“Actually, yes.” I wish I didn’t have to burden her with another task, but it’s important. “I was looking for the jug Claire always used for her iced tea.”
“There’s iced tea out on the patio already.”
“Okay, thanks, but as silly as this sounds, I was hoping to use Claire’s jug and make some herbal tea. For, you know, sentimental reasons.”
“Sure,” she says agreeably enough. “We actually keep it in here.”
I trail behind her into the pantry, where she tugs open a long cupboard I’ve never looked inside before. One of the interior shelves is lined with nine or ten pitchers and jugs, some glass but also ceramic ones in the shape of things like peaches, oranges, rabbits, and monkeys.
I watch her sweep the collection with her eyes, absentmindedly fingering the small gold cross she wears around her neck.
“That’s odd,” she says. “It’s not here anymore.”
13
Shaking her head, Bonnie lingers before the shelf, obviously perplexed. This is her turf, and the mystery has snagged her attention. With her brow furrowed, she closes the door of the cupboard and pulls open another one. And another.
“For Pete’s sake, where’d it go?” she says. “I’m sorry, Summer. Someone’s clearly using it.”
“When was the last time you saw it?” My heart’s thrumming from what all this might mean.
“It was upside down on the drainboard when I came back from my break yesterday. Claire must have washed it before she left the room.”
Her face clouds as she speaks. A short time later, of course, she would find Claire writhing on the living room floor.
“But what would someone be using it for?” I say.
She shrugs. “Maybe they wanted water in their bedroom. I’m sure it will turn up at some point.”
Willit? I mean, the pantry is nearly bursting with a brigade of fruit- and animal-shaped alternatives, so why wouldanyone take the container Claire used, unless they wanted to be sure it couldn’t be found?
“Okay, I’ll have regular iced tea for now.... Bonnie, can I ask you one more question?” I lower my voice, and she observes me quizzically. “When you found Claire yesterday—do you think she’d just come downstairs from a nap? Or do you suppose she’d never gone up?”
I’ve been wondering that ever since last night.
“Gosh, Summer, I don’t have any idea.”
“Why, if she wasn’t feeling well, do you think she would have gone into the living room instead of coming out here and trying to find help?”
Her face contorts in anguish. “Maybe she was looking for Ash in his study. To tell you the truth, it’s too tough for me to even think about.”
I feel guilty making Bonnie relive the tragedy, but I need to in order to figure things out. “I understand. And I’m sorry to bring it up. I only hope she wasn’t suffering for too long.”
“I know; me, too.”
I start to exit the house by the kitchen door, but a glance out the window reveals Keira and Marcus standing on the patio, their faces grim. He shakes his head, not angrily but with a firmness that says she’s wrong about something or that he’s not going to change his mind. There’s no way I’m going to intrude on the moment.
But I need a quiet place to think. I slip into the dining room and follow the long corridor to the eastern end of the house. Once I reach the screened-in porch, I settle on one of the wicker couches and exhale.
Okay, let’s say that the terrifying theory I’ve been toyingwith is really true and Claire was poisoned to death by a drink made from foxgloves. How would the tea have been brewed? I wonder. The killer must have dried out the leaves from the plant after they’d been picked. But where? An oven seems like the only possibility given the tight time frame, though using the oven in this kitchen would have been too risky with everyone around. Andyet...it would have been easy enough to do during a quiet moment in the carriage house kitchen. The carriage house where Hannah is staying.
Once the leaves were dried and crumbled, the poisonous tea could have been made and substituted for Claire’s daily iced tea, or possibly added to it. Thinking it through, the latter makes more sense to me, because the taste of the foxglove leaves would have been better disguised that way.
The trickiest part of the plan would have been adding the poison tea to Claire’s jug without being observed because the kitchen here often resembles Grand Central Station at rush hour. Yet the roomwasn’tbustling on Sunday morning, was it? Claire was at the farmers’ market, Ash was on a bike ride, and Bonnie was at church.
There would have been one more matter to deal with: the jug. Someone washed it and placed it in the drainer after Claire drank the tea, and it probably wasn’t her, since she was beginning to feel unwell. But then the jug was removed later. Did the killer decide it was smarter to get rid of it altogether?
I lean back against the couch pillows, bewildered. Though it’s easy to imagine how someone might have orchestrated the poisoning, when I take a few steps backward, the whole idea seems preposterous, including the notion of Hannah as apoisoner. She might be a liar and thief but that doesn’t make her a cold-blooded murderer. Right?
