“What do you want?” I asked.
“Company.”
“I’m a little tired right now.”
My brother’s nose started quivering like a hound’s nose. “You stink of sweat and gunpowder, Carson. I smell a woman, too. Have we gone burrowing for love in the cherry grove?”
I saw his emergency-band scanner on the table. “You know what happened, right? You were listening.”
He held up his hand, thumb and forefinger a half-inch apart. “A bit. I heard cops and medical people. A man died, correct?”
“Yes. Badly.”
“Tell me all about it, brother.”
“I was visiting Cherry and she got a call about a man with a rifle shooting at—”
“Not all three acts, Carson, just the final one. What was the death like?”
“The man was sick. Convulsing. His heart stopped in the ambulance. Drugs maybe. Or it just chose that moment to go.”
Jeremy’s brow furrowed with curiosity. “Was the death interesting?” he asked, eyes alert.
“Interesting?”
“You know … a sense of drama. Of theater. Or, as deaths go, was it just …?” he fluttered his tongue dismissively.
“I don’t need this right now,” I said, not wanting to revisit a man’s demise for the odd pleasures of my brother. I walked out the door and kept moving.
The next morning found me sitting in the lodge restaurant at Natural Bridge Park, McCoy and Cherry across from me, revisiting the Tanner episode. Her cellphone buzzed. She pulled it from her jacket, walked to the porch for better reception. After three minutes she rang off, returning with a hard smile on her face as she shot McCoy a thumbs-up.
“I messengered the mushroom to a buddy in forensics. Tanner’s chicken stew contained a fungus called a fool’s mushroom.”
McCoy winced. “Amanita verna. Deadly poisonous. A few bites would start messing up the head and tearing down the machinery. Think Brother Tanner’s recipe came from the Borgia family cookbook?”
I thought back to fungi noted on my hikes. In under a week I’d seen perhaps fifty different varieties. “Does this happen often?” I asked McCoy. “Mushroom poisoning?”
“It’s a problem.”
“There’s another possible explanation,” Cherry said, shaking her third packet of sugar into her cup of coffee. “Brother Tanner was purposely eating poison mushrooms to prove he was touched by Grace, safe under the watchful eye of God. It’s the creed of the snake handlers. Taking up serpents to test one’s faith. Cousin Zeke had been getting stranger over the years, more insistent on proofs of faith.”
McCoy said, “Two choices, then: Zeke got careless or tempted fate.”
I said, “There’s a third. Tanner’s part of the other killings. The geocache murders.”
Cherry shook her head. “It hurts to agree with Krenkler, but nothing ties Tanner’s case to the others. He wasn’t tortured. Nothing appeared on the geocache website.”
“He looked a lot like a man in torture,” I argued. “Especially those last few minutes. Something feels related to the others.”
“Can you expand on that logically,” Cherry asked, “or are you using your psychic powers?”
I thought a moment, shrugged, let it go. “What’s your plan for the day?” I asked, changing the topic.
“Sonny Burton’s visitation is today. The Feds want me there in case our killer pays his respects.”
“The Feds are attending?”
“I actually convinced Krenkler they’d be too conspicuous in person. There’s a junk shop a block and a half away. They’ll park behind it and we’ll use radio.”
“Radio? So they’d never know if we added another pair of eyes to the mix, right?”
Cherry and I walked from the lodge together. The sun was high and warm, the air rich with the scent of pine and last year’s leaves turning into humus, intoxicating and almost dizzying in its gentle fecundity.
“Do you want me along?” I asked. “Burton’s visitation?”
“Very much, Ryder.”
“If I recall, it wasn’t all that long ago you were telling me to take a hike.”
“That’s when I thought you were a hot dog with an attitude.”
“You don’t think that any more?”
She smiled, coy and warm at the same time, a wonderful combination. Both eyes seemed to focus on mine. I felt my knees tremble.
“A little,” she said. “But you’re improving daily.”
We stopped at her cruiser and I looked into her eyes. It was a moment with the chance of turning either beautiful or awkward, so I chopped it off, spinning toward my truck while my legs still functioned.
“I’ve got to change into a dress,” she called to my back. “How about I come get you in an hour.”
I winked as I climbed into my truck. “Done.”
I started the engine, drove past Cherry. She held up her hand, wait. I stopped.
“One more thing just came to mind. We talked about Charpentier? I’m thinking if he’s as perceptive as McCoy says, he might be another useful set of eyes. Think you could stop by his place and feel him out?”
My heart froze in my chest. “You want Charpentier at the visitation?”
“The man’s a head doc, right? Given that we can use all the professional input we can, and the Feds won’t be overly near …”
“Charpentier’s an odd duck,” I said, trying to keep from stammering. “But I’ll ask.”
I returned to the cabin, slipped into dark slacks and blazer and drove to Jeremy’s. Though it was ten a.m., Jeremy was in pajamas, sky-blue with white piping, like we’d worn as children. His feet were in brown leather slippers and he was opening mail with a pearl-handled dagger.
I said, “You know, of course, that a man named Sonny Burton was the first killing.”
“It was all over my police scanner. Fascinating methodology, no?”
“Burton’s visitation starts in an hour. Cherry wants you along.”
The knife fell to the floor. “WHAT?”
“Don’t worry, you can make up a story about you having the flu or something. I want you to meet her. It’s the perfect chance to brand the image of a benign professor into Cherry’s head. Do it now and here, where you control the setting.”
“Why does your little screech owl want me at the visitation?”
“McCoy told her you’re a brilliant psychologist. It’s your fault for talking psychobabble like you’re the Freud and Jung Traveling Circus.”