“A Capri-Sun pouch? Why would she bring that in? Didshesend you here?”
Corey brushes his hand against my knee, just barely, but the message is clear.Settle down.Which is easy for him becausehedidn’t have to deal with Angela and her little SoSo Hart last year.
“She brought it in because she noticed a suspicious residue on the edge of the straw hole. And she was right to do so. Because of the unknown cause of Mr. Robinson’s death, we tested the Capri-Sun pouch and found traces of sodium nitrite residue.”
“Can you say that again? And a little louder? And slower?”
He’s not—is he? Oh my god,he is.
My dad is holding out the fancy microphone he bought for his podcast, the bright red timer on his phone’s recording app speeding forward. I try to communicate with wide eyes that this is beyond not okay, but he purposefully avoids looking back, like Pearl when she’s hoping I’ll forget bath time another night.
“Sodium ni—” Detective De La Rosa starts, but Detective Berry shoots him a stern glare that makes him clamp his lips shut.
“Did he even drink a Capri-Sun?” I ask. “He always drank those energy drinks in the cans. Did you testthose?”
I get the answer in the form of my own stern glare from Detective Berry.None of your business.
“Sodium nitrite,” my dad continues. “Isn’t that used in gardening? That odorless, tasteless substance that can dissolve in liquid?”
Detective Berry leans forward and squints at Dad, her lips pressed flat.
“He knows that because he watches a lot ofDateline,” I rush to explain. “Not because he goes around poisoning people!”
Detective Berry’s face stays deliberately the same, but De La Rosa’s mouth drops open. And yeah, I guess maybe that wasn’t the most convincing thing I could say.
“My dad has never poisoned anyone,” I say firmly. “None of us have.”
“That’s an interesting method for homicide, but how would they get it in the pouch undetected? And what did the toxicology report come back with? I need to do my research, but thatwould need to be a significant amount, to kill a man of that size so quickly. Unless…it’s been happening for a while. Did you test the cups at his house?”
“Sir, we cannot give you any more information, and I’m really going to have to ask you to put that microphone away.”
“I will in just a moment. But first, what do we know about his family? And who—”
“Detectives,” Corey says calmly. My first instinct was to tackle my dad to the ground and, I don’t know, swallow that goddamn microphone. But sure, that works, too. “I’d be happy to show you the receipts for everything I brought. And as far as I know, the kids drank them with no issues, but we can give you the numbers of all the families so you can call around and check. We’ll help in any way we can.”
Again, Corey is smiling, polished, but his thumb continues its circle and there’s a tightness to his jaw.
“That would be great,” Detective De La Rosa says. Detective Berry opens her mouth to ask something else, but Polly starts barking. There’s a knock at the door, and Ms. Joyce is walking in before any of us can even stand up.
“Corey, those greens you brought me are top notch. I already have them simmering on the stove with a ham hock. And these limes.” She holds one up. “You said they were key limes? Because they look mighty big for that. What kinda fertilizer are you using—oh, Officers! What a nice surprise!”
It’s no surprise at all. She wants to know what’s going on already, not wait a moment longer for Corey’s secondhand story.
“Are you here about the reports I made about my neighbor? Because I took your colleague’s advice and I’m installing my own cameras. I’m keeping them on my side of the fence because he was right, thatmaybe against the law, but I couldn’t find the specific code, so…”
She keeps talking, as if the detectives showed up on her doorstep for a social visit, but her voice fades away as I struggle to process everything we just learned.
Coach Cole was killed by drinking a poisoned Capri-Sun? It doesn’t sound real…but these detectives sitting here in our living room, asking questions—thatfeels very real.
Who would do that? And why?
Do the detectives really think we could have anything to do with it? My dad or Corey poisoning Coach Cole, hurtinganyone—the very idea is ridiculous.
But as I follow Detective Berry’s narrowed gaze to the lime in Ms. Joyce’s hand—the lime grown in Corey’s garden, when apparently a substance used for gardening was put in Coach Cole’s drink to murder him—I get a sinking feeling in my stomach that she may not think that’s as ridiculous as I do.
Eight
As the detectives ask theirquestions, my mind is spinning with a million of its own.