I was leaving Whole Foods today when I noticed a woman pushing a cart with just three six packs of Whole Foods Tonic water. I have to admit the bright purple packaging is sort of festive, but I doubt that the purchase was motivated by the color. As I pondered the reasons someone might make a trip to that store just to buy Tonic Water, a number of options started to pop up in my over-active imagination.

By the time I was home, I was ready to do a google search on Tonic Water. It turns out that a few years ago, the FDA decided to take Quinine tablets off the market for treating leg cramps. People have resorted to drinking Tonic Water for leg cramps at night as a natural treatment of the condition. The FDA, however, had removed it as a treatment after it was proven that Quinine can be quite trigger a rare but extremely serious blood disorder that can be fatal.

So, there’s a possible why. I had already formulated a short story on the way home about why the woman might be purchasing 18 cans of Tonic water and nothing else. Actually, two or three different rationales brought up two or three different little plots. After reading that the quinine in Tonic Water could also cause similar effects to the tablet form, I came up with another murder mystery plot to add to my growing collection of food related murder mystery ideas. I’d like to eventually bring them all together as either a short story collection or flesh out into a series of mystery novels. Here’s another to add to the growing pile.