Late that night…
“Back to the drawing board,” I said, the minute I’d entered my grandmother’s armory. We’d agreed to meet down here to discuss the recent developments in the case and in Gamma’s conquest to find out what Jessie Belle-Blue was up to.
“You must keep calm.” Gamma tapped away on her touchscreen desk, bringing up multiple tabs of information at once. “Calm mind, clear decisions.”
“I know,” I said. “I know. I don’t understand why I’m struggling with that so much lately.”
“Because this case is the only thing you have at the moment apart from dusting the inn and serving guests who complain all day long,” Gamma replied, without lifting her gaze from the screen. “I’m telling you, Charlotte, being a retired spy should be a paid gig. The amount of times I picture blow darting a civilian in the neck…”
I snorted a laugh.
“You’re dropping the case,” Gamma prompted.
“The case of the stolen recipe book? Yes. That’s out of the window, but the murder case? That I’m interested in. I want to know what happened.”
Gamma gave me a knowing look.
“What? There’s not much else to do around here?”
“No one’s disputing that.” My grandmother swiveled her chair, her arms folded over a neat cotton robe. She wore a pair of fluffy slippers that dangled off the toes of one foot as she sat, cross-legged. “But the point is, you want to know what happened. And I have some new information.”
“You do?”
“Yes. As of this morning.” Gamma swiveled again and tapped on the touchscreen desk. The image of today’s newspaper headlines appeared.
Poisoning by cyanide!
“Their headlines are going downhill.”
“Regardless,” Gamma said, “our suspicions about the method of poisoning were correct. With this confirmation, I started doing a little research to help you.”
“What have you found?”
“That cyanide isn’t readily available as it might’ve been in Agatha Christie’s novels. Not everyone has a medicinal cabinet in their home,” she said.
“Right, OK. So what does that mean for us?”
“I cross-referenced the industries that use cyanide in their processes and found nothing nearby. There’s only one place this cyanide could’ve come from, locally, assuming our killer didn’t bring it from another part of the country when they came for the competition.”
“And that is?”
“There’s a chemistry lab over in Crabapple,” Gamma said. “About an hour’s drive to the South. That’s the nearest place.”
“Right, OK, so we have to find out if any of the suspects have been there? Or know someone who works there.”
“My thoughts.” Gamma acquiesced, bowing her head.
“But the suspects themselves are a problem,” I said. “There's Glendaree who lied about the recipe book being stolen.”
“She didn’t just lie. She kicked up a fuss for two days prior to her approaching you, Charlotte. She wanted everyone to know she’d been wronged. But to what end?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me. Was she doing it to disadvantage Brenda? Was that it? To make her chief competitor look bad so that when it came to the judging, she might be disqualified? Or was it something more sinister?” I paced back and forth, clicking my fingers at my sides. “And then there’s Brenda’s boyfriend, Norman. He was mighty cozy with Kayla last night.”
“Kayla with a father who’s been locked up for grand theft auto.” Gamma tapped on the screen again to bring up a picture of a leery looking guy with dark circles under his eyes. “He’s out now. Apparently, he’s been repairing cars and is going clean.”
“I bet Kayla and Norman worked together,” I said. “Worked together to get rid of Brenda. But the note!”
“The note referencing the recipe book we assume was left by the killer.”
“Who else could’ve left if behind? It seems obvious that the murderer brought the pie and water as a thank you for help with the recipe book. Which would implicate Glendaree.” I stopped pacing. “Unless they were talking about a different recipe book? It didn’t seem likely at the time, but we are about to host a baking competition in Gossip.”
“Yes.”
I let out a groan. “This is so frustrating!”
“Breathe, Charlotte, for heaven’s sake. You’re not cut out for this type of thing,” she said. “You were a spy, not a detective. Think about it logically. Who was the last person seen with Brenda?”
“Rumor says the boyfriend, but there’s no evidence of that. And then there’s the mysterious white Kia that was seen driving around the block early on the morning of the murder,” I said, and chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Glendaree doesn’t have a car that we know of, but we never know with her, given that she hired me to find a recipe book that wasn’t stolen.”
“Bitter as burnt sugar,” Gamma teased.
I did a double take.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing, just the way you said that reminded me of something. I don’t know what.” I counted my suspects off on my fingers. “So we have Kayla and Norman, Glendaree the liar, and then there’s Colton Harrison who might have done it, but doesn’t appear to have a car. Do we know what Kayla and Norman drive?”
“Norman drives a blue honda. Kayla’s as much of a mystery to me as she is to you,” Gamma said. “And I don’t like that at all.”
“You know what? You’re right. We need to peel back a few layers on that relationship. If we can’t get through to Kayla herself then I’ll settle for talking to Norman about these new developments.”
Gamma beamed at me. “Atta girl, Charlotte. That’s the spirit.”