Sip, Swallow & Scream

Part 9 | Math & Chocolate

If you’re just joining our story, you can find all the episodes listed below:

---

The drizzle had started again, so I beat feet across the lane to the little candle store Regan said she’d be in. The scent of wet autumn leaves was replaced with a dozen different wisps of deliciousness — lavender, baked apple pie, and maple sugar to name a few. That was the one thing about candle shops. If you lit the right candle, you could close your eyes and be transported to your grandparentals’ place and almost taste the apple pie cooling on the sideboard. Sounded retro, but when you’re raised by your grandparents, life always feels a little old-fashioned.

I wasn’t standing there five seconds before Regan swept over to the front window and pointed. “She’s leaving. What did you say?”

“Nothing,” I said, turning and pulling the top off of a sugar cookie candle jar and taking a big whiff. Oh, nice! “I told her I was Emma something-or-other from the Temple News — seemed legit, and I was here for a feature story on the discovery and Victor and what it might be like to find a treasure like this. She was already not having it when I walked in, and now I have to know what the cops said. Was it just a condolences call? She said they were friends. Was it something else?”

“Ses, are you sure —,” Regan stopped, glanced back at the woman behind the counter; the rest of the place was empty. Then, she leaned in and lowered her voice. “Are you sure it was a murder?”

“Well,” I hissed, sort of annoyed by the question, but also just trying to keep my voice low, “the dead guy told me he was murdered. You saw him. His ghost. Linds saw him. It was Poe, right? I mean, Victor. It was Victor, right?”

Regan took a beat and then nodded. “I know. Just, well, this ain’t normal. Dead people just don’t show up and tell you they were murdered. It’s not a thing, Ses, so, I just want to be sure.”

“A ghost told us how to find the book. And Linds is gonna tell us what Ghosty McGhosterson said last night when we get back to the room. He’s leading us through this thing. All we have to do is do the, um, math. Or cipher, um, deciphering, and then break down a poem like we’re in junior year American lit. We got this.”

“Can we get a copy of the autopsy report? If they know it was a murder, what killed him?”

And just then, as if Victor himself was appearing to tell me the answer, my phone buzzed. A single word hovered on my screen below a litany of unread texts from Lindsay. I swallowed. I believed in timing, the Universe’s timing, and it was answering questions today. “Poison.”

“Follow her?” It was all I had to say to Regan, and she was out the door. I watched her, my statuesque friend, who ordinarily stood out in a crowd, slipping through the busy street like a ghost, gray hoodie up over her fro. And then she was gone.

It took me a few minutes of ducking under awnings and puddle jumping to get back to the room, drop my wet kicks and sock-foot it across the hall. Lindsay was sitting at the little writing table under the window playing with her phone and drinking what looked like some white wine.

“What wine goes best with gloomy weather and murder?” I asked, closing the door behind me. “I wouldn’t have thought it was chardonnay. What are you doing?”

“Riesling,” she said with a wink. “I get a sweet tooth when I’m noodling. I already ate all the chocolate in the room.”

“Too sweet for my taste.” But I wasn’t above stealing a water from their mini fridge and sitting down on the couch, where I could see the rain coming down harder now. “Poison?”

“Huh?” Linds looked up.

“Linds, you sent me a — oh, hold on,” I said when my phone dinged, and I pulled it up. “Text incoming from our local shadow.”

“We have a ghost AND a shadow?”

“Regan, silly. She’s shadowing Charlie. She was — hold on.” I glanced down at the screen and read the texts out loud as they streamed in.

Followed two blocks

Rain sux

Met tall guy; 6-4ish, 180 lbs; big fuckr

Got in caddy NY plates

Following the guy

“Poison,” said Linds in response, and I looked up.

“Wait,” I said, and started typing.

Be safe. Stay dry. Call if you need us. Don’t hurt him.

“Don’t hurt him? You said he was six something feet something pounds. Big guy.”

“Yeah. You know she can take anyone that’s not bigger than a house.”

“He sounds like house-sized.”

“That’s because you’re shoe-sized.” I winked.

“I’m fun-sized, which is better.” Linds stuck her tongue out at me, and then took another sip of her Riesling, and went back to her phone while I wondered if this B&B had more than some overly sweet wine in a cabinet somewhere.

“Back to the poison. You finished the cipher?”

And suddenly, Linds was focused, setting her phone down. “OMG, yes! It was a good one. That Poe! He was pretty good at ciphering stuff. Nothing like modern-day ciphers, but for an ancient writer, not half bad.”

“Let’s have it then. We’ve gotten this far with Victor’s help. The key. The book. What are we up against now?”

“Ready? Hold on to your wig,” she announced, more animated and now standing, as if she needed to perform it. And before I could even grab my wig, she did just that, stopping, turning and staring at me with wild eyes. Words flooded out of her mouth in the deepest voice she could manage, and later I thought I’d have to give her at least four stars for her performance.

“In vials black, where secrets steep,
A bitter draught, a death so deep.
Where mortar grinds and tinctures flow,
The serpent’s venom waits below.

The scented air, both foul and fair,
A whispered cure, a hidden snare.
Behind the glass where shadows creep,
Lies the toxin brewed for sleep.”

“Oh yeah, Ses, poison. Someone murdered him.”

“Shit.” I stared out the window, watching the drops roll down the glass.”

“Shouldn’t we call the cops?” Linds plopped onto the couch next to me, half a glass of wine in hand, then downed it with a flourish.

“And tell them what? The ghost of a dead guy has been sending us cryptic ciphers floating in the air like ghostly letters, which we’ve been diligently deciphering, thanks to our resident genius, and these ciphers have been decrypted to creepy Poe-like poems, which have led us to find a quill that’s really a key and a priceless, unpublished volume of Poe’s writings that the Masque of the Red Death tried to kill us over?”

Linds squinched up her face. “You think they won’t go for it?”

I just eyed her and realized that of the two of us, I was the one who should be drinking. “I’m calling room service,” I said. “Wait. Do B&Bs do room service? Shit.” Now that was gonna be a bummer because now that I thought of it, I was sure room service was not a thing at a B&B. But maybe they had some bourbon or whiskey? Or tequila? Or I could OrderUp someone who would slosh over on a wet bicycle and hand me a bottle. Either way, it meant I was gonna have to get up, and I was sorta not wanting to get off my ass just then.

Talk about long nights, not enough sleep, a little less fun and a little more murder than I wanted on a weekend. I thought about just sitting there and pouting. It always worked for Linds, but that was her thing, and my thing was go get the thing done. And that meant, Cal, the dude who was most likely in the house right now, might know about a certain bottle of brown liquor stored in a certain cabinet somewhere in a certain room. It was a mystery, but one I was up for solving.

I unfolded myself from the couch, sad to leave the warm spot I’d diligently established, and looked back at Linds, who was face-deep in her phone again. “Noodling?”

“Sudoku.”

“Huh?”

“When I math, I crave math. And chocolate. So, I’m mathing. We’re just waiting on Regan, right? So, I math.”

The girl never ceased to surprise me. Now it’s art, and she’s an artist. Now it’s math. Next week she’ll be volunteering as a baby goat groomer. I could never keep up.

“Need another bottle?” I nodded at the table and the Riesling, which looked like it had seen better days. Lindsay nodded back. She did nothing half-assed. She was a “whole ass girl,” she always said.

Answer in hand, I sock-footed down the hall, eager for a nip. Cal seemed like an okay guy. Definitely the B&B type — yes, there was a type. Bubbly. Happy for you to be there. Here are some fresh cookies. Breakfast is yummy. More cookies left out around bedtime. The house had smelled like butter rum and brown sugar the entire time we’d been here, even if we’d barely spent more than a few minutes in the place. And, as predicted, good ole Cal was on his game. There was a bottle of whiskey in a cabinet in a room with a small fireplace, a big chair and a lot of books. And I felt almost a little sad that I couldn’t stay and do my own noodling there in that chair with the roaring fire he’d offered to make, but there was something else on my mind.

And as much as I wanted it to be the backstories of Emily Sinclair, Soap and Loofah, Henry Aimes, and who knows who else, I couldn’t stop thinking of something that I’d almost missed in Regan’s texts: “Got in caddy NY plates.” And what Charlie had said just an hour ago, “And the only other person I know of who’s here is Alice Foster. She’s a powerhouse from the Big Apple, fetches rare books and antiquities for the rich. She would have brought the biggest payday.”

I stopped just as I opened the door to Linds and Regan’s shared room. “That bitch lied.”

“What bitch?”

It was a familiar voice, usually strong and full of energy but sounding now like I felt -- a little cold and done and in need of a drink and the plate full of freshly baked, still warm Snickerdoodle cookies I had in my hand. Cal said he’d make more, which was good because Regan was back.

“Now you, you poor thing.” It was as much as I could do while trying to set down the cookies and find a couple of glasses. My girl looked like a drowned cat, and all I wanted to do was fill her full of cookies and this Elijah Craig Small Batch. I twisted and poured, delivering a few fingers and a warm cookie. “Sorry, Regan. I could have gone.”

“Nah,” she said and unwrapped herself from the blanket she was cocooned in just enough to accept my peace offering. “It’s all good. She’d met you three times and would have made you following her. Ms. Distract-O-Mattic 3000 here,” she said, aiming half a cookie at Lindsay, “surely kept that goth girl’s eyes off of me enough to make it easy for me to tail her.”

“I resemble that remark,” she said without looking up from her math.

“But the caddy. New York plates. Tell me.” I shoved the whole cookie in my mouth and realized we were gonna need Cal to bring more soon. The bourbon was the perfect chaser, and I snuggled in next to Regan and leaned my head on her damp shoulder.

“Navy blue with silver trim. NY plates. SUV, a big one. Subject got in, but not before a short conversation with the big dude. Goth guy. Long hair. Looked like he was born for this place.”

I perked up at the mention of the guy. “Masque of the Red Death?”

“No way to tell,” said Regan.

“Wasn’t wearing his costume to make it easy?”

“Also wasn’t carrying a halberd or taking a swing at me. I was watching them in a reflection, but he was almost two heads taller than her, and she’s a pixie. Could be something. I followed him.” Regan took a sip of her bourbon and then crammed a second cookie in her mouth. “I didn’t know sleuthing was such hungry work,” she said, crumbs flying.

Just then there was a knock at the door, and I jumped up to get it. It could only be one thing, and it definitely wasn’t a ghost coming to spew ciphers at us.

When I opened the door, all I could see (and smell) was the plate of cookies, but I thanked Cal nonetheless, almost completely oblivious to his sheepish grin and the way his dark bangs fell over his eyes. Was everyone in this village goth or emo, or was that just what year-round Halloween did to you? I shook that thought off faster than you can shake off a dude’s hand on your ass at a bar, and before I could say, “More cookies, bitchachos,” I was on the couch handing them out. They were warm and bendy and smelled like a dream. And there was murder in the air. The cookies didn’t stand a chance.

No alibi, your honor. We ate them all.

“Dude was in a black slicker and boots, as much prepped for the rain as I wasn’t. He even had like a bucket hat or old fisherman’s cap. He looked like one of those Maine lobstermen from the Discovery Channel, if you ask me, but a creepy one with long, stringy hair and dark eyes. Or maybe it was eyeliner.”

“So, a Scooby Doo villain.” Linds giggled and snatched a cookie and turned back to her phone. I wasn’t gonna say anything; I was thinking it myself. And her work was done. I’d let her noodle. As soon as I said, let’s go interrogate the suspect, she’d be back in the game. ‘No one ever let’s me interrogate the suspect!’

“Get a look at his face?”

“No, but I got a look at where he went,” said Regan. “The caddy rolled out, so it was either come back or follow him, so I followed him. They only spoke for a minute, and then it was just him and me in the rain, along with a few hundred other yahoos too stupid to get inside. This place attracts so many people. I didn’t think it would be so crowded, but it helped — kept me off his radar as far as I could tell.” Regan finished her glass and handed it to me, shook off another round and settled into the chestnut brown blanket. “He crossed the street, then turned left and continued down the lane a bit. Maybe another block and a half. This town isn’t big, so I was expecting him to turn off at some point and duck in somewhere — maybe I could get a better look at his face or find one of his haunts, but before we even got to that point, he ducked off to the right through some bushes and was gone.”

“Bushes? He just walked right through a hedge or something?”

Regan was working on another snickerdoodle just then, but she nodded. “Something. Like That.” She took a beat and continued. “There was a little path there past a big old rose bush that tried to get me, and it continued on behind that block of little stores. There’s a huge tree back there, which gave me a little shelter from the rain, and then the path went down to the river.” She shook her head. “That’s as far as I go without backup, girlfriend.”

“Could you find it again?’ It wasn’t like I wanted to go down by the river in the rain and the oncoming dark, but where did that guy go? Was he just a rando, a friend? Did he have a part in this, or was this a random encounter? And if Alice Foster was in that caddy, where was she staying? What did she and Charlie talk about? Maybe the little goth girl was lying, or maybe not. “Where he went into the bushes. Could you find it again?”

Regan nodded and reached for the bottle. Maybe she was feeling a little rundown, too. “Yeah, sure thing. It was right after we passed this cute little place called The Serpent & The Rose.

“That’s it,” I said. “That’s the one.”

Author’s Notes: This part has some of my favorite chitchat. That’s one of the things I like best about these three — they talk so freely, such easy back and forth. I had quite a time developing their personalities, especially Regan’s because she tends to be quiet, but I think I have a pretty good handle on it now.

Watching the three of them sit in a cozy B&B and eat cookies and drink whiskey seems like the perfect afternoon, although in the next episode, they’ll discuss getting murdered down by the river. Hey, it’s a sleuthing thing, and besides, you know they ate all the cookies lickety-split.

Hope you’re enjoying this. I’m having a blast writing more of their adventures.

Go on to read Episode 10 below: