‘I was saying that hair and urine samples showed arsenic levels that could have led to the symptoms Fargo was having. But it didn’t kill him, obviously.’

  ‘No, that was lead poisoning,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Funny,’ from Pavlik’s side.

  ‘I guess you’ve heard it before.’

  ‘Once or twice,’ Pavlik said dryly. ‘Anyway, we’re looking into Mrs Gilroy’s movements on Wednesday night. Making sure she actually did get home and stay there.’

  ‘Didn’t you already do that?’

  ‘Fergussen checked, but since he just considered her “an old lady”, he may not have been as thorough as he should have been.’ Pavlik didn’t sound happy. ‘He’s also the reason a full tox screen wasn’t run on Fargo. Told the coroner we already knew the cause of death.’

  ‘Which was true, so far as it went.’

  ‘Which wasn’t far enough. An effective investigator has to have an open mind, not set out to prove his or her own set of facts.’

  Seemed the very opposite of Fergussen, in my opinion.

  ‘Anything I can do?’ I asked.

  ‘No, you’ve already been more helpful than most of my department. I’ll be late tonight. Don’t wait up.’ He rang off.

  ‘He’s really ticked,’ Sarah said.

  ‘And for once, it’s not at me.’

  It was Friday night, but no date night for Pavlik and me. Not that it usually was, at least since we’d been living together. Friday was mostly pizza night, a tradition that Frank, Mocha and I carried on bravely in the sheriff’s absence.

  When the pizza came this time, I made sure I tipped the guy extra generously. ‘Somebody has to make up for the Fargos of the world,’ I told the dogs.

  As I cut up their slices, I thought about Rafael. Paid ‘hit-and-miss’ by Kip Fargo. Did he know what Mrs Gilroy was doing? If he had, would he have stopped her?

  ‘I don’t know,’ I told Frank as I put his bowl on the floor. ‘I’m not even sure I’d have stopped her.’

  Mocha whined.

  ‘OK, I probably would have,’ I said as I set her bowl down, too. Both dogs dug in for about three seconds, which is all it took for the pizza to disappear.

  ‘Best part of the day, over,’ I told them as I picked up their dishes. ‘Depressing, huh?’

  Then again, life was so simple for them. Eat, sleep, repeat.

  I paused with both dishes in my hand. Everything in this case had gotten so complicated. The proposal, the will, the missing money, the gun, the arsenic. What if the simplest theory was the right one?

  Could Kip Fargo – feeling old and sick, thanks to the arsenic – have shot himself?

  The only thing that had countered that theory at the beginning was the absence of the gun. You can’t kill yourself and hide the gun. But now we knew it was Jayden who took the gun and hid it, thinking she was protecting her brother.

  I set the dishes in the sink and returned to the living room to pour myself a glass of Pinot Noir. Leaving the bottle on the coffee table, I sat down at the computer.

  And if hadn’t been suicide, what was the alternative?

  Suspect-wise, we were down to an old woman who had more loyalty to her employer’s son than to her employer. And probably for good reason, given what Rafael had said. Had the pleasure of knowing she was gradually poisoning her employer to death made up for years of missed or late paychecks? Of cooking and cleaning for an ingrate?

  Might have helped. And as a plus, the housekeeper was clearing the way for Jason.

  But … had she actually cleared the way? Had she actually come back to the house that Wednesday night and shot Kip in the head? Or could somebody have done it for her? Was there an accomplice?

  The obvious person, though I hated to think it, was Rafael. As a Fargo employee he’d have the same beefs with Kip as Mrs Gilroy had, if for not as long. But when Kip was shot, Rafael was out of the country. In Colombia, where he and his frogs would soon return.

  I was thinking of Fergussen’s allusion to Body Heat.

  Could we have some whacked-out, fun-house mirror version of Body Heat, featuring Rafael Rojas and Mildred Gilroy instead of Amy and Jacque?

  Might Rafael and Mrs Gilroy have hatched the plan to poison Kip and – when it looked like he was about to change his will – accelerated it?

  Mrs Gilroy would have had to shoot Kip since Rafael was out of the country, and that would leave her, like William Hurt’s Ned Racine, as the fall guy.

  And now Mrs Gilroy – also like fall guy Ned Racine – was dead, leaving Maddy/Rafael free to take off for ‘an exotic land’.

  Firing up the computer, I punched in ‘Colombia’. Then, because I had nothing else to go on, I added ‘frog’.

  What came up was the small, greenish-gold frog with the cartoon eyes, the one that matched the Porsche and that I had held in my very own hand. Golden poison frog … Phyllobates terribilis.

  I scrolled down the Wikipedia listing:

  The golden poison frog’s skin is densely coated in an alkaloid toxin, one of a number of poisons common to dart frogs (batrachotoxins). This poison prevents its victim’s nerves from transmitting impulses, leaving the muscles in an inactive state of contraction, which can lead to heart failure or fibrillation.

  ‘Holy shit,’ I said out loud, rubbing my hand on my pants.

  And then the doorbell rang.

  TWENTY

  ‘You know.’

  It wasn’t a question. Yet Rafael Rojas still looked like the nice man I’d befriended over frogs and information in the Fargos’ front yard.

  Since I didn’t want to open up a can of poison frogs in this case, I went with the theory I could pin on Mrs Gilroy. ‘That Kip was being poisoned with arsenic? Yes. But how did you know that I was on to it?’

  ‘I saw the books in your car,’ he said, moving into the living room. ‘Mrs Gilroy was entertained by Dame Agatha Christie.’

  ‘And influenced?’ I stepped back. ‘Arsenic is undoubtedly a classic.’

  ‘Just as Christie was.’ He shrugged. ‘I think it amused Mildred – or perhaps kept her sane – to be dropping a bit in Mr Fargo’s iced tea every day.’

  ‘You consider that sane?’

  Mocha skittered in, followed by Frank. They both stopped when they saw we had a visitor. Not exactly attack dogs, but somehow it comforted me to have them there, as did the fact that the front door was still open.

  Rafael smiled at the dogs before answering my question. ‘She said a little arsenic was good for the complexion.’

  ‘That’s in the book, too,’ I said, stepping over Frank to get to the coffee table where I’d left the book. As I picked it up, I slid my phone, which was next to the stack of books, between the pages before I turned back to Rafael. ‘But over time it causes the problems Kip was experiencing. He must have thought he was falling apart.’

  ‘Aging prematurely. And then a young woman turned down his proposal.’

  ‘You think Kip shot himself.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s the most likely conclusion – and would have been from the beginning if Jayden hadn’t removed the gun from the scene to protect Jason.’

  ‘The boy isn’t worth it.’ Mocha was sniffing around Rafael’s ankles, and he leaned down to scratch behind one of her tiny ears.

  I didn’t have time to set the phone to record, but I did manage to hit ‘1’ on speed dial and close the book again before Rafael straightened. ‘You said your brother teaches at the university in Madison. Is Jason one of his students there?’

  ‘Jason studying Herpetology? I think not. He’s more interested in money than living things.’

  ‘Do you think that was part of it?’

  Rafael cocked his head, not understanding.

  ‘I meant did Mrs Gilroy want Kip out of the way for Jason’s sake?’

  ‘You mean to inherit?’ He frowned. ‘I think not. I don’t think she actually meant to kill Mr Fargo, just inconvenience him.’

  ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have given her the arsenic.’ I shrugged. ‘Or rat poison or whatever it was. Much easier for a gardener to have access, I would think, than a housekeeper.’

  ‘You’d be surprised. Arsenic is in many things.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ he said finally, ‘Mrs Gilroy was a bitter woman.’

  No kidding.

  ‘She had spent her life working for the family and Fargo treated her like an indentured servant.’

  ‘But indentured servants can’t leave,’ I said. ‘She could have.’

  ‘How many people are advertising for an elderly cook and housekeeper these days?’

  ‘And change is hard,’ I admitted. ‘You did know about the poisoning then.’

  Mine hadn’t been a question either.

  He hesitated before nodding. ‘As someone versed in the sciences, the signs were unmistakable.’

  ‘Yet you didn’t stop her.’

  He shrugged. ‘Mr Fargo was not a nice man. He was arrogant and cheap. He didn’t pay what he owed me for my work and demeaned me, despite the fact I was better educated than he was. It was hard to feel sorry for him.’

  ‘What did you think when he died?’

  He raised his shoulders and let them fall. ‘I didn’t know what to think. But it seemed unlikely he had been murdered.’

  ‘Despite all his faults?’

  ‘We – Mrs Gilroy and I – were more aware of his faults than most.’

  Not anymore. ‘Did you know Jayden had put the gun in the hole? Did she tell you? Ask you for help?’

  He ducked his head. ‘No, but I saw the gun when I went to finish planting the tree.’

  ‘But you didn’t say anything.’

  ‘Not at the time. I assumed the arsenic would be found at the autopsy and I needed a chance to think about the ramifications.’

  ‘But it wasn’t found.’ Thanks to Fergussen.

  ‘No, though you figured it out anyway.’

  ‘But only after Mrs Gilroy was dead and couldn’t implicate anybody else.’

  ‘You mean me.’

  ‘Yes.’ I felt a vibration from the phone inside the book. Probably Pavlik texting back, meaning he’d gotten my call and was listening to what was going on. The thought made me brave. ‘Tell me about the frogs.’

  Rafael regarded me with … I’d say more appreciation than surprise. ‘The frogs.’

  ‘You stocked Kip’s pond with Colombian poison dart frogs. Was that another passive-aggressive way of getting back at him?’

  He rolled his head side to side, considering, before he answered. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘You handed one to me that day. There’s no antidote for the poison. Were you trying to kill me?’

  ‘Didn’t your research tell you the frog produces the poison when it’s threatened or in pain?’

  I hadn’t scrolled down far enough, evidently. ‘So I’m lucky I didn’t squeeze it?’

  A flash of a white-tooth grin. ‘Actually, while one small Phyllobates terribilis has enough poison to kill ten men where they stand, the frog loses its toxicity away from its environment in Colombia. Scientists believe the poison is a result of the diet they eat in their natural habitat – probably certain beetles and insects.’

  ‘Then the frog you gave me wasn’t poisonous?’ No wonder Rafael was smiling. My theory had just gone down the PVC pipe drain.

  ‘Not anymore.’ He seemed hurt I’d had to ask the question. ‘Nor are the ones you can order online.’

  ‘You can order poisonous frogs online?’

  ‘You can. Though I prefer to eliminate the retailer and get them directly from Colombia through my brother.’

  ‘The professor.’

  ‘Yes.’ Rafael ducked out the still open door to the porch and returned with a box.

  One of the ventilated frog boxes I’d seen by the pond. ‘These were just shipped from Colombia, which is why I didn’t let you touch them on Tuesday.’ He closed the door.

  A shiver went up my spine. ‘They’re still poisonous.’

  ‘Hard to say.’ He was holding up the box to peer through a hole.

  ‘That was the day you thought of it,’ I said, remembering back. ‘Not this Tuesday, but the day after Kip died, when you gave me the frog to hold. You stopped talking suddenly and waved distractedly as I left, because that’s when it occurred to you: somebody here in the U.S. could die from frog toxin and nobody would ever suspect.’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose.’ He was still frog-gazing.

  I pressed the point. ‘You’re having second thoughts now, I suppose – worried the poison will be traced to you. That’s why you took those new frogs out of the pond.’

  ‘Traced to me?’ He looked up now.

  ‘Batrachotoxin causes heart failure. Mrs Gilroy’s cause of death.’

  ‘Mrs Gilroy was an old woman.’

  ‘And you were in a tough spot. Came back from a nice vacation in Colombia and found that Kip was dead and Mrs Gilroy was panicking.’

  It was a shot in the dark, but a logical one.

  It landed. ‘As I said to you, Mildred and I feared the arsenic would be found in the autopsy. Then when it appeared Jason had killed his father, she wanted to make the dramatic gesture and confess to the crime, like in a book.’

  ‘Confess to shooting Kip or poisoning him?’

  ‘Both. Mildred thought that if she admitted to the arsenic, the police would readily believe she’d taken it a step further and returned to shoot him.’

  ‘What about the night blindness?’

  ‘That was true and one of the flaws in her plan. I told you she was old. She wasn’t thinking straight.’

  ‘So, you decided to stop her. How? Hand her a frog?’ As I said it, I gestured with the book in my hand and my mobile slipped out, hitting the floor at Rafael’s feet.

  His expression shifted. Still affable but with an emptiness, or maybe it was desperation, behind it. ‘I’d be happy to hand you one right now, if you’re curious.’ He set the box on the ground to open it.

  ‘Leave it!’ I commanded Mocha, who had come up to sniff. Frank was still laying on the floor in front of us.

  ‘Oh, let them play,’ Rafael said. ‘The toxin probably won’t kill them at this point unless they ingest a whole frog or perhaps have an open wound.’ He shrugged. ‘But then who knows, really.’

  An open wound. And the vented frog box had been in the kitchen the day Mrs Gilroy cut herself. In fact, she’d ordered Rafael to move ‘those disgusting things’.

  ‘Mrs Gilroy was so upset when Jason was brought in for questioning that she cut herself.’ I wanted to distract him, keep him from removing the lid of the box. ‘You dressed the wound. Is that how you did it?’

  ‘Apparently so.’ Another shrug. ‘I honestly didn’t think it would work.’

  ‘If the poison is so toxic, why didn’t she die immediately, right there in the kitchen?’

  ‘It’s hard to say what the toxicity level was at that point. The new frogs had been out of their natural habitat and away from their usual poisonous diet for a few days. Besides, I didn’t use a lot – to do that, you’d have to stress the frog, even torture it to make it release the poison as a defense mechanism. I would never do that.’

  But he’d kill a human. ‘Then what did you do?’

  ‘Very little, really. Gave the frog just a little squeeze, as you said, and wiped it on the gauze before I came out of the storeroom. I didn’t even put that layer closest to the wound.’

  Kudos. ‘You preferred that Mrs Gilroy be home when it took effect. Work its way into the wound from the gauze?’

  ‘Or the other way – the blood works its way to the toxin. Mildred was apparently washing dishes after she got home, so maybe the water flooded the toxin into the wound.’ He straightened and toed the box on the floor. ‘I’d honestly love to do some research to see, but I don’t have time.’

  ‘When is your flight?’ I asked it casually like I was taking him to the airport.

  ‘Two hours.’ He sighed. ‘I wish I knew what to do with you. I’m not a killer, really.’

  I heard a car door slam out front. Pavlik.

  I took a deep breath. ‘You are, really. You just do it the coward’s way.’

  ‘You believe shooting somebody is brave?’

  ‘No, but I think dosing them with toxin and then pretending you don’t know what will happen is chicken shit.’

  The doorbell rang.

  What the hell? The cavalry was ringing the doorbell?

  Rafael twisted to glance toward the door, too, and I did the only thing I could think of: smack him in the head with the book. ‘Help!’

  Surprised, Rafael took a step toward me but managed to step hard on Mocha. A bit of a street fighter, she gave it right back to him.

  She sunk her sharp little teeth into his ankle and hung on for dear life.

  ‘Shit!’ As he danced around on one leg, I gave a shove and toppled him over a still-prone Frank.

  Harrumph, was all Frank had to say.

  ‘Help! Help!’ I screamed.

  On the floor, Rafael was swearing in Spanish.

  The doorbell rang again.

  As I started toward the door, Rafael grabbed my leg and swung me back around. That’s when I saw the bottle of wine on the coffee table. As I stumbled past, I made a grab for it and, continuing my circular trajectory, brought the thing down on my assailant’s head.

  The Pinot worked infinitely better than the book. Rafael let go of my leg. Not stopping to see if I’d killed him or merely stunned the man, I made for the door and swung it wide open for my rescuers. ‘Pavlik—’

  ‘You order a pizza?’

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘Wait a second,’ Sarah said. ‘Number one on your speed dial is Mr Pizza Pie?’

  ‘I asked the same thing,’ Pavlik said. ‘It was kind of hurtful, to be truthful.’

  As he said it, he helped himself to a second slice.

  ‘I thought I’d changed it,’ I said sheepishly. ‘I honestly couldn’t figure out why you were ringing the bell in your own house. Especially when I assumed you were on the line and hearing what was going on.’

  ‘So what does Mr Pie bring you when you just dial them up like that?’ Amy asked.

 

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