Death of a Batty Genius (Stormy Day Mystery #3) Read online

  Jeffrey, my mischievous and gray feline roommate, jumped onto the table and playfully swatted my hand for attention. Petting his soft fur gave me an idea.

  “Officer Wiggles, how’s your cat these days? His name’s Peekaboo, right? Now, is he more ginger or more marmalade?”

  “Ginger,” she said without hesitation. “He’s good. He put on a little weight over winter, because he thinks snow is the devil, but spring’s coming.” She took a slow, audible breath. “What can I do for you tonight? Are you in trouble again?”

  “No, it’s my roommate. This is going to sound crazy, but I think she got drugged or poisoned by a powdered smoothie drink. The brand is—”

  “Rainforest Delight,” she interrupted. “With a bunch of googly-eyed tree frogs on the packaging.”

  “Oh, no. I mean yes. This is bad, Peggy. How bad is it?”

  “About a dozen individual disturbances across town. We’ve traced the supply back to a gas station that must have gotten the recall notice on the merchandise and had the genius idea to put the stuff on sale rather than send it back.” She made a tsk-tsk sound. “The contaminant hasn’t been identified, but the good news is, it hasn’t been lethal. You said your roommate had the smoothie? Keep an eye on her and let her sleep it off. The doctors are saying no need to take her to the hospital, unless the symptoms get worse. Any sign of paralysis or coma, bring her in.”

  “What if she’s gone missing?”

  “Then you need to find her before she does something crazy and hurts herself.”

  I swallowed the lump of worry in my throat.

  Voice cracking, I said, “Can you help me? I’ve been looking for Jessica, and I can’t find her. She’s on foot, without her phone, and I’m worried. I already checked the ravine, where she likes to walk, and I was so sure she’d be there, but she wasn’t.”

  “Do you know the protocol for an urban search?”

  “A little bit. I can look it up. Good idea. Thanks, Peggy. I’ll let you know when I find her. Good luck with—”

  “Stormy, I’m as good as on my way. You’re at your house?”

  “Yes, but…” I tried telling her that I could handle it, and I didn’t want to take away police resources when they had so many other calls, but Peggy politely told me to let her do her job. She asked for a physical description of Jessica, plus her full name, so she could let the other officers know and put in a notice with the hospital, “just in case.”

  While I waited for her to arrive, I grabbed my notebook and started thinking on paper while refreshing my memory of the police procedure for an urban search. My father had been on a number of calls over the years, typically for people with memory-related diseases who’d wandered away from home.

  Jessica didn’t fit the age profile, but just like those people, she might have gotten confused about the date and been trying to get back home to her old apartment. I would check there next.

  I grabbed her phone to review her recent calls or messages. Luckily for me, we didn’t have that many secrets from each other, and when I’d told her about using the word bacon as my password, she’d made it her password as well.

  She hadn’t made or received any phone calls between the time I’d left the house and called her myself, so that was a dead end. I used her address book to get her mother’s phone number, then called and broke the news as gently as I could. Mrs. Kelly talked to her daughter every day, sometimes multiple times, and was understandably upset.

  “Not again,” she sobbed. “I can’t have someone disappear like this.”

  “Jessica’s a tough cookie,” I said. “And smart. Don’t you worry. Even if she’s not quite herself, she’s still got more sense than most. And we’re going to find her. Do you have any ideas about places she’d walk to?”

  “She mentioned a treehouse, near the ravine.” Mrs. Kelly started sounding more hopeful. “She must be there!”

  “Good idea,” I said, hating myself for the white lie. I promised I would keep Mrs. Kelly up to date, and she offered to make some calls and work on a list of other places to search.

  After I ended the call, I double-checked the text messages on Jessica’s phone. There was a draft message sitting in the outbox that hadn’t been sent.

  The text was addressed to me: Don’t freak out, but your ex is here at the house. He just showed up, no warning. I thought it was you at the door, so I answered it with no pants! Just a shirt and boxer shorts! What a dork! Now Christopher wants to surprise you by showing up at the restaurant. That would be a bad idea, right? He’s very

  She hadn’t finished or sent the message, which meant she’d been interrupted, possibly by the smoothie kicking in.

  “And then what?” I asked out loud. “He’s very what? Persistent? Aggravating?”

  Jeffrey tried to help me with my pen and paper, but discovered he didn’t have opposable thumbs and therefore couldn’t write, so he dumped my notepad onto the floor instead.

  “He shoots, he scores,” I said dryly, then I gave him a kiss and went next door for some human help from Logan.

  Logan had the local community station on his television, showing a live news update. The digital banner across the screen read Rainforest Delight Outbreak in Misty Falls, Oregon.

  “Can you believe this?” Logan turned down the volume so we could talk. “My secretary called and told me I had to turn on the news. I was just about to come over and get you and Jessica.”

  “Good idea, but…”

  The screen flashed to announce incoming information.

  We both watched as the young woman reporter, the one who usually covered the weather forecast and pet adoption announcements, excitedly gave an update on the situation.

  “As of now, at nine o’clock, thirteen people are known to have ingested the contaminated Rainforest Delight smoothie mix. Oh my gosh, this is just… I can’t even. What? Read the prompter? Okay… Police are asking for the public’s assistance in locating a few of the people affected. We have a new citizen to add to the list of the lost or missing: Jessica Kelly. Age thirty-three, average height, long, red hair. What? Oh my gosh, it’s Jessica who works at the Olive Grove. I know her!”

  The young woman stared at the camera, unable to speak for several seconds. Voices off-screen urged her to keep going. She opened a bottle of water, took a long drink, then continued, “Jessica was last seen in the West Creek neighborhood, wearing a pink jacket. If you see someone fitting that description, please approach calmly and, oh my gosh I can hardly breathe. Daphne, pull yourself together! Um, please notify the police at the hotline number on the screen. The number is area code five-four-one…”

  Logan turned to me. “Is this true?”

  “Given the way that woman reports the weather, I’m shocked to say that yes, she’s got all the details right. I was just coming over to tell you. I’ve already spoken to Jessica’s mother, and I would call her friends, but now that Marcy’s moved away, you and I are about it.”

  “We’ll find her.” He jumped up, then winced and touched his palm to his stomach. He no longer wore the bandages from his recent altercation with the pointy end of a sword, but the deep cut was still fresh.

  I’d noticed him touching the scarred area whenever he was worried. It reminded me to be more careful in the future with my crazy ideas, because every action carried consequences. Safety had to come first. Whatever happened with my investigating career, I couldn’t live with myself if I got one of my friends hurt. Again.

  “Stormy? Don’t fade away on me. We’ll find her.”

  I nodded. “Officer Peggy Wiggles is already on the way over here. We’ll follow police procedure and start canvasing a two-block radius.” I glanced at the front window, watching for the police cruiser that would be arriving any minute.

  Logan asked, “Jessica’s not driving, is she?”

  “Her car’s still out front, and I think that silver car across the street is Christopher’s, which means he took a taxi to the restaurant, or maybe he ran there, which
would explain the sweating.”

  “He’s sleeping now, but I’ll go wake him and see if he can remember anything useful.”

  I put my hand on Logan’s shoulder to stop him. “I’ll go. You keep watch for Peggy.”

  “Or Jessica,” he said. “With any luck, she’ll find her way back home again.”

  My throat was too tight for me to answer, so I nodded again. I wanted to believe him.

  While Logan kept an eye on the driveway and the news, I walked back to the second bedroom. Christopher was right where we’d left him, on the mattress of the pull-out sofa. His breathing was calm, and he seemed peaceful, despite being tangled up in his clothes. He’d gotten one arm out of his long shirtsleeve, and now the sleeve was wrapped around his neck.

  “Wake up, Christopher, I need to talk to you. And not just about how your space-age shirt is trying to murder you.” I started untangling the fabric and unbuttoning the front.

  He stirred. “You want me,” he said sleepily.

  “I want you to keep breathing. Your shirt’s all messed up.” I continued unbuttoning the placket. “Christopher, where’s Jessica? Was she here at the house when you left? Did she say she was going somewhere?”

  His eyelashes fluttered, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Who’s Jessica? Did the Forest Folk eat her, too? We have to be very quiet. They’re making the stew.”

  “Really? You’re hallucinating about monsters again? What happened to the Lancaster Hotel in Paris?”

  He smiled. “Paris.”

  I finished untangling his shirt and started pulling it off the remaining arm. He resisted, and then, as I was leaning over to get him free, he grabbed my waist and pulled me down on top of him.

  I was so surprised, I let out a nervous laugh. His body was warm, even without a fever.

  “This is perfect,” he said. “The Lancaster Hotel. Just me and you.”

  The way he held me, I had a pretty good idea what kind of hallucination it was.

  “Christopher, I need you to come back to America with me. Come back and tell me about when you visited my house and saw my roommate, Jessica.”

  He responded by nuzzling my neck.

  “Focus,” I said. “Back to America. You’re at my house.”

  I tried to pull away, but he gripped me tightly.

  That was when Logan, who could have been standing at the door for a while, cleared his throat.

  “Logan!” I wrestled myself away from Christopher’s embrace.

  Logan said, “A police cruiser is pulling into the driveway.”

  “He was all tangled up in his shirt,” I said quickly. “It’s this fancy-man stretchy fabric, see?” I stretched out the shirt’s sleeve to demonstrate.

  Logan didn’t sway. The room was dark, so he was backlit by the hallway light. I couldn’t see the expression on his face, but he couldn’t have been too impressed to see me snuggled up with my ex. He said he would go let Peggy in, and left the doorframe.

  “Stupid shirt,” I said. I balled up the fabric and tried to throw it on the ground, but part of it stuck to my palm. I lifted the fabric to my nose and sniffed it. In addition to the scent of Christopher, there was something else. Pine.

  The clues clicked together.

  I ran out to the living room.

  “Logan, I know where Jessica is.”

  Chapter 5

  The flashing lights of a police car are just as unnerving when you’re inside the car, in the passenger seat.

  Officer Peggy Wiggles drove us toward Accio Bistro, the restaurant I’d fled hours earlier.

  Logan had stayed behind at the house to coordinate the local neighborhood canvas with the other officers.

  Officer Wiggles asked me, “Any luck?”

  I lowered my phone and dropped it in my lap.

  “The line’s still busy,” I reported.

  I’d been trying to reach the taxi driver who’d picked up Christopher at my house, to confirm that Jessica had gone with him to the restaurant, but I couldn’t get through to the taxi dispatch.

  “She’s your friend,” Peggy said. “If you have a hunch she’s up a tree, that’s where we’ll find her.”

  “I wish I had more proof than a bit of twigs and pine sap on someone’s shirt.”

  “How about a whole human? Will that be enough proof for you?”

  “I just feel like I’m wasting everyone’s time, and if I’m wrong, you’ll hold it against me as proof that I have no business calling myself an investigator.”

  She cleared her throat and took a long look at me before returning her attention to the road.

  “Stormy, we’re five minutes out from Accio Bistro, which means we’re five minutes from finding out if your hunch is correct. In your career, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to be thrown under the bus by other people. Don’t do it to yourself. Be confident in your strategies. Sell people on the possibility you might be right, that you might be the person with the answers. Everyone wants someone to believe in. If it turns out you’re wrong, acknowledge that your idea was only one of several options, and move on. Most times, nobody will remember who was right and who was wrong, but they’ll always remember your confidence.”

  “Thanks, Officer. I appreciate that.”

  “You can call me Peggy if nobody else is around.”

  “Thanks, Peggy.”

  She slowed down and steered into the restaurant’s parking lot. She said, “Here we are, and it’s been less than two minutes, not the five that I guessed. Does my being a bit wrong diminish anything I said?”

  “No. Good point.” I would have thanked her for being a great mentor, but I was too nervous about finding Jessica.

  “Those are some tall trees,” Peggy said.

  I leaned forward to look up through the windshield as we rolled along the row of parked cars.

  “Perfect for climbing,” I said. “Jessica was always up in a tree when we were kids. It was the only way she could get peace and quiet away from her brothers.”

  “I’ll put in a call to the fire department. We can use their ladder to get—Stormy! For crying out loud, wait for me to stop the car!”

  I was already out and running. I’d changed clothes since I was last in the icy parking lot, and the grip on my winter boots made me sure-footed.

  I ran straight for the white oak tree with the widest base. Its bottom branch hung low to the ground, inviting tree climbers to step right up. The oak was bracketed on three sides by bushy pine trees that etched my jacket with the same sap that had led me there.

  “Jessica?” I peered up into the darkness, searching for a pink jacket somewhere between me and the moon.

  She didn’t answer, but something rustled, and gritty particles fell into my eyes. I blinked the grit away and started climbing the tree blind. Jessica had to be up there. She had to be the one moving around and sending dried tree material raining down on me, because if it wasn’t her, it was a very large raccoon, and I didn’t want to make friends with a raccoon.

  I climbed, legs aching as I got higher and higher.

  With my eyes still tearing up from the grit, I reached out for what looked like a knobby stick to use as a handhold. The stick moved away, leaving me grasping and lurching to keep my balance. With a groan, I hugged the trunk and waited for the dizziness to pass.

  Something shifted above me, sending down more grit.

  “Hello?” I said. “If you’re a raccoon, please say something now. Make one of your scary raccoon noises, and I’ll be out of this tree so fast it’ll break the sound barrier.”

  Nothing answered, which I hoped was no-news of the good-news variety. I reached up and groped a shoe, connected to an ankle that was, thankfully, warm and human.

  “Jessica, it’s me.” I squeezed her ankle.

  She made a non-verbal sound that reminded me of Jeffrey’s question-meow—the one he’d make after being awoken from a deep sleep.

  I found a stable branch for my foot and got myself up to her level, then called do
wn to Peggy on the ground, “We found her! She’s right here, just like I said!”

  Peggy called up, “You two boneheads aren’t safe until you’re on the ground. Get down here.” She shone her powerful flashlight in my eyes.

  I shielded my eyes from the light. “What’s the rush? The view’s great from up here, if you’d stop blinding us.”

  “Stay up there all night if you want. That big ol’ raccoon two branches above you looks positively thrilled to be sharing her tree.”

  I looked up and spotted the shining eyes, illuminated by Peggy’s bright flashlight.

  “Uh-oh,” I said under my breath. “Jessica, climb down with me.”

  I pulled on her jacket, but she hugged the trunk. The raccoon above us made curious chittering noises, then full-on complaint cries. The high-pitched distress calls scared Jessica into clamping onto the trunk tighter. That explained why she’d been stuck in the tree.

  Flashing red lights flickered through the branches from below. Down on the distant ground, a firetruck parked alongside the tree. Deep voices—the firefighters coordinating with Peggy—filtered up to us on male laughter.

  “Come on, Jessica. Shake a leg. Are you really going to let a bunch of boys rescue us from a tree? Like a couple of helpless kittens?”

  The answer was yes.

  The ladder extended up, and within minutes, I was being tossed over the shoulder of the biggest man I’d ever seen. Near the bottom, he handed me off as though I were a sack of potatoes and went up for Jessica.

  The firefighters on the ground checked my eyes and reflexes before letting me join Peggy by the police car.

  “I could have climbed down myself,” I grumbled.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Tell me you didn’t have fun being tossed over that man’s shoulder. Some women pay good money for that sort of treatment, every year at the Firefighters’ Ball.”

  “It wasn’t horrible.”

  “The boys volunteered to drop you off at home. I’ve got another call.” She gave me a hint of a smile. “You two boneheads stay out of trouble.”