The Shifter Plague by Sherry D. Ramsey

Author:Sherry D. Ramsey [Sherry D. Ramsey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sherry D. Ramsey
Published: 2023-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

A Piece of Evidence

Oliver and I drove back to the office, he got coffee perking, and I phoned Ellis.

“Can you drop by the office this morning?” I asked him. “I have something to show you.”

“Will I refrain from making a suggestive reference?” His voice sounded tired, but it held the warmth of a smile.

“Please do. Oliver is here, so this is nothing that would offend his delicate sensibilities.”

He snorted a laugh. “I’ll be over in fifteen minutes. Should I bring coffee?”

“Oliver has some perking, better than the takeout you were considering.”

Which wasn’t a lie. Oliver did not like to skimp on many things, and coffee was an un-skimp-able. I was much less fussy, but I appreciated his efforts.

I had a strategy in asking Ellis to come over here so I could give him the ink, instead of meeting somewhere like the police station. That strategy was: I would feel braver, and he might be less angry if I was on my home turf, and Oliver was around. At least, that was my hope.

We settled in chairs in my office with two mugs of Oliver’s excellent coffee steaming in front of us, and the door to the outer office left ajar to facilitate Oliver’s eavesdropping. I pulled the ink from a locked drawer in my desk and passed him the plastic evidence bag.

He raised his eyebrows. “What’s this?”

“Oliver and I believe it’s some of the contaminated ink that was used to poison Danny Tobias and the two animal keepers,” I said. “Without the virus incorporated yet, though. Just the aconitine.”

Ellis narrowed his eyes at me. “Where did you get it?”

Ah, right to the point. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I took a sip of my coffee before I answered, hoping I seemed nonchalant. “In the cavern, under the lighthouse.”

“The cavern that was empty when I got there?”

“Yes, we took it when we had to rush Heather out of there, because I was worried about losing everything before you arrived. And I was right to worry,” I added as a reminder.

Ellis leaned back in his chair, leaned forward again to reach his coffee, and took a long drink. He looked like he could use a restorative, so I was glad the coffee was so darn good.

“You forgot to mention this to me last night?” His voice held all the chill of the underground cavern.

Here was the tricky part. “I was so tired, and still worried about Heather. I kept the vial in the safe, though.”

“If you’d mentioned this, I would have come over and collected it—just that, not stayed or anything.” He didn’t sound too angry, but he wasn’t letting me off the hook.

“I know.” Well, I might as well come clean. “I wanted Robin’s opinion this morning on whether there’d been magical alterations or tampering.”

He nodded, pressing his lips together in a thin white line. “So you took the only piece of solid evidence in this case—”

“—which wouldn’t exist at all if not for me and Oliver—”

“And took it for someone else to examine before handing it over to the proper authorities.

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