Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

said before I could think. “Arsenic?”
    “Yeah,” Greg said casually.
    A pregnant beat hung heavy in the air, both of us realizing at the same time that there had been no mention in the paper about exactly what kind of poison had been used to kill Carter. Greg looked down at me, and seemed to read my mind, which wasn’t hard; I don’t have much of a poker face. “Hey, let’s continue the ride,” he said cheerily.
    My fencing skills were going to come in really handy now, I thought, as I watched the twinkling lights of the village fade. As were my scrapbooking abilities. That was another class that I had been subjected to by my mother, her hope being that I would meet other nice nerdy girls with similar interests. I looked over the side of the boat and stared into the murky depths of the Hudson, trying to judge exactly how far we were from shore and how deep the water was. I pulled the straps of the life preserver around my body and attempted to tighten them. No luck. It was so dark that I couldn’t see what I was doing, and it became immediately apparent that whoever had worn it prior to me had the circumference of a three-year-old. The straps wouldn’t come all the way around and they wouldn’t reach the buckles in which they needed to be inserted.
    From his perch, I heard Greg muttering. “Gosh, dude, I wish you hadn’t followed me.”
    “You poisoned him,” I said. I continued to fiddle with the straps, my fingers shaking.
    Greg looked at me, still in front of the steering wheel, sad.
    “God, Greg! What were you thinking?” I asked. I hugged the life preserver, my arms wrapped tightly across its puffed front.
    “That guy ruined me!” he said, taking a step away from the steering wheel and closer to me. “Have you read any of the shit he posted on his blog? Every week, the same thing. And still he had the nerve to come into Beans, Beans every day! Like nothing had ever happened between us. It was all I could do not to kill him with my bare hands.”
    “So you poisoned him.”
    “So I poisoned him! I didn’t mean to kill him,” he protested. “I just wanted to make him sick. To keep him away.”
    “If that’s the case, Greg, he’d be writing about how Beans, Beans made him sick. And you’d still be out of business.” I thought it necessary to point that out. That turned out to be a giant miscalculation on my part. Greg exploded.
    “Do you know how long it took me to save up enough money to open that place? It might seem like a shit hole to you, but to me, it’s everything! And because of that bastard, I’ve lost everything! I can’t pay my rent, I can’t pay my vendors …” He looked at me closely, his face grim. “And now, dude, I can’t serve you coffee.”
    Which, to me, was code for “And now, dude, I have to kill you,” because the look of sadness on Greg’s face just barely masked the rage beneath. He stepped all the way down the stairs and in one deft, strong motion pulled the life preserver over my head, tossing it to the other end of the boat.
    “It all makes sense now. The nasty blog posts, the comments from Coffee Lover … Greg, you need to turn yourself in.”
    He stopped walking toward me, a few feet separating us. “You know, I’d heard things about you. That you were nosy. Even a little crazy. Too smart for your own good. But I didn’t believe them because I’ve always liked you, Alison.” He frowned. “But now I’m not so sure. I’m disappointed, dude.”
    “Yeah, me, too,” I said. “I never pegged you for someone who could kill.”
    “I’m not,” he said.
    “Yeah, well, what about the poisoning?” I asked. I swatted at a mosquito who was dining on my cheek.
    “I already told you. I never meant to kill him.”
    I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. He certainly seemed sincere but Lord knows I’ve been wrong before, reading a situation completely incorrectly and finding myself in a heap of trouble. I had known Greg in a casual capacity for several years and had never gotten the vibe that he was anything but an aging hippie who made terrible coffee and who didn’t have great business sense, based on some of his promotional activities. The Prostate Awareness Month promotion had been a huge disaster, what with its promise of providing men over fifty free blood tests and a free cup of coffee to make sure their PSA levels weren’t too high. Overzealous phlebotomists had lined the streets trying to entice older gentlemen into the