3 Loosey Goosey (26 page)

“Lucy, wait!” Eric jogged toward me, an index card held above his head. “The recipe.”

Oh, yes, the recipe. I placed my hand on the tote bag, checking to see if the wild onion was still inside.

He handed me the card, his smile broad and warm. “Try this tonight. Trust me, you won’t regret it. And tell Ben that if there’s anything I can do for him just to let me know.”

I took the card, nodded appropriately, and bit down the question as to why he was suddenly willing to risk HA! in support of my brother. Then I got in my rig, along with Kiska and Pauline, and waited as Eric pulled out of the parking lot ahead of me.

I was just ready to turn onto the main road toward my house when I glanced down at the card and the reality of what Eric had given me hit.

A recipe card, very much like the one I’d seen Phyllis stick in her purse while we were at Tiffany’s.

Dilated pupils. Pale skin. Definitely signs of being high, but also signs of being poisoned.

I reached in the bag and pulled out the onion.

Eric Handle had killed Tiffany, and now he was trying to kill me too.

Chapter 24

I burst into Stone’s office waving Eric’s “wild onion” over my head. “Set Ben free. He didn’t kill Tiffany, but I know who did.”

Stone, his ear pressed up against his phone’s receiver, cursed and waved at me to be quiet or settle down or something. I honestly didn’t know what he was trying to tell me, and I didn’t care. I was too jacked at having saved the day and my brother.

I waved the onions under his nose. “These are not onions. I don’t know what they are, but I know if I ate them I’d be deader than disco.”

Stone dropped the receiver onto the phone and placed his hands flat onto the top of his desk. “Who have you been talking to?”

He didn’t wait for my answer.

“George,” he yelled.

I’d never seen Stone yell. He got superior and testy with me plenty, but he’d never lowered himself to actually yell.

It felt good to have pushed him this far. I’d found his weak spot—having case-solving evidence waved under his nose.

I wiggled the onion again for good measure.

He jerked it from my hand.

“Hey,” I objected, but Stone wasn’t listening to me. He’d moved around the desk and out of his office. I could hear him yelling more, this time adding Peter’s name to his bellows.

I plopped down in the closest chair and waited. He’d come back eventually. He’d have to if he wanted to learn who had planned to add me to his victim list.

Five minutes later, Stone returned, and he wasn’t alone. George and Peter both followed. George, looking sheepish and worried. Peter, looking tried and not as tolerant as one’s boyfriend should, quite honestly.

Peter opened the conversation. “Lucy, what are you doing?”

He left off the
now
. Basking in my success, I decided to give him points for that.

“I know who killed Tiffany, because he tried to kill me too,” I declared, trying to stay at least somewhat humble. I didn’t mind showing Stone up as publicly as possible, but George and Peter were also police officers, and, while the case wasn’t theirs, they could easily have felt they should have solved it before me.

“With this?” Stone waved the “onion” at me.

I sat up primly in the chair. “Yes.”

“Someone tried to kill you with a wild onion?” Peter asked.

George turned to the side and stared at the doorframe.

I flicked a length of hair from my eyes and stared the two disbelieving detectives down. “It only looks like an onion. I don’t know what it is, but whatever it is—”

Stone took a bite out of the bulb.

I didn’t like the man, but seriously... I jumped to my feet. “Spit it out. Don’t swallow—”

He swallowed. Then he took another bite. “A bit strong. Next time, you might want to pick them earlier.” Then he dropped the remains in the trash and muttered something I couldn’t decipher in Peter’s direction.

When he turned on me, his face was colder than I’d ever seen it. “Who have you been talking to, Ms. Mathews? Both Detective Blake and Officer Pearson say they haven’t given you any information about this case, but you did visit your brother recently, didn’t you? Did he encourage you to stage this farce?”

“Farce?” The man was insane. I came in with a legitimate lead and he—

He leaned forward. “I don’t know who the two of you planned to frame, but it won’t work.”

Peter took a step forward. His face was grim, but his attention wasn’t on me. It was on Stone. His hands were loose at his side, but I could see the tension in his body.

George must have seen it too. He stepped between the two men, his arms held out.

Stone shot another ugly look my direction and stalked out of the office.

I moved to race after him, but Peter put his arm across the doorway, cutting me off.

“You can’t let him leave. Not after eating—”

“Onion. That was a wild onion.” Peter plucked the remains of the plant from the trash and held it out to George. “Show her. Then send her home. I have...” He looked down the hall where Stone had disappeared. “...work to do.”

o0o

I hadn’t just slunk home after Stone and Peter’s dismissal. I’d stood my ground for as long as it took George to look up wild onions on the Internet and show me a picture.

The plant Eric Handle had picked for me was most definitely wild onion. I based that not just on the pictures George showed me but also the fact that Stone was, when I left, still very much alive and very much not showing signs of falling victim to anything more deadly than heartburn.

Even the heartburn wasn’t for sure. It was more something I was hoping for.

Back home, I mumbled and grumbled and felt sorry for myself. Stone had treated me like I was an idiot, and Peter hadn’t stayed around to hear my entire story.

Okay, yes, I had apparently been wrong about the onion, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t on to something with my theory.

Eric did forage, and there were plenty of poisonous plants that grew in the wild. Plus there was the recipe card, and Eric’s connection to both Tiffany and Hope.

He had to be the killer.

Tomorrow, I would get a recipe card from the Antlers and take it to Peter. And maybe I’d call my mother too. There might be more she could get from FriendTime...

Mulling this over, I got ready for bed and, dressed in my favorite flannel jammies, crawled under the covers.

What felt like only minutes later, I woke up to the sound of water running and a malamute howling.

“What the...” I sat up, groggy and disoriented.

The distinct odor of cocoa tickled my nose. I rubbed at my eyes and flipped on my bedside lamp.

A steaming mug of cocoa sat on the table beside me. Beside it was a note.

Sorry your day was so rough.

It was signed,
Peter
.

My heart constricted.

How sweet was that? Peter had made me cocoa. The mug was warm against my skin, and the first sip of cocoa was rich and sweet and comforting.

I had the best boyfriend in the entire world.

There was a thump from the laundry room.

I sat up a little straighter. “Peter,” I called.

Another thump and then the woo woo sound of my dog’s righteous indignation.

Kiska was not happy. Not an unusual occurrence, but he should have been beside the bed by now, yelling at me in clear uncertain terms.

I looked down at the mug in my hand. Peter’s offering.

Except Peter wasn’t here when I went to sleep, and he didn’t have a key to my house. And while I was sure he was capable of getting past my 100-year-old locks, he, rule-follower that he was, would not do that.

In the bathroom, a faucet squeaked, and the sound of water running stopped.

The cocoa still coating my mouth curdled. I set the mug back on the table and jumped out of bed.

The cold floor beneath my feet jarred me completely out of sleep. I leapt forward, intent on getting out of the bedroom before whoever was in my bathroom realized I was awake. My covers fell as I moved and tangled around my legs. I made it to the door only to fall through it and onto the floor of my living room.

“Don’t tell me you don’t like cocoa?”

Eric Handle, dressed all in black, stood over me with a pistol in his hand.

“I really don’t want to shoot you,” he said.

Then don’t,
seemed the appropriate response, but I kept the smartass response to myself.

“Why don’t you come back to bed and drink your cocoa?”

Like a good little girl
.

Instead, I glanced around for a weapon, but the living room was dark and the light spilling in from the bedroom was not enough to reveal a Bazooka that I had somehow forgotten that I’d left lying on the floor behind the couch.

He cocked his gun. “Bullets hurt.”

Desperate, I found my voice. “They’re also hard to make look like an accident.”

He shrugged. “Contingency plan. Robbery. Single woman alone in the woods. It was only a matter of time.”

Except, as I’d told Leslie Danes, Helena wasn’t a high crime area—but then again, thanks to him, it was a lot more high in the crime area than it had been.

“I have a dog,” I offered.

“That you unfortunately left locked in the laundry room,” he replied. “Bad decision.”

The laundry room had gone eerily silent. No howling. No throwing of a malamute body against the door. Under normal circumstances, this would have been cause for investigation, but considering the gun pointed at me, I let it slide.

“I guess this means you killed Tiffany.” It was an unusual conversation opener, but I wanted to know, and I wasn’t in any hurry to go back to bed at the moment.

Handle, however, didn’t seem inclined to answer.

“Why Ben?” I asked. “He’s a good guy. He supports your cause. Why would you want to frame him?”

The HA! founder sucked in a big, apologetic breath. “It wasn’t personal. Just convenient.”

In other words, the damn Lemon and its damn Lemon non-starting ways had created an opportunity to tie Ben to Tiffany’s death, and Handle took it.

“And Hope? She was HA! to her core.”

Regret flickered over his face. “True, but she wouldn’t leave Tiffany alone. She’s why I had to kill Tiff in the first place. All those posts on FriendTime and then the protest on Tiffany’s opening night... Tiffany freaked and threatened to—” He closed his mouth, apparently thinking better of confessing all.

From my position on the floor, I tried to look sympathetic. “She had something on you, huh? Old girlfriends, they can be the worst.”

He didn’t buy my act, or maybe he was just getting impatient; he stepped closer and motioned with the weapon. “I’m losing patience. Back in the bedroom.”

Figuring I’d stalled with words as much as I could, I moved my feet to make it seem as if I was trying to stand. In reality, I was just buying more time, grasping for an idea of how to get the hell out of the situation.

Unfortunately, none came.

I moved to my feet. Eric waited for me to come close, then stood back as I shuffled past on my way back to the bed.

“Drink the cocoa,” he ordered again.

Sitting on the mattress, I wrapped my hand around the still-warm cup and sucked in a breath. This couldn’t be it. I couldn’t be meant to die at the hands of a crazed animal rights activist. I loved animals. He loved animals. How could he kill me?

A little sob forming in the back of my throat, I picked up the cup and took a drink, and then with Handle’s prompting, a few more.

I was staring at the cup and feeling even more morose when Kiska and Pauline barreled into the bedroom.

Eric jerked, his attention moving from me to my dog. Kiska, his limited patience in the negatives, took two steps back for increased volume and began to yell in the biggest, loudest woo woos any malamute could hope to produce. Pauline, apparently intent on making her own point, flew onto the bed and flapped her wings in a display so impressive, I could feel the wind moving my hair and pushing me into action.

I staggered to my feet. Eric turned, the gun in his hand raising and his mouth opening to yell... I didn’t know what and I didn’t care. I smashed the oversized ironstone mug into the side of his head with every bit of strength I could muster.

Cocoa splattered everywhere. Eric fell sideways. Rage flaring, I shoved him hard and knocked him to the ground. Then I picked up the now-empty mug and bashed him in the head again. Finally, unsure if he was alive, dead, awake, or unconscious, I scrambled over his cocoa-soaked form and picked up his gun.

o0o

It took Peter a lot less time to get to my house than I’d expected. Uniformed police weren’t far behind, and Stone arrived a few minutes after them.

Three a.m. and my small ghost town was hopping. My neighbors even came out of their houses for a while to see what was happening.

George apparently handled them.

I stayed inside with Kiska on one side of me and Pauline on the other. They’d stayed that way since I’d hung up from Peter, Pauline with her gaze glued to Eric, Kiska grinning and just happy to be free from the laundry room.

Eric wasn’t unconscious, but he wasn’t exactly alert either. He sat with his hand pressed against the side of his head as if worried that his brains might leak out.

I did my best to follow Pauline’s lead and kept my hand and gaze steady.

I might not have shot him to save myself, but I sure as hell wasn’t risking Kiska or Pauline getting hurt or him escaping and Stone claiming everything that had happened tonight was of my own invention.

Peter announced his arrival with an official “Police,” appearing in my bedroom seconds after I responded that I was as fine as I could be and had the situation under control for the moment.

His revolver pointed at Handle, my boyfriend-to-the-rescue took the activist’s weapon from me.

While uniformed officers put Handle in handcuffs and led him out the front door, Peter holstered his weapon and looked at me.

I hadn’t moved from my position on the bed and neither had my companions.