Deadly Currents by Beth Groundwater Page A

what she said?”
    “Yes. She must be in a lot of pain to lash out at you like that.”
    “What? Are you sticking up for that she-devil?”
    “It’s the day of her husband’s funeral. Let her grieve in peace.”
    In disbelief, Mandy raised her arms and slammed them down at her side. Her purse slid off her arm and crashed to the sidewalk, spilling keys, comb, and lipstick out onto the asphalt. She bent down to scrape the contents inside. Rob knelt down to help, but by then, she had shoved everything, plus some gravel, back in her purse.
    “Why does she have to take it out on me? And Uncle Bill?” Mandy stood and slung her purse over her shoulder. “What did we do to her? What gives her the right to be so evil?”
    A family on their way to their car turned and glared at Mandy.
    Rob rose and gave her arm a little shake. “This is not the time or place. Use some sense, Mandy. People are staring.”
    Ice crystals formed in Mandy’s veins, their sharp points slicing into her heart. She spoke between clenched teeth. “So now I’m stupid again.”
    Rob put up his hands. “You know I don’t mean that. And I didn’t then.”
    “Then why do you keep saying it?”
    “Let’s go somewhere private where we can talk.”
    “I have nothing more to say to you right now. I have an appointment.”
    Mandy stalked across the street. A nest of demon emotions fought for control of her heart—anger, pride, sorrow, and one green-faced imp rubbing his hands gleefully in the corner of her mind because he knew he would conquer her sleep that night—guilt.
    _____
    Mandy screeched her Subaru into a parking spot in front of the Chaffee County government building. She pounded her hands against the steering wheel until her palms burned red. Then she marched up and down the row of cars until her ears stopped steaming and her heart resumed a regular beat. When she thought she could speak coherently, she entered the building and strode up the stairs to Quintana’s office.
    He was on the phone when she knocked, but he opened the door and waved her into his guest chair.
    As he hung up, a patrolman poked his head through the open door and handed a couple of sheets of paper to him. “Here’s the guest list for the King memorial service, sir.”
    “Thanks.” Quintana laid the papers on his desk.
    “Why do you want to know who attended the memorial service?” Mandy asked. “And why were you there, taking so many notes?”
    “For the same reason I need to talk to you. The Pueblo coroner’s office finished their toxicology test and reached a conclusion on the cause of death for Tom King.”
    Mandy leaned forward. “Did he have a heart attack?”
    “No.”
    She slumped back in the chair. “Damn. What did he die of then?”
    “Poison.”
    That made her sit up straight. “P-poison?”
    Quintana nodded. He fished a page out of the Tom King file on his desk, now twice the size it had been when Mandy last saw it. “Aconite, to be exact, and this particular aconite came from the Western monkshood plant. The purple-blue flowers are supposed to be very popular with bees.”
    “Does that grow along the river?”
    “It does grow wild in this area, plus I’m told some people grow it in their flower gardens, if they don’t have pets.”
    A thousand questions battled for access to Mandy’s tongue, but the first one to fight its way out was, “So how did he get poisoned by it?”
    “He ingested it.”
    “Why would he eat wildflowers?”
    Quintana leaned forward and peered at Mandy. “We don’t think he chose to eat it. The dosage was more than you get from a few flowers. We think someone slipped it to him in something he ate or drank.”
    “Ohmigod.” Further implications crowded Mandy’s brain. “Ohmigod. That means—”
    Quintana nodded. “That means Tom King’s death probably wasn’t accidental. He was most likely murdered.”
    “Is there an antidote? I mean, if he’d been pulled out of the river earlier, could he have been