THE HERBALIST (Books 1-5)

by Leslie Leigh

  Cynthia smiled. “I brought you a little basket from the bakery, Helen,” she said.

  “How do you know my first name?” Helen asked.

  “We’ve met several times at various events here in the neighborhood,” she responded.

  “And she was here in this house last summer when I was home,” she said.

  “Oh-h-h-h,” Mrs. Hodges said, clearly assenting without remembering. “Well, do sit down, please. My husband just passed away.”

  “Yes,” Cynthia said. “I’m very sorry to hear that. Was he ill?”

  “He’d had a heart condition for years,” Mrs. Hodges said.

  Cheri just looked at Cynthia and Melissa.

  As they all sat down, Melissa glanced at Cheri, trying to sense her. The oddest thing of all, Melissa thought, was that no one seemed too distraught at Mr. Hodges’ passing.

  “I’m not sure what I’ll do now. We only had the one girl, and she lives in the Midwest,” Mrs. Hodges said, talking as though she weren’t aware of Cheri’s presence.

  “I’m right here, Mama,” Cheri said, bending toward her mother so that their faces were close together.

  “Oh, Cheri!” she said. “Sweetheart, when did you get here?”

  That was really all Melissa needed to hear, so she stood.

  “I think I’ll leave you all to get reacquainted,” Melissa said. “Brian will be back shortly and, I need to get in touch with the girls at my market.” She knew that she sounded lame and disjointed.

  “Sure,” Cheri said.

  Melissa took her hand as she walked to the door. “Perhaps you and I can have coffee sometime while I’m here?”

  “I’d like that a lot.”

  “It was lovely to meet you, Mrs. Hodges,” Melissa said.

  “You, too, dear.”

  “Mom, I’ll see you and Gary for breakfast tomorrow—what time?”

  “What works best for you two—nine? Ten?”

  “Let’s split the difference. We’ll see you at nine thirty.”

  “Nine thirty it is,” Cynthia said.

  # # #

  It was another hour before Brian got back, but Melissa needed to talk to Flora and to think some more. She hadn’t sensed anything particularly deceptive about Cheri, but some people were good at hiding it—in the beginning.

  This time, her mother hadn’t oriented at all. Melissa still felt it was the strain of the last couple of days—her husband passing away, visitors popping up all over the place, Cheri coming in—that was exacerbating it.

  Her mother was still at the Hodges’ when Brian returned, and they left for the cabin right away.

  “Everything is set to go forward,” he said. “They’ll have forensics over there first thing in the morning. It has to go to Sacramento to be run, and of course I don’t have friends in the lab there, so who knows how long it will take to get the results?”

  “I’m not sure it makes any difference now as far as Mrs. Hodges is concerned; she never oriented at all while we were there. She didn’t know Mom or I, and at one point she didn’t even remember that Cheri was there—even though she was sitting right next to her.”

  “Sounds serious,” he said.

  “Unfortunately, though, this lays nothing to rest because there is one huge question hanging out there like a flag on the Fourth of July: how is it that this woman who can’t remember who is in the room with her for five minutes could remember to give her husband poison every day?”

  “Supposing we actually find that to be true, that he was poisoned by the foxglove, what’s your theory?” he asked.

  “I wish I had one. There are so many variables. I mean, was she that disoriented before Mr. Hodges passed, or is that a result of the stress? Is she experiencing some kind of break with reality due to the shock?”

  “Do you think any of this could possibly be an indicator that she was, in fact, psychologically abused? Could it almost be a psychotic break of some kind? Can prolonged verbal abuse bring on this type of dementia?” asked Brian.

  “Wait, when you said ‘psychotic break’, yesterday when Mrs. Hodges was telling me the story about Mr. Hodges coming home from the war to a hysterical two year old who screamed every time he stepped into the room, I remember thinking that that could have been a psychotic break, and I know that psychotic breaks can also be triggered by the loss of a loved one. She was pretty dependent on her husband, it seems. So you may be on to something there.

  “I kept looking for signs of depression, but in a psychotic break, mild delusions are not rare.”

  “Mild?”

  “Then, let’s just say that delusions are a pretty common symptom.”

  “So, does that mean then that up until yesterday she was perfectly lucid?”

  “Cheri said that her mother says kind of off-the-wall things sometimes, but that she really hadn’t noticed any major dementia.”

  “So, then it’s not impossible that up until yesterday, she could have been administering the poison on her own in a very consistent manner.”

  “No, it’s not impossible.”

  “But that puts us back to square one, right? About what to do with an 80-year old woman who may be a murderer?”

  Melissa sighed. “After we have breakfast with Mom and Gary tomorrow, I’m going to go back to the Hodges’ home. I need to sit myself down and see what’s really going on there. I feel like there’s a big gap here somewhere.”

  “Is it a big gap, or are we just not ready to admit the possibility that what Cheri told your mom in the first place is the truth.”

  “I want to hear the rest of that story she was telling me about Cheri’s dad coming home after the war. Maybe if I’m really patient and don’t try to re-orient her—just work with her wherever she is, I can get it out of her.”

  Chapter 11

  Brian and Melissa arrived at her mother’s a little after nine the next morning. Melissa had brought along a plethora of fruits to make a fruit salad—something light to go along with Gary’s biscuits and gravy.

  Her mother had a large kitchen, nearly as large as the one at the cabin, so the three of them could work without falling over each other. Brian sat down at the island separating the kitchen from the living room so he could keep abreast of the conversation.

  The kitchen soon smelled heavenly. Cynthia made the biscuits with Gary’s recipe, and he made the gravy. Melissa cut up and combined the fruit into a beautiful mélange, then whipped up some whipping cream with a bit of sugar and nutmeg to serve on the side.

  “I hated biscuits and gravy for a long time,” Brian said. “I always thought of it as army food—SOS—and nothing that anybody ate by choice. Then, I had friends who would eat it for breakfast when we went out together, but I remained unimpressed—until I was spending the weekend in a little B&B in the Midwest and she served it one morning. It looked like no other biscuit gravy I had ever seen—it was dark and rich. So, I tried it. I was in love. Unfortunately, I’ve never found it like that again, anywhere.”

  “Well, you’re in for a real treat, then,” Cynthia said.

  “This is something I never tried to fix when my kids were growing up, but when Gary introduced me to his recipe, it was to-die-for.”

  “You have to have the right kind of sausage and find the right consistency for the gravy,” he said. “Then, putting that over big, fluffy biscuits makes it all mouthwatering.”

  “My tale is that as a student nutritionist, I thought eating something like this was absolute heresy until I discovered that, as long as you’re not insulin resistant, you can eat pretty much anything as long as it’s real food—not processed or packaged. That’s why you don’t see my market shelves crowded with boxes and cans. Some people are under the impression that just exchanging regular processed food for organic processed food will make you healthy.”

  With the biscuits in the oven, Cynthia and Melissa proceeded to set the table with festive tableware, cloth napkins with rings, and champagne flutes.

  “Ooh, I almost
forgot,” Cynthia said, bringing out a liquid orange concoction along with a bottle of champagne and an opener. Melissa’s eyes got big.

  “Mother! When did you ever…?”

  Cynthia laughed. “Oh, Gary has taught me all sorts of fun things,” she said, looking at him with mischief in her eye.

  “So you two have been together for a while now, haven’t you?” Melissa asked.

  “About a year, maybe a little more,” Gary said.

  “That must be a record for you, Mom, since Dad died.”

  Cynthia’s jaw dropped, and Gary just smirked.

  “Oh, I know all about your mother’s reputation,” he said. “Why do you think I wanted to go out with her?”

  Now Cynthia turned toward Gary who pinched her bottom and kissed her on the mouth. Melissa blushed and Brian looked quite amused.

  “The difference is, I think she’s a keeper,” he said.

  Melissa looked at the two of them and decided that they really did have deep affection for one another.

  Brian declared that Gary and Cynthia’s biscuits and gravy probably surpassed those he’d eaten in the Midwest.

  When the food was gobbled up and the kitchen clean, Gary wanted to take Brian with him to shop for outdoor wear, so Melissa invited her mother to go with her to pay an unannounced visit to the Hodges.

  The men left first, and Melissa turned to her mom. “Do you and Gary talk about getting married?” she asked.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “We don’t even live together, although we might as well. He has his stuff and I have mine.” She laughed. “I just don’t know how necessary it really is at our age, and it has nothing to do with lack of commitment. We both enjoy each other’s company so much we have no desire to be with anyone else. The only break we would get if we were married is on taxes, but with both our incomes, it’s not really that big of a deal. What about you and Brian, dear?”

  “I guess I deserve that question since I brought it up to you,” Melissa chuckled. “Truthfully, it’s something we’ve never even talked about.”

  “Never? Or you just weren’t listening?”

  Melissa smiled. “Mother it took me a year to even realize that I loved him.”

  “A year?”

  “I think you got it all, Mother.”

  “All what?”

  “The attraction to men. I was perfectly willing to live single in my little cottage, but…” she said to deflect the words that her mother was about to say, “I one day woke up to what I have with him, and it finally started to stoke the flame. I really envy your spontaneity with Gary.”

  “I guess I’m just an affectionate person, but I think as you allow yourself to grow in affection for Brian that you’ll be more spontaneous.”

  “The only thing that I really wonder about is how divergent our goals are.”

  “Tell me,” Cynthia said.

  “It’s kind of like what you said on the phone. I’d like to expand my business. If we were in the business together, it would be one thing, but Brian’s just not the type. And you really are right—with as much as we’d be apart if we had separate careers, it wouldn’t be much of a marriage. I’d rather stay single than have one of those successful but always separate marriages. I guess it depends on what one’s idea of a successful marriage is.”

  “And what’s yours, Melissa?”

  “As much as I didn’t mind being alone, I do really enjoy our companionship. We learn so much from each other; it’s nice to be on the same par intellectually with your partner.”

  “Companionship is nearly everything in my book. When you get too old to have sex, you can still talk and cuddle.”

  Melissa laughed. “There’s that,” she said.

  “What makes me nervous, and I only say nervous because it’s such a big unknown and would be a huge decision for me, is that he wants to travel the world. I really can’t do that and have a successful business.”

  “If he wasn’t working, how would he do that?”

  “Oh, I guess I hadn’t told you that a friend of his just died and left him two million dollars in cash and property. If he manages it right, he could leverage that into a comfortable living.”

  “That’s nice at his age. But really, Melissa, as much PI work as you’ve gotten him lately, thanks to Dr. Mercer, I don’t see why you couldn’t live together in Catalonia and just do as you’re doing now. Do you really feel the necessity to expand your business?”

  “I suppose not. I just think it would be really fun to be a baker, especially if I open a whole foods bakery.”

  “And not practice your herbalism?”

  “I know, Mom. My problem is I want to do it all, and now that Brian has come along, I want to do even more.”

  “I’m sure you two will work it out, sweetie. Nothing is insurmountable when you approach it together.”

  Cynthia stroked Melissa’s cheek as she spoke, and they walked out the door toward the Hodges.

  # # #

  “Cheri isn’t here, dear,” Mrs. Hodges said, greeting them at the door. “She went to get her hair fixed.”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Hodges, we’re here to see you anyway.”

  “Oh, how nice. I’ve had quite a lot of company over the last couple of days. I’ve rather enjoyed it. We didn’t get many social calls when Mike was around.”

  Melissa’s ears pricked up at that. “He wasn’t very social?” she asked.

  “Not social at all. Once Cheri left home, he never begrudged me going and doing as I wanted, but he didn’t like people and he just wanted to stay home. When we lived out in the country, he was in his element. He had a big workshop and spent a lot of time doing all sorts of projects. But when we moved here so that he didn’t have all that heavy work to do, he started having heart problems.”

  “So he did have heart problems?”

  “Oh, yes, dear. He took digitalis for years.”

  “That’s why I gave him that tonic every day, trying to keep him strong, but I guess when it’s your time it’s your time.”

  “Tonic?” Melissa asked.

  “Yes, a men’s tonic that I got out of a book. It was so easy, I could just grow the ingredients right here in my garden.”

  Melissa heart skipped a beat.

  Mrs. Hodges got up from her chair and went to the kitchen. In a moment she was back with a 3x5 card in her hand.

  “Here,” she said. “You should copy it down. Maybe you’ll need it someday for your men, not that it did mine much good, but I always said it was his disposition that would do him in.”

  Melissa took the card from her and looked at it. It was a scrawl, but the handwriting did not look like that of an elderly person, more like one who had just learned cursive in grade school. At the top of the card it said simply “Men’s Tonic.” The recipe was for decocting foxglove by the water method. It even had the dosage on it. At the bottom of the card it said, “Good for heart balance.”

  Melissa closed her eyes. There was really more to a digitalis tonic than was detailed in this recipe, but it would have worked for a while, had Mr. Hodges not already been on digitalis.

  “So, your husband was seeing a cardiologist?”

  “Only about twice a year. That was all I could get him out of the house and to the office.”

  “When he started having strange symptoms a few weeks ago, you couldn’t get him to go to the doctor?”

  “His appointment was going to be next Tuesday. It took us a long time to get in.”

  “How long had you been giving him this tonic, Mrs. Hodges?”

  “For about six months, I guess, right after his last appointment when the doctor warned him that his heart was becoming enlarged, going into…into….”

  “Hypertrophy?”

  “That sounds like it.”

  “What was the doctor going to do?”

  “He was worried because his blood pressure was higher than normal, so he put him on a new water pill.”

  Melissa nodded her head. “Where did yo
u get this recipe, Mrs. Hodges?”

  “I found it in a book.”

  “You found the recipe in a book and wrote it down?”

  “No, I found the card in a book not very long ago when I was looking through some old things of Cheri’s.”

  Melissa didn’t know what to say. It was the worst of “self-doctoring” gone wrong. Why did Cheri have it in the first place, she wondered.

  “Could I see the book, Mrs. Hodges?”

  “Why sure. Just a minute.”

  She came back with a thick, brown, leather-bound book with handcrafted paper pages. The front was embossed with golden-leafed vines around a hexagram. In the center of the hexagram were the letters BOS.

  “Is this Cheri’s?” Melissa asked.

  “I think so,” Mrs. Hodges said. “I’d never seen it before, but it’s her handwriting. It had been packed away for years before we moved here, and I didn’t open the boxes; I just stored them in the back bedroom.”

  “If it’s Cheri’s,” Cynthia said, “whose initials are those?”

  “It’s an acronym, not initials,” Melissa said.

  Just then, the door opened and Cheri came in. As she approached them, she stopped abruptly and stared.

  “What on earth are you doing with my Book of Shadows?” she said.

  “Your mother was showing us where she found the recipe for the tonic she was giving your dad,” Melissa said, as she slipped the card into her pants pocket.

  “Really? In there? That’s hilarious. I haven’t seen that since I was, like, in junior high.”

  “These things have always fascinated me, being an herbalist and all,” Melissa said. “Do you suppose I could keep it for a day or two and look through it?”

  “S-sure,” Cheri said, a bit dubious. “Although I’m not sure how much interest you’ll find in the occult ramblings of a twelve-year-old.”

  Melissa glanced out the window and saw that the men had returned from their shopping trip.

  “Oh, look, Mom. Gary and Brian are back. Let’s go see what they brought us.”

  “Pffft,” Cynthia said. “They were in a sporting goods store. Do you think we even crossed their minds?”

  Everybody chuckled, and Melissa and Cynthia made their way out the door, Melissa clutching the Book of Shadows.