Peril in Paperback: A Bibliophile Mystery

cassava plant to concoct cyanide? So if it wasn’t her, then who? And what about the bottle of weed killer that was already half gone? Was someone in the house in the planning stages of yet another murder?

Chapter 10
     
    Nathan wasn’t in the library, so Gabriel and I made ourselves comfortable at the center table with more cups of coffee and some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies I’d pilfered from the kitchen. We made lists of suspects and motives, then tried to draw lines between the two. I drew up a timeline and we attempted to fit the guests into it, trying to figure out who had been where, when they had been there, and what they had been doing. Then we tried to predict the killer’s next move.
    After an hour, I still had no clue. And even though Gabriel was an expert in this kind of stealthy home surveillance and was willing to search every guest’s room for clues, he didn’t know exactly what to look for, either.
    I tried to help. “You should look for a bunch of gnarly old cassava roots. Check everyone’s sock drawers.”
    He raised an eyebrow. I wasn’t exactly being helpful. I tried again. “Could someone have set up a chemistry lab in their bathroom?”
    “Think it would take a chemistry lab to process cassava?” he asked.
    “That’s the problem, isn’t it? I don’t have the first idea of what it would take to turn a cassava root into a deadly poison.” Remembering what he’d mentioned earlier about chewing the root, I said, “Bella wasn’t chewinganything; she was drinking. So the cyanide had to have been delivered in something closer to liquid form.”
    “True,” he said. “But if they used weed killer, they would have to mix it with a strong-flavored drink to disguise the taste.”
    “The iced tea.” I thought back to the séance. “When Ruth handed Grace the glass of iced tea, she told Ruth that passion fruit was her favorite flavor. Ruth said she knew that. Who else in the house would know that passion fruit iced tea was a drink that Grace wouldn’t turn down?”
    “Anyone who knows Grace knows that’s her favorite drink.” Gabriel shrugged. “Even I know it. Her staff makes it for her every day. It tastes awful, by the way.”
    “So why would Bella drink it?” I wondered. “She’d been drinking alcohol pretty heavily. Either cosmos or vodka tonics, I think. Why would she suddenly gulp down a glass of iced tea?”
    “Maybe she figured she should sober up a little.”
    “Maybe.” I had considered that very possibility earlier that week.
    “Let’s get back to the cassava conundrum,” he said, then frowned. I had a feeling he was going through all the cassava facts he had on file in his brain. Finally he shrugged. “I guess you could put it in a blender. That might turn it to liquid.”
    “A little risky if you ever want to make margaritas again.”
    “But the cassava in liquid form would have a milder, more acceptable taste than weed killer.”
    “I’m glad you know that.” I moved to my desk and powered up my laptop. “I’m going to do what I was taught to do years ago in library science class.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I’m going to look it up.”
    “Good plan,” Gabriel said, stretching his legs out under the table. “I’ll sit here and drink coffee.”
    “Excellent.” I logged on to Google.
    “These cookies are amazing.”
    “I know.” I grabbed another one, tore it in half, and took a bite. “God. I want to hire Chef Tang. And Merrilee. And Shelly and Ray. I’ll take the whole staff.”
    “It’s a good group,” he said.
    Forty-five minutes later, I glanced up from my computer screen and looked around. Gabriel was gone. Huh. Hadn’t noticed him leaving. And Nathan still wasn’t back. So maybe I’d gotten a little carried away with my research, but the good news was, I had answers.
    I would track down Gabriel in a few minutes, but first I read over my notes. Cassava had turned out to be an interesting little food product. It was relied on as the main source of calories by some five hundred million people around the world. And yet I’d never even heard of it. But that said more about my provincial upbringing than about the plant itself or the people who consumed it.
    Of course I’d heard of tapioca, one of cassava’s main by-products. As I’d mentioned to Gabriel, my mom used to make it for our family on a regular basis. She would layer it with whipped cream and…well, thinking about Mom’s fresh, fluffy tapioca and