I’d left the remains of the glass jar of paint with Max. I needed to see him and get my remaining paint sample, but he wasn’t answering his phone. He was probably too busy at the shop. It was shortly after ten, so it would be open by now.
But when I arrived at The Alchemy of Tea, the sign on the front door of the shop was set to CLOSED. He hadn’t opened the shop that day. He must have been running late because of me. He wasn’t kidding about harassing Detective Vega until she got answers about the paint.
Since Max wasn’t answering his phone, I called the detective.
“Like I already told Max,” she said with an exasperated sigh, “the lab doesn’t work that quickly.”
“Is he still with you?”
“He left a while ago. I appreciate the tip about the paint, but you two really need to leave things to us now. If I find out you’re—”
“All I’m doing is looking for Max,” I said truthfully.
“He was talking about a cabinet before he left,” she said. “So if he’s not at his shop, maybe he was stopping by a hardware store to fix one of his cabinets.”
“Maybe,” I murmured as I peered through the glass. The shop was dark inside, but in the dim light I could see the cabinets and shelving. Nothing was broken.
“Leave things to us, Zoe,” the detective said before hanging up.
“Max?” I rattled the handle. “Are you restocking? This is important!”
I shook the handle once more. Even if he was in back, the front lights should have been on.
“Max, the paint isn’t just prone to catch fire,” I cried. “It’s poison!”
There was no reply. It was a small shop. He would have heard my shouting even from the back. Something must have happened.
“What did you just say?”
It wasn’t Max’s voice.
I whipped around, cursing myself for my foolishness shouting about poison when I was next door to a popular café. But the woman who’d spoken hadn’t walked out of Blue Sky Teas. She was hurrying over from across the street.
“You,” I whispered when she reached my side. I recognized her. It was the mysterious art collector, Joni Mitchell. The suspect Detective Vega had said wasn’t under suspicion. Where had she come from?
“FBI Special Agent Mitchell,” she said, showing me her ID. The woman’s surname was truly Mitchell, though she had a different first name.
She was a law enforcement agent. That’s why Detective Vega had told the Flamels she could be trusted. And also why she’d made sure her clothing was the most distinctive thing about her when she’d met with the Flamels.
“You’re investigating the Betty Kubiak homicide?” I asked.
“Something like that.”
Unlike the woman in the photo Nicolas had showed me, this version of Special Agent Mitchell was dressed like a backpacker. With scruffy sneakers, a jean jacket covered with hand-sewn patches of national parks, a small backpack that clipped onto her hips for stability, and two walking sticks she held in one hand, she looked like she could have stepped off a hiking trail on Mount Hood, not out of an office where she was looking into a murder that had taken place in the city.
“I haven’t come across poison in my investigation,” she said. “What were you yelling about?”
I wasn’t worried about Special Agent Mitchell being an imposter. Detective Vega had vouched for her. But how much could I tell her? It was clear I needed help, but asking for help was difficult when the reasoning was based in alchemy.
Detective Vega had told me more than she’d realized. I hadn’t noticed it at first either. She said he’d been talking about a cabinet when he left her. None of the shelving in his shop was damaged. But there was another cabinet central to this investigation. The Apothecary’s Cabinet.
“I’ll tell you about the poison,” I said, “but I also need your help. My boyfriend has a theory about what’s happening. And now he’s missing.”