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It was the next day and I was still trying to figure out where to go with the information I’d discovered in Lola’s file when Aidan stuck his head into my office.
“Afternoon,” he said with a smile. His brown hair was still damp, almost as if he’d just gotten out of the shower.
“Did you just get to work?” I asked.
His brow furrowed. “No. Why?”
“Oh, I just wondered. Your hair is wet.”
“Had to jump into the pool unexpectedly.” He smiled. “Good thing I keep an extra pair of work clothes in my car.”
I was immediately concerned. “You jumped in the pool? Why? Was someone in danger?” I hated to admit it but the first thought I had was that Anne would get wind of whatever happened and either close down the event that had precipitated it or simply close the pool down in its entirety.
“No, nothing like that,” he reassured me. “Billie lost her earbuds.”
“Her earbuds?”
He chuckled. “She was doing some water exercises. Had her phone on the ledge and somehow the earbuds dislodged from both her ears and her phone. She couldn’t reach them and she didn’t want to dive under and get her hair wet.”
I grinned. “That sounds like Billie. And that was very nice of you to do that.”
“I don’t know what good it did,” he said with a shrug. “Her earbuds might be shot from the water exposure.”
“Still, you did it. And that’s what matters.”
“It was refreshing, considering it’s like a million degrees out today.”
One of the nicest things about working at Oasis Ridge—anywhere indoors, really—was that I could easily escape the heat of a Florida summer.
“Anyway,” Aidan said, “I just thought I’d stop by and see if you had any more leaves or plants for me to take a look at.”
“Excuse me?”
He grinned. “It was a joke.”
Denise poked her head in the door, and I was starting to feel like I was in the most popular office in the building.
Aidan noticed her. “Guess I should get going,” he said after giving Denise a small wave and a smile. He turned back to me. “You let me know if you find any more poisonous leaves you need me to identify.”
He strolled out of the office, leaving Denise standing there, gaping at me.
As soon as he was gone, she marched inside and closed the door.
“Poisonous leaves?” she said. “What is he talking about?”
I slumped into my chair.
This was not the way I’d wanted Denise to learn about the leaves found on Arthur’s dinner plate.
“You better start talking,” she commanded as she dropped into the chair across from me. She folded her arms tightly across her chest. “Because I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on.”
I stifled a sigh.
Denise wasn’t bluffing.
She would literally sit in that chair until nightfall. Heck, I’d probably find her in my office the next morning.
“Fine,” I finally relented. “Aidan is studying plant biology. Over at Crestview.”
“Well, isn’t that convenient.”
“I gave him the leaves and asked if he could identify them.”
Her expression was hard. “And you didn’t think any of that was important to tell me?”
“What? That he was a plant bio major?”
“No,” she snapped. “That you gave him the leaves and he was able to identify them!” She took a deep breath. “What did he say? What kind of plant is it?”
I pressed my lips together. I still didn’t it was a good idea to tell her what I’d found out, but I also knew that ship had sailed. She wasn’t going to let it drop. And I also knew that I wasn’t making much progress on my own with the information I currently had.
“It’s a plant called monkhood.”
“Monkhood?” She wrinkled her nose. “What kind of name is that?”
“I didn’t ask,” I said dryly. “I was mostly concerned with the fact that he said the entire plant is poisonous.”
“How poisonous?”
“Deadly poisonous.” I relayed the symptoms Aidan had mentioned to me.
Denise’s eyes were as big as I’d ever seen them. “Oh, lordy, this is bad.” She slapped her palm against my desk. “I just knew something was going on! I knew it!”
“Now, hold on,” I cautioned. “We still don’t know anything.”
She looked at me incredulously. “What on earth are you talking about? There were leaves on Arthur’s plate. Poisonous leaves. And guess what? Arthur is now dead. Literally died eating that food!”
“I know,” I said with a nod. “But the problem is, we have no idea who put it there, or if anyone did. And we certainly don’t know if Arthur ingested any of it.”
Denise rolled her eyes. “Of course he did. He’s dead, ain’t he?”
“He was also seventy-something years old,” I pointed out. “Any number of things could have caused his death.”
“Including being poisoned,” she said stubbornly.
“Including that,” I agreed. “But what are we supposed to do? Go to the authorities and tell them we found these leaves on his plate? And go to them several days after the fact? Don’t you think that’s going to make us look bad?” I saw her brow furrow with concern so I forged ahead. “I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t want the police suspecting me of any kind of...of foul play.”
She licked her lips. I could see she wasn’t too thrilled about that idea, either. “So what do we do?”
“We need more information,” I said.
Denise shook her head. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not cut out for this.”
“Cut out for what?”
“For being patient. For looking for clues.” She glared at me. “Wanna know how many times I won Clue when I was little? I’ll tell you. None.”
If the situation weren’t so serious, I would have burst out laughing. I didn’t think the success rate of winning a kid’s board game had anything to do with our ability to poke around and figure out a few more details before deciding whether or not contacting the authorities made sense.
“So you think we should go to the police and tell them what we know?” I asked. “Without having a suspect in mind? Without knowing much of anything?”
She cradled her hands in her lap. “What about Ruth?” she asked.
“What about her?”
“I told you she was upset about Arthur,” she reminded me. “Isn’t she a suspect?”
“Sure,” I said, nodding. “And she has a ton of plants in her apartment.”
Denise’s face lit up.
“Of course, she doesn’t have a clue what any of them are,” I continued. “She just grows them because they’re pretty, but maybe she just decided to clip some leaves and toss them in Arthur’s food and hope something would happen.”
Denise seemed to be seriously considering this.
“Of course she didn’t do that,” I snapped.
Denise gave a little shiver. “No?”
“Highly unlikely,” I said. I thought about what Lola had told me about Ruth, that she’d hated Mary.
Mary.
Mary had her own reasons for being upset with Arthur.
“Then there’s Mary,” I said.
Denise’s eyebrows lifted. “She was Arthur’s girlfriend. They were gonna get married.”
“Except he had no intention of marrying her,” I told her. “At least according to my sources.”
Denise considered this. Apparently she wasn’t as surprised by this news as I had been.
“Supposedly she was upset about that,” I said, remembering Ruth’s words. “So maybe she was the one who killed him. She was sitting at the table with him, remember? She would have had access to his food. And she conveniently left the table that night...”
Denise stroked her chin thoughtfully.
“And then there’s Lola.”
“Lola?”
I nodded. “You said yourself that Arthur was a pain in Lola’s side. Always complaining about the food. But Mary said he had been on a mission to get her fired.” I paused. “Guess who had access to the food itself? To making it?”
“Lola,” Denise muttered.
“Yep.” I leaned toward her and lowered my voice to a whisper. “And guess who has a note in her personnel file about a prior case of food tampering?”
To my surprise, Denise did not seem surprised by this announcement.
“She’s tampered with food before,” I repeated.
“Oh, I know,” Denise said with a wave of her hand.
I stared at her. “You know this?”
“Of course,” she replied. ”She’s forever messing with people’s food.”
I was astonished. “Are you serious?”
“Nothing serious,” she said quickly. “It’s not like she’s feeding peanuts to people who are allergic. But picky eaters drive her nuts. There was this one resident who insisted he didn’t like mushrooms. Said they were slimy and gross and tasted like dirt. Told her under no circumstance would he eat them, and to make sure she never put any in his food.” Denise chuckled. “Guess who had seven dinners in a row with mushroom as an ingredient?”
“That’s terrible.” I was still aghast, especially at Denise’s apparent lack of concern. “What if this resident didn’t like them because he was allergic? Maybe he just didn’t want to admit that he couldn’t eat them so he said he didn’t want to eat them.”
“Oh, she was careful about that,” Denise said. “She always made sure it was dietary preference and not medically-related.”
I still wasn’t convinced. “So do you think Lola could have taken it to the next level? Put poison in someone’s food instead of just a food they claimed not to like?”
Denise was silent for a moment, thinking. “I don’t know,” she finally said.
“I mean, if she thought her job was on the line, and Arthur was the one who was making her life miserable, would it be so hard to imagine that she’d want him out of her hair? Permanently?”
Denise swallowed hard. “I don’t know that Lola would do something like that.”
“Oh, I know,” I said, nodding. “It’s hard to imagine someone you know, someone you work with on a daily basis, could do something so heinous.”
“Do you really think she’s the one who did it?”
“I honestly don’t know.” I rubbed my eyes. “But that’s exactly my point. We can’t do anything yet because we don’t know enough. And turning over what little evidence we have is going to put us—the both of us—under the microscope.”
Denise gave a slight nod.
“I’d prefer to wait,” I said. “See if we can uncover any more details before we do anything more.”
“Where are we gonna find these extra details?” Denise asked.
It was a great question.
And I didn’t have an answer for her.