Death Drops Page 12

  Signed,

  Awfully Itchy

  Dear Awfully Itchy,

  Poison ivy produces urushiol, which irritates your skin and causes an itchy rash. Typically, it lasts about a week. To get better faster, natural cures can help. If your poison ivy is itchy and oozing, apply a paste of baking soda and apple cider vinegar or oatmeal. Leave it on until you take a shower. If you need to, apply it again. You can also find good poison ivy treatments at your health food store. Choose formulas that contain gumweed, jewelweed, and plantain to calm the itch and remove toxins. The homeopathic remedy Rhus toxicodendron can also help you heal faster by stimulating the immune system.

  Signed,

  Dr. Willow McQuade

  Getting to Betty’s Organic Bake Shop was a quick trip, only about seven minutes out of town, along scenic Route 25. We passed the pond, with geese congregated all about, the Lutheran church, the miniature golf course, and several craft stands, then went up a hill with a peekaboo view of the wetlands below. Once over Mill Creek, with its vista of the bay, we passed the fish market, the organic vegetable stand, and the animal hospital, and then eased into Southold. We drove with the windows down, and the fresh breeze was delightful, salty and tangy.

  We found Betty’s Organic Bake Shop wedged between a pottery studio and doctor’s office on the Main Road. A bright, welcoming place, the building was painted white with navy-blue trim and navy-blue awnings. I pulled into the parking area in front and we hopped out.

  I opened the door to the delicious scent of fresh-baked bread and immediately began to salivate. A few people were queued up to the counter, but other than that, it didn’t seem too busy. When we reached the counter, we were greeted with a smile from an apple-cheeked, pear-shaped woman wearing a baker’s apron that said Betty’s Organic Bakery.

  “Can I help you?”

  I scanned the bins behind her, which were full of breads, pastries, and doughnuts, and wanted it all. My stomach was empty and it was very close to lunchtime. But I tried to remain focused. “I’m Willow McQuade from Nature’s Way Market and Café. I’m here to pick up our bread order.”

  The woman frowned. “You haven’t paid for the last one yet. I’m sorry about your aunt, but business is business.”

  My stomach lurched. Allie and I traded an “uh-oh” look. Luckily we were now the only ones in the store. I didn’t need the whole East End to know we had financial troubles. “How much how do we owe you?”

  She pulled over a ledger and flipped it open. “Two hundred sixty-two dollars and fifty cents.”

  I blew out a sigh of relief. Now that amount I could handle. “Check?” I asked, opening my checkbook.

  “Wonderful. Make it out to Betty Evans. You want the usual?”

  “Sure,” I said, writing out the check. I wanted to get to the bottom of my aunt’s finances. I needed to know why the business was in such bad shape. “Did you regularly have a problem with payment, Betty?”

  She grabbed five loaves of freshly baked bread and put them into bags. “Just lately. Claire was really good about paying me when we first started doing business together last year. But in the past two months or so, I think things must have gone wrong. She was always late with payment and carrying a balance. Whenever Janice came to pick up the bread order, she seemed stressed out to me. Although, let’s face it, she isn’t exactly Ms. Mary Sunshine on a good day. You know what I mean.” She rolled her eyes.

  I sure did. I nodded in agreement. “Was she complaining about my aunt? Or her job?”

  “Not in so many words, but I got the impression that she wasn’t happy with how business was being done. She was always saying they didn’t have enough money.” She popped two dozen yummy-looking rolls into another bag. “I do remember her saying once that Claire seemed distracted.”

  “In what way?”

  “Janice said she was always holed up in her office, out of the shop, or off to New York for meetings. I used to see Claire next door sometimes, at Dr. Neville’s. Arnold is a dermatologist. About what I don’t know.”

  I thought maybe I did.

  We thanked Betty for her bread and left the store, and I headed next door while Allie waited in the car. I figured I’d have better luck alone. I stepped inside to find a pretty twenty-something receptionist wearing a flower-print dress, who gave me a once-over for any zits or other blemishes. Her skin was clear, natch.

  “We’re about to close,” she said, not being helpful. “Can I help you?”

  “Is Dr. Neville around? He treated my aunt Claire, Claire Hagan?”

  She made a show of looking at the appointment book on the desk in front of her. “I can’t talk about other patients. But if you’d like, you can make an appointment for yourself.”

  Did I look like I needed to see a dermatologist? To my thinking, my complexion was one of my best features. I always got compliments on it.

  The door opened behind her and a man I presumed to be Dr. Arnold Neville came out. He put a file down on the desk, told the receptionist he’d see her in the morning, and turned to go. But I had other plans for him. “Dr. Neville?” He turned back to look at me. “I’m Willow McQuade, Claire Hagan’s niece. Can I speak to you for a minute?”

  He made a big show of looking at his watch, and then sighed. I guessed I was making him late for his golf game. Regardless, he opened his office door and said, “Please come in.”

  I followed him inside and he closed the door. The office was bare-bones, just a desk, a bookcase, filing cabinets, and an unhealthy-looking aloe vera plant on the windowsill. Two diplomas had been placed on the wall along with some generic seascapes. I walked past a door that opened into a small adjacent room that looked like a lab, filled with test tubes and equipment and smelling of ammonia. I wondered if he, too, was making up a version of Fresh Face. He gestured to the guest chair and we both sat down.

  “I was so sorry to hear about your aunt. My deepest condolences.”

  “Thank you so much. It has been a difficult time.” Especially since it had become increasingly clear that Aunt Claire hadn’t been keeping a close eye on her business before she died. I had a strong feeling I was playing catch-up and whoever had killed her and/or stolen the Fresh Face formula was way ahead of me. Case in point, his lab. “I was wondering why Aunt Claire came to see you.”

  “She had some problems with her skin.”

  Problems with her skin? Aunt Claire, like me, had skin like a baby’s bottom, even considering her age. He wasn’t being straight with me. “I think there was more to it than that. Did she ever mention her new herbal face cream, Fresh Face?”

  He shifted in his seat. “We talked about it, yes.”

  “Was she looking for advice? Were you working on it together?”

  He held up his hand in a “whoa” gesture. “Now wait a minute. I don’t think this is any of your business.”

  “I am her sole heir and someone stole that formula from the store. I need to find out who it was.”

  He pointed to himself and said, “Surely you can’t think that I broke into your store and took the formula.”

  “Who said anything about breaking in?” I questioned him.

  He shifted uncomfortably in his chair again. “I must have read something about it in the paper.”

  The phone on his desk buzzed. He grabbed the receiver as if it were a lifeline. “Yes, Penny?” He listened for a moment to what I was sure was a lame excuse to get me out of his office. “Thank you for letting me know.” He hung up the phone and stood up. “I have to be going. Office emergency.”

  Was there a really big zit that had to be dealt with? I thought not. He obviously wanted me gone.

  “No problem. I’d like to talk to you again, if that’s all right.”

  “My schedule is completely booked for the next month. Besides, I’ve told you all I know,” he said, going to the door and opening it for me.

  I didn’t believe that for a second.

  “So what did he say?” Allie asked.

&nb
sp; “It’s what he didn’t say,” I replied as I nudged the car out onto the road and headed east, back toward Greenport. “He definitely knows more than he’s telling. If he worked on the formula with Claire, he might have a motive. He could have killed her and then come back for the formula.”

  “But if they worked on it together, wouldn’t he have a copy?”

  “Not if she just went to him for general advice,” I replied. “Maybe he got hip to what she was working on and wanted it all for himself, so he killed her.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “I just don’t know why she’d go to see someone like him. He doesn’t have great credentials,” I said, telling her where he went to college. “It’s not like he went to a top-tier medical school.” We passed the animal hospital where Qigong had been treated. “Claire was an expert. She knew how herbs worked on the skin. If she had any questions, wouldn’t she have tapped a more well-known dermatologist, someone with real weight?”

  “Like an MD in New York?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how are you going to find out who that is?”

  “The answer may be in her e-mail folder; I have plenty more to wade through.” And I needed to do it immediately. I increased my speed. A light rain had started to fall, so I switched on the wipers.

  We drove up and over the hill and headed for Greenport. As we passed the eco-friendly building-supply place, I took a quick glance in my rearview mirror. Right on my bumper was an old black Ford truck that had seen better days. “I hate it when people do that.”

  “What?”

  “Tailgate.” As I watched in the mirror, the truck sped up and tapped my bumper. “Hey! What does he think he’s doing?”

  Allie turned around and looked back at the truck. “I can’t get a good look at the driver.”

  Squinting into the mirror, I tried to see the face of the driver. Whoever it was had on a baseball hat and sunglasses, so it was next to impossible to identify him. The truck zoomed up again and tapped my rear bumper. I pressed the gas pedal, but within moments, the driver increased his speed and tapped me again, even harder. Panicked now, I punched the gas pedal.

  “You’re going almost eighty!” Allie said, glancing at the speedometer.

  “I know!” I cried, pressing the pedal to the floor.

  “There!” Allie pointed to a turnaround in front of the Lutheran church up ahead. “Make a left! He won’t follow us into a church parking lot.”

  I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw that the truck was gaining on us again. I wasn’t too sure Allie was right. If this person was connected to Aunt Claire’s death or was the one who had thrown the brick with the note that said to get out, he might follow us. Clearly, he wanted to get rid of me. Why, I didn’t know.

  “Turn!” Allie yelled, pointing at the church.

  I cut over the road and aimed for the turnaround. But as I did so, the truck caught my bumper again, and thanks to the slippery road, we headed for the drainage ditch. “Hold on!” I yelled, fearing for our lives.

  I gripped the steering wheel and Allie grabbed the dashboard as we spun into the ditch. We landed with a thud, but right side up, facing in the opposite direction. The Ford truck turned and burned rubber, heading west. It was gone so quickly, I didn’t get the license number.

  I unbuckled my seat belt and leaned over to look at Allie, who now had a gash on her forehead from the dashboard. “Allie, you okay?” I gave the cut a close inspection. It was superficial, but head wounds always bleed profusely, and this one was no exception. I reached into the glove compartment and grabbed a wad of Kleenex and pressed it into the wound. I replaced my hand with hers. “Keep the pressure on.”

  Allie gave me a concerned look. “Are you okay?”

  Good question. I did feel some discomfort in my left hand. I flexed my wrist and felt a sharp bolt of agonizing pain. “I think I broke my wrist. But we’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

  chapter thirteen

  Dear Dr. McQuade,

  I went for a walk today and sprained my ankle when I stepped into a hole. Is there anything I can use to feel better faster?

  Signed,

  Feeling Sore

  Dear Feeling Sore,

  With any sprain, you’ll first want to follow PRICE—protect, rest, ice, compression, and elevation. As soon as possible, start taking homeopathic Arnica montana. We call it homeopathic aspirin. It helps to relieve pain and swelling and speed healing. You can also apply arnica topically to the injured area. Be careful, though, not to apply it to broken skin. Hawthorne is another helpful herb. It contains anthocyanidins and proanthocyanidins to help reduce inflammation. To stimulate the repair of tissues, supplement with glucosamine sulfate, which comes from shellfish.

  Signed,

  Dr. Willow McQuade

  After waiting in the ER for an hour, we were finally seen, assessed, and treated. The doctor put a neon-green cast on my severely sprained wrist and a bandage on Allie’s head wound.

  When we pulled into the parking lot of the store, Merrily ran out through the raindrops to meet us. The van was gone.

  “Are you two okay?” she asked, worry furrowing her brow. I’d called her on the way to the hospital and told her what had happened.

  “We’re okay,” I reassured her, and grabbed a bag of bread, the original purpose of our wild ride, out of the backseat with my good right hand.

  Allie picked up another bag. “We’re alive. That’s what counts. I do, however, have one heck of a headache.”

  “I’ll bet,” Merrily said, and took two bags of rolls from the back. “The mechanic took the van. It’ll be back in a few days.”

  Inside, the dining room was empty except for Stephen, the chef from across the street who had made good on his promise to visit, albeit a day late. There was also a huge delivery of products next to the counter that would have to be dealt with.

  Merrily nodded in his direction. “He’s been waiting for you.”

  “Thanks. Can you get started on the orders that came in?” I asked, pointing to the boxes. “I’ll help in a minute.”

  “No problem.” She put the bag of rolls on the kitchen counter. “Just let me get these trays of raspberry and blueberry muffins out of the oven. I started baking when you guys didn’t get back right away, just in case. And I need to finish clearing off a table.”

  I thought again how lucky I was to have her. “Merrily, you’re amazing.”

  She smiled, clearly pleased by the compliment. “Just doing my job.”

  Giving her the bag of bread I was holding, I waved to Stephen and grabbed two vials of arnica to help minimize the swelling and inflammation from my accident. I handed one to Allie, who said she was going upstairs to lie down. Since she had a head injury, I’d check on her in a little while to make sure she was okay. I headed over to Stephen.

  He checked out the cast. “Whoa! What happened to you?”

  “We got into a car accident,” I said as I twisted open the bottle of homeopathic pellets and put four under my tongue. I’d need to repeat the dose three more times in the next twenty-four hours.

  “That sounds nasty,” he said.

  “It was pretty bad,” I agreed, wondering if Gavin Milton had been in that truck. “Did your boss go out this afternoon?”

  “No, he was in the store. We had a lot of new inventory to unpack, like you do.” He glanced at the boxes on the floor. “Why?”

  So much for that theory. Still, Gavin might be guilty of breaking and entering or of knocking me on the noggin. I dug a little deeper. “Did you ever hear Gavin trash-talking Aunt Claire?”

  He rolled his eyes. “All the time. Sometimes he just stands at the front window and stares over here and bitches about the fact that we have you as our main competition.”

  “Do you think he was out to get Aunt Claire?” Or me, I thought, feeling my wrist ache from our near miss.

  He looked out the window, in the direction of Nature’s Best. “He definitely wanted her out of bu
siness.”

  “I don’t know if you’re aware, but someone threw a brick through our front window and started a fire. Someone also stole a new face-cream formula my aunt was working on. I’m thinking it could have been Gavin.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him,” Stephen said as he fiddled with a fork on the table. “He’s got kind of a shady past. When he was a trainer and nutritionist in New York, he was involved in fight fixing. He’s not a good guy, which is why I want out.”

  I nodded to Merrily, who was clearing dishes at the table next to us, and said, “The servers here make their own dishes.” Even though I had been thinking about adding a chef for better efficiency, with all the new bills flowing in, now was not the time to take on a new hire. “I don’t have the budget to add a chef right now.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of being a chef. I know you guys don’t work that way. I want to be a server. I could use the tips. Figure I’ll make out better, especially in the summer.”

  I wasn’t sure about that. Business seemed to be picking up, but we were by no means really busy. Still, I needed one more person to help out now that Janice and the rest of the crew was gone. (I’d fired Ron and Stephanie when they called in sick again.) Stephen seemed motivated, and he had a good attitude, a far cry from Janice the grouch. He also was a cook, which would make it much easier for him to learn how to serve our dishes. In addition, he didn’t seem bothered by the recent series of weird and dangerous events around here. I decided he would be a good addition to the new team I was building. I put out my hand to shake his. “Welcome to Nature’s Way Market and Café.”

  While Stephen went across the street to tell Gavin the bad news, I joined Merrily in unpacking the orders.

  She sliced open a box and glanced over at me. “Are you sure you can do this with your wrist?”

  “I’ll just use my right hand. This is a lot of stuff to get through.” She handed me the box cutter, and I cut open the top of a large box. Inside, I found a cod-liver oil supplement with vitamin D that I liked to recommend to my patients. It was an important supplement that helped to boost overall health, especially brain health, and was also good for depression. Vitamin D can prevent many chronic diseases, but too many people, lacking sun exposure, are deficient. We need the sun to manufacture vitamin D, so the key is to get sun, not sunburn, as I always told my patients. Everything in moderation.