Free A Bird in the Hand by Dane McCaslin Page B

talents heretofore not recognized, she and my husband were acting as though they'd taken a dose of my sleeping pills.
    My sleeping pills! I slapped my hand to my forehead and dashed back into the hall, hightailing it to our bedroom and over to my nightstand. The bottle stood exactly where I had last seen it, on top of the latest issue of National Geographic , the lid still firmly in place . I'd only taken one of the thirty prescribed for me, so I would know if any were missing.
    I picked up the bottle with the edge of my shirt, careful not to touch the surface. I wasn't sure what made me do that, only that something felt off, and my mind tends to be suspicious anyway. I managed to pry open the childproof cap and dumped the medicine onto the comforter. My eyes scanned the small white pills, counting under my breath. It was as I had suspected. Twenty of the tablets were gone. I had a feeling that I knew exactly where they were. How they'd gotten there was the real mystery.
    A phone call to Poison Control and the nearby animal clinic eased my mind somewhat, although I still wasn't comfortable with the alacrity that Gregory had displayed in falling asleep once more. I let my two darlings snooze, standing by with water for Trixie and a pot of strong coffee for Gregory.
    I'd quite forgotten about dinner and had lost all semblance of appetite anyway, so I returned all the ingredients to the refrigerator. I cut myself a large slab of strudel after careful inspection of its topping and sat at the kitchen table. I felt as though my world was spinning out of its orbit once again: dead bodies, doctored pastries, unanswered questions. And a manuscript that wouldn't write itself. I sighed, careful to gather up the last of the crumbs on my plate. Well, I was only one person, and I'd just have to prioritize.
    I managed to get some food into Gregory and Trixie (scrambled eggs for him, kibbles with a dollop of yogurt on top for her) and listened, dumbfounded, as my husband described his delight in finding the pastry box sitting on the counter near the kitchen door. He had assumed that I'd left it for him, a nod to his noble character or some other such nonsense, and took it as a sign to consume the entire confection.
    Really, I thought to myself as I helped him wobble down the hall and into our bed, men can be incredibly self-serving. Trixie, bless her heart, hadn't been as affected as previously thought. She'd only had the few crumbs that had fallen onto Greg's shirtfront and not much more. Her Sleeping Beauty act had been just that—an act. She'd sleep the entire day away if we'd let her, and between the two of us, we'd fallen victim to her wishes.
    In all of this, I still hadn't been able to work out how some of my sleeping pills had ended up as streusel topping. To think that someone had slipped into our home and had been cognizant of the pills and where I kept them gave me a first-class case of the willies. To have known that Gregory, the public health nut, loved sweets was even stranger.
    I admit to having slept with one eye open that night.
    I sometimes look back at the Incident of the Poisoned Pastry, as I came to think of it, and can feel shivers creep up and down my spine for what might have happened. I think it was then, as I lay in bed that night next to Gregory and listened to his sporadic snores, that I realized I might have lost him. For that matter, I might have lost me as well, if that makes any sense. Someone had purposely targeted me and mine for what could have been a quiet death, a sleep-induced slide into the welcoming arms of oblivion (alright, I might have exaggerated a tad, but that was exactly how I felt).
    And that someone apparently thought we had either seen or knew something that was important. Or, at the very least, something incriminating. I wasn't certain how the body in the park, the death of my neighbor, Tally Greenberg, and now this close brush with death were connected—or even if they were related