THE HERBALIST (Books 1-5)

by Leslie Leigh

  ~~~

  NARCISSUS and NIGHTSHADE

  Chapter 1

  To say it was shattering for the small town of Catalonia when young Jim James jumped to his death through his second-story apartment window onto Main Street was an understatement. They were just getting back to normal after the murder last spring of a successful jewelry artist who had lived among them for several years.

  Catalonia was a sweet little town in the Santa Rita Mountains of southeastern Arizona, known for its art, historic buildings, and Melissa B.’s Market. They weren’t eager to be known as Arizona’s “Other Boot Hill.”

  James left behind an adorable fiancée and an attic full of strange and frightening art. Each one was a dark and disturbing self-portrait, often a violent portrayal. To most, James Michael James’s work was simply violent and terrifying. James, of course, kept insisting that the paintings were brilliant, and thus could not understand why no shop owners in Catalonia wanted to display them.

  A couple of shop owners had tried carrying James’s work in the interest of supporting local artists, but the complaints from a few tourists and several citizens and shop owners had been loud and vociferous. “Nobody wants to be blindsided by this stuff,” one town council member had said.

  George Hall showed up at every town council meeting or any public venue where he could get an ear to complain about James’s art and anyone who was willing to carry it. While Melissa agreed that James’s portrayals could be dark and fairly disturbing, they seemed to unhinge George.

  One of the galleries had set up a wall with some of James’s art. Even though it was away from the open gallery and not directly visible to the public, one could easily come upon it if they wandered far enough into the gallery. George Hall had nearly lost his mind that time and had threatened to “violate” the art if the gallery owner didn’t remove it.

  The gallery owner had left it up even after that because the sheriff’s department had apprised George of the consequences to those actions. However, he finally had to ban George permanently from the gallery after he caught him coming into the store with a bottle of paint thinner in his pocket.

  Melissa felt that James’s art had to be a product of either a violent childhood, some kind of psychosis, or possibly both. He was incredibly handsome, and he could be a charmer when he wanted something, but mostly people thought of him as arrogant with an insatiable need for validation and respect. He insisted that everyone call him James because James was a name to be respected while “Jim” was too bourgeois. “Jim” was how Kimmie introduced him to everyone, but God forbid anyone call him that to his face. There was little other way to describe Jim James than as a narcissist. Melissa had often heard that label applied to arrogant people, but James was the first person she had ever met who fit the classic psychiatric definition.

  His fiancée, Kimmie Thompson, was a wisp of a girl who had grown up nearby. She had met Jim James on a dating site. Kimmie stroked his ego as it had never been stroked before with her slavish devotion. They had a brief online and cell phone courtship after which James showed up on her doorstep, whisking her out of her mother’s home and renting the upstairs apartment of Mrs. Baker’s house on Catalonia’s Main Street for three years now.

  Whenever one talked with Kimmie by herself, it was always, “Well, James thinks this, and James does that,” to the point where one felt as though Kimmie had disappeared altogether, and nothing remained other than James’s echo.

  James had been highly irritated when Melissa wouldn’t allow him to display even one piece in her market. His work might have merit in New York City or L.A., but she had to agree with the majority that it wasn’t really ideal for tourist attractions or natural markets in small towns. She recalled the day that he had come in to ask.

  “What do you think of this one, Melissa?” he asked, turning the canvas of one of his smaller pieces so that she could see the painting.

  Melissa recalled taking a good, hard look at it. “I think it tells me something about you, James.”

  “Really? What do you see?”

  “The tortured soul of an artist.”

  He became animated. “I am a tortured soul,” he said. “At last! Someone who understands me.”

  “I understand you, Jim,” Kim said, looking doe-eyed.

  “It’s just not pleasant to look at,” Melissa said. “I think your work could have merit in some venues, but not here in a natural market and café.”

  James frowned and turned the painted side of the canvas back toward himself to look at it. “How can you not see power and beauty in it?” he asked.

  “If there is power in pain….”

  “If there is? Of course there is,” he said. “Look at the Marquis de Sade or any of the fascist rulers. Power comes from pain; pain creates power. Pain and power drive my art.”

  “Where does your pain come from, James?” she had asked.

  “Just look at me,” he said. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  Melissa looked at him curiously.

  “Being stuck in this godforsaken hole of a town where nobody appreciates my brilliance is my pain. I’m being persecuted for my art,” he said.

  Melissa thought for a minute. While her first thought was “and you love feeling persecuted,” what she said was, “Have you thought about renting that little building down at the other end of Main Street? You could fix it up however you want and create your own gallery.”

  “That’s what I mean about being stuck in this godforsaken hole. I don’t have the money to do that.”

  “We really don’t,” Kimmie said, quietly, “but if we could sell some of his art....”

  “If I did have money, I wouldn’t waste it in this town. I’d get the hell out,” he said vehemently.

  “We,” Kimmie reminded him. “We’d get the hell out.”

  James smoldered. “So, would you display just one of my pictures, Melissa?” he pled.

  “Do you have anything a bit more colorful? A bit more lighthearted? You’re such a good-looking guy, James. Why not paint one that shows your beauty?”

  “He is beautiful, isn’t he?” Kimmie said, smiling. “My beautiful James.”

  “I don’t know how you can look at this and not see beauty,” he insisted. “You said you could see my soul in it. How is that not beautiful?”

  Melissa saw no point in continuing the conversation, so she politely declined, and he walked out in a huff, Kimmie chasing across the store after him.

  After they had gone, Melissa said to Flora. “That girl is sorely in love with him.”

  “In love? More like obsessed. It’s like she doesn’t even exist when he’s around--for either of them. She might just as well disappear into the floor for all he pays attention to her.”

  “Hmmm,” Melissa said. “She seems extremely co-dependent. Is he rescuing her from someone?”

  “Her mother,” a third voice chimed in.

  Both Flora and Melissa jumped. They hadn’t heard Vivian, Melissa’s other counter clerk, come in.

  “I graduated from Sonorita High with her mother, Mindy. Kimmie’s father left before Kimmie could even walk. Her mother doted on her every minute, lavishing all her attention on the girl.”

  “That’s what she wanted to get away from?” Melissa asked.

  “Well, I’ve heard that when Kimmie was in high school her mother still insisted on washing Kimmie’s hair and face for her and combing her long tresses. She told her what to wear, who she could have as friends, and boyfriends were completely out of the question. So, when James came along,” Vivian continued, “the girl jumped at the chance.”

  Melissa’s mind returned to the present. Perhaps little Kimmie had jumped from the frying pan into the fire, from one control freak to another. There’s no worse control freak than the one who feels like he has no control over his life, Melissa thought. The more she thought about it the more it made sense. People tend to seek out those who appear different but still provide them the trappings with which they are mo
st familiar.

  # # #

  That night, Melissa dreamed that she was observing a Witches’ Sabbath. She had been dressed in a deep green hooded robe and brought to a circle.

  “How do you enter the Circle?” she was asked by the Gatekeeper.

  “In perfect love and perfect trust,” she said, and the Gatekeeper stepped aside.

  When she was ushered in, she was met by someone who handed her a broom along with a jar of ointment. She looked at the jar but had trouble focusing on the label. At last, she saw the words Onguent de Vol. Flying Ointment! “What’s in this?” she asked the one who handed it to her.

  “Henbane, Hemlock, and Nightshade,” the figure replied.

  Melissa awoke with a start when her kitty, Sweet Pea, jumped on the bed. She lay there a few minutes trying to gather her dreams. She felt that her last dream had been significant in some way, but Sweet Pea’s antics seemed to have chased it away.

  She turned onto her back, and Sweet Pea climbed onto her chest and lay down, wanting Melissa to pet her. She pretended that the kitty was thinking, “I love you, Melissa” when she knew it was more likely, “If I let her pet me, she’ll get up and feed me.”

  Melissa laughed and got up, shooing the cat from the bed. She paused for a second midway across the room still trying to grasp what the dream had been about and what she was supposed to remember.

  Chapter 2

  Flora was putting her freshly baked muffins into the bakery case when Melissa came in that morning.

  “Mmm…they smell terrific!” Melissa said.

  “Do you want one? I have muffins in the kitchen that are still warm. Apple-cinnamon.”

  “Sounds great! I’ll put on the coffee,” Melissa said.

  “Oh, guess what I heard last night,” Flora said over her shoulder, as she returned to the kitchen.”

  “Tell me,” Melissa said, as if the woman would need any prodding.

  “I had dinner with Miss Ada and a couple of her friends, and Ada said that Jim James was flying around his kitchen and dining room like a madman just before he jumped.”

  “How would anyone know that?” Melissa said.

  “I guess that’s what Kimmie told the sheriff.”

  “And who’s privy to that information?” Melissa asked.

  “Have you forgotten that Ada’s nephew is a deputy sheriff?”

  “I thought he was assigned to the new jail in Nogales.”

  “Well, you know how talk gets around.”

  “I guess so,” Melissa said. “Were there more details than that?”

  “Apparently, he was babbling and said, ‘They’re coming for me! They’re coming for me! Look, they’re here!’ just before he jumped.”

  “That’s strange for someone about to commit suicide,” Melissa said. “Did Kimmie put that into any context?”

  “That seemed to be all Ada knew.”

  “So, when did you start hanging around with Miss Ada and her friends? They’re not really your speed,” Melissa said, laughing.

  “I find them quite useful when there’s information to be had,” Flora said, winking.

  “I’ll bet,” Melissa said, and they both laughed.”

  Flora went back into the kitchen to clean up from the baking, and Melissa thought about what Miss Ada had meant—specifically about him “flying”—when it triggered the memory of her dream.

  Flying ointment had been the label on the jar she saw. She stood stock still, pulling at her memory. Henbane, hemlock, and belladonna the figure had told her. She felt a sudden nervousness, a sense of urgency that always meant she needed to pay attention to what her subconscious was telling her—pay attention and follow up on it.

  She got a cup of coffee, and one of Flora’s warm muffins. She must have had that look on her face that said she was working something out in her mind because Flora didn’t say another word.

  Vivian arrived and opened the shop, allowing Melissa to retreat to her office. Melissa sipped her coffee and stared straight ahead, asking herself what the dream meant. Hemlock always represented death to her. Plus, she didn’t think that it was a coincidence that Flora had told her about James flying around before he jumped through the window.

  Flying ointment was something that witches in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries supposedly used in their sabbaths to fly around on their brooms. However, perhaps that was just a metaphor in her dream. Melissa knew that it had been postulated that the “flying unguent” that they supposedly rubbed on their brooms to make them fly was actually applied to sensitive body tissues which, when absorbed, gave them a feeling of euphoria and a sense of flying. Hadn’t she heard that same term “flying” applied to other hallucinogens?

  Hmm, she thought, hallucinogens like henbane and belladonna? But it would take so much to cause hallucinations great enough to cause somebody to throw themselves out of a window. What if…what if Jim’s death hadn’t been suicide? What if it had been influenced by hallucinogens? It had been less than 24 hours. They wouldn’t embalm him because Kimmie had requested he be cremated, but should there be a coroner’s report first?

  She picked up her phone to call her friend, Dr. Hal Mercer, whose family lived in her childhood home now. She glanced at the time and saw it was early enough still that he wasn’t likely to be with a patient. She found his name in her contacts, and pressed to call him.

  “Hal?” she said. “It’s Melissa.” She took a deep breath. Hal knew her well. He knew and trusted her methods and sensitivities, but it was always hard to approach just anyone.

  “Hal, is it too late to request an autopsy on Jim James?”

  “Maybe not, but why? What do you know?”

  “Unfortunately, I know only a little, but…I have reason to suspect something.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  “Well, Flora told me she had it on good authority that James was flying wildly around the room and saying, ‘They’re coming for me. They’re coming for me.’ Then, he said, ‘Look, they’re here,’ just before he jumped.”

  “Hmm…kind of odd behavior for someone about to commit suicide.”

  “My though exactly. What if there were hallucinogens in his system?”

  “It would have to be a massive dose,” he said.

  “Have you ever prescribed belladonna for him?”

  “Actually, I have. He was suffering from a spastic colon for a while, but surely you don’t think…?”

  “How long did he take it?”

  “That was a couple of years ago, but it was only like for 30 days or something.”

  “In what strength?”

  “I’d have to check, Melissa. Why?”

  “Because I have reason to believe that it was belladonna that caused him to ‘fly.’ Was it in suppository form?”

  “No. I gave him drops.”

  “What are you thinking, Melissa? Even if he took all of one of those tiny bottles at once, it wouldn’t have caused those kinds of hallucinations.”

  “I know. I’m grasping at straws here; but, I still think he should be examined before he’s cremated.”

  “Okay, suppose you’re right. What would it prove? It would just move it from suicide to accidental death.”

  Melissa was silent for a moment, thinking.

  “Well, one, it could give Kimmie some piece of mind to know it wasn’t suicide, and two, if he had that much of an illegal substance, other than a street drug, in his system, it would be useful to find out where it came from. Perhaps someone’s guilty of criminal negligence.”

  “You mean if it was doctor who just gave him a whole bottle or something.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then that’s a possible crime, and there does need to be an autopsy. I’ll make some phone calls.”

  “Thanks, Hal. I owe you one.”

  “Aw, heck,” he said, “just make me my own box of Chelsea buns.”

  “Done!” she said.

  # # #

  A couple of days later, Melissa heard car d
oors slam and saw the county sheriff and one of his deputies getting out of their patrol car. Her heart skipped a beat, as they headed for the door of the market. The sheriff wasn’t a regular customer, so she only saw him when he had news.

  “What is Scopa…Scopo…oh, here,” the sheriff said, handing Melissa a sticky note with the word, scopolamine, written on it. “Everybody thought Jim James died from injuries sustained in the fall, but the coroner’s report showed…that,” he said, pointing at the sticky note.

  “Like a lot of scopolamine?” Belladonna! she thought. Both belladonna and henbane contained scopolamine. Her dream had been about James.

  “You tell me,” he said, handing her the coroner’s report.

  She just stared at him for a second before looking at the report. She could barely contain her shock. She knew that a coroner’s report would be for law enforcement or a medical expert’s eyes only in the case of an investigation.

  “Good Grief! It looks like he had residual amounts of the scopolamine in his tissues but a lot in his stomach.”

  “Can you give me an interpretation of that?”

  “It means that he had been taking scopolamine in some form for quite a while, but then he ingested a whole lot of it right before he died.”

  “Enough to kill him?”

  She looked back at the report, “That depends on the individual, but given the residual he had, it would have—at the very least—caused major hallucinations.”

  “Like something that could cause him to throw himself out of a window?”

  “It could.”

  “Where would he get it?”

  “The stuff he was taking all the time would have been prescribed by a doctor, and the quantity he had in his stomach could only be obtained by a doctor, but no self-respecting doctor, or, let me rephrase that, any doctor who wanted to keep his license, would allow anyone to have that large of a quantity of the substance to self-administer.”

  “Do you carry it?”