Death of a Batty Genius (Stormy Day Mystery #3) Read Online Free Page B

how’s your cat these days? His name’s Peekaboo, right? Now, is he more ginger or more marmalade?”
    “Ginger,” she said without hesitation. “He’s good. He put on a little weight over winter, because he thinks snow is the devil, but spring’s coming.” She took a slow, audible breath. “What can I do for you tonight? Are you in trouble again?”
    “No, it’s my roommate. This is going to sound crazy, but I think she got drugged or poisoned by a powdered smoothie drink. The brand is—”
    “Rainforest Delight,” she interrupted. “With a bunch of googly-eyed tree frogs on the packaging.”
    “Oh, no. I mean yes. This is bad, Peggy. How bad is it?”
    “About a dozen individual disturbances across town. We’ve traced the supply back to a gas station that must have gotten the recall notice on the merchandise and had the genius idea to put the stuff on sale rather than send it back.” She made a tsk-tsk sound. “The contaminant hasn’t been identified, but the good news is, it hasn’t been lethal. You said your roommate had the smoothie? Keep an eye on her and let her sleep it off. The doctors are saying no need to take her to the hospital, unless the symptoms get worse. Any sign of paralysis or coma, bring her in.”
    “What if she’s gone missing?”
    “Then you need to find her before she does something crazy and hurts herself.”
    I swallowed the lump of worry in my throat.
    Voice cracking, I said, “Can you help me? I’ve been looking for Jessica, and I can’t find her. She’s on foot, without her phone, and I’m worried. I already checked the ravine, where she likes to walk, and I was so sure she’d be there, but she wasn’t.”
    “Do you know the protocol for an urban search?”
    “A little bit. I can look it up. Good idea. Thanks, Peggy. I’ll let you know when I find her. Good luck with—”
    “Stormy, I’m as good as on my way. You’re at your house?”
    “Yes, but…” I tried telling her that I could handle it, and I didn’t want to take away police resources when they had so many other calls, but Peggy politely told me to let her do her job. She asked for a physical description of Jessica, plus her full name, so she could let the other officers know and put in a notice with the hospital, “just in case.”
    While I waited for her to arrive, I grabbed my notebook and started thinking on paper while refreshing my memory of the police procedure for an urban search. My father had been on a number of calls over the years, typically for people with memory-related diseases who’d wandered away from home.
    Jessica didn’t fit the age profile, but just like those people, she might have gotten confused about the date and been trying to get back home to her old apartment. I would check there next.
    I grabbed her phone to review her recent calls or messages. Luckily for me, we didn’t have that many secrets from each other, and when I’d told her about using the word bacon as my password, she’d made it her password as well.
    She hadn’t made or received any phone calls between the time I’d left the house and called her myself, so that was a dead end. I used her address book to get her mother’s phone number, then called and broke the news as gently as I could. Mrs. Kelly talked to her daughter every day, sometimes multiple times, and was understandably upset.
    “Not again,” she sobbed. “I can’t have someone disappear like this.”
    “Jessica’s a tough cookie,” I said. “And smart. Don’t you worry. Even if she’s not quite herself, she’s still got more sense than most. And we’re going to find her. Do you have any ideas about places she’d walk to?”
    “She mentioned a treehouse, near the ravine.” Mrs. Kelly started sounding more hopeful. “She must be there!”
    “Good idea,” I said, hating myself for the white lie. I promised I would keep Mrs. Kelly up to date, and she offered to make some calls and work on a list of other places to