“I heard a thump,” I whispered. “But I’m not sure what it could’ve been.”
“Were the windows open when you came up here?”
I shut my eyes, forcing myself back to the moment I’d found Jordan. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Could the noise have been the sound of a window closing?” Gamma turned, grabbed the window and brought it down. The thump was loud.
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe. But I can’t say for sure.”
“Interesting. Let’s scour the room for evidence. Any clue that someone else was here would be a good start. There’s no way that Jordan could’ve done this without help, since there was no chair or anything of the sort near the body.”
“Right.”
Gamma and I split up, heading to opposite ends of the room in search of evidence. The attic was large, but I focused my search around the area where I’d found Jordan’s body. I shifted furniture aside, careful not to disturb the crime scene itself.
A glint caught my eye, and I frowned, dropping into a crouch. “Georgina,” I whispered, beckoning to her. “There’s something wedged between the floorboards here.”
“Ah.” She joined me, removing a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and a pair of tweezers.
“You walk around with tweezers?”
“Always be prepared for an emergency,” she replied, “eyebrow or otherwise.”
Gamma snapped on the gloves, then bent next to me and worked the tweezers between the boards. She removed the shimmering object and held it aloft. “Wow. That’s interesting.”
The object was cylindrical and silver, the size of a pea. It had a small indentation around its middle. Gamma dropped it into her palm, then carefully removed the top half. The inside of the shell was empty, but for a single drop of clear liquid.
“What do you think?” I had my opinion, but I wanted to hear my grandmother’s first.
“It’s a pill. Reminds me of something I was equipped with when I was working in the field. We’d take cyanide with us in casings like this, in case we were caught and interrogated. You can crush it between your teeth, but it looks like this one’s been opened.”
“Is it made of metal?”
“Not sure. Might be a biodegradable material I haven’t seen before,” Gamma mused. “But this is not a run-of-the-mill item. And it’s not from my collection.” She glanced up at the spot where Jordan’s body had been. “I suspect that if Jordan’s body hadn’t been stolen, the toxicology report would’ve come back showing he’d been poisoned.”
“Someone with spy tech broke in and poisoned him, then strung up his body?”
“That’s what it seems like to me,” Gamma said.
“But who? If Kyle could get in here, why not simply poison me instead?”
Gamma shook her head, brow wrinkling. “It doesn’t make a whit of sense, does it?”
“No.”
“Charlotte, did you notice anything odd about Jordan’s body?” Gamma asked. “Or the way it was hanging?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll admit that I was shocked. I didn’t take note of anything other than that he was dead.”
“What did his face look like?”
“Pale, lifeless. Eyes were open.”
“Open. Hmm.”
“What are you thinking, Georgina?” I asked, nerves bubbling in my belly.
“That I’m going to have to get this tested.” She gestured to the droplet of liquid caught in the shell. Carefully, she closed the pea-sized pill. “Once we have the results, we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”
“But what’s next?” I asked. “We can’t just sit around and wait. We should break into the coroner’s office. Question people. Do something.”
“Patience is a virtue, Charlotte.” Gamma offered me a worried smile. “But in this case, I think we should talk to the people who were closest to Jordan near the end. They might clue us into what he’d been up to. Who he’d been talking to. If Jordan had an enemy with technology on this scale, then we ought to find out who he’d been hanging around with in the last few days.”
8
That evening…
The rest of the day had flown by. After lunch service, Gamma and I had taken the old map of the known exits and entrances to the inn and tried to ensure they were closed or barricaded in a non-intrusive manner.
We couldn’t risk Kyle entering the inn and hiding out in it without our knowledge, and the realization that the strange pill hadn’t come from Gamma’s stash had us on edge.
If not from her armory, then where? And who? And, most importantly, how? There was a frustrating lack of answers.
After our search for hidden nooks and crannies, Gamma and I helped Lauren prep everything for dinner, served the guests, and then cleaned up and saw our chef safely on her way. We locked the inn, then gave each other the look.
It was time.
Hannah Greerson, the most likely suspect if we didn’t take the spy pill into account, was on duty at the inn tonight. The tiny newbie had offered to do night shifts because she was concerned for the kittens after Jordan’s passing.
Gamma unlocked the door to the kitten foster center, and we moved in, determination in every movement.
Hannah was in the incubation room, watching over the smallest kittens and holding her cellphone.
“Good evening, Hannah.”
She jumped a little and quickly stowed her cellphone. “Oh goodness, you scared me,” she said. “Hey Georgina, Charlotte.”
“Hi,” I said. “Having a good evening.”
“I guess,” she replied, and pulled a face. “I mean, a man died here yesterday. I’m kind of on edge.”
“Yeah, it’s such a pity about Jordan,” I said pointedly.
Hannah wasn’t a slow girl. She grimaced. “I know, I know. We didn’t exactly get on, but, in my defense, Jordan was so creepy.”
“He was?” Gamma asked. “How so?”
I opened the half-door, and we entered the incubation room.
“I don’t want to talk trash about a dead guy,” Hannah said, slowly.
“You can tell us,” I replied. “I know you wanted to lodge a complaint about him yesterday morning, and I didn’t have the time for it.”
“Yeah, but does it matter now that
