THE HERBALIST (Books 1-5)

by Leslie Leigh

  “Why wouldn’t she just falsify the fingerprint records as well, then?” Melissa asked.

  Brian shook his head again. “That’s much, much trickier, and the whole hacking thing to create more than one identity for the fingerprints makes a lot more sense than her being fingerprinted three different times under three different identities.”

  “What would her motive be for doing this?”

  Brian sat back and thought for a moment. “Maybe her license was pulled at some point, but, no…that doesn’t make sense because I’m sure her fingerprints would have been flagged then. Somehow, she’s been doing this for a while without anybody noticing.”

  “Do we have any idea how old she is?”

  “Not yet.”

  “It’s really tough to think of a legitimate reason she might do this, so what might be a more nefarious reason?”

  “I…I don’t know. I still need more information to even begin to put this together.”

  She came to the table and kissed him on the forehead, and he encircled her waist.

  “I’ve not had the best of days,” she said. “I started out the morning reading the riot act to Kim, and it just went downhill from there. Seeing you in my kitchen is a real treat,” she said smiling.

  “I’m very glad you feel that way,” he said.

  “I’m going to jump in the shower,” she announced. “I didn’t get home when I thought I would, so I’m kind of behind the power curve.”

  “No problem,” he said. “Sweet Pea and I will catch up on our mutual admiration. I think we both need to backpedal a little bit in order to go forward.”

  # # #

  She came out, dressed and ready in a half hour.

  He laughed. “You’re my kinda gal. If you can look this great and be ready to go somewhere in a half hour….”

  “It’s not exactly a formal affair,” she said. “That makes it easier.”

  “Well, then, I promise to cut you some slack if we ever get invited to a black tie event.”

  # # #

  Dinner at the Mercers’ house was an unexpected pleasure. They had fed the kids early and dispatched them to their rooms to do homework, so that they could talk freely.

  Melissa decided to wait until the main meal was over before bringing up the situation. As Eileen served a delicate angel food cake, spooned with a blackberry sauce and real whipped cream, Melissa asked the doctor if he had any ideas since they talked.

  “I have, actually,” he said. “It’s rather odd, but as an herbalist, Melissa, maybe you will have a greater appreciation for it. I looked for anything that could elevate the digoxin level without showing up. There were two possibilities, one was that the blood was taken less than eight hours after ingestion, which, as slow as the wheels turn around her, I rather doubt. But the other possibility is a false-negative when the digoxin has come from an herbal source such as foxglove.”

  Melissa knit her brow. “Foxglove,” she said, “or oleander! Bingo!”

  Brian looked at her quizzically.

  She turned to him, “Do you remember those huge bushes that obscured the front of their house, the ones with thousands of blossoms?”

  He nodded.

  “Those are oleander.”

  “Would a nurse know that?” Brian asked.

  “One with herbal knowledge would, or…one who has studied poisons.”

  Everyone was dumbstruck for a few seconds, pondering the significance of the revelations.

  “I may be premature,” Melissa said, “but I think gross negligence just got upgraded to murder.”

  “But why?” Dr. Mercer wanted to know. “Does she fancy herself a female Jack Kevorkian?”

  “I think Corinne would tell us,” Brian said, quietly, “that the difference between Jack Kevorkian’s patients and her father was that they were willing. According to Corinne, her father was not.”

  “Let me take that a bit further,” Melissa said. “Lloyd Johnston was a hospice patient; but, he just wanted to be left alone and have palliative care only. His doctor kept after him to undergo more procedures, so Lloyd applied for hospice care. It wasn’t as if Lloyd had any illusions that he wasn’t going to die, but he felt ok and wasn’t in a lot of pain. Corinne said he enjoyed just sitting in his rocker, looking out at the mountains and the pastures. I also think another telling thing is that he died lying on his bed with his clothes and shoes on. If it were planned euthanasia, he would have been in bed, probably in pajamas.”

  “And I doubt that it would have been achieved by overdosing him on digoxin,” Dr. Mercer said. “That would definitely not be a way to go out gently.”

  “Brian, tell Dr. Mercer what you discovered via the fingerprints,” Melissa urged.

  “Well, there’s a whole story behind it, but suffice it to say that Melissa and I found something we felt belonged to the nurse and had it dusted for prints. When I checked the database, the same set of prints came back to three different nurses.”

  “How could that happen?” Dr. Mercer asked.

  “Well, I think she did it via hacking, but the interesting part is that the database accepts the fingerprints but has no way of cross-referencing them. If someone raised a red flag about her, it would likely be discovered in the same way I discovered it, but evidently no one has.”

  “The prints aren’t in the national database?”

  “If you mean the criminal database, no. And since there really isn’t any nationwide nurse registry, there likely isn’t a sharing of information between states. A nurse can be licensed in multiple states, but I think we would have to send the prints to each state board individually to find out anything. It might actually be easier to see if there are reports of other similar unsolved cases.”

  “But that means someone would have to know quite a bit to question it.”

  “True. It’s easy enough to check. Whether or not we’ll get any hits is another question all together.”

  “Sadly, so many of the elderly are not in touch with anyone else at all, or sporadically at best,” Melissa said. “Even if they have regular contact, I’m guessing it’s rare to have daily contact like Corinne and her dad did. I could be wrong.”

  “Let’s hope in the digital age you are wrong,” Brian said. “Email and text have made daily contact much easier if the parent is at all capable.”

  “I’ll put out a call for similar unsolved cases tonight.”

  The four of them turned to lighter conversation, and Melissa helped Eileen clean up while Dr. Mercer and Brian got better acquainted. Dr. Mercer had hired Brian upon a friend’s recommendation when Melissa had been a suspect briefly in a murder case fifteen months ago. They had talked briefly from time-to-time, but this was the first chance they had really had to get to know each other.

  “Hal tells me that Kim James is working for you,” Eileen ventured.

  Melissa issued a heavy sigh. “Yes, she is. Did you know that Jim’s brother is in town and is attempting to woo her?”

  Eileen’s eyes opened wide. “Oh, no. How long has he been here?”

  “Well, let’s see, right now, I believe he’s been here about fifty-seven hours.”

  “And you’re not exaggerating when you say woo?”

  Melissa shook her head. “He was in the café late this morning, and I overheard him ask her why she was working because it took too much time away from us. I think what he meant, more likely, was me. I don’t know if he is a classic narcissist like James was, but he’s going to have to go a long way to impress me.” She was getting irritated just thinking about it again. “I kind of knew something like this was going to happen. Kim was too rational and logical once the whole mystery of Jim’s death was solved, but she hasn’t really allowed herself to grieve—in my opinion. Her emotions are really mixed up, and I’m afraid that she’ll misplace her grief by falling head over heels for Brandon.”

  Eileen nodded, understandingly, and place her hands over Melissa’s. “You’re not her mother, Melissa.”

  “Sh
e doesn’t really have one she can rely on, so I suppose I’ve kind of taken on that role.”

  “Is her mother abusive?”

  “According to Kim, she’s at the very least overbearing.”

  “Have you ever met the woman?”

  “I have.”

  “What was your impression?”

  Melissa thought about that for a minute. “I…I really didn’t get much of an impression. We were there for such a short time.”

  “So, it’s possible that Kim’s resistance is just latent teen rebellion?”

  “Well, something has made her desperate to be loved.”

  “Just not having a father can do that,” Eileen said. “A lot of young girls, if they were in some way abandoned by their fathers, are extremely co-dependent on males. Any male that will give them the attention they need is the one they fixate on.”

  “But I want to protect her.”

  “I know you do, but you’re only her boss—and perhaps not that for very much longer.”

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “I tried this morning, but I botched it completely.”

  “Maybe not,” she said. “Your words will likely come back to her—hopefully when the need is greatest.”

  Melissa was able to smile at her a little. “Thanks for that. I do need to let it go.”

  They rejoined the men in the living room. Eileen brought in a tray with four glasses and a bottle of dessert wine. They sipped and spoke of pleasant things—books, philosophies, and movies they had seen. They tried to keep murder as far from their minds as possible.

  Chapter 5

  Carl’s biggest task at this time of year was keeping the veggies from getting damaged by the rains. Most of them were pretty hardy, but he worried over his tomatoes. He didn’t want them to fall off the vine too early.

  He would end up picking most of them just before they ripened because they would continue to ripen off the vine, and by August, the grasshoppers would have set in. Those critters wouldn’t touch a green tomato, but give it the slightest tinge of red and he’d find his tomatoes chewed.

  The purple and green bush beans were prolific, and he gathered them by the pound daily. The kale was ready to cut, and plenty of other greens were ready for harvest, as well. It kept both he and Dale hopping in the mornings, so that they could take the sweltering afternoons off.

  The season’s rains were productive, as well, which was good news for a parched desert. Unlike many deserts around the world, the Sonoran desert was rich and lush. Riparian areas were abundant, but all of it had suffered for the last eight years. Most people in the rural areas such as Catalonia understood that the heat and humidity they endured throughout the summer meant good things for the land.

  But there were always a few killjoys who complained about it constantly, and one of them was filling Melissa with her current tales of woe. Melissa always felt caught between not wanting to encourage it and also not ignoring them. Either end of the continuum made things worse.

  It was one of the hazards she had come to grips with in being the owner of a prominent store in a small town. She became a sounding board. But even as that thought passed through her head, she wondered what had happened to make her so judgmental of late. She was kind to all, but she allowed some to irritate her more than others. As she pondered that, she recalled reading a quote by a sensei of Aikido that said, “My students think I don't lose my center. That is not so; I simply recognize it sooner and get back faster."

  She felt better when she recalled the quote. It always felt better when she could exert control over what she was doing. It wasn’t that she could maintain perfection and never get irritated, it was simply that she had to recognize when it was happening and return to her center. After all, wasn’t irritation just a form of anxiety? She thought how annoyed she had been with Kim and realized it was all from her own anxiety for the girl.

  Her phone rang, and she used the opportunity to extricate herself from the talker.

  “I haven’t called the county yet,” Brian said. “I wanted to wait until I got the report back on similar cases. They’re still coming in, but there’s one right up the road from you.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “The address is Vail, but it’s out on the Santa Rita highway. The person died two days before Lloyd Johnston.”

  “That’s Pima County then,” Melissa said.

  “Yes. So, there’s one in Pima that we know of, and one in your county. I’m going to try to track down next of kin and see what the story is. If it’s considered suspicious circumstances, somebody had to make the complaint.”

  “What concerns me is if she pulled two in that short of time, where’s she going next?”

  “I have over a dozen reports now, ten from other western states—all suspicious circumstances, apparent digoxin overdose with no supporting tox screen.”

  “Ye gods, we can hope that a lot of them are like Hal said, lab sample taken too early and not repeated.”

  “One can hope.”

  “Over what period of time?”

  “Let’s see…three years.”

  “And those are only the reported ones! Any others in close proximity or close in time?”

  “Not really. But as you say, these are only the reported ones.”

  “I’m going to see if she’s working under any of her aliases in other nearby counties.”

  “Good idea.”

  “We also have to consider that she could be working for a private agency.”

  “That could take a while.”

  “The registry should also show their last place of employment.”

  “Without an employer ID, I’m limited in what I can find out. I have a buddy who could possibly tap in….”

  “Wait. Hal would have access to that information as a potential employer. Can you get with him, giving him her aliases?”

  “Perfect! I will do that now.”

  # # #

  Brian had called back to say that Hal had found one of her aliases listed as working for a small agency in Cochise County. A call to the agency, as might have been expected, proved fruitless, as they said she was no longer employed there.

  Melissa reasoned out that she might still be visiting at least one or two of the patients, because once she was a familiar face, no one would question whether or not she was still working for the agency.

  They decided it was time to enlist the help of law enforcement because to allow the nurse to continue to work unimpeded could result in another death, yet they didn’t want the horn blown until they had the evidence they needed that would result in more than getting her license pulled, especially since it apparently hadn’t deterred her before.

  Both Melissa and Brian dreaded talking to the sheriff, but they knew they had no choice. His love for them was not great, but he also knew that the two of them had solved more than one murder for him already.

  “What can I do for you two?” Sheriff Estevez asked.

  Brian and Melissa took turns filling the sheriff in on everything they knew to date.

  “Why is this the first I’m hearing about it?”

  “To be honest, Sheriff Estevez,” Brian said, “we weren’t even sure until a couple of days ago that there was anything more than a grieving daughter’s imagination. But once the info started coming in, it seemed to overflow the banks quickly.”

  “I know you two, and I don’t think you’ve come to just drop this in my lap and leave. So what do you want?”

  “We think the next step is to have a meeting with the top people at the Board of Nursing. They need a heads up so they can start taking action, but we also don’t want them to compromise our investigation. Do you have a detective you could send with us to lend some authority to our request?”

  The sheriff stared at them, thinking, and then said, “Detective Harms is the one I want to send. Let me call him, and you can bring him up to speed.”

  Brian and Melissa exchanged surprised looks. They hadn’t ex
pected it to be nearly this easy. Would there be a catch?

  Detective Harms’ looks belied his name. He was professional and courteous—and didn’t look a bit hardboiled. One supposed there might be less detective work in this county than others. They had different fish to fry.

  “I’m surprised it has taken this long for us to meet. I understand that you have solved a couple of murders for us over the past year and a half, Detective Byrne.”

  Melissa was quite sure that Brian would be pleased at the detective putting Brian on equal footing with himself.

  “I certainly can’t take all the credit,” Brian said. “Miss Michaelson and I work quite well together.”

  “Wish I had as fetching a partner,” Harms said.

  Melissa decided to let that slide, and Brian was silent.

  They told him why they were there and filled him in on the details.

  “Have you already contacted the Board?” Harms asked.

  “No, sir. We thought it would be better coming from you.”

  “I suppose it would. Do you have names and phone numbers for me?”

  Brian had them readily available and handed them to the detective. Detective Harms left them sitting in the sheriff’s office to make the contact.

  “I’m rather overwhelmed at the charity we’re receiving today,” Brian said. “You don’t suppose…?”

  “No, I don’t. I think the planets must have aligned for the day or something.”

  Brian chuckled.

  Detective Harms returned. “The good news is they’ll see us. The other news is that we have to be there by two, so we better get on the road. A trip to Phoenix at this time of year is not something I relish, but I don’t see how it’s to be avoided.”

  “I understand, Detective Harms. Thank you so much,” Brian said.

  Harms drove one of the county’s SUVs. Luckily, it was fairly new, so the air conditioning worked well.

  “I just hope we don’t get into one of those haboobs,” Harms said. “They can look far away, but then they’re on you before you know it. I think, though, that we’ve had enough rain over the past few days that there’s not a lot of loose, dry dirt to pick up.”