Lye in Wait (2 page)

The sandy-haired cop came back in but hovered near the back
door, looking as though he'd rather be almost anywhere else. I
couldn't really blame him.

The EMTs must have let in the next arrivals. We heard them
coming down from above and moved off the narrow stairs so they
could enter the room. First came a tall, thin, balding man who
looked like an undertaker, but wore the same dark blue uniform
as Sandy Hair. He introduced himself as Sergeant Zahn. Behind
him came another man, wearing jeans and a maroon, collared
shirt under a sweater the color of fall chestnuts. Sawdust clung to
the elbow of the sweater. His dark hair had begun to gray at the
temples, and his brown eyes moved around the room, lingering
for a moment as something snagged his interest, then flicking to
the next detail.

Looking relieved, the young officer hurried over to them. The
three men talked for a minute, then Sandy Hair went upstairs. I'd
been able to identify the paramedics, the firemen, and the police
by their uniforms. Who was the guy wearing jeans?

"Ladies," Sergeant Zahn said, "I'm very sorry for your loss." It
sounded like patter right out of a TV crime drama, and I could tell he was really thinking about something else. "We need for you to
move upstairs while we process this room. Detective Ambrose here
will need to ask you some questions."

Ah. Detective Ambrose.

Sergeant Zahn went outside and took out yet another cell phone.
Meghan moved back to the bottom of the stairway, but I shifted
closer to the spatter of lye on the floor, guarding it from the feet
of the emergency personnel. Detective Ambrose looked around the
room again, his gaze methodical, his attention pausing for several
seconds on Walter, on the glass lying on the floor, and then on my
face.

He raised his eyebrows, and I thought he was going to chastise
me for not hopping to obey the sergeant's orders.

But instead he said, "You found him?"

"Yes"

"And you are?"

"Sophie Mae Reynolds.

"You live here?"

I nodded.

Ambrose waved toward Walter. "What about him?"

"What... Did he live here? No. Across the alley, in that little cottage." I pointed. "Walter is-was-our local handyman, fix-it guy,
whatever you want to call it. He was going to build a new raised
bed for our vegetable garden this morning."

He walked over and gazed down at the body. "Poor bastard," he
said. His brow furrowed and he bent to take a closer look at Walter's face. "If you could go ahead and wait upstairs, Ms. Reynolds,
I'll be there in a moment. I'd like to take you over to the station in
order to get a proper statement."

"I just wanted to tell you to be careful where you step," I said.
"This spill's caustic."

Ambrose straightened. "What is it?"

"It's sodium hydroxide," I said.

"Sodium hydroxide."

"Lye."

"Lye? Why would..." he trailed off, looking back down at
Walter.

"I don't know. I mean, I think it's there on the floor because he
drank it and then dropped the glass, but I don't know why he'd do
that. Drink it, I mean. I can see why he'd drop the glass, of course."
I closed my mouth to stop my babbling.

"How do you know it's lye?"

"By the smell. And I stuck my finger in it."

He raised one eyebrow.

"I know, I know. Stupid," I said. "But I was a little rattled. Anyway, it's slick, definitely alkaline. And has that flat, almost sweetish
smell. It's quite distinctive."

Ambrose leaned over the stain. "All I smell is something
minty."

"Peppermint" I leaned forward, too. Sniffed. The peppermint
scent was coming from the pool on the floor. "But I can smell the
lye, too."

He straightened. "Not many people'd be able to peg lye by the
texture and smell."

I let that hang.

"Any idea where the stuff came from?" he asked.

"I don't know. Can't be mine."

"You don't keep any on hand to clear sink clogs?" His tone was
mild, but he never blinked and his eyes never left my face.

"Um, not for that, no," I said, flustered. Behind me I heard
Meghan make a noise in her throat.

The skin seemed to tighten across Ambrose's features.
"Meaning...?"

"Well, I use lye, yes. But," I said, pointing to the liquid on the
floor, "that's not mine. Or at least I didn't mix it up." I stopped
and took a deep breath. "Look, I keep lye here. Plenty of it, but I
haven't needed any for a week or so. I don't see how the lye Walter
drank could have come from my supply."

"Your supply."

"Yes"

He sighed. "Ms. Reynolds, perhaps you would indulge me
with an explanation of just why you have `plenty of lye' on the
premises."

"Oh. I guess I haven't been very clear, have I? I use sodium
hydroxide to make cold-process soap, which is a large part of my
handmade toiletry business. You mix the granules with water to
activate the lye, then combine it with oils at certain temperatures.
The resulting chemical reaction produces soap." I just managed to
stop myself before I began spewing information about saponification and superfatting.

A displeased expression settled on Detective Ambrose's face.
"Show me where you keep it."

"Sure" I went to a lower cupboard beside the refrigerator, knelt
in front of it, and reached for the combination lock.

"Wait" He squatted next to me. Up close, his sweater smelled
of fresh-cut wood. Pulling on a pair of rubber gloves, he asked,
"What's the combination?"

Staring at his hands, my mind went blank.

"Ms. Reynolds?"

I blinked and my brain came back online. I gave him the numbers and carefully he spun the dial forward, back, forward again,
slid the lock off the hasp, and opened the door. Inside sat two
five-gallon buckets of sodium hydroxide granules with snap-on
lids and skull-and-crossbones labels. Several empty gallon jugs sat
on a shelf above, each of which had a rough skull and crossbones
drawn on with permanent marker and the word POISON in bold
red ink.

Detective Ambrose stood. "So what are the plastic jugs for?"

"When I'm going to be making a lot of soap-and when I make
soap, I make a lot at a time-it's expedient to mix up all the lye I'll
need at once. It doesn't react with plastic, so these work well for
storing it. I always keep the solid sodium hydroxide in here-and
the liquid lye once it's mixed. I'm careful about keeping the lock
on.

He crossed his arms over his chest.

Meghan spoke from where she waited by the stairs. "She's very
careful with the chemicals, Detective. I have a ten-year-old daughter, and Sophie Mae would never do anything to endanger her."

I flashed her a grateful glance.

"And you are?" Detective Ambrose turned to face her.

"Meghan Bly. I own this house" Her voice trembled at little at
the end.

"I see." He turned back to me.

"So how would... Walter, right? ... How would Walter get access
to your lye? Did he know the combination?"

I frowned. "No. I never told him. Never needed to."

Ambrose looked skeptical. "And that's all of it there in the cupboard? You don't have it anywhere else, maybe in liquid form?"

I shook my head.

"You know, Ms. Reynolds, anyone can make a mistake."

"That is not my lye."

He stood watching me and, as I felt the flush creep up my
face, I cursed the Scandinavian complexion that showed my every
emotion.

"So despite the fact you have literally buckets full of lye here
in this room, and a man lies dead on the floor apparently from
drinking lye, you don't think there's a connection?"

"I don't-"

"A man, who, I might add, doesn't even live here? Who could
have accessed the lye without your knowledge?"

"I never told him the combination. Not even the girl who
works for me can get into that cupboard if I don't open the lock
for her." I paused, realizing what Ambrose had just said.

Since stumbling upon Walter, my thoughts had been focused
in a tight beam, concerned only with tamping down my visceral
reaction so I could concentrate on the practical details of how to
deal with a dead body in my workroom. Now it occurred to me to
wonder why he'd taken a swig of lye in the first place.

"Wait a minute. He...he did it on purpose?" I rubbed my hand
over my face. "Oh, God. He...of course... he committed-" But I
couldn't say it, struggling to swallow away the dread that settled
into my chest just from thinking the word.

Ambrose's gaze held mine in an almost physical grip. A few
beats while no one spoke, and finally he looked away. But before
he did, something gentle-sympathy? kindness?-passed through
his eyes. I tried not to be obvious as I let out my breath.

He put the combination lock in a plastic bag. "I'll be happy to
drive you to the station for that statement."

Meghan said, "We'll drive right over, after we freshen up and
get our nerves under control. Say, in half an hour?"

Ambrose didn't look happy but agreed. In Meghan's former
life she'd been a lawyer-technically she could still practice-so
I guessed we were within our rights. And the ugly truth was that
Walter's death, besides being horrifying and sad, could present
legal issues since he'd died in her house.

I wondered if I could somehow prove he hadn't used my lye to
kill himself.

Zahn came back in, and Ambrose turned toward him. Meghan
started up the stairs, but I just stood there, looking at our handyman still lying on the cold concrete, and hated myself and pretty
much everyone else for having to think about liability at a time
like this. I'd liked Walter Hanover a lot. He'd been a fixture in the
neighborhood for years and had been a great help to Meghan, her
daughter, and me. He lived across the alley in the former guesthouse for the larger house facing the street behind ours. A gentle
soul, he worked hard and always had a cheerful word for everyone.
Whatever despair had driven him to deliberately choose such a
horrible death must have been grim indeed.

My eyes felt hot. I blinked, hard.

Freshen up, Meghan had said. Not a bad idea, come to think of
it. A splash of cold water on my face and a splash of Scotch down my gullet. Or perhaps better to wait on the latter until after I'd
given my statement. I trudged upstairs to find a cold-water spigot
and talk to my housemate before heading over to the Cadyville
Police Station.

Below, I heard Zahn say, "For God's sake, Ambrose. I don't care
if it is your day off-go home and change. Makes the department
look bad."

As I walked through the door to the kitchen, Brodie's vigorous
displeasure at being shut away from the excitement drowned the
detective's response.

MEGHAN AND I WERE roommates at the University of Washington. Then she went on to law school, and I married Mike Reynolds
and went to work in the administration office of the Lake Washington School District. The job was comfortable-boring, but
comfortable-and I never got around to looking for another one.
Then, six years into our marriage, lymphoma struck Mike a killing
blow. The doctors caught it late, and only three months later I was
a widow. Like finding a new job, we'd never gotten around to having children.

Meghan married Richard and had Erin. After she passed the
bar, she and her husband bought the house in Cadyville, about
twenty-five miles north of Seattle, and she opened a practice specializing in contract law. Three years later, her husband turned
out to be a real jerk, with both a secret gambling habit, which had
drained their savings, and a not-very-discreet girlfriend.

She divorced him, closed her law practice, and apprenticed
as a massage therapist. Less than a year later, my husband died. The offer to come live with Erin and Meghan came at a miserable,
lonely time in my life, so I quit my job, moved to Cadyville, and
went to work at the local bookstore. I started selling my soaps and
personal care products as a lark, but last year I took the plunge and
quit my day job. Now Winding Road is my full-time business, and
I love it.

As promised, Meghan drove us to the police station. After a
gray-haired officer took our fingerprints-just routine they told
us, but it gave me the creeps-Ambrose talked to each of us separately. In addition to asking me the same questions he'd asked
before about the lye, he also wanted to know about anyone who
might have access to my workroom, when I'd last mixed lye for
soap, and whether there had been any left over. I told him I often
left the outside door unlocked and always did when Walter was
doing work back there, and that I'd last mixed lye eight days before
and had used it all to make that batch of soap. I told him the glass
on the floor didn't belong to us, that Walter must have brought it
with him.