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The saving grace was the conditions also meant that the killer—or anyone else wandering around in the grounds—couldn’t see them. He was amazed that Aroostine and Carl had managed to connect with the Carlisles, the doctor, and the police officer out here. But he supposed he shouldn’t have been. A person underestimated Aroostine Higgins at their peril—a truth that applied to most of the women in his life.
Hank leaned across Bodhi and yelled something, but the wind immediately tore the words away. Leo shook his head. Hank nodded and extended his hand, pointing ahead of them. Leo stared hard where Hank pointed. Finally, the faint outlines of the farm manager’s house came into focus. When Aroostine and Carl had come over earlier to search the house, they’d had the foresight to leave the lights burning. As a result, a hazy yellow glow permeated the wall of white.
They raced toward the house. When they mounted the steps, Hank already had the key out, and he shouldered the door open quickly. They ran inside out of the elements. As they stood in the hallway stomping the snow off their boots and shaking the melting flakes off of their eyelashes, Bodhi shivered.
“It’ll be cold in here,” he told Leo and Hank. “Remember, I turned down the thermostat and cracked that window.”
“I’ll take the cold over the smell of death any day,” Hank assured him.
Leo tore off his gloves, cupped his hands around his mouth, and blew into them to warm them. “That was brutal.”
“It’s one helluva storm,” Hank agreed.
Bodhi’s expression grew thoughtful. “I wonder if the storm didn’t move up the killer’s timetable?”
“How so?” Hank asked.
“Absent the raging blizzard, if someone had knocked Rex on the head—even hard enough to cause an epidural hematoma—he could’ve survived with immediate medical attention to relieve the swelling on his brain. But because of the storm, he never stood a chance.”
“Interesting,” Leo considered the point while recalling his most recent conversation with Paul Conklin. “This might support that hypothesis: Paul said Rex didn’t order the candied lemon rinds.”
“And Conklin knows this how?” Hank demanded.
“He checked the invoice from the bespoke cocktail shop that Rex frequented before he left the kitchen. He didn’t want to get back here only to find out something was missing and have Rex send him back out into the storm to get it. That’s the sort of thing Rex did.”
Hank pulled a face. “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but that’s a jerk move.Andthe guy was a regular at a bespoke cocktail shop? I mean …”
“I hear you,” Leo told him. “Believe me. Anyway, Paul said the jar of lemon twists wasn’t on the receipt. He didn’t know if the store sent them over as a gift because Rex was such a good customer or if somebody else put them with the order after it was delivered.”
“It’s unlikely that the store poisoned one of its best customers,” Bodhi pointed out. “Even if he was an unpleasant person.”
“True. But here’s the interesting part. Paul said anyone in the group would have known there was no way Rex would have used the lemon peels this weekend.”
“Lemon peels, orange peels, what’s the difference?” Hank asked.
“To me, you, and most of the world, probably nothing. But the amaretto sour was Rex’s signature drink. Paul was sure he would take the lemon peels home and do some test batches with lemon juice and lemon peel or perhaps lemon juice, lemon peel, orange juice, and orange peel before he ever served it to his friends. So Rex was never supposed to die this weekend.”
Bodhi turned this over in his mind. “He was supposed to take the murder weapon home with him and die at some point in the future. Which, frankly, is a genius plan. Think about it—if he dropped dead alone at home a month from now, who would think to trace the poison back to this weekend or any of the people here?”
Leo gave the Buddhist a long look. “Your mind is also a dark place, my friend. But there’s an elegant simplicity to the idea.”
Hank chimed in. “Except then the storm hit, and the killer thought, why wait? The perfect opportunity had presented itself.”
Bodhi nodded, then frowned. “But then the question becomes, once Rex was dead, why didn’t the killer grab those lemon peels and pop them in their bag? Nobody else would have noticed their absence, with the possible exception of Paul, because the drink doesn’t call for lemon peels. Why leave them out and run the risk of accidentally poisoning an unintended victim?”
“Only if we accept that it was an accident,” Hank cautioned.
Leo nodded. “Right, we’re back to Option B: the murderer intended to kill Grady to keep him from spilling the beans about Rex’s child.”
Hank was shaking his head. “Grady made the drinksbeforehis surprise announcement. So if Grady was killed to keep him quiet, the killer knew beforehand that Rex had told Grady, and they were just waiting for an opportunity to silence him.”
“Right, when the group had their little mutiny and decided they wanted cake and cocktails, the killer saw their chance. They didn’t need the cyanide for Rex anymore. He’d already been taken care of,” Leo picked up the thread.
“It’s still risky, though. What if Grady hadn’t run out of orange peels and needed to open the lemon peels? Or what if he’d given someone else the last drink? It’s too hard to control the variables in that scenario,” Hank objected.
“Spoken like a federal agent,” Bodhi observed. “Not necessarily the train of thought of your average murderer. In my experience, they don’t tend to have the same disdain for unintended consequences.”
The others nodded, mulling it over.
