Death by Coffee by Alex Erickson Read Free Book Online Page A

here and I hadn’t seen him carrying a bag from somewhere else. Could his lunch have been in his briefcase, prepared by Heidi herself? How hard would it have been to slip some peanut shavings into his ham sandwich while removing his EpiPen at the same time?
    Heidi noticed me staring again and leaned forward to whisper something to Mason. He turned, shot me an irritated look, and then rose. Heidi followed suit and they both stormed out of the store. I was guessing I wouldn’t be seeing them here again.
    Mason glanced back as the doors swung closed. The look on his face caused my heart to skip a beat. There was an unspoken threat there, as if he was warning me to leave them alone. I got the distinct impression that if I didn’t, I very well might be the next one to die.

5
    Needless to say, I wasn’t worth much for the next few hours. I couldn’t get my mind off Heidi and Mason and what they’d talked about. I very well might have overheard them talking about a man’s murder for goodness’ sake!
    During that time I screwed up two orders and dropped a third before Vicki stepped in and took over.
    “Take a break, Krissy,” she said. “You look wiped.”
    While “wiped” wasn’t exactly the word I would have used, I didn’t object. I handed her the mochaccino I’d been making and scuttled off into the quiet of the office. I closed the door and sat down in one of the chairs, thoughts racing.
    Could Brendon Lawyer actually have been murdered?
    I normally liked letting the police do their jobs while I kept my nose far, far away from their business, but this had happened right across the street from me, to a man whom I’d just served. They might have classified it as an “accident,” but after hearing the Lawyers talk, I wasn’t so sure.
    It was a mystery.
    That was a bad thing.
    Mysteries have always intrigued me. I think it had a lot to do with the books my dad wrote. He used to let me read each and every one ahead of time. I would do my best to see if I could figure out the killer or where the missing link was, and often I would help him improve upon the novel. I liked mysteries. They were like puzzles. You took seemingly unconnected pieces and found ways to fit them together so you could see the whole picture.
    But my love of them was also what got me into a lot of trouble in my youth. I’d see mysteries in everything and would often insist on trying to solve them whether they needed solving or not. There was this one time when I could have sworn the school librarian was sneaking smokes in the bathroom. I could smell the smoke almost every time I went in there and she would slip into the bathroom at least two times every class period. I’d been so sure of myself, I took my theories to the principal, insisting something should be done.
    Turns out, the librarian had an extremely overactive bladder, which caused her to have to go suddenly at least a dozen times a day. Apparently, it was the janitor who smoked and the smell was drifting up from the basement, through the ventilation, and into the bathroom. The janitor got fired; the librarian was embarrassed; and I was scolded by not only the principal, but by my parents, for interfering.
    Still, the error didn’t stop me from continually sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. Even now, I couldn’t help myself.
    So, what did I have? Brendon died when he ingested peanuts of some kind. He didn’t have his EpiPen with him, something someone with an extreme allergy never would have done. His wife, Heidi, was seen with his brother, Mason, the day after his death. They were both at his workplace, though Mason had been the one to go in. He’d seemed agitated; yet when he was with Heidi, they both seemed to calm down. And then there was the whole bit about Brendon’s death not being an accident.
    I knew there had to be more to the story, but I felt as if I was getting a pretty good picture of what was going on. If Brendon was as big a jerk as he seemed when I