LITMIR.BIZ

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      “What’s oleandrin?”

      “The poisonous toxin in oleander—the cardiac glycoside that nearly switched off his heart.”

      Agent Keefe smirked again. “You think I’m heavy-handed, Ms. Pickard? Look at the crime from my vantage point. You had the best opportunity to poison Mr. Ballantine, along with easy access to the toxin. There’s an oleander bush in the Captain’s back garden, less than twenty feet away from the kitchen door.”

      Sharon murmured a silent thank-you that Emma Neilson, the owner of The Scottish Captain, had married Glory’s Deputy Chief of Police. Early that Monday morning, Rafe Neilson had telephoned Sharon to explain that he’d requested assistance from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. “I had no choice,” he’d said. “It would be highly inappropriate for me to investigate an intentional poisoning at my wife’s B and B.”

      Rafe had continued. “The NCSBI is sending Ty Keefe to conduct the interviews. He’s smart, experienced and an expert at spotting evasion, so be totally open with him. Don’t even think about lying.”

      With Rafe’s safe advice fresh in her mind, Sharon took a moment to frame a response to Agent Keefe’s near-accusation. “Why would I want to poison Andrew Ballantine? He was a complete stranger to me when he walked into the gazebo. He lives in Asheville, on the other side of North Carolina.”

      “I was going to ask you about that.” Keefe gazed at her once again with an intensity she could almost feel. “Two other people who went to the tea party told me that you latched on to Mr. Ballantine like he was an old friend—that you barely spoke with anyone else.”

      Sharon felt herself blush. “At first we talked about Glory Community Church. He’d spent two hours on Sunday afternoon inside the sanctuary looking at the stained-glass windows. He had several questions about the church and Pastor Hartman. After I answered them, we discussed our shared interests, like Scotland and the Scots. The time flew by.”

      “Until he collapsed in a heap.”

      She nodded. “Oleandrin often triggers bradycardia, a dangerously low pulse rate. Andrew became pale, said he was feeling nauseated, and then fainted. I called the paramedics. Emma Neilson folded a tablecloth into a makeshift pillow to help make Andrew comfortable. One of the guests at the B and B—Haley Carroll, a physician—worked on him until the ambulance arrived.”

      “And once at the hospital Mr. Ballantine received some kind of high-tech antidote?”

      Sharon answered with an ambiguous shrug. Agent Keefe must’ve known that she couldn’t voluntarily provide specific details about Andrew’s treatment to the police, although there wasn’t much to keep private. Andrew’s overnight stay in the E.R. was a simple tale with a happy ending. The “high-tech antidote” for oleandrin poisoning was antidigoxin antibodies—a therapy originally developed to treat digitalis overdoses. Five vials helicoptered to Glory from Duke Medical Center in Durham had worked well for Andrew.

      Ken Lehman, the lead emergency room physician at Glory Regional had also followed the “old fashioned” treatment protocol throughout the night: He encouraged Andrew to throw up, treated his various cardiac symptoms as they appeared, and gave him multiple doses of activated charcoal to absorb the oleandrin left in his system.

      Agent Keefe retrieved a small notebook from his jacket pocket. “Tell me what happened yesterday from the beginning—when you arrived at The Scottish Captain. I’m curious why an emergency room nurse would spend her day off cooking a Scottish dessert in a local B and B.”

      “Two months ago an electrical fire in the sanctuary of Glory Community Church destroyed one of the church’s stained-glass windows,” Sharon explained. “The Window Restoration Committee was organized to oversee the window’s replacement. I’m the Chair of the WinReC, as we’ve come to be called.”

      “And the members decided to hire Andrew Ballantine to act as your stained-glass window guru,” Keefe interrupted. “I interviewed Emma Neilson this morning. I know that she’s also a member of the committee and that she agreed to host a welcoming tea party for Mr. Ballantine in the Captain’s garden gazebo.” He leaned against the sofa. “Let’s get back to you.”

      “I offered to pitch in because Emma is the best friend I have in Glory.”

      Sharon peered sideways at Agent Keefe. He seemed to accept her statement without any questions. Good. She didn’t want to have to explain the details of her friendship with Emma to the nosy detective.

      They’d met the previous March when Sharon, who sang alto, had joined the choir at Glory Community Church. Emma, a soprano, had recently returned from her honeymoon with Rafe. Sharon and Emma quickly discovered the many other things in addition to good voices they had in common—from a love of women’s softball, to a dislike of church politics, to the painful fact that both had moved to Glory from big cities to escape the stress of messy divorces from unfaithful men.

      Stress was the key word. Shedding her husband of six years, starting a new job and moving from Raleigh to Glory had filled her days with “stress points” a year earlier. Blessedly, her new life in Glory now seemed more or less normal—but here was Agent Keefe, trying his best to crank up the pressure.

      He would never understand, but filling her free Sunday with busy work had been a fair trade. Helping out in the Captain’s kitchen had benefited Emma. But equally important, enjoying a productive Sunday with a friend at The Scottish Captain had softened the reality that she would go through another Christmas season alone.

      “Anyway,” Sharon said, “I arrived at the Captain at one o’clock and began making the Strathbogie Mist. I also worked with Calvin Constable, the Captain’s breakfast chef, to prepare the scones and tea cakes.”

      “In other words, you spent the afternoon in the kitchen?”

      She thought about this. “Except for two ten-minute breaks when I helped Emma greet arriving guests, starting with the Dickensons—a couple from Pennsylvania. She’s a dentist, he’s a lawyer.”

      Sharon wondered if she should share her other routine observations—that Samuel and Theodora Dickenson were a well-tanned, healthy-looking duo: she a lean woman with caramel-colored hair; he somewhat chubbier with ashen hair and a trim brown goatee.

      No need. Agent Keefe undoubtedly spoke to them this morning, too.

      “Next, I met the Carrolls, from Wilson, North Carolina,” she said. Haley Carroll—an anesthesiologist—was a round-faced redhead, while Michael Carroll—an accountant—was a rangy, mostly nondescript man with an unusually large nose.

      Agent Keefe flipped a page in his notebook. “One other guest arrived on Sunday afternoon. A Mrs. Amanda Turner.”

      “She checked in while I was cooking. Emma showed her through the kitchen when I was putting away the mixing bowls I’d used.” Sharon recalled that Emma hadn’t looked especially happy when she led the fortyish, full-figured woman with brassy blond hair through the kitchen’s swinging door.

      “This is Amanda Turner,” Emma had said with a noticeably strained smile. “Amanda hails from Birmingham, Alabama. She recently purchased The Robert Burns Inn, the B and B on Campbell Street. She’s staying with us until the painters and carpet layers finish redecorating the guest rooms.”

      “They promised to be done by Wednesday,” Amanda drawled, “but I almost don’t care, because I know I’m going to enjoy my stay here. The Captain is so lovely, and now I have a chance to see every last inch of the building.”

      Sharon had instantly understood Emma’s hesitation. She wasn’t thrilled to give a future competitor a comprehensive tour of The Scottish Captain, but she could hardly refuse, because Amanda was a legitimate paying customer.

      Agent Keefe clicked his ballpoint pen then jotted a few words. “How many portions of Strathbogie Mist did you make for the tea party?”

      “Twenty-four.”

      “All

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