Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

me.”
    “Queen.”
    “My Queen? Hooters waitress cum private investigator? My roommate, Queen?”
    Crawford explained that Queen had followed me while I was following Greg. Ostensibly, she had been walking Trixie. But she had been around me long enough and had gotten enough information about me from Kevin to know that I’m a giant nosey parker and that when I didn’t want to come home, something was up. Being a good private investigator, she wanted in on the action. She went home and got Trixie, then stayed just far enough behind me so that I didn’t know she was following me but close enough to know that I was in trouble when I hit the water.
    In addition to being a great waitress and a very astute sleuth, Queen Martinez had been captain of her swim team at Our Lady of Lourdes High School and had supplemented her high school income by working as a lifeguard at a tony hotel in New York City during her summers off. Queen Martinez, it would seem, had lousy taste in men but a varied and interesting résumé that was going to serve her well, I imagined, as her life progressed. One thing was for sure: she would always be able to support herself with that kind of skill set.
    She had commandeered a boat at the dock from a young guy who was cleaning the decks. They had followed us out, and when it appeared that my life was in danger and that I obviously couldn’t swim, she jumped in and saved me. I thought about the voice that I had heard right before I passed out and wondered whose it had been: my mother’s or Queen’s?
    “I don’t have to give her free room and board for the rest of her life because she saved mine, do I?” I asked.
    Crawford took my face in his hands and smiled. “I don’t think so.” He planted a kiss on my lips. “Yum. River water.”
    I took a deep breath and felt the pain of a classic belly flop. “Is my not being able to swim a deal breaker?” I finished the water in my cup and handed it back to him.
    “A deal breaker?”
    “Yeah. Are we still ‘on’?” I asked.
    “Yeah. We’re still on,” he said. “Is that a yes?”
    I smiled and closed my eyes, exhausted. “It’s a yes.”
    “Is that what you want?” he asked, just to be sure.
    I smiled and nodded. Yes, that’s what I wanted. I drifted off to sleep thinking that everything I’ve ever wanted, I already had.

Thirty-Four
     
    Queen moved out of my house and into the guesthouse on the Wilmott property on the Saturday before the Labor Day weekend. Kevin moved in with his brother Jack, he of the spectacular teeth and most excellent kisses (not that I remembered). I still didn’t know what was going on with Kevin, specifically, and he wasn’t offering up any new information. So I just let it be. When the time was right, he would let me in on the big secret. Until then, we had an unspoken agreement that we would still be friends, but that I wouldn’t ask any questions.
    I was returning to school full-time on the Tuesday after the holiday weekend and was relieved to have my house back to myself, just me and Trixie and Crawford, when we could get him. People were getting murdered left and right in his precinct, and he was busy.
    Since my unfortunate dip in the Hudson, I had learned a few things. Greg was standing by his original assertion that he only wanted to make Carter sick, not kill him. But kill him he did. Carter, despite his rantings about Greg and Beans, Beans on his blog, was a regular at the coffee shop, ballsy bastard that he was, so it seemed that he was getting a steady diet of French roast with a healthy serving of arsenic every time he frequented the shop. Mac the Knife was sticking to his cause of death as poisoning, and Greg was going away for a long time. Mac had also called me to find out if Crawford and I could come over for dinner after the semester started. Reezie was making beef Stroganoff.
    There was a troubling aspect to the whole story, however, and that was that nobody really knew whether or not Greg was poisoning Carter’s coffee specifically or just poisoning the whole entire lot of us. I thought back to how sick I had felt and how my health had improved once I stopped frequenting Greg’s. Several other patrons reported feeling sick as well, but the district attorney couldn’t decide if it was a case of mass hysteria or the truth. Enough time had passed that there was no way to know from any blood tests or such whether or not we had started on a dark journey just by drinking Greg’s