NaNo update for those who care
Nov. 20th, 2005 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charliesmumAm up to 27,635 words. I was hoping to hit 30,000 today, but I've just run out of steam. I still don't hold out much hope that I'll make it to 50,000 since I'm running out of days, but it's still coming along nicely.
Anywhoodle, here's chapter three. Remember, totally unbeta'd. I've not even reread it myself, really, because I'd like to get the entire plot down, at least. Then I can go back and make it actually make sense.
When I woke up the next morning, I had maybe a minute of calmness before the events of the day before descended on me with all its horror. I lay in my bed, not wanting to face what the new day was going to bring; unsure what to do or where to go. Obviously the office wasn’t going to be opened; the police had to continue their investigation, and the rest of the staff were hospitalized. I rolled over on my side and stared blankly at my bookshelf where I kept all my comfort books. The bottom row was filled with all the Nancy Drew’s I’d inherited from my grandmother, originals from the thirties and forties. She’d given them to me because Nancy and I, she said, had quite a bit in common. We both lost our mothers at a young age, and we both had the same colored hair, although it was a long time before I realized ‘Titian-haired’ was a synonym for strawberry blonde, which is what I am usually described as having. When I was growing up I often wished for a mystery to solve so I could be just like Nancy. Now that I seemed to be in the midst of one, I wasn’t sure I was on par with the great girl detective. I’m sure she would have found fifteen clues to the Case of the Poisoned Cake or whatever before she left that day, and not have burst into tears like an idiot in front of a member of the police force.
Detective Morris was very kind, really. He didn’t run away, or tell me to stop sniveling, but stood quietly until I’d calmed down some, then handed me a clean white handkerchief, the sight of which made me start to giggle through my tears. I mean, who carries handkerchiefs any more?
“Did this come with your suit?” I asked him.
He looked at me blankly. “No, why?”
“Well, it’s a bit of an old fashioned look, that suit,” I said, wiping the tears off my face and handing him back his handkerchief. “Sorry. Bad joke, I guess. I’m just...”
“Oh. Well, I haven’t been a detective very long. Most of my career has been in uniform. I bought this suit because I thought it looked professional.” He looked down at himself. “You don’t think it does?”
I gave a watery laugh. “Well, you may want to flip through GQ or something. Or at least watch a cop show.”
We talked for a few more minutes, and then Terry Bender arrived looking flustered and confused. For some reason, Terry always put me in mind of the poet Rupert Brooke. It could have something to do with the way he carried himself, or perhaps the way women seemed to flock to him, or maybe it was just the ‘poet on opium’ look he seemed to favor.
Terry was the opposite of Bob in many ways; tall and blonde where Bob was short and dark, a dreamer where Bob was practical. Bob was the one who started the business after their father died, leaving the brothers a decent sized fortune, and he was the one who made it into a success. Terry drifted in and out, making friends with clients, coming up with outlandish and usually impractical ways of improving the business while Bob just stuck with the bottom line.
Terry spotted me and rushed over. “What happened?” He looked from me to Detective Morris, “I got a call saying the office was poisoned and my brother was dead. What happened?”
I filled him in as gently as I could. His pale face went even paler as I spoke and I was sure he was going to pass out.
“You’re going to need to identify the body,” Detective Morris said. “Why don’t you come with me, I can fill you in on the way down.” To me he said, “I’ll be in touch with you if I have more questions, Miss Lewis. Thank you for your time.” And with a nod and a wave, he was gone.
I then went to the hospital to check up on Carrie and the others. After much waiting around, a nurse finally was able to tell me what was happening.
“We ran tests, and it seems that your friends were poisoned by Oleander.”
“Oleander? Isn’t that a houseplant or something?”
“Yes, but it is also very poisonous, just ingesting a few of the leaves is dangerous, and potentially fatal.”
Not just potentially, I thought, remembering the sight of Bob slumped over his desk. “Are they going to be okay?”
“If they survive the next twenty-four hours, they will make a full recovery.” That wasn’t very comforting.
The nurse must have read my mind because she said in a reassuring voice, “Most of the people who were brought in are doing well; they suffered mostly abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting. The doctors induced emesis. Vomiting,” she added, seeing my blank look, “to help rid their systems of the poison and their vital signs are being monitored. The odds are very good they will survive. Most of your friends didn’t seem to get too bad of a dose.”
“What about Carrie? Carrie Elder? She was really sick.”
The nurse looked at her chart again. “Oh, Carrie Elder. Yes. She is a bit worse, her heart beat is slightly irregular, and her blood pressure dropped, but the doctor’s are confident she will pull through.”
I thanked the nurse, then went home and called my dad. I filled him in on what happened and told him about the oleander. “I don’t understand why they wouldn’t have tasted it, though. Wouldn’t it make the cake taste weird?”
“Well, I’d have to research that, but I imagine it would be the same reason people don’t notice pot cooked in brownies.”
“And you would know this how?”
My dad cleared his throat, a sure sign he was uncomfortable, “Well, sweetie, you know I was a teenager in the seventies, things were different then.”
I had to laugh. “Don’t worry about it Daddy, I won’t hold your checkered past against you.”
“Maggie, I’m worried about you. Why don’t you come home? There’s nothing there to hold you, and you can start fresh, here. You have friends here, people who love you. There’s no shame in coming home, you know.”
Even without the poisoning, this would have come up in conversation. He’d been saying that to me ever since Cliff left. Even in the early days of my marriage, he wasn’t happy with me moving so far away from him, but this was where Cliff got accepted to law school, and like the dutiful and loving wife I was, I came with him.
“Daddy, I want to stay here. I need to stay here. I need to make it on my own. If I go running back home, then Cliff will have been right about everything.”
Dad cursed; something he always did when Cliff’s name was mentioned. “You know I’m here for you, right?”
“Right.”
“And if things get too horrible, you can always call me, or just come home. I’ll be here for you. “Cause you’re my...my brown eyed girl.”
“Daddy. Don’t sing. Daddy!” I raised my voice to drown out the next verse of the song, trying not to laugh, “Stop it Dad.”
“You love me singing that song.”
“Loved. When I was ten. Now it’s a little creepy.”
Dad laughed. “Okay, I’ll stop. Get some sleep. Call me if you need me. I love you.”
“I love you too, Daddy.” Talking to him always made me feel better. I hung up the phone, poured myself a generous glass of wine, got in my comfy pajamas, and eventually drifted off to sleep, hoping things would look better in the morning.
And now it was the morning and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I lay there for a few more minutes then grabbed my charcoal pencil and pad I always kept by my bed and started drawing. Drawing helps me think; it gives my fingers something to do while my mind works on whatever problem is bothering me. Without quite thinking about what I was doing, I found myself drawing a sketch of Detective Paul Morris, bad suit, wire-rimmed glasses and all. I also found myself smiling as I thought of him. He was really cute, and seemed like a nice guy, an actual good guy, fighting for truth and justice and all that.
“Damn, girl!” I said out loud to the empty room startling Murray, my cat, who was at the foot of my bed, licking his private places and probably wondering if I was ever going to get up to feed him. “What am I doing?” I asked him. “Am I that lonely for a man that I’ll go crushing on the first guy around my age to speak to me in months?” Murray continued staring in that way only cats have then meowed once and hopped off the bed, looking for breakfast. “You’re no help at all you know.”
It seemed a bit frivolous to be joking with my cat about men when someone was dead, but life has a habit of going on, even when you think it shouldn’t. At any rate, drawing the picture and talking to Murray helped me get the energy to get out of bed and get ready to face the day.
While I was showering I went over all the facts in my mind. Someone left a cake in the kitchen that was laced with a poison, but why? Was it against the company in particular, or were they gunning for someone specific? That didn’t seem likely. If the murderer was aiming someone specific, then why leave the cake where the whole office could get it, unless they didn’t care if everyone else died. Besides, how would they know that person would eat the cake? But Bob did die. I needed to find out more about this Oleander stuff.
After I finished dressing and fed Murray, whose meowing was reaching a crescendo, I went online and entered a search for “Oleander”.
What I found out was only moderately interesting. Apparently Oleanders thrive with little care and will grow especially well in seaside gardens, generally growing best in the coastal areas of South Carolina. Considering I was inland and in New Jersey, that didn’t really help me much.
I narrowed the search by adding “Poisoning”, which gave me more relevant information. Turns out that pretty much every part of the plant is poisonous. There’s even an urban legend about kids getting sick roasting marshmallows, because they used branches from an Oleander plant as skewers. “Well, that’s just sad,” I told Murray, who was now attacking my hand as it moved the mouse around. Still didn’t explain how Oleander could get in a cake without anyone noticing though.
I narrowed the search further, adding ‘cake’. Jackpot.
I discovered Bob’s murderer wasn’t the first person to think of putting Oleander in a cake. “Bees sometimes use oleander pollen to make honey, making for a sweet and deadly honey cake.” Read one page. Maybe that was how our cake got poisoned. “How would one go about finding those bees?” I wondered aloud. “It’s not like stores sell honey with labels that say ‘Made from a poisonous plant’ on it.” Obviously it would have to be someone who understood bees, or raise them, or at least weren’t afraid of raiding a beehive. “That’s it,” I said to Murray. “Our murderer is Winnie The Pooh.”
The next site I found that had “Oleander”, “Poison” and “Cake” in the same paragraph was, oddly enough, a ghost story. I read the story several times, a theory growing in my mind. Not a good one, necessarily, but it could be a possible motive.
I was about to continue my search when I noticed the little envelope thing that indicated I had an email. I don’t often get email at home; most of my friends send me stuff at work since that’s where I am most of the time, so I don’t always remember to check my personal mail. Curious as to who was writing me, I opened my mailbox and looked at the new message.
My scream made Murray leap off the desk where he’d been happily knocking pens onto the floor and dart into the kitchen.
“You were talking to the police yesterday. Don’t get involved. I don’t want anyone else to die.” Read the message.
But that wasn’t the weirdest part.
The weirdest part was the address.
It was Bob’s.
Anywhoodle, here's chapter three. Remember, totally unbeta'd. I've not even reread it myself, really, because I'd like to get the entire plot down, at least. Then I can go back and make it actually make sense.
When I woke up the next morning, I had maybe a minute of calmness before the events of the day before descended on me with all its horror. I lay in my bed, not wanting to face what the new day was going to bring; unsure what to do or where to go. Obviously the office wasn’t going to be opened; the police had to continue their investigation, and the rest of the staff were hospitalized. I rolled over on my side and stared blankly at my bookshelf where I kept all my comfort books. The bottom row was filled with all the Nancy Drew’s I’d inherited from my grandmother, originals from the thirties and forties. She’d given them to me because Nancy and I, she said, had quite a bit in common. We both lost our mothers at a young age, and we both had the same colored hair, although it was a long time before I realized ‘Titian-haired’ was a synonym for strawberry blonde, which is what I am usually described as having. When I was growing up I often wished for a mystery to solve so I could be just like Nancy. Now that I seemed to be in the midst of one, I wasn’t sure I was on par with the great girl detective. I’m sure she would have found fifteen clues to the Case of the Poisoned Cake or whatever before she left that day, and not have burst into tears like an idiot in front of a member of the police force.
Detective Morris was very kind, really. He didn’t run away, or tell me to stop sniveling, but stood quietly until I’d calmed down some, then handed me a clean white handkerchief, the sight of which made me start to giggle through my tears. I mean, who carries handkerchiefs any more?
“Did this come with your suit?” I asked him.
He looked at me blankly. “No, why?”
“Well, it’s a bit of an old fashioned look, that suit,” I said, wiping the tears off my face and handing him back his handkerchief. “Sorry. Bad joke, I guess. I’m just...”
“Oh. Well, I haven’t been a detective very long. Most of my career has been in uniform. I bought this suit because I thought it looked professional.” He looked down at himself. “You don’t think it does?”
I gave a watery laugh. “Well, you may want to flip through GQ or something. Or at least watch a cop show.”
We talked for a few more minutes, and then Terry Bender arrived looking flustered and confused. For some reason, Terry always put me in mind of the poet Rupert Brooke. It could have something to do with the way he carried himself, or perhaps the way women seemed to flock to him, or maybe it was just the ‘poet on opium’ look he seemed to favor.
Terry was the opposite of Bob in many ways; tall and blonde where Bob was short and dark, a dreamer where Bob was practical. Bob was the one who started the business after their father died, leaving the brothers a decent sized fortune, and he was the one who made it into a success. Terry drifted in and out, making friends with clients, coming up with outlandish and usually impractical ways of improving the business while Bob just stuck with the bottom line.
Terry spotted me and rushed over. “What happened?” He looked from me to Detective Morris, “I got a call saying the office was poisoned and my brother was dead. What happened?”
I filled him in as gently as I could. His pale face went even paler as I spoke and I was sure he was going to pass out.
“You’re going to need to identify the body,” Detective Morris said. “Why don’t you come with me, I can fill you in on the way down.” To me he said, “I’ll be in touch with you if I have more questions, Miss Lewis. Thank you for your time.” And with a nod and a wave, he was gone.
I then went to the hospital to check up on Carrie and the others. After much waiting around, a nurse finally was able to tell me what was happening.
“We ran tests, and it seems that your friends were poisoned by Oleander.”
“Oleander? Isn’t that a houseplant or something?”
“Yes, but it is also very poisonous, just ingesting a few of the leaves is dangerous, and potentially fatal.”
Not just potentially, I thought, remembering the sight of Bob slumped over his desk. “Are they going to be okay?”
“If they survive the next twenty-four hours, they will make a full recovery.” That wasn’t very comforting.
The nurse must have read my mind because she said in a reassuring voice, “Most of the people who were brought in are doing well; they suffered mostly abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting. The doctors induced emesis. Vomiting,” she added, seeing my blank look, “to help rid their systems of the poison and their vital signs are being monitored. The odds are very good they will survive. Most of your friends didn’t seem to get too bad of a dose.”
“What about Carrie? Carrie Elder? She was really sick.”
The nurse looked at her chart again. “Oh, Carrie Elder. Yes. She is a bit worse, her heart beat is slightly irregular, and her blood pressure dropped, but the doctor’s are confident she will pull through.”
I thanked the nurse, then went home and called my dad. I filled him in on what happened and told him about the oleander. “I don’t understand why they wouldn’t have tasted it, though. Wouldn’t it make the cake taste weird?”
“Well, I’d have to research that, but I imagine it would be the same reason people don’t notice pot cooked in brownies.”
“And you would know this how?”
My dad cleared his throat, a sure sign he was uncomfortable, “Well, sweetie, you know I was a teenager in the seventies, things were different then.”
I had to laugh. “Don’t worry about it Daddy, I won’t hold your checkered past against you.”
“Maggie, I’m worried about you. Why don’t you come home? There’s nothing there to hold you, and you can start fresh, here. You have friends here, people who love you. There’s no shame in coming home, you know.”
Even without the poisoning, this would have come up in conversation. He’d been saying that to me ever since Cliff left. Even in the early days of my marriage, he wasn’t happy with me moving so far away from him, but this was where Cliff got accepted to law school, and like the dutiful and loving wife I was, I came with him.
“Daddy, I want to stay here. I need to stay here. I need to make it on my own. If I go running back home, then Cliff will have been right about everything.”
Dad cursed; something he always did when Cliff’s name was mentioned. “You know I’m here for you, right?”
“Right.”
“And if things get too horrible, you can always call me, or just come home. I’ll be here for you. “Cause you’re my...my brown eyed girl.”
“Daddy. Don’t sing. Daddy!” I raised my voice to drown out the next verse of the song, trying not to laugh, “Stop it Dad.”
“You love me singing that song.”
“Loved. When I was ten. Now it’s a little creepy.”
Dad laughed. “Okay, I’ll stop. Get some sleep. Call me if you need me. I love you.”
“I love you too, Daddy.” Talking to him always made me feel better. I hung up the phone, poured myself a generous glass of wine, got in my comfy pajamas, and eventually drifted off to sleep, hoping things would look better in the morning.
And now it was the morning and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I lay there for a few more minutes then grabbed my charcoal pencil and pad I always kept by my bed and started drawing. Drawing helps me think; it gives my fingers something to do while my mind works on whatever problem is bothering me. Without quite thinking about what I was doing, I found myself drawing a sketch of Detective Paul Morris, bad suit, wire-rimmed glasses and all. I also found myself smiling as I thought of him. He was really cute, and seemed like a nice guy, an actual good guy, fighting for truth and justice and all that.
“Damn, girl!” I said out loud to the empty room startling Murray, my cat, who was at the foot of my bed, licking his private places and probably wondering if I was ever going to get up to feed him. “What am I doing?” I asked him. “Am I that lonely for a man that I’ll go crushing on the first guy around my age to speak to me in months?” Murray continued staring in that way only cats have then meowed once and hopped off the bed, looking for breakfast. “You’re no help at all you know.”
It seemed a bit frivolous to be joking with my cat about men when someone was dead, but life has a habit of going on, even when you think it shouldn’t. At any rate, drawing the picture and talking to Murray helped me get the energy to get out of bed and get ready to face the day.
While I was showering I went over all the facts in my mind. Someone left a cake in the kitchen that was laced with a poison, but why? Was it against the company in particular, or were they gunning for someone specific? That didn’t seem likely. If the murderer was aiming someone specific, then why leave the cake where the whole office could get it, unless they didn’t care if everyone else died. Besides, how would they know that person would eat the cake? But Bob did die. I needed to find out more about this Oleander stuff.
After I finished dressing and fed Murray, whose meowing was reaching a crescendo, I went online and entered a search for “Oleander”.
What I found out was only moderately interesting. Apparently Oleanders thrive with little care and will grow especially well in seaside gardens, generally growing best in the coastal areas of South Carolina. Considering I was inland and in New Jersey, that didn’t really help me much.
I narrowed the search by adding “Poisoning”, which gave me more relevant information. Turns out that pretty much every part of the plant is poisonous. There’s even an urban legend about kids getting sick roasting marshmallows, because they used branches from an Oleander plant as skewers. “Well, that’s just sad,” I told Murray, who was now attacking my hand as it moved the mouse around. Still didn’t explain how Oleander could get in a cake without anyone noticing though.
I narrowed the search further, adding ‘cake’. Jackpot.
I discovered Bob’s murderer wasn’t the first person to think of putting Oleander in a cake. “Bees sometimes use oleander pollen to make honey, making for a sweet and deadly honey cake.” Read one page. Maybe that was how our cake got poisoned. “How would one go about finding those bees?” I wondered aloud. “It’s not like stores sell honey with labels that say ‘Made from a poisonous plant’ on it.” Obviously it would have to be someone who understood bees, or raise them, or at least weren’t afraid of raiding a beehive. “That’s it,” I said to Murray. “Our murderer is Winnie The Pooh.”
The next site I found that had “Oleander”, “Poison” and “Cake” in the same paragraph was, oddly enough, a ghost story. I read the story several times, a theory growing in my mind. Not a good one, necessarily, but it could be a possible motive.
I was about to continue my search when I noticed the little envelope thing that indicated I had an email. I don’t often get email at home; most of my friends send me stuff at work since that’s where I am most of the time, so I don’t always remember to check my personal mail. Curious as to who was writing me, I opened my mailbox and looked at the new message.
My scream made Murray leap off the desk where he’d been happily knocking pens onto the floor and dart into the kitchen.
“You were talking to the police yesterday. Don’t get involved. I don’t want anyone else to die.” Read the message.
But that wasn’t the weirdest part.
The weirdest part was the address.
It was Bob’s.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2005-11-21 04:11 am (UTC)I still say your main character really sounds like *you*.
no subject
on 2005-11-21 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-11-21 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-11-28 02:07 am (UTC)