Rotten to the Core (34 page)

Bree and Michael exchanged a glance, and then Bree nudged Michael and nodded toward Art. “Tell him.”

Michael straightened up and faced Art. “We kind of left something out the last time we talked to the police. Bree and I were at the dinner, and we left together, and Jason left with Daphne. But Bree and I were together the whole night. I didn’t want to say anything until she did.”

Chivalry lives
, Meg thought—and then realized the implications of what Michael had said. “But that means you couldn’t have been hauling Jason around in the middle of the night! That’s an alibi, you idiots!” Unless they were co-conspirators, but no way was Meg going to believe that.

Art struggled to suppress a smile, and Meg wondered if he was thinking the same thing. “Can we get back to last night? So there you all were, at Meg’s. What were you doing?”

“I was putting the finishing touches on dinner—boiling spaghetti, heating the garlic bread,” Meg answered.

“Who was in the kitchen?”

“Everyone, at one time or another.”

“So anyone could have slipped something into the food.”

“More or less. But nothing tasted off.”

Art smiled openly this time. “Turns out the stuff tastes like garlic. Handy, wasn’t it? Who knew what your menu was?”

“Nobody! Except me. Next you’re going to be telling me I did it.”

“Calm down, Meg. I’m not accusing anybody of anything at the moment. I’m just trying to work out the timeline. Let’s move on. You all ate. And everybody seemed fine after dinner?”

Three heads nodded in unison.

“What order did people leave in?”

“Michael left with Daphne. Bree decided to stay over—she has a room at the house. Seth left last, and I decided not to bother cleaning up the kitchen and just went to bed.”

“When did you start feeling sick?”

“I woke up a little after two, and I threw up. And then Bree did. And then we went downstairs looking for some juice or something. Anyway, Art, you know the rest. We felt sick, we were getting worse fast, and we called you. And here we are.”

Art stood up, then leaned against the wall so he could look at all of them at once. “So any one of you could have done it. Most of you have the expertise to calculate dosage of this pesticide.”

“What a minute!” Bree exploded. “It’s not that simple. How could anybody know how much one person would eat? Or how it would affect them? You saw yourself, different people showed different symptoms. And everyone ate everything, more or less.”

“Daphne didn’t eat much of the spaghetti,” Meg said slowly. “I thought she just didn’t like my cooking, but maybe she knew what was in it. But then, she watched Seth eat seconds, and I don’t know of any reason she’d have to hurt him. Maybe she just wanted to stir up trouble?”

“Or, if she killed Jason, she was trying to set up someone else. Anyone else—you, Michael, Bree. Whoever killed Jason knew what the right fatal dose was,” Art said grimly.

A thick silence fell. To her surprise, Meg felt tears behind her eyes. She saw Bree lean toward Michael, and he put an arm around her.

Art finally broke the silence. “We need to find Daphne. Any ideas? Michael, you know her best.”

“Hey, I don’t know her well,” Michael protested. “Other than her place and the GreenGrow office, I have no clue where else she might go.”

“She doesn’t have a car, she told me,” Meg added. “So she couldn’t go far. But where would she go? Does she have family around here?”

“We’re looking into that.”

The looming figure of Detective Marcus filled the doorway. “Cozy little gathering we have here. Getting your stories straight?”

Did he deliberately try to antagonize people? Meg wondered. “Nice to see you again, too, Detective. Please join us.”

Marcus looked momentarily nonplused by Meg’s remark and decided to ignore what he probably suspected was sarcasm. “I need to ask you some questions.”

“And we’d be delighted to answer them. Where would you like us to start?”

“To begin with, I want to talk to you separately, although it’s probably too late. Preston, you should have kept out of this.”

“Marcus, I was part of the scene, so I was already involved. But you go right ahead, and we’ll wait outside. Or maybe we’ll go find the cafeteria. Michael, Bree?”

Michael and Bree silently filed out in Art’s wake, leaving Meg alone with Detective Marcus. Marcus sat down in a vacated chair, pulled out a pad, and said, “Okay, from the top.”

Meg repeated her story, sticking to the facts. Marcus jotted a note or two. “So, anybody there could have done it, and almost everybody had a motive.”

“What was my motive? Or Seth’s?” Meg said indignantly.

“Would you rather it was your little employee? Or her new boyfriend?”

“I’d rather think it was Daphne. Is she still missing?”

“We have only Michael’s word for it that he took her home. Maybe he killed her, too, and dumped her somewhere on the way home.”

Meg stifled hysterical laughter. Her head hurt, she was dizzy again, and Marcus kept coming up with increasingly improbable scenarios. “Just find Daphne, will you? Ask her what her side of the story is. Then you can start assigning blame.”

Detective Marcus gave her a stony glare. “Ms. Corey, one man is dead, and more people could have been, last night. Someone has to answer for it. I’m just doing my job.”

He did have a point. “I know, Detective,” Meg said, contrite. “I’m sorry if I was out of line. As you pointed out, somebody tried to kill me, too, and I take that seriously. Please find whoever is doing this.”

“That’s what I aim to do. Thank you for your cooperation, Ms. Corey. I’ll go find the others now.”

“Oh, wait,” she called out after his retreating back. “When I go home, can I use my kitchen, or is it still considered a crime scene?”

“I have all I need,” he said and stalked out, leaving Meg feeling steamrolled again. He was right: he had only Michael’s word about what had happened after he and Daphne had left her house. Could Michael have killed Daphne? She just didn’t know. She trusted Bree, and Bree trusted Michael, so by some transitive property, she had to trust Michael. And that was the best she could do at the moment.

Where was Daphne?

Meg and Bree were cleared to leave before noon, although Meg was told that the hospital wanted to keep Seth around a while longer. Meg was happy to be liberated, and thanked her lucky stars that she still had insurance coverage. Right now she just wanted to get home.

Michael had hung around and volunteered to drive them back to Meg’s place. When they pulled into the driveway, Meg felt as though she had been gone for days, not for less than twelve hours. “I’m going in the front door,” she announced when Michael turned off the engine. “I can’t face the kitchen just yet.”

“Um, I can help you clean up, if you want,” Bree volunteered. Michael looked uncertain.

Meg took pity on them. “Michael, are you sticking around? You’re welcome to stay. Bree, I think the first thing I want is a nap, and then we can figure out what to do next.” She led the way to the front door and dug around for her keys. When she opened the door, she was greeted by Lolly, protesting loudly.

Meg laughed. “That’s right, you haven’t been fed, you little pig. Hey, you had dry food, so don’t try and go all pitiful on me.” Lolly continued to complain, but when she saw three humans, she retreated up the stairs in a huff. “Bree, I meant what I said. I’m going to crash for a while and then see how I feel. I’ll see you later.”

“Deal.” Bree and Michael looked like a pair of kids waiting for Mom to go away so they could do whatever they wanted. Meg had a pretty good idea what that was, so she beat a retreat to her bedroom. The unmade bed looked very welcoming. Meg crawled in, pulled the covers over her head, and was out in seconds.

When she awoke again, the sun cast slanted rays across the floor. She checked her clock: nearly five. She felt alert, but she also didn’t want to move, not just yet. She listened for a moment. No sound from the rest of the house, and she wondered if Bree and Michael were still there.

Bree and Michael. An interesting and unexpected combination. Most of the time Bree defended her independence fiercely, so to let down her guard with Michael would be a big step for her. And from what Meg had seen, Michael apparently did care for Bree, which was good.

Why had he popped into her head? She’d been thinking about Bree and Michael and . . . young love. They seemed so young to her, so untried; in contrast, she felt old. Had her past relationships shut down something in her? Eroded her confidence in herself, in her judgment about other people? There had never been anything like what she would call love in her life, although she had dated her share of men, but she didn’t want to jump into anything with Seth, either. For one thing, if things went wrong, it would be hard to avoid him, since he’d be running his business out of her property.

What Seth needed was a stable, long-term relationship and a houseful of kids and dogs and gerbils, and Meg wasn’t sure whether that was what she wanted, or if it was anything she could offer. But still . . . when he’d been in danger, she’d been terrified. Maybe she wasn’t ready to “have” him, but she didn’t want to lose him, either. She wanted a chance to find out if there might be anything between them.

She stretched and sat up. Time to get up, get back to her life. But as she walked past the window facing the orchard, Meg saw a flicker of movement. She stopped and looked out. Yes, there, at the springhouse. She felt a pang of irrational fear: had Jason come back to haunt her? No, she thought she recognized the dumpy outline, the slump of the shoulders.
Daphne.

What should she do? First, call Art. And then see if she could talk to Daphne without spooking her.

Meg picked up the phone and dialed the number for the police station, now engraved on her memory, and was put through quickly. “Art, it’s Meg.”

“Not again.” He chuckled. “What’s wrong this time?”

“I think Daphne’s up at the springhouse in the orchard.”

Suddenly Art was all business. “I’ll be there in five. Don’t do anything. Who else is there at the house?”

“Bree, and Michael, I think. They may be asleep.”

“Just sit tight, and I’ll be right there.” He hung up.

Right, like she was going to do nothing. Meg pulled on jeans, sweatshirt, shoes. She opened the hall door cautiously and listened. There was no sound from Bree’s room at the far end of the hall. Meg tiptoed down the stairs, found her coat and keys, and set off for the orchard.

She was panting by the time she reached the top of the hill.
Being poisoned takes something out of you
, she reflected wryly. She slowed as she approached the springhouse. She had been right: Daphne was sitting where Jason’s body had been, staring into space. She turned to watch Meg approach but made no other move.

Meg stopped about ten feet away from her, then dropped to the ground, leaning against the trunk of one of her apple trees. “What are you doing here, Daphne? The police have been looking for you.”

“This is where Jason died. I had to come here.”

“How’d you get here?”

“Walked. Took a while.”

“Why?”

Daphne ignored her question, wrapping her arms around herself and rocking back and forth. “Have you ever been in love? I mean, sick in love, so much that you’d do anything for the guy, even though you knew it was stupid and pointless?”

“Is that how you felt about Jason?”

“I did. For a long, long time. I dropped out of school so I could be with him, and my parents stopped talking to me. I stopped seeing any of my friends, so I could help him at GreenGrow. But he was so wonderful, at least at the beginning. He was smart and sure of himself, and he could talk to people, make them see what he saw, and he really believed in what he was doing, in GreenGrow. And I kept hoping and hoping that he’d see—I mean, really
see
me. And when we started sleeping together, I thought maybe it was happening, maybe things would work out. But I never meant anything to him.” Tears started running down her cheeks, and she ignored them. “Whenever he wanted a quickie, there was Daphne, always willing.” Her voice was tinged with bitterness. “Whenever he wanted any stupid job done, there was Daphne, again. God, I was a fool. But I loved him. And now he’s dead.”

Meg had a lot of questions she wanted to ask, but as she took a hard look at Daphne, she realized something was very wrong. “Daphne, did you take something? Are you trying to kill yourself?”

Daphne smiled sadly. “I had some left.”

Daphne had come here to die, Meg realized. And then suddenly she was boiling mad. “Damn it, Daphne, you’re not going to die here. I’m not going to let you. I’ll get you to the hospital.”

Daphne’s only response was to lean over and throw up. Meg waited until that bout had passed, then reached down and grabbed Daphne’s arms, hauling her to her feet. She had to get her down the hill, to her car, or Art’s if he showed up in time. Daphne felt like a large mass of dough, sloppy and boneless.
Come on, you silly cow. I am not going to let you die on my property.