Poisoned Petals

by Joyce; Jim Lavene

  “Well not anywhere,” he mimicked her. “But you could start by looking places where Reverend Appleby spent time prior to his death. The Community Garden, perhaps. Or wherever he was staying at the time.”

  “Yes, but how will that prove anything? Even if we find the base of the plant in the garden, we still won’t know who picked it.”

  “That is where Ms. Sato comes in. When you find the plant, there may be footprints around it or fingerprints on the base of the plant. You do your part of the job, and we’ll do ours. I’ll arrange a police escort to take you around tomorrow. Take Ms. Sato with you.”

  “Is this what I can expect if I contract to be a forensic botanist?”

  “This and all the coffee you can drink. Maybe even a key to the lab if you play your cards right” He winked at her.

  Fortunately, he turned away before she could laugh at his suggestive tone. Knowing from previous encounters with him that she and Mai were dismissed, Peggy left the same way she’d come in. “He’s such a people person.”

  Mai laughed. “I think he’s spent too long behind that microscope. He’s kind of forgotten what people are.”

  “And you’re happy working for him?” Peggy asked her as they got back in the car marked Medical Examiner’s Office on the side.

  “Only until I take his place,” Mai said. “He can’t live forever.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, Peggy drove to the police lab instead of going to the Potting Shed. She’d called Selena to let her know she wouldn’t be in that day. The sergeant at the front desk issued her a name tag after checking her ID. Mai met her at the door and gave her a small case marked ME’s Office. “You’ll need it. It has gloves and plastic sample cases. All the things a contract forensic botanist needs.”

  “Great.” Peggy played with her new name tag, thinking how life could take the oddest turns. John would be amazed to see her here.

  Mai shrugged. “All in a day’s work.”

  “Good morning,” Ramsey greeted them. “I called for your ride. I hope nothing has been disturbed since we had to wait until today to get started.”

  The one thing Peggy wasn’t sure of was working with this man. He was annoying on his good days. She wasn’t used to being bullied and made to feel guilty about her work. She didn’t need him to remind her she was a professional.

  After going to Mai’s office to get her gear together, they walked out of the building into the sunshine. Peggy breathed in the powerful scent of wisteria. It was attached to a tall pine tree that grew behind the police station.

  “Smells beautiful,” Mai enthused.

  “Yes,” Peggy agreed. “But it’s deadly, too. At least to that poor tree it’s smothering.”

  “Why can’t something just be pretty and smell good? Why does life have to be so complicated?”

  “Some things aren’t complicated. Roses. Sweet William. Mint. They’re pretty, smell good, and they’re harmless.”

  “Ladies,” a familiar voice called them from the window of a nearby police cruiser. “I understand you need an escort.”

  “Oh no!” Mai whispered when she saw it was Paul. “I suppose Dr. Ramsey thinks this is funny.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know,” Peggy suggested.

  “Yeah, right. Like everyone doesn’t know we dated.”

  “Hello, Paul,” Peggy finally greeted her son in a normal tone. “I think we’re on our way to the Community Garden first.”

  “So I heard. Climb in and we’ll head over there.”

  Mai hurried toward the backseat, shoving her kit in with a little too much force before she climbed in after it and slammed the door.

  Peggy sat in the front seat and smiled at her son. This is going to be fun. If Paul tried any harder not to look at Mai, he was going to have whiplash, she mused. “Do you know where they found Luther?”

  “I don’t think we’ll have any trouble locating the spot.” Paul pulled the car out of the parking lot.

  “I have the crime-scene photos,” Mai interrupted. “We should be able to use them to locate the spot, even if it’s been disturbed.”

  Paul looked at the rearview mirror. “Hello, Mai. I didn’t see you back there.”

  “Funny.” She uttered the word then looked out the side window.

  Peggy shifted in her seat. “I guess this is my first forensic botanist case.”

  Paul smiled into the mirror, not hearing his mother. “It was always easy for you to look the other way, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m not sure if I should be happy or not.” Peggy ignored him. “I suppose if I help Darmus, it will be worthwhile.”

  “It was always easier to look the other way than to look at you!” Mai responded to his jibe.

  “That wasn’t always what you said—”

  “I wasn’t always this smart!”

  Peggy put up her hands. “Children! And I mean that in the most adolescent way! If you’ll recall, this is what you were doing before you got together. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up in each other’s arms again.”

  “I don’t think so,” Paul argued.

  “I won’t make that mistake again!” Mai agreed.

  “Then let’s talk about the case and pretend you weren’t involved a few months ago,” Peggy suggested.

  “Mom!” Paul was outraged.

  “Was I supposed to think you were just good friends?”

  “Peggy!” Mai added her complaint. “Could we talk about something else?”

  “Yes.” Peggy smiled at both of them, thinking what a shame it was they weren’t still together. Mai was certainly her best bet for grandchildren. “Let’s talk about the case, shall we?”

  It wasn’t hard to identify the crime scene in the Community Garden. The area was roped off and didn’t seem to have been disturbed since they found Luther there. But a thousand footsteps had crushed everything living around the spot. Most of the tender young grass was dead. Tree limbs from a few dogwoods were broken and some were left hanging. Even a few large rocks had been pushed aside and rolled over.

  “I don’t see how you’re going to find any plant parts here.” Paul crouched down and looked at the site.

  “We don’t need them to be whole.” Peggy crossed the police tape. “Let’s just see what’s out here.”

  She took samples of everything living she could find, letting Mai bag the items as she told her what they were. They had a hundred bags of living matter when she finished, but there was no sign of a hyacinth. “I don’t know where else to look.”

  Paul shrugged. “What about Darmus’s house? The house was burned, but the yard is still there. He had all kinds of plants.”

  She glared at him. “I’m not here to prove he killed Luther.”

  “Then prove he didn’t.”

  They got back into the car and drove out toward UNCC. Traffic was heavier now as workers started pouring into the uptown area of Charlotte. Fortunately, they were heading away from the city.

  Darmus’s house was covered by a blue tarp to keep rain from making the damage even worse. It was hard for Peggy to look at it. It made her remember how she risked her life rushing in to save a man—a man who was already dead. What were you thinking? she wanted to ask Darmus. How could you do something so stupid?

  “This may be even worse than the Community Garden,” Mai said as they got out of the car. “The firemen weren’t looking to avoid stepping on things.”

  Mai was right. The yard had been trampled under the weight of firemen’s boots and pulled apart by long, heavy hoses. Whole rosebushes were uprooted. Daylilies, just showing their green leaves, were scattered from one end of the yard to another. Hundreds of yards of grass were gone. Daffodils were decapitated, their bases still standing proudly in the sun like lonely sentinels, witnesses to the terrible devastation.

  Ignoring the chaos and destruction wasn’t easy, but Peggy put her mind to the task and searched through the yard, bagging hundreds of other botanicals. But there were no purple hyacinths. She was relieved and puzzle
d. Hyacinthus orientalis didn’t grow wild.

  But the flower could have been snatched up from anywhere: a garden shop, grocery store, hardware store. Everyone sold them this time of year. It would be almost impossible to locate one flower base in the city. And then timing would have been critical for the killer. Since the scent would wear off, the hyacinth would have had to have been sprayed moments before Luther smelled it to have that kind of deadly effect.

  “Anything here?” Paul asked.

  “Nothing obvious,” Peggy said. “I’m ready to go back to the lab.”

  “WE’VE HAD ANOTHER PIECE of evidence come in,” Ramsey told Mai and Peggy when they got back. “We think it may be the base of the poisoned flower.”

  “Where did it come from?” Peggy put down her kit and looked at the new botanical evidence.

  “We received it from an anonymous source. So we have two pieces of plant structure. Let’s compare them.” Ramsey looked at Mai. “Will you go and get us some coffee, Sato? And a few bagels. I’m famished. Would you like something, Dr. Lee?”

  “No, I’m fine. Thanks.” Peggy took off her coat as she wondered why Mai let Ramsey treat her like an overpaid gofer. How could her career be on the right track with him sending her for coffee?

  She took the samples of hyacinth from Ramsey, feeling as though he already knew the answer and really only wanted her to confirm his hypothesis. He stood silently to one side, trying to appear as if he wasn’t watching her work. She decided to ignore him, get done with the sample, and go home.

  Peggy looked at the pieces of stalk under the microscope. The green, tubular fibers matched where the stem had been separated. “We’re in luck. The person who did this pulled the stalk apart. That actually makes it easier for us to tell that the two were one piece. The ends of the flower stalk and the slight piece of stalk left from the base plant are the same.” There was no question of that. The match was as perfect as any jigsaw puzzle.

  But there was something else there, too. “Would you bring me those samples we collected?”

  Ramsey looked around the room. It was empty except for the two of them. “Are you speaking to me?”

  Peggy glanced up at him. “I’m looking at something unusual on this stalk, and I don’t want to move it. Please get the samples we took from the Community Garden. I think they’re in that gray case over there.”

  Ramsey looked around one last time as though someone might appear to save him from the task, but when no one appeared, he grudgingly went to get the gray case. “What are you looking at? I didn’t see anything there except the stem.”

  “That’s because you don’t know what to look for,” she responded when Mai came back with his coffee and bagel. “I’m sure you’re very good with dead people, but dead plants are very different.”

  “So . . .” He stood next to her and peered down his large nose at her.

  She moved aside so he could look at the stalk while she carefully went through the samples in the case, laying them out on the counter beside her. “What do you see on the cut end of the sample?”

  “I see the stalk, the flower. What should I see?”

  “Do you see that small bit of white matter with a black dot in the center right where the flower first meets the stalk?”

  He adjusted the lens on the microscope. “Yes. Isn’t that part of the plant?”

  Peggy smiled at Mai. “No. It’s a tiny part of a seed.” She picked up one of the sample bags. “Here’s another. I thought it was unusual at the time, since we aren’t growing cotton in the garden.”

  Ramsey cleared his throat. “Cotton? What are you saying, Dr. Lee?”

  “This is part of a cottonseed. Whoever picked the hyacinth may also have been in the Community Garden.”

  “How is that helpful?”

  “There was a cottonseed where Luther’s body was found. Whoever gave him the hyacinth may have had cottonseeds on his clothes or shoes. There is probably only one way to get cottonseeds like that—raising or harvesting cotton.”

  Ramsey looked at the hyacinth again. “Interesting. Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” Peggy wasn’t sure if she’d just helped or hurt Darmus. She could only look at the facts. “Maybe it would be possible to get a search warrant for this.”

  “Perhaps.” He ruminated over the word like it was a cup of cold coffee. “We’ll see. But there’s no way for us to know it was the same person spreading the cottonseeds at the garden and picking the hyacinth.”

  “True,” she considered. “Unless we find a DNA link between the seeds and match them to another we find somewhere else.”

  “Possibly. Anything else you’d like to add?”

  She was a little miffed that finding the cottonseed link wasn’t enough for him. But she was even more disappointed when they took it to Jonas. He didn’t act like her discovery was anything to go on. Everyone thanked her and told her to turn her time sheet in for her work.

  “If they weren’t going to use my findings, why bother?” Peggy asked Mai as the girl showed her how to fill out her expense sheet. It was almost eight, and she was exhausted.

  “You did what they wanted you to do,” Mai explained. “They weren’t looking for a new theory. They wanted you to substantiate their old one. The anonymous donor got the bottom of the plant from Dr. Appleby’s experimental garden at UNCC.

  “Of course! So I gave them what they needed to charge Darmus with Luther’s murder.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “But he’s innocent, Mai.”

  “Maybe. But he looks guilty. Especially now that they think he grew the flower and have proof he knew how to use the poisonous scent.”

  It made Peggy too angry to speak. She left the lab, vowing to herself that she would never return, and drove home in a terrible frame of mind.

  She walked into her quiet kitchen and sat down. It was spotless, much cleaner than she ever left it. She knew Aunt Mayfield and Cousin Melvin didn’t leave it that way. It had to be her mother. Peggy cringed as she imagined what her mother probably found behind the flour canister or on top of the refrigerator.

  “Steve went home a little while ago. Said he had an early morning.” Her father pulled up a chair opposite her. “Would you like something to eat? I think there’s some salad left from supper.”

  “No thanks, Dad.”

  “How did things go?”

  Peggy told him what she’d discovered and that the police didn’t care. “I guess I shouldn’t have gone. They would’ve had to wait for the state forensic botanist to confirm what they found. Or if I wouldn’t have opened my mouth in the first place, they still wouldn’t know about the hyacinth, since I’m the one who told them about that, too. Some friend.”

  “I’m sure Darmus wouldn’t blame you for using what you know to help solve the crime. If he’s innocent, Margaret Anne, he’ll want to know what happened to his brother just like you wanted to know how John was killed. It’s human nature to be curious and want answers.”

  “Maybe so.” She slumped down in her chair and stared at the ceiling.

  “You’re tired. You should go to bed.”

  “I should. I just can’t get up enough energy to go upstairs.”

  “I’d offer to carry you like I used to.” He chuckled. “But you’re a mite big, and I’m a mite old and puny.”

  She looked at him in the dim light from above the sink. In her mind’s eye, he would always be the daddy who showed her how to ride a pony and let her jump into the hay before it was baled. But he looked tired and old now, worn out by the hard, physical life he’d always led. Though she knew he was in good health, a tingle of fear slid up her spine at the thought of living without him.

  “I have to go to bed.” She got slowly to her feet. “I have the garden club tomorrow, and then I have to go to the Potting Shed. It was bad enough I left Selena, Keeley, and Sam alone with it all day.” She slid her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. “I love you, Daddy.”

  He patted her ar
m and smiled. “I love you, too, sweet pea. Go on upstairs now and get some rest. I’m reading this new mystery I found on your shelf. It’s good. This fella, Daniel Bailey, knows what he’s talking about.”

  “He should. He’s the chief deputy for Mecklenburg County. He’s been a sheriff for more than thirty years.”

  “Well, nobody’s perfect,” her father joked, reminding her of his ongoing feud with the sheriff ’s department in Charleston County over a fence he put up. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “You try to get some sleep, too, Daddy.”

  “You know I always grab a few hours. Don’t fret, Margaret Anne.”

  PEGGY WAS GLAD she rode her bike the next morning. She loved Charlotte on days like this when light wisps of fog and mist clung to the trees, obscuring the tall buildings uptown, and steeples reached up into the pale blue sky, fingering the clouds.

  It would be hot later, but the morning was still cool as she passed Providence Hardware and waved to Mr. Patterson, who was out for his morning jog. Dr. Yin, a prominent neurosurgeon at Mecklenburg Neurology, was out picking up trash along the road with his stick device. Sweat glistened on his bald pate as he mumbled to himself.

  Charlotte had changed drastically since John Lee brought her there as his bride thirty years ago. The cloistered, narrow feeling from too many generations living and dying without enough outside interference was gone. People had moved in from all over the world. They brought their problems with them. But they also brought new life to the city.

  Being raised in Charleston, a port town, Peggy found Charlotte stifling to begin with. She was used to the banter of many languages and the jumble of different customs that surrounded the old coastal city. Charlotte had strict traditions but nothing to soften them.

  That changed as time went on, and Peggy was glad for it. John said it created difficulties for the police department. She knew having students from different countries who spoke different languages created problems for the college. But those new students helped them become an accredited university. Peggy was proud of her work there. But she might be ready to try something new.