“So you lied to him to prove how smart you are?”
“Don’t be silly!” Eve tossed her romaine leaves into her salad bowl and reached for the olive oil. “How on earth could I prove how smart I am by lying to the man? No, I’ve got a better way to do it, and to make that Tyler Cooper look like the fool he is. And you’re going to help me.”
I didn’t like the sound of that at all. “How?”
She hummed a little tune while she drizzled on her olive oil. “Why, that’s simple, honey. We’re going to solve Drago’s murder ourselves.”
I choked out a laugh. It died the moment I realized she was serious.
“You’re nuts,” I told her.
“Maybe, but I’m going to do it. And you’re going to help me.”
“No.”
“Why ever not?”
“That’s what the police are for.”
“The police…” She glared at the spot where she’d last seen Tyler. “The police aren’t listening to us. And Beyla is lying. So is John. Doesn’t that make you want to find out what’s really going on?”
“No.” I wasn’t kidding. There were professionals who were paid to do this kind of thing. “Eve, we don’t know how…”
My voice trailed off as I watched Eve start to toss her salad. I might as well save my breath. She wasn’t listening. She added blue cheese to her bowl, her eyes shining in a way that told me I’d never change her mind. Not about this.
That’s when I knew one thing for certain: We’d just gone from Scrumptious Salads and Dazzling Dressings straight into hot water.
Seven
I’VE NEVER MET A BRUSSELS SPROUT I LIKED. Which is why when I finally got around to checking my e-mail the next afternoon and found the little buggers on Jim’s list of what to bring to our fourth class, I wasn’t exactly thrilled.
But there were those twelve years of Catholic education to consider, and if I’d learned nothing else at Saint Charles Borromeo Elementary and then Bishop Ireton High, it was that homework was homework. Thrilled or not, I wasn’t about to argue. I dutifully wrote out my shopping list.
Brussels sprouts.
Canned chestnuts. (Canned? They came that way? And what was a chestnut, anyway? Aside from the fact that they roasted on an open fire in that Christmas song, I wasn’t sure I’d ever made the acquaintance of a chestnut.)
Butter.
Salt and pepper.
Sugar. (Now there was something I knew something about.)
A quart of your favorite fruit. (I’d already decided on apples.)
I finished my shopping list, fully aware that I was spending too much time on it, but nevertheless taking care that my writing was neat and perfect, checking and double-checking the supplies I needed to purchase against the copy of Jim’s e-mail that I’d printed out. All so I didn’t have to think about Drago’s murder, my near-death experience with the stove, and Eve’s crazy idea about the two of us as Jessica Fletcher clones.
Even thinking about Brussels sprouts was better than pondering all that.
By the time I was done, I still had twenty minutes left on my lunch break. I’d just decided to take a walk and clear my head when Eve breezed into the employee lunchroom.
No, she didn’t work at the bank with me. But she came to visit often enough. Everyone knew Eve and just naturally accepted her as one of the family.
She said hello to Dave and Stan, fellow tellers who were chatting near the coffee machine, then plunked down in the chair across from mine. “We have work to do,” she said, and as if to prove it, she plopped a briefcase on the table between us.
Seeing Eve with a briefcase is a weird sort of thing. Like seeing a dog pull a watch out of his back pocket. Half real, half cartoon. I might have laughed if there was anything funny about it.
Instead, I weighed what I wanted to say (which was something along the lines ofWhat on earth are you up to now?) against my desire not to hurt Eve’s feelings.
I shilly-shallied too long.
Tired of waiting for me to respond and apparently convinced that I was going to again point out that she was off her rocker (which I was), Eve raised her beautifully arched golden eyebrows and tapped her finger against the briefcase. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten our investigation? I’ve been going over my notes all morning. There are some things we need to discuss before we continue our case.”
There were so many weird miscues in her statement, I didn’t know where to begin.Investigation? Notes? Our case?
It was enough to boggle the mind.
Fortunately, I am not the type who stays boggled for long. I shook myself out of my momentary stupor and decided to start with the most salient point and work my way backwards. “Eve,we don’t have a case. And what notes, anyway? You haven’t been taking notes. You never take notes. You spent four years in high school not taking notes.”
Eve’s smile was sleek. “That was then, this is now. And now that we’ve got an investigation to conduct, I figured I’d better turn over a new leaf. I knew you’d be too busy here at work this morning to do anything, and fortunately, I’ve got the day off. I sat down and made a list.” She dutifully pulled it out of the briefcase and waved it in front of my nose. “This is everything we know. Seems to me, all we have to do is prove that our friend Beyla had access to the poison and-”
“You’ve been watching too manyLaw & Order reruns.” I pushed back from the table, making it clear that I was putting some distance between myself and my friend’s lunacy. “We can’t do this, Eve.”
I swear, she wasn’t even listening.
“Remember what that hardheaded, cold-blooded scum-bag Tyler said?” she asked. “He said Drago was poisoned with foxglove. I went to the library this morning, Annie, and the nice librarian there helped me out. Did you know that foxglove used to be called witches’ gloves? And goblin’s gloves? And dead men’s bells?”
I didn’t, and I didn’t see why it was important, but I was impressed by the simple fact that Eve had done some research. I told her how much I admired her initiative.
Of course, that didn’t mean I was buying into her girl-detective scenario, and I told her that, too.
She pooh-poohed my protest with a wave of one hand. “Don’t you see what I’m getting at here? First that nice librarian-did I mention it was a man and that we’re having drinks together tomorrow afternoon?-first, he found a picture so that I could see what foxglove looks like.” This time when she reached into the briefcase, she came out holding a color-copied picture. It showed a riot of tall, spiky plants covered with drooping, bell-shaped flowers in shades from purple to white and every tint of pink in between. The colors reminded me of Monsieur Lavoie’s potholder display.
“That nice librarian-his name is Tony, by the way, and he is a little nerdy, just like you’d expect a librarian to be, but in a cute sort of way-Tony, he took his break early so that we could take a little walk around the neighborhood. You’d never believe it, Annie. When you know what you’re looking for, you realize that plenty of people grow foxglove. Tony pointed it out. All over the place. You see what that means, don’t you? It would have been easy for Beyla to get some and give it to Drago. I’m sure she knows that it’s poisonous-with names like that, it’s pretty obvious that the plant can do some serious damage.”
“It’s only pretty obvious to someone who knows all the old names.”
It seemed like a reasonable argument to me, but Eve was already way beyond it. She pulled out another printed-from-a-Web-site sheet. “Symptoms of foxglove poisoning,” she said, and reached into the briefcase again. She slid out two slim volumes. The title of one said something about poisonous plants in the garden. The other was, surprisingly enough, a history of witchcraft.