Before I hit Send, I add a heart emoji. It’s as close to telling Dylan I still love him as I’m willing to admit right now.
After dinner, I walk down the hill for book club, vowing to try my best to stay focused and not worry about tomorrow’s meeting with Brittany’s mother. It won’t be easy.
I draw in a deep breath of cool ocean air to clear my mind and turn the corner to Main Street. Madge, with her murder board, is standing outside my door. I lift a hand and say, “Hi. Am I late?”
Madge sticks out a plate of cookies. “I’m early. Wanted to get the board set up before we start. Oh, and Julie called. Her kid is sick, so she can’t make it.”
I unlock the door and punch in the security code. “Nick called too. He’s got a nasty cold, so he’s staying home.”
“Bummer.” Madge hauls her board that’s as big as she is to the bistro area. “We could’ve used his computer skills. I saw some notes on Dylan’s desk about poisons that cause paralysis. Brittany can probably help us, though.”
I shake my head. “She’s with Raphe tonight. Looks like it’s just the Admiral and us.”
“Ah.” Madge busies herself setting up the board.
While I could use a giant-sized glass of wine tonight, I want to keep my wits about me, so I grab three mugs for coffee and take the plastic wrap off the cookies. Then I find the book Nan handed me earlier. She left a bookmark in the pages she wanted me to read, so I grab a cookie and get started.
I’m so absorbed in the odd methods authors have used to poison characters that when a hand lands on my shoulder, I jump. “Oh, hi, Admiral. You scared me.”
He chuckles. “Captivating prose, I take it?” He fills a mug with vanilla bean coffee before sitting at the table.
“You wouldn’t believe all the ways authors have found to kill off their characters. Like being buried alive in a septic tank, or being pushed into a giant blender, drowning in a vat of milk, or by Lingchi.”
Madge joins us and grabs a cookie. “What’s Lingchi?”
The Admiral says, “Death by a thousand cuts. It was used in Asia fairly often until the 1900s, when it was banned.”
I blink at the Admiral. Here’s a man who sometimes can’t remember what he had for lunch, and yet trivia like that comes out of his mouth on a regular basis. “Okay. Here’s a stumper I bet you don’t even know. What’s the irony behind Mark Twain’s death?” I only know this because my mother named me after a character in one of his books. My mom knew all there was to know about Mr. Twain.
He shakes his head. “No idea.”
I set my book down. “Mark Twain was born on a day when Halley’s Comet appeared, something that only happens every seventy-five years or so. He told everyone he met that he’d die the next time the comet appeared. Twain died the day after the sighting in 1910. Weird, right?”
Madge helps herself to another cookie. “Not as weird as dying by toothpick.”
I chuckle. “Seriously?”
“No, it’s true.” Madge stands to pour herself some coffee. “Sherwood Anderson, the author of Winesburg, Ohio, was on a cruise with his wife when he developed a terrible stomachache. After a few days, he died. When the ship’s doctor asked the wife if he’d swallowed anything unusual, she said he liked his martinis with olives and had accidentally swallowed a toothpick a few days before. Evidently, toothpicks are tough on internal organs.”
The Admiral raises a finger. “Or, the wife poisoned him and blamed it on the toothpick.”
“Fair assumption.” I set the book down. “That brings us right back to why we’re here tonight. How was Tina poisoned?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.” Madge sighs. “The only scribble I found on Dylan’s desktop notepad—”
I interrupt, “Don’t tell me you used a pencil on the top blank page and scribbled until you could see the note.”
“What?” Madge asks, all indignant. “It works. So anyway, there was something about natural poison.”
“So, let’s get started.” The three of us turn to the board and study the timeline and clues Madge has set up. She even has my father’s latest development on there. “How did you know about Emily seeing my dad with Tina’s cup?”
Madge shrugs. “I took a picture of Dylan’s murder board with my phone and copied it. He keeps all the stuff he doesn’t want me to find in his computer files on his covered board. Whatever you do, don’t tell him I know that.”
Not much chance of that. We’re broken up. But I’ll keep that tidbit to myself for now. “My lips are sealed.”
“Wait.” The Admiral’s brow knits. “What’s this at the bottom of the board about Max and Tina’s cup?”
I quickly fill him in. “I sent a text to Dylan. He’ll look for the cup.”
The Admiral slowly nods. “But that would mean your father drank from the cup after Tina. If there was poison in there, wouldn’t your father have been at least a little sick too?”
“That’s an excellent point.” I pick up the book again. “Maybe we should use this online tool that authors sometimes use. It’s called a cause-of-death generator. It helps the author figure out creative ways to kill off characters. It’s worth a shot.”
Both Madge and the Admiral nod enthusiastically as I find the website on my phone. “We have to give it some basic information. Like age, sex, special character traits, fitness levels, and the location where the book is set.”
I tap all the information in as it pertains to Tina and press the Go button. I flip the phone around so they can see too, and we all wait for the
