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“‘The man’?” Henry cut in. “He didn’t tell you his name?”
“No,” she said. “He probably didn’t see the need to give me any more information than was strictly necessary.”
“You’d think if he wanted to hide his identity, he wouldn’t have met with you in person.”
“You would think,” Victoria responded, tone now a little tart. “I don’t know what his reasoning was. And unfortunately, we can’t ask him, because he’s dead.”
Henry’s lips thinned. “That’s true,” he said. “So, the man — we’ll call him John Doe for now — came to your studio. What happened next?”
“I was trying to be polite,” she said. “I asked him he wanted coffee or tea, or water. He told me he wanted coffee and asked if I had any creamer. I told him I did, then went into the kitchen and made him a cup with my Keurig. After that, I got the container of creamer from the fridge and poured some into his coffee. I took him the coffee, and he drank a couple of swallows, then fell to the floor, dead. That’s when I called Selena and Calvin.”
The police chief looked even less thrilled by this reminder of our involvement in the whole mess. As for me, I couldn’t quite ignore the cold sensation in the pit of my stomach. A little less than a year ago, the televangelist Aaron Galloway had also dropped dead after drinking a cup of coffee provided by a friend of mine. In that case, suspicion had centered on Josie…until it was proven that Mark Lemmon, a local man furious that his wife had squandered their life savings by sending massive donations to the TV preacher, had murdered that Pastor Galloway.
But when Aaron Galloway had died, the poison was arsenic, something that had given him violent stomach cramps until he passed away a few hours later. He definitely hadn’t dropped dead on the spot the way Victoria’s nameless blackmailer had.
The man had obviously been poisoned, but with what? What kind of toxin acted that fast? Cyanide? Strychnine?
Since I hadn’t exactly made a study of the subject, I had no idea.
“I’ll need to see that creamer,” Henry Lewis said, his tone grim.
“It’s in the fridge,” Victoria told him. “I can go get it — ”
“No,” he cut in immediately. “I don’t want you handling it any more than you already have.”
He left the design space and went into the kitchen, pulling a pair of rubber gloves out of his pocket as he went. Standing a few feet away from Calvin and me, Victoria sent us a single stricken glance, one that told us she’d already done the mental math and was coming up with a sum she didn’t like very much.
I had to admit that if I hadn’t known she was utterly blameless in all this, I would have thought she must be the one who’d killed the blackmailer. After all, what better motive for murder than the pressing need to get rid of someone threatening to ruin your life less than a week before your wedding?
Whatever was in that creamer, though, I knew Victoria hadn’t put it there any more than I had.
As though we were all acting according to some unspoken agreement, the three of us trailed along behind Henry and back out into the studio’s main room, which was now empty. It looked as though his deputies had finished gathering whatever evidence they could find; a place as small as Globe didn’t exactly have what you could call a dedicated forensics team.
The police chief went to the refrigerator, pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket, and slid them on before opening the door. He took out the innocent-looking carton of creamer, set it on the counter, then got out his phone.
“Deputy,” he said, “I’ve got some evidence here that needs to be collected. Come up to Ms. Parrish’s studio and get it, then take it to the station to be admitted.”
Did the Globe P.D.’s evidence locker have a refrigerated section?
I didn’t dare ask, obviously. No, I just had to stand there and wait with Victoria and Calvin until the deputy — one of the men who’d been there when Henry arrested Thad Sullivan, Dillon James’ murderer, although I still didn’t know his name — appeared at the studio door. Still wearing the rubber gloves, Henry placed the container of creamer in the baggie the deputy had produced and told the man to hurry.
The deputy nodded and, baggie of evidence in hand, hurried back down the steps, no doubt to get the creamer to the station as quickly as possible.
Was Henry worried that the poison might break down if the liquid inside the little wax-coated paper carton came up to room temperature?
Again, I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure whether Calvin would know, either, even though he’d taken a class on poisons and other toxins when getting his degree in criminal justice at Arizona State University.
I’d have to ask him once we were alone.
Henry turned back toward Victoria, still wearing that grim expression. Before he could say anything, Archie burst into the room, looking more frantic than I’d ever seen him.
“What happened?” he exclaimed as his gaze moved right to Victoria where she stood a few feet away from the kitchen. “Victoria, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said, although her tone was understandably tight. “I’ll explain later.”
“Much later,” Henry said, eyes as flinty as ever. “Victoria Parrish, I’m afraid I’m going to have to arrest you for the murder of John Doe.”
I supposed there was one good thing about getting arrested early in the morning on a weekday. At least this time, the judge could hear the preliminary evidence and decide Victoria only needed a hundred grand to get bailed out, probably because she had no priors and the evidence against her was kind of flimsy. Maybe that would change once the initial analysis of the creamer — and spilled coffee, which Henry’s deputies apparently had also collected — was complete, but for now, we all knew she was getting off pretty easy.
