“Fusion craft? Enlighten me,” he said. As soon as I started talking about knitting and crochet, I sensed he was losing interest. “Okay, I get it. She was mixing two things. You said most of the pages were missing. He picked up the manuscript and thumbed through it. “Well, it looks like they’re all here now.” He paused a moment and then, in his best community-relations voice, suggested that maybe we’d been mistaken about a person being in the room. “A crow might have come in the open window. They can sure make a mess. Maybe the pages you thought were missing just got knocked under the bed.” He glanced around the room. “Housekeeping probably found them when they did the room.” He gestured toward the open door, signifying it was time to go.
“I can buy you trying the key, and when you saw something flapping around inside, going in, but looking at her computer is kind of a stretch. You should talk to her ex and find out how he wants to handle her things.”
I know I said I didn’t want it to be murder, but I couldn’t ignore a nagging question. Before I walked out into the hall, I posed it to Sergeant French.
“Izabelle Landers was extremely careful about what she ate. I thought she was on a diet, but now I realize it was because of her allergy. Why would she have taken the s’mores that contained peanut butter, and how did the bag with her EpiPen end up in the plants? I’m just saying it seems kind of suspicious. And I think you’re definitely right. I think there was somebody on the beach with her.”
Sergeant French appeared impatient. “Oh no, you aren’t going amateur sleuth on me, are you?” He rolled his eyes. “I appreciate your input, but we professionals have it under control. Are you trying to say you think somebody murdered her with a s’more?” He took a moment to collect himself and go back to his community-relations voice. “There’s an easy explanation. Maybe the s’more bag was mismarked, and she could have dropped the purse with the EpiPen without realizing it.” He draped the crocheted bag over his little finger to demonstrate how lightweight it was.
“But she’d have had to make the s’more, and she’d have realized there was peanut butter right away. Have you seen how those things ooze? And peanut butter has a definite smell. She’d never have made the whole thing and then eaten it without realizing what she was eating.”
Sergeant French threw up his hands. “Okay, so maybe she did know what she was eating. I had an aunt who was allergic to cranberries. She knew it, but every Thanksgiving she’d eat them anyway. She always said this year it was going to be different, that she wasn’t allergic anymore. Plus, I’ve heard that people crave what they’re allergic to. I’m sorry, Ms. Pink, there is just no way I’m going to buy that somebody killed her with a s’more. And here’s one other little problem with your scenario. Let’s just say someone did make the s’more for her. How would they have gotten her to eat it? You admit she’d have to have known about the peanut butter.” He shook his head and looked skyward. “Am I really having this conversation?”
CHAPTER 12
“MAYBE IT’S NOT THE WORST THING THAT SERGEANT French doesn’t think it’s murder,” Dinah said. “Remember how you wanted this to be a no-dead-body weekend?” She caught herself. “Okay, maybe there is a dead body-but I think what you really meant was a no-murder weekend. Right?” She realized she’d spoken a little too loudly and threw me an apologetic smile.
“Yes, that’s what I meant, but having a no-murder weekend doesn’t mean a pretend-it’s-not-a-murder weekend. Even Sergeant French thinks there was someone else on the beach with Izabelle. I’m just going to do a little quiet investigating,” I said. We were stationed at the registration table in the administration building. There had been a steady stream of campers checking in, though the number was less than we had originally expected. The fog delay had caused some people to cancel. I wondered if more people would have canceled if they’d heard about Izabelle’s death.
Somehow I was going to have to turn things around on this weekend. I thought of my late husband, Charlie, and wondered what he would do. He was an expert at putting a positive spin on things. But even he would have had trouble putting a spin on the fog emergency and Izabelle’s death.
The thought of Charlie brought a wave of sadness. It had been over two years since he died, and I had picked up the pieces of my life and started anew. I was proud of myself for getting the job at Shedd & Royal and making new friends, but a part of me wished it had never been necessary. You moved on, but you didn’t forget. Not a day went by that something didn’t remind me of our previous life.
I suppose that was why I still resisted Barry’s desire to take our relationship to another level.
I heard the musical flourish that was my cell phone’s ring tone. It took a moment to locate my tote bag in the corner and then I answered it. It was Barry checking in.
“Hey, babe, remember the boxes? Well, there are more of them in your hall now. Do you want me to check with your sons?”
I said no a little too fast. Maybe that was another reason Barry’s and my relationship hadn’t progressed. My older son, Peter, just didn’t like Barry, and Samuel viewed him as an intruder. I softened it by saying I’d checked with them already. Peter knew nothing about them, and Samuel hadn’t answered his voice mail.
It was frustrating to Barry that he couldn’t get along with my boys the way I got along with his son, so he changed the subject. “How’s it going there?”
I mentioned the retreaters arriving and the workshops starting in the afternoon.
“That isn’t what I meant.” As usual, he saw right through what I said or, more important, didn’t say. “Okay, Molly, let me guess. Even though this Sergeant French is satisfied your crochet person died from an accidental allergic reaction, you don’t buy it.” Barry didn’t approve of my amateur sleuthing and found it very frustrating that no matter how much he told me to stay out of things, I got involved anyway. And even more upsetting to his worldview, I had actually solved a number of cases.
“Well, you wouldn’t either, if you knew all the facts.”
Barry tried to resist, but he couldn’t, and finally asked me for the facts I was talking about. At the end, I heard him blow out his breath.
“You do realize if you get this French to think it’s murder, the number one suspect is Adele. It certainly wasn’t very smart of her to go on and on about how Izabelle had done her wrong.”
I’d already thought about that and come to the obvious conclusion that there was no point in trying to convince Sergeant French that it was homicide. I would just have to figure the whole thing out myself. I didn’t tell Barry the last part, but he figured it out.
“Molly, you have a bad track record for getting into trouble. I’d jump in the Tahoe and be up there in six hours, but when you canceled on me, I let somebody else have the weekend off,” he said.
I looked over at the registration table. Suddenly Dinah was swamped with a bunch of people. I told Barry I had to go, and got off the phone quickly.
What did he mean I had a bad track record for getting in trouble? Maybe I had gotten into a few embarrassing situations in my past investigations, but this time I was sure nothing like that was going to happen.
“What do you mean Izabelle Landers won’t be doing her workshops?” a woman in a khaki safari jacket was demanding of Dinah when I reached the table. I had wondered how to handle the situation with the new arrivals. Dinah, Adele, Sheila, and I had gone through the schedules in the folders and crossed out Izabelle’s name and written in Adele and Sheila. I thought I would tastefully tell each person that Izabelle wouldn’t be with us as they registered, but this woman had opened her program folder too quickly.