Dressed Up 4 Murder (Sophie Kimball Mystery Book 6) by J.C. Eaton

Author:J.C. Eaton
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2020-02-24T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Nate and Marshall weren’t able to glean too much information from Ranston and Bowman when they met Saturday morning. No new insights regarding Cameron Tully’s connections and nothing that would link Elaine Meschow to him, other than the fact that they both ingested toxins from the sago palm. What was certain was that the sheriff ’s deputies, along with Williams Investigations, had all but exhausted all contacts related to both victims.

Marshall puzzled over the entire matter most of the weekend when he wasn’t conferring with Nate on the phone.

“I can’t believe Thanksgiving is this Thursday and we still haven’t gotten anywhere,” he said as we folded a batch of laundry on Sunday night. “I couldn’t even enjoy spreading out on the couch and watching the football game today.”

A washcloth dropped on the floor and I picked it up. “You made a good stab at it.”

“Yeah, well, a guy’s got to try something. Oh geez, I completely forgot to tell you—I called Bethany Cabot to ask about their distributor. Got to speak with her husband. Tucker, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anyway, it wasn’t Coldwater Seafood. We can scratch that off our list. Spellbound Naturals has used the same distributor for the past five years. Not a familiar name, but then again, I’m not up on dog food suppliers.”

“Was Tucker as obnoxious as Elaine Meschow says he is?”

“Not really. Not on the phone anyway. I told him what was going on and why we thought there might be a motive for Cameron’s murder if the same distributor was used for dog food as well as gourmet seafood.”

“What was his reaction?”

“Believe it or not, he laughed. Said the food they source is natural, all right, but nothing humans would consume. Gave me the lowdown on Asian carp. Did you know those fish were gradually introduced into our lakes and waterways with an unexpected outcome?”

“Um, no.”

Marshall stopped rolling his socks into neat tubes and let out a breath. “The Asian carp are really aggressive fish. Aggressive and very adaptable. Apparently, those little stinkers outcompete the native fish for food and habitat. And those carp keep growing in size. It wouldn’t pose a problem if they were edible, but those things are boney as hell.”

“Ugh. Sounds horrid.”

“It is. The exploding carp population correlates to a decreasing supply of other freshwater fish and that’s not all.”

“You mean there’s more?”

“Oh yeah. Those fish have no natural predators. And they breed faster than rabbits. Although I think the actual word is ‘spawn.’ Tucker gave me the complete run-down.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what’s in the dog food—Asian carp. Not to say the food doesn’t contain salmon, tuna, or other fish, but the carp make up a large percentage of the product.”

“Isn’t that illegal or something?”

“Nope. The ingredients are listed on the packaging, according to content, and the labels are rather generic. They use words like ‘ultra formula,’ ‘premium formula,’ ‘natural formula,’ and my personal favorite, ‘healthy formula. ’ Everything’s on the up-and-up. Anyway, Tucker had a good chuckle when I told him we thought there might be a connection.

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