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  I needed to get out of that ER before my nerves frazzled to nothing. All the beeping noises and people yelling for assistance as others ran by us made me wish for the quiet and solitude of my cozy little house at that moment.

  Pushing out past people as they rushed in, I finally made it outside. I inhaled a deep breath of air and closed my eyes, thankful to be out of that place.

  Alex came up behind me and touched me gently on the arm. “You going to be okay?”

  I looked at him and forced a smile. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. That was all just a lot, sort of like sensory overload for a minute there.”

  “Let me take you home, Poppy. I can work the details of the case for the rest of the day, and if Mr. Engels is okay to talk anytime soon, I’ll be sure to let you know so you can come with me when I speak to him.”

  “What happened to Gerald, Alex? Did the same thing that killed Marcus Tyne get to him?” I asked as we walked to the squad car.

  “I don’t know what happened to him, but I know this. We need to find out from Donny right now what happened to Marcus Tyne because if it’s some kind of public health issue, we can’t let this get away from us.”

  “Public health issue?” I asked as we got into the car. “What are you talking about? I thought we were going with the idea that Marcus Tyne was murdered.”

  Alex started the car and pulled away from the curb. “We were. We still are, but I can’t rule out that whatever killed him might be the same thing that just landed Gerald Engels in the hospital, and that could be something entirely different than murder.”

  “Like what?” I asked, my heart pounding in my chest at the thought of some kind of epidemic in Sunset Ridge.

  His eyebrows knitted, Alex shook his head. “I don’t know, Poppy.”

  “Well, I’m not going home then. If you can work without sleep, I can work through getting all emotional. Let’s go see what Donny has to say about what killed Marcus Tyne.”

  Chapter Six

  Donny poked his head into Alex’s office to announce that he had nothing definitive to report. “Before you start asking me what killed Marcus Tyne, I should tell you I don’t know.”

  Both Alex and I looked at him with disappointment. What was the point of making us wait three hours to tell us he had no idea what had killed our victim?

  “Would you like to come in, or is this your new way of dealing with the police, Donny? Taking to doing drive bys instead of your usual detailed explanations of things nobody really understands?” Alex asked with a smile to temper his sarcasm brought on by lack of sleep.

  The coroner shrugged. “I like to keep you guys on your toes. No, but really, I don’t have anything to discuss yet. Nothing definitive.”

  “I’ll take anything, Donny. Just give me something to work with.”

  With a sigh, he nodded and took a seat next to me in front of Alex’s desk. “My preliminary examination tells me the man died of organ failure, specifically his kidneys shutting down, in addition to congestive heart failure with cardiogenic pulmonary edema.”

  “That sounds awful,” I said as I imagined how much pain Marcus Tyne must have been in from all of that.

  Donny looked at me and frowned. “I’d say that’s a good way to put it. Certainly not the way I want to go, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Me neither. It sounds like a terrible way to die.”

  “If I have my way, I’ll just go in my sleep. Peaceful and quiet. I like that idea,” Donny said with a satisfied grin, like he’d thought quite extensively about his exit from this world.

  “I agree,” I said. “I don’t like to think about my own demise, but if I have to go, I’d like it to be painless and peaceful.”

  “Oh yeah, painless is important too. I forgot to mention that. Definitely don’t want to be in agony in my last moments on this earth.”

  Alex cleared his throat, making Donny and me stop talking and turn to face him. “Have we covered all the details of your death wishes? So now can get to the guy who actually died? You know, our victim?”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Yeah, sorry Alex. It’s just that as I said when I first got here, I don’t really have anything definitive yet.”

  “Well, what killed him? Were any of those things you mentioned deadly?” Alex asked with an edge to his voice that told me his frustration with this case was increasing by the moment.

  Donny shook his head. “He went into cardiac arrest, but everything in this guy seems to have been shutting down. I don’t know what would have made that happen yet.”

  “Everything? What can do that to the human body?” I asked, wondering if Alex’s thought about a public health emergency had been more on the mark than I’d initially believed.

  For a moment, Donny considered my question, and then he answered, “Well, that’s an interesting question. Anyone at the end of their life and dying from a disease like cancer will experience a failure like that, but I didn’t find any evidence that your victim was suffering from any cancer. Things like hemorrhagic fever and plague can have similar effects, but—”

  Before he could continue, I interrupted him. “Plague? Like the Black Death in Europe in the fourteen century plague? You can’t be talking about that, Donny.”

  I looked across the desk at Alex and saw his eyes nearly bugging out of his head. Just the word plague made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  But the coroner didn’t seem as traumatized by the mere mention of a disease that had wiped out upwards of half the population of Europe at one time. Touching my arm, Donny tried to calm me.

  “I’m not saying that it was the plague, so don’t worry just yet. I just used it as an example of what could cause organ failure as extensive as I saw in your guy. But for what it’s worth, the bubonic plague still exists today in the twenty-first century, even here in the United States. Mostly in the southwest. It’s also been found in Russia and in China in the past few decades.”

  “I just want to make sure I have this straight, Donny,” Alex said calmly. “You aren’t saying this is plague, right?”

  Donny waved his hands in front of him as if to erase any mention of plague. “No, no. Don’t worry. I don’t think we have any variety of the plague on our hands. That’s not what I was saying. I was just offering it as an example. There’s no need to press the panic button here.”

  Both Alex and I took deep breaths and let them out slowly. So it wasn’t plague, but what killed Marcus Tyne by causing his organs to completely shut down?

  “Is there anything else other than cancer or something on a biblical level that could have killed him?” Alex asked with a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

  Donny shrugged. “Poison might do it. It would depend on what he was given, but some poisonous substances can cause the body to react like your victim did.”

  Smiling, Alex jotted notes down in his tablet. “Poison. Good. Okay, poison is something to go on, at least. It’s not bubonic plague, so I’ll take it for now.”

  The coroner nodded and stood from his chair to leave. “When I have a cause of death, you’ll be the first to know, unless this is some kind of contagious disease we’re dealing with, which means you’ll be more like the twentieth person to find out after the CDC and the Feds. I’m telling you now, I hope it isn’t that because I don’t need those people swarming my morgue.”

  The happiness drained from Alex’s face at Donny’s mention of a contagious disease. “You just said it probably isn’t plague and now you mention the CDC? What are you doing to me, Donny?”

  Throwing his head back, he laughed at the reaction he’d gotten from Alex. “I love seeing you guys overreact. Don’t worry. I’m putting my money on something other than contagious disease. I don’t know what yet, but I’ll let you know what I find after a few more tests.”

  He turned to leave and Alex said, “Hey, the guy whose car we found him in was just admitted to the hospital after we found him at his house. He seemed confused and right before we got to the hos
pital, he said he couldn’t breathe. We heard it announced that they had a Code Blue right after they took him in. I think he went into cardiac arrest.”

  Donny looked at each of us and sighed. “Another cardiac arrest. That’s not good. Hopefully, he recovers so he can give us a hint as to what happened. If not, he’s going to be next on my table, so I better get back to the lab now.”

  We sat in silence as all of what Donny had told us sunk in. Bubonic plague? Poisoning? It all seemed so impossible to be happening in Sunset Ridge.

  Alex typed something into his laptop and shook his head as he read what appeared on the screen. “I thought he might have been wrong about the bubonic plague here in the US, but he was right. There were four deaths so far this year, all in New Mexico and Arizona.”

  “Yet another reason why I love living right here in Maryland. No scorpions, hundred degree heat, and now no plague.”

  My lame attempt at humor made him smile. “I think I’d have to second that emotion. I could probably handle the heat, but no thanks on the scorpions and plague.”

  Leaning back in his chair, he folded his arms across his chest. “I wonder if this is some kind of food poisoning or something like that. But what kind of food poisoning causes organ shutdown so pervasive?”

  I thought back to the last time I had food poisoning. I’d eaten undercooked chicken at a barbeque, and for nearly twenty-four hours after, I suffered terribly. I thought I might never get to leave my bathroom again.

  “All I know is that food poisoning makes you wonder if you’re going to die while you’re in the middle of it,” I said as my mind replayed those horrible hours of that night.

  “I know that. I’ve had food poisoning a few times, but never did it get so bad that I was in danger of dying. Maybe being dehydrated but not dying,” Alex said.

  “Then I doubt it was food poisoning that killed our guy. Maybe some other kind of poisoning, though.”

  Alex’s eyebrows raised into his forehead. “Been reading Agatha Christie lately, Poppy? Are you suggesting a good arsenic poisoning right here in little old Sunset Ridge?” he asked facetiously.

  He enjoyed making fun of my reading choices since they tended toward the older mysteries. He preferred more modern day books, and more than once he’d had a laugh at my bookcase full of the oldies, as he liked to call them.

  I liked the term classics myself, and even though many of those stories’ settings were very different from the town we lived in, the methods and styles of the detectives were just as good as any of his newer fictional investigators.

  “No, I wasn’t, Alex, and it isn’t like poisoning someone with arsenic is impossible today. For someone who chastises me about jumping to conclusions too often, you seem perfectly fine with discounting this idea very easily.”

  My defense of such an old school method of poisoning someone amused him, and he laughed out loud at me. “My apologies, Miss Marple. I guess I better get prepared for an onslaught of doilies in this case.”

  I leaned forward and perched my elbows on the edge of his desk. “I’ll have you know, Mr. Montero, that arsenic was found in dangerously high levels in wine just last year. Discount it as much as you want, but it could be what killed Marcus Tyne and nearly killed Gerald Engels.”

  Still doubting my thesis, he grabbed his pen and scribbled something in his notebook as he corrected me. “That’s Officer Montero, Miss Marple.”

  I craned my neck to look at what he’d written and saw it said Poppy loves arsenic.

  “Funny. Real funny.”

  I sat back in my seat, disgusted at how easily he dismissed my idea. Alex usually seemed so open minded when it came to my suggestions, but clearly this one didn’t get the benefit of the doubt.

  His expression slowly morphed into one far more serious than my sulking warranted, so I asked, “What’s wrong?”

  Sighing, he said, “Something just occurred to me. Marcus Tyne was at McGuire’s Monday night. I’m wondering if Gerald Engels was too.”

  “Why?”

  Alex hesitated for a moment and then said the one thing I hadn’t thought of in all of this. “Because if he did, that’s a connection I’ll have to investigate.”

  As the possibility of my father’s bar being even more involved in this case wound its way through my mind, my stomach tightened. What if both men were at McGuire’s? What if they both drank the same thing there and…?

  I couldn’t finish that thought.

  “Poppy, don’t jump to conclusions. I’m serious. I can see by your face what you’re already thinking. Don’t.”

  “What if they were poisoned there, Alex? That will devastate my father. How could that happen?”

  The horror of someone dying outside his bar had shaken him to the core. What would happen if that man had died because of something he’d consumed in McGuire’s? I didn’t think he’d be able to handle it.

  In a stern voice, Alex said, “I told you not to jump to conclusions. We don’t know what killed Marcus Tyne yet. We don’t even know if Tyne and Engels were at any of the same places that day. All we know is we have one victim, Poppy. Concentrate on that.”

  I couldn’t, though. Every horrible possibility ran through my head as I sat there. If we found out that both men were at McGuire’s Monday night, my father’s business might be shut down for days or weeks even as the investigation worked its way through suspects and clues. That bar was his life. He devoted every second of his day to that place.

  “That bar is all he’s had since my mother died, Alex. He’d be brokenhearted if he had to close, even if it was just until the investigation was over.”

  “Poppy, I severely doubt anyone died from anything they had at your father’s bar. Please don’t worry prematurely. Let’s find out what Donny has to say first before you get worried about Joe.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to calm down, but it was no use. Hanging my head, I said, “I don’t know what my father would do without that bar. I know it sounds silly, but I think he lives for that place.”

  “Look at me, Poppy.”

  After another deep breath, I did as Alex wanted me to and lifted my head to look at him. His usually stoic expression had been replaced by the look he always gave me when he knew I was unraveling. His brown eyes seemed softer and more caring when he looked at me like that.

  “I want you to go spend some time with your father this afternoon. I promise I’ll call you when Donny gets me any results, but I think it would do you some good to be with him today.”

  “I don’t know, Alex. He’s going to know I’m upset about something. I don’t think telling him about it would do any good for me or him.”

  “Then don’t tell him. Why don’t you go out for a bite to eat with him or you two do something together you haven’t done in a while? I know he loves a pick-up game of basketball any time he gets the chance,” Alex said with a smile.

  My father did love to get outside and shoot hoops on his day off, but I’d never been very good at basketball. It had been over a decade since I’d even touched one.

  “Maybe. I’m just not sure I can hide what I’m thinking.”

  Alex laughed out loud at that idea. “Poppy, you have the opposite of a poker face. I don’t think you’ve ever had an emotion that didn’t show all over your face. So no, I don’t think you can hide anything, but maybe you two spending some time together will take your mind off things for at least a few hours.”

  I had to admit he was probably right. Until Donny got back to him with some information about Marcus Tyne’s cause of death, all I’d be doing was waiting around and worrying.

  “What about you? You’ve been awake for almost twenty-four hours. You must be exhausted.”

  Alex waved away my concern. “I’m fine. Maybe I’ll catch a nap while I’m waiting for Donny to call. I don’t have a shift tonight, so I can catch up on sleep then.”

  The dark circles under his eyes told the real story, no matter what he claimed. A workaholic, if I knew him, h
e’d probably catch his second wind once Donny gave him his preliminary report and launch into the investigation full steam ahead, sleep or no sleep.

  “You know, Donny has your cell number. You and I could go back to my house and you could grab a nap there. You aren’t on the schedule today, so it wouldn’t be breaking any rules.”

  A sly smile spread across his lips. “I’m not worried about breaking any rules. You know how I am with a case. I won’t be able to sleep at your house anyway. Too many distractions.”

  “Are you calling me a distraction?” I asked with a smile. “Because if you are, that might be one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me.”

  Rolling his eyes, he pointed toward the door. “Go. Take a few hours to spend time with your father while I sneak a nap in my chair here. I’ll call you as soon as Donny calls me.”

  I got up from my seat, accepting that I wouldn’t be able to change his mind on this issue. “Fine. I’m going. I wouldn’t want to be a distraction to you while you’re trying to work. Or napping.”

  He shook his head and smiled. “You’re my favorite distraction, Poppy. Tell Joe I said hi and I’ll be in for Thursday’s Orioles game.”

  “I beat out this season’s sport? I must be doing something right,” I joked as I left.

  I heard him chuckling as I walked down the hall toward the front door of the station, but for all my joking around, I couldn’t help but worry that when Thursday came around for them to hang out at McGuire’s to watch the baseball game that the bar would be closed and my father would be stuck in the center of our investigation of Marcus Tyne’s death.

  Until that happened, though, I had to push my worries out of my mind if I was going to spend time with my father. Alex had been right when he remarked about me not having a poker face. My mother always said I wore my emotions and my heart on my sleeve.

  I couldn’t let my father see how worried I was about him and this case. That would only make him wonder if he truly was to blame for that man’s death. That I’d never believe, no matter what Donny or Alex or anyone said.