Punch, Pastries, and Poison by Harper Lin (ebook reader for pc and android .txt) 📕

I pushed the box away and pulled over the sign-in sheet. Well, it wasn’t so much a sign-in sheet as a sort of guest book. A guest sheet, really, since it was only one piece of paper. Names filled one side completely and went two-thirds of the way down the other side. We’d had a good turnout. It was a shame how the night ended up.

I scanned down the list, idly looking for any names that stood out. Names I didn’t recognize were scattered in amongst the many I did. It didn’t mean I didn’t know them—there were lots of people I ran into around town who I recognized and would chat with but whose names I didn’t actually know. And there were plenty more who I only knew by first name. Still, I recognized many of the names. Todd Caruthers, Mary Ellen Chapman, Karli, who worked the front desk at the gym, Sammy, Melissa, Rhonda and her husband, Sammy’s friend Dawn, Dean Howard from Howard Jewelers. So many people I knew and loved. I’d just wanted to celebrate with them, and I’d ended up sending some of them to the hospital.

Well, not me. I hadn’t actually done anything to put them in the hospital. But someone had. Someone had come into my café and poisoned the food I had prepared for our big birthday celebration. I felt violated. I felt angry. I felt offended. And I felt helpless. I didn’t know who could have done such a thing.

The girls who worked with me in the café had the most access, but I couldn’t imagine any of them doing something like that. I’d known them all a long time, and I trusted them. Well, all except for Ephy. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her—I just didn’t know her yet. Still, I didn’t think she could have possibly... no, she couldn’t have.

That meant it had to be someone who came to the party. Someone had come to the party under the pretense of celebrating with us but had poisoned us instead. I couldn’t imagine who could have done such a thing. Who among my friends and neighbors would do that?

I held out a fragile hope that something had come in from a vendor already contaminated, but it seemed unlikely. I’d tasted everything as I made it and hadn’t gotten sick until the party itself. Maybe there was still a chance it hadn’t been someone at the party.

A tech stuck his head out of the back room. “What do you want us to get from back here, Detective? She’s got a lot of stuff.”

I bristled at his choice of words. As if I’d somehow intentionally made sure I was well-stocked with supplies, just to annoy them or make their jobs more difficult.

Mike rubbed his forehead and looked at me. “What do you have back there?”

The rebellious side of me wanted to blurt out that I had poison, of course, but I didn’t think Mike would see the humor in it. I chose the wiser option. “Supplies. Some extra food I had for the party.”

He nodded. “Get samples of all the party food in the—” He looked at me again.

“Fridge.”

“In the fridge.”

The tech nodded and walked back into the kitchen. As he went, I realized I actually did have poison on site, if you considered cleaning products a potential poison, which I supposed they were if they were put into someone’s food. And then I thought of something else. I’d been so focused on the “who” that I hadn’t even thought about the “what.”

“What kind of poison was it?”

Mike looked down at me with his eyebrow raised like he wasn’t sure I was talking to him.

“You said the food was poisoned, but you didn’t say what the poison was.”

He grunted and turned back to watch the techs still going through every last inch of the café.

“You’re not going to tell me?”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea at this stage in the investigation,” he said without looking at me.

“Why? Are you afraid I’ll accidentally tip someone off?” And then a worse possibility crossed my mind. “You don’t actually think I had something to do with it, do you?”

Mike crossed his arms over his chest and glanced down at me out of the corner of his eye before looking back at the techs.

I sank back in my chair as a fresh wave of nausea washed over me. Since Mike announced that someone had poisoned my guests, I’d reassured myself with the thought that Mike knew me and understood that I would never do anything like that. But now I wasn’t so sure. And that terrified me.

Chapter 10

We were back at my house when Mike walked into the living room. The crime scene techs had finished at the café and done a quick search of Matt’s house before coming to mine and settling in for what looked like the long haul. They’d already been through my kitchen cabinets and drawers, and now techs were digging through my refrigerator, pantry, dresser drawers, and bathroom. Two of them were even sitting on the floor in the bedroom that used to be my grandparents’, going through the boxes I’d packed up with their belongings. To keep myself from freaking out about it all, I kept telling myself that they would put everything neatly away when they were finished, even if I wasn’t sure that it was true.

“How you holding up?” he asked, leaning on the doorframe.

I took a deep breath and turned to look at him from my place on the couch. My first instinct had been to snap back with some smart-alecky comment about how he was suddenly acting like he wanted to be my friend again, but before I could say anything, I noticed how utterly miserable he looked. He was my friend, even if we were on opposing sides of an investigation at the moment.

“You look terrible. Do you want to sit down?” I gestured at the chair nearby.

He