A Corpse for Yew

by Joyce; Jim Lavene

  “Oh?” She raised a cinnamon-colored eyebrow. “Did you hear a different weather report than I did?”

  “Probably not. But I’m going to need a hand with a new aspect of the landscaping business. I’ve been reading up on it, and I think it could save us until the drought passes.”

  “Well, let’s hear it.”

  “I’d like to oblige you, but I’m on my way out to Mrs. Foster’s place to fertilize her yard. She’s having me plant grass seed and fertilize it. She said she feels rain coming in her bones, and she wants to take the chance. I tried to talk her out of it. Not very hard, but I did try.”

  Keeley pulled her car up beside them, her dark eyes narrowed as she rolled down the window. “Has he told you his idea yet?”

  “No,” Peggy admitted. “He’s being secretive this morning.”

  “I promise I’ll find you at lunchtime and we’ll talk.” Sam was halfway in the truck as he spoke. “Come on, Keeley, we’re already running late.”

  6

  False Solomon’s Seal

  Botanical: Smilacina racemosa

  There are two types of wildflowers with the name Solomon’s seal. True Solomon’s seal has tiny white blooms that hang down on the stem. False Solomon’s seal has feathered white blooms at the end of the stem. Also, false Solomon’s seal has reddish purple berries in the fall; true Solomon’s seal has green seedpods. Other than that, it is difficult to tell them apart since leaves and stems are so much alike.

  PEGGY WALKED INTO THE SHOP through the back door and locked it behind her. It was over an hour before Selena would report for duty. Just enough time to enjoy a cup of tea and sit in her rocker beside the waterfall.

  She wasn’t able to enjoy her favorite rocking chair as much as she had in the past. She’d thought giving up her position at Queens would give her more time, but instead she was busier.

  Some of that was her parents being new to the area. She took them around and showed them the sights as much as she could. After leaving their farm, she knew it would be hard for them to adjust to the city. But even that didn’t truly explain her lack of time.

  She heated some water on the little electric cooker and took out a tea bag, smelling it as she did. It was orange and spice, her own blend, leftover from the holidays last year. The cooker and teapot were covered in dust, mute evidence of their lack of use. She needed to take stock of her herbal teas as well as her life, and find out how she could spruce them both up.

  Finally settled in her rocking chair, Peggy inhaled the aroma of the tea she’d made, sipping it from a Potting Shed cup. The little waterfall cascaded prettily from the rocks in the top pool into the middle and bottom ponds. A few orange koi she and Keeley had saved from certain doom during a wedding landscape project swam in and out through the current created by the waterfall.

  She looked around her little shop and was very pleased with the changes brought on by the broken water pipe over the summer. When she’d first opened, she had used what she found there rather than spending money she didn’t have on specialized fixtures. Now the shelves were made to hold growing plants as well as seeds and bulbs. The hydroponic garden hanging from the ceiling gave the whole place a wonderful sense of life.

  John would have loved it. She sipped her tea and rocked quietly in her chair. This dream that she was living, which sometimes seemed to consume her, would’ve been heaven for him. Her father loved to garden, but John was even more passionate about it. He could take the sickest plant and make it well. Their love of growing things was exceeded only by their love for each other.

  Sometimes she was afraid she had glossed over the rough patches of their marriage and made John a saint. She pushed herself to remember the bad times as well, times they’d argued over his dangerous job or her refusal to quit working at the university. But even in those times, it had been their love that sustained them. She had loved him more in the years before his death than she had when they’d stood before the minister in Charleston to say their wedding vows. She wouldn’t have thought that was possible.

  There was a loud pounding at the old glass door, which faced the courtyard. Peggy opened her eyes, wiping away tears, and glanced at the wheelbarrow-shaped clock near the door. It wasn’t time to open yet. She sneaked a peek around the counter and saw her neighbors from across the cobblestoned way peering into the shop, looking for her.

  She wanted to ignore them, but knew Emil and Sofia from the Kozy Kettle Tea and Coffee Emporium never went away that easily. With a sigh for her short-lived peace, she gulped down the rest of her tea and went to answer the door.

  Maybe it was just as well she didn’t have much time to sit and ruminate if she was going to end up crying and feeling guilty that John was dead. Sometimes she could go days without even thinking about him, thrilled to be with Steve and find her life so full.

  Other times, she felt the terrible pain of losing him as though it had happened only yesterday. She didn’t know if it would ever be any different.

  “Thank God you opened the door!” Emil Balducci pushed his bulky frame through the opening, his well-rounded wife right behind him. He curled his oiled, black mustache and looked around the shop. “You got any problems here?”

  “What kind of problems?” Peggy looked around the shop, too.

  “Termites!” Sofia put her white Kozy Kettle apron over her blond head and settled her gaze on the ceiling. “They’re jumping off everywhere at our place. God forbid it gets like it did that summer in 1962. They ate an entire village to the ground. People with wooden legs had to run for their lives!”

  “Not to mention the damage they did to the water supply.” Emil proceeded to embellish the incredible tale of the Sicilian village where they’d lived. “We couldn’t drink the water for weeks.”

  “People lay on the ground and died from thirst,” Sofia continued. “My Aunt Teresina’s tongue got so big, they had to tie it away from her mouth so they could give her something to drink.”

  Peggy tried hard never to laugh at Emil or Sofia. They believed everything they said, from deadly goldfish that spared their village only because a priest blessed them to relatives who had qualities similar to Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. “I haven’t seen any termites, but it’s always possible.”

  Sofia pulled a scarf from her pocket. “That’s why we brought you this. My cousin used it as an aphrodisiac, but all the termites died when she put it on, so she got out of helping people who couldn’t get married and started a business killing termites.” She handed the colorful scarf filled with white powder to Peggy. “You spread it around in here, and the termites will stay away.”

  Peggy took the scarf carefully. “What about you? Don’t you need some of this in your shop?”

  Emil shrugged his broad shoulders. He looked like a man who had been handsome in his youth, and acted like he had used it to his advantage. But that was a long time ago. “Ah, we called Terminix. We didn’t know if you could afford it with business being so bad.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Peggy protested. “I think we’ll get by, even if we have to call an exterminator. But you know, the company we pay our rent to would’ve sent a termite inspector without you paying for it. It’s part of the lease agreement.”

  Sofia stared at her husband for a long moment before she snatched the powder-filled scarf from Peggy and hit him on top of his black curls. “How many times I have to tell you to read the lease? Now we paid good money we didn’t have.”

  “How was I supposed to know? You said we should do it!”

  Sofia smiled at Peggy and patted her hand. “Don’t worry about the powder on the floor. I told you it is an aphrodisiac. It might be good for you to bring your Steve down here. You know what I mean?” She waggled her brows up and down.

  “I’m going back to finish the baking,” Emil declared. “Can I bring you a muffin, Peggy? It will make up for Steve not paying you any attention.”

  “No, thanks. I have to leave in a few minutes.” Peggy wasn’t getting in
to a strange discussion with the couple as to why they thought Steve was neglecting her. She certainly didn’t plan to talk about their love life.

  Sofia shrugged. “Don’t worry. You bring him down here. He’ll want you.”

  Emil’s laughter bellowed out of his barrel-shaped chest. “He’ll want you and every other woman after he gets a whiff of this! Sofia, you stay in the shop when you see him.”

  Peggy closed the wooden door with the many-paned windows behind them and locked it for good measure. They were impossible. She’d have to think of some way to keep Steve from going over there for the next few days. She shuddered to think what the conversation would be like if they saw him.

  By the time Selena came to work, Peggy had taken stock of everything they were low on in the Potting Shed. Some of it they used on a regular basis, like the house plant fertilizer and the new grow lights, but the rest she’d wait for until the stock got a little lower.

  “This place looks great,” Selena enthused, putting her backpack behind the counter. “And it smells lemony. Not so much like dirt and plants.”

  “I added a touch of lemon verbena to the floor cleaner. I couldn’t believe how dirty the floors were.” Peggy gave her a list of things to do if traffic was slow during the day. “Don’t worry about any of this if you have customers. But if it’s slow like it has been, the shelves could do with a dusting and some reorganization.”

  Selena glanced at the list. “This could take me a week, even without any customers.”

  “I’m sure it’s not that bad.” Peggy put away her rocking chair. “And if you’re busy, don’t worry about it.”

  “Does busy include studying for my chem test next week?”

  “Not exactly. But you don’t have to do all of this in one day, so you can take some time to study, too.”

  Selena sighed. “What’s going to happen to us, Peggy? How is the Potting Shed going to stay open making a hundred dollars a day?”

  “I don’t know yet. Sam said he has some ideas. Let’s hope they’re good ones.”

  “I’ll try and come up with some ideas, too. Maybe we can tighten our belts and cut some corners.”

  Peggy laughed. “That sounds great! Write them down and we’ll talk about them.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “I have to go to the police lab. If you need me, call me.”

  “You know I will. I hope we have a lot of customers, ’cause I really don’t like cleaning the shelves.”

  Peggy left Selena frowning at the cleaning list and drove to the ME’s lab a few minutes away. “You’re late!” Mai met Peggy at the door to the lab with her white coat in one hand and a file in the other. “You know how important this is. I can’t believe you could be late today, of all days.”

  “I’m sorry. Traffic was bad between here and the Potting Shed.” Peggy considered, unkindly perhaps, that Mai needed a tranquilizer. It was only a minute after nine, and they were already walking back to the lab.

  “I’ve heard from the chief three times since seven-thirty. His family wants to bury his aunt by this weekend. He said we better make up our minds about what killed her.”

  “Did you tell him that’s what we’re doing?”

  Mai shuddered. “Of course not! He’s the chief! We have to make a decision about Mrs. Mullis today. I need you to help me do that.”

  The phone rang and Mai answered it. She held her hand on the receiver and made a face at Peggy. “It’s Dr. Ramsey. I guess the chief called him, too. I left all the stuff we took off the body on the worktable. Maybe you could start taking a look at it.”

  Peggy nodded, glad she didn’t have to talk to Harold, and went to take a look at the “stuff.” Mai seemed fairly convinced that Lois had had a heart attack. She wasn’t sure why she was second-guessing herself.

  Of course the information about Lois’s cars still being at her house and the ladies from the club not finding a friend who took her to the dry lake was part of the police investigation, not the ME’s. Peggy knew she couldn’t allow her suspicions on those other matters to color her judgment on the physical evidence.

  As far as Geneva believing Jonathon was responsible for what happened to Lois, she felt sure that was simply grief and anger talking. Outside of taking on this project of collecting old bones, the two seemed to have nothing in common.

  All of the plant samples Mai had taken from the body were in plastic bags arranged neatly on the long, gleaming metal table. Peggy picked up a marker and a notebook to try to classify what they’d found.

  Some of it was simple. There were some blackberry brambles with tiny pieces of fabric caught in them and a stem of purple berries from false Solomon’s seal that had been found in her shoes. Most of the botanical evidence was what she would expect to find on anyone who was outside in a rural, forested environment. Nothing special.

  Then she came to three small, green seeds. Those took her aback for a moment. She looked at the notation in the folder as to where they were found on the body. For a moment, she stared straight ahead at the spotless, eggshell-colored wall.

  The first thing she’d noticed when she’d seen Lois’s dead face was that her lips were red. Since it appeared she was wearing eyeliner as well, she’d assumed it was lipstick. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  “So? What do you think? Anything that could lead to death?” Mai glanced at the collection on the table.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “I knew it!” Mai put her hand down hard on the table. “I don’t know why. It wasn’t that stuff you told me about her cars. I just knew it!”

  “It may not be anything, but these seeds you took out of her mouth are yew seeds. The berries they were probably attached to are deadly poisonous. I saw that her lips were red, but I didn’t think about her eating something that colored them.”

  Mai looked at the green seeds. “I don’t get it. They don’t look red to me. Do they change color with saliva?”

  “No. The seed is almost hidden inside a bright red berry on the plant. They’re hard to spot. The berry resembles a blackberry or raspberry. It would take only this small amount to kill her.”

  “You think she was out there at the lake alone and wanted a little snack? She saw the berries and decided to eat them, not realizing they were dangerous?”

  “Did you find any seeds in her stomach?”

  “I don’t think so. Let’s check.”

  Peggy watched Mai look up the case on the computer. Mai checked everything, but couldn’t find a notation of physical evidence that would show them that berries had been ingested.

  “I suppose it could be possible she didn’t have time to swallow them,” Mai suggested. “Could they be that toxic?”

  “It’s possible, especially for someone who had heart problems.”

  “So it could still be an accident. Maybe not a natural death, but not a homicide.”

  “It could be an accident,” Peggy agreed carefully. “People, especially children, eat poisonous berries every year. Pokeberries, elderberries, yew berries—they all look harmless enough. Sometimes birds eat them, so people think they can eat them, too. If Lois saw them and ate a few, it could’ve caused her death.”

  “We’ll have to go back and check to make sure the seeds aren’t inside, too.” Mai made a note. “But this theory could explain what happened.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been in touch with Lois’s friends from the historical society again. They couldn’t find anyone who took Lois to the lake yesterday. They even have a suspect. If they knew about the berries, I’m sure they’d be convinced she was a victim of foul play.”

  “No way.” Mai sat down hard on a stool. “I don’t want to know about this. It’s not my job. We find the physical evidence on and in the body. That’s all. We don’t do any outside investigating, except for sending you out to look for the yew berries.”

  “Branches.” Peggy shrugged. “All right.”

  “Really. I mean, that’s not ou
r job. The detectives have to check into that other stuff.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “And why would her friends think this, anyway? She was supposed to be out there with them yesterday.”

  “She called and told them she couldn’t be there because of her lumbago. They weren’t expecting her to be there.” Peggy glanced at Mai. “To make matters worse, neither of her vehicles was there. I told you how they feel about that.”

  “Maybe she took a taxi.”

  “I thought of that. She hated taxis. Her friends said she’d never take a taxi.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m telling you what they said and what they’ll probably insist on telling the chief. I don’t know if he’ll listen to them. Even if yew berries poisoned her.”

  Mai stood up again, shaking her head. “No. I won’t get involved in this. We have too much to do, and the chief wants results today. We have to give him what we have. We’ll have to take another look at the body. There’ll be more tests. The detectives have to do their job. That’s the way it has to be. Let me know if you find the right branches or berries out at the lake.”

  LAKE WHITLEY WAS ONLY FORTY minutes from the ME’s office. “I don’t know how I let you talk me into this,” Mai said as she drove. “I have a hundred things to do today, not the least of which involves redoing part of the autopsy on Mrs. Mullis.”

  “You said we should go and look for yew bushes at the lake.” Peggy shrugged. “I thought you meant right away.”

  Mai glanced at her. “I didn’t say we should look for yew bushes. I don’t even know what yew bushes look like. You’re the forensic botanist. You’re supposed to go out and take care of these things.”

  “And I will, but—”

  “But you couldn’t resist taking a look around at the crime scene,” Mai continued. “And for some reason, you wanted me to come along.”