Mom Zone Mysteries 02 Staying Home Is a Killer by Sara Rosett Page B

hall. “The food from the base. Especially the espresso beans.” His voice faded as he paced down the hall.
    I sat looking at the freckled tabletop, but not seeing it now. Something was bothering me. My thoughts chased themselves around in my head. “Oh,” I said to myself and half stood, but then I heard Thistlewait’s voice growing louder as he walked back down the hall. “And you’d better send the results over to Jensen at the Vernon PD so they can compare it to the tox screen from the Follette woman. Right.”
    I sat back down in the chair.
    He returned as he slipped the cell phone back into its carrier on his belt. “Well, Mrs. Avery, thanks for the information. I’d advise you to stay out of this mess. Since I know you and I know you’ve shown an interest in bringing the guilty to justice, so to speak, in the past, I doubt you’d do something as stupid as try to murder a friend and then call the police in and help them with their investigation. But”—here he paused and leaned on the back of the chair across from me, arms braced—“not everyone around here is inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt. So, I’d advise you to act like any normal citizen and mind your own business.”
    “Are you saying that I’m a suspect?” My heart skittered. He hadn’t read me my Miranda rights, so I couldn’t be an official suspect, right?
    “We’ve had two incidents in four days, a murder and a poisoning. You’re linked to both of them. You gave Lamar a bag that may contain poison; we certainly can’t find it anywhere else. And you alerted us to the possibility that Follette might not have committed suicide, which was correct. We’re trained to look for the unusual connection, the discrepancy. You look like a pretty glaring discrepancy right now.”
    My armpits felt damp and I pressed my hands down the front of my jeans to hide my trembling fingers. “But I had nothing to do with either thing. I just handed off the bag. I could have thrown it away. And I would never hurt Penny. She was my friend. If I’d murdered her, I could have erased the answering machine message.”
    “But, in both cases, you didn’t. There are some strange people out there who do odd things like call the police with evidence that they’ve committed a crime. Arsonists do it all the time. They like to watch the furor their actions create. They get a charge out of it. Murderers do it, too. They leave little clues or call tip lines.”
    A rush of emotions coursed though me. “But I would never—that’s absurd!” I couldn’t put a coherent sentence together as rage, anger, and disbelief converged.
    Thistlewait pulled back and headed to the door. “All I’m saying is I’m inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you better stay out of trouble. Try to be that average citizen who never notices anything and doesn’t get involved.”
    An Everything In Its Place Tip for Organized Closets
    Don’t plan to organize every closet in your home in one day—an overwhelming thought. So overwhelming, in fact, that it may stop you even before you get started! Instead break your organizing task into several smaller tasks to achieve your overall goal. For instance, start with one closet, even one area of your closet, and use the “Keep, Throw Away, Give Away/Donate” model to get started. Then tackle changing the shelving or storage containers in your next organizing session.

Chapter Eight
    “M itch, I’m a suspect. Whether or not they read me my rights, I’m at the top of their list. I could see it. I could feel Thistlewait’s attitude shift as soon as I said I took the bag from Penny and brought it to the Scheduling Office. I can’t leave my future in the hands of some investigators. What if they get it wrong? What if they go with the easiest answer? That’s me. Like Thistlewait said, I’m connected to both Penny and Georgia. I got the feeling Thistlewait was cutting me a little slack, but what if someone wants a quick