By the time Dave had typed my statement and I'd signed it, the station buzzed with news about hemlock in the carrot bars. The chief had made no secret of the information he'd gleaned, and he told Dave to arrange for a press conference with a health department representative for later in the afternoon. Obviously, he thought that there was more upside than down to informing the public about the cause of Eric's death. I'd definitely have to watch the evening news to find out all the details, but I called Susan to give her a heads-up as soon as I left the station.
“Hemlock? I don't understand how something like that could get into dessert bars.”
I explained about the possibility of the poison hemlock plant's root being mistaken for an edible vegetable. Actually, that probably wasn't as far-fetched as it had seemed at first to me. Lots of people—well, maybe not lots, but many—foraged for wild plants, whether to take a cutting from a wild rose to grow in their own gardens or to gather fresh leafy greens to use in a salad.
I'd done it several times myself, although it had been years since I'd hunted for morel mushrooms in the spring, back in Missouri. My parents had a knack for locating the sponge-like fungi, which my mom breaded and fried in butter with a little bit of olive oil. They were really yummy, I thought, with a touch of nostalgia for times past. Now that my parents were living in Florida, and I resided in Arizona, there'd be no more treks in the woods to hunt morels.
Susan told me that she hadn't made her statement yet, so I clued her in that now might be a good time to take care of it since Lieutenant Belmont was at his doctor's office.
“It'd be just my luck that he'd come back while I'm there, but I guess I might as well get it over with. I feel so depressed—first Natalie and then Eric. He was only forty-five. I know what a hard time he's had since Natalie died, but he should have had lots of years left, and they could have been good ones. Maybe he could have made a new life for himself. He acted almost like the old Eric when he came into the Roadrunner to see me the day of the Christmas parade. Whatever he wanted to show me, he felt excited about it. I can't wrap my head around the fact that he's gone. Chip was shocked when I told him. He and Josh have been friends since grade school. I have a feeling Josh is going to need his friends more than ever in the next few weeks. Eric was the only close family Josh had left, and now he's gone, too.”
“Poor Josh. I can't imagine what he must be feeling,” I said.
“And then to show up when the coroner and police were there: it was such a shock.”
“It was terrible. I feel sorry for Kayla, too. Here, she thought she was doing Eric a favor by bringing him dessert from the fair.”
“I know. She shouldn't blame herself.” Susan sighed. “I guess I might as well get this over with. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the lieutenant doesn't come back to work while I'm at the station.”
Poor Susan. She'd never forget the trauma of her arrest. Lieutenant Belmont had never apologized to her for his mistake, either. No wonder she didn't want to see him.
After a stop at the supermarket, I headed home with a few supplies, including a new candy thermometer. My old one had let me down big time when I'd attempted to make penuche a few days earlier. I wanted to have some on hand because it was my dad's favorite, but because of the thermometer failure, I'd ended up with ingredients that I'd boiled until the so-called candy was as hard as a rock. I couldn't remove it from the pan, so I threw the whole unfortunate conglomeration in the garbage, pan and all. Needless to say, I was hoping for better results next time.
As usual, my affable retriever greeted me enthusiastically at the kitchen door. Mona Lisa decided she wanted to join the club, too, and she brushed against my ankle, meowing until I scooped her up in my arms. Satisfied after a brief moment, she leaped to the top of her kitty tree, where she could keep her eye on Laddie and me.
I put the groceries away, took Laddie outside for a game of fetch, then fixed a sandwich for lunch and distributed a couple of treats into Laddie's bowl. As soon as Mona Lisa saw my last maneuver, she jumped down, went straight to her bowl, and waited for her own treat. I obliged her, and she quickly swallowed it and returned to her perch, swatting at Laddie on the way. Luckily, he'd seen her coming and swung his head away before her paw connected with his nose.
Although I wasn't feeling especially inspired and I admitted I was sorely tempted to procrastinate, it really was time to get to work. I'd put a large landscape on hold while finishing Mr. Big's portrait. Before mixing oils on my palette, I secreted my painting of the little dog in the studio's closet, because Belle was very likely to pop by later.
I considered landscapes, painted in an expressionistic abstract manner, my signature style. By contrast, I painted pet portraits in a very realistic way, and my inclusion of them in my repertoire had definitely improved my bottom line, but my first love was the imaginative landscapes that weren't selling at the moment. For that matter, neither were the pet portraits. If someone commissioned their dog's or cat's picture now, I wouldn't have enough time to complete it before Christmas, so it was useless to hope that someone would order a last-minute pet portrait for a holiday gift.
Perhaps I should try to find more gallery representation. I thought, as I carefully layered paint on my fiery red-orange landscape, reflecting a blistering desert scene bathed in radiant sunlight. Many artists were represented by several galleries, each in a different city. Thus far, I was represented by the Roadrunner and the Crystal Star Gallery, back in Kansas City, where I'd had my one-and-only solo show.
The trek from Lonesome Valley to Phoenix or nearby Scottsdale took only an hour and a half. Since Scottsdale was well known nationwide for its many art galleries, and it was so close, maybe it was time to expand my horizons and seek representation from one of them.
The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Although in the months since I'd moved to Lonesome Valley, I'd driven to Phoenix only a few times to pick up Emma or my parents at the Sky Harbor Airport and a couple of times to deliver a large painting to a specialist in shipping art, it was certainly close enough to make the prospect appealing, since I could personally deliver my artwork to a Scottsdale gallery and not have to worry about shipping it.
Emma would be arriving in a few days, so, since I'd be driving to Phoenix anyway, I could go early and explore a few galleries before her flight arrived at eight o'clock. I put my brush down to check the schedule she'd texted me and saw that she was coming in at eight in the morning, rather than in the evening, as I'd mistakenly recalled. That could work, too, though, if Emma didn't mind stopping for a leisurely breakfast before spending some time scouting around art galleries so that I could find out which ones might be good prospects for me to approach. I called Emma, and she loved the idea, especially since she planned on spending most of her semester break working at the feed store, so her holiday would be more work than vacation time. She'd worked there for Dennis in the summer, too, and liked having the extra spending money she earned.
With my plans to visit the galleries in Scottsdale settled, I returned to my landscape, only to be interrupted by a call. If I'd been really engrossed, I might have chosen to ignore it, but my curiosity won out. As soon as I picked up my cell phone, I saw that Susan was the caller. By now, she'd had ample time to visit the police station and make her statement. I really hoped she hadn't had the bad luck to run into Lieutenant Belmont there, as she'd feared.
“I just left the station,” she said breathlessly, “and I found out why Eric thought his financial situation was about to improve and what it was he wanted to show me.”