Once Davis was in prison, had Joelle cared what h
appened to him? She held Davis’s Power of Attorney, so did that mean they were still a couple?

  Or did Joelle believe that Melissa was taking Davis’s affections from her?

  Chapter 28

  As they worked through another routine day at the bakery, Erin let her thoughts wander. Who knew how many people Joelle had tried to blackmail. Erin was sure the list didn’t end with Adele and Melissa. She would get as much dirt as she could on everyone she could. The more people she tried, the better the chances that she would get a good payoff.

  “Vic, what does foxglove look like?”

  Vic looked over at Erin. “What does it look like? People usually recognize it by its blossoms. They’re sort of trumpet-shaped.”

  “And what does the plant look like? What do the leaves look like? It must grow wild here, does it? How would I know it if I walked by it in the woods?”

  Vic did her best to describe the rosette shape of the leaves and pulled a picture of it up on her phone to show to Erin.

  “Whoever put the poultice on Joelle’s leg, they would have had to get it from somewhere. Would they have it in their own garden? Do people put it in gardens around here?”

  “Sure. I can’t say I’ve noticed anyone growing it in town, but they look very lovely in a garden.”

  Erin suspected that anyone who was planning on poisoning would not want to use a plant growing in their own garden. They wouldn’t want something that pointed right back at them.

  “Joelle didn’t have any in her garden, did she?”

  Vic thought about it. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “What about Adele?”

  “I don’t remember seeing any in her yard. But she doesn’t cultivate a lot. She mostly tries to find her plants and herbs in the wild, I think. Wildcrafting, they call it.”

  This fit with Erin’s knowledge of Adele’s activities. Often when Erin dropped by to see her, Adele was out gathering plants or sorting them and hanging them to dry. She didn’t grow neat rows of herbs in the little cottage garden, but went out looking for what she needed.