The doorbell rang. A tiny frown marred the perfection of her face. “Now, who is that? I’m leaving for the gym after we finish.”
“I’m done in here. I’ll go down with you.” As we walked downstairs we discussed container types and I set up a return time.
I intended to slip discreetly out the front door. Two men in business causal dress stood on Clarissa’s porch when she opened the door. One man said, “Mrs. Bedford, I’m with the OSI. Is there a Mrs. Avery here?”
I stopped trying to sidestep around them. “Right here.”
“We need you to come with us,” said Man Number Two.
“Why?”
“We have a few questions for you.”
“About what?”
The men exchanged a glance; then Number One said, “Oliver Thistlewait would like to talk to you.”
I didn’t move. “What about?” I repeated.
Guy Number One said, “Lieutenant Georgia Lamar’s been hospitalized.”
Chapter Seven
Being practically taken into police custody is not how I want to end the first meeting with a client, but I went with them. I drove myself to the OSI building. It felt less like they were arresting me that way.
I waited in a small room long enough to memorize the flecked pattern on the tabletop, the worn spots on the carpet, and the six nail holes in the walls. I’d called Mitch and gotten his voice mail on his cell phone and no answer at home. He’d probably taken Livvy to the store. I hung up without leaving a message. What was I going to say? “Honey, I’m at the OSI office and I don’t know why I’m here, but I’m waiting in what looks like an interrogation room.” Not a good message to leave.
Instead, I dug around in my purse, a pebbled leather Prada shoulder bag, just businesslike enough to project an efficient air, but the red color still made it fun and not too boring. I found a Hershey’s Kiss in a corner and peeled the foil away, then popped it in my mouth. I concentrated on savoring the chocolate so I wouldn’t think about where I was. Thistlewait walked in the door and I chomped the rest of the chocolate and swallowed quickly.
“Mrs. Avery.” He sighed, his usual reaction on seeing me, and took a seat across the table. “Tell me about Monday again.”
“What? Is this about Georgia or about Penny? Is Georgia okay?”
“I’ll give you the details later. First, tell me about your day on Monday.”
Obviously, Thistlewait wasn’t going to tell me anything until I went over my day again. “All right. Monday.” I summarized my day from my conversation with Penny to dessert with Marsali later that night. Thistlewait rephrased his questions and I answered them again. Finally, he said, “You’ve heard about Lieutenant Lamar?”
“Just that she’s in the hospital.”
“Since yesterday.”
“Is she going to be all right?”
“She’s in critical condition right now. You said you saw her on Monday?” he said, returning to my earlier statement.
“Yes. Like I told you, she came in the Scheduling Office when I went to meet Mitch for lunch. She seemed fine. Well,” I amended, “she was hot. She’d just gotten a speeding ticket.”
“Anything else?”
“She was mad about the posters in the Hole. She wanted them taken down. She thinks they’re sleazy.”
“Okay. Anything else happen?”
“No. Oh, wait. I left the chocolate-covered espresso beans there.” Thistlewait stopped writing on his notepad and sat still, eyeing me like a strange creature he’d never seen before. “Penny gave them to me that morning. She said she couldn’t have them anymore.” Then I made the connection. “Because of the baby. No caffeine.”
Thistlewait didn’t say anything, just watched me. I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable under his intense gaze. “I’d completely forgotten about it until now. I don’t like espresso beans, so I took them in and told everyone that they were there, but no one ate any right then.”
“Describe the bag.” Thistlewait’s gaze bored into my face.
I shifted in my chair, suddenly uncomfortable with his intense scrutiny. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Relax, I told myself.
“It was a small gold bag with a top that folds down. It had a cursive font on the front. I don’t remember the brand, but Penny usually had a bag with her. She loved them.” I swallowed hard. There were too many questions about food. “Was Georgia poisoned?”
Thistlewait sighed again and rubbed his hands over his eyes. “It looks like it. Vomiting and convulsions, an apparent poisoning. They’re rushing the tox screens, but we don’t have the final word back yet. Her stomach contents and the food in her refrigerator look all right. Most of the foods she ate Tuesday and Wednesday, she ate with her roommate or went out with friends at lunch. No one else is sick.”
“I bet it was the espresso beans. Mitch doesn’t like coffee, so he wouldn’t eat the beans, and Tommy only drinks Folgers. He’s kind of a coffee snob in reverse. He thinks the fancy brands are just a rip-off and nothing is as good as plain old grocery store coffee. He wouldn’t touch gourmet coffee.”
Thistlewait pulled out his cell phone and punched a few numbers. He motioned for me to stay and wandered out into the hall. “Yeah.” His voice carried down the hall. “The food from the base. Especially the espresso beans.” His voice faded as he paced down the hall.
I sat looking at the freckled tabletop, but not seeing it now. Something was bothering me. My thoughts chased themselves around in my head. “Oh,” I said to myself and half stood, but then I heard Thistlewait’s voice growing louder as he walked back down the hall. “And you’d better send the results over to Jensen at the Vernon PD so they can compare it to the tox screen from the Follette woman. Right.”
I sat back down in the chair.
He returned as he slipped the cell phone back into its carrier on his belt. “Well, Mrs. Avery, thanks for the information. I’d advise you to stay out of this mess. Since I know you and I know you’ve shown an interest in bringing the guilty to justice, so to speak, in the past, I doubt you’d do something as stupid as try to murder a friend and then call the police in and help them with their investigation. But”—here he paused and leaned on the back of the chair across from me, arms braced—“not everyone around here is inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. So, I’d advise you to act like any normal citizen and mind your own business.”
“Are you saying that I’m a suspect?” My heart skittered. He hadn’t read me my Miranda rights, so I couldn’t be an official suspect, right?
“We’ve had two incidents in four days, a murder and a poisoning. You’re linked to both of them. You gave Lamar a bag that may contain poison; we certainly can’t find it anywhere else. And you alerted us to the possibility that Follette might not have committed suicide, which was correct. We’re trained to look for the unusual connection, the discrepancy. You look like a pretty glaring discrepancy right now.”
My armpits felt damp and I pressed my hands down the front of my jeans to hide my trembling fingers. “But I had nothing to do with either thing. I just handed off the bag. I could have thrown it away. And I would never hurt Penny. She was my friend. If I’d murdered her, I could have erased the answering machine message.”
“But, in both cases, you didn’t. There are some strange people out there who do odd things like call