Destroying Angel, page 5
“Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne, thanks for coming in,” Tom said. “Brought coffee if you’d like it – cream and sugar’s there too.”
He was taking charge of the interview again, and Julia had to push down her annoyance. She’d been MIA yesterday, working on a more interesting case, but she’d been tricked into thinking Tom was starting to trust her when he let her go out to the woods alone with Nick Wilkins.
Mrs. Hawthorne waved away the coffee with a tight little shake of her head, but Mr. Hawthorne accepted the beverage holder with a thanks, setting it on a side table next to him. Julia and Tom took seats across from the sofa, in chairs a lot less cushy and more business-oriented. Julia flipped open her notebook, prepared to play transcriptionist again, and watched as Mr. Hawthorne added sugar to his coffee, his hand shaking slightly. He took a single polite sip before abandoning the cup on the table.
“We’re prepared to help however we can, but we’re not exactly happy to be here, as I’m sure you can understand. We have a funeral to plan,” he said, “so at the risk of being rude, can we please just get this over with?”
“Of course, I understand,” Tom said. “If you’re ready to talk about it, I’d like to hear more about what happened before Brandon got to the hospital. Mrs. Hawthorne, how was he when you went to check on him?”
“Awful,” she said, and the strain of keeping herself together was visible in the tendons pulling at her neck. She didn’t cry though, and her voice didn’t crack. “I had to use my spare key to get in – he was so weak he couldn’t answer the door. I found him in his bedroom, and oh,” she wrinkled her nose, remembering, “the stench was terrible.”
Tom gave her a moment and she breathed deep a couple times, suppressing the sense memory.
“He’d been sick into a trash can beside the bed,” she said. “Must have given up on going to the bathroom, or maybe he was too weak to get there.”
At that point, her voice did waver, and her husband reached across the expanse between them, setting his hand on hers.
“And before he got sick, thinking back to a few weeks before, he was acting normal?” Tom asked. “Not depressed, sad?”
Julia knew what he was really doing – gently bringing up the possibility of depression, suicide. Yes, the amatoxin had snuck up on him a second time when he thought he was recovering. But there was no record on Brandon’s phone of a 911 call, or any attempt at all to reach out for help from a friend, his girlfriend, anyone.
Mr. Hawthorne took over. “He was happy. I know we’re the parents, and young people keep secrets from their parents. They don’t always say so when they’re in trouble… but Brandon was never like that. He always told us when something was wrong.”
“There were Gatorade bottles on the nightstand beside the bed,” Mrs. Hawthorne said. “Why would he be hydrating if he didn’t want to…” she paused, choosing the most palatable euphemism and settling on, “get better?”
“He’d just gotten a promotion to assistant coach,” her husband added.
Tom nodded. “I spoke with his boss yesterday. He spoke highly of Brandon. Did he ever mention stress, his new responsibilities weighing on him?”
Again, Mr. Hawthorne shook his head. “He loved that job – being outdoors, coaching kids, it was basically his dream come true.” He chuckled. “Well, if you don’t count the professional baseball player dream.”
“Our son was not suicidal,” Mrs. Hawthorne interjected. “He had a good job, a good family. He and Amanda were only dating for a short time but he was already talking like she might be the one. And he had good friends, a supportive family… he was happy.”
“I reached out to Amanda, but she hasn’t answered her phone,” Tom said. “Can you tell me more about her?”
“We didn’t have the chance to get to know her too well yet, but she came to see him in the hospital,” Mr. Hawthorne said. “We haven’t seen her since, but she called yesterday to ask if she can do anything to help with the funeral.”
“How long did they date?” Tom prompted.
Mr. Hawthorne looked to his wife. “What’s it been, about four months?”
She nodded. “He brought her to meet us for the first time around Christmas. She was a sweet girl. Brandon was so in love with her right from the start.”
“Did you ever hear about any fights they had?” Tom asked.
She shook her head, and Mr. Hawthorne took up the mantle. “I think they were still in the honeymoon period – too enamored with each other to fight.”
Tom asked a few more questions, and gave Julia the floor to ask anything she wanted. She got a list of restaurants Brandon liked to eat at, but none of them were high-end like Emery told her to look for. Out of respect for the grieving parents, Julia kept her questions to a minimum. The interview ended, Tom said goodbye at the door, and Julia walked them out of the building.
When she got back to her desk, he was sitting at his. He looked up with a grunt.
“Well, that was less than helpful,” she said. “Young guy who has everything going for him just lies in bed and dies of severe food poisoning… I’m gonna call around to some restaurants, but do you want to check out the apartment with me in about an hour?”
“Sure,” Tom said, “holler when you’re ready.”
The drive from the police station to Brandon Hawthorne’s apartment was only about fifteen minutes, but they took Tom’s shiny new SUV, which was a big improvement over the sedan from the motorpool that Julia had been using. It had leather seats – heated for the winter – and it even had hints of that new car smell.
“What do I have to do to get upgraded to one of these?” she asked as they pulled out of the police parking deck.
“Get shot in the line of duty.”
Julia damn near choked on her own tongue. “Oh shit.”
“It’s okay.”
“I knew you were injured,” she said. “I didn’t mean to bring that up.”
“It’s fine.” There was that gruff tone again.
Tom lapsed into silence, and she wondered if she’d fucked things up with him again.
“Now you’re thinking the department bribes people who get injured on the job,” Tom said.
“No–”
“If they did, I’d have asked for a hell of a lot more than this car,” he added. “I don’t even get to take it home at night.”
He looked sidelong at her, and she realized he was being his version of friendly. Relief washed over her and she relaxed in her seat.
“So, the girlfriend,” she said, trying to fill the silence with a new topic. “I tried her just now and I didn’t get an answer either.”
“Slippery one,” Tom agreed. It was the most Julia had felt like she was on equal footing with him since she arrived in Fox County.
They talked more easily the rest of the way to the apartment, which had already been sealed off as a potential crime scene. Evidence technicians had been out to bag up everything in Brandon’s refrigerator and pantry that had been opened, plus all of his trash. It was in the forensics lab now, being tested, and if any of it was the source of the amatoxin, the techs would figure it out.
Meanwhile, Julia and Tom did a walk-through of the place. It was as tidy and unhelpful as his parents made it out to be – the apartment of twenty-five-year-old who was mature for his age, responsible, actually ate vegetables and not just an endless supply of frozen meals and take-out pizzas.
There were a few framed photos of Brandon with various people on the TV stand and beside his bed. Julia recognized his parents in one, and Nick Wilkins in another.
The bedroom was as Mrs. Hawthorne described it, too – a sick room with Gatorade bottles and Pepto-Bismol within reach of the bed. There was also an acrid stench, the lingering smells of severe gastrointestinal distress.
“Landlord’s gonna have to air this one out,” Tom commented.
Julia didn’t particularly want to venture into the bedroom – she hadn’t thought to bring any camphor with her to disguise the smell. She felt her phone buzz in her pocket and used it as an excuse to wander the living room for a moment, checking the message that had come in.
When she got back, she found Tom in the bedroom. He’d just walked right in and did what he had to, so Julia ignored the smell and did the same.
“Got a call from a restaurant, might have a lead,” she said, then picked up a framed photo by the bedside. “This must be Amanda.”
The photo featured Brandon Hawthorne beaming with his arm around a cute blonde in a band tee.
“That’s her,” Tom nodded. “Found her Facebook profile yesterday – she didn’t respond to a message there either.”
Julia set the photo frame back down. “Everything the parents said checks out. Doesn’t look like the apartment of a guy who was giving up on life.”
“Nah, I don’t think the kid was suicidal,” Tom agreed. “So that rules out one manner of death.”
“We’re left with accident or homicide,” Julia said. “The girlfriend avoiding us isn’t looking good. For Brandon’s sake, I’m still hoping for accident, though. You up for one more errand before we go back to the station?”
“Restaurant?”
“Yeah, the Chez Lounge has a mushroom guy,” she said.
The restaurant wasn’t open for dinner service yet when they arrived, but the maître d’ heard Julia knocking and came to let them in.
“You spoke to me on the phone,” he informed them, leading Julia and Tom through a velvet-upholstered dining room to the kitchen. “This is Chef Elijah, he’s the head chef. Elijah, this is the detective I told you called.”
The maître d’ made himself scarce and Julia sized up Chef Elijah. He was tall and lanky, with worry lines in his forehead and a decidedly annoyed expression. “I’m not under arrest, am I?”
“No, we just have a few questions,” Julia said.
Elijah looked at her, then at Tom. “For me or for the Chez Lounge?”
Ugh, one of those men who ignored her whenever there was another man around because they assumed she had no authority and probably no brain, either. She was too irritated by that attitude to worry about stepping on Tom’s toes right now. She stepped subtly in front of him, her gaze burning into Elijah’s face until he acknowledged her.
“We’re investigating a suspicious death,” she said. “They may have eaten at your restaurant.”
Elijah put his hands up. “First of all, this isn’t my restaurant. I just work here.”
“But you’re the head chef,” Julia pressed now that he was on the defensive. “I bet you do all the ordering, like for produce?”
“I do,” Elijah says, arms now crossed in front of his chest. “You saying somebody got food poisoning so bad they died?”
She ignored his question. “You have mushrooms on the menu?”
“In some dishes, yeah. Specials, mostly.”
“And who do you order them from?”
“We source them locally,” he explained. “That’s why they’re not on the regular menu – they’re seasonal for one, and we don’t know what we’re gonna get until the guy comes.”
“Guy?”
“Yeah, mushroom supplier. He shows up when he has something to sell, and we decide if we want it,” Elijah said. “Name is… ah… Rick, I think.”
A genuine struggle to recall, or was he trying to distance himself from this supplier by pretending not to know him well?
“Is it unusual for a restaurant to get ingredients through that kind of arrangement?” Tom asked.
“At expensive ones, yes,” Elijah said. “Certainly not at your local Applebee’s.” He said the restaurant chain’s name like it tasted bad. Then his brow furrowed with those worry lines again. “Are you saying someone died from food they ate at the Chez Lounge? Because if they did, we’re going to have to figure out how to deal with the fallout…”
Julia could see his mind working a mile a minute, probably imagining the PR nightmare for the restaurant and how it would look if his name were attached to the news. She held up a hand to stop him before he got too far down that rabbit hole.
“We don’t know anything for certain yet, and we’ll be sure to notify you if and when we do find something out. For now, it would be really helpful if you could remember Rick the mushroom supplier’s last name for me.”
“I’ve got his card somewhere in the office,” Elijah said. “Give me a minute.”
He disappeared into a small room off the back of the kitchen, and Julia turned to Tom. “What do you think?”
“I think we better pray there’s not some get-rich-quick moron out there foraging poison mushrooms and selling them to expensive restaurants,” he said. “Chef’s right, how the hell would we track down everyone who ate those mushrooms?”
Wait for their livers to fail, Julia thought grimly.
“Here,” Elijah said when he returned, holding out a business card.
“Rick Beasley,” Julia read. The card was printed on regular printer paper, pointing to a guy who couldn’t get his business organized enough to order real business cards. But at least they had contact info now. “Thanks.”
Chef Elijah looked relieved to see their backsides as they left the restaurant.
11
EMERY
“What exactly are you so smiley about?” Monica asked.
Emery was perched on a lab stool watching Monica run tests on the mushrooms she’d collected from the woods. She was supposed to be doing the heavy lifting – Monica knew what she was doing, but she rarely spent time in the lab unless she had students with her. But after the third time Emery paused with a pipette in hand to tell her yet another detail about her day yesterday, Monica had pushed her out of the way.
“I’m not smiley, I’m just interested in this case.”
“Which is why you’re letting me do all the work.” Monica scoffed. “Come on, I think I know you by now – we’ve only been colleagues for a decade. You went from worrying about losing your job over that dumb email to drooling on your shoes within twenty-four hours, and we both know there’s only one reason for that.”
“I need a vacation,” Emery said at the same time Monica answered her own question.
“You have a crush on that detective.”
Emery bristled. “Do not.”
“Yes, you do,” she countered. “And summer vacation’s right around the corner – comes at the same time every year, so don’t use that as an excuse.”
“I don’t take the summers off,” Emery reminded her. She wasn’t teaching faculty like Monica, so she worked year-round. Things at the university were always quieter in the summer, and she enjoyed that. More time for serious research. “Anyway, Glen was waiting for me outside my office bright and early this morning.”
“Uh-oh. The email?”
“Yeah,” Emery said. “I’ve been avoiding him all week because of it but it wasn’t actually that bad of a chewing out. I guess the last community liaison got yelled at by parents all the time. Don’t be one of those moms, Monica.”
“Not planning on it,” she laughed. “And this is exactly why I teach adults.”
“The freshmen hardly count,” Emery pointed out.
“That’s true, but once we get done potty-training them in their first couple years here, most of them become pretty good scientists.”
Speaking of which… Emery pointed to the microscope. “Verdict?”
She had a spore print from one of the meadow mushrooms mounted to a slide, and they’d been looking at it on the display monitor mounted above the microscope.
“You seriously don’t want to talk about it? I know you’re not the gossiping kind, but this is big for you.”
Emery arched an eyebrow at her. “You’re acting like I’ve never looked at a woman before.”
“Look at them, yes,” Monica said. “But actually be more than just friends or colleagues? I can tell this detective is different, the way you talk about her, the way you stare off into the distance and lose your train of thought all the time.”
“All the time? It’s been one day,” Emery said, folding her arms over her chest. “My intentions are not to pick her up, because we’re working on this case together and that would be unprofessional.”
“But scaring the bejeezus out of a group of ten-year-olds is totally profesh,” Monica smiled. Then she turned back to the monitor. “You were right on your ID. Plain old meadow mushrooms.” She gave Emery a wink. “There, your part in the case is finished, so you can ask her out.”
Emery took off the latex gloves she was wearing and snapped them in Monica’s direction.
“I’m going to my office to write this up,” she said. “Send me screenshots of those spore prints.”
“You’re the boss… when Glen’s not around.”
Emery went down the hall to her office and shut the door behind her. She turned on the task light at her desk instead of the overhead, partly because it was a nice, sunny day out, and partly because it helped her avoid Glen, which was always a good thing.
She was halfway through writing up her findings on both the hike and the harmless meadow mushrooms she found when her desk phone rang. Figuring it was Monica wanting to go to lunch, Emery picked up and tucked the receiver against her shoulder. “This is Dr. Ellison.”
“No, this is Patrick,” was the reply she was waiting for – Monica’s go-to Spongebob reference whenever she called Emery.
Instead, there was a pause, a throat clearing, and a surprising voice tickling her ear. “Hi, this is Detective Julia Taylor… from yesterday.”
A smile came automatically to Emery’s lips and suddenly all of her attention was on her caller. “Yes, I remember… you made a strong, uh, impression on me.”
“Oh god,” Julia laughed. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“I really don’t see that happening.”
Julia cleared her throat again. “Well, the reason I’m calling is I wanted to thank you for the restaurant lead… and check on your findings… although it was just yesterday that you collected those specimens… and you probably have a lot more to do than just consult for me…”
