Chapter 2256: New Clue
They must get to the bottom of this matter and also carry out the investigation with great fanfare. They must clear Li Gui's name! They must clear the restaurant's name!
"What about Grandfather? Does Grandfather know about this?" Qiao Mei asked nervously. "Not yet," Xia Wen said.
After all, Qiao Qiang was already so old and he had seen Li Gui's sacrifices over the years. He had long treated Li Gui as part of his family. In his heart, Li Gui and Qiao Mei were probably equally important.
"How are the four kids?" Qiao Mei asked again.
After a moment of silence, Xia Wen said, "All four kids were actually present during that time. They were helping out in the kitchen that day. Xiao Wei has been the one taking care of his younger siblings for the past few days. This kid will be able to achieve great things in the future. He is able to keep calm under difficult situations."
Qiao Mei finally felt less tense. It was not scary that something had happened. As long as her family members were still healthy and alive, everything else could be resolved.
Xia Yue could not help but yawn. It had been a long flight and the three children were a little tired from the journey. Xia Wen drove back to Qiao Mei's house first to get the children settled.
Xu Kang and Feng Hua hurriedly ran out to carry out the luggage and take care of the children. The adults went to the study to discuss the issue.
"Did you find out what went wrong?" Qiao Mei asked.
"The first thing we did was to check if the food was the problem. The shop staff had already been sent to Eldest Auntie for interrogation. They didn't do anything. The only possibility is the water source," Xia Wen said.
All the ingredients were bought directly from Qiao Mei's greenhouse. The meat was bought from a long-time business partner of Osmanthus Food Factory, so there should not be any issues. Qiao Mei trusted Xia Xiu and her methods. Moreover, Li Gui treated the shop staff very well, so it was not likely that these people had bitten the hand that fed them.
All the people who ate at the restaurant that day showed signs of poisoning. This in turn should rule out the possibility that this was an act of revenge from an enemy, but then again, it was not entirely impossible.
Qiao Mei walked into the secret room inside the study. She took out three bottles of golden medicinal wine and said to Xia Wen, "Let's make sure that the children get well first. Anything else can wait."
Xia Wen handed the medicinal wine to Da Zhuang and Xiao Zhuang and asked them to deliver the bottles to the three children's families. Xia Wen wanted to bring Qiao Mei to the restaurant to take a look at the situation there.
Although the restaurant had already been cordoned off, Xia Wen could still enter by tapping on his contacts. With the Xia family's help, the police would be able to find the real culprit much more efficiently and they would not have to work so hard.
The interior was in a mess. The tables and chairs had fallen over the place and there was also a lot of vomit on the ground. Even though it was not Xia Wen's first time here, he still felt a little nauseous.
Qiao Mei looked at everything in front of her calmly and went straight into the kitchen. The most conspicuous things in the kitchen were the three water vats.
"Auntie Li had put these here only after you left. It's faster to get water from the vats than from the taps. This is where the perpetrator put the poison," Xia Wen said.
The poison that was put into the water vats was a pesticide called dichlorvos. This pesticide was very common on the market and it was very difficult to trace the source.
Qiao Mei looked at the vines outside the window and curled her lips. These vines were not of high quality and their memory storage was very limited. They could only retain memories for around a week.
Li Gui had already been in prison for three days. Coupled with all the delays, there was probably not much left in the vines. Still, Qiao Mei decided to give it a try and started to search through the memories of the vines.
On the morning of the incident, the shop staff were at work getting the ingredients ready and Li Gui was in the kitchen to help out. Everything seemed normal and there were no suspicious people around. Qiao Mei checked on the memories for the day before and found out that someone had entered the kitchen at night and then went out with two buckets.
"Have you checked on the swill collector?" Qiao Mei asked.
"No..." Xia Wen said after being stunned for a moment.
It was no wonder that Xia Wen did not know about this. No one else in the Xia family was in the food and beverage industry. Swill was very much in demand in this era. It was a very lucrative business. One could feed it to one's livestock or sell it for a lot of money.
"I'll go and check now!" Xia Wen had only taken two steps when he returned and handed the car keys to Qiao Mei. "I'll arrange for transport. You can drive my car back."
Qiao Mei nodded. She still needed to stay around and check for more clues.
The next morning, Qiao Mei received a call from Xia Wen. The swill collector had been found, but he was not the one who collected the swill that day.
The original swill collector was an old man. He was a relative of one of the shop staff and had made use of this relationship to ask Li Gui to let him collect the swill. He had been doing well, but in the past few days, his family's cows had suddenly fallen sick and then died!
He had wanted to go and settle this score with the restaurant! Before he could do that though, the incident had happened.
"What else did he say?" Qiao Mei asked with a frown.
"A woman came to look for him and borrowed his three-wheeled vehicle. That's why he didn't go out to collect swill during this period of time," Xia Wen said.