right?”
“Sure,” she said. But she wasn’t. She wasn’t remotely all right. She wasn’t sure if she was ever going to be all right again. Maybe it was crazy-she had to hope she was crazy-but the thought in her mind was as indelible as lead ink. Fiske had been murdered. And not just murdered, but killed by someone on the boat.
Once she set down the platter, she poured herself a mug of coffee and held it with both hands so she could keep the darned thing from shaking as she sat down. She was sitting with a murderer, her mind kept telling her- which was probably why her heart was pounding louder than a freight train.
The craziest thing of all was that she was the only one who knew what had happened. And even if she told, she couldn't imagine anyone would believe her.
Chapter 6
Immediately after breakfast, Harm joined Ivan in the pilothouse, where he could use the radio to check with Juneau. The response didn’t take long. Harm made a sound of irritation as he clicked off.
Ivan said, “What?”
“In the immortal words of the authorities, the pathologist is fishing.”
“Ah. This is Alaska,” Ivan said, as if that was an answer in itself.
“He’ll get to the autopsy. But maybe not today. Or tomorrow.
Ivan said, “It’s just different thinking up here. The man’s dead, so what’s the hurry?”
“That we’ve all been put in limbo until we have results from the tests? That the man has a daughter who very likely wants to plan a funeral?” Harm shook his head again. “I’m going below. The coroner asked me to go through Fiske’s things. The coast guard took the list of his medical conditions and medicines, but they want me to check to see if there were any other medicines or things he might have been taking that weren’t on the list.”
“You want me to ask Hans to do it?” Ivan asked.
“No. I’m fine.” Harm clipped below deck, hoping to catch Cate en route, but she wasn’t in the galley or the dining area. Something had shaken her at breakfast. Since nothing seemed to shake Cate-certainly not whales or finding dead guys-Harm figured it must have been something substantial.
Not that she was any of his business…but sweet damn, she’d become his business. The dimensions of the why and how, right then, he refused to examine.
First off, anyway, he needed to explore Fiske’s belongings. No one was below deck. The men were all topside for the sail toward Baranof and Hot Springs-their next land destination. Fiske’s cabin was big enough for a squirrel. Fiske’s duffel was sitting navy-tight on his bunk.
Harm rifled through it, found four brown plastic prescription containers. One was a statin, a cholesterol drug Harm recognized. Two were heart medicines, and the last-he just didn’t know. Never heard of the name, and the labeling didn’t indicate what the one-a-day dosage was for. All the medicines had already been reported to the coast guard.
Harm hefted the heart pills, feeling a sharp gulp. Yesterday, the coast guard had come to the most obvious conclusion-that Fiske was an overweight guy under a lot of stress, a heart attack or stroke waiting to happen. Harm hadn’t created that stress, but he still felt responsible for failing to find answers that could have alleviated it. Fiske was a good soul. His uncle’s closest friend in the company.
Harm bent over, hoping to find something else in Fiske’s belongings. He saw the corner of an old, battered red- leather case-just a calendar-and was about to pull it out when he heard Cate. “Harm?”
He didn’t have to spin around and see her face to know something was wrong. It was like at breakfast. Her usual sass and sparkle had disappeared. There was none of the full-of-herself sexy love of the night before, the daredevil, the troublemaker. Just a quiet voice and nerves. “I need to tell you something,” she said. “And you’re not going to believe me.”
“Why wouldn’t I believe you?”
“Because no one will. No one’s going to take this seriously. And you won’t, either. Trust me.”
“I do trust you.” Quickly, he steered her out of Fiske’s cabin, out of the empty corridor and into his cabin. Last night, after she’d damned near seduced him-and thoroughly rattled his timbers-he’d vowed not to be in private quarters with her alone unless…well, unless.
This definitely wasn’t an “unless.” But he could tell from her face that he wouldn’t want anyone else hearing this-or even knowing that she was talking privately with him.
“It’s about Fiske,” she said. She obviously couldn’t stand still. She started pacing-and promptly bumped into his chest the first time she did a spin around. “I think someone killed him, Harm. With peppermint.”
“Say what?”
“I know. Death by peppermint. It sounds silly. Crazy. Impossible. And part of the problem is that I don’t think anyone would know. How could authorities think of this? Why would a pathologist test for it? He wouldn’t. It’s not a drug.”
“Whoa. Start at the beginning. I’m having trouble following.” He didn’t push her on the bed, just framed his hands around her shoulders and gently sat her down. Two of them couldn’t pace at the same time. And once she’d suggested murder, Harm figured he had the biggest reason to pace.
He heard her spill out the details. The empty peppermint bottle. The missing lid. The way she’d found Fiske, his position indicating he’d been clawing at his neck, as if he were choking. But there’d been no sign of vomit. And the bottle had been put away, except for the lid.
“Do you understand, Harm? I don’t see anyone will find evidence of it in an autopsy because it’s not a drug or anything anyone would ever test for you. But I would think it would create a burning in the esophagus or throat. You could ask them that, couldn’t you? To look for it?”
“Yes. I’ll radio immediately on this.”
“That’s why I had to tell you. Because if you don’t ask, I don’t see how they’d find it.”
“But I’m still not totally grasping this, Cate. I mean, peppermint’s a candy. And you made cookies from it. And I think I remember a grandmother advising that you could rub it on a sore tooth. Couldn’t it have been like that? He got a toothache, got up in the middle of the night, thought he’d try that old wives’ tale, and that’s how he got into your peppermint?”
“No. I mean, yes, it’s possible he had a toothache, might have known of that old wives’ tale. But if that were the case, he’d have used a drop or two, not the whole bottle. No one would take a whole bottle of peppermint by choice. It couldn’t happen. Your throat would burn like fire. You might try it by accident, not realizing that…but then you’d rush to a sink, to the nearest water, start spitting it out, do anything to make it stop burning.”
Harm spun around, only to find that Cate had bounced up from the bed and was trying to pace again, too. It couldn’t happen. Not in a space the size of an animal cage.
“Maybe he dropped the bottle. Spilled it. And that’s why it was empty. It seems logical to me that he’d have thought peppermint would soothe his stomach, something like that. You know he ate like a horse that night, easy to believe he had a stomachache-”
“That could have been. And I’m not trying to say that I know how he died. For that matter, maybe he did die of a heart attack. If someone forced him to intake a whole bottle of peppermint, I can well believe it caused an impossible shock to his heart. I’m not a doctor. Just a chef. And I’m telling you…someone handled my peppermint in a way that couldn’t have been an accident. Someone used the entire bottle. Someone, not me, didn’t put the lid back on. And if Fiske had been the one to think he wanted it, who touched it, then swallowed that amount, there’s no way in the universe he’d have been physically capable of putting it back in the cupboard and closing the door and leaving the galley all tidy. He’d have been frantic to stop the burning in his mouth and throat.”
“Okay. I hear you. I got it. But who knows that stuff about peppermint?”
She thought about that, answered slowly, “I have no idea. I mean, I’d think it would be common knowledge from someone like me, a chef, a cook, someone who knows foods. But otherwise…well, I can’t imagine why you’d know it. Or any other normal person. I guess I’d assume a scientist-type might, just because they’d get the chemistry part of it.”
Unfortunately, all his men had that background-that is, everyone but him. His mind kept replaying the men, the
