by Judith Mehl
“I remember when you showed me this the other day,” Agatha said. She faced Kat, “So we know this is an insecure, dangerous person who felt betrayed by Margaret. She could have been killed for revenge.”
“Why would someone want revenge on Margaret? I’ve seldom met such a quiet, loving person.”
Agatha agreed, then realized, “The same person must know Rosalin and me and hate us, also. That’s even more difficult to comprehend. Other than Rosalin’s work with the herb shop and her bookkeeping at the farm, there was no connection to Margaret and me.”
Her facial muscles contorted in fear.
“I’m so sorry, Agatha. You must be frightened, and feeling pretty much alone here. I wish I could help more.”
Agatha appeared to rally. “That darling Lewis is not neglecting me. Don’t worry.”
Kat turned away and smiled at the thought of ‘darling Lewis.’ She stared out the window. Did a tie to the herb shop make any sense? Rosalin, though a wonderful person, wasn’t a very strong link. After all, she was just an employee, not the brains behind the scenes.
To include Agatha in her thoughts, she said, “I wonder if the police have found a connection, or have an idea why Rosalin was killed. And if it had to do with the herb shop, wouldn’t you have been the prime target after Margaret and killed before an attempt was made on Rosalin?”
Kat winced at her own lack of subtlety. Maybe she should take a pain pill, after all. She swallowed one while Agatha remained stalwart and turned to the next note for more clues.
It read:
Rosalin, you inserted yourself and gained what was mine. Now it is time to leave before the summer heat wilts your resolve. Quick. Sun can be deadly.
Neither of them understood what Rosalin had gained.
“What a puzzle,” Kat said.
Detective Hill had shared the note with Kat to glean her perspective on the handwriting. It hadn’t revealed much. It obviously was the same person who wrote Margaret’s and Agatha’s notes. She’d told the detective that the lack of consistency did provide a shadowing image. The inconsistent shapes blocked some conclusions. That, in itself, allowed them to make some. When there are too many shapes, it puts up warnings: a potential sign of dangerous antisocial behavior. It helped the police begin to form a picture of the person they were dealing with, but not enough to provide direction where to look for such a person.
Agatha packed up the quilting in time for lunch and shook her head in despair.
“I’m afraid we’re getting no where. And I can’t stay here forever.”
Chapter 19
The upper zone of a lower-case letter that predominates in height in comparison to the other two zones suggests a sense of curiosity, of exploring, a leaning toward expansion of horizons.
“I think even his eyeballs were tattooed.”
The sisters blindsided Kat with their excited description of the man they saw lurking by the roadside that afternoon. They took turns, rushing to complete each others sentences.
“We went to visit our old friend Myrtle,” Delia added.
“Down the road from Margaret’s herb farm,” Lizzie continued.
Nick had dropped Kat at the sisters’ house to discuss the balance of the potentially lethal flowers. He was in a rush to head back to the office in their temporary suite at the hotel. She understood. She knew he needed time to initialize the final phase of pulling in the crooked developer. Nick settled Kat on their sofa, obviously only too happy to leave her to the sisters’ attention. He knew the sisters well. Kat watched him walk out without even blinking at the ‘man with the tattoos’ line.
“Bye, sweetheart.”
Kat fluttered her hand weakly, already turning to the sisters, hoping they’d pinpointed a lethal poison or purpose in all the bouquets. She really wanted to forge ahead on this problem. Inactivity for so many days created a growing freneticism in Agatha yesterday as the day wore on. She was antsy and was ready to bolt. They were running out of time. She wouldn’t stay in hiding forever.
Today, Kat nodded at the women and smiled brightly, seeing their enthusiasm. This could be it. They found something.
But Lizzie and Delia were engrossed in an explicit tale of the man they were sure had delivered the death blow to Margaret, the man who murdered Rosalin, and haunted Agatha.
“His body was covered with tattoos, violent in intensity. They ran up his neck over his cheek.”
“Lizzie, what on earth do you mean? How would you know if his body was covered by tattoos?”
“Keep your bonnet on, Delia. I didn’t actually see his whole body. No reason to raise your temperature.”
“Don’t forget the ponytail.”
“Right, Delia. That’s easy. It was black.”
Kat intervened, “Lizzie, can you describe the tattoos?”
She pursed her lips in thought. Delia recognized the signs and kept quiet, though Kat could tell she did so reluctantly. Kat snuck in a scratch of her bandaged ankle and waited.
“He wore one of them muscle shirts or what have you. You know, the kind where half the chest and the whole arm shows? Those tattoos wrapped around every inch in sight, maybe designed to emphasize the muscles. The wildly exuberant flowers entwined around him is what caught my eye . . .”
Delia snickered. “Yeah sure, Lizzie. You had hopes up for another stud muffin.”
“The flowers ran counterpoint to the violent nature of the man, a discordance of mirth and menace,” Lizzie made the serious observation with thought, her brows puckered.
Kat moved to the edge of her seat. “Where did you see this guy?”
Lizzie pushed Kat’s leg back on the cushion and tsk-tsked her for forgetting to keep it elevated.
Meanwhile, Delia supplied an exact location, explaining that it was of interest because it was on the side road that led to the farmhouse. “You know, that dirt road?”
Lizzie interrupted, giving the name as Old Line Road.
She continued, “Like I said, we were visiting old lady Myrtle. She’s so lonely since her husband died.”
Kat studied the sisters, both in their early eighties, and ventured, “Just how old is Myrtle?”
Delia smirked. “Why she turned ninety-three last month, but she’s old, you know, in her head.”
Lizzie agreed, and explained that her body hadn’t fared very well either, so they went to visit whenever they could.
“Myrtle misses her late husband and lives alone. We can’t imagine having nothing to do all day.”
Kat knew they were so involved themselves that the concept was alien. She moved the conversation back to the tattooed man, wondering if there was any relevance to this story. “So what was this man doing that you noticed him?”
“He leaned against his car parked off the side of the road. At first I thought he was smoking, but he had a long-stemmed weed in his mouth, instead. He acted like we weren’t even driving by.”
Lizzie agreed with Delia for once saying, “That’s what happens when you get old. Nobody notices you.”
Kat feared for their safety. “You didn’t do anything suspicious to draw his attention?” When they reassured her she rose and limped to the table with the flowers. “If he was staking out the farmhouse the last thing we want is for you to be remembered.”
She vowed to check out the situation as soon as possible. First she needed to review the last of the flower information. The sisters reverted to a serious discussion of their findings, returning first to additional information acquired on the foxglove.
“The leaves contain digitalin, digitoxin, and digitonin. Severe poisoning comes from eating the leaves, either dried or fresh—they do not lose their toxicity when cooked. We knew that part,” Delia explained.
She added, “The symptoms mimic those of a strong reaction to medicine for congenital heart failure. If she somehow ingested it, she probably never knew what happened.”
Lizzie looked in agony over their friend Margaret suffering from a massive headache, even
tually ending in ventricular fibrillation. She explained to Kat. “It increases the heart’s contractions and stimulates the central nervous system. It takes just twenty to thirty minutes to cause symptoms.”
Her face contorted. “It wouldn’t take long to die if not treated for complications.”
They had no way of knowing why she would have swallowed it. She hoped the police had fared better on that front.
Delia moved on to another section of the table—the Rosalin section. They had yet to determine how any of the flowers they’d discussed earlier could hold any more meaning. Worse, all three were stumped by the bouquet delivered to Agatha. The flowers within were all poisonous to some extent, except the peonies. Kat again studied the flowers.
The bouquet included Queen Anne’s Lace with its umbels of white flowers, some of the most poisonous plants found in its family. Kat had noticed the poison hemlock with its obvious hollow green stem spotted with purple, white flowers when she studied the bouquet at Agatha’s house.
“Wasn’t that the notorious plant used in Greece to execute Socrates?” she asked.
“Sure was, though nothing points to it as the killer here. Both of those plants are common throughout Pennsylvania and similar in appearance,” Lizzie said.
They’d dismissed it earlier, then moved on to the innocent looking nutmeg geranium, the Pelargonium fragrans, as Delia proudly said, and extolled its virtues as an aromatic herb with a spicy scent and a rub for aching feet. “Its meaning carries the warning of an expected meeting, like maybe she should have known he would come for her once Margaret was dead?”
As Kat and Lizzie frowned, she nodded. “I know, it’s reading a lot into a simple flower, but I don’t know why else it would be included.”
Kat eased her bag up to the table and pulled out the now crumpled copy of the third note. The copy lurked in the bottom of Kat’s purse since the first day she became involved. It read:
Agatha, you sat on the sidelines, but erred even then. Where was your support for one in need? Now you’re the last of three; is the third time the charm? Alone, to whom will you turn? May these flowers lead the way. Soon.
Once they’d found Margaret’s note, and then the police found Rosalin’s, Kat waited for inspiration and connections to become obvious. So far, nothing came to mind.
They all reviewed the note again, hoping to see new meaning when side by side with the flower information. They each read it. Kat, slow and aloud; Delia silently; and Lizzie, almost reverentially.
“The killer of Margaret and Rosalin undoubtedly wrote all three notes. If Margaret died of an overdose of digoxin, there was a tie between the first bouquet and note.” Kat said. “Rosalin more than likely died from a push down the stairs. Do you see anything from the flowers to foreshadow that?”
Each sister did a simple, solemn shake of the head.
Agatha’s note shouted danger in its simplicity. Did it portend pain, or death, or was it a useless threat? Kat hoped to find which before the killer could find their friend and clarify the meaning with an end to her life.
Kat took her friends’ notations on the flowers and offered to deliver them to Chief Burrows, who still held the original bouquet. A glance at both sisters’ writings proved valuable to her, also. Activity urged by their curiosity probably prolonged their life. Their handwriting reflected that.
First she wanted to make a copy of their notes to share with Agatha. Then she’d devise a way to sneak in to see the woman, who had called last night fraught with frustration and boredom. Her reprieve working with Kat the day before had already worn off. She’d taken to mothering Nick’s team, but Kat knew Nick needed to concentrate on completing his job without the numerous side ventures involved in Kat’s or Agatha’s problems.
One of Kat’s most reliable student workers, Cheri, had agreed to ferry her around for a few days until she felt comfortable driving. When she arrived at the sisters’ house, she chatted for a bit, discussing the happenings at work. Cheri handed her the cane that she attempted to leave behind. The young girl just smiled and settled it firmly in Kat’s hand.
“I know. You’re right. I can’t do without it, yet. I just hate the look.”
As they left the Victorian home, Kat’s mind returned to the Tattoo Man, as they’d begun to call him. Her thoughts jostled in her head, fighting for top standing with her worries for Agatha. She wondered if they should drive to the herb farm and warn the workers to be on the lookout for the Tattoo Man. On the other hand, those same down-to-earth farm people still held space on her suspect list.
She followed that thought with a further comment. “I just can’t believe any of those down home, earth loving workers and friends of Margaret and Agatha could be killers,” she told Cheri.
“If they’re not, I should warn the farm crew.” She pondered calling Nick and asking his advice. She loved Nick for so many reasons. His sensitivity, his caring nature, and his quest to save the world from itself no matter what the danger topped an endless list. He also knew how to deal with those who sliced that world with no compunction and took what they wanted. Kat loved and admired him more than anyone else because of his ability to live in that world without being controlled by it. It wasn’t the reason she married him, but it’s why she called him now.
She suggested Cheri pull off to the side of the road so Kat could make the call and determine where they were headed. She attempted to organize her chaotic thoughts as her mind raced in fear for the employees at the farm. Why would Tattoo Man be staking out the place?
Chapter 20
Distorted ‘e’s imply a skewed perception of other’s rights and in this twisted thinking the person may consider his own needs first. Distorted m's and n's correspond to distorted thoughts and odd or twisted thinking.
“Jones’ farmhouse is on fire. We’re out. He’s calling the fire department.”
Lance’s voice bounced around as he ran toward the back road while reporting in to Nick.
“You okay, Lance? Can’t hear your voice over your breathing.”
“Chasing arsonist. Send help.” In a deep breath he finished. “Will call.”
Lance had seen a truck on the road minutes before. He caught a glimpse of a man, bare arms pumping, head for the truck which he could see now parked around a curve from the farmhouse. Tucked into the tree line, smart move. If I hadn’t been automatically checking out the property I never would have seen it from the farmhouse, or him. He has to be the arsonist. As the man jumped in the truck, Lance raced to his sports car to pursue him. That ancient pickup truck wasn’t a match for his turbocharged Evolution.
Within minutes the suspect’s sputtering vehicle lurched off the gravel road and crashed into a tree. He’d braked, just not in time. Lance, Farmer Jones supposed prodigal son, tracked him with ease. The man’s muscles bunched and undulated as he ran, but slowed him down. Lance tackled him from behind. He had him shackled before the tattooed fist could alter his face.
The team’s back-up crew of Lewis and Tommy arrived within minutes.
“No ID in truck. No wallet,” they confirmed.
“You got a name?” Tommy asked as he prodded him into the backup car.
“Nope.”
Tommy grabbed the keys from the truck and threw them to Lewis. “Park this at the office till we can search it.”
A muscled leg swung out and cracked into Lewis’s thigh. “Better not get a scratch on my truck or you’ll hear from me.”
Lewis eyed the beat-up old truck and scoffed. Tommy shoved the man into the car.
Lance took a minute to think things through before proceeding. Jones had been threatened before. Now it appeared someone risked burning him out to get him to sell the property. If this guy did it he should be turned in to the fire department. No one saw him set the fire, though. “I checked that Farmer Jones is safe, and the fire department had already controlled the fire,” he told Lewis.
Fearing the firemen would see what was left of the old newspapers scattered on the ba
ck porch, and the logs left over from last winter, he texted Jones. “Make sure they call in the State Police Fire Marshall or an arson inspector. We don’t want them to just assume the paper combusted.” Jones came right back. “They already have.”
Lance said they were taking the suspect back to Nick and they would keep him for police or fire investigators in case they wanted him. First, we’ll find out who set him up for this. May be our lucky day if it links to our case.
Lance left to catch up with the others. The Petingill and Donnelly Security Agency’s biggest concern was to find out if this guy set the fire, and especially why he set the fire, If it wasn’t for his own purposes, who hired him? Was this their first solid lead?
Nick had let his team carry the job long enough. It was time to crank up the sting a notch. Lewis Pinkney, aka Art Doufle, held off the developers through the weekend by saying that Nick was busy. If the developers were casing the place, Nick hoped they would assume he was tied up with his ‘mistress.’ Nick managed to disappear the following week supposedly to round up some money for this new investment. He and the team were stalling, looking for certain proof of a scam before moving forward. In between he juggled backing Kat at the herb shop, nearly getting arrested for breaking in, delivering Agatha to the safe house of the second hotel room, and finding teenage neckers in the old farmhouse. Now it was time to place the stake on the developers’ scam and see what happened.
He’d just arrived at the hotel suite and received a report from his team before Kat’s call came in simultaneously with Lance racing in the door. Nick answered the call immediately and soothed her from her alarmed state into a slower explanation.
Nick knew his wife used the number only for emergencies, so stalled the report while he figured out what she was saying. He had a habit of repeating her words to clarify and did it now as a gentling tactic.