THE HERBALIST (Books 1-5)

by Leslie Leigh

  “Were you here when they arrested your nephew, Mr. Evans?”

  “Yeah. They drove in right after dinner last night. Nash was doing the dishes.”

  “Are you aware of the charges against him?”

  “I am.”

  “Can you tell us anything about that?”

  Mr. Evan set their tea down on a tray on the burl wood coffee table in front of them.

  “I can tell you this. Nash has had a real hard time financially for a while. He lives here with me and does chores for his rent. He was working in Nogales and got laid off a few months ago. But that boy has never smoked dope, nor sold any that I know of, ever.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that he might have recently decided to sell it to help him get out of his financial problems?” Brian asked.

  Mr. Evans sat looking at them, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, chewing on a sunflower seed.

  “Here’s what I have to say about that. One, what would two ounces do to get him out of his money troubles? Two, the look on his face when they arrested him was one of shock and disbelief. They asked to see the guitar, and he knew he was in trouble for going in her house when the crime scene tape was in place. He had told me about that. But the look on his face when they pulled that marijuana out of the accessory compartment told me that he hadn’t a clue it was in there.”

  Brian looked thoughtful for a moment. “Mr. Evans, is it possible we could look at Nash’s room?”

  Evans looked back and forth between the two of them, and finally said, “I don’t see why not.”

  He walked them down a long hall. Melissa looked at the immaculate Saltillo tile floors, the photographs hung on the walls, and the neat pine doors on each room. The last one was Nash’s.

  “I don’t know what you’re looking for, but I guess you do, so I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Evans,” Melissa said.

  “Sure, Missy,” Evans said. “Again, I’m sorry about your Pop.”

  “Missy?” Brian said, grinning, after Evans had retreated.

  “That’s the third time I’ve heard that in a week,” she said. “I thought nobody but Miss Ada called me that anymore.”

  “Who’s Miss Ada?”

  “Ohhh,” Melissa said, “that’s right. You’ve not met Miss Ada. Well, I’ll have to introduce you sometime.”

  Nash’s room was as neat as the rest of the house, so it didn’t take them long to find the bag in question at the back of his closet, dangling from a hanger.

  Melissa took the bag down and opened it. She pawed through it for a few seconds, then walked over and dumped it out on his bed.

  “Ooh. Not nearly as much as I expected. And none of the gems are here at all.”

  They continued to search the room, opening drawers and cabinets. At last they looked under the bed and found a small wooden chest. Melissa got a kick out of it when they brought it out, saying it reminded her of the stagecoach strongboxes she’d seen in museums. It was latched but not locked. They opened it to find a stack of bills.

  Brian picked up the stack and thumbed through it. “There’s about twelve thousand dollars here.”

  “That’s just about what’s missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “Yeah, I’m guessing that’s just about what all of her pieces plus the gems would have been worth.”

  He whistled, then put the stack back in the box and pushed the box back under the bed. “Guess it’s time we had a talk with Nash,” he said.

  Chapter 14

  As they pulled over the last ridge that looked down into the county seat, off to the left was a huge concrete complex.

  “Wait,” Brian said. “I didn’t know there was a federal prison down here.”

  Melissa laughed. “It’s not. That’s our new fifty-million-dollar jail.

  “What? I guess I don’t get out of Phoenix much. Is there that much crime down here?”

  “Believe it or not, Nash would likely be considered one of the more dangerous ones. They mostly just jail illegals here who have been caught one too many times.”

  “Fifty million dollars. Where did this little county get that kind of money?”

  “I wanted to know the same thing. Ha, funny,” she said. “I just realized that the sheriff told Cindy that this county was too small to have its own morgue, but apparently not too small for a big jail.”

  Brian’s phone beeped just as they pulled into the visitor parking lot. He pulled it out after they stopped, and started reading.

  “Shit,” he said.

  Melissa looked at him.

  “Final ME’s report is in. They ruled it a homicide.” He sat for a few seconds then sighed. “I really hoped we’d get farther in our investigation before we have the department all over it. And with Nash already in jail…”

  “This kind of changes our line of questioning.”

  “It does, but we need to be careful, too. Chances are the sheriff’s department isn’t going to run right over here and grab him, especially when he’s being arraigned in the morning.”

  He sat and mused for a bit. “On second thought,” he continued, “maybe they will run right over here. I’m sure they would love it if they could arrest him for homicide at the same time.”

  “Don’t they have to have some kind of evidence to do that?”

  “Not just to arrest him. They would have to have evidence within a certain period of time to hold him on that arrest, but it sure looks good for the prosecution if they can say that he’s being looked at for murder when he’s being arraigned on the drug charge.”

  “That hardly seems fair.”

  “It is and it isn’t. If somebody’s actually guilty, it can work in the prosecution’s favor, but if they’re not, well, it still works in the prosecution’s favor. It will depend on a lot of factors. The judge might not pay any attention to it. It depends on whether he has any priors, whether he is gainfully employed, if he has family in the area, etcetera.”

  “You can check priors, can’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “He has family, but the whole town seems to know that he has money problems.”

  “What do you make of the jewelry thing now?”

  She looked at him and shrugged. “Why don’t we see what he has to say?”

  *

  They sat in a common room waiting for someone to bring Nash out. No one else was in the room, and everything seemed fairly quiet. At last an officer brought him into the room, sitting him down in a chair, and retreating to the far side of the room.

  “Melissa,” Nash said. “This is a surprise. Who’s your friend?”

  “Detective Brian Byrne,” Brian said, putting out his hand to shake Nash’s.

  “Detective? What’s this about?”

  “Why don’t you tell us,” Melissa said.

  Nash turned to look at the wall as if composing himself then looked back at the two of them. He shook his head. “I have no idea where the weed came from.”

  “Do you have any kind of prior arrest record for either use or intent to sell?”

  “Hell, no. I haven’t done that stuff since I was a kid.”

  “Ever get caught for it?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “Do you have any idea where it came from, Nash?”

  “I have banged my head against the wall trying to figure that out,” he said. “Since the guitar was at Lauryl’s house, the only thing I can think is that she put it in there, but how or why I don’t know. I mean how she got it. Maybe being always worried about getting sick, and knowing how much pain her sister had been in made her get it. But why she would get two ounces of the stuff when she never smoked any as far as I know, and then, why—when you can get a prescription for medical marijuana—would you get the illegal stuff?”

  “Do you think someone could have given it to her?”

  He just shrugged.

  “I think there’s something here that we’re all missing,” Melissa said.r />
  Both men looked at her.

  “How did the deputies know you had it?”

  *

  Brian thought for a moment. “That’s actually good,” he said. “That can help your defense. Who else knew about it and called the sheriff’s department? But there have been some important developments, and other things we have to ask you about urgently.”

  “Urgently? I don’t think I’m going anywhere anytime soon.”

  “Well, things have changed,” Brian said. “Lauryl’s death has been ruled a homicide.”

  “Homicide?” he said, wide-eyed. He looked back and forth between them. “How?”

  “That’s the weird part,” Melissa said, “and some of the urgent part. No one seems to know. All the Medical Examiner knows is that the conditions from which she died are not possible to be natural. If she was ill enough for that to have happened naturally, she wouldn’t have been walking around. She would have been in a hospital, likely for weeks.”

  It was almost as if Nash were dumbstruck. He sat there, his eyes bugged out, his mouth open, clearly unable to process any of it.

  “Oh, God.”

  “What?”

  “Somebody’s going to think I did this, aren’t they?”

  “Why do you say that?” Brian asked.

  “Because of the jewelry.”

  “That’s the other urgent thing we need to ask you about,” Melissa said.

  He exhaled heavily and held his head in his hands.

  “Why did you take it, and, more importantly, why did you sell it?”

  “You remember when I told you that she had decided she wasn’t going to do the show?”

  Melissa nodded.

  “Well, the whole story is that she tried to get a loan for me but she couldn’t. Not even five thousand dollars. That’s all she asked for. The stupid thing was that the bank said they had a minimum of ten thousand for loans, but then told her she didn’t have the necessary credit score to borrow ten thousand. Go figure.”

  “They wouldn’t let her use the jewelry as collateral?”

  He shook his head. “They said they don’t do that anymore. So she decided if they wouldn’t let her use it as collateral that I should try to sell it. She gave me a guy’s name in Tucson who had been after her to sell him all her pieces for years, but she had refused because she liked selling it herself a piece at a time. She liked knowing the people who bought them.

  I drove to Tucson and looked the guy up the next morning. He bought it all except for a few smaller pieces. When I got back, I drove right to her house to tell her, and that’s when I saw the crime scene tape.”

  “But nobody else knows this, right? Nobody can verify your story?”

  “Well, the guy that bought it could. She called him that morning to tell him I was coming so he wouldn’t think it was stolen or something.”

  “She called him that morning? The morning of the same day she died?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you give us his name and number?” Brian asked.

  “Sure, uhhhh…well, I can give you his name. His number’s in my cell phone and they confiscated that when they processed me.”

  “Good enough. If he’s a gem dealer we shouldn’t have too much trouble finding him.”

  “It’s Gordon…Gordon Hensley.”

  Brian wrote it down in his little notebook.

  “Anything else, Nash?” Melissa asked. “Did she tell anyone else what she was doing?”

  He shook his head. “Oh, wait. The waitress at the inn where we had the drinks—she overheard Lauryl talking about me selling her collection, and she asked Lauryl about a bracelet that she had asked Lauryl to make for her.”

  “The green and lapis one?”

  “Heck, I don’t know what kind, but it should still be there in her room somewhere.”

  Melissa looked at Brian. “That’s the one that was still on the peg in the armoire.”

  “Do you know the waitress’s name?”

  “Nope. Only that she knew Lauryl, and that she works at the Santa Rita Inn on Monday nights.”

  “Good enough,” Brian said, writing again. “Now, there’s something you need to know. If—and I only say ‘if’ because I have no idea whether or not this is their intent—if they try to arrest you on the homicide, you immediately tell them you want a lawyer.”

  “I can’t afford one.”

  “The public defender will do for now. If it goes beyond that, we’ll see what we can do.”

  Melissa placed her hand over Nash’s. “We’ll be here for the arraignment,” she said.

  The guard turned and looked through the window of the door, and opened it to allow another visitor. It was the sheriff.

  “Well, well, well,” he smiled, “I had no idea Nash here was so popular. Let’s see, we’ve got the lady who dispenses remedies without a license; now, she’d be a good person to know, especially if you wanted to put a hex on someone and make ‘em disappear. And this must be the pretty boy P.I. from Phoenix I’ve heard about. Maybe old Nash thinks you can lead a trail of evidence away from him and point it at someone else.

  “Is that what you thought, Nash?” he asked, whiplashing toward the young man. “Because I’d have told you to save your money. I investigate the crimes that happen in this county, and I’m a public servant. That keeps me honest and impartial. Let the chips fall where they may, that’s my motto. The facts are the facts, and you can’t bend the truth to suit your purposes.”

  Brian stood up and said in an even voice, “Everybody’s entitled to a second opinion, Sheriff. And, by the way, if the truth was as simple as you claim, no one would ever need to hire a lawyer.”

  The sheriff stared back at Brian as if he’d just made an unflattering remark about the sheriff’s mother. “Well, son, you know what they say about opinions, don’t you? Since we’re in the presence of a lady,” he said, making it sound like a dirty word, “I won’t elaborate. But I will point out to you that you are obliged to inform me of anything you may uncover during the course of your…snooping around. Failure to do so would cost you your license. The official investigation will proceed, but we never know where our information will come from. It’s possible you might accidentally stumble across something pertinent. Like they say, even a blind pig will pick up an acorn once in a while.”

  Brian took a step toward the sheriff. His hand darted behind his back, as if he were drawing on the sheriff in some High Noon showdown. The sheriff’s body stiffened and his hand went to his gun belt. Brian slowly removed a comb from his back pocket and, using the sheriff’s sunglasses as a mirror, ran the comb through his hair. Melissa nearly burst out laughing.

  The sheriff nodded curtly to the guard. “Visit’s over, folks,” the guard announced.

  Melissa stood and looked down at the young man. “You take care, Nash.”

  Outside, Melissa and Brian chuckled over the sheriff’s heavy-handed manner.

  “Gosh, that man sure knows how to make a person feel absolutely worthless,” Melissa exclaimed.

  “That’s what bullies do,” Brian smiled. “Just shake it off. Pushing people’s buttons is an old law enforcement technique. They hope their target will get emotional and blurt out something they can use. Personally, I’ve always favored the Good Cop approach.”

  “What do you think he was getting at back there with that comment about keeping him informed? Do you think he knows something about the money and jewelry out at Nash’s uncle’s place?”

  “Well, I can’t believe that they didn’t get a search warrant when they got the tip about the dope in the guitar case. He must just take it one step at a time. I wouldn’t be surprised if another tip comes his way soon regarding what we saw out there. But we can always claim we didn’t see anything that looked suspicious. After all, what do we know? We’re just a pretty boy P.I. from Phoenix and…”

  “…a witch! Go ahead and say it!” Melissa laughed hard, exorcising the sting of the sheriff’s jabs.

  “I
was going to say ‘lady,’” Brian clarified.

  “Well, when you say it, it sounds much nicer. And, just for the record, Brian, you are kind of pretty.”

  *

  She awoke realizing it was Chelsea bun day. In light of everything going on, she thought about not baking them, but she knew her patrons wouldn’t understand. Besides, it would be some Zen time that she could use to process everything in her head. She looked at the clock by her bed stand and realized that if she got up then, she would have plenty of time to make the buns and still make the arraignment.

  She decided just to slip on jeans and a shirt. She would have time to shower before leaving for the courthouse.

  She loved walking into her market kitchen where everything stood waiting at her fingertips. She had always felt that baking was like magic—such simple ingredients became such fabulous creations.

  She loved making familiar recipes as well as experimenting with new things. Just like her meditation room, the ritual of bringing the ingredients together in a certain order, stirring it together just so, kneading the dough—all of it took her into a space beyond herself.

  The pieces of the mystery surrounded her. Someone had set Nash up, ostensibly to get him out of the way. Who would do that and why? If it was just to set him up to take the fall for the murder, why go to all the trouble? The weed had nothing to do with the murder.

  Then she remembered that Cindy had told her that Nash wanted to know when he could have his “stuff.” If Nash knew nothing about it, that meant that Cindy did. She got so excited, she wanted to call Brian right away. But a glance at her phone told her it was only 4:30. She would have to wait at least a couple of hours.

  She didn’t even want to go to the arraignment now; she wanted to go directly and talk to Cindy. But she had promised Nash they would be there, and she didn’t think Cindy was going anywhere.

  Melissa finished cutting the buns. She used dental floss to cut them cleanly and quickly. She laid them out on the pans, and covered them with lightly floured towels for their final rise.

  She went into the front of the darkened market to prepare a cup of tea for herself. She walked to the window just to get the early dawn perspective of the little street and noticed a dim light on in Lauryl’s house. From the direction of the light, it had to be coming from the kitchen.