A Corpse for Yew

by Joyce; Jim Lavene

  “But the killer didn’t go in after it?”

  Peggy agreed that it seemed a long shot. “Maybe it dropped into the mud and whoever was with Lois didn’t see it at the time. Jonathon said there’s a spring under the mud that keeps it moist. It also keeps it moving. That’s why it took us a few minutes to find Lois. The question still remains: Did Lois go out early to meet this person and give them the ring, or did this person surprise Lois and decide the time was right?”

  There was no response from Steve. She realized he was asleep. Smiling, she laid her head on his chest and listened to his breath and heartbeat. Being engaged would be good. It was a new start to a new life. Marriage was far enough off that she didn’t have to panic . . . yet.

  If she’d been home, she would’ve gone downstairs and worked on her projects in the basement. She didn’t want to leave Steve, so she lay quietly until she finally fell asleep.

  AN INNER ALARM WOKE PEGGY at six a.m. She kissed Steve, they showered and shared cold pasta for breakfast before they went their separate ways for the day.

  Peggy went back to her house, refusing to think about all the complications that would arise from being with Steve all the time. The whole his house-her house argument stayed out of her consciousness as she let Shakespeare out and put on a kettle of water for tea.

  The phone rang at the same time the kettle whistled. She answered one while she reached for the other and poured the water into her cup. “Good morning, Paul. Are you on your way home?”

  “I could ask you the same thing.” He chuckled. “I noticed you weren’t home last night when I drove by the house.”

  “All right. I give up. My truck was plugged in. The bike was in the shed. How could you tell I wasn’t home?”

  “I stopped in. Shakespeare thought it was you. Did you patch things up with Steve?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes. We’re on for the engagement dinner on Tuesday. Maybe we should make it a double wedding. How about you and Mai joining in?”

  “That was a cold, cruel thing to say. You know she isn’t ready for that yet. I know she isn’t.”

  “Because you ask her every day?”

  “Not anymore. Anyway, good news ’bout you and Steve. Will you live in our house or his?”

  “I’m not thinking about that right now. Go home. I’ll talk to you later.”

  She closed her cell phone and sat down to look at her garden outside the kitchen window and sip her tea. She was fortunate to have the big oaks that shaded the backyard from most of the sun. Even so, the drought was hard on everything growing. The holly bushes were wilting along with the burning bushes and marigolds. The dogwoods with their red berries, were the only trees that still looked healthy. She didn’t know how much longer anything would survive unless they started getting regular rain again.

  Hating the water restrictions that prevented her from helping her plants, Peggy switched on her laptop to check her e-mail. She was part of several focus groups of botanists from around the world who discussed their projects in the hope of solving world hunger through better horticulture.

  There was an e-mail from Sir Nigel about the yew berries. Apparently all parts of the plant were poisonous except for the berry. He also told her that chewing on the seeds could release enough poison to kill Lois.

  She replied and thanked him, asking him about his own projects at the institute that were connected with their yew studies.

  Like every other day, there were hundreds of e-mails to sift through. Even with her spam blocker on the highest level, she still received scams from people who claimed to represent everyone from the IRS to the wife of a foreign dignitary who needed help sending money out of her country. All of them were just ways for the unwary to lose money at best, and their identity at worst.

  She deleted those e-mails gladly, wishing she could send each of them back and tell the senders how stupid it was to send them out. Unfortunately, that would probably give her computer a virus, and she’d just gone through that recently.

  Peggy glanced through the remaining e-mails, noting one familiar name after another. She knew Dr. Mendosa in Costa Rica was working on a grain plant that would have a shorter growing season and fare better in hotter climates. Dr. Kingsley was e-mailing about her edible cotton project that seemed promising.

  There was one e-mail that didn’t fit in with the rest. She would’ve deleted it for spam, but in the subject line was one word that caught her attention: Nightflyer. The e-mail address was different from any of the ones her old chess partner had used before. He’d told her he would try to contact her occasionally after going underground to escape from people he worked for at the CIA.

  It sounded bizarre to think about it now. But she knew him too well to doubt his true involvement in things larger than most people understood. Several times he’d helped her solve cases with information no one else was privy to or willing to share.

  She bit her lip as she clicked on the e-mail. Dear Night-rose, I am doing well if not living happily ever after. I stay constantly one step ahead of the men who are hunting me. I’m sorry I can’t contact you more often. I would not endanger you for anything. I hope you are staying out of trouble and are content with your life. I will write again when I can. All my love, Nightflyer.

  It seemed there would be no complex chess match between them online, where they could chat about whatever was going on in the world and she could ask him for advice about what she was doing. She missed those days, but they had come to an end soon after she’d met Steve. Those long, lonely nights with only the Internet for company seemed to be behind her. She didn’t miss them.

  Peggy knew she couldn’t answer Nightflyer’s e-mail. He’d explained the situation to her. As soon as he’d sent the e-mail, probably from some wireless café, he’d be gone. There was a certain romance to it that had almost captured her imagination. But she wasn’t the kind of woman who could leave everything behind for a man. She was happy with her life and the second chance she’d been given for love.

  Her last swallow of tea accompanied her final reminiscing. She shut down her laptop and went upstairs to change her clothes. Shakespeare followed her up the marble staircase, and back down again when she was done. He looked at her sadly and whined a little.

  “I suppose you want to go out to the lake,” she said to him. “I’ll warn you, I have to go over to the Potting Shed for a delivery before I go out there. No falling in the pond again. You’re too big to go swimming in there.”

  The Great Dane thumped his tail hard on the old wood floor. Peggy took that as a promise to behave, and put on his harness and leash. She’d be happy to have his company out at the lake. Too much was going on out there for her to feel comfortable alone.

  With Shakespeare beside her in the truck, she drove to the Potting Shed to wait for Sam’s rain barrel delivery. Lois’s funeral was at four. She’d have to be back from the lake by then and to have left the yew branches at the lab. Merton wouldn’t be at the university until Monday, so there was no point in going all the way out there.

  Peggy let Shakespeare into the shop as the delivery truck arrived. The man was nice enough to put all of the barrels into the storage area in back before he left. She thanked him and gave him a nice rosemary plant for his wife.

  She was getting ready to bring Shakespeare back out to the truck when the Shamrock Historical Society van pulled into the parking lot beside her. She groaned and closed her eyes. This wasn’t a good way to start the day.

  20

  Agave

  Botanical: Agave

  Agaves were a major source of material for clothes, food, paper, and juice for early Mesoamericans. It wasn’t until later that Europeans found they could make tequila from the plant. Commonly referred to as the century plant, agave does not live for a hundred years, but it is long-lived, possibly thirty years, and may take a long time to flower. It has many names for various types, from parryi van truncate (artichoke) to agave americana marginata, which gr
ows to soaring heights.

  WHAT PEGGY HAD COME TO think of as the militant arm of the museum, the Shamrock Historical Society, spilled out of the van. Jonathon was with them. She could only guess that the ladies had adopted him since he’d been forgiven for his sins. Apparently all question of him killing Lois had been resolved to their satisfaction.

  “Peggy”—Grace was the first to reach her—“we need your help.”

  “We have to get into Lois’s house,” Geneva continued. “There are things in there that don’t technically belong to Lois or her descendants. Chief Mullis is holding an auction there next week, and an appraiser is going through on Monday to catalog the items.”

  “Some of the things actually belong to the museum,” Jonathan said. “At least that’s what the ladies tell me. I’ve informed the board, but without the chairman they can’t act, and he’s in Switzerland until the end of the month.”

  “I understand what you’re saying.” Peggy tried to stop the tide of emotion flowing over her. “But I’m the wrong person to talk to about this.”

  “If you’re talking about that stubborn horse’s back end, Mullis, you’re barking up the wrong dogwood tree,” Dorothy told her. “We already tried talking to him. He said if he found out any of us went in there to look through Lois’s things, he’d send us to jail.”

  “First of all, he can’t just send anybody he wants to jail,” Peggy assured them. “But going into his house—”

  “—Lois’s house,” Mrs. Waynewright reminded her.

  “The house belongs to Chief Mullis now,” Peggy said. “If you go in without his permission, he can have you charged with breaking and entering. If you take anything, it will be stealing.”

  Geneva smiled broadly. “That’s why we came to see you!”

  “You’re a member of the Shamrock Historical Society.” Grace giggled. “But you weren’t there when he talked to us. You could go in and look for the items. Mullis didn’t say anything about arresting you.”

  Peggy would’ve laughed at the preposterous statement if she didn’t believe Grace and the others were serious. “It doesn’t matter if he threatened me or not. I can’t go in there without the chief’s permission.”

  Mrs. Waynewright sighed. “As you get older, it’s harder to lose things of personal value. They become like members of your family.”

  “The museum is missing several items that Lois took home to clean or categorize,” Annabelle explained. “It’s not right for Chief Mullis to sell those. They belong to the museum.”

  “You’ll just have to hope she has something in her will to protect those things.” Peggy refused to be drawn into the discussion. “Jonathon, you have to know better than this.”

  He shrugged. “I wish there was another way. But what the ladies say is true. Everyone takes a few items home from time to time, to make the job of cleaning them less of a burden on the museum. I don’t know how valuable the artifacts are that she had, but they could be lost at the estate auction.”

  “Mullis doesn’t want anything in there to remind him of Lois,” Annabelle said. “He told us the sooner he gets the place cleaned out, the sooner he can tear it down and build a new house.”

  “All that history lost.” Mrs. Waynewright shook her head. “Such a pity.”

  “We thought maybe you could convince that handsome young son of yours to go with you and pretend you had a legal right to be there,” Geneva suggested. “After all, the two of you work for the police. Mullis might be fooled into thinking you’re there for something to do with the case.”

  “That’s not going to happen.” Peggy smiled at them to lessen the harshness of her words. “I wouldn’t involve Paul in any of this.”

  “You mean you’d be willing to do it on your own?” Dorothy enthused.

  “Thank you, Peggy!” Grace hugged her. “I knew we could count on you.”

  “I didn’t say I’d break into the house to look for anything.” Peggy tried to get herself out of the position they’d put her in.

  “Of course not!” Geneva stepped forward and gave her a set of keys and instructions to disable the alarm system. “We wouldn’t expect you to do that.”

  After a series of hugs from all the women, they piled back in the van with Jonathon and squealed the tires leaving the parking lot. Peggy stood watching them with the keys and alarm code, wondering why they’d picked on her.

  She pocketed the keys and went into the shop to get Shakespeare. He was asleep next to the pond while a little lizard cavorted through the leaves and across the stones. Selena may have thought Sam got rid of it—or there was more than one.

  There was a knock on the front door. Peggy looked up, not sure if she wanted to answer it. She recognized a professor from Queens University. Smiling, she left Shakespeare sleeping and opened the door. “Professor Burris! I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

  “That’s because you gave up teaching and went into business,” he told her.

  He’d always reminded her of a sharp-tongued Santa with his long white beard and flowing white hair. He was a little rotund as well, to complete the image. But instead of a bright red suit, he always wore gray tweed and smelled of pipe tobacco. He wasn’t a jovial kind of person, voted again and again as students’ least favorite history professor at the university.

  “That’s true,” she agreed. “What brings you here today?”

  He looked around as though he was uncomfortable. “I have a problem, and I thought you might be the person to solve it for me.”

  Peggy couldn’t imagine what that could be or how he would’ve thought of her. “I’ll do what I can to help.”

  “My problem deals with a lady friend.” He pointed at her and snarled, “No laughter! And no words of wisdom about older men with girlfriends.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it.” She smiled despite herself. “I don’t normally give advice to men with lady problems, but—”

  “Don’t be impertinent! I’m here to consult your horticulture skills, Dr. Lee, not your matchmaking abilities! I don’t need your help finding a woman, if that’s what you mean.”

  “All right.” She was beginning to regret that she’d opened the door. Professor Burris’s personality left a lot to be desired. She couldn’t imagine who’d want to date him. “Tell me what I can do.”

  “I want to grow some plants. I have a sunny window in my apartment. I also have a small balcony that may be appropriate for a pot or two. My lady friend is very partial to plants. She hasn’t visited my apartment yet, but I’ve been to hers and she has plants everywhere. I believe she’ll experience disappointment in me if I don’t have plants.”

  Peggy turned her head to keep from laughing. He wanted her to set him up with plants to impress his girlfriend. It was always amazing, the things that could happen in a day. “I’ll be glad to help you out, Professor. Did you want to pot these plants yourself or take home some already in pots?”

  “Don’t use all that jargon with me. I need to understand what I’ve brought home. I’m sure my lady friend will expect me to know what I’m growing.”

  “Then follow me, and we’ll get started.”

  Peggy led him to the workbench she’d had installed, and picked out an aloe plant to start with. “This is aloe. It’s relatively easy to grow. It likes sunlight, and you said you have a sunny window. Here’s a pot that should be the right size. This soil, with a little sand mixed in, should be fine for it. You need to water it once a week or so. It can handle being dry.”

  She watched the fastidious professor dig into the soil and pick up the aloe to put it in the pot. It was hard for him to hide his distaste at actually getting dirty. She supposed he’d never gotten that far into a subject before.

  When he was finished, she rounded up a large philodendron that was root-bound and needed to be transplanted. “This is a little bigger, but the plant is easy to care for. A philodendron will be happy with lower light and water once a week. Just add some soil to this pot and move the plant into i
t, then fill in around it until the soil’s firm.”

  “Will my lady friend recognize these as beginner’s plants?”

  “Not at all. Many seasoned gardeners have these plants as well. I can recommend a book you can read that will tell you more about them, and you can learn as you go.”

  “What about my balcony? I assume I’ll need something fairly hardy to survive out there.”

  Peggy suggested an agave. “This agave should do well on your balcony. It will be easy to take care of, and doesn’t require much work. It will get bigger before it flowers, then dies back. That means changing its pot again probably in six months or so. Your lady friend should enjoy it. This one is a Weber’s agave. It’s one of the biggest and fastest-growing. See the fleshy, blue green leaves? It’s a gorgeous plant as it grows.”

  She helped the professor load his Subaru with his purchases. She’d been surprised that he hadn’t haggled over any of the prices. He’d been a quick learner who was obviously motivated to take good care of the plants. “I hope this works with your lady.”

  “I appreciate your time, Dr. Lee. You were always quite talented when it came to living things. I saw in the paper that you’ve recently turned your sights to dead things as well.”

  “You mean the forensic botany.” She nodded.

  “I mean Lake Whitley. I was out there twenty years ago, during the last drought. It wasn’t as severe as the one we’re experiencing, so our findings were limited. But it was an impressive site.”

  “Yes, it is. I only wish the circumstances had been different. Finding a dead woman wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “In history, one takes what one finds at face value until one does the proper research.” Professor Burris lifted his chin and looked down his long, straight nose at her. “What was it that woman was killed for?”

  “I believe it was a ring.” She thought she might as well be honest with him. “I found it out there, but it’s part of the museum’s collection. No one seems to know where it came from or its value.”