Chapter 40

After Tim was settled on the bed in PJ pants with a fresh ice pack and his phone, ibuprofen at the ready on the nightstand, I cleaned up the kitchen. I felt stupidly proud of my dinner accomplishment, but I didn’t have any plans to keep up the practice. That was what takeout was for.

I fixed an herbal tea, peppermint tonight, and settled myself on the couch with the mystery du jour. Except instead of opening the book, I stared at my thoughts.

Jamie was pregnant again. She was pretty far along, was what Tim had said. I shook my head. Some people got all the fertility mojo. But how in the world was she going to support another child? And was she staying clear of drugs and alcohol until after the birth? Judging from how Tim had described his sister, there was no guarantee of that.

As he’d expressed, one couldn’t help but be torn between heartbreak for her and the child and deep anger at her choices and lack of responsibility. Still, Tim and I didn’t have any other option. Jamie wasn’t my blood relative, but she was Tim’s only sibling. She was family. We would stick by her in whatever form that took.

For starters, maybe I’d write her a note. I’d offer my congratulations on the baby and ask what we could do to help. No, better to ask what she needed for the baby—open-ended offers could steamroll in the wrong direction. Either way, it couldn’t hurt to pretend everything was fine, at least for now.

I’d heard Tim murmuring on the phone in the bedroom earlier, but all was quiet now. His assistant had been sick yesterday, but Isaac had seemed fine this afternoon. He could cover for Tim tomorrow, if necessary. Tim could drive to work and perch on a stool to shape loaves if he couldn’t stand on the ankle. He was in such great physical shape, and I couldn’t imagine him not bouncing back with ease from turning his ankle in a pothole.

What I could imagine was getting this homicide case resolved and done with. The worry that a murderer was out there blithely going about their business nagged at me. It had been almost five days since Byrne was killed, and still no one was behind bars for that horrible crime. Whoever did it had to be feeling pretty smug right about now, safe from arrest. But who was it?

I reached for the coffee table and swapped out the book for my tablet. The group thread didn’t have anything new. That didn’t mean I couldn’t sit here and do my own research.

Edwin was my action item, but I thought I’d dug up everything about him that I could. The fact that Pa trusted him meant a lot, too.

Sita was one of the persons of interest I hardly knew anything about her other than her apparent romance with Carl and the fact that she worked at an arboretum in North Carolina. Tulia had probably already run an internet search on Sita. I figured it couldn’t hurt to see what I could learn on my end, especially since the name Sita Spencer shouldn’t have too many duplicates, if any.

I clicked through to the arboretum’s website. Where had Gin said it was located? Raleigh, I thought. Sure enough, I found a ten-acre arboretum and botanical garden attached to a university. Sita Spencer was listed as one of the tour staff.

Maybe a travel review site would have more interesting information. I poked around, combining search terms in different ways until I found reviews of the arboretum’s tours. Sita had quite a few four- and five-star comments left by visitors who praised her depth of knowledge of the trees and flowering shrubs.

My eyes widened when I clicked on several entries awarding only one or two stars. The first I read said Sita had been rude and condescending to the children in their group. Another wrote that she’d made fun of the North Carolina accent. And the one-star review mentioned her scary fascination with poisonous plants.

I sat back. It was scary, indeed, especially if she’d used that knowledge to murder Bruce Byrne.

Gin had said Carl also worked at the arboretum. I focused on the tablet again but came up empty-handed, at least in connection to the arboretum. Either his job didn’t bring him into contact with the visiting public or nobody had anything to say about him—good or bad.

It was a Barnstable County notice that grabbed my attention. Carl O’Connor was listed, among many other property owners, as owing back taxes on the pub. A lot of taxes. Did Yvonne know that?