THE HERBALIST (Books 1-5)

by Leslie Leigh

  Her heart started to pound. She walked quickly back into the kitchen where she picked up her cell phone and pressed the speed dial number she had selected for Brian.

  “Hello?” he said, sounding groggy. “Melissa?”

  “Brian. Get up. Somebody is in Lauryl’s house. Meet me in her backyard in five minutes.”

  “Got it,” he said. Melissa ended the call.

  The light still burned. She wished she could get closer now, but it would be wise to wait for Brian.

  She was already in front of Jessie’s house when she saw him coming down the alley. He didn’t say a word, they simply walked around to the back of the house and peeked in the one window where the treatment wasn’t drawn.

  It was Cindy, and it looked like she was cleaning out the kitchen.

  Melissa knocked on the window.

  Cindy was startled to see her, and continued to scrape whatever was in her hand into the garbage disposal. Only then did she put the dish down and come to the door.

  “Melissa! What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here, Cindy?”

  “I couldn’t sleep, so I came over to get some things from the kitchen and decided to clean out the fridge,” she said, picking up another dish and poising over the sink.

  “You can’t do that, Cindy,” Melissa said, reaching for the dish. “The house is still a crime scene.”

  “What? What crime?”

  “Your aunt’s death was ruled a homicide,” Brian said.

  “Homicide?” Cindy said, looking truly horrified. “But she was sick.”

  “No matter how sick she was or wasn’t, the ME’s finding was that she did not die of natural causes.”

  Cindy turned back to the sink and mechanically started to empty the contents of the dish. Before Melissa could do anything, she turned on the water and flushed it down the garbage disposal.

  Melissa stood there horrified, then calmed herself. “Can you at least tell me what that was that you just put down the sink?”

  “Bean soup,” Cindy said. “Aunt Lauryl was getting so thin, and I was getting so worried about her that I started cooking for her. She just wasn’t eating. She said she liked my soups that I make homemade like my mom did.”

  “How long ago did you make that soup that you just threw out?” Melissa asked.

  “I made it for her and brought it over a couple of days before she died.”

  “Where did you get the beans that you used for the soup?”

  “They all came from Native Seed Search. She loved the really colorful beans.”

  Melissa nodded.

  “Cindy,” Brian said. “We’re all going to have to leave now, okay. This really is a crime scene, and nobody should be in here.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Who are you again?”

  He started to put his hand out to her, “De—“

  Melissa grabbed his arm, “This is my friend Brian.”

  “So what are you two doing out at this hour of the morning.”

  “Oh, you know. It’s Chelsea bun day at the market…Oh, Lord,” she said. “I need to get back to get them in the oven before they fall.”

  Cindy washed her hands and dried them on a towel that hung on the stove. She walked out the back door in front of Brian, and Melissa picked up the towel, folding it outside in, as small as she could. She didn’t want to put it in her pocket, so she just hid it in her sleeve and was glad it was still fairly dark.

  They waited until Cindy was up the street and out of sight. Melissa pulled the towel out of her sleeve.

  “Let me put this in a plastic bag,” she said. “Can you get it tested?”

  “For what?”

  “Bean soup.”

  “Uh, sure.”

  Chapter 15

  The Chelsea buns were at the limit of their rising when she got back into the store, but she was in time, nevertheless. She stirred up the egg wash and brushed a third of them for the purists. The other two-thirds would receive her signature frostings—one made with yogurt, the other with coconut cream for the non-dairy folks.

  She started the convection oven and began to insert the pans one by one. She smiled as she thought of how quickly they always sold. It was really just another version of the cinnamon roll, but she rolled dried fruit into them. Depending on the season, she used different fruits.

  She always made raisin and currant ones, but the rest of the year, others might range from apples to peaches to figs. At Christmas, she always did up a few like fruitcake. That was when she had to enlist the help of all of her employees—and a few temporary helpers besides—people would order whole pans of the buns to feed their holiday guests.

  She glanced at the clock, hoping that Flora would be on time so that she could go home and change her clothes for the arraignment.

  Just then she heard the door open. She listened with amusement to Flora’s footsteps. Flora always stopped to adjust displays, a millimeter here, a half-inch there. She was glad that her employees took as much pride in the market as she did. This time, her footsteps approached quickly.

  “Good morning, Flora,” Melissa called.

  Flora didn’t return the pleasantry as she entered the kitchen. She looked distraught.

  “Have you checked your herbals yet, Melissa? Have you researched what might have killed Lauryl?”

  Melissa wasn’t sure how to respond. She knew what she’d provided Lauryl, and she’d been trying to resolve the mystery in every other way, but she hadn’t actually done an inventory of her supplies, if that’s what Flora was asking.

  “I haven’t had a chance. This situation seems to be all over the place, with significant-seeming pieces that don’t fit.”

  “Well, I did a bit of it for you.”

  Melissa’s eyebrows went up in surprise.

  “Well, I have an herbal poisons book that I’ve been creating for years.”

  “Creating? Flora, I had no idea.”

  “I hoped it would come in handy someday. It’s kind of my own materia medica,” she said.

  Melissa just continued to stare at her.

  “I started it just as an Arizona thing a long time ago. I was fascinated to learn about all the beautiful weeds in my yard that were poisonous, but I ultimately stretched it to other herbal poisons as well.”

  “You put me to shame,” Melissa said. “Here I am the ‘certified herbalist,’ but I’ve never created my own materia medica.”

  “I realize it’s kind of redundant now when all that information is so readily available online, but it’s been kind of a creative outlet for me. I sketch the plants, kind of like the old herbals, and write my findings. It has also helped my recall since I write it all by hand.”

  “Helped your recall in general?”

  “Well, that too, but I mean that now when I hear about something, it trips a trigger in my brain because it sounds familiar.”

  “So, don’t keep me waiting; I gather something about the facts from the ME’s report stimulated something for you.”

  “Yes. When I heard you discussing it on your phone—I assume it was with that handsome detective—something seemed familiar.”

  “Well…?”

  “There are five plants I could find that could produce such major organ failing. There might be more on the Internet, but I had five. Thing is, four of them are only found in remote regions in Africa and Asia.”

  “But one of them…?”

  Flora nodded.

  “Are you waiting for a drum roll?” Melissa said, grinning.

  “It deserves one.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Only one problem.”

  Melissa could feel her heightened anticipation begin to deflate.

  “It doesn’t grow around here. It’s a tropical plant. The castor bean.”

  Melissa pondered that for a second. “Oh, my god. That’s what ricin comes from.”

  Flora nodded.

  “Except that they would have detected that on her finger tips,
in her nasal cavity or something,” Melissa said, thinking back on the ME’s report.

  “Unless she ate it.”

  Flora was right. Most of the time ricin was powdered from drying the bean mash and delivered as a powder. It was what Ted Kaczynski had used when mailing packages to his desired victims.

  Nobody used it as bean mash by itself because it would be too hard to get someone to eat it—unless, of course, you were cooking for them.

  “The bean soup!” Melissa said, dropping her paddle into the frosting.

  “The what?”

  Melissa looked at the time and saw she only had a few minutes before Brian would be pulling up outside her door to head over for the arraignment.

  “Got to run,” she said, “but thank you. You’re brilliant,” she said, giving her a quick hug. “I’ll tell you more when I know something. In the meantime…”

  “Mum’s the word. Of course,” Flora said.

  Chapter 16

  “I’ve got news,” Brian said as she climbed into the SUV and put on her seatbelt.

  “Me, too,” she said, “big news. You first.”

  He put it in drive, heading up the street, out of town. “The sheriff and his posse showed up at Nash’s uncle’s place last night and found the cash and jewelry. They’ve charged him with Lauryl’s murder.”

  “Can they do that without any kind of connection?”

  “They’re calling it probable cause.”

  “One thing that doesn’t make sense to me is, if Nash were going to be arrested as a murder suspect anyway, why bother with the marijuana setup? I mean, the sheriff would have arrested him last night after finding the money.”

  “I don’t think the sheriff knew about the money, I think finding that was an added bonus. But somebody definitely tipped him off about the jewelry. Do you think it would have been Dryden?”

  She shook her head. “No, he meant it when he said he wouldn’t tell them anything. I just don’t know how much he told other people. Or,” she continued after musing, “Cindy could have done it if she discovered it all missing.”

  “Unless she and Nash are working together.”

  “This is making my head spin,” Melissa said.

  “So…you said you had news, too.”

  “Yes,” she said, telling him about Flora’s discovery.

  “Castor bean? Isn’t that what they make castor oil with?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “And that’s poisonous?”

  “The oil is not poisonous, although it does have purgative properties.”

  “Purgative? Oh, as in purge—got ya.”

  “Yes. But the bean itself is poisonous. Don’t ask me how somebody ever figured out that the oil had healing properties while the bean was poisonous.”

  “How did anyone figure out…?” he said grinning.

  “Very carefully, I’m sure. Anyway, that was my intuition when we were standing in that kitchen this morning. Cindy was very anxious to get rid of that bean soup. That’s why I asked you to have the towel tested.”

  “I overnighted it to the lab in Phoenix this morning and put a rush on it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So, back to purgative. It did make her vomit.”

  “Apparently.”

  “But why didn’t it show up in her organs or blood, or any of the tox screens if it’s that toxic?”

  Melissa furrowed her brow as she thought about that. “Wait,” she said. “Let me check something.” She took out her Smartphone and got on the Internet. She nodded her head as she squinted to read the results of her search.

  “For Pete’s sake,” she said. “Because it is so rarely ingested, no normal tox screen, not even testing for poisons will reveal it. Because of the way the poison is usually used, nobody can test for it except the CDC!”

  “The Center for Disease Control?”

  “Yes. Ricin usually only shows up as kind of a bio-terror sort of thing, so only the CDC has the necessary methods of testing it. But…”

  “But?”

  “It can only be tested via a urine sample. It’s been 24 hours since the final ME’s report. They’ve probably already released the body and discarded the samples.”

  “Not if it was ruled a homicide without understanding the total cause. They still have to keep her body on ice for precisely this reason.”

  “Is there something you can do?”

  He thought for a moment. “This is really sticky, especially if it has to go to the CDC. There will have to be a chain of custody, or it won’t be admissible in court. I think we’re going to have to talk to the DA’s office in this case.”

  “Do you have an ‘in’ there?”

  “If you’re asking if they know me, sure. If you’re asking if anyone there owes me any favors, no.”

  “Just checking.”

  *

  Nash’s arraignment proceeded quickly and, for the most part, uneventfully. The murder charge was entered, along with the possession and tampering with evidence charges. Nash’s public defender pointed out that most of the evidence against Nash was circumstantial, but the prosecutor portrayed Nash as being enough of a threat to the public that he sought to have bail denied.

  Melissa, Brian and Dr. Mercer sat together, watching the proceedings from the back of the courtroom.

  “That’s not right,” Melissa groused. “They used his military record against him, inferring that he was some cold-blooded killer.”

  “Everybody loves soldiers,” Brian observed. “It’s veterans that they have a problem with.”

  Dr. Mercer added, “It didn’t help that he doesn’t have a stable employment record.”

  The judge did grant bail; however, the amount was so high—one hundred thousand dollars—that he might as well have denied it altogether.

  Melissa found it curious that there was no mention of stolen goods or theft in the charges. She waited to see if the prosecutor would bring these up, but soon the judge banged the gavel and Nash was led away in handcuffs.

  The trio sat slightly stunned as the judge recessed for lunch. The participants and spectators filed from the courtroom. Melissa saw Brian pull out a tablet device.

  “Oh, so you’re not a technophobe,” she teased.

  “I told you I wasn’t. I find this device very useful, but when I’m making notes, I prefer to keep them completely to myself.” He manipulated the device for a couple of minutes, then said, “Neither the jewelry nor the cash were entered into the chain of custody. Although the jewelry was cited in the probable cause report, there is no mention of it having been stolen.”

  “Is my additional report in there?” asked Dr. Mercer.

  “I don’t see one,” Brian said.

  “You made another report?” Melissa asked.

  “Yes, I went to see Mike Dryden after you told me about your conversation with him, Melissa. He repeated, just as you told me, that Nash and Lauryl came back to her place together, and that Nash left just a short time later. He is positive that Nash left before 11:30 p.m.”

  “And…?”

  “And, the ME puts her death at around 1 a.m.”

  “So, she gets home, feels a little woozy from drinking, and hasn’t eaten a lot. She decides to have a bite before she goes to bed, and eats that great bean soup that Cindy brought for her.”

  “Bean soup?” the doctor asked, “But she had no stomach contents.”

  “No, she vomited it up,” Melissa said.

  Then it dawned on her, “You can help us!” she said.

  She explained Flora’s castor bean theory, and then revealed that testing for it could only be done by the CDC.

  “I can make that request,” the doctor said.

  “I knew it!” she fairly shouted. “That will save us having to see the DA, for now anyway.”

  Doctor Mercer said he had to get back to his waiting patients but promised to make the request to the CDC the second he had a break that afternoon.

  Brian and Melissa walked back to the par
king lot and sat in the SUV.

  “I’m beginning to think he’s being set up, not only by the murderer, perhaps, but also the local law enforcement. They want to see if he will take that money and flee,” Melissa said.

  “Yes, which tells me one thing: any evidence whatsoever that they have, if they have any at all, is very shaky. They need him to run so they have an excuse to put him away for a while.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t know Nash very well. I don’t know how frightened he is or whether he would be likely to run.”

  “A lot of good people do crazy things when they’re scared.”

  Just then the main courthouse door opened and out walked Nash and his uncle.

  “I’m going to go talk to him right now,” Melissa said, jumping back out of the SUV.

  She sprinted across the parking lot toward them.

  “Melissa,” Nash said, appearing relieved to see a friendly face. “Thanks for being here.”

  “I told you I would be,” she said, smiling. “To tell the truth, I thought you were going to stay in custody.”

  “Naw, my Uncle Brady took care of everything,” he beamed, hugging his uncle’s shoulder.

  “Well, the bondsman was nice enough to accompany me to the hearing,” Brady smiled. “Soon as we knew the amount, we finished the transaction and the lady in the bond department detoured the deputies. The wheels of justice move smoothly when they’re properly greased.”

  Melissa thought of the $12,000 they’d seen in Nash’s room. The bond would be ten percent of the bail amount. Since the money hadn’t been seized, it wasn’t really evidence. She couldn’t think of a better use of the money then buying Nash some time and freedom while they tried to help him with these trumped-up charges.

  “Nash, I don’t have to tell you, but the sheriff is gunning for you. I wouldn’t blame you for considering some options other than a trial, but whatever you do, stay put.”

  “We think the sheriff would like nothing better than to charge you with absconding,” Brian added. “The more circumstantial pieces he can put together, the guiltier you look to a jury, understand?”