Page 53 of My Blind Date is a Ghost

“And if I wasn’t poisoned?” I ask. “What then? If things really happened the way I’ve always believed they did, then we are in the same place as before with no leads.”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that,” Sophia says. She starts to open the folder when the bell above the door to the shop rings and I look up, expecting to see my husband, Edward. But it’s not Edward; it’s Beckett—someone I’m actually excited to see. He holds up a manila folder triumphantly.

“What’s it say?” I ask, running over excitedly.

“I don’t know yet,” he says. “And believe me, I nearly had to chop my own hand off to keep from opening it.”

“Open it, open it!” I tell him.

“Alright,” he says. He opens the folder and pulls out a stack of pages. “Dar Detective Dawson…” he mutters, reading the cover letter. “Inside you will find…da da da… The cause of death is as follows.”

I suck in a breath and hold it.

“Drug overdose: arsenic. The manner of death has been ruled a homicide. Further details are explained within.”

The room is so quiet it’s as if I’ve died again. I can hear nothing. I can say nothing. I can say nothing. Beckett slowly looks up at me from the paper. My eyes fill with tears. The floodgates open and I stumble backward. Sophia grabs my arm and leads me to the counter to keep me from falling to the floor.

I was poisoned. Murdered. I can’t believe it. Who would want to kill me? What did I ever do?

I’m crying so hard I can’t say the words that I’m thinking. Beckett leads me over to the couch and sits me down, rubbing my back.

I always knew that I had been murdered. But I always considered it more of an accident. Jeremiah Holland was known to be a strange individual. He wasn’t right in his mind. When he killed me, I figured he didn’t actually know what he was doing. It wasn’t malicious. He just snapped. But when he was executed, at least he would never hurt anyone else. Justice was served. But now… Oh, God! Now, I know that an innocent man was executed because of me! I feel sick and grab a small waste basket to vomit into.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Beckett says. “Let it all out. I know this is a shock.”

“It’s terrible!” I say. “This was no accident. Poison indicates a long thought-out plan.” I start crying again and lean on Beckett’s shoulder. I have no idea how long I cry. I can’t stop. I can’t think. I can’t hear what anyone around me says. I see Sophia wipe a tear away as she taps away on her cell phone, probably texting Piper the bad news. Finally, the tears slow to a trickle even though I still feel sick in my stomach.

“Poor Jeremiah,” I say when I can speak again. “He was murdered too.”

“That’s true,” Beckett says. “I hadn’t thought about that. But you are right. Whoever killed you has two murdered on their hands.”

“When we get justice for you,” Jacob says, “we will get justice for Jeremiah too.”

“What are the werewolves going to think?” I ask. “Will they be furious?”

“Let’s worry about that later,” Beverly says. “First, we need to figure out what this means for you right now. What else does the report say?”

Beckett flips through the pages of the report, reading quickly. “Umm… Oh, here we go. Arsenic was found in the hair and fingernails of the deceased, which would indicate that she was poisoned shortly before death. Due to the length of time between death and exhumation, a time of death cannot be determined. The source of the arsenic could also not be determined. However, the levels of arsenic indicate that it was consumed deliberately and not through environmental factors. As the deceased was believed to be of sound mind at her death, it is this determination of this coroner that the cause of death was homicide.”

“Is there more?” I ask.

Beckett flips through the pages. “Yes, but there is a lot of technical talk, and…umm…pictures. I don’t think you want to see those.”

I shake my head. I wasn’t present for the exhumation. I didn’t think I could bear to see my own dead body, or even my casket. It was too much. Too real.

“So, what happens next?” Jacob asks.

“Well,” Beckett says with a sigh, “basically, since Cora was murdered, her case will be kicked from closed to open. Usually, an investigation would be opened for at least a few months before being marked as cold and basically put on the shelf. For a case this old, it would probably be marked cold and shelved immediately. But in Mystic Cove, the sheriff will probably let me open it and work on it. This is the one town where there might actually be witnesses who could still be interviewed.”

“I guess the big question is, was it Cora’s husband?” Beverly says.

“It had to be,” I say.

“Well, we don’t know that for certain,” Beckett says. “We don’t know the source of the arsenic.”

“It had to be the tea,” I say. “It was not something I usually drank, so I thought the bitter taste was probably normal. And I died so quickly after I drank it.”

“But did your husband know it was poisoned?” Jacob asks. “Maybe someone else poisoned the tea and gave it to him without his knowledge. Who was the apothecary?”

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