My three visitors left shortly after that, two out the front, the third retreating the way she’d come, as my phone vibrated, and a text came in from Kit.
I scanned it, some further info on the venom, before shooting one at her. About snakes and zoos and Reading girls with a penchant for poker.
Robert already knows, she sent back. Sealed the deal for Caroline’s guilt. Your thirty-minute window won’t impress him or change his mind now that he thinks he has his killer. You know what he’s like. Did I. He’s releasing everyone from Reading in the next twenty-four hours so if you’re going to do something, you better do it. Short pause followed by. Sorry, that was mean.
But she was right.
Except.
Not my case.
I had to sit back and breathe a little while hugging my pug who always had that oddly nacho cheese scent I could never identify the source of because I didn’t feed her such treats. She softly snored against me, content to let me hold her, triangle ears twitching as she fell into a dream, yipping softly and letting out one of her requisite farts that had me laughing and waving one hand in front of my face.
“Thanks for bringing me down to earth again,” I said, stroking her forehead wrinkles with fondness I never thought I’d feel for her. When we’d first met, she’d been in mourning for the loss of her first owner, my Grandmother Iris who adored her, Petunia the Fourth, as much as her predecessors. We’d taken a week or so to come to an agreement, two or three before we were kind of friends. But over time she’d become as much a part of my life as Crew and Daisy, Mom and Dad, and the fallen bed and breakfast that had borne her name.
Thinking sad thoughts about Petunia weren’t helping, were they?
She did, however, snort and open her eyes, looking up at me, perking a little when I spoke to her. All gentle focus and love and utter adoration, that intensity of gaze that told me I was the center of her particular universe, and no matter what, she would always love me.
Reminding me it wasn’t just about jobs and assigned tasks and doing what I was told. It was about doing what was right for those I cared about and who trusted me, and I trusted.
And yes, I trusted Caroline. Above anyone else on my suspect list. Was she worth going to jail for?
I guess we were about to find out.
As I bundled up and headed out, Petunia on her leash, heading back for The Iris to drop her off so she’d be safe and sound and whatever happened could happen and I wouldn’t have to worry about her, I realized just how much I blamed myself for the Robert problem. In a way, it was my fault he was free and not sitting in a cell of his own—or at the bottom of Cutter Lake with a rope tied to a boulder around his neck.
Wish it was the second.
Fee, temper.
At any rate, I should have made sure he’d gone down for what he did instead of doing my usual and losing sight of the big picture in favor of my nosiness into other people’s business. Could I have stopped him from turning state’s evidence in the Patterson matter? I had no idea, but I certainly would have given it the old college try.
Failing the legal route there were ropes and rocks and lakes, remember?
I knocked on Jade’s door on purpose, knowing what it meant, Petunia firmly ensconced with Mom who watched me with wide, worried eyes when I told her what I had planned. Didn’t argue, just hugged me, because that was the awesome who was Lucy Fleming, Mom of the Freaking Century, letting me be me and do me and make the mistakes I needed to make and the choices that fit me so I could sleep at night and live with myself and not spend the rest of my days feeling like I’d failed someone who needed me.
The inside of the Reading jail wasn’t all that bad, anyway.
Jade answered her door in a bathrobe, wet hair evidence she’d just stepped out of the shower a moment before. She seemed to sense I was there for reasons other than checking up on her or her room and hesitated before letting me in. She sat on the edge of the bed, her hands tucked between her knees but her back straight while I took the wingback near the window, afternoon sun lighting both of us through the gauzy curtains, that scent so exotic heavy in the mist drifting from the bathroom.
“Did you hear what killed Jameson?” She shook her head in mute retreat when I asked that question, almost as if she didn’t want to know. “The venom of an inland taipan,” I said.
Jade’s jaw dropped, her eyes huge, her level of shock impossible to fake.
“How?” She leaned forward, her resistance gone, frown and intensity almost an attack. “Was he bitten? Who would bring a snake like that into public? They aren’t native.”
I waved off her questions. “He ingested it,” I said. “It was in his drink.”
Jade immediately shifted from anxious concern to denial. “That’s impossible,” she said. “It wouldn’t have killed him.” And then, dawning understanding when I pointed to my lip, and she remembered. “George hit him,” she said.
“So, my research is right,” I said. “If he drank it and it entered his bloodstream through the cut in his mouth, it would kill him?”
She nodded then, absently, staring at the floor as though far away, mind obviously working. “Drinking it might have made him ill,” she said. “More likely, the acids in his stomach would have simply destroyed it, might have increased his intoxication, but nothing else. But yes, you’re correct. The venom would have had to be in his blood to cause his death.” Black eyes flashed in anger. “You think I did it.”
I waited for her to go on, not saying anything while Jade stood and paced.
“I didn’t,” she said. “I don’t even own a taipan anymore. They are simply too dangerous.”
She’d sold hers? “When did you get rid of it?” The blog post was from last year.
“Six months ago,” she said. Paused in her pacing to meet my eyes. “But I didn’t get rid of him. He passed.” The catch in her voice was rather heartbreaking under the circumstances. “I kept some of the venom,” she said, like that made her guilty in her own view. But no, not her, right?
“And you shared it with someone,” I said.
There was that silence again, that almost childlike hurt in her tiny face.
“You gave a vial to Miles Weston on the first day of play,” I said. “Was that the taipan venom?”
Her tiniest of head nods was all the answer I needed.
“Which means you weren’t working with Miles to kill your ex-husband?” This time the motion was to the negative but remained the barest of motions. “And I’m supposed to believe you?”
Jade didn’t fight me. Just spread her hands in front of her like there was nothing she could say in her own defense.
I believed her. Time to let her off the hook.
Except I didn’t get a chance.
The door to Jade’s room slammed open, both of us jumping at the sound and the intrusion as, expected and yet not welcome, Deputy Rose Norton burst into the space with her cuffs out and the happiest smile on her nasty little face I’d ever seen.
“Finally!” She laughed out loud. “Fiona Fleming, you are under arrest.”
***