I just hoped I wouldn’t go to jail for it.
Meanwhile, the whole time I was engaged in that mental game of tug-of-war, there was a little voice in the back of my mind, repeating the same words over and over again: What you do with chocolate? What you do with chocolate? I shook my head like an Etch A Sketch that needs erasing. The man was on enough painkillers to down an elephant, that was all. Somehow he’d gotten chocolate on the brain, a condition I could completely understand, and with all those drugs, not to mention the head trauma, he had just hallucinated some crazy scene where he gave me chocolates … some chocolates that for some reason he didn’t want me to eat.
As I pulled into the driveway, I had to laugh at the absurdity of it all. I’m not exactly the most religious person in the world, but I do believe that we each have some kind of higher power—some presence that watches over us all, pulling the strings and keeping everything spinning. Whatever it is, I was beginning to think that my higher power had a very mischievous sense of humor. On top of all the craziness that had unfolded in the last few days, the moment I had decided to go on a diet it seemed like there was something tempting me to break it every five minutes. I was beginning to feel like a character in a book, where everywhere I turned the author put some chocolate in my path just to torture me.
* * *
As I came around the curve and saw the carport under my apartment, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Michael’s car was in its regular spot, and so was Paco’s. As an undercover agent, Paco rubs elbows with all kinds of shady characters—corporate embezzlers, drug dealers, gang members—and as for Michael, fighting fires isn’t exactly the safest activity in the world, so a full carport always means one thing: I can rest a little bit easier. It’s like a big ball of tension in the pit of my stomach just starts melting away.
Of course, a full carport usually means I’m probably getting a gourmet meal for dinner, so that feeling in my stomach could just be hunger.
Either way, as I crunched across the driveway to the steps, the sight of Michael and Paco busily moving around in their kitchen helped take my mind off everything. I decided that, at least for tonight, I’d just let it all go and try to have a nice, relaxed evening with Ethan.
He was taking me to Yolanda, the Spanish restaurant where we’d had our very first official date, so I definitely didn’t want to spend the whole night thinking about Baldy and Janet and Mr. Hoskins and Cosmo. It helped that I didn’t have Mr. Silverthorn’s number; otherwise I would probably have been calling him every half hour to find out how his search was going. I didn’t even know if he owned a cell phone at all, but I had already decided that it wouldn’t hurt to sneak away at some point during our date and give Mrs. Silverthorn a quick call, just to see if there was any news.
Once inside, I dropped my backpack in the middle of the floor and sat down on the couch. There was just one more little thing I needed to take care of if I really wanted to have a nice night and focus all my attention on Ethan.
I reached down in the side pocket of my cargo shorts and pulled out my souvenir from the Silverthorn Mansion—the shredded remains of my book’s missing chapter.
I laid it down on my lap and whispered, “Okay. How in the world did you end up in that tree?”
Given the week I’d had, I half expected it to answer me, but of course it didn’t. It just sat there all shredded and mute—clearly it wasn’t giving up its secrets that easily—so I unfolded the loose covering of lavender fabric and drew out the pen-and-ink drawing.
“And who the hell are you?”
The woman peered back at me, tight-lipped and sly. I flipped it over. It wasn’t signed anywhere, but I knew it had to have been one of Mr. Hoskins’s drawings. The only difference was that it looked almost like a preliminary sketch. The style was the same, but it wasn’t as detailed and intricate as the other drawings.
I studied the woman’s face, hoping there might be something I recognized, some identifiable feature, like a mole or a tattoo, but there was nothing. She could have been any pretty young woman with long dark hair … but of course, I had my theories.
The top page was mostly intact. Even though the lower portion was nibbled a bit at the ends, and the paper was all buckled and water stained, I could still make out the chapter title. It was “Gardeners Beware.”
I read the first paragraph.
Now let the reader turn to Figure 9, where such a beauty as Abrus precatorius is depicted. If the reader wishes to preserve his muscle for other household chores, he may allow such a vine to o’ertake his fields, which it will do in short order, smothering all other plants in its path and establishing a garden that is, if not attractive, forever free of fret and fidget. We hasten to add, however, that the fruit from which this industrious vine gets its common name, rosary pea, is quite deadly. It is in fact considered the most poisonous seed of them all, so unless the gardener has less charitable uses in mind, he would do well to avoid the cheerily colored berry altogether.
I hadn’t even finished the last sentence when I grabbed my cell phone off the coffee table and punched in Detective McKenzie’s number.
“McKenzie here.”
I said, “Detective, this may sound crazy, but has the coroner determined Mr. Hoskins’s cause of death?”
She said, “Dixie, the cause of death is gun wounds. That was obvious from the beginning.”
I frowned. “I know he was shot, but did you run blood tests? Was there anything odd in his blood?”
“Dixie, what’s going on?”
“Remember when I told you about that book I bought in the bookstore that night? Remember I said it was missing a section? Well, get this—I was in the top of that big magnolia tree at the Silverthorn Mansion, and I found the missing section in a squirrel hole.”
There was a pause. “A squirrel hole.”
“Yes, a squirrel jumped out and it had a piece of paper in its mouth. They were using it as a nest.”
“The squirrels were using the hole for a nest…”
“No, no. The book. They were using the book, chewing it up and building a nest with it in the garden shed. At first I couldn’t figure out how it got there—”
“I’m trying to figure out how you got there, but go on.”
“It’s a long story. I didn’t have a chance to look at it until now, but listen—it’s all about poisons. The whole chapter is plants that gardeners should avoid if they have pets.”
She sighed. “Dixie, it sounds interesting, but I don’t see the connection.”
I said, “The very first paragraph is about rosary pea vine. It’s like the most poisonous seed in the world, and it’s growing all over the Silverthorn Mansion. It’s basically covering everything that doesn’t move.”
“Yes?”
“So, I mean, don’t you think that’s kind of weird? There’s a book in Mr. Hoskins’s store that’s missing the last chapter, and then the next thing you know Mr. Hoskins is dead and the missing section is all about poisons and it’s hidden in a tree surrounded by poisonous vines? I know it seems crazy, but you’re just going to have to trust me on this one. If you run those tests, you’ll find poison in his blood.”
“Dixie. We ran tests. His blood was clean. There were no foreign substances at all. No poisons. No drugs. Nothing. There was head trauma, so we think he was knocked unconscious first, and then he was dragged into the crawl space and shot once in the chest. We know how he died.”
I winced. I wished I’d been spared that detail. “Are you sure?”
“Dixie, I wish you were right, I really do. I’d love to have a lead on this case, but I just don’t see a connection. There was no poisoning.”