Page 61 of A Rose of Steel
“The plant that you get castor oil from.”
“Castor oil. Jesus. I took that stuff my entire childhood. Are you telling me now it’s poisonous?”
“Not the oil, only the protein of the plant. And it’s always been poisonous.”
“You said before that he inhaled it. Now that you know what it is, you still think that?”
“I do,” I said. “Kind of puts things in perspective for me.”
“How so?”
“Because there were crumbs on Alex’s mouth when he gave Bumper CPR. I wondered where they’d come from.”
“Where did they come from?”
“Like I just said, you get ricin from the protein of the plant. It would have to be extracted. Someone—whoever killed him—must have crushed it to get into the inhaler. Maybe it still had small pieces of the castor bean in it, it came up when Bumper inhaled, stuck on his mouth and Alex picked it up.”
“That makes sense.”
“Only...” I hesitated while I thought it out. “It is making me wonder how it could have been done because ricin takes a while to kill.”
“What do you mean ‘a while’?”
“Like a couple days. Symptoms come within about four to ten hours. Death, though, might even take up to thirty-six.”
“Oh. Jesus,” Pogue said. “Is Alex going to die?”
“No,” I said, nervousness suddenly bubbling up in me. “Why would you say that?”
“You just said it took a while. I just thought...”
“Don’t think like that. Geesh.”
“Okay. Okay,” he said. “But doesn’t that mean somebody fed it to Bumper days before the wedding.”
“Maybe.” I took in a breath, my words distant. I’d taken to wondering had Alex taken enough of it for it to kill him, too.
“Maybe?”
I thought about the conclusions I’d already made and everything I’d learned. “I’m sure it was the inhaler, I just don’t know when he was introduced to it.”
“So tell me how they did it.”
“Ricin is deadly as an aerosol, and its water soluble. Someone mixed the albuterol in his canister with ricin. And the symptoms of ricin poisoning when inhaled are shortness of breath, tightness in the chest. Sweating.”
“Aren’t those the same symptoms as when you’re having an asthma attack?”
“Yep,” I said. “So no one thought anything different. Not me. Not Alex. Not even Bumper. He probably just thought his asthma wasn’t clearing up.”
“So I need to find someone who had access to his inhaler,” Pogue said.
“Good luck with that,” I said. “Everyone at that wedding had an inhaler, and Mrs. Hackett told me she kept them all over the house. Everyone knew that and anyone could have gotten to one.”
“Were you questioning Mrs. Hackett, Romie?” He let out a snort. “I asked you not to butt in.”
“I didn’t question her. I didn’t even know he’d been murdered when she told me. She was just upset the inhalers hadn’t worked and explained to me how she was always ready with one in case he had an attack. I’m leaving it up to you from here. That’s the end of my report. You want to solve it on your own, believe me, you’re welcome to it.”
I hung up the phone and hung my head. I felt bad for lying to Pogue. I couldn’t leave it up to him. Solving that last murder had put a bug inside of me and I couldn’t wait to share what I’d just learned with my unlikely ally, Auntie Zanne. I was becoming just like her—lying and conniving.
