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  “What happened with Doc Westin?”

  “He died.”

  “No, I mean with the ricin experiment.”

  “It didn’t work.”

  “Oh my goodness, Auntie. I mean did he actually get any ricin?”

  “Why didn’t you just say that? I can’t read your mind.” She took in a breath, her chest heaved up then back down. Her eyes went up like she was thinking. “I don’t think so.”

  She went back to grinding whatever it was in her mortar.

  “Auntie,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Can you tell me whatever you know without us having to go back and forth?”

  “We grew the castor beans,” she said with a huff. “We knew you just can’t open up the castor bean and get ricin out. And if you don’t get it out the right way, it loses its toxicity.”

  That made me know that what Alex had ingested, the small piece on his lip, probably wasn’t very toxic. It was still entangled in the bean and that wouldn’t be enough to kill.

  “So are you telling me that Doc Westin wasn’t able to get access to any ricin from the castor beans you grew?”

  “It’ll have a greater potential for killing, whether it’s cancer cells or people, if it’s been purified by a technical process, and that’s difficult for anyone to do. And it’s even harder to produce ricin that can be inhaled.”

  “It sounds like you’re reading from a textbook. Just tell me what you’re saying.”

  “It was too hard to use. So we suggested that that not be one of the alternatives he used, unless he wanted to spend time and effort trying to purify it.”

  “Then what happened?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “It’s just all such a big mystery.”

  Chapter Thirty

  After I finished talking to Auntie, I went up to my room, J.R. following close at my heels. I was so frustrated with Auntie that I wasn’t sure what I’d learned from her would help me solve the case.

  Did Doc Westin have ricin or just the castor bean and was unable to extract the deadly protein? And with the information that Auntie Zanne gave me about how hard it was to get, it made me wonder who was sophisticated enough to do it, or the resources to have it done.

  I decided to take a little trip and do something I should have done a long time ago. But, first I called Alex and filled him in on all I knew, including the fact that there was no antidote. I also told him that not everyone who ingests it dies. I told him about ricin’s extraction process and how that fact alone lessened the chances of him having enough in him to kill him. And, we hadn’t noticed any of the symptoms—vomiting, diarrhea, low blood pressure and dehydration. He joked that maybe it was Auntie’s tea that saved him. Still we agreed. He should see a doctor.

  After I hung up from Alex, I changed into a pair of jeans and a sweater, Texas night air in early October could be a little cool. I tied on a pair of tennis shoes, pulled my unruly hair back into a ponytail, and grabbed my purse.

  “Come on, J.R., I’ve got to go out. I don’t know how long I’ll be, so you can wait downstairs in your own bed.”

  I grabbed Auntie’s car keys from the wall caddy by the back door, then walked through the front of the house and out of the side entryway to the carport. She usually kept a car and a hearse out for late night runs. I took the car and drove to the ME’s office. I wanted to get a look into Doc Westin’s boxes because for some reason I kept running into his name.

  My little talk with Auntie about ricin had marked the second time Doc Westin’s name had come up in our little investigation. The first time with him prescribing medicine for Bumper. I needed to process all she’d told me and see what I could find from what he’d left because for some reason it was really pestering me.

  The pharmacist, Mr. McDougal, hadn’t thought anything was out of the ordinary when I questioned him about Doc Westin writing prescriptions for the high school’s athletes. “He was everyone’s doctor,” he had said.

  I could understand him being the senior of the JOY Club’s doctor. He was, after all, in his early seventies, and that made him one of them. Healthcare wasn’t always available for their numerous and frequent ailments, nor was it always accessible. But why was he a seventeen-year-old’s doctor? At least that’s how old Bumper had been in high school. And did he continue to be his doctor once he left for college. How had that worked? Was he just prescribing medicine willy-nilly?

  I drove to the parking lot. Three pole lamps illuminated the ME’s office. Like death it had odd hours. It was fortuitous that the Commissioners hadn’t asked me for my key or changed the code to the security system. They still trusted me with access. Even though it was completed, I could come and go as I pleased, and I really liked that.

  I locked the car, punched in the code on the keypad for entry and flicked all the switches on the light panel as I entered. The lights flicked on as I walked across the floor. I had had Catfish store the boxes in a back room until I could get to them. It had only been three or four, but I thought it was better to keep them out of anyone else’s view, although besides Auntie and Catfish, no one else had been inside after it was completed.

  The Commissioners were going to have to hire staff in addition to a full-time ME, but right now the place’s only occupant was me. I lifted one of the boxes marked personal off the top of two other boxes and took it out to the office and sat it on the desk.

  I lifted the top of the box and peered inside. What were the odds that I’d pick the right box the first time? In this case zero. The box was filled with personal pictures, desk accessories and periodicals. I put the top back on and went and got another box. That one looked more promising.

  It contained a handful of patient files. I pulled them out of the box and took a seat. Some of the names I recognized, some I didn’t, but perusing them I was able to note that all of them belonged to people over the age of sixty.

  Where was Bumper’s file?

  Maybe Mr. McDougal had been wrong. He hadn’t looked up any records, just gave me information as he remembered it. But when people are familiar to you, sometimes that’s all you need. Still it seemed Doc Westin would have something on Bumper, he had it on everyone else.

  I started to put the folders back in the box, take it back and grab the next one when I noticed a spiral notebook. It was opened and had Medicare Scam written across the top of the sheet of paper, underlined twice.

  “What is this?” I said.

  There was a list of names written down one row of the paper. And dates and times in consecutive rows. The dates were more than two years old.

  The names matched a lot of the ones that he had file folders for, and notated next to them was JOY. That must be the senior club, I reasoned.

  The first entry was almost three years ago: Two club members, J.D. and M.C. spoke to me about Medicare Part D calls they received. They sent money for insurance coverage, but hadn’t received a card. Doesn’t sound right!

  I read the next one: M.C. told me she had several friends who were approached the same way and paid $500 for Part D insurance.

  There were at least a dozen entries like that over the next few pages and when they stopped, Doc Westin had begun making notations that to me seemed to be a detailed account of an investigation.

  One of the investigatory notes caught my eye: I was able to find out a phone number and a name—Chase Turner.

  Chase Turner.

  That was the best man’s name.

  Or maybe not. It might be a common name.

  Currently away in military, was written a few entries down.

  Well that cleared that right up. I remembered that Chase Turner had worn a military uniform to the wedding.

  What did he have to do with a Medicare scam?

  I just didn’t understand where he fit into all of this, or why he lied to me about
not knowing where the inhaler was.

  I was sure one didn’t have anything to do with the other. And while it might be a good thing to tell Pogue about a Medicare scam, I needed to look for information on ricin and evidence that Doc Westin had written scripts for inhalers for Bumper.

  So I closed up the box, took it back and picked up the next one. That box turned out to be what I was looking for.

  Inside were at least ten albuterol sulfate inhalation aerosol canisters. The red plastic encasing gave me flashbacks of Bumper holding one to his lips and trying to get his asthma medicine inside of his lungs.

  What was Doc Westin doing with all of these inhalers?

  There was a big brown paper bag folded at the top. I took it out and sat it to the side.

  Underneath the inhalers and a prescription pad was one of those old-time diaries that young girls used to have. I clicked in on the snap to open it, it was locked. I shook my head. The lock was easily picked, and it was funny that he thought it could hold his secrets from anyone who wanted to know what they were.

  Like me.

  I opened the desk draw and retrieved a letter opener and jimmied the lock. Once the pages were free to be searched, I turned to the first page. The heading was: Alternative Cancer Treatments. The next line read: Cancer type: non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Five Year Survival Rate: 70%.

  I guess he did have cancer.

  I flipped through the book. He had different sections labeled: Food. Exercise. Herbs. I started with herbs. After all, plant information was what I was after.

  He had three columns, every line filled, some were starred. Only a few I recognized: HuaChanSu, milk thistle, amygdalin, curcumin, ricin...

  I stopped reading. There it was. Ricin. It was one of the entries that was starred. I don’t know why I thought it wouldn’t be there, Auntie had told me that he’d considered using it to help cure his cancer. Who knows, he might have even tried it.

  I sat the diary aside and moved stuff around in the box. No Bumper file. No mention of him anywhere. Still, in that box was everything that had been used to kill Bumper. I didn’t have to look any further. I’d found the murder weapon.

  Now what was I supposed to do with this information?

  I moved my hand to bring it up to hold my head, it felt heavy, but accidently knocked the brown bag I’d set on the desk onto the floor.

  What’s in here?

  I opened it up and found little blue, plastic containers with white tops. There were a couple dozen or more. I picked one up. Written on a piece of masking tape attached to the lid was B17.

  B17. I knew that. It was associated with amygdalin.

  Ahhh... I had seen that on his list of alternative treatment. I opened it up and there were seeds inside. I picked up several other blue containers out of the bag and they had labels that matched the names of things from Doc Westin’s list for alternative cancer treatments.

  Did he have one for ricin?

  I dug through the bag and found it. It was empty.

  “What happened to you?” I said, speaking out loud as I looked into the empty container. “Did Doc Westin use you, or did someone else take you?”

  I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding and thought about what I should do.

  Tell my cousin, the sheriff? Even though I’d told Pogue what killed Bumper, I was sure that Pogue hadn’t discovered yet that the killer had easy access to the murder weapon thanks to the lady Voodoo herbalists who were growing castor beans in their backyards. And I surely didn’t want to tell him it was because of Auntie Zanne it was being grown.

  I could just imagine how that would go. He’d want to question her and she wouldn’t cooperate. It would be a rehash of what had happened in the first murder investigation. She’d been so awful to him, smacking him with her wooden spoon for questioning Josephine Gail, keeping information from him, and generally telling him that he didn’t have what it took to figure a murder out. And in the end, when she and I were the ones who figured it out, it didn’t do much for his ego. Although it wasn’t entirely his fault, he did have to go out of town leaving us there to snoop.

  Was there some way I could tell him about what I’d found and not tell him the part that Auntie Zanne had played?

  Wait...

  I cocked my head to the side and frowned. What was I even considering telling him? I thought about my conclusions, it was even more outlandish than Auntie Zanne’s gratuity and bribery murder plot.

  My theory, if you looked between the lines, was that Doc Westin, the man with the inhalers and missing ricin, was the person who had killed Bumper Hackett, even though he’d been dead a good two months before it happened. I’d come to that decision because he was the only one who had both of the instruments of his death.

  Geesh, maybe I really should just leave the investigating up to Pogue, because that sounded crazy..

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Why would you even tell them to meet you at Angel’s Grace?” I asked.

  “I thought Rhett and Hailey were going to be there.”

  We were on our way to the Community Center. Auntie hadn’t said two words about bribery and murder to Shane Blanchard and Coach Buddy when she’d seen them at the funeral yesterday, or so I thought. But after we got home, Auntie had sprung it on me that after I had excused myself from their conversation, she’d asked them to come and meet her at the Community Center the next morning.

  “And where are they now?” I said, not sure I wanted to know the answer. “Are they coming?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “I couldn’t reach either one of them.”

  “Are they together?”

  “Who?”

  “Rhett and Hailey,” I said.

  Auntie Zanne sucked her tongue. “Why do you want to know that?”

  “Never mind,” I said.

  “What if they bring some more of the poison?”

  “Who?” My turn to ask.

  “Shane Blanchard and Coach Buddy.”

  “And what poison would that be?”

  “The poison they used to kill Bumper,” she said.

  “Oh my,” I said. “What exactly did you tell them when you arranged for them to meet you?”

  “That I needed to talk to them about one of the football players.”

  “That sounds innocent enough,” I said.

  “They might have read between the lines.”

  “And what did it say ‘between the lines’?”

  “That I knew they were killers.”

  “Just don’t go,” I said. “If you’re that afraid of them.”

  Auntie was driving the car. If it had been me, I would have just turned around and gone home, she wouldn’t have had a choice.

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Then why are you shaking like a leaf on a tree?”

  She held out a hand and looked at it. “I’m cold,” she said.

  “It’s nearly seventy degrees.”

  “I’m anemic,” she said.

  “You’re scared,” I said. “But there is no need to be. No need to be afraid of them. No need to meet them. I don’t think they did anything.”

  “Well, I do. I think they killed Bumper and I need to question both of them. I wish LaJay was coming too.”

  “You want to add more people? Why? You’re not scared enough?”

  “I told you I’m not scared.”

  “Okay.”

  “I just want to talk to him.”

  “And ask him did they pay him to go to A&M and in return he’d kill his lifelong friend, Bumper?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Yeah, I’d be scared too if I were you.”

  “It’s nervous energy,” she said.

  “Make up your mind,” I said. “And tell me this, what are you going to do when they all confess?
”

  “I don’t know now.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I told you, I thought Rhett was going to be there. I can always reach him. Heck, it can be two o’clock in the morning and he answers. I don’t know what he’s doing now that he doesn’t pick up.”

  I wished she’d stop implying Rhett was somehow wrapped up with that woman, Hailey Aaron, because I knew that’s exactly what she wanted me to think that was what she thought. And really, the thought of it did make my heart go all aflutter. I was going to need a defibrillator to get it back on track.

  I sucked my tongue. Why was I even worried about Rhett and that woman?

  “Auntie,” I said, shaking my head clear of Rhett thoughts, “just use my cellphone. Call Shane or that coach guy, and tell them you’ll meet with them at another time.”

  “Do you want to solve this?” I think with her words, she pressed down harder on the accelerator, “or not?”

  I braced myself against the dashboard. “We’re not going to solve Bumper’s murder by questioning these guys, that’s for sure. Because they didn’t do it.” I glanced over at her. “You want to slow down?”

  “You want to stop thinking that those two aren’t coldblooded killers?”

  “I could perhaps understand LaJay doing it,” I said, trying to reason with her, “to get the girl, but not all three of them.”

  “Well, it’s too late now, we’re here and there they are.” She swung into the parking lot, hitting the apron of the parking lot so fast that it nearly made me bump my head on the top of the car. “Already here. Lying in wait,” she said.

  “What are you going to ask them?” I said.

  “Just thought I’d wing it,” she said, pushing the gear into park. “And I didn’t think I’d have to wing it for long. I figured the Cavalry would roll in and this case would be closed.”

  “Chase lied to me about the inhaler,” I said, maybe updating her on the information I had would deter her from questioning these two guys. “Maybe it was him that killed Bumper.” I nodded, wanting her to agree with me.