Fudge Brownies & Murder (20 page)

He punched a button on a remote that sat next to his closed laptop. An opaque, gray shade descended from the ceiling in front of the problematic window, blocking the view and most of the cloud-filtered sunlight. "Better?"

"Yes, sir." She used her foot to swing the door shut as she passed by on her way to the improvised bed. They were enclosed in a twilight-hued cocoon.

Alex had been right. The couch was a nice place to add some adventurous spice to their sex life. That was until someone knocked on the
unlocked
office door. The naughty encounter went from romantically exciting to fervently hoping one of his employees didn't get a glimpse of their boss and his wife in the buff.

Alex used an excuse to stall opening his office door, but Amy didn't hear what he said because she was too busy trying to wriggle back into her skinny jeans without pulling a thigh muscle. She had
just
zipped up her knee-high boots when Alex opened the door and said, "Jarod. What a surprise to see you here today."

The man appeared startled by Amy's presence, so she decided to save them all the awkwardness and excused herself. As she was walking down the hall, she heard the graphic designer explain that he had seen the Jeep in the parking lot and decided to stop to see if they could talk about a project. The men's voices echoed through the empty hallways of the building as she slinked away for some fashion maintenance. Alex was still chatting about a scoreboard in a baseball stadium when she emerged from the restroom after doing a quick hair tidying session. She had been sporting a serious case of bed head. There was a floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the hallway that overlooked the street. Since she could hear the conversation was still ongoing with no signs of wrapping up, she decided to check out the view. Her knees were still feeling a little wobbly from the very energetic impromptu romantic rendezvous. Amy leaned against the wall beside the window and watched people strolling along the sidewalk.

A man and woman emerged from a silver Prius parked half a block away. She recognized the walnut-colored curls of the woman. It was like her superpower, thanks to formerly being a hairdresser, recognizing people by their haircuts. Candi stood on her tippy-toes and kissed the tall, dark, and handsome man who had been the passenger in the same car. Instead of a winter coat, he wore a long, white lab coat. He crossed the street and disappeared from sight.

The hallways on the second floor of the Quantum Media building formed a plus sign with full windows at each end. Amy sprinted around the corner of the hallway. When she reached the window that overlooked the street the man was walking down, she spotted him pulling open the door to a business. She squinted to read the sign. It was a pharmacy.

Amy backtracked to Alex's office. She rapped on the open door and said, "Since you're busy, I'm going to go on a quick shopping trip. I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Okay. Have fun," Alex called from the other side of the door.

She had left her coat in her husband's office, but the bulky fisherman's sweater would be warm enough for the quick trip across the street. When she exited through the back door, the cold was…bracing. At least her body was nice and toasty from the best cardio workout in the world.

Anderson Compounding Pharmacy was new to downtown Kellerton. She had seen an announcement in the Downtown Business Association's newsletter that had been delivered to Riverbend Café. Amy pulled open the same door that the man had disappeared behind. She entered a small gift shop area filled with candles, costume jewelry, and assorted knickknacks. At the back of the cozy store, the shelves full of bottles and boxes—the accoutrements of the pharmacy—were visible through a wall of windows.

Candi's hottie in a lab coat was chatting with a customer at the pick-up window. He and the vegan extremist made a lovely couple. At least visually. What kind of personality yin went with her crazy yang?

Amy checked out a display of dangly rhinestone earrings while the pharmacist chatted with the elderly customer. When the woman wandered away from the window, Amy stepped up to it. "Excuse me. I was wondering what a compounding pharmacy does. It's a term that I'm not familiar with."

The pharmacist, named Thad, according to the embroidered patch on his lab coat, flashed a toothpaste commercial-worthy smile. "We make medications based on a patient's needs. So custom dosages, formulations that don't include unnecessary ingredients, different forms like liquid or capsules…basically we do customized prescriptions. We can even add flavoring to make things like children's medicines easier to take."

That last nugget of information would be useful to Carla. The rest could be of great interest to her husband. Esther Mae had taken a lethal dose of the wrong medication because it had been altered to look exactly like the high blood pressure medicine she took every day. Shepler had shared that important clue with her to see if she could make any sense of it after all of his research had come to dead ends.

"That's fascinating. I'll definitely come back the next time I need a prescription filled."

"Please do. We love new customers."

Amy turned to leave, but a display of pink and blue in the far corner caught her attention. The baby area. She walked around the shelves picking up stuffed bunny rabbits and bibs screen printed with pink elephants while a steady series of
bings
signaled new customers entering the pharmacy and gift shop. Everything in the baby display was adorable, but an apple-green mat with a divided plate molded right into the flexible silicone was ingenious. A plate and placemat all in one. It would be the perfect accompaniment to the baby food cookbook.

She picked out two mats, one green and one red, then headed to the checkout counter near the door. After making the purchase she steeled herself for a few seconds before proceeding to the front door. She had lost all of the Alex-generated body heat while perusing the gift area. It was going to be a cold walk back to Quantum. Amy glanced over her shoulder. There was a new person chatting with the model-perfect, drug-altering pharmacist. Rori. From afar, the conversation looked rather flirty. The yoga instructor smiled and tilted her head to the side as she laughed at something he said.

Amy had only pushed the door open a few inches as she observed the conversation. Suddenly the handle she was grasping moved on its own. The momentum propelled her outside, onto the sidewalk. "Sorry," a man in a navy-blue business suit said as Amy flailed past him. "I didn't see you."

"No problem," she mumbled as she hoisted the strap of her purse back onto her shoulder. All of the yoga classes with Rori had actually given her a bit more grace and agility, but it wasn't easy to instantly gain composure after being unexpectedly yanked out a doorway.

Her mind was on overload as she walked back toward the parking lot where Alex's black Jeep was parked. She could feel the blood pumping through the veins in her neck, a result of the surprise of being forcefully ejected from the pharmacy. The unexpected discovery of the man who could easily disguise low blood pressure medication as the high blood pressure pills that Esther Mae needed to take was very friendly with two suspects in the murder case. Okay, so one was a suspect only in Shepler's book, and the other one was a suspect only in her eyes, but they were both tied to the case in some way.

The headlights on Alex's Jeep flashed when Amy veered off the sidewalk and into the employee parking lot. She broke into a trot to make it to the warm vehicle. A puff of heat greeted her when she pulled open the door. She grabbed the handlebar Alex had attached to the roll cage above the passenger door and pulled herself up into the lifted four-wheel drive.

"You left your coat in my office." Alex turned and retrieved her wool coat from the back seat. He spread it over her as if it was a blanket. "Why didn't you ask for it before leaving? You have to be half frozen by now."

She snuggled under the warm fabric and sniffled as the heat from the Jeep's vents hit her nose, which was doing an impression of a melting ice cube. "I didn't even think about it. My sweater is pretty heavy, so it wasn't too bad."
And the information she had uncovered was well worth it.

"Still want Indian food?" Alex asked as he put the Jeep in gear.

"Yes, please."

Amy warmed up most of the way on the journey across town. Spicy food would finish the job by heating her up from the inside out. She and Alex always ordered a tableful of entrees to share and sample when they visited the Indian restaurant. After they were seated, Amy studied the four-page-long menu. A big array of meal choices was both exciting and daunting. When two-thirds of the menu sounded good, how was she supposed to decide?

"Hey, look who's here," Alex said.

She followed his gaze to the checkout counter. Shepler was paying the cashier. Two bags filled with foam containers sat on the counter next to him. Apparently Amy wasn't the only person craving Indian food that day. She made the split-second decision to leave the ordering up to Alex. The evening would be much more enjoyable if she got the pharmacy information out of her head and into Shepler's crime-solving trained mind. "I'm going to go say hello and see how Carla's doing. I'm kind of surprised she's eating dinner from here since she's had such bad heartburn lately. I want the tandoori eggplant, but you can order whatever else you want to share."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Anything? How about curried goat?"

She hadn't seen that item in her perusal of the menu. "Ummm, sure. You know I'm always game to try something new."

He chuckled as she walked away. Shepler hadn't seen her and was turning to walk out the door with his load of spicy takeout. "What a surprise to see you here," she said as she finally made it through the maze of tables.

Shepler looked over his shoulder at her and rolled his eyes. "Yup. It's a surprise for me, too. I thought Carla couldn't eat anything spicy, but when your pregnant wife wants palak paneer, you go get it, even if you have no idea what it is." He tilted his head to the side to peer behind her. "Have you and Alex been here? Is the food good? I didn't even know this restaurant was here until Carla gave me the address and told me to go pick up our order."

"Yes, the food is excellent. And palak paneer is spinach puree with chunks of Indian cheese." She looked around. They were alone in the entrance area. "I need to tell you something. I discovered a new compounding pharmacy near Quantum Media this afternoon. They make custom medications. One of their services is making the drugs in different forms, like liquids or capsules instead of tablets. So prescriptions filled there may not look the same as from somewhere else."

"That's interesting. I wasn't aware of that business."

"It could help you in two ways. First off, they can flavor liquid medicines to make them more palatable for kids. So you may want to keep that in mind for the baby." She took a deep breath and let it out. "Also, I saw two women chatting in a very friendly manner with the pharmacist."

Shepler lifted up the bags. "Hungry wife at home. Why would I care who the guy was talking to?"

"One was Candi Edwards, the scary crazy woman I've told you about who works at the vegetarian restaurant booth that Esther Mae tried to steal customers from." She didn't want to tell him the second person, but she had been almost fatally wrong about someone's character before. "The other person was Rori."

"What are you two doing?" Carla asked as she watched Amy hand off another huge tote bag to her mother. There had to have been at least six of the bulging bags that made Amy look like a toddler carrying her mom's purse. "Where are you taking those bags and what is in them?"

"Into the nursery. Just a few more things I know you'll need for the baby," her mother answered as she dragged the newest bag over the floor because it was apparently too heavy to lift. "Amy offered to pick the items up for me."

"Please stop with the baby stuff. At the rate you two are going, there won't be any room in the nursery for the baby." She looked at Bruce, who was sitting in his recliner completely engrossed in a football game playing on his laptop. "A little help here, honey."

"What?"

"Tell them to lay off of the shopping sprees."

He looked at Amy and with a completely stone-faced expression said, "You can't go shopping for anybody or anything from now on."

"Okay, I can absolutely not abide by those terms." Amy laughed as she disappeared out the front door again.

"Uh-huh," Bruce mumbled as his attention returned to the computer screen.

"Thanks for being so helpful. You do realize, that's probably stuff for a baby shower. That thing that I
don't
want to have."

He held up both of his hands. "Don't know. Don't understand. Don't want to get in the middle of it."

Carla tossed the book she had been reading about breastfeeding techniques on the coffee table. Napping, reading, and threatening Amy and her mother about the consequences of throwing an unsanctioned baby shower were pretty much the only things in her life. The calm before the up-all-night baby storm. The bed rest restriction had been lifted, so she was free to move around as much as she would like. The baby was due in a little over a week. So any labor resulting from her being in a vertical position would no longer be classified as premature. Her mother had tried to get her to go out and walk around the mall. She could get some shopping done herself and maybe even start the labor. That last thought kept her glued to the familiar couch, reading about mammary glands and football hold feeding positions. She wasn't in a rush to become a mom, even though the new role was imminent.

Amy came in the front door again. "Last one," she announced.

Her mother trotted from the hallway leading to the nursery. "Everything is wonderful. Perfect."

Carla used the couch arm to push herself up to standing. She was immediately rewarded with the intense sensation of a baby-squished, full bladder. "What's perfect?" she asked as she waddled toward the powder room that had been a lifesaver many times during her extended stay on the couch. The full bathroom was upstairs. A long journey when time was precious.