Lance and I moved to the exit, but we didn’t get very far. Standing just outside the door was Violet, and she seemed much calmer than before. She even gave me a shy smile as she approached.
“I was hoping to talk to you.”
“We’re in hurry.” Lance barely slowed his pace. “Can it wait?”
“I meant Miss DuBois, actually.”
I pulled up short. “You know, anything you say to me, you can say to Detective LaPorte here. He’s the police officer, not me.”
My, that feels good. Usually, Lance had to talk people into letting me join a conversation, but now I had a chance to repay the favor.
“Okay, then,” she said. “If you insist.”
“I do. We’re a team.”
“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” She nervously toyed with a thread that dangled from the sleeve of her blouse. “I’m afraid I owe you both an apology.”
“An apology?”
“Yes. I didn’t help either one of you very much. In fact, I might’ve gotten in the way. But you need to understand something. If I lost my husband and my son, it would just kill me. I didn’t want Foster to get any more tangled up in this mess than he already was.”
“What made you think you were going to lose Mr. Carmichael?” While I didn’t understand it, she sincerely believed every word, because worry etched her face.
“My husband loaned a lot of money to Wesley over the years. Even when he found out about the gambling. I thought if you knew that, Foster might get in trouble, too.”
“But it’s not illegal to loan someone money,” Lance said.
“No, but it’s not right when that person has an addiction, like Wesley did. I thought you’d charge Foster for it.”
“I don’t think that’s possible.” I shot a quick glance at Lance, who confirmed my suspicion with a nod. “No one’s going to charge your husband with anything.”
“That’s so good to know. My husband never did things like that before. He used to make better decisions. Wonderful decisions. But ever since he started drinking again, everything changed.”
I bit my tongue, because I’d suspected as much. No one reeked of alcohol at eleven in the morning unless he had a serious problem with it.
“You’ve had a lot to deal with, Mrs. Carmichael.” I spoke gently, since this woman obviously had been through a lot. “Are you going to be okay?”
She nodded. “I think so. My daughter invited me to come stay with her in New York City for a while. Just until things calm down.”
“That’s probably a good idea.” While I didn’t know enough about the Carmichaels’ marriage to offer any input, it seemed Violet needed to get away for a while. And Electra seemed to have enough chutzpah for both of them. She could take care of her mother now, instead of the other way around.
“Well, I guess that’s all,” Violet said. Already her thoughts seemed a million miles away. “Thank you for everything.”
She turned and slowly retreated down the hall, her footsteps as halting as her speech had been.
“Well, that was interesting.” I waited for her to disappear before I spoke.
“I’ll say. It obviously made her feel better to get that off her chest.”
“I don’t know why she confided in me.” I threw him another look. “Somehow, people can’t stop themselves from telling me their secrets. It must be my kind face.”
“Sure, that’s it. You and your kind face.” He threw me a playful punch. “Well, as long as you haul that kind face of yours upstairs to help me out, I won’t disagree.”
Before I could reply, he headed for the stairs, so I joined him. We climbed the steps in tandem, since the wide planks offered more than enough room to comfortably navigate the staircase.
Every other houseguest had disappeared by now, and every bedroom door on the hall was open. First up was Buck’s room, with its empty closet and massive writing desk. Next came the room I used, although it looked like no one had spent much time there. Other than the sheets, which I bunched and swirled during my restless night, nothing else looked used.
I wished I could have spent more time in the beautiful room, because an antique bookcase held a week’s worth of paperbacks, and an enormous picture window offered ample reading light. The perfect place to unwind after a hectic weekend, like the one we’d just gone through.
I forced myself to continue walking. After a moment, I made it to Jamie’s room, which sat at the very end of the hall. Like before, the drawers of the dresser were all askew, and fat pillows tumbled from the bed to the floor.
I understood why Nelle had called this the “blue room,” though, because heavy velvet curtains as blue as the sky lined the windows, with porcelain tiebacks that pulled the fabric away from the glass.
The room held several pieces of heavy furniture, including the four-poster bed, a captain’s chair, and an antique writing desk, which was wedged under a large window. The desktop lay bare, except for a few pieces of writing paper. I meandered over to the papers and gazed at the first one on the stack. It looked like an ordinary grocery list, with most of the items crossed out. Alongside everyday items like deodorant and mouthwash, someone had written “apple” and “matches” to end the list.
“Say, Lance?”
He stopped whatever he was doing and crossed the room to the desk. “Yeah?”
“What do you think of this?” I pointed at the list, which someone had written in both blue and black ink.
“Looks to me like Mr. Lee picked up a few things before he got here.” Lance reached behind his back and withdrew a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. Ever the Boy Scout, he seemed to stash everything inside those pockets but the kitchen sink. “I’ll take this down to the lab and have it dusted for fingerprints.”
“Just a second.” I lightly stilled his hand. “I understand why he’d want matches. He couldn’t very well offer Wesley one of his doctored cigarettes without also offering him a match. But why would he need an apple?”
Lance didn’t hesitate. “People put loose tobacco on a slice of apple to keep it from drying out. My grandfather used to do that. Jamie probably knew it’d take him some time to grind up the poison, and he didn’t want the cigarette to fall apart when he was done. That’s my guess, anyway.”
“No wonder you’re a detective. I never would’ve thought of that.”
Lance deftly scooped up the list and placed it in the bag. “That guy really knew what he was doing.”
“Or maybe Lorelei did. She might’ve been the one to prepare the poison, for all we know.”
“You’re right. See, now you’re thinking like a detective: look at all the possibilities. Don’t sell yourself short, Missy.”
I chuckled. “Thanks, but I think I’ll stick to making hats. Your job sounds interesting, but I could never do what you do. I don’t have the heart to chase down criminals, or the stomach for it.”
“That’s only one part of the job. Anyway, I’m going to head into the bathroom next. He might’ve left something in there by accident.”
While Lance left to scope out the bathroom, I studied the sheet of paper that remained on the desk. Unlike the shopping list, it hadn’t been used. I began to turn away, when the sun suddenly popped out from behind a cloud and bathed the desktop in sunlight.
Why, the other sheet wasn’t blank at all! Tiny indentations formed words where someone had written something on a sheet placed over this one. Did Jamie write another note, and not realize his handwriting would appear on the bottom sheet, too?
Since Lance was busy searching the bathroom, I bent lower to examine the paper. It was short—only a sentence long—but succinct:
One seed = .1 milligram. Fatal at 10 milligrams.
Gracious light! It was the recipe for making thorn apple lethal! The author knew exactly how many seeds would kill Wesley. But who? Was Jamie telling the truth when he said he only wanted to make Wesley sick, or did he mean to kill him all along? Did Lorelei join him in this room, and was it her handwriting on the bottom sheet?
“Lance!”
Once more, something rustled as Lance dashed out of the bathroom and into the bedroom.
“What’s up?”
I silently pointed to the piece of paper. But just when he was about to examine it, a cloud moved across the sky and darkened the bedroom.
“I don’t see anything,” he said.
“Wait a minute. You will.”
We both waited for the cloud to pass, and when it did, warm sunlight once more bathed the desk in light.
“Huh,” he said. “What do you know.”
“The sun happened to hit it just right. Someone wrote the directions for making thorn apple toxic. Apparently, the killer needed at least a hundred seeds.”
Out came another plastic bag from Lance’s pocket.
“How deep are those pockets?” I couldn’t help but smile, since his khakis reminded me of all the times I’d watched clowns perform at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Invariably, a portly clown would pull a menagerie of items from his pants, including a plastic bouquet of flowers and a full bottle of seltzer water. Somehow, the pockets never seemed to empty.
“Don’t worry about my pockets. I’ve learned what I need—and what I don’t—over the years. These bags can hold evidence, or work as a glove, or even carry liquids. Leave me and my pants out of this.”
“Okay. No need to be defensive. Can’t a girl be curious?”
He ignored that last remark. “It looks like we’re done here.” He stashed the evidence bag away. “I need to head over to the station and have a little chat with our suspects.”
“I’d love to join you, but if I don’t go back to my studio now, I have a sneaking suspicion my assistant will lock herself in the bathroom. You know, to escape the thundering hordes of brides.”
“I get it. Thanks again for helping me out. I’ll call you later.”
“But not too late, okay?” I yawned loudly, the exhaustion hitting me full-force. “I’m planning to hit the hay as soon as I can. What could possibly happen now?”