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Had someone mixed foxglove into a love potion?
Although I suppose someone might have been so besotted with Danny Ortega that they believed slipping a potion into his drink at the party was a good idea, I couldn’t begin to understand why they’d thought putting something as toxic as foxglove into the mixture was a good idea. While the plant had its medicinal uses — when prepared very, very carefully — it definitely wasn’t part of any love potion I’d ever heard of.
“That’s what killed Danny,” Joyce said sadly. “Henry is pretty sure he suffered a massive heart attack because of all the digitalis in his system, but that’s just an educated guess, since all we have is the results of the analysis of the spilled wine.”
I thought that sounded like a pretty solid hypothesis to me.
She sent me a pleading look. “But please don’t say anything about this to anyone else. Henry’s doing his best to keep it all locked down while he continues the investigation.”
“Of course,” I said automatically. I could see why Chief Lewis wouldn’t be too keen to let Globe’s population know that one of their neighbors had a predilection for spiking people’s drinks with digitalis.
Then again….
“Do you mind if I mention it to Calvin, though?” I asked next. “He might be able to offer some insights. And you know you can trust him to keep the secret.”
Joyce hesitated, fiddling with the amethyst cross she wore around her neck — the cross her husband had bought from me last spring for her birthday.
“Well….” she said, clearly wavering.
“It won’t go any further than Calvin,” I assured her. “It’s just that he has a lot more experience with this sort of thing than I do. And maybe he’d know of someone who grows foxglove in their garden.”
“Lots of people do,” Joyce told me. “It’s such a pretty flower, and great if you want an old-fashioned sort of flowerbed. I have some in my own yard…but I hope you don’t think I had anything to do with this.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Of course not,” I replied. “And I’m sure Henry is doing a thorough job of checking around town. But there are lots of homes in the area that aren’t strictly inside Globe’s city limits.”
Which was only the truth. Various properties were scattered along the highways that fed into the town and didn’t fall under the jurisdiction of the Globe police department, but rather had to work with the county sheriff. Calvin didn’t precisely have jurisdiction in those places, either, but he was on much better terms with the sheriff’s department than he was with Chief Lewis.
Joyce remained silent for a moment, then said, “All right. As long as you keep it between you and Calvin. Henry would absolutely hit the roof if this spread all over town.”
“It won’t tell anyone else,” I promised.
“Then I hope you can figure it out,” she told me. “I have to say, it gives me the heebie jeebies to know someone at that party poisoned Danny so easily. It could have happened to any of us!”
I had my doubts on that score; more and more, I was coming to believe that he’d been targeted specifically, whether for revenge or as the victim of a love potion gone wrong. The rest of us had been perfectly safe — well, barring the unfortunate circumstance of someone grabbing Danny’s drink by accident and downing the fatal brew.
But that hadn’t happened, and there hadn’t been any further incidents. The current quiet in Globe seemed to tell me we were dealing with a one-off crime here.
However, I only gave a sympathetic nod, then told Joyce she could come by any time with her candles once she had the order put together. She took thenon sequiturfor what it was, and left aside the discussion of Henry’s killer to tell me she would do her best to drop everything off on Friday afternoon.
After packing up her samples — and after I helped her take them out to the Chevy Bronco she had parked out front — I went back in the store, a frown tugging at my brow.
Now I had a better idea of exactly how Danny Ortega had died…but I still had no idea who had killed him.
* * *
The rest of the day passed quietly enough, as did the evening that immediately followed. Thursday, I woke up feeling anxious, and I knew exactly why.
Tonight was my dinner with Calvin’s parents. He’d done everything he could to allay my fears about such an important engagement, and yet I still couldn’t quite push away the gnawing worry in my stomach.
What if they hated me?
I told myself not to be ridiculous, that hate was an awfully strong word and that we could all get along like civilized adults even if they weren’t terribly thrilled about Calvin getting serious with someone from outside the San Ramon tribe. And maybe even there I was borrowing trouble. If Calvin had been their only child, possibly they’d be more upset about him getting involved with someone like me, but he was one of five children, and all his siblings had multiple kids. It wasn’t as though Calvin was jeopardizing the Standingbear name by hooking up with an outsider.
But because the store wasn’t super-busy that day, I couldn’t quite distract myself completely from stewing and fretting. I ended up closing half an hour early, mostly so I could spend that time in my bedroom, trying on outfit after outfit, even going so far as to put on the one blazer I owned with some jeans and kitten-heeled boots, figuring the ensemble would make me look more respectable.
One glance in the mirror, however, told me I mostly looked like someone trying on a costume. I wasn’t heading out to give a deposition, after all — I was going to meet my boyfriend’s parents. If I didn’t present myself to them as the person I truly was, then what was the point?
I pulled off the blazer and hung it back up in the closet, and instead put on a mulberry-hued wrap top along with a beautiful printed skirt from India which included that same shade of mulberry, along with subtler hues of slate blue and cream and black. Out of the closet came my black cowboy boots, and from my jewelry stash a gorgeous rhodolite pendant that had been something I’d ordered for the store but was so pretty I had to keep it for myself.
