Death Drops Read Online Free

your mother? Was it mutual?”
    I was already getting tired of his questions, but I answered, “When my mother was in the hospital last year with heart problems, my aunt Claire disagreed with what the doctors were doing for her. She wanted to add some natural remedies. My sister and my mother rebuffed her. They still hadn’t made up.”
    Detective Koren handed the plastic bag back to Coyle and drilled me with a look. “They local? I’ll need their addressesand phone numbers for follow-up.” He flipped open a small notebook.
    “Yes,” I said, thinking about how much my mother and sister were going to dislike talking to a cop. “My mother lives in Greenport.” I gave him her address and my sister’s in Southold.
    He scribbled down the information. “Do you live around here?”
    “No,” Janice said with a sniff. “She lives in L.A.”
    Was that a crime? Some locals thought so. They called us citidiots. Pushy city folks clogging up the streets, the grocery store, and the beaches. “That’s right. I was here visiting Aunt Claire.”
    “And you’re staying where?”
    “I’m staying here, upstairs, and I’m not leaving until this is settled. Aunt Claire just had a clean bill of health from her doctor yesterday. Something is very wrong here. Like I told you, I think she was murdered.”
    He gave me a look I didn’t like. “Why don’t you let us worry about that?” he said as he flipped the pad closed and put it in his jacket pocket. “And staying put is a real good plan. Why don’t you tell your mother and sister to stay put, too? Sounds like we all need to talk.”
    The coroner arrived a few minutes later and removed Aunt Claire’s body.
    The day wore on into evening, and the cops worked late into the night processing the scene as I cried myself to sleep upstairs, which worked better than the valerian I took for my occasional insomnia. Valerian root, like chamomile, lemon balm, and lady slipper is an herb known as a nervine, which soothes and calms the nervous system. But tonight my tears did the trick.
    Saturday morning, I awoke to the rhythmic pat-pat-pat of rain on the bedroom window and the crackle of thunder in the distance. When I got up to close the window, droplets peppered the windowsill. Ginger and Ginkgo both stirred, stretched, hit the floor, and then followed me as I crossed the hall to make sure the windows were closed in Aunt Claire’s room.
    When I opened the door, her presence was so strong it felt like a punch to the chest. Even though I knew her spirit was gone, the room was all so her, everything from the art on the walls depicting Australia and London, two of her favorite places, to her beloved, worn cotton comforter, the books on the shelves, even the lavender smell of a large pillar candle. It had been her favorite scent.
    I lit the lavender candle, which was also good for relieving stress, sat on the bed, and reached for the book on her nightstand, The Power of Now, a classic by Eckhart Tolle. Hers was well-worn and dog-eared; she’d obviously referred to it constantly. Perhaps even more so of late, since she clearly was troubled by something. Lying back on the bed, the grief like lead in my chest, I stared at the flickering candle and sifted through what could possibly have been troubling Aunt Claire.
    A knock on the door disturbed my reverie. I blew out the candle and padded out of the room. When I opened the front door I found Merrily Scott, one of the café waitresses, dressed in the standard Nature’s Way uniform—jeans, a white T-shirt, and a green apron with the logo on the front. On top of her head she had twisted her bright red hair into tufts with fluorescent blue, green, and orange rubber bands.
    Merrily was hypercheerful and hyperenergized, probably from the energy drink she constantly was holding. Today, though, her usual good cheer had been replaced with sadness and tears.
    “I’m so sorry about Claire,” she said, her red eyes moist. “She was always so good