Death Drops Read online

  “Death Drops is a gem! Entertaining, informative, and with a mystery that had me completely baffled!”

  —Gayle Trent, author of Killer Sweet Tooth

  NATURE’S WAY MARKET AND CAFÉ SELLS HEALTHY FOODS AND NATURAL CURES FOR WHAT AILS YOU. BUT THERE IS NO CURE FOR MURDER. . . .

  Even naturopathic doctors need a little stress relief—that’s why Willow McQuade, ND, takes a break to visit her Aunt Claire, owner of Nature’s Way Market and Café, on Long Island’s North Fork. But Willow’s serenity is shattered when she finds her aunt’s lifeless body on the market floor, a bottle of Mimulus lying nearby. Taken to calm one’s fear of misfortune, the flower essence clearly failed Aunt Claire . . . for her death was no accident.

  But who would want to kill her? The police soon zero in on Willow herself, who stands to inherit Claire’s business and the rights to a breakthrough anti-aging cream. Desperate to prove her innocence, Willow turns to former police officer Jackson Spade for help. Together they unearth a slew of suspects, each with something to gain by Claire’s unnatural demise. But as Willow gets closer to the truth, a killer waits to administer one final dose of death.

  “An absorbing mystery and entertaining debut.”

  —Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, writer/producer of Designing Women

  CHRYSTLE FIEDLER, a writer specializing in alternative health topics, is the author of four books including The Country Almanac of Home Remedies. Death Drops is the first in a new mystery series. Visit www.chrystlefiedler.com.

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  COVER DESIGN BY MIN CHOI • COVER ILLUSTRATION BY DAN CRAIG

  Who would want to hurt Aunt Claire? A disgruntled customer? Someone she ticked off at the post office? Despite her Zen nature, Aunt Claire did have a knack for getting into confrontations with certain folks. This child of the sixties was also a real activist, holding meetings for causes like workers’ rights and animal rights every week in the store. Suddenly, I heard a startled gasp from behind me. “What happened?”

  Turning around, I found Aunt Claire’s passive-aggressive right hand, Janice Dorian, a stricken look on her face. Despite being surrounded by natural ways to calm down, she was an uptight forty-something, with a perpetually pinched face. “What have you done to her?”

  “Nothing!” There was no one I loved more than my beloved Aunt Claire. “She’s gone, Janice. The police will be here any minute.”

  Janice pushed past me and bent over Aunt Claire’s body. “Everything was fine until you came home. I’ve never seen her so agitated since you arrived.”

  This was true but had to do with my efforts to bring my mother and Aunt Claire back together. Or maybe, her agitation had something to do with her new business venture. Even then, she hid it very well. “Janice, you know that we loved each other very much.” I pointed to the bottle of Mimulus. “I think she was murdered.” I explained my theory.

  She snatched up the bottle before I could stop her and snarled, “You did this!” She waved the bottle at me. “This is your fault!”

  DISCLAIMER

  This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health, or any other kind of personal professional services in the book. The reader should consult his or her medical, health or other competent professional before adopting any of the suggestions in this book or drawing inferences from it.

  The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

  Gallery Books

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Chrystle Fiedler

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Gallery Books trade paperback edition February 2012

  GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Jacquelynne Hudson

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Fiedler, Chrystle.

  Death drops / Chrystle Fiedler.—1st Gallery Books trade paperback ed.

  p. cm.—(Natural remedies mystery series)

  1. Naturopathy—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3606.I327D43 2012

  813'.6—dc23 2011043575

  ISBN 978-1-4516-4360-2

  ISBN 978-1-4516-4362-6 (ebook)

  Dedicated to My Detective Dachshunds:

  Holmes, Fletcher, and Wallander.

  Best Friends, Protectors, Muses.

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  contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter: One

  Chapter: Two

  Chapter: Three

  Chapter: Four

  Chapter: Five

  Chapter: Six

  Chapter: Seven

  Chapter: Eight

  Chapter: Nine

  Chapter: Ten

  Chapter: Eleven

  Chapter: Twelve

  Chapter: Thirteen

  Chapter: Fourteen

  Chapter: Fifteen

  Chapter: Sixteen

  Chapter: Seventeen

  Chapter: Eighteen

  Chapter: Nineteen

  Chapter: Twenty

  Chapter: Twenty-One

  Chapter: Twenty-Two

  Chapter: Twenty-Three

  Chapter: Twenty-Four

  Chapter: Twenty-Five

  Chapter: Twenty-Six

  acknowledgments

  My heartfelt thanks go to my agent Ann Collette, for her insight and support; the wonderful team at Gallery/Simon & Schuster, especially Mitchell Ivers, Megan McKeever, and Stephanie Evans; all the alternative health experts who have been my teachers, including herbalist Brigitte Mars, Suzy Cohen, RPh, Deborah Wiancek, ND, and Jacob Teitelbaum, MD; and my mother, Marion Fiedler, who started me on the alternative path. Thank you all!

  death drops

  chapter one

  Dear Dr. McQuade,

  Help! I’ve been feeling anxious and stressed to the max ever since I started my new job. Is there anything natural I can take to help me chill out?

  Signed,

  Stressed Out

  Dear Stressed Out,

  Have no fear. One of the best natural remedies for stress is flower essences, which help to correct emotional imbalances. There are thirty-eight flower essences
, developed by Dr. Edward Bach in 1934. Just put a few drops of Bach Rescue Remedy—a combination of rockrose for terror and panic, impatiens for irritation and impatience, clematis for inattentiveness, star-of-Bethlehem for shock, and cherry plum for irrational thoughts—under your tongue and you’ll begin to chill big-time. You’ll find it at your local health food store.

  Signed,

  Willow McQuade, ND

  Call me a nature nut. I love nature. I like to walk in nature, I use natural remedies, and I practice natural medicine as a naturopathic doctor in Los Angeles. So my “green exercise,” walking in the forest, this Friday morning fit right into that theme.

  It was part of the reason I’d traveled to Long Island, two hours east of New York City at the beginning of June, wanting to absorb by osmosis nature’s finest in a preserve the Nature Conservancy called one of nature’s last, best places. I’d come back to my hometown of Greenport, New York, an idyllic fishing village turned tourist mecca, to stay with my beloved aunt Claire, master herbalist and owner of Nature’s Way Market and Café, for my annual summer visit and to rest and recuperate.

  I desperately needed these two weeks away after a punishing spring that involved joining a new holistic medical practice in West Hollywood, traveling biweekly to consult at the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, writing a blog and numerous articles for Nature’s Remedy—an online magazine—and handling a high-maintenance boyfriend, now my ex. More about him later.

  Right now the forest, dappled in sunshine, was spread before me like a visual all-you-can-see feast. Splashes of color from blooming cosmos, hibiscus, and Rose of Sharon bushes saturated the landscape. Bluebirds cawed and flitted from tree to tree, while squirrels skittered down the path, looking for breakfast. The woodsy smell of foliage, flowers, and crusty earth was intoxicating. Through the canopy of trees I could just see a wink of clear, blue sky.

  I’d driven to this nature preserve walk every day for the past week. Although it was just outside of town, I felt transported to Eden. I focused on being here now, feeling my legs move in rhythm with my breathing, one-two, one-two, concentrating on every butter-yellow-Croc-soled step, and making it a walking meditation.

  Still, in spite of my best intentions, my thoughts kept returning to the conversation I’d had this morning with Aunt Claire, which had left me worried. I’d come downstairs from my bedroom on the third floor to discover her working feverishly on her computer. For years Aunt Claire was a real technophobe, but once she made the leap into the twenty-first century, she never looked back. She even used an iPhone.

  She glanced up at me, smiled, and pushed a wisp of shoulder-length blond hair behind her ear. She was dressed in her usual casual style—a T-shirt, denim shorts, and hemp sandals—although the vegetarian message on her T-shirt, Love Animals, Don’t Eat Them, was anything but.

  “Honey, did I wake you?”

  I’d been sleeping in Aunt Claire’s guest room, across the hall from her bedroom, above Nature’s Way Market and Café for the past week and a half. I hadn’t heard her get up, probably because my white-noise machine was on. Although there weren’t the traffic sounds I was used to hearing in L.A., just the sounds of crickets to keep me company, I couldn’t break myself of the habit.

  That morning I woke up at six thirty, hopped out of my cocoon of a bed, did my morning reading of inspirational authors such as Thich Nhat Hanh and Eckhart Tolle, and meditated for fifteen minutes. Feeling centered and at peace with the world, I dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, and my yellow rubber sandals and headed downstairs. On the way out, I found Aunt Claire working away in her office before the store and café opened at eight.

  “I didn’t hear a thing.” I walked over to the desk, kissed her smooth cheek, and looked at the computer screen. “What are you working on?”

  “The fountain of youth.”

  I blinked. “Say what?”

  She chuckled. “I’m working with a company in New York on an age-defying herbal cream.”

  “So that’s your secret.” I appraised her. Nary a wrinkle; clear, vibrant skin; sparkling aquamarine eyes. Aunt Claire glowed with vibrant health. Her calendar age was sixty-seven, but she looked a good ten years younger.

  She pushed Send and reached for a steaming cup of herbal tea. It smelled delicious, like licorice and fennel. She pointed to the pot of tea on the desk and an extra cup. “You could say that. I first started using this specific combination of herbs when I was researching my book.”

  Aunt Claire had written The Complete Encyclopedia of Herbs a few years ago and The Complete Encyclopedia of Herbs for Beauty last spring. She’d circled the world to complete her research, traveling from the Amazonian rain forests to the Himalayas. “The cream is full of herbs, antioxidants, and lots of other goodies.”

  “Sounds great. And people are really into that kind of thing. I’d use it.”

  She shook her head and smiled. “Sweetheart, you don’t need it. Your skin is beautiful, just like the rest of you.”

  Giving her shoulder an affectionate squeeze, I circled the desk and caught sight of myself in the large, wooden-framed mirror on the wall. Not for the first time, I noticed how much I looked like my aunt Claire, instead of my own mother, a petite brunette. Although I was twenty-eight and Aunt Claire was sixty-seven, both of us were tall, thin, and blond, with angular features, good skin, model-like cheekbones, and excellent teeth. “The teeth of the tiger,” my aunt always said, as neither of us spent any time in the dentist’s chair.

  Overall, we were presentable and personable. People liked us, a good thing, since I was a doctor and she was a business owner. I was glad the gene fairy had given me Aunt Claire’s characteristics rather than my mother’s. In fact, Aunt Claire felt more like my mother than my own mother did. She was a nurturing soul and accepted me the way I was. My mother always wanted me to be different, more like my sister, the “real” doctor, and less interested in “whoo-whoo” medicine, which is what she called my chosen profession.

  I sat down and reached for the ceramic teapot, with its bold red-and-yellow floral design, and poured tea into the matching cup. The chair was comfy, as was the office, with overstuffed couches, bookshelves crammed with natural, new age, and vegetarian-themed books, and pictures on the wall of various herbs and yoga positions. Above the doorway was a sign with the word Peace in big, bold letters. On her desk in a place of honor was a picture of me receiving my degree in naturopathic medicine from the Southwest College of Natural Medicine and Health Sciences. Aunt Claire, my inspiration in all things natural, was the only family member to fly out for the ceremony.

  My mother considered my pursuit of natural medicine foolish; why, she asked, hadn’t I gone to a real medical school like my sister, who graduated from Harvard? I was tired of trying to convince her that naturopathic doctors are “real” doctors, too. Our training is rigorous, and I’d even stepped it up by learning from some of the best and brightest—namely, Ray Richmond-Safer, MD, a nationally renowned holistic physician (and bestselling author and talk show favorite) at the cutting-edge Arizona Center for the Advancement of Natural Medicine.

  Unlike traditional doctors, naturopaths are taught to take into consideration a client’s entire body, mind, and spirit before rendering a diagnosis. After such an assessment, if I believed a patient (many of whom were bicoastal entertainment types: actors, agents, and studio execs) could benefit from more conventional medicine, I referred him or her to integrative doctor friends—those who had MD after their names but were open to natural medicine approaches—in L.A. or New York. My aunt Claire couldn’t be more proud and my mother, Daisy, more dismissive.

  The fact that my mother would not support me in my chosen field was a constant source of friction between them. There had been many arguments and tears. Then, last September, when my mother was admitted to the hospital for heart problems, Aunt Claire wanted to help restore her health with natural remedies, but my sister rebuffed her. Now, even though my mother lived in Greenport and my sister
lived in Southold, seven minutes away, the three women still weren’t talking.

  “Have you been working on this long?”

  Aunt Claire picked up a bottle of vitamins and turned the label toward me. “Green Focus, the company that makes this line of vitamins, approached me about creating beauty products after my book topped the New York Times non-fiction list last fall. I’ve been working on it all winter. You know I’ve always wanted to have my own line.”

  I did. For as long as I could remember, Aunt Claire had been working on formulas to address different health conditions, first in her native Australia, then in London, then when she came to Greenport one summer to visit us and ended up training with master herbalist Nick Holmes, now her boyfriend of more than fifteen years (neither believed in marriage). I’d always been fascinated by stories about exotic Aunt Claire, a professional herbalist who’d traveled to distant lands like Japan, India, and China, so when she came to the East End, twenty years ago, I’d been a sponge ready to absorb everything about her.

  She was fascinated by natural remedies and the way the body could use these cures to make itself well. Her curiosity was boundless, and she’d drawn me into her quest more than once. I’d been a guinea pig for her black tea compresses for sunburn, ginger-garlic soup for viruses, and special salve for poison ivy. She sold the ginger-garlic soup in the café, but the other remedies had never been packaged for her customers. Creating and distributing her own line was a dream come true. Sipping the tea, I savored the warm spices and kick of fennel and the happiness I felt for her.

  “When will your anti-aging formula be on the market? Or should I say, in your market?” I smiled.

  She beamed back at me. “I’m hoping Fresh Face, that’s the name of the line, will be on the shelves by year’s end. But for now, don’t say anything about it. It’s all very hush-hush. I’ve been instructed to keep it—what do you kids say? On the down low. They don’t want anyone to scoop us.”