Scene of the Brine (5 page)

7

A
fter Sheriff Carlyle made his dramatic exit, the party continued on but in a much more subdued manner. The cake was cut and distributed, Nate's lively music morphed into softer ballads, and former revelers hummed along softly. As the cake disappeared, so did the partygoers, one by one. Piper was sure the thoughts of many were on the emergency that had called the sheriff away, as were hers.

The suspense lingered until the next morning when Piper rose early to finish cleanup. Leftover food had been distributed or refrigerated the night before and trash gathered and hauled off, but shop countertops needed polishing and merchandise had to be returned to its proper place. Piper was retrieving a box of canning jars from her back room when she heard taps at her alley door. She raised the shade to reveal Gil Williams on the stoop. Piper quickly turned the lock.

“I just learned what happened last night and thought you'd want to know,” he said, stepping inside as Piper opened the door.

“What is it?” Piper asked. Gil's look was grim and she braced herself.

“The ambulance we heard rushed Dirk Unger to the hospital. Unfortunately, he died there.”

“Gosh, I'm sorry to hear that. But why was the sheriff involved?”

“From what I understand, Unger at first appeared to be suffering from cardiac arrest. But later they came to suspect poison.”

“Poison!” Piper backed toward a stool and sat down. Her thoughts raced. “Any chance it could have been accidental?”

Gil shook his head. “I don't have any details. I imagine more testing and investigation needs to be done.”

“Yes.” Piper looked up at Gil worriedly. “But if it turns out to be murder . . .” Piper couldn't voice what she most feared.

“No use worrying until all the facts come out,” Gil said. He rubbed his hands together as though they'd suddenly become cold and Piper felt chilled as well. “I'll let you know if I hear more.”

“Thanks, Gil.” Piper let Gil out and relocked her back door. She turned away, feeling stunned by the news, and wondered if she should call anyone. When Gil first mentioned poison in connection with Unger, her thoughts had instantly flown to Sugar Heywood. Unfairly, surely, but if Piper's thoughts had gone in that direction, others' would have, too.

If last night's suspense was bad, Piper was sure the next round of waiting was going to beat that by a mile.

Piper had opened up for business and was idly leafing through her invoices when she noticed a woman standing outside her new front door. After several moments the woman, whose apple-red cheeks echoed her overall roundish shape, walked in, calling out a cheery “Good morning!”

Piper, whose mood had been stuck at gray, suddenly felt like a bit of sunshine had peeked through the clouds.

“I missed the party last night,” the woman said, “so I came by to see the new door for myself. I love it! I'm Tammy Butterworth, by the way,” she said, extending her hand.

“Hi, Tammy.” Piper introduced herself, then asked, “Are you new to Cloverdale?”

“I am!” Tammy exclaimed, as if Piper had made an impressive deduction. “Jeremy Porter made me an offer I couldn't refuse, so I picked up and moved here.”

“You're a Realtor?”

Tammy's burst of laughter was infectious and Piper couldn't help joining in, though she had no idea what she was laughing about. “No, dear,” Tammy said. “I don't sell houses. I clean them!”

“Ah!”

“I cleaned Jeremy's other house, so when he wasn't happy with the cleaning staff for his new house in Cloverdale—Jeremy's very particular—he asked if I'd come and do the job. I was in the mood to relocate, so I did. Not as a live-in,” she said, seeming anxious that Piper understand that. “Uh-uh. I have my own place. And I take other jobs, too. Homes, offices, you name it.”

“I'll keep that in mind in case anyone is looking for help.”

“Thank you, sweetie! Now tell me, what kind of shop is this? I never heard of a pickling shop.”

Piper was happy to oblige and happier, too, to have an obviously receptive listener as she ran through her list of pickles, preserves, and the means to produce them.

“How lovely!” Tammy declared when Piper had finished. “I've done a little canning but no pickling of any kind. I'm going to try it! Where do I start?”

Piper pulled out a couple of cookbooks that explained the basics of pickling, along with offering many great recipes, and let her new acquaintance look them over. As Tammy browsed, Piper decided the woman must not have heard about Dirk Unger and speculated that it might not have been her day to clean at the Porter house. But to Piper's surprise, as Tammy flipped a page in one of the cookbooks she said, “A shame what happened to Mr. Unger, isn't it?”

“Yes. It was. I just heard about it an hour ago.”

“Oh, I heard it last night.”

“You did?”

“Uh-huh.” Tammy reached for the second cookbook. “Mallory Porter—she's Jeremy's sister—called to say I shouldn't come in today and why. Which is why I had time to come here!” She smiled brightly at Piper, clearly not too broken up about Dirk's passing.

“Did Mallory Porter know what happened?”

“You mean that he might have been poisoned?”

“Uh, right.”

Tammy nodded. “That was why she canceled my cleaning. She said the police were going to be there asking a lot of questions. She wasn't too happy about that.”

“Unhappy about the questions or about Unger's death?”

Tammy laughed. “The questions, definitely. Neither of the women—Lydia or Mallory—liked Mr. Unger. They were always after Jeremy to get rid of him. But for whatever reason, he never would. Well, now that battle's over, anyway.” She held out one of the cookbooks. “I'll take this one,” she said. “And I should probably get new jars and lids and stuff. I'm going to try the pickled beets. I loved the ones my mother used to make.”

“A good choice.” Piper helped Tammy gather the items she needed, thinking the whole time about what the woman had said. There were a thousand questions forming in her head, but before she could get any of them in order, it was time to ring Tammy's items up.

“Why don't you leave your number with me,” Piper suggested, wanting to keep in touch with this woman. “In case anyone is looking for a cleaner.”

“Sure!” Tammy scrambled through her purse and pulled out, to Piper's surprise, a pack of business cards. The card she handed Piper had a cartoon drawing of an apple-shaped woman—obviously Tammy Butterworth—wielding a mop, along with her contact information. Piper turned the card over to see a QR code along with a website address.

“You have a website?”

“Doesn't everybody?” Tammy asked, to which Piper winced.

“I've been meaning to,” she admitted.

“Oh, you should get one up, honey! You have no idea how much business you could be losing without one. I can recommend my web designer. Her link's on my home page.”

“Thank you,” Piper squeaked. She handed over Tammy's purchases, which filled two large bags.

Tammy took off and Piper gazed after her, feeling properly chastised for her lack of good business practice. She'd been working, off and on, on putting together at least a makeshift website herself, but had made little progress, with the multiple distractions of her new life in Cloverdale getting in the way. She comforted herself with the fact that she did at least have flyers printed up, which she had given away at the previous summer's Cloverdale fair. Piper had reached for her cell phone to pull up Tammy's website when Aunt Judy walked in, holding Jack, her black-and-white mixed-breed, on a leash. Months ago she and Uncle Frank had taken in Jack as a skinny, fur-matted stray and gradually rehabilitated him into the healthy and lovable dog he now was.

“You don't mind my bringing Jack into the shop, do you?” Aunt Judy asked, unnecessarily.

“Of course not!” Piper bent down to ruffle Jack's fur as he yipped happily at the sight of her, his tail wagging furiously. “How's my most favorite dog in the world?” she asked, more of Jack than her aunt, though it was Aunt Judy who answered.

“He's fine but he needs his booster shots. I'll walk him over to Dr. Rhodes in a minute but we wanted to stop in and say hello.”

Jack yipped at that, as though agreeing, then calmed and sat obediently at Aunt Judy's bidding.

Aunt Judy's face sobered. “You've heard, perhaps, about that man who worked for Jeremy Porter?”

“Dirk Unger? Yes. Awful news.”

“It is, and I'm very sorry for him, despite the kind of person he seemed to be. But I'm most concerned at the moment for Sugar Heywood.”

Piper nodded. “She was my first thought when I heard about it, too.”

“Surely—”

“No, I don't think for a moment that Sugar could have done anything so terrible. But the connection is unavoidable after what Dirk Unger did to hurt her the other night.”

“But since poison is usually taken in food,” Aunt Judy said, “would that eliminate Sugar? She would hardly be fixing a meal for that man.”

“Pretty unlikely, yes, but there are other methods. At this point, though, not knowing what the poison was and how it acts means we can only make guesses, which is next to useless.”

“You're right.” Aunt Judy reached down to pat Jack, who'd started squirming. “Oh, how I wish Sugar had come to your party last night. I completely understand why she couldn't bring herself to do so but it might turn out to have been a bad mistake.”

Piper hoped they were unnecessarily worried, and Aunt Judy took Jack off to the vet's, leaving Piper to wonder how long it would take to pinpoint the cause and circumstances of Dirk Unger's death—and how many theories and accusations she would hear before the truth was finally uncovered.

8

P
iper began to lose count of the number of people who stopped in to discuss Dirk Unger's death. She looked forward longingly to Amy's arrival, which would allow Piper to escape to her back room for a while to make pickles—always a stress-easing as well as productive activity for her. When Amy walked in, however, her first words kept Piper rooted to the spot.

“I've heard from Kendra, one of our kitchen staff. Daddy's been questioning all the A La Carte people.”

“Really!”

Amy stowed her purse under the counter. “It was my day off so I didn't know that awful man, Dirk Unger, had lunch at A La Carte yesterday.” She wrinkled her nose. “Despite his obviously low opinion of everything we fixed.”

“Does that mean your father thinks that's where Unger was poisoned?” Piper's hopes for Sugar escaping suspicion rose. On the other hand, this was the restaurant where Amy worked part time, and she needed the job.

“As usual, Daddy didn't let me in on his official business, but it doesn't sound that way. Kendra said he was most interested in knowing if Unger had taken food home with him.”

“And had he?”

“No. He never does, and he didn't yesterday. Thank goodness! I mean, can you imagine if the poison could be traced to food from A La Carte's kitchen?”

“It would certainly ruin the restaurant and put a lot of people out of jobs. The poison, though, could have been slipped in by anyone, like whoever Unger was dining with or someone stopping at his table.” The multiple possibilities ran through Piper's head, though the images of all the evildoers had fuzzy blobs for faces.

“I know! How unfair would that be? But at least we seem to be off the hook.”

Piper agreed. “From your father's questions, it sounds like Unger's poison needed to be consumed fairly close to the time he became sick,” Piper said. “So it must have been ingested with his dinner or at least around dinnertime.” She still couldn't see that implicating Sugar, though it didn't definitely rule her out, either. Stranger things had been known to happen than a victim accepting food out of the blue from a person they'd hurt.

At that thought, Piper decided it was time for her to take a break. “I'm going to work on the carrots I have in the back.”

“Want any help?”

“Not on the carrots. If you'll take care of things out here, that'll give me the downtime I need right now. I've been dealing all morning with speculations on the poisoning. I'm most happy to turn that over to you for a while.”

“Fine with me. I'll just play super dumb when the subject comes up.”

Piper smiled, knowing that act wouldn't fool many, but she wished Amy luck and headed on back. Her project that day was spicy carrots and she looked forward to the peeling and chopping ahead. It was one of the first recipes she'd learned in Aunt Judy's kitchen and making it always brought back the proud feeling she'd had as a ten-year-old after helping process several pounds of Uncle Frank's organically grown vegetables (and snatching several tasty bites of the fresh carrots in the process).

Piper turned on her iPod, propped safely out of the way on an upper shelf, choosing a calming Gilbert and Sullivan song, “I'm Called Little Buttercup,” and hummed along as she pulled her carrots from the refrigerator and checked her supply of vinegar and spices. By the time she reached the chopping stage, her playlist had moved on to the operetta's “We Sail the Ocean Blue,” and she found her knife strokes keeping time smartly with the music.

She had brought her vinegar, water, and spice mix to a boil and was ready to add her carrot sticks when she heard a commotion in the shop. Piper recognized Sugar Heywood's voice and instantly stopped what she was doing and turned off her stove.

Amy leaned in through the dividing door. “Ms. Heywood wants to—” she began.

“Send her in,” Piper said, grabbing a towel to wipe her hands and turning off her music.

“Piper, I'm so sorry to bother you.” Sugar rushed past Amy, visibly upset. “I just didn't know where to turn.”

“What's happened?”

“It's Zach. They've taken him in for questioning!”

“Zach? Why?”

“It's that stupid poisoning of that stupid man, Dirk Unger. Just because Zach is a botany major and the poison came from some odd plant he might know about, they think he could have done it.”

Piper's head was swirling. She hadn't considered Zach at all. But Zach had been furious with Dirk Unger on behalf of his mother, she reminded herself, so Sheriff Carlyle's reasoning might be understandable.

Sugar had been pacing, her words tumbling over each other, and Piper opened out two of her folding chairs and directed her friend to sit down and take a few deep breaths.

“First things first,” Piper said. “What poison are they talking about?”

“It a plant called bloodroot. I never heard of it before but it grows wild everywhere. Zach is always out walking, looking for any interesting plants. Everyone who knows him knows that. But he's not looking for poisons! He'd never want to kill anybody, no matter what.”

“Bloodroot,” Piper said. “How did they come up with that?”

“Apparently they tested the food in Unger's kitchen. They found it in his leftover salad.”

“Do you know how it works?”

Sugar shook her head helplessly.

“Hold on,” Amy said from the doorway. She was typing rapidly into her iPhone. “I'm pulling it up now.”

They waited as Amy did her search. “Here it is. Bloodroot. It's an herb with thick roots and red juice. Grows mostly in woods. It has white flowers and all parts of it are poisonous.”

“What are the symptoms?”

“Let's see. Just touching it causes rashes. But if you eat it, it causes violent vomiting, then cardiac arrest. Wow! Who knew something like that was around?”

A botany student might know,
Piper thought.
But who else?
“How quickly does it act?” she asked.

Amy scrolled, mumbling incoherently as she read. “Ah! Here it is! One to two hours.”

Piper thought back to when they heard the sirens. What time was that? Seven thirty? Eight? She wasn't sure.

“Zach was here last night when he brought your cake, Sugar. That was around five thirty. But I don't think he hung around long. Did he come back home?”

“Not until late, maybe one in the morning. I was asleep, but I heard him come in. He said he was at his friend Justin's, watching a movie.”

“Good. That's an alibi.” As long as Justin can say Zach showed up there early. “Were you alone all evening?”

“Me? No. I wasn't up to coming to your party, as upset as I was, but my next-door neighbor, Ginnie, stopped in after Zach took off with the cake. We ended up baking cupcakes for Ginnie's grandkids who were coming over the next day.”

That covered Sugar's alibi,
Piper thought,
assuming Ginnie concurred.
Zach's alibi, on the other hand, was still pending.

“Did you call a lawyer for Zach?”

Sugar looked up in surprise. “No. Should I have? I didn't even think of it. I don't even know of one.”

“I think Zach should have someone with him.”

“But he's not guilty!”

“All the more reason. A lawyer will look after his rights. Scott Littleton's office is right down the street. I can vouch for him.”

Sugar hesitated, then said. “You're right. I should talk to Littleton. Maybe he can get this whole ridiculous thing straightened out and over with. Thank you, Piper. I knew you were the right person to come to.” Sugar had calmed considerably, now that she had a sense of direction.

“Piper's had plenty of experience—” Amy started to say until Piper shot her a look. She had far too much experience with past murders. She sincerely hoped Sheriff Carlyle would speedily arrest the proper culprit of this latest crime and let her stay happily out of it.

Sugar hurried out, having been pointed to Scott's office. A customer walked in almost immediately after, and Amy waited on her, leaving Piper to return to her spicy carrots. She turned on her stove but left her iPod off. There was far too much to think about.

Could Zach have done anything so terrible?
Piper didn't know him well, but the few times she'd met him he'd always struck her as a levelheaded person, or as levelheaded as twenty-year-olds could generally be. He obviously was very protective of his mother and had been furious over Dirk Unger's action after the Realtors' dinner.

It seemed to Piper, though, that if Zach had been angry enough to kill Unger, he would have done it immediately, or very soon after—violently and person-to-person, rather than secretively by poison. Poison just didn't seem like a young man's weapon of choice. However, Zach was a student of plant life. Could that have offered a special intellectual satisfaction that made it appealing?

Piper shook her head. She was thinking much too far ahead. The sheriff was simply questioning Zach. Hopefully, Sugar's son could verify his actions and whereabouts during the critical time. And that would be the end of it. Piper added the carrots to her simmering vinegar mixture, then left them to check on her jars in their water bath.

The jars of spicy carrots had been filled and sealed and were cooling when Piper heard an unfamiliar voice carrying from the front of the shop. In a moment, Amy appeared at the doorway.

“There's a lady who would like to speak with you,” she said. From the pucker of Amy's brow, Piper guessed it wasn't a customer wanting pickling advice. A salesperson? A charity donation request?

“Who is it?” Piper asked.

Amy paused, glancing back to the front of the store, then whispered, “It's Lydia Porter. Jeremy Porter's mother!”