Lye in Wait

FORTHCOMING BY CRICKET MCRAE IN 2008

Heaven Preserve Us

Cricket McRae

MIDNIGHT INK
WOODBURY, MINNESOTA

Lye in Wait: A Home Crafting Mystery (c) 2007 by Cricket McRae. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Midnight Ink except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First Edition First Printing, 2007 Book design and format by Donna Burch Cover design and photo by Lisa Novak Editing by Connie Hill

Midnight Ink, an imprint of Llewellyn Publications Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McRae, Cricket. Lye in wait : a home crafting mystery / Cricket McRae. - 1st ed. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-0-7387-1116-4 1. Women artisans-Fiction. 2. Soap trade-Fiction. I. Title. PS3613.C58755L94 2007 813'.6-dc22 2007018060

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Midnight Ink Llewellyn Publications 2143 Wooddale Drive, Dept. 978-0-7387-1116-4 Woodbury, MN 55125-2989, U.S.A. www.midnightinkbooks.com Printed in the United States of America

Writing a novel is never done in a vacuum, and so many people
helped me in this endeavor. Thanks to Jacky Sach, my terrific
agent, and to Barbara Moore, Connie Hill, Brian Farrey, and all
the other hardworking folks at Midnight Ink. I feel indebted to
my writing buddies Bob Trott and Mark Figlozzi for their constant
support, inspiration and willingness to listen to my whining. Others who cheered me on by reading drafts, providing feedback and
pushing me forward include Edward and Rochelle Cattrell, Tom
Martin, Jody Ivy, Stacey Kollman, Mindy Ireland, Kevin Brookfield, Marjorie Reynolds, Jeff and Denise Weaver, Rod and Nita
Lindsey, Margot Ayer, Stasa Fritz, and Aimee Jolie. Thank you, too,
Jane Isenberg and Larry Karp for reading my manuscript and saying such nice things about it. Apologies to anyone I've forgotten to
mention; everyone who was willing to take a look at this novel has
my gratitude.

The local members of the Puget Sound Chapter of Sisters in
Crime have been staunchly enthusiastic on my behalf. Police Chief
Chuck Macklin answered my questions about Cadyville's police
force and its procedures, and Officer Charlie Frati answered my
questions and let me ride along in his patrol car. Frank Borshears
told me all about the chemical properties of sodium hydroxide
and how it mixes with other substances. I take full responsibility
for any information I changed for fictional purposes or that I simply got wrong.

THAT THURSDAY MORNING HAD been going so well until I found
the local handyman dead on my workroom floor. Walter lay on his
back, twisted to one side. His right hand was pressed to his throat.
The left clenched the chambray work shirt in front of his heart.
Streaks of moisture along the cuffs and in uneven splotches down
the front darkened the blue of the shirt's fabric. I recognized the
signature yellow suspenders first, then the gray hair pulled back
into a ponytail.

Staring down at the ruin of his face, I covered my mouth with
one hand. His eyes were squeezed shut and his lips drawn back in
a horrific grimace. The interior of his open mouth was inflamed
and raw. His teeth, now a disturbing shade of dark gray, jutted
from what remained of his gums, and angry blisters welled on his
chin and jaw.

My gaze shifted to the open doorway, to where the sun had
finally pried its way through the clots of gray sludge above. The
Japanese maple in our backyard blazed incandescent orange against the evergreens along the neighbor's cedar fence. A chickadee called through October air so crisp it would have crunched if
you bit into it...

Then I remembered to breathe. A long, shuddering inhalation, and the oxygen hit my brain. Practicality surfaced through
my horror, and I spun and ran up the interior stairs to the main
part of the house. Through the kitchen and the foyer to Meghan's
massage room, where I burst in without thinking. Thank God her
client was still dressed. Meghan's eyes widened.

"Call 911," I said.

She dropped an armful of white towels onto the massage table.
"What happened?"

"Walter's dead in the basement. Call 911"

She nodded and went through to her office for the phone. As
she called out to the client that she'd have to reschedule, I turned
and ran back downstairs. I'd never been more grateful for Meghan's
no-nonsense approach to things than I was at that moment.

Back in my workroom, I leaned against a counter and looked
around at anything except the body on the floor. The spacious
thirty-five-by-forty-foot room had been plumbed and heated
when Meghan and her husband-now ex-husband-bought the
house. I'd hired Walter to install plasterboard, two rows of track
lighting, a few appliances, and several work surfaces. He'd made it
into the perfect place to produce the soap and other items I market under the name Winding Road Bath Products.

A glass lay on its side at the edge of the braided rag rug in front
of the sink, an oblong splatter of liquid extending out onto the
bare concrete. The room smelled of the rosemary and peppermint
essential oils I'd used to make a foot scrub the previous afternoon, but another odor rode the air, far more subtle and so familiar it
didn't seem out of place until I realized what it was: sodium hydroxide. Lye. I used it to make soap, but I hadn't mixed any batches
of cold-process soap for over a week.

With a growing sense of dismay, I tiptoed to the glass and the
spill on the floor and crouched beside them. Then, like an idiot, I
stuck my finger in the liquid. The slick consistency was instantly
familiar, and I hurried to the sink to rinse it off even as my skin
began burning. I had to step over Walter to reach the faucet. My
hands were shaking. No wonder his mouth looked like that. Leaning over the sink, I gulped air and tried to quell my rising stomach
contents.

"The paramedics are on the way," Meghan said from the doorway. "Poor Walter... hey, are you okay?"

I turned from the sink and tried to nod. Meghan started toward
me, then faltered as her gaze dropped to the form on the floor.

"Oh God, Sophie Mae. What the..." She looked up at me.
"What happened to his face?"

"He..." I swallowed. "I think he drank lye."

"Holy shit." Her voice was low, almost a whisper.

We heard a thump and the doorbell rang upstairs. Brodie,
Meghan's old corgi, let out a series of sharp barks from the top of
the stairs, and my housemate went up to answer the door.

Two uniformed EMTs, a woman and a man, clumped down
the narrow wooden stairs and hurried to the prone figure. Meghan
followed behind them, stopping on the bottom step to watch
from the doorway. Kneeling beside him, the paramedics blocked
my view of Walter's head and torso. I heard them mutter to one
another in low voices, and moments later they stood up, shaking their heads. The man took a walkie-talkie phone from his belt and
stepped out into the backyard. Through the window I saw two
firemen talking in the alley.

The woman told me in a gentle voice they couldn't do anything to help Walter-not much of a news flash, but her kindness
brought a sudden lump to my throat.

The other paramedic returned. "They're on their way."

"Who?" I asked.

"Police."

"Oh." And for the next five minutes we stood in awkward silence, waiting for whatever would come next.

THE DOORBELL RANG AGAIN and Meghan went upstairs. She returned with a uniformed officer in tow. He looked about fourteen
years old, though he must have been at least in his twenties. Nice
looking, with hair the color of sand and wide blue eyes that grew
wider when one of the EMTs said it looked like Walter had died
from something he ingested.

No kidding.

I imagined how the lye would have felt going down: nothing,
then the fierce burn, the realization of having made a terrible, utterly irrevocable mistake.

I started to tell the officer about the lye, but he waved me off
and pulled his phone from his heavy belt, murmuring into it as he
walked through the open door to the backyard, just as the paramedic had.

The EMTs went back upstairs, and I heard Brodie's muffled
barking; Meghan had shut him in the laundry room, away from
all the comings and goings. She still wore her work clothes-loose yoga pants paired with a soft pastel T-shirt. We sat down on the
third step, where the wall and the corner of a counter blocked the
body except for Walter's work boots pointing toward the ceiling.
"Turning up your toes" had been my grandmother's euphemism
for dying, and when it popped into my head I had to fight down
the sick giggle that threatened to erupt. Instead my stomach rumbled, and the urge toward inappropriate laughter turned to consternation. Even under these circumstances, my body still insisted
I'd skipped breakfast and owed it an early lunch.