Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Rather than responding to Lily’s messages, Flynn wandered over to visit her on Wednesday morning. When he told the sergeant he was nipping out for a while, he didn’t bat an eyelid. The atmosphere between the two of them had relaxed in the past few weeks. He’d even say that they rubbed along well.
“This looks like good timing,” Flynn remarked when he walked into the shop to find Lily staring forlornly into a bowl of ice cream. “Do you need a taste tester?”
“No.” She pulled the bowl closer to her.
He frowned, thinking things might be worse between them than he thought if she was no longer letting him taste the ice cream.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m checking to see if it’s poisoned.”
Confused, he shook his head and pulled out a chair.
“I know what you’re going to say – that I’m just looking for a reason to delay opening the shop, but that’s not what’s going on. I’m genuinely worried the ice cream is going to make people ill.”
He frowned. “Because some of your ingredients came from the garden centre?”
“Yes. I washed everything well, but I didn’t examine everything closely.”
“The results came back from the lab,” he told her solemnly. “In both the herbs and the tea they found compounds that were consistent with daffodils and hydrangeas.”
“No way!” Lily slapped her palms on the tabletop, making him wince. “ Daffodils and hydrangeas? I can’t believe you’re serious.”
“You were the one who said all along it was garden plants.”
“I know, but hearing you say it sounds completely ridiculous. What a pathetic way to poison people.” She stared down at the ice cream in front of her. “This is going to make me ill, isn’t it?”
“It won’t if you don’t eat it.” He felt his eyebrows pull together. “But there’s no way anyone slipped dried herbs or tea into the ice cream is there?”
“No, but if they’re taking advice from Arthur’s blog they probably also know you can poison people with fresh leaves from the plants. What if the mint leaves weren’t all mint leaves? What if there was another plant in there too?”
“Can you throw out everything that has ingredients from the garden centre and make it again?”
“I can, but that won’t leave me with much ice cream. It’s only a few days until the opening. I won’t be able to get my hands on enough fresh supplies to make new batches before Saturday.” She frowned as she put a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth.
“What the heck are you doing?” Flynn snapped, pulling the bowl away from her. “Are you seriously trying to poison yourself?”
“I’m hoping it’s not poisoned,” she said sadly. “But this seems to be the only way to figure out if there’s a problem with the ice cream. If I get ill, I’ll know I can’t serve it, and I’ll have to postpone the opening. Or maybe I can make enough ice cream without the supplies from the garden centre, but I’m not sure I’d have enough. It would also leave me with fewer flavours, which would be disappointing.”
He stared at her, trying to figure out if she was serious. “You can’t eat it if there’s a chance it’s going to make you ill. If you think the food has been tampered with, that’s a perfectly good reason to postpone the opening.”
“No, it’s not.” She reached for the bowl, which he moved further out of her way. “It’s one thing not to open because of my own stupid insecurities, but I refuse to let someone else scare me out of opening.”
She held her hand out for the bowl of ice cream and he shook his head. “Postpone the opening,” he said firmly.
“The most likely scenario here is that I get a nasty stomach ache. But maybe the food is fine. I don’t want to throw everything out for nothing.”
“This seems really stupid,” he said, finally releasing the bowl.
Lily plunged her spoon into the ice cream. “What’s stupid is that I didn’t consider that there might be a problem with the ice cream earlier. I wouldn’t accept a drink when I was up at the garden centre, but somehow it didn’t occur to me to wonder if the food I took from them might be problematic.” Gingerly, she put the spoon in her mouth. “If I’d thought about it, I’d have looked more carefully at the ingredients before I made the ice cream.”
“I don’t like this plan.” He rubbed at the back of his neck and remembered the message he’d received from her. “Why were you asking if we’d been talking to the press?”
“Because it’s all over the news. Haven’t you seen it?”
He shook his head and pulled out his phone to check his apps. “Not headline news,” he told her when he struggled to find anything.
“Dig around a bit and you’ll find it.” She sighed. “If it didn’t come from the police, I wonder who’s been spreading the word. Did you hear Gordon’s radio interview?”
“No,” he replied, feeling entirely out of the loop.
“You can listen to it on replay.” With a few taps on her phone, she set it playing for him, then took another spoonful of ice cream.
Watching her eat it pained Flynn.
“That’s enough,” he said, unable to concentrate on the interview while she ate the potentially poisoned ice cream.
“I should probably have a bit more.”
He shook his head. “How much of the smoothie did you drink before you got ill?”
“Not a lot.”
“That should be enough ice cream then,” he said, moving it away from her.
With a sigh, she dropped the spoon into the bowl and they fell silent to listen to the radio interview.
“So that’s what got you worried about the ice cream,” he said when it came to an end.
Lily nodded.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” she said after a moment. “Because he kind of sounds like a concerned citizen warning people to be vigilant. But…”
“He also sounds as though he’s scaremongering,” Flynn finished for her.
“Yeah.”
“If you were trying to keep newcomers from coming to the islands, spreading the word that people are being poisoned seems like a good way to go about it.”
Slowly, Lily nodded. “The interview definitely gave me bad vibes about Gordon.”
“I’m surprised you’re not already questioning him.”
“I would be if I wasn’t seriously questioning my judgement.”
“In what way?”
“I thought it was Arthur, and then I decided it probably wasn’t. And then I thought there was something fishy about Denzel but I turned out to be way off. Now I think Gordon is suspicious…”
“That’s how investigating works,” Flynn pointed out. “You check out everyone who seems suspicious until you land on the right person.”
“Maybe, but I’m still questioning my judgement.” She dropped her chin to her chest. “Not only because I feel as though I’m chasing my tail trying to figure this out, but also because I just consumed ice cream that I think might be laced with poisonous plants.” She raised an eyebrow. “Overall, I’m questioning my choices.”
“I’ll admit that eating the ice cream seems like a bad call, but the rest of it is going well.”
“I told you, I’m chasing my tail.”
Flynn smiled as he leaned on the table. “The sergeant has been asking me for updates on your findings.”
“That makes sense. He’s concerned about who I’m going to upset next with my rogue investigations.”
“No,” Flynn said. “He wants to be kept updated because he thinks you get good information.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Lily insisted.
“He does.” Flynn grinned, endeared by her disbelief. “He even said I’m allowed to share information with you, because we get such good information from you.”
“Are you serious?”
Flynn leaned back in his seat, a warmth in his chest that he’d got the spark back in her eyes. “I doubt he’ll admit it to your face, but I think he’s pretty impressed by your work.”
“He should be,” she said, her self-confidence returning in a rush.
“You said you’ve crossed Denzel off your list of suspects?”
“Yeah. Turns out his alibi is airtight.”
“I thought you said he was lying about his alibi?”
“He was, but now I know why and it puts him in the clear.”
Flynn arched an eyebrow. “Should I ask?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I have to keep things confidential.”
“Fair enough.”
“Really?” She looked sceptical. “You’re not curious?”
“I am curious, but I don’t think it will kill me not to know.”
She lifted a shoulder in a subtle shrug. “I’d tell you if I could.”
“Okay.” He smiled to reassure her that he didn’t have a problem with her keeping things to herself.
Her phone buzzed on the table and she lifted it to read the message. “That seems like my cue to go and question Gordon.”
“Who’s the message from?”
“Dante. Wanting a progress report.” She stood abruptly. “I’ll go and question Gordon before I start vomiting from this ice cream.”
“Shall I come?” he asked.
“No. Your uniform tends to scare people into silence.”
That was fair enough. Also, Sergeant Proctor had already been to question Gordon and he didn’t want to get into trouble for harassing him.
“Keep me updated,” he told Lily.
“Will do.”
“On your health as well as anything you find out from Gordon Pengelly!”
She grimaced and headed for the door.