His Love Was My Poison novel · Chapter 9 of 48

Chapter 9: The Orchard

"He didn't poison himself," I said into the phone. "Tell the doctors to call me. Tell them it's arsenic and lead, from a candle, and I have the data."

"Yes, ma'am. I'll try. She's listed as his family, so they're talking to her."

"Is he awake?"

"On and off. He asked for you once. She was in the room."

I closed my eyes.

"Don't let her bring anything into that room. Not food. Not flowers. Not a candle. Nothing."

"Yes, ma'am."

I hung up and sat there with the phone in my lap.

Micah crouched in front of the stool so we were eye to eye.

"Talk to me."

"She's building a story," I said. "Depressed general, jealous ex comes back, general poisons himself with the ex's arsenic. If he dies, it's suicide. If he lives, it's my fault either way."

"Then we break the story."

"With what? The cards say she sent him candles. Every one of them could have been clean when it left her hands. She'll say someone tampered with them."

"So we need the place they were made."

"Yes."

"Lead arsenate," he said slowly. "From an orchard."

We looked at each other.

I pulled up Eleanor's old interviews on my laptop.

It took me ten minutes to find it.

A ten-year-old magazine profile.

Nora Varley grew up picking apples on her daddy's orchard outside Winchester, Virginia, and she still goes back to the old packing shed to write her songs.

Her father had died four years ago.

The orchard was for sale.

I called the CID agent at seven in the morning and told her everything.

She listened without interrupting.

"I can't get a warrant for a shed because of a magazine article," she said. "Give me a week."

"He might not have a week."

"Ms. Sayle. Do not do anything stupid."

"I won't," I said, which was technically true.

I didn't think it was stupid.

The listing agent for the Varley orchard was delighted to show it on a Saturday.

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