Dipped to Death

by Kelly Lane

  “We’re so happy to see y’all!” gushed Daphne, giving me an air-kiss. “Aren’t we, ladies? Oh, and Emmett is happy to see y’all, too, aren’t you, Emmett?” She tittered as she fwapped close friend Emmett on the forearm with her hand.

  “Sure am,” said Emmett. He tipped his cap.

  “Girls,” said Daphne, addressing me and Pep, “we’ve got your rakes and tarps all set up for y’all over there. Just rake up everything you see. What you can’t rake just set on the tarps. Then wrap up the tarps and haul the waste over there, to the pickup. The boys will drive it all away.”

  “If y’all ask me, it sounds like prison work,” huffed Pep. “Sure y’all don’t have pretty orange jumpsuits for us to wear?”

  Daphne tittered. “Oh, Pepper-Leigh, I just a-dorwh your sense of humor!”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Although well-intentioned, the cleanup was all a bit ironic, because it had originally been scheduled to take place two weeks earlier, so that the village would be picture-perfect for the Peeps Week parade. Unfortunately, severe storms made postponing the cleanup a necessity, and the garden club folks weren’t able to make it happen before the Sunday after the parade.

  In the end, it all worked out, because there was an extraordinary amount of trash that had accumulated during parade day. The cleanup couldn’t have come at a better time.

  Most of the volunteers gathered in the boulevard’s parklike center median. Some mowed grass, others trimmed flower gardens, while others pulled weeds or picked up trash. Still others wandered up and down the boulevard, emptying trash cans, sweeping the sidewalks, and watering, trimming, and repotting plants in the many planters and hanging pots up and down the street.

  Looking around, it was obvious, as in most community organizations, that there was a clear hierarchy to the group. Longtime garden club leader Bubbles Bolender, who, by the way, was a dead ringer for Marilyn Monroe, sat in a high director’s chair under the biggest live oak tree in town, smack-dab in the boulevard’s median center. With an iced tea in one hand and a bullhorn in the other, Bubbles ordered everyone else around. And although using a bullhorn may sound a little over-the-top, it was an absolute necessity for Bubbles, because she not only looked like Marilyn Monroe, but with a soft, airy voice, she sounded like the famous siren as well. Without the horn, no one would have heard her instructions that afternoon. Not that anyone was really listening . . .

  As non–club members and reluctant “volunteers,” according to the hierarchy, Pep and I were ranked lowest of the garden club caste, hence our job reflected our station. For example, next down from Bubbles and her bullhorn were the social elite of Abundance, commonly referred to as the B6 group. The group included Cat Blankenblatt, tall and svelte with short, dark hair and exotic features that heralded her Cherokee heritage. It was Cat’s job to pass out name tags, while her handsome lawyer husband, Ty, jotted the names of everyone who showed up.

  How hard is that?

  And peanut money heiress Asta Bodean trotted about in her signature white pants and caftan, serving everyone iced sweet tea in red plastic cups.

  Again, how hard is that?

  And if you wanted something with a little more punch than sweet tea, blonde, bug-eyed plastic surgery junkie and winery owner Bunny Bixby had a table setup offering wine . . . to purchase, of course. All proceeds to benefit the garden club. Timber heiress Bernice Burnside, who looked like a female Raymond Burr, ambled around giving photo ops and news interviews while occasionally stabbing at trash with a long spear, while her nephew Tommy, who ran the tee shirt place in town, walked alongside her, holding the trash bag.

  Again, was that hard work?

  You get the idea.

  And it was no surprise to see redheaded gossipmonger Beula Beauregard huddled near a dogwood tree, pointing me out to her friends, as she, no doubt, filled them in on all the juicy details concerning what she knew about the latest man to turn up dead at Knox Plantation.

  And to be fair, there were folks working quite hard. A number of new club members were on their hands and knees, happy, it seemed, to weed and plant. And there were people marching around blasting noisy weed choppers, grass trimmers, leaf blowers, and pushing mowing machines. Most of them were men, obviously thrilled to get out and play with their deafening equipment.

  Of course, it was often the male club members or the husbands who handled the heaviest equipment. Except Debi Dicer. Apparently, she was queen of the chain saw.

  “How appropriate,” Pep laughed when she saw Debi arriving about an hour or so late, with her precious tool in hand. “A chain saw. The perfect device to cut folks down. Just what the she-devil needs!”

  “She doesn’t need a tool, Pep. She can slice and dice quite well on her own,” I said.

  “Well, I think it suits her.”

  “I don’t disagree. Just stay out of her way.”

  We giggled as we raked up a massive pile of leaves and twigs probably left from fall the year before. That’s because at the bottom of the Abundance social caste, we were the rakers and pilers, raking and picking up the debris that everyone else left behind—leaves, sticks, rocks, branches, dead shrubs, trash, and some darned heavy tree limbs. In fact, some of the tree limbs were so big and heavy that we should’ve had someone cut them up for us. But that someone would’ve been Debi, so we decided to drag the heavy stuff ourselves.

  “I need a break,” said Pep, after several hours. She plopped down under the shade of an old oak tree. An abandoned ladder leaned on the back side of the tree trunk.

  “Sounds good to me,” I said, dropping down next to Pep. The shade under the tree felt good. At least for a moment, anyway.

  An older man operating a weed whacking machine walked past, spinning dirt and debris all around us. We were too tired to move. The debris stuck to our sweaty skin.

  “Do ya think Asta Bodean will see us way over here and bring us some tea?” shouted Pep over the machine racket.

  “Doubt it,” I yelled back.

  Pep cupped her hands. “I meant to ask you, how’d it go this morning with Detective Gibbit?”

  “As well as it could’ve, I guess.” The weed machine man moved away. I lowered my voice. “I mean, I’m not in jail. Not yet, anyway.”

  “So somebody really killed Dex Codman? Hard to believe another murder happened at our place.”

  “You’re telling me. Still, I did some research this morning. Found out some stuff. I just can’t put all the pieces together.”

  “What do you mean? Do you think you know who killed him?”

  I waited to answer while a noisy lawn mower grumbled past us.

  “Well, certainly, it has to be one of the people from Perennial Paper, right? I mean, who else would it be? It wasn’t me. It wasn’t you. Or Daphne or Daddy. Or Precious . . .”

  “I get it. I get it. So, what are you thinking?”

  “Well, I found out some stuff on the Internet this morning that I didn’t know before. Like, the woman Coop married when I knew him—her name was Heather Tarbox—apparently divorced Coop to run off and marry Dex a few years ago! I found a wedding announcement in the Boston Globe. I also found a blog written by someone who said Heather cleaned Coop out, financially. Also, I saw a bunch of society page stuff about Dex and his wife, Heather Tarbox Codman.”

  “No kidding.”

  “And judging from a conversation I heard between Wiggy, Coop, and Spencer, Coop wasn’t too forgiving about losing his wife to Dex.”

  “Can you blame the guy? One of his best friends obviously stole his wife . . .”

  “Right. But then, apparently, Heather dumped Dex, too!”

  “So, you mean he wasn’t married when he died?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did Dex have any kids?”

  “Not that I can find.”

  “So, why did Heather dump him? Oh, I kn
ow . . . the second marriage never lasts.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true. Just ask anyone at the Roadhouse.”

  “Omigosh, Pep. That’s ridiculous.”

  Pep shrugged. “So, it’s like, this Heather babe cleaned out the first guy—”

  “Coop.”

  “Then she cleaned out the second guy, our dead guy—”

  “Dex.”

  “And she moved on, rich and free.”

  “Exactly. She married a retired bank executive and they moved to Brazil.”

  “So, what do you think . . . that the first husband, Coop, had it in for Dex?”

  “Could be.”

  “Wow.”

  “And apparently, Heather cleaned out Dex, just like she’d done to Coop. Which is really interesting, because I heard Coop make some comment yesterday about how Spencer would never see the ‘fifty grand’ he’d loaned to Dex.”

  “That’s a ton of dough to lose . . .”

  “Sure is.”

  “So, the Spencer guy could’ve killed Dex because he didn’t repay a loan?”

  “Could be. But there’s more. Dex’s longtime assistant, Claudia, had a relationship with Dex after I was out of the picture. I heard the men mention that Dex took her skiing in Switzerland. But afterward, something happened. Like, maybe, he dumped her.”

  “And you think she might’ve killed him . . . because after they arrived here, he had the hots for you and she was jealous? I mean, he did grab your boob . . .”

  “Please. Don’t remind me. Maybe. She’s definitely not completely stable, if you ask me. Still, it doesn’t quite fit, because according to everyone else, Dex was paying her way too much for what she did for him at work. And her job with him was very secure. Now that he’s dead, she’s whining about how she’ll never find another good-paying job . . .”

  “So, in other words, why would she kill her cash cow?”

  “Exactly. But then again, it doesn’t seem like their personal relationship had been too solid.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Joy Birdsong coming across the grass.

  “And what about the other guy . . .”

  Joy looked to be finished for the day.

  “Eva, are you listening?”

  “What?”

  “I said, what about the other guy? The big guy with the beard? What’s his name, again . . . Uncle Wiggly?” Pep giggled.

  “Wiggy. I’m not sure. However, listening to him, he doesn’t seem at all upset that Dex is gone. In fact, he seems to think Dex was a liability . . . Dex’s death seems to have had some sort of unburdening effect on Wiggy. And this is the part that I can’t figure out. There’s an important reason they’re in town . . . except it is not vacationing or bird-watching, like they say. It’s something to do with land—”

  Just then, there was a crack above us, and a huge tree branch came crashing down, landing with an earth-shattering WHUMP on the ground, just inches away from me.

  “Criminy, Eva! You could’ve been killed!” cried Pep, jumping up.

  I took a deep breath. Then I heard a voice, above us. A voice I knew all too well.

  “Oh gee, did that big ol’ limb almost crush y’all? I’m so sorry!”

  Overhead, Debi Dicer peeped her head around the oak tree and looked down at us. She was standing atop the ladder we’d seen earlier, leaning against the other side of the massive live oak.

  “I gotta give the bitch credit,” said Pep, looking up. “She’s catty alright.”

  Debi hopped off the ladder and seated herself on a massive branch above us. With her legs swinging to and fro, she brushed the tree detritus from her neon, shorty-short Lilly Pulitzer skort.

  Of course, the tree crap fell right onto our heads.

  “My little ol’ chain saw needed sharpening, so I took a break earlier,” said Debi, smiling from the big limb above us. “Then when I got back from my break, I thought I’d just climb up here and snake myself around the tree to test the branch I’d worked on earlier . . . you know, just to see whether or not I really needed to haul my heavy ol’ chain saw back up here again—it’s just so dangerous, working with a chain saw, don’t y’all know it? And after all, I’d nearly cut clean through the limb before my saw stopped working earlier. Plus, I saw y’all talking down there and I hated to disturb y’all.”

  Pep snorted. “‘Snake’ says it all for me . . .” She flicked tree bark from her hair.

  “And do y’all know what?” asked Debi, still talking. “Turns out I didn’t need to use the chain saw anymore, after all! Except, bless your little hearts, I forgot to call out to let y’all know I was about to push on the limb that was above your pea-pickin’ little heads. I’m so glad y’all are okay.”

  Debi looked down at us, smirking. Like the proverbial cat that swallowed the canary.

  CHAPTER 41

  I didn’t even care. It was almost as if Debi were some sort of cartoon character, always dropping anvils out of the sky, in hopes of landing one on me.

  Really, she didn’t faze me one bit anymore.

  “Better luck next time, Debi,” I said, pulling myself up from the ground. “I don’t have time for you or your desperate, jealous antics today.”

  Really, my mind was so preoccupied trying to sort out all the details concerning Dex’s murder, that when I’d seen Joy Birdsong crossing the grass a few moments earlier, all I could think was that I just needed to get to her.

  “Pep, I’ll be back,” I whispered. “Debi is all yours.”

  I picked myself up, stepped over Debi’s near-miss giant limb, and jogged away, leaving Debi high up in the tree overhead.

  Pep will know exactly what to do with Debi, I thought.

  “Hey! Where are y’all going, sweetness?” Debi shouted as I took off after Joy. Apparently, it wasn’t enough for her to try to crush me with a humongous tree limb. She needed a bit of verbal sparring, as well.

  She’d have to wait on that. Besides, I knew she’d have her hands full with Pep.

  “Joy!” I shouted to the botanicals shop owner. “Joy Birdsong! Hello!”

  I ran up to Joy and touched her lightly on the shoulder just as she reached out to her car, which was parked in the boulevard. It was a refurbished green Volkswagen Beetle that looked to be vintage seventies.

  “Well, Eva Knox! Hello, hon. I see your big sissy ‘volunteered’ you to help out today! I hope you’re enjoying the afternoon. It’s always so refreshing to be outside in the clean air.”

  Like the day before, she wore a lightweight caftan over leggings. Only this time the caftan was coral colored and the leggings were green. And she wore a pair of big black rubber boots. She carried a worn pair of garden gloves in one hand.

  “It’s been an interesting afternoon, for sure!” I said. “And I’m sorry that I didn’t see you earlier, Joy. I see you’re on your way home. Please, do you have a moment? I have some questions, and I think you’re just the person to ask.”

  “Sure, hon. Ask away.” Joy motioned for me to join her on a nearby park bench. “Let’s sit down over here in the shade, shall we?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Do tell, what are your questions about?”

  “Belladonna.”

  “The plant?”

  “Yes. What can you tell me about it?”

  “Well, now, let’s see. It is a perennial herb, part of the nightshade family, native to wooded areas of Europe, North Africa, and parts of Asia—”

  “But it’s available here in the United States, right?”

  “Oh yes. The scientific name for the plant is Atropa belladonna. It’s also known as nightshade, deadly nightshade, black nightshade, sleeping nightshade, Barbados lily . . .” Joy turned her eyes skyward and looked thoughtful as she called out the long list of names for the plant. “. . . banewort, devil’s cherri
es, devil’s herb, dwale, naked lady lily, naughty man’s cherries, witches’ berry.” She tittered. “Oh my! The list just goes on and on. There are a whole bunch of wonderfully descriptive names for it. Really, the plant is not too uncommon these days. It’s sometimes planted as a flowering perennial in gardens, although it is often considered more of a biennial. Did you know that other members of the nightshade family include the potato, the tomato, and the eggplant?”

  “So it could be growing here, in Abundance?”

  “I know it is. In fact, I believe your sister has some at all y’all’s plantation. I sold her some seeds a while back. I usually have some in the shop. Although, it is difficult to grow from seed. Oh dear, wait a moment . . . perhaps, I’m mistaken. Perhaps that was Bubbles Bolender . . . or Pickles Kibler . . . who has the belladonna. I’m sorry, I don’t remember, really. Maybe it was Beula Beauregard?”

  “That’s okay. Can you tell me what it looks like?”

  “Well, it’s not terribly distinctive, I’m afraid. Around these parts, the bushy plants are usually about three to five feet tall, with dull green ovate leaves that are about eight inches long. Although, it does have pretty, bell-shaped, reddish bluish or purple flowers during summer. And, the flowers are followed by dark purplish or black berries about the size of cherries. It’s still summer around here, so you may find some plants that continue blooming. Or, they may already be sowing berries. I’m not sure.”

  “Is it used for anything other than decoration?”

  “Oh, goodness, yes! It’s an ancient herb that’s now cultivated for its medicinal alkaloids, mostly scopolamine and atropine, which are used in narcotics, diuretics, sedatives, antispasmodics, and the like. You can purchase it in pellet or tablet forms, as well as seeds, roots, or foliage to make your own liquid solutions, suspensions, powders, decoctions, tinctures, infusions, plasters, pills, or suppositories. Belladonna can be used alone and in combination with other herbs and medications. Although, some synthetics have been developed in order to bypass the terrible, undesirable side effects of the alkaloids.”

  “I’m sorry. All that means?”