I glanced at Adeena. “What do you mean?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You telling me you didn’t come here fishing for information about that Winter boy? You girls, who’ve lived here your whole lives and never once came to this part of town. You just happen to come to the diner the Winter boy wrote about, the Winter boy who happened to die earlier this week in your restaurant? That what you want me to believe?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Uh . . . yes?”

He shook his head. “Miss, I’m simple. I’m not stupid.”

I started to apologize, but he held up his hand. “It’s fine. I know why you’re here. Word is both you and your aunt are in trouble. You’re just looking out for your family, yeah?”

I bit my lip. “Yeah. We had nothing to do with his death. Tita Rosie’s a good person and these rumors are destroying her. She’s already worried they’re going to take away our restaurant, now she’s stressed that I’m going to be taken away, too. It’s too much, you know? It’s just too much . . .”

I choked up and couldn’t finish the sentence. Adeena put her arm around me and pulled me close. “We’re not gonna let that happen. You hear me? We’re gonna figure this out.”

Stan nodded. “I’ve met your aunt a few times, you know. Doing volunteer work at the church.” He paused. “I’ll keep my ears open. People ’round here like to talk. If I find out anything good, I’ll let you know.”

I didn’t know what to say. “I . . . thanks, I . . .”

He held up his hand. “Miss Rosie is good people. I can tell you’re cut from the same cloth. If you say your family didn’t do it, I believe you.”

Tears sprang to my eyes and I barely managed to choke out a “thank you” before running out to my car. I sat in the driver’s seat, tears rolling down my face, embarrassed by my overly emotional reaction. I guess it was just so reassuring that this complete stranger believed in us. Believed in me. Nice to be reminded of all the kindness there still was in the world.

A whoosh of cold air announced Adeena’s arrival as she opened the passenger door and slid in. She dropped my bag of leftovers in the backseat.

“You forgot that.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“And to pay your half of the check.”

I winced. “Sorry. I’ll get you next time.”

“Oh don’t worry, you’re paying for dinner. You also ran out before leaving your contact information, so I gave him both our numbers. You need to get better at this detective stuff, or we’ll never have any informants.”

I let out a shaky breath. “Thanks, Adeena. What would I do without you?”

“I really don’t know,” she said without a trace of sarcasm. “Here’s hoping you never have to find out.”

Chapter Nineteen

When I got home, Marcus was in the living room with all the aunties, enjoying a meryenda of coffee, cheese, and the last of the mamón. I brewed a pot of tea and set out the ube crinkles I’d been experimenting with.

“I didn’t expect to see you so soon, Marcus. Or is it C.O. Marcelo?” I grinned and held out the tin. “Try some of these cookies. I remember you having a particular fondness for ube.”

“You remember right.” Marcus popped a whole cookie in his mouth before stacking several more on his plate. “Whoa, these are so good. Thanks, Lila.”

Ninang Mae smacked him upside his head. “What do you mean, ‘Lila’? That’s your ate, show some respect!”

I flushed. “Ninang Mae, it’s fine. I don’t really care about that stuff.”

Tita Rosie smiled at me. “She’s right, Mae. As long as they respect their elders, what’s the harm in not using the titles among themselves? I mean, Lila and Marcus aren’t that far apart in age. Marcus, how old are you now?”

He swallowed a mouthful of cookie. “I’m twenty-one, Tita.”

Ninang Mae huffed. “No member of my family will be so disrespectful, especially not in front of all my friends. Now, Marcus, tell us everything you know.”

Poor Marcus. He probably wasn’t supposed to tell us anything, but he seemed to not care about the bounds of professional privacy as much as Bernadette and Amir did. Or at least, he wasn’t as scared of losing his job as he was of angering the aunties.

He picked up another cookie. “Well, I’m sorry to say it’s not looking too good. Along with the arsenic in Derek’s dessert dishes, they seem to have found narcotics in his system, similar to the ones found in Li—I mean, Ate Lila’s locker.”

I wrinkled my brow. “Wait, so he was drugged first? Maybe someone forced him to eat the poison?”

He shrugged, not so much in nonchalance as discomfort, his words coming out more like questions than statements. “Uh, well, it seems more likely that he purposely took the pain medication? You know, for uh, recreational use?”

“So maybe an overdose?”

Ninang June shook her head. “I doubt it. The EMTs would’ve recognized the symptoms of opioid overdose and used Narcan or something similar. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is becoming more common. Not in Shady Palms necessarily, but throughout the county.”

I sighed and nibbled on an ube crinkle, so lost in thought I couldn’t even enjoy how the light coating of powdered sugar gave just enough sweetness to the subtle, almost vanilla-like flavor of the purple yam. It all turned to sand in my mouth.

I put the half-eaten cookie down. “So what does this mean for me?”

Marcus rubbed the back of his head, the rasp of the short-shorn bristles grating on my already fragile nerves. “You need to prove that those drugs didn’t belong to you. It’s their main piece of evidence. Or that the arsenic got into Derek’s food through some other means. If you can’t prove those things, then I don’t know.”

Ninang Mae frowned. “Amir’s good, but Detective Park is relentless. He doesn’t care that Rosie is a friend. If he thinks he’s right . . .”

Those ominous words hung in the air for a moment before Ninang June spoke up. “So, Lila, have you checked out anyone on the list yet?”

I glanced at Marcus and Tita Rosie, who didn’t seem surprised. Guess that was to be expected—not like my godmothers to keep a secret for long.

“I’ve met two so far. Adeena and I went to Stan’s Diner today to meet Stan Kosta and his wife. I don’t think it’s them. They had reason to be angry, but it hasn’t hurt their business at all, so it’d be foolish for them to risk a murder. Plus, how would they even get the poison in our food?”

“You’re all forgetting something,” Ninang April said. “Yes, the fact that arsenic was in the dishes is very strange, but how quickly does it kill? Did anyone bother looking it up?”

Ninang June leaned back in her chair and tapped her chin. “Arsenic tends to be more slow-acting, taking anywhere from two hours to maybe four days, depending on the dosage. He vomited, which is definitely a sign of arsenic poisoning, but it’s also a sign of most other poisons. And it was less than an hour from when he started his meal till he passed.”

We waited for her to say more, but she had her thinking face on and wouldn’t talk to us until she was good and ready. Ninang April picked up the thread of the conversation again.

“June, if I understand you correctly, that means while Derek may have had arsenic in his system, it was a low enough dosage that symptoms shouldn’t have appeared yet. Which points to something else as the cause of death.”

Ninang June nodded. “It doesn’t make sense, but that’s what I think. Also, the arsenic was only in Derek’s dessert dishes? Nothing on any of the other plates?”

Marcus shook his head. “When Detective Park was out, I took a look at the report. The dishes were all mixed together from other tables, but arsenic was only found on two dishes, and one of them was the almost-full bowl of whatever Derek was eating when he passed out. The other still had banana leaf and bits of sticky rice on it, which we assumed was his other plate.”

I nodded. “He ate suman, so chances are good the other plate was his. But it doesn’t make sense. They seemed to think arsenic was in our rice, so it should’ve been in all the dishes, not just the dessert ones.”

As I said that, another thing occurred to me. “Wait, that definitely doesn’t make sense. The tainted bag held jasmine rice, but we don’t use that for the desserts. We use glutinous rice. We’re being set up!”

Ninang April nodded her approval at me. “That’s a huge discrepancy. So what do you think happened?”

I tried to think outside the box. “Someone added arsenic to the dishes and bag of rice after Derek had already eaten. Is it possible for there to be another kind of poison in his system that didn’t show up on the lab report?”

Marcus shrugged. “Dunno. My job is just supervising the people that get arrested. I don’t have anything to do with like, on-the-street stuff. This is all stuff I heard ’cause people in that building love to talk.”