Case of the Poison Powder Chapter 7
And Book 3 Announcement!
Hey, Mystery Lover,
I’m a little late with this week’s chapter because…drumroll, please! I got my third novel Beyond Tarnish submitted to my editor this week. Keep watch for updates coming soon. In the meantime, enjoy The Case of the Poison Powder, Chapter 7!
The Case of the Poison Powder
(Miss Chapter 6? Find it Here) Or start with the first chapter!
Chapter 7
The morning shift at Shady Glenn had a different energy. The whole place felt more alive at this hour, residents awake and alert rather than drowsy from dinner. Breakfast trays clattered in distant rooms. Someone’s television played the local news too loudly.
“Margaret!” Cheryl’s motorized chair whirred around the corner at her usual breakneck speed. The woman had probably been a terror on the roads before age took her license.
Spotty skittered across the linoleum. Cheryl scooped him into her lap with surprising agility for someone in her eighties.
“You’re here early.” Cheryl’s gray eyes sparkled with curiosity. “Must be important.”
“I need to talk to Dad about a case.” Margaret leaned against the wall, grateful for the support after a night of restless sleep. Jake Mercer’s quiet “Maggie” had haunted her dreams. “Where is everyone?”
“Common room. Linda’s holding court.” Cheryl rolled her eyes with affection. “She’s convinced the kitchen staff is trying to poison us with undercooked bacon.”
Margaret smiled. Some things never changed. She followed Cheryl down the hallway, Spotty now riding in the motorized chair like a furry king surveying his domain.
The common room was bathed in morning light. Her father sat by the window in his wheelchair, hands folded in his lap.
“Morning, Dad.” Margaret pulled a chair close to him. “I need your legal brain.”
“The Jalloh case.”
“The pesticide woman! We’ve been following the story on the news.” Linda wheeled herself closer. “Have you proven her innocence yet?”
“Working on it, Miss Linda.” Margaret settled into the chair. “Though it’s more complicated than I expected.”
Tony shuffled over in his backward propulsion style, beaming. “Marget! Did you find the construction worker?”
She blinked. Sometimes Tony’s memory was sharper than anyone expected. “I did, actually. Jake Mercer tracked him down in Wilmington.”
“Katherine’s investigator,” George said. “Good man. Army Ranger background?”
“Retired, yes.” Margaret tried not to think about how Jake’s shoulders filled out his jacket, or the way his voice deepened when he said her nickname. Professional, Margaret. “He got a signed statement. The construction supervisor remembers Sade, even tried to get her phone number.”
Linda snorted. “That’ll teach the prosecution to ignore a woman’s word.”
Margaret crossed her arms. “ASA Griffith isn’t backing down. He believes he has a solid case.”
“Heath Griffith.” George nodded slowly. “Sharp prosecutor. Doesn’t pursue cases he can’t win. What’s bothering you?”
“My client’s badge was used twice that night. Once at the main entrance at 11:35 PM, once at the storage room at 11:47 PM. Twelve minutes apart. Which tracks with walking from the entrance to the storage area,” Margaret said. “But the security cameras were bypassed. No footage from 11:30 PM to 1:00 AM.”
“Convenient timing.” George steepled his fingers. “The cameras go down right before the badge is used. That’s not coincidence. That’s coordination.”
Margaret gathered her thoughts, feeling the familiar rhythm of working through a case with her father. They’d been doing this since she was old enough to understand what he did for a living. “Here’s something else that doesn’t make sense. AgroSynthetics did a thorough inventory after the theft. Nothing of real value is missing. No experimental compounds, no proprietary formulas, and there were no files in the room to photograph. The only thing taken was bulk chlorpyrifos worth about eighteen hundred dollars.”
Linda snorted. “Well, that’s just stupid. If you’re going to steal from a chemical company, at least steal something valuable.”
“Exactly!” Margaret felt a spark of frustration. “Sade has worked there for fifteen years. She knows exactly what’s stored in that facility and what it’s worth. If she was going to commit grand larceny, she’d steal something worth the prison time.”
Cheryl had wheeled closer, listening intently. Even Tony had stopped his usual fidgeting, caught up in the puzzle.
“So either,” George said slowly, “someone didn’t know what they were stealing—”
“Or someone specifically wanted chlorpyrifos,” Margaret finished. “But why? It’s not hard to get if you have proper licensing.”
“Unless you don’t have licensing,” Tony observed. His gap-toothed grin widened. “Then you gotta steal it.”
The room fell silent. Margaret sat back, the morning sun warm on her shoulders.
“Tony, you brilliant man.” She pulled out her phone, then remembered where she was and put it away. “Who would need twenty-five kilograms of restricted pesticide but couldn’t purchase it legally?”
“Someone without certification,” George said. “Agricultural applicators need licensing. Farmers need permits for large quantities.”
“Or someone who needed to hide the purchase,” Linda added darkly. “If you’re doing something illegal with pesticides, you can’t exactly walk into a farm supply store and buy them with a credit card.”
Margaret’s mind raced. “Sade said only three people had access to that storage room. Herself, Chris Webb the security manager, and Nick Liu from Research and Development.”
“Have you talked to all three?” George asked.
“Chris Webb has an alibi—home by 5:30 PM, ordered Chinese food. Police verified it. Nick Liu wasn’t at work when I visited, but that’s apparently normal for him.”
“And your client?” Cheryl leaned forward.
“Says she was in Wilmington, and now we have a witness who corroborates that.” Margaret paused.
“What about the husband?” Linda pressed. “You can’t just dismiss him because he teaches history.”
“I’m not dismissing him. But I need to establish means, motive, and opportunity.” Margaret counted off on her fingers. “Motive—yes, he benefits from Sade’s conviction because he can get everything in the divorce. Opportunity—possibly, if he could get Sade’s badge. But means? I haven’t found anything connecting him to the technical knowledge required to access the security cameras.”
“Unless Nick Liu is his connection,” George said quietly.
“You think they’re working together?” Margaret felt pieces shifting in her mind, trying to find where they fit. “Olu provides information about Sade’s schedule, access to her badge. Nick provides technical expertise, facility access.”
“It’s a theory.” George spread his hands. “Olu gets his wife out of the way, Nick gets... what? Money? A cut of whatever they’re selling the chlorpyrifos for?”
“Or Nick has his own reasons for needing restricted pesticides,” Cheryl added. “And Olu just provides the convenient scapegoat.”
Margaret made notes, her mind racing through possibilities. “Right now, my job is to defend Sade. And to do that, I need to figure out who actually took those pesticides.”
Spotty chose that moment to launch himself from Cheryl’s lap into Margaret’s, demanding attention with insistent paws. She laughed, scratching behind his ears. The terrier had impeccable timing.
“You’ll figure it out,” Tony said suddenly, his gap-toothed grin wide and certain. “You always do, Marget. Just like your dad used to.”
Margaret stood, settling Spotty in her arms. “Thank you. For helping me think through this.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Cheryl declared. “Well, that and complaining about the food.”
“And racing wheelchairs,” Tony added.
“And solving crimes,” Linda said with satisfaction. “Don’t forget solving crimes.”
“Speaking of which,” Cheryl announced, “we’ve decided to form a detective agency. The Shady Glenn Sleuths.”
Margaret laughed. “Have you now?”
“Tony’s in charge of surveillance because he’s always awake at 3 AM anyway,” Cheryl continued. “Linda handles interrogations—she’s terrifying. And I’m the muscle.” She flexed a surprisingly toned arm. “Seventy years of arm wrestling my brothers.”
“What about Dad?” Margaret asked.
George smiled. “Legal counsel, obviously. Every good detective agency needs one.”
“And what cases are the Shady Glenn Sleuths working on?”
“Well,” Linda said, adjusting her pearls significantly, “someone’s been stealing pudding cups from the kitchen. We have three suspects and a whiteboard.”
“A whiteboard?”
“Tony stole it from the activities room. We’re very professional.”
Margaret felt warmth spread through her chest. “I have no doubt. Keep me updated on the pudding cup caper?”
“Oh, we’ll crack it,” Cheryl said with absolute confidence. “And then we’re moving on to the mystery of why the physical therapy room always smells like burnt popcorn.”
Margaret made her rounds saying goodbye—a pat on Linda’s shoulder, a gentle squeeze of Cheryl’s hand, a promise to Tony that she’d tell him all about it when the case was over.
She didn’t visit her mother. Candace would be resting after breakfast, and Margaret had work to do. Some mornings, she just couldn’t pretend to be Scarlett O’Hara.
Outside, the January air bit cold and clean. Margaret settled Spotty in the backseat of her car and pulled out her phone to call Katherine.
“Tell me you have good news,” Katherine answered.
“I have theories.” Margaret started the engine, letting it warm up. “And a request. I need everything you can find on Nick Liu. Financial records, employment history, any criminal record. And I need phone logs for both Nick Liu and Olu Jalloh—see if there’s any communication between them.”
“Looking for a connection.”
“Exactly. If they’re working together, there has to be evidence.” Margaret pulled out of the parking lot, Shady Glenn growing smaller in her rearview mirror.
“I’ll put Jake on finding Nick Liu. He should be our priority,” Katherine said.
There it was again. Jake’s name, and Margaret’s treacherous heart doing that skip-and-flutter thing. She cleared her throat. “That would be good. Thank you.” She ended the call, her cheeks still burning, and drove through Baltimore’s morning traffic toward her office.
Stay tuned for Chapter 8, next week!
And watch for more info about Book 3 Launch Party Coming SOON
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Margaret Mitchell, her white terrier Spotty, and her gang at the local nursing home tackle Baltimore mysteries with pluck, perception, and palaver.
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