Fogged Inn by Barbara Ross

soup?” Binder asked.
    â€œQuite a few people.” The foggy, icy night made it an attractive option. “Barry Walker and Caroline Caswell ate it as their starter. Deborah Bennett had it, along with a salad, as her dinner.”
    â€œExcuse me.” Binder moved out of the booth, jabbing at his cell phone as he went. Flynn got very interested in something in his notebook, and I fussed with the ketchup container on the table so we could avoid talking to one another, or looking at one another for that matter, while Binder was gone. When he returned, he said, “The crime scene techs will be back in a little while to take the soup for analysis.”
    Unconsciously, my gaze drifted toward the walk-in and its crisscross of crime scene tape. “But I thought the ME found an injection site.”
    â€œShe did. But unless our victim was a drug addict, why would a healthy adult man let someone inject him? Perhaps he was subdued in some way. Slowed down, docile, or confused. How much of the Wild Turkey did he drink?”
    I thought back, reconstructing the evening. “Three. Doubles.” I hesitated. “I’m pretty sure.”
    â€œIf he arrived at seven thirty and left at ten, as you believe, that’s what—six ounces over two and a half hours. He was probably impaired but not enough to let someone shoot him up, unless he wanted it. We’ll have the techs take the Wild Turkey. Did he have anything else to drink?”
    â€œWater.”
    â€œBottled or tap?”
    â€œTap. I filled his glass myself, from the spigot behind the bar.”
    â€œIce?”
    â€œYes, from the bucket behind the bar.”
    â€œAny left?”
    â€œI threw it in the bar sink at the end of the night.”
    Flynn scribbled furiously. Binder must have noticed my puckered brow. “Don’t worry. We’re doing this out of an abundance of caution. And I might as well warn you, when the techs come back to get the soup and the bourbon, they’ll be searching through the rest of the food as well.”
    â€œLooking for poison?”
    â€œLooking for a syringe. Gus found the victim alone, with no sign of a needle. If he injected himself, it’s possible he hid it in one of the pots, even buried in Gus’s hot dogs before he lost consciousness.”
    â€œDo you think that’s what happened? He killed himself accidentally in Gus’s walk-in?”
    â€œOr his killer could have hidden the needle in the food.”
    â€œOh.” That scenario depressed me even more than the first one.
    â€œEither way, if we find the syringe, we’ll know a lot more about the manner and means of his death. So I hope we do.”
    There was a sharp knock at the kitchen door. When Binder opened it, Jamie stood outside. Binder leaned toward him and they held a whispered conversation. Flynn put away his pen and notepad as they spoke.
    Binder turned back toward me. “I’m afraid we have to interrupt this again. We’re needed urgently elsewhere. Is there anything else about last night you need to tell us?”
    â€œNo?” The word came out as a question, with a rising inflection at the end, because somewhere at the back of my murky, sleep-deprived mind, an unformed thought nagged.

Chapter 7
    Binder and Flynn climbed into a cruiser driven by Officer Howland, who then sped out of Gus’s little parking lot, though he didn’t turn on the siren.
    I looked at Jamie, who leaned against the doorjamb. “Want some coffee?” He seemed like he needed it.
    â€œThanks.”
    I thought he might fall asleep where he stood, propped against the doorway. Gus didn’t stock anything as prosaic as a to-go cup. “If you wanted ta go,” he’d say to the unwary inquirer, “whyja come heah in the fust place?” So I brought Jamie black coffee in a heavy ceramic mug.
    â€œFor goodness’ sake, come in.”
    He looked around the little parking lot.