Notes: Takes place at some vague point in the future. All science in here is completely made up.
Megan stood at her living room window, unable to get Carson Sorrel's body out of her mind. There was no way the gunshot wound could've been the cause of death. If she could just put her finger on what had killed him...
"Hey," Peter said, wrapping his arms around her from behind. "I can hear you thinking all the way in the kitchen." He kissed her shoulder, which the thin straps of her dress left mostly bare. "Let yourself enjoy this."
"I am," she assured him as he brushed his mouth toward her collar bone. "Especially that thing you're doing right—hmmm—now."
"You mean this?" he murmured, kissing her again right where her throat met her shoulder.
"Mmm-hmm." She was silent for several seconds, appreciating the attention he was paying the spot on her neck. But the bullet hole in Carson's chest kept floating in her mind's eye. "It's just that I don't think Carson Sorrel was shot to death."
She could practically feel Peter deflate against her back. "Megan," he said, sounding rather put out. "We said we'd leave work behind for the night."
"I know, I know." She had promised. She'd thought he was going to make her put it in writing after their last date had ended at two a.m. in the lab, wrist-deep in intestines. "Forget it. We can deal with it in the morning."
"Well, now you've got me curious," he said. "What do you think he died of?"
He loosened his hold on her waist, and she turned to face him. They were still well into each others' personal space, but the moment had lost its earlier intimacy.
"There wasn't enough blood at the entrance wound. There's natural variation in how much different people bleed, of course, and there might have been enough clotting to slow it down, but this was unusually little. I thought this afternoon that it looked like he might've been shot post-mortem, but the tox screen came back negative for everything common, and there weren't any other wounds.
"But you remember his partner at the furniture store, with the side business in organic gardening? One of her specialties is mushrooms. Carson ate mushrooms two hours before he died."
She watched Peter turn this over in his head. "But doesn't that kind of poisoning take several days to kill someone?"
"Most of them do. But"—she almost smiled at the way the chain of logic was fitting together so neatly—"if someone's allergic to the Amanita ericonans mushroom, then combined with the toxin, it can kill in just a few hours. So if time of death was around two p.m., he would've eaten the mushrooms at noon—"
"And the secretary said that his partner brought in lunch for the three of them because she had some produce that was about to go bad—"
"Which would mean..."
"We've got the wrong woman sitting in lock-up."
They really were suited for each other. She was glad he'd been so persistent about getting her to see it. "I'll get my coat," she said.
"All right." He poked her shoulder, then slowly trailed his fingertips down her arm. Her skin tingled in the wake of his hand. "But we are not finished here."
"Damn right we aren't," she answered, suddenly very tempted to leave her new theory for tomorrow. After all, if the mushrooms were A. ericonans, the signs would be just as visible a few hours from now. But knowing now could help bring the real killer to justice and get an innocent, grieving wife out of jail those few hours sooner, and Carson deserved that much.
Before heading for the hall closet to get her coat, she leaned forward and kissed Peter, briefly, but with the force of her promise behind it. Once she ran the test, she'd let Bud and Sam take care of the rest, rather than spending the entire rest of the evening at the lab. She might not be very good at relationships and emotions, but she knew how to learn from her past mistakes.
Peter sighed when she let him go. "How long does the test for this mushroom take?"
"Half an hour, more or less. Most of that's just waiting for the results."
He raised an eyebrow, the corners of his mouth turning up ever so slightly. "So in theory, while we're waiting we could..."
She thwacked his arm. "Peter!"
"I'll take that as a no, then?"
She just smiled at him.