by Molly Fitz
I hurried out the door and down the hallway.
“Got your drink right here,” Amy called as I crossed the café.
“Great! Be right back.” I tried to sound as chipper as I could without alerting anyone to the fact something was going on.
There were fewer people outside than there had been several minutes ago. The bucket brigade was removing bags from the front quarter of the bus now. Soon everyone taking the new bus would be called to board for the rest of the trip home and someone would take away the original bus to finish processing whatever was in there.
Maybe after this, they wouldn’t need to.
I stopped an officer leaving the scene. One I hadn’t seen before. “Have you seen Grant Miller?” The van that he’d been getting supplies from earlier was gone. I hoped I hadn’t missed him.
“What’s this about?”
Tapping my computer to bring the screen back to life, I said, “I have something he’s going to want to see. It’s about Mr. Meyers.”
He reached for the walkie on his shoulder and then pressed a button. “Ten thirty-nine for Grant Miller.”
A moment later, the investigator’s voice came over the officer’s mic. “Miller here. You needed me?”
“I have a 10-69. A Meredith Duffy. Says she has something on her computer you have to see.”
“Tell her to stay right there.” In the background, I heard the slamming of a vehicle door. “Three minutes.”
The officer waited with me until the van pulled up to the scene once more.
Grant rushed over to me. “What have you got?”
“A picture of the victim. Have somewhere I can set this down?”
“Hood of my van work?”
I nodded. “You can thank the cat for this, by the way.” At his raised eyebrow, I quickly explained the circumstances under which I’d discovered the picture.
Once I’d typed in my password, the screen dissolved to show the photo in question.
“Cute,” Grant said with a chuckle. “You know you’re not supposed to take photos while you’re sitting at slot machines, right?”
“You’re going to be glad I did. Look behind me.” I pointed at the man in the background sitting three machines away.
His mouth dropped open slightly. “Wow. No doubt it’s him.”
“Yeah, and see all those cups around his machine? They were only serving coffee in those. What is that—eight, ten cups?”
“More. Some of those are stacked.”
“And that”—I pointed at the screen—“is one of those energy shots.”
Grant let out a hard breath. “Do you have any other photos from this angle?”
I hadn’t looked. Not since I’d sorted all my selfies into one folder, and I wasn’t looking at the background. Together we sat as I went through the few photos before and after this. He left two photos after the one I’d first noticed him in.
“I’d won five hundred dollars here. That was my celebratory drink. I wonder if he left at that point thinking another machine so close to mine wouldn’t hit.”
His brow furrowed. “That’s not how it works.”
“No. But it worked for him. He ended up winning big on another machine as we got ready to leave.” That must have been why he’d given me a thumbs-up when I got on the bus. He’d known I’d won something because he’d seen me.
“Huh.” Grant scratched at his temple.
“What?”
“How much caffeine do you suppose is in a cup of coffee?
“Depends on the coffee. Those are eight-ounce cups. The coffee is probably slightly watered down and sugary—look at all the packets crumpled up—so it’s either not the greatest quality or he had a heavy sweet tooth. I’ll say maybe eighty milligrams.”
The investigator turned to me with a surprised look.
“I used to be a barista and went to culinary school. I know things.” This was not how I was expecting my double major to pay off.
“Assuming all those cups are empty, eighty times a dozen, is nearly a thousand milligrams. Add in that energy shot for another—”
“Two hundred at least.”
“You’re looking at twelve hundred milligrams.”
“And that’s not counting what he may have had before or after these were taken. Caffeine has a variable half-life. Anywhere from one and a half to nine and a half hours.” He gave me another look. “Trivia night question.”
He blinked a few times at that answer. “If he kept drinking caffeinated beverages, he could have sustained these high levels.”
“How high are they?” That I didn’t know, but given how much coffee I’d already had today, I was concerned. My coffee had been much better quality.
“Three times the recommended amount in your system at any one time.”
“And what happens if that’s sustained?”
“At best, nothing. Maybe a case of the coffee jitters, but prolonged? Possibly all day? Sweating, vomiting, seizures, even death.”
Okay, I wasn’t at the jittery level yet, but I was cutting myself off after the coffee waiting for me inside. “You think caffeine did this to him, don’t you?”
“Won’t know for sure until we have the ME do some tests. He had four empty bottles of one of the most caffeinated sodas in the seat with him.”
I thought back to the first time remembered seeing him. “He’d come on drinking a soda after our breakfast pit stop yesterday morning.”
“I wonder if he even slept or if he gambled the whole time.”
“He did go and get candy at some point.” I couldn’t forget that fact.
He seemed to consider this a moment. “Can you send a copy of these to me?”
I brought up my email and then attached the photos to a blank message. Turning the laptop to him, I let him fill in his information.
He clicked Send, and the email disappeared. “Thank you for this. I think you’ve solved this case because of your casino selfies. We might not have checked caffeine levels otherwise. It’s not a common cause of death. Maybe one a year.”
“Even in our coffee culture? Wow.”
He nodded as he pushed the laptop back to me. “You gotta figure, we aren’t downing them at the rate he was all the time. Maybe one in the morning. One once we get to the office that we drink throughout the morning. Even someone who drinks a lot of coffee would likely be more spread out than he was. Like you said, half-life and all that. And if he already had a medical condition, it could have been exacerbated by his intake. But we’ll find that out too.”
I closed the laptop. “Any chance of me getting that candy back now since it won’t have cyanide in it?”
Chuckling, he shook his head. “Sorry. Already back at the station and turned in as evidence. But you’ll get some more soon.”
“Had to try.” I picked up my computer, then tucked it tightly under my arm. “We’ve already said our goodbyes, so I’m not saying them again. It’s bad luck to do it twice in one day.”
“Well, I’ll say stay out of trouble, then.”
I fought a laugh.
“What?”
“The cat from earlier. His name is Trouble, remember? I’m adopting him.”
“Ah,” he said, holding a finger up, “that explains why you’re not taking the bus back home.”
“You’ve got some pretty good reasoning skills yourself,” I replied, mirroring his earlier comment about me.
“I’d hope so.” He chuckled. “Good day to you, Meredith. Thank you for your help. Safe travels and enjoy your new cat.”
Chapter Eighteen
We’d been home in Wisteria Falls for almost a week. Trouble was settling in nicely. He’d escaped my apartment five out of six days, but half of those were to my parents’ house upstairs from my basement rental. The others were out a window, and well, I didn’t know about the third. But there he was today on the front lawn, waiting to greet me when I got home from work.
I carried him inside, then whipped up a snack for each of us
. A friend of mine had emailed me a recipe for tuna treats when I told her I’d gotten a cat, so Trouble got two of those—from the second batch I’d made, because he’d broken into the cupboard and gorged on the first batch. I had a sandwich to go along with some of my own treats from the trip. I was still waiting on my replacement candies to come in the mail, but nothing yet.
After eating, I made myself a coffee—nothing too fancy now that I was back to living on my budget—we settled on my recliner. It was the only seat in my apartment that was high enough for Trouble to wedge himself behind my head on my shoulders. I set my coffee a safe but accessible distance away, then pulled out my laptop. I had yet to write a blog post for any portion of my trip, giving myself time to distill all that had happened at the end. But now it was time. At least for the first post. I had several to write from this trip alone. And that was without mentioning what happened on the bus ride home, other than the pit stop to the cat café and introducing everyone to Trouble.
A notification popped up in the corner of the screen as my blog’s dashboard loaded. One new email. When I saw the sender’s email address, G. Miller from the Snowhaven PD, I clicked on it immediately.
Dear Meredith,
I hope this finds you and your new cat settling in at home. I trust that you had a safe and uneventful rest of your trip. Did you keep your cat’s name or pick a new one?
I’m writing to thank you for your help regarding the death of Mr. Meyers. Thanks to your photographs, we knew to check the caffeine levels in his bloodstream. As we suspected, his levels were exceedingly high and were a major contributing factor in his death along with other things that made him more susceptible to succumbing to such an amount in his system.
I am usually not at liberty to discuss such things but felt that you deserved to know after your contribution to the case.
Wishing you and your cat the best.
Grant
I reached up and scratched Trouble’s head behind me. “Look at that, Trubbs. We helped figure out how that man died after all. That’s good. I like having answers. Now let’s write that blog post, shall we?”
It wasn’t the post I’d intended to write, but it was the one that came most easily as I set my fingers to the keyboard. I typically liked to go in chronological order as I wrote about trips, but my readers wouldn’t mind finding out about my new cat. I told them they wouldn’t see him in the next few posts because he wasn’t there, but that he’d make at least the occasional appearance.
After he was officially mine, Robin, Ben, and I drove to a local pet shop and we got him everything he needed for the trip home. He’d done great in the car.
With how well it had gone, I looked forward to taking him on some of my future adventures. He was trouble, there was no doubt, but I also believed he’d make a perfect travel companion. Or should I say purrfect?
“Huh. I kinda like that.”
“Like what?”
“The Purrfect Travel Companion. It has a good ring to it. Might have to rebrand my whole blog.”
“Sounds good to me.” Behind me, Trouble yawned and slid down from his spot.
“Wait…” I was alone. There shouldn’t have been anyone to reply. Yet someone had. I stared at Trouble. “Oh my goodness. You can talk!”
Trouble nodded, then licking his front paw and used it to wash behind his ear. Once he’d set it back down, he said, “I can, and now that you know, could I have another treat?”
I’d thought that helping solve the death of Mr. Meyers on my last bus trip was one of the more curious things to ever happen to me. But with a talking cat, my life was about to get a lot more interesting.
Want More?
We hope you enjoyed Catastrophe on the Road, the prequel to the “Purrfect Travel Companion” series, which will be coming soon from Whiskered Mysteries.
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If you like this, then you’ll also love Cookies and Curses, featuring one of Meredith’s friends from culinary school. Matchmaking baker Joanie must solve why ghosts only she can see are interfering with the couples she’s gotten together. It’s a delicious read with tasty treats, quirky characters, one sassy calico cat, and a smorgasbord of supernatural secrets to uncover in Heartwood Hollow, Maine.
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Learn more about the series, author Rosie Pease, and where you can find her at www.RosiePease.com.
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