Page 67 of A Rose of Steel
I moved my hand to bring it up to hold my head, it felt heavy, but accidently knocked the brown bag I’d set on the desk onto the floor.
What’s in here?
I opened it up and found little blue, plastic containers with white tops. There were a couple dozen or more. I picked one up. Written on a piece of masking tape attached to the lid was B17.
B17. I knew that. It was associated with amygdalin.
Ahhh... I had seen that on his list of alternative treatment. I opened it up and there were seeds inside. I picked up several other blue containers out of the bag and they had labels that matched the names of things from Doc Westin’s list for alternative cancer treatments.
Did he have one for ricin?
I dug through the bag and found it. It was empty.
“What happened to you?” I said, speaking out loud as I looked into the empty container. “Did Doc Westin use you, or did someone else take you?”
I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding and thought about what I should do.
Tell my cousin, the sheriff? Even though I’d told Pogue what killed Bumper, I was sure that Pogue hadn’t discovered yet that the killer had easy access to the murder weapon thanks to the lady Voodoo herbalists who were growing castor beans in their backyards. And I surely didn’t want to tell him it was because of Auntie Zanne it was being grown.
I could just imagine how that would go. He’d want to question her and she wouldn’t cooperate. It would be a rehash of what had happened in the first murder investigation. She’d been so awful to him, smacking him with her wooden spoon for questioning Josephine Gail, keeping information from him, and generally telling him that he didn’t have what it took to figure a murder out. And in the end, when she and I were the ones who figured it out, it didn’t do much for his ego. Although it wasn’t entirely his fault, he did have to go out of town leaving us there to snoop.
Was there some way I could tell him about what I’d found and not tell him the part that Auntie Zanne had played?
Wait...
I cocked my head to the side and frowned. What was I even considering telling him? I thought about my conclusions, it was even more outlandish than Auntie Zanne’s gratuity and bribery murder plot.
My theory, if you looked between the lines, was that Doc Westin, the man with the inhalers and missing ricin, was the person who had killed Bumper Hackett, even though he’d been dead a good two months before it happened. I’d come to that decision because he was the only one who had both of the instruments of his death.
Geesh, maybe I really should just leave the investigating up to Pogue, because that sounded crazy..
Chapter Thirty-One
“Why would you even tell them to meet you at Angel’s Grace?” I asked.
“I thought Rhett and Hailey were going to be there.”
We were on our way to the Community Center. Auntie hadn’t said two words about bribery and murder to Shane Blanchard and Coach Buddy when she’d seen them at the funeral yesterday, or so I thought. But after we got home, Auntie had sprung it on me that after I had excused myself from their conversation, she’d asked them to come and meet her at the Community Center the next morning.
“And where are they now?” I said, not sure I wanted to know the answer. “Are they coming?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “I couldn’t reach either one of them.”
“Are they together?”
“Who?”
“Rhett and Hailey,” I said.
Auntie Zanne sucked her tongue. “Why do you want to know that?”
“Never mind,” I said.
“What if they bring some more of the poison?”
“Who?” My turn to ask.
“Shane Blanchard and Coach Buddy.”
