Peril in Paperback: A Bibliophile Mystery

cleaners, usually under different chemicalnames. And it’s found naturally in the nuts and seeds of some edible plants and some roots, too.”
    “Plants? Like garden plants?”
    “That’s right. Lima beans, bitter almonds, apricot seeds. But we’re not supposed to worry because the government carefully regulates all that stuff.”
    “I wasn’t worried until you said that.”
    And not everything was regulated, I realized, recalling the poisonous plants and trees that were clearly marked in Grace’s conservatory.
    I mentioned the plants to Gabriel and we discussed the remote possibility that someone had taken a cutting and somehow drawn the poison from it. I’d seen stranger things happen, so I wouldn’t put it past a truly desperate person.
    It was likely that the killer had simply used some kind of weed killer or cleaning agent. But before going off to bed, Gabriel and I made a date to search the conservatory tomorrow to see if any of the poisonous plants had been disturbed.
    No, not
if
. Something had definitely been disturbed; that much was clear. Now Gabriel and I were resolved to find out just how far someone in this house had gone in their attempt to kill our friend Grace.

Chapter 7
     
    Bright and
way
too early the next morning, two police detectives and two EMTs finally showed up from the local police department. The detectives, whose names were Pentley and Graves, were a no-nonsense team. They told Merrilee to round up all the guests in the Gold Salon for interviewing, then asked to be taken to see the victim.
    Gabriel and I led the way to the root cellar, where Pentley told the paramedics to unwrap the sheet to check that Bella was, in fact, there. She was, thank goodness. Then they wrapped her back up and Pentley gave the two EMTs permission to take charge of Bella’s body.
    I watched as the two burly men slipped her body, sheet and all, into a black zippered body bag. Then one of the EMTs ran back to their vehicle for a gurney to more easily transport Bella to the ambulance.
    I breathed in the icy air. It was never a fun thing to view death up close like that, but standing around with the cops and paramedics as they started down those cold concrete steps into the dark, dank root cellar? It really disturbed me. Especially since I knew that poor dead Bella had been lying there all night, waiting inside that earthen cavern on that icy slab for the police and EMTs to show up and declare her dead.
    Bella hadn’t deserved to die, but she also hadn’t deserved to be wrapped in a plain white cotton bedsheet and stuck on the shelf of a funky old root cellar like a bushel of potatoes while she waited for justice to be served.
    Rubbing my arms to fend off the chill, I added up the insults that Bella had endured. I put them all on a mental list of reasons why I wouldn’t stop until I found her killer. I didn’t care if that person turned out to be Grace’s best friend, her worst enemy, or Grace herself. I was sick and tired and pissed off at people who killed other people, especially when I was around. It made me cranky and vindictive.
    And yes, sometimes it was all about me, damn it.
    Shoving my hands into the pockets of my thick fleece vest, I walked away from the activity. I didn’t go far, just a few dozen feet, but it was far enough to take advantage of the sight of the early-morning fog hovering over the lake beyond the house. Snow had fallen during the night, so the mountains and trees surrounding the lake had received a light dusting of white. Everything looked clean and sparkly.
    Staring up at Grace’s home, I was overwhelmed by the grand eccentricity of the design. The outer walls were constructed from thick, heavy stone, but the style of the home itself was Queen Anne Victorian, complete with steep gables, a central tower, rounded turrets, and cone-shaped, or witch’s cap, rooflines. Fanciful finials perched on top of the witch’s caps completed the Victorian look. I was familiar enough with the design because Victorians of every style were ubiquitous in San Francisco.
    Wrapped around the outside walls of the second and third floors was a labyrinthine maze of passages and walkways that led to balconies and porches and terraces outside the various bedrooms, parlors, and salons on the second and third floors. Some of the balconies were walled in by stone, while others were contained by pretty wooden spindle railings.
    At the very top of the house was another railing that surrounded a