Page 56 of Ghosted
She scowls at me and folds her arms over her chest. “Tell me.”
“No.”
“Rae.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head.
“Has Dean ever heard about that time in eighth grade when you sh–”
“I was drugged!” I interject. Not wanting her to spill about the time I indeed shat myself. The stomach flu is no joke, and I caught a dodgeball in P.E. right against my stomach when it was already protesting. The kids called me “Dia-Rae-uh” for at least six months. Good times.
“What?” Wren says.
I clear my throat. “I was drugged. On accident. Okay, well, I guess it was a little on purpose, but it wasn’t Dean’s fault. He didn’t know there were drugs in the coffee. He was just trying to be sweet?—”
“Rae. Stop. Back up. What do you mean you were drugged? And what does this have to do with Dean?” Wren asks, placing a concerned hand on my shoulder.
I take a breath to gather my thoughts. “Okay. We went to his office last weekend to see if we could shake any more memories loose. When we were there, he made me a cup of coffee. He wanted me to try his favorite, so that's what he made me. Anyway, long story short, someone had put GHB into the type of coffee that Dean likes because no one else in his office drinks it, so it was a guarantee that he’d be the one to have it. I was unlucky enough to get one of the three pods left that had been tampered with.”
“This was last weekend?” she clarifies.
I nod. “Yeah. I passed out on his couch and didn’t wake up until the next day. I had to rush out so I could get to work and grab all those auction items. It was terrible. I had the worst headache all day.”
Her scowl deepens. “The day when you came into Brewed Awakening to grab the gift basket? That day?” I nod, and she smacks my arm. “How could you not tell me that?”
I wince, more at being called out than the sting on my arm from Wren’s assault. “Sorry, it just didn’t seem like a great time to announce that. Especially since you were feeling particularly murderous with Julian.”
“Who’s Julian?” Dean asks.
“I can sense your question, ghost. He is the bane of my existence. The rotten ground from which nothing will grow. The drought, the plague, the blight that ruins everything,” Wren says, getting surprisingly poetic.
“You seem to think about this guy a lot,” Dean says with a smug grin.
Wren’s eyes narrow to slits. I jump in to keep the fragile peace, “Anyway, yes. I was drugged, which heavily implies that Dean was drugged before he died.”
“Are you okay?” she asks, expression softening.
“Yes, I’m surprisingly fine. I think I’m not freaking out because it was an accident more than anything. Although I probably won’t be having caramel-flavored coffee anytime soon,” I say, hoping to reassure her.
She nods and asks, “How long did it take to kick in?”
“I don’t know, maybe thirty minutes?”
Wren turns to look in Dean’s direction. “Did you only have the one cup of coffee that day?”
He looks up at the ceiling, brow furrowing as he tries to remember. “Ummm. No. I had at least two other cups of coffee,” he says, looking at me.
I relay his answer and then ask him, “Do you always have a cup of coffee before you drive home?”
“I do, usually. Especially when we’ve been working a lot. Someone must have switched out the coffee pods later in the day.” He looks at me and visibly swallows. It’s looking more and more like this person is someone he knows.
“I’m going to call Jack,” I state, pulling my phone out of my pocket.
“Thanks again for the update,Rae. I’ll call you when I have something,” Jack says before hanging up. He agreed that it had to be someone in the office who drugged Dean (and me). So, he’s going to look back at security footage from that day to see if someone slipped in to replace them without the secretary noticing. The security footage only shows the very entrance of the office, so he won’t be able to make out thebreak room. At least it will narrow down who was there in the late afternoon before Dean drank his coffee.
“I have to get going. I need to go home and shower before my next shift. Please tell me important things, okay? Like being drugged, for instance,” Wren says from the chair opposite my couch, eyebrow raised to the sky.
“Yes, Mom. I promise,” I say, crossing my heart with my finger. I lean back against the couch and stretch my neck, feeling my impending thirtieth birthday creeping in with every creak and groan of my joints.
