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

“You said you wanted to add some new drinks to the menu for the summer season. You could work on that. You always come up with really creative stuff.”

“Have you been talking to Matt?”

Sammy giggled. “No, did he say the same thing?”

“Yes,” I groaned. “I know I could work on that, but I want to feel like I’m doing something useful. Like I’m not just sitting here waiting for the poisoner to figure out what they’re doing and actually kill me.”

I could feel Sammy’s stillness through the phone line. “I’m so sorry, Fran,” she said in a small voice. “You’re right. Who do you have on your list so far?”

I rattled off a handful of names, including Mary Ellen and her beau, Todd Caruthers, and Dean Howard.

“Mr. Paul was at the party, and I remember he came in early yesterday.”

“Mr. Paul?” I asked.

“That’s just what I call him to be polite. It’s Paul. I’m not sure of his last name. I think he’s a lawyer or something over in Barnstable. He comes in early every day.”

I vaguely remembered him being the first customer through the door the day before. I wrote his name down, even though “Paul something who might be a lawyer” wasn’t the most helpful information. As far as I was concerned, it was better to include too many names than to leave off an important one. Besides, even if I didn’t know this Paul guy, maybe he knew me. I shivered. The thought of someone I didn’t even know wanting me dead was even more chilling than someone I did know wanting me dead. “Anyone else?”

“Ummm…” Sammy thought for a minute. “I don’t think so. Oh! Melissa. Melissa was in.”

“Really? I don’t remember seeing her.”

“Yeah, she was in for just a minute. She bought some cookies for her office.”

I jotted down Melissa’s name. I didn’t think she was capable of hurting a soul, even when not heavily pregnant, but if I was putting Paul on the list, I needed to put Melissa down too.

Sammy couldn’t think of anyone else, but she promised that she’d call me back if she did. I wished her luck on her chicken then said goodbye.

Rhonda was next on my list.

“Hey, Fran!” she answered. “Stop it! You’re being rude!”

I sat in silence, wondering what I’d said or done to merit that greeting. Then I heard the distant but distinct sounds of gas being passed, accompanied by vigorous burping.

“Not you, Fran. I have the boys in the car and—stop it!—they’re having an armpit fart competition. And burping, just for good measure. You two are disgusting! You’re on speaker, by the way. We’re in the car.”

“I caught that,” I said, determining that the last bit was for me. “Should I call you back later?”

“No. No! No! Stop it! Get out! Go! Get out! Stop it, you’re disgusting, get out! You’re fine, Fran, go ahead.”

“Um—” I hesitated, not sure I wanted to be part of Rhonda abandoning her teenage sons on the side of the road.

“It’s fine. We got to the soccer field. I have some peace for an hour or so.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “You don’t need to go watch them or anything?”

“It’s just practice,” Rhonda said. “I’ve seen enough hours of soccer practice for my lifetime and yours. What’s up?”

Hoping to avoid the grilling I’d gotten from Sammy, I gave Rhonda a vague explanation of what I wanted to know—just that I was trying to remember which regulars we had at the café yesterday afternoon. She knew me too well, though.

“You’re trying to figure out who the poisoner is, aren’t you?” she said immediately.

The long silence while I tried to come up with a plausible denial gave me away.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell Mike a thing. His kids practice at a different time anyway,” Rhonda said with a chuckle. “So, who do you have so far?”

I rattled off the names on my list, including the two Sammy gave me.

“Mrs. D’Angelo,” Rhonda said immediately.

I went to write her name down then stopped. “Wait, was she?” I didn’t remember seeing her on either occasion. I wondered how I’d missed her.

“Oh, yes. She cornered me both times. I think I still have talon marks.”

Mrs. D’Angelo was known for, among other things, her lengthy fingernails, always perfectly manicured in blood red, which she frequently used to grasp her unwilling conversation victims. “Conversation,” of course, was a generous term for what was really a monologue on Mrs. D’Angelo’s part.

“She didn’t get sick at the party, did she?” As annoying as the older woman could be, I hoped she hadn’t been ill. While not frail, she was old enough that I worried about the eye drops’ effects on her. Of course, knowing Mrs. D’Angelo, she’d probably just order her body back to health, and it would comply out of sheer fear of the consequences of doing otherwise.

“No. That was actually the subject of the second cornering. The virtues of temperance.”

I gasped. “You don’t think she—”

“Poisoned everyone? Nah, she’s a personality, but I don’t think she’s gone off the deep end. She actually seemed more offended that people were smoking.”

“Smoking? At the party?” I may have been sick, but I wouldn’t have missed the smell of cigarette smoke. It wasn’t something you smelled much anymore, especially not indoors. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen—or smelled—someone smoking indoors.

“Vaping, I think,” Rhonda clarified. “I didn’t see it, but she said something about ‘those newfangled cigarettes.’” She slipped into a pitch-perfect imitation of Mrs. D’Angelo’s upper-crust New England accent. “‘They think they’re getting away with something, but, mark my words, those things are just as much cancer sticks as the old kind.’” She dropped back into her own distinctly Massachusetts tones. “I mean, she’s probably right. We’ve already talked to the boys a couple times about it. Not like they hear anything I say—in one ear and out the other. Dan has better luck, but that’s because he mostly talks to them