A Murder of Crows by Jan Dunlap Read Free Book Online Page B

My mouth began to water in response. Just the thought of Luce’s fresh salmon had me salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs. I followed my wife inside to where she was standing by the counter, already measuring ingredients into a bowl for homemade biscuits.
    “Why in the world would Red want to hurt herself?” Luce posed the question when she saw me.
    She’d been thinking it over, too, which didn’t surprise me in the least. In the year since our wedding, I’d learned a secret about my bride. Luce was as stubborn as I was when it came to solving a puzzle. If I was a Sherlock Holmes, she was my Dr. Watson.
    “Because she wanted more days off than Chef Tom would give her,” I said in exasperation. “I have no idea! I just think it’s too coincidental that the one time Red might have key information for a murder investigation, she’s suddenly memory-less.”
    Luce stopped blending milk into the mixture.
    “It’s a murder now?”
    I’d forgotten she didn’t know.
    “Rick was in my office this morning when he got a call,” I explained. “Sonny was poisoned. The medical examiner found traces of hemlock in his stomach. In lieu of any evidence that he committed suicide, they’re treating it as a homicide.”
    “Oh, my,” she breathed, staring into the bowl of dough. “What about an accidental death? Maybe Sonny mistakenly ate … no,” she declared, affirming my own opinion. “No way. Sonny was an expert woodsman. He couldn’t have mistakenly ingested hemlock.”
    She went back to stirring the biscuits, but I could tell from the tilt of her head that she was still mulling it over. I may not be a mind-reader like Luce, but I do know body language, and body language doesn’t lie.
    Sure enough, a moment later, she added, “Wild ginseng does look an awful lot like water hemlock. If you were harvesting your own ingredients for brewing a natural tea, I guess it could be possible that …”
    “You’d pick poisonous water hemlock by mistake? Remind me not to drink any loose leaf ginseng tea the next time someone offers it to me,” I told her. “For that matter, I don’t think I want to drink any more ginseng tea, period.”
    Luce dumped the dough onto the floured kitchen counter and patted it out with her fingers into an oval shape.
    “I’m just saying it could happen,” she insisted. “I know Sonny was into natural foods. Maybe he routinely harvested his own tea leaves. Lots of people hunt for edible mushrooms and roots these days to use in their diets.”
    I suddenly remembered Red reassuring Mrs. Delite that her meal was all organic. Maybe Luce was onto something here. Maybe Sonny’s death was just a terrible mistake—he’d taken an early morning stroll, picked some leaves and thrown them into his morning cup of tea, thinking he was going to savor some wild ginseng.
    “But what about the scarecrow get-up he was wearing?” I wondered aloud. “You’re the one who thought that was a clear indicator of foul play,” I reminded her.
    She looked me up and down.
    “Maybe I spoke out of turn,” she said.
    I glanced down at my weathered blue jeans and my favorite flannel shirt that I’d worn to work. Stick an old hat on me, and I could be Sonny’s fashion double.
    “Okay, so maybe the clothes aren’t a dead giveaway.”
    Luce groaned.
    “Sorry. I didn’t mean that intentionally,” I tried to apologize. “It was a slip of the tongue. Bad Bob! Bad Bob!” I reprimanded myself.
    Luce laughed and cut the dough into biscuits.
    I watched my wife’s expert chef’s hands smoothly transfer the biscuits onto a waiting cookie sheet. She could probably do it in her sleep, I realized. Had Sonny likewise been on automatic early Sunday as he strolled the Arboretum and unthinkingly tossed in a deadly leaf to steep in his morning tea?
    Stranger things had happened, I supposed, though at the moment I honestly couldn’t think of any.
    “I think you should call Rick and tell him about the ginseng,” I told