Prose & Poison, page 10
part #1 of Cafe Prose Mystery Series
As if the tense conversation we just had never took place, Kevin sat down at this desk, placing two hands in front of him. His deep brown eyes studied me, and it infuriated me to admit how handsome he looked in that very moment. “What is it then?” he asked, business as usual. I clenched my jaw, infuriated even more he could go from zero to sixty back to zero in just a moment’s time.
I slid Harold’s note across the desk. “I think Harold left this for me.”
Kevin’s eyebrows scrunched together. “What is it?”
I sat down. “It’s an anagram that re-scrambles to SHAKESPEARE’S FOLIO.” I pulled out my phone and after opening the web browser to the Folger Shakespeare Library’s website, slid it across the desk so it rested right in front of him.
“A book?” he asked. “Are you here to convince me of your book theory again?” His eyes widened.
“Kevin! Harold left this note for me. I can just feel it.”
“You can feel it?” he interrupted and waved two hands in my face. “What, have you started reading your tea dirt like Piper?”
“Haha,” I said, unamused. “Like I told you before,” I emphasized, “he wanted me to appraise a rare item, then he gave me this coded note to let me know in secret what that item was.”
Kevin dropped his head back and laughed. “Do you hear how ridiculous that sounds? Secret codes? We don’t live in the world of Murder She Wrote, Talbot.” He folded the note back up, placed it in the center of the table, and then leaned back in his chair, hands resting behind his head. “Why don’t you leave the policing to me and my men?”
I cocked an eyebrow.
“And women,” he corrected. “I’ll tell you what.” He snatched the note from the desk and shook it like a leaf. “I’ll have your mother make a copy of this note and we’ll look into it.”
“Promise?” I asked. He nodded. “Because if Harold had that book, there are people who would do anything to get their hands on it.”
Kevin drummed his fingers on the desk. “And people would do anything to get their hands on the money Harold Ellerton already possessed.”
I couldn’t deny that point — a point that did seem a bit more valid than a mysterious book. “Fine, Kevin. I’ll try to stay out of it.”
“Good.” Kevin opened the office door and ushered me through the police department. “Busy, please make a copy of this and give the original back to your daughter,” he instructed my mom.
“What is this?” she asked.
I opened my mouth to tell her, but Kevin cut me off. “We aren’t sure quite yet,” he said adamantly. “Talbot.” He gingerly placed a hand on my shoulder that suddenly warmed under his fingertips. “Like you promised.”
“Mmm hmm,” I muttered. I’d try.
Kevin moved to the kitchenette a few feet behind my mother and poured himself a cup of coffee. Where were the donuts?
My mom knew me so well, because the next sentence to come out of her mouth was, “Petunia from Stick of Butter Bakery will be dropping off donuts later.”
I giggled inside.
Mom turned to me, reached two hands across the partition connected to her desk, and grasped my hands in hers. “Great news, Talbot!” Mom said excitedly. “Looks like your belongings will arrive a day early. Movers called while you were meeting with Kevin and they’re on their way.”
Finally, some good news. “Awesome.”
“Oh … and one more thing.” Mom glanced quickly to Kevin and grabbed a pen and stationary pad from the top of her desk.
“What are you —,”
She stopped my question with a pointer finger and then slid the paper in front of me.
Two words — I snoop.
“I’m not snooping, Mom,” I said. I was simply here to tell Kevin of my improbable theory.
“Not that,” she whispered with a frown and moved her fingers over the slip of paper.
“Oh!” Another anagram.
I rearranged the words and letters in my head, and it only took a few seconds until I spelled one out that made more sense.
“Cause of death,” I stated matter-of-factly.
Mom nodded as I looked to my handwriting.
Poison.
Chapter 10
“So how did they figure out Harold was poisoned?” I asked mom.
We stood in line at Trickling Springs Creamery, waiting for our pumpkin pie milkshakes. After I left the police station, mom texted me to meet her at the creamery at five for their newly-released fall flavor. It was a great replacement for dinner, so here we sat. And this was so worth the calories.
“Well, Dr. Fuller just hired an assistant coroner because his workload between doctoring and coronering has become a bit overwhelming.”
“Don’t think that’s a word, Mom,” I teased.
Mom ignored my comment. “He needed an assistant.”
“Plus, he’s ancient,” I mumbled into my milkshake.
Mom laughed. “That too. This new guy … I think his name is Preston or maybe Prescott.”
I waved Mom to move on with her story. The name wasn’t important.
“Anyway Dr. Fuller brought the new young man to the embalming at Kreamer’s Funeral Home, and because he was being trained, Dr. Fuller allowed him to do some routine swabs on Harold.” Mom put her hands up in surrender. “Now I won’t give you the gory details Kevin so generously gave me.” She grimaced. “But let’s just say, the mouth swab tested for …” She leaned in and whispered the next word. “Cyanide.”
“Interesting,” I remarked.
“Interesting how?”
“Well,” I began. “Cyanide is odorless, tasteless, and easy enough to conceal.”
“How do you know all that?” Mom asked.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m a librarian by trade. I’ve researched, or helped someone else research, just about everything.”
“Who researched poison?” Mom asked.
“A student when I worked in the library at college,” I said nonchalantly. “He wrote a thesis on the changing nature of murders across literature.”
“Hmm,” she said. “That is fascinating.” Mom twirled her straw around in her milkshake. “And why are you so interested in Harold’s case?” Mom studied me. “It’s a rabbit hole you don’t want to go down.” Mom spoke from experience.
Kevin’s comments from earlier bounced around in my head — how I only think about myself. It wasn’t fair to bring Mom into the drama of this, the drama of another murder, so I settled on a small fib. “Just curious, is all. I was the one to find him …” I still couldn’t say it.
But how exactly did I find him? Now that I knew the cause of death, the crime began to unfold in my head. I could almost see it now.
That night, Harold sat in his office, fiddling with paperwork. He had a shot glass and whiskey on his desk, so he must have had a drink. Another person slipped the tasteless and odorless cyanide into Harold’s beverage, either then or before. Harold drank it, began to sputter and choke. The murderer left his office. Harold knew the end was near, so he wrote a note for me to find. And then I found him … and his secret note … dead.
Everything in that scenario worked, until the addition of the note. It seemed out of place. As much as I hated to admit it, maybe Peter’s Folio theory was a bit farfetched after all, and the note simply was random musings of Harold Ellerton.
“Earth to Talbot.” Mom waved the milkshake in front of my face. “Yours is more milk and less shake,” she said, pushing my straw through the tan liquid. It sloshed around the sides of the parfait glass.
I smiled weakly. “Just thinking about all the unpacking ahead of me,” I said. “You have plans tonight?”
Mom frowned. “I do need to check in on Harold’s gardens,” she said. “Do you care to join me?”
I sighed. “I really should get working on the apartment.” But then realized maybe I could find a few answers at Harold’s. See if he’d left any other sorts of notes. I did find him. The least I could do is see what I could do to help. I thought to Kevin’s comments. Selfish my butt. “Actually, I think I will join you.” I sipped on my drink.
Mom smiled. “Great. It’ll be nice to have someone keep me company since.” Mom sniffed back what looked like a tear. She shook her head and with it, shook away whatever emotion just flooded through her. “It’ll be nice to have you there.”
I squeezed Mom’s hand. “Okay, then.”
* * *
We arrived to Harold Ellerton’s estate twenty minutes later. Bright yellow police tape crisscrossed over the front door and a sudden chill washed over me. “I guess it’s kind of official,” I muttered.
Mom didn’t even give so much as a glance at the front door and then gestured to a gray stone path lit by solar lights that wrapped around west side of the home. “This will lead us to the gardens.”
Low grumbles of thunder sounded in the distance. “We should hurry.” Mom picked up her pace. “Looks like another storm is on the move.”
We reached the rear of the massive home, walking the stone path that wound around six circular areas of flowers and greenery. The stone pavers cut through the final two circles and led to the entrance of Harold’s study where another overlapping of arrest-me-now yellow tape was fastened across the French doors.
I turned away, my back to the study doors, while Mom bent down to pull weeds from below a row of green giants enclosing the garden area. “This is beautiful, Mom,” I said, noting the ring of fall Burgundy Peonies to my left with Purple Pearls showing deep purple berries with hunter green leaves. They were tinged with a lavender color around the edges. The circular bed to my right comprised of Petit lie Caryopteris, with its blue and purple flowers blossoming brightly. The center of this circle boasted a fresh grouping of Siberian and Yellow Irises Mom had just planted a few weeks ago. “What’s that one?” I asked Mom, bending over an Iris beginning to bloom toward the back of the bed.
“That’s the Immortality Iris,” she answered with a sigh. “Harold’s favorite.” She pushed something from her face and then huffed. “And he always makes …” she hesitated. “Made.” She cleared her throat. “Such a mess of the dirt.” Mom slipped on her stained gloves and pushed the soil around the irises back in place. “I don’t even know why he wanted a walking path if he never stuck to it.” She huffed in exasperation, bringing the back of her hand to her forehead, leaving a streak of dirt behind.
Another grumble came from the sky, but this time, droplets of rain came with it, soft and steady at first. Mom had just enough time to prune back some of the iris growth when the rain began to pick up speed, falling in heavy sheets around us.
“We need to get inside,” Mom directed, pointing to the study’s doors.
“But it’s a crime scene.”
Mom shrugged. “And I work for the police department.” She grabbed a key hidden under a large, cylindrical flower pot at the garden’s edge and opened the door. We ducked under the tape and stepped inside the stately home. “I’ll explain everything to Kevin tomorrow,” she assured me.
Mom took off her shoes and placed them just outside the door so they were protected by a three-foot awning. I followed suit. “How about I make us a bit of tea?”
I wrapped my soaked sweater arms around my torso. “Sounds like a plan,” I spoke through chattering teeth.
Mom left me in the quiet of the study. I shivered. Not from the chill of the rain this time, but from the memories of this room. It hadn’t even been a week since I found Harold hunched over in the chair next to me. That memory too much to bear, I moved to the other side of the desk. I didn’t feel comfortable standing in the exact spot he died in. The exact spot he was murdered in.
I heard the clanking of dishes and then the steady stream of water hitting metal. “She must be filling up the teapot,” I whispered to myself. If I wanted to look for a book, now would be the time to do it.
I tiptoed to the floor to ceiling bookshelf and scanned over Harold’s titles. I smiled, realizing his collection hadn’t changed much since I was a teenager. Editions of Chaucer, Dickens, Austen filled these shelves. “This one,” I sighed, pulling from the shelf the first edition of Alice in Wonderland that was so dear to my heart. “You’re the reason I do what I do,” I spoke to the book as if it were a person and then tucked it back in its proper place.
Next, I pulled out a copy of Emma and sighed. This was the first book of Austen’s I’d read. Harold had gifted it to me at the end of sophomore year, and I’d sent it back to him right after Patrick and my breakup. I traced my fingers along the words scrawled in the bottom right corner of the inside cover. “To Tally-O, the brightest star I know.” Harold. A sudden warmth spread through my chest. At one time, I was the only person to see how kind and generous Harold Ellerton could be. Obviously, that changed fifteen years ago with the Georgetown incident, but as Kevin mentioned, the good, kind part of Harold must have resurfaced.
If he’d made amends, then who would kill him?
I continued working my way around the study, searching for a loose book that, when pulled out, would reveal a hidden compartment tucked behind solid wall, just like I’d seen in old movies. But there was nothing of the sort like that in Harold’s study.
I moved to another small shelf to the right of Harold’s desk that contained more copies of classic novels where a leather-bound spine, sans a title, caught my eye. I pulled the book from its place and opened the cover.
“A day planner!” I exclaimed. And even more, it was for this year.
The teapot squealed down the hallway. I needed to hurry, not wanting to explain myself to Mom if she caught me riffling through Harold’s things. I flipped to October, checking out the few weeks leading up to his death. I stared at the page, eyes wide open, hoping to find anything out of the ordinary.
“What’s this?” I asked aloud, my mother’s footsteps shuffling around in the kitchen. Although many of the entries were hard to decipher, Harold’s schedule the day of his death was quite clear.
6:15 - breakfast
7 - phone call: Peter
8 - garden walk
9 - meeting with Peter
10 - tea
11 - lunch
Noon - reading
1 – phone with Charlotte
2 - meeting with …
“Oh my gosh!” I exclaimed, seeing the name in the two o’clock slot. I ran down the hallway until I reached my mother who now carried two mugs of piping hot tea in her hands.
She recognized the look of sheer terror on my face. “Talbot. What’s wrong? It looks as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
I breathed quickly. “Aunt Tilly!” I spat.
Mom looked from side to side. “What about Matilda?” Mom asked.
I took the cups from her hands and sat them on the counter. “She’s with Harold’s killer. Right now!”
Mom shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
I pointed a finger to the two o’clock slot on the afternoon of his death.
“I need to call Kevin.” Mom reached in her back pocket for her phone. “I forgot it at home.”
I grabbed my cell. “What’s the number to the station?” Mom rattled the digits while I plugged them in.
Please pick up. Please pick up. Please pick —
“Hello?” a man answered.
“Kevin!” I shouted, thankful he answered. “It’s Talbot.” Before Kevin had the chance to say a thing, I spoke. “You need to get to my Aunt Tilly’s house. The last person with Harold Ellerton was Mayor Samuel Moore.”
“He never mentioned … how do you know?”
“Found Harold’s planner in his study.”
I expected Kevin to question me. Ask how I’d found his planner while his team of men missed it? What I was doing in Harold’s house? But instead he responded, “I’m on it.”
As much as I hated to admit it, Kevin might have been right about Mayor Moore after all.
* * *
The blinking lights of Kevin’s police cruiser blinded me as Mom and I arrived at Aunt Tilly’s cottage just ten minutes later.
“Thank God,” I sighed, seeing my aunt rocking on her porch swing, blanket draped over her shoulders. A young officer, another of the rookies on the force, knelt in front of her and jotted down notes in a book.
I stepped on the porch and asked, “Are you okay?”
She nodded with an Aunt Tilly-esque smile. “Kevin stormed in here, demanding to speak with Samuel. Talk about drama king,” she huffed and wrapped the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “Then he told me to wait out here.”
Mom stayed on the porch with Aunt Tilly while I walked inside and down the hallway, pushing boxes of drama props out of the way, careful not to run into a coatrack this time.
“I assure you, Officer Homestead,” Mayor Samuel Moore’s low voice bellowed from the kitchen. “There was no such meeting.” I stood in the threshold of the room, not wanting Mayor Moore or Kevin to know I could hear their every word. I peeked an eye around the corner to see a visibly upset Samuel Moore put a hand to his head. A lantern-shaped light hung over the dining table where they were seated with two plates of faux-turkey and spinach pushed to the side.
Kevin jotted down notes. “Then why were you scheduled into Harold Ellerton’s calendar at two o’clock the day of his death?” Kevin asked.
“Because we scheduled a meeting.” Samuel said matter-of-factly. “But Harold called around 11 that morning.” He scrunched his face. “Or maybe it was 11:30.” He flicked his hand. “Nevertheless, it was a short conversation. He said something pressing had arisen and he’d be in touch to arrange another time to meet.”
“Mm hmm,” Kevin mumbled. “And what was your meeting supposed to be about?”
Samuel rubbed the side of his face. “That’s something I’d rather not discuss right now.”
“Mayor Moore,” Kevin said sternly. “You’re in no position to withhold anything from me this time.”
Samuel put his hands up in defeat. “Fine, but please promise me you’ll not breathe a word.”
