I was bringing the flask to my nose to smell the contents when Gillian entered the tent.
“What are you doing with that?” She darted to my side and snatched the flask out of my hand. Amber liquid slopped out onto my blouse.
I grabbed her arm before she could dump out the contents of the flask. “Wait!”
Gillian threw a desperate glance over her shoulder. “Let go!” She kicked me on the shins.
I bit back a cry of pain and grasped her hand with both of my own, struggling with her over the flask in a two-person parody of the tug-of-war. “Gillian, stop. Just talk to me for a minute.”
“I haven’t got a minute.” Her shoulders slumped. “My dad’s gonna come looking for me any second now. If he catches me here, I’m in big trouble, and it will be all your fault.”
“I’ll cover for you. Tell me why you came back for Ladd Foster’s flask.” I bent back her thumb and slipped the flask out of her fingers. “Quick, before somebody comes in here.”
“Ow!” She massaged her hand, glaring at me. “You hurt me.”
“Yeah, well, you kicked me hard enough to cause a bruise, so I guess we’re even.” I waved to my shin, where we could both see the bruise coming up. “What’s in this flask?”
She folded her arms over her chest, the picture of a sullen teen. “Whiskey?”
I took a quick sniff, and nearly gagged. “It smells horrible.” I held it under her nose. “Is this what it smelled like when Ladd handed the flask to you for safekeeping?”
She recoiled from the smell and fought to maintain her defiant pose. “How should I know?”
“Gillian, I saw Ladd hand you his flask before the caber toss so it wouldn’t be in his way. I watched you take a sniff and make a face. Then you came in here, and when you came out again, you didn’t have the flask with you. That’s how I knew it was here.”
“What are you, the flask police?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, I’m the teenage-girl police. I don’t allow middle-aged men to prey on teenage girls. Who cares? All I want to know is, does this smell the same as it did before, or is there something in here that wasn’t before?”
She stared me down for a full minute, and then she dropped her gaze. “It smells different. Nastier.”
“Did you put anything in it?”
Her head snapped up again. “No! I brought it in here and put it down and came right out. I didn’t want my dad to catch me with it.”
I risked another sniff. I could make out the tangy smell of whiskey, but it was nearly drowned out by an overpowering smell that reminded me of gasoline—an oily, fuel kind of smell. I screwed the top back on and laid the flask down on the table.
Gillian twisted her hands together. “You think somebody put something in his flask, some kind of poison, and that’s why he fell over?”
She’d put her finger on the nameless fears I was only beginning to sort out. I nodded. Before I could say anything, she lashed out at me.
“You can’t pin this on me! Just because I touched it doesn’t mean I poisoned it. Loads of people could have done this!”
I gripped her by the shoulders. “Gillian, I’m not the police! I’m a seamstress, okay? I’m just minding other people’s business right now. But you cared about Ladd Foster, at least for a little while, so maybe you could help me figure out what happened to him.”
She shook me off.
Out on the field, the announcer called out, “Our final event is the Atlas Stones. Jamie Deakens, step right up.”
Gillian opened her mouth to speak when Patrick Ames walked into the tent.
I patted Gillian on the shoulder. “There. Your vest should be fine for your next dance.”
She looked at me in confusion, so I went on, “It’s almost three-thirty. Breanna’s probably wondering where you are.” I took her arm and turned her to the exit. “I’ll walk along with you.”
Patrick merely nodded at us as we walked out, then he turned back to the water cooler.
Gillian kept looking sideways at me as I walked her out of the tent.
“I told you I’d cover for you,” I said. I led her away from the crowd.
She pulled her arm free. “Are you going to call the police?”
I nodded.
“You can’t call the police! My fingerprints are on that flask. They’re going to think I did it.”
“Gillian, I have to call the police. If someone poisoned his whiskey, they were trying to kill him. That’s something the police need to know.”
She stopped and faced me. “Just leave me out of it, okay? I don’t want to get in trouble. Whenever I have anything to do with the cops, they always twist things around so it looks like I’m a juvenile delinquent. They’d love to pin a poisoning on me.” She looked pointedly at my blouse. “You might want to watch out yourself. You’re wearing that poisoned whiskey right now. Your fingerprints aren’t on the flask because you held it with a tissue. How are you going to explain that when the cops start asking you questions?”
How indeed? She had a point there. I couldn’t go around wearing the blouse, which I now realized smelled awful and had a visible stain. But if I took it off and hid it, and someone found out, it would look like I had something to hide. If I confessed I had snooped in the VIP tent and spilled some of the poisoned whiskey but didn’t mention Gillian’s presence, I could get caught in inconsistencies later on. In the worst-case scenario, the police would think I was the poisoner. I had found myself in the position of discovering a dead body or two in my time. I inwardly cursed myself for ending up in this position through my curiosity.
McCarthy had once told me that unless there was a good reason to lie, it was always better to tell the truth. Maybe the best thing for me to do would be to go back to the VIP tent, pick up the flask so my fingerprints were on it, and then call the police and tell them the whole story. Sorry, Gillian.
It was only fair to warn her. “I’m going to call the police now. They’ll probably want to talk to you.”
She tossed her head. “I have to dance.” She ducked through the crowd and disappeared.
I didn’t bother going after her. I figured it wouldn’t be too hard for the police to catch up with her, so I headed back toward the VIP tent. I needed to put my prints on Ladd’s flask and then call the police.
The crowd around the athletic field gasped as I walked up, their eyes all fixed on Patrick Ames. He was straining to lift a huge boulder to drop onto an upended barrel. I paused for a moment to watch, thinking he should have been dressed in animal skins for this caveman event. He gave a huge grunt and dropped the boulder onto the barrel, which tipped but didn’t overturn. The crowd roared.
Someone prodded my shoulder from behind. I turned to see Letty standing with her hands on her hips. “Can’t keep your eyes off the hunks, can you? Is anyone minding the booth?”
I let a look of embarrassment show