Page 49

CHAPTER 49

I went next door and collected Poppy and told her what had happened and that I needed her help with Bea.

“Louise is dead ?” Poppy said.

“Yes. Poisoned.”

She took a deep breath. “By who?”

“We don’t know.”

Poppy nodded and then took a minute. “I can think of a lot of people who’d want to see her gone. Dottie, for instance.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think it was Dottie. She was standing next to me when it happened and she was surprised. Dottie’s not good at hiding emotions. We were all surprised.”

Poppy frowned at me. “Is this why you want to see Bea? You think she killed Louise?”

“No. She knows something and I can’t afford to be patient and understanding anymore.”

“Right.” Poppy nodded, a little wobbly. “Time to get ahead of the death curve.”

She took a deep breath, and I thought for a moment that she looked older. Sadder. Wiser. Not so much a kid anymore. The same way Marley had changed. Or maybe they’d both been changing all along and it was just that I was finally seeing them as grown up now.

It had been so much easier when they were kids.

“The problem,” I said, “is that it couldn’t have been Junior. He’s been dead two days. Someone put the poison in Louise’s mug in the last twenty-four hours.”

“Great,” Poppy said. “We have another killer.” She called Maggs and came with me, but she was quiet as the three of us walked down State Street toward Bea’s Honey Pot shop.

“Are you all right?” I said.

She nodded. “Yeah. You’ll fix it. You and Max.”

I wasn’t sure what to do with that, but she said she was okay and that was a lot. “That’s some faith you have there, Poppy.”

“Yeah. Faith and some sleep,” she said. “I’m getting there. You were right. I was stuck. I just have to figure out a direction to move in.”

She didn’t sound sure, though. We were going to need another cocoa talk at the kitchen table.

We kept trudging through the slush on the sidewalk, both of us lost in our thoughts, soaking in the peace of a gentle winter morning in a beautiful mountain town and trying not to think about violent death and what we were going to do about it, and then a loudspeaker clicked on somewhere and Mariah Carey started shouting about what she wanted for Christmas.

“What the hell?” Poppy said at the music, stopping in her tracks.

“Hermione found Mr. Crothers’ loudspeaker system.”

Poppy frowned. “There’s a speaker system? And what’s Hermione still doing with Mr. Crothers?”

“Guess.”

“ Really? He’s that dumb?”

“At least he didn’t hook up with Louise,” I said, and then remembered nobody was going to be hooking up with Louise again. “For right now, it’s Bea we’re concentrating on. She knows something and she’s upset and we need to get her to rehab before she dies. So, we’re going to talk to her before she drinks herself into a coma and see if she’ll cough up some information and listen to us about her drinking. I’m thinking Louise’s death might knock something loose there. Because right now, she’d be even easier to kill than Louise.”

Poppy nodded, still wincing at the music. “And then we shut this Christmas music crap down.”

“One thing at a time,” I said.

By the time we got to Bea’s shop, the music had shifted, inevitably, to “The Little Drummer Boy.” Some man wrote that song. The last thing any mother wants right after giving birth is some random kid showing up beating on a drum.

The shop was dark and the CLOSED sign was up, but when we tried the door, it opened. I called out, “Bea!” suddenly anxious because of the unlocked door. Anyone could have walked in there. Poppy went in to check the workroom at the back of the store, and I stood at the bottom and called her name again. When Poppy came back and said she wasn’t in the back room, we looked at each other, both afraid of what we were about to find, and started up the stairs to Bea’s apartment.

Every wall in the shop was painted honey-yellow, which made sense, but the upstairs was all that gold color, too. The pictures on the walls were of bees, framed in gold. When Bea had a decorating theme, she didn’t mess around. We checked the kitchen, the front bedroom, and the powder room in the hall, all empty, which left us Bea’s bedroom.

“Please don’t let her be dead,” Poppy said.

Her bedroom was empty, too, her bed unslept in.

“Bathroom,” Poppy said and opened the door.

Bea was in the tub, her eyes closed, slumped down so that her chin was in the water. There was a half-finished drink on the shelf by the bath and her bee mask behind it, like she’d been drinking and looking at it, and an empty bottle on the floor.

Oh, hell, I thought. Make a mask, cause a suicide.

I went closer, afraid to see a bathtub full of bloody water, but it was clear. I said, “Bea?” and patted her cheek, and that caused her to slide down so her mouth and nose went underwater. Bubbles came up as she exhaled.

I grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her up before she inhaled soapy water, and Poppy pulled the stopper. I kept patting Bea’s cheek and calling her name, and she’d flinch and shake her head, still unconscious but definitely alive, thank God. So I grabbed my phone and called Jackie, who said, “What the hell now?”

There was a man’s voice, undoubtedly Luke’s, in the background.

“Bea Handler is unconscious in her bathtub and I’m not sure what to do,” I told her.

“Is she above water?” Jackie asked.

“Yes. And we’re draining the tub. But we can’t bring her around.”

Jackie must have put her hand over the phone as I heard two muted voices, then she came back on.

“On my way,” Jackie said. “The Honey Pot, right? End of the street across from the Wok Inn?”

“That’s it,” I told her and put my phone back in my pocket. “Get me some towels,” I said to Poppy, who grabbed them. I draped those over Bea as the last of the water finally ran out of the tub.

Poppy stood there, staring down at her.

“Go look in the bedroom for a diary or a letter or something that tells us who she’s been talking to.”

“She’s dead ?” Poppy said, horrified.

“No, she’s drunk.”

“Then we shouldn’t be messing with her stuff.”

“Poppy, go look ,” I said, having no patience for scruples at this point.

Poppy went. In a couple of minutes, I heard the shop door bang again, and Poppy called down to somebody, “Up here!” and shortly after that, I heard her talking to somebody in the bedroom, and then Jackie came into the bathroom.

“She’s alive,” I said, and then suddenly Bea snorted in her stupor, which was a relief.

“Was she trying to kill herself?” Jackie asked, eyeballing the bottle.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Subconsciously, maybe. I think she drank herself unconscious. Can you get her, I don’t know, somewhat coherent? She knows something we need to know.”

“Yeah, that was clear yesterday.” Jackie examined Bea and then took her phone out of her jacket and punched in three numbers. “Suspected alcohol poisoning, The Honey Pot shop in Rocky Start.”

“Rescue squad?” I said, not liking it but knowing it was necessary.

She nodded. “Yes, and I’m not taking any arguments this time.”

I nodded. Pike would just have to deal with Outsiders in an ambulance.

“Thank you for coming,” I said. “Again.”

“Do you think somebody did this?”

“No, I think she did it. She was really upset yesterday.” I hesitated. “I think she’s been talking to somebody, maybe working for somebody, and she wasn’t happy about all the attacks. I think she knows a lot more about these attacks. She knows she’s in trouble.”

“What could she possibly know?” Jackie said. “She’s drunk most of the time.”

“She didn’t used to be. Her lover died by the same serial killer who took out Sid, and she fell apart.” I looked down at Bea and felt sorry for her. All she’d had were her bees and Harvey, and now Harvey was gone. Personally, I thought that was a blessing, but I could see where he’d left a hole in her life.

Bea began to snore, which was so normal, it was a relief.

Poppy came to the door and said, “There’s no diary, but I found a burner phone.”

“Okay,” I said, concentrating on Jackie. When Poppy was gone again, I said, “Look, I know you don’t want to stay, and I don’t blame you, but?—”

“No, I’m in,” she said, and that placid facade cracked a little. “Hester and I talked after the Louise thing. I was afraid she’d be upset, but what’s bothering her is leaving here. She really loves the bakery, Coral’s teaching her a lot, and she wants to stay in one place to finish high school. She says I’ve dragged her all over the country for my work and she deserves her last year-and-a-half of high school in the same place. She says you all need a doctor, and we can stay until she graduates, and if I say no, she’s going to move in with Coral.”

“Oh,” I said. “Wow.”

“I could make her leave with me,” Jackie said, sounding miserable. “But she’s always gone along with me, and we have moved a lot. I mean, with the traveling doctor thing we got to see a lot of places, and the money was really good, saving for college, but I had no idea she wanted something like the bakery. Of all the places we’ve been and things she’s been exposed to, this is the first time she’s shown real, genuine desire. She says Coral is teaching her everything. She wants to be a professional baker, go to school for that; I’ve never seen her so excited. It might not last, she’s young, but she’s happy, the happiest I’ve ever seen her . So I’m thinking we stay at least until the new year and if she still feels the same way . . .” She took a deep breath. “. . . we’ll stay for her high school years.”

Okay, good. Finally things were going our way: Bea wasn’t dead and we were closer to getting a doctor. “I’m sad for you but glad for the town,” I told her.

She gave a small smile. “Don’t feel too sad for me. Rocky Start has its attractions.”

Yeah, Luke was hot.

She leaned over the tub to look at Bea again, clearly finished with our conversation, and I went out to check on Poppy.

She was standing in the middle of Bea’s bedroom with a cheap phone to her ear. “It wasn’t locked. I just hit redial. So the last person Bea talked to should answer—” She stopped to listen, and I watched shock make her face go slack.

“Poppy?” I moved forward and took the phone out of her hand and listened.

“—had it with you, Bea Handler,” the woman on the phone snarled. “I’m not paying for any more drunken rambling about snakes and llamas. Don’t call me again.”

And then the phone went dead.

I knew that voice.

I’d know that voice anywhere.

And so would Poppy.

Serena Stafford wasn’t dead.