Tongue poking between her lips, brow tense in concentration, she was using a syringe to squirt something into a set of cupcakes.
Though Oakley was acting suspicious and Charles and Gertrude and Alice all had motive to frame Emmie, I wasn’t going to count her out.
She had access to not just her grandmother’s medicine but that of all the elderly in the retirement community as well. Any one of those medications could have been deadly to Brooks.
I stepped back into the shadow of the alley and headed to the police station.
Of course, Winston gave me a blank look when I ask for the toxicology report.
He made a big show of shuffling the papers around. “I can’t seem to find it.”
In other words, they’d never had it done.
“Then I want a sample to do my own tests.”
“I mean, Ida said it smelled like cyanide,” Winston whined as he led me back to the evidence locker.
“Ida is old and crazy. What does she know?”
“Supposedly, that’s how she killed her husband in the fifties. That’s what my great-granny says anyways.” He handed me one of the cupcakes in a bag.
I didn’t take it. “What are you doing? You can’t just hand it to me. There has to be a chain of custody.”
I watched him as he filed a transfer request, and a courier showed up to take the sample to a lab I used in New York City.
“You’re real good at this cop stuff,” Winston said in admiration.
It wasdark by the time I finally returned to the café.
My eyes adjusted to the dimness of the alley.
Why weren’t there any lights back here?
Moose yowled as a cat knocked over a metal trash can.
Wait. Not a cat…
A dark figure raced by me out of the alley. I caught a whiff of almonds.
The hell?
So, Emmie’s suspect was real after all.
The baker gave me a startled look when I opened the back door to the kitchen.
“I think I just saw your murderer.”
7
EMMIE
As was fitting, it was dark and overcast as I tried to zip up my black funeral dress.
“The bus is leaving,” Gran called.
“Can it wait?”
“Let’s go. I want to get a good seat.” Gran peered into the bathroom. “You need more shapewear.”
