Next questions: If Margaret had stolen it, did she still have it? Or had Conway already fenced it for her? And why had the chief so deliberately evaded any discussion of Margaret in our conversation earlier that morning? What did he know that I didn’t?
Meanwhile, Conway was not going anywhere. He would no doubt get a lawyer with whom the DA could dicker. If he returned the unsold items and helped to recover those he had sold, he might get the charges reduced from felony larceny to—
Mary Jean appeared at the door. She frowned at me and gave Curtis a starchy smile.
“Time’s up, Chief. And Phyllis just called the nurses station—says to tell you that you need to pick up your cell. It’s urgent.”
“Thanks.” Curtis put a hand on Conway’s arm. “I’m going now, Jed. After I’ve got a few things straight with Amelia—with Margaret, too—I’ll be back and we can start getting this mess cleaned up. You hang tight for now. LeRoy Hatch is sitting right outside the door. Need anything, just ask him.”
This sounded generous, but I knew what it was: a warning that there was a cop standing guard. Take one step out that door, you’ll be wearing cuffs.
Conway knew it, too.
• • •
Outside, the snow was coming down fast and fierce now, blown almost sideways by the whipping wind. Virgil had arrived in earnest. Through the blur of its shifting white curtain, I could see the time/temperature sign on the red brick bank building across the street. I shivered. Thirty-two degrees—a full twenty-five degree drop since I left Hemlock House that morning. The calendar had flipped back to winter in just a few hours.
Behind me, the chief was on his cell. He ended the call and pocketed the phone, lips tight. “You’re coming with me.” He jerked his thumb toward the intersecting street. “Six blocks south on Pine, big brick house, middle of the block on the right. Meet me there.”
“What’s going on? Who—”
But I was talking to the back of his black parka. He sprinted to his car, turned on the flasher and the siren, and pulled out of the parking lot fast, fishtailing on the icy pavement. Wherever we were going, he was aiming to get there in a hurry.
I was slower. Somebody had spread salt pellets on the sidewalk, but the footing was still treacherous. Bent against the wind, I had to struggle to keep my balance. In the car, I saw that it was now nearly nine-thirty and I was supposed to be at Margaret Anderson’s house, so I called and told her I was running late. “I should be able to make it in another hour,” I told her.
And maybe, by that time, the chief could go with me. But he seemed to have some sort of information about Margaret that I didn’t have, and we would have to discuss my plan to meet with her before I kept the appointment. I would cross that bridge when I came to it, though.
The streets were already glazed and treacherous, and where I’m from, we don’t get a lot of practice in driving on ice. It was definitely a challenge, especially since the windshield wipers of my little Mirage were having trouble keeping up with the blowing snow. I could see the chief’s flasher ahead but I didn’t even try to catch up to his car.
Midway down the block, several squad cars were angled into the curb in front of an impressively porticoed brick house. An EMS ambulance was there too, the med techs huddled with their backs to the wind, hands in their pockets and watch caps pulled down over their ears. As I got out of the car, I saw the chief hurrying up the snowy driveway toward the double garage. Yellow crime-scene tape was stretched across the driveway and the front walk. The snow had been blowing hard enough to create a small drift in front of the garage door. It had stayed in place, like a low white curb, when the door was lifted.
A uniformed officer in a heavy navy-blue parka, her blond hair skinned back into a ponytail, had come out of the garage and was talking with the chief. When I joined them, I saw that the officer’s name badge said Chris Bojanov.
“When?” the chief was asking.
“Last night, seems like. A neighbor found her this morning and called it in—” Bojanov glanced at her watch. “A half hour ago. Doc Lawrence just got here. He’s in there now.” She jerked her head toward the garage. “With her.”
“A note?”
“In the car, along with an empty bottle of Lunesta and a Glock 9mm. The car ran until it ran out of gas. Most of the night, probably.” She added, “I bagged the note, the gun, and the bottle and left them where I found them. The note is kinda long and rambling, but it explains the gun.”
“Stay here,” Curtis told me.
I stayed. I’ve seen suicides. I didn’t need to see another.
“I know who you are.” Bojanov frowned at me. “You’re that woman from Texas who found Jed Conway after he got shot yesterday. The one who was typing.” There was a faint note of accusation in her voice. “At the police station.”
I nodded. “I just can’t resist those Selectrics, you know? Every time I see one, I have to sit down and put my fingers on it. And then before I know it, I—”
She rolled her eyes.
I should behave. “Anyway,” I said penitently, “it looked like y’all had more than enough to do.”
She eyed me, remembering I was there with the chief, and decided we must be on the same team. “We’re understaffed,” she agreed. “Ask the chief, he’ll tell you. Every budget, it’s the same. City council never gives us enough positions. Or overtime.”
I nodded sympathetically. I’d heard the same complaint from my friend Sheila Dawson, the Pecan Springs chief of police. But I was thinking of Amelia Scott and wondering what had driven her to kill herself. Was it the prospect of going to prison for attempted murder—or for murder, if Conway had died? Was she repenting her role in the library larceny that the two of them had dreamed up? Or was there something else? Something like . . .
I turned my back to the wind and pushed my hands into my pockets. My fingers were cold inside my borrowed mittens. My feet were even colder. “I understand that Ms. Scott was the president of the Hemlock Guild.”
“Yeah. The right-to-die folks. Not all that popular in Bethany. I guess she decided to practice what she’s been preaching.” Another frown. “Except that I thought they were supposed to use hemlock. No shortage of that around here.” She pointed a leather-gloved finger toward a tall, conical tree beside the garage, now frosted with snow. “There’s one right there.”
“Hemlock poison doesn’t come from the hemlock tree,” I said.
“It doesn’t?” Bojanov looked surprised. “No kidding?”
“No kidding,” I said.
“Where does it come from, then?”
“Poison hemlock is a plant, maybe yea tall.” I held my hand waist-high. “Looks a lot like Queen Anne’s lace, blossoms like little white umbrellas, lots of green, ferny leaves. Doesn’t take much to kill a person—a hundred milligrams, just eight or nine fresh leaves, will do the job. It was the go-to poison for centuries, if you had a mind to do yourself in. Not so much now, though.” Now, there’s carbon monoxide, as near as your closest car and garage. And a lot less painful way to go.
“Queen Anne’s lace? I see that blooming along the road all summer.” Bojanov shook her head. “Jeez, I always thought hemlock poison came from the tree. Like, if you boiled a bunch of cones, maybe. How about that? All these years, and I was wrong.”
“I think somebody told me she sold real estate,” I said. “Ms. Scott, I mean.”
“Yeah. Commercial real estate.” Feeling the cold, Bojanov stamped her feet. “Market hasn’t been any too good here and the chances for recovery don’t look great. I heard her company bottomed out a couple of months ago, after some bad investments. Filed for Chapter Eleven. Folks said she might lose her house, too.” She looked up at the place speculatively. “Maybe she decided she couldn’t live without it. Some people are like that, you know.”
“Could be,” I said, remembering Conway’s remark about
money troubles. Looting the Carswell library must have seemed like an easy way to make up the difference. And once the money began coming in, it would have been an incentive to more looting. The loss of it could have been an motivation for suicide. “Family?”
“Divorced last year, no kids. All wrapped up in that Hemlock Guild stuff, I understand. You know how it is with some people. They get a tribe, they don’t need anybody else.”
The chief stepped out of the garage, his eyes flinty. To Bojanov, he said, “Miller is taking over for you and you’re coming with me. Bring your car. This may take a while and I may need you to stay after I leave.” To me, he said, “I’m bringing in a team to search this place for that book you keep talking about. Can you describe what they’re looking for?”
“I can likely get you a photo,” I said, taking out my phone. Pointedly, I added, “while you get a search warrant.” Back in 1973, North Carolina had been the last state to abolish the common-law crime of suicide. Which meant that no crime had been committed here, and there were no exigent circumstances. It wasn’t my job to remind him he needed a warrant, but I did it anyway. I was on his team, wasn’t I?
He narrowed his eyes at me. “The warrant is coming.” His cell dinged, and he looked at it. “It’s here. You got a problem, Bayles?”
“No problem at all,” I said cheerfully. “Just being helpful.”
I put in Jenna’s cell number. The chief pulled Bojanov off a little distance to talk to her. Bojanov went to her squad car, and he came back. By that time, my phone was displaying three photos of an impressive calf-bound, gold-embossed, silver-clasped copy of A Curious Herbal. Jenna had sent them.
“Forwarding to you,” I said.
It took just a moment to transfer the photos from my phone to his and from his to the search team’s. He pocketed his cell. “Follow me,” he said, and started down the drive.
“Where to now?” I asked, trying to step in his footprints. The snow had been falling hard and drifting while I’d been talking to the officer. My loafers were soaked. Ruby’s hand-knitted wool socks were soggy. And cold.
Over his shoulder, he said. “Margaret Anderson’s. I want you there, too.” At the foot of the drive, he stopped abruptly and turned. “Something else. When you were interviewing folks for that so-called article of yours, did anybody come up with the idea that maybe Carswell hadn’t killed herself?”
I stopped too, pausing to answer his question. “The parrot lady couldn’t add it up,” I said. “Her thing was the weapon. According to her, Sunny would never have used a gun to kill herself—and especially not that gun. Because of her father and grandfather, that is.” I hunched my shoulders against the wind. “Are you going to tell me what was in that suicide note?”
The chief scowled. He was deciding whether I deserved to know. At last, he said, “It was a confession. Scott claims she killed Sunny Carswell.”
“O-kay,” I said slowly. I wasn’t surprised. Even the sheriff had said that the death raised more questions than they had answers for. And murder can be made to look like suicide—if the murderer is smart. And lucky. “She give details?”
“How she did it, why she did it. Says Sunny caught her stealing pages out of books. Says she knew where that old gun was kept. She got it, met Sunny in her room, shot her, wiped the gun and put it in Sunny’s hand.” He paused. “Says she shot Jed as well, and left us the gun to prove it. A Glock nine.”
I whistled between my teeth. “She say why she shot Conway?”
“Yeah. Says that he knew how Sunny died and threatened to tell. When she found out he wasn’t dead, she figured he’d turn her in.” Another pause, this one longer. “But she claims she had nothing to do with the big book. The one you’re looking for.” His voice was oddly flat. “She says Margaret Anderson must have stolen it.”
And there it was. An accusation made in a dying declaration was considered an exception to the hearsay rule and was therefore admissible in court.
But this revelation wasn’t much of a surprise to me, either. I had already moved Anderson to the top of my suspect list. “You’re going to search Anderson’s house?”
Silly question. Of course he was going to search Anderson’s house. Scott’s suicide note provided the probable cause he needed to get a warrant. He wanted me to be there to identify the Herbal if he found it. Well, I supposed I could do that preliminarily. He would need to bring Dorothea or Jenna down from the mountain for an official identification.
“Yeah,” he said briefly. There was more coming, and he opened his mouth to tell me what it was.
But it didn’t come. He cleared his throat, tried again, and gave it up. After an awkward moment, his glance fell on my loafers and he found something he wanted to say.
“In weather like this, anybody with a lick of sense would be wearing snow boots.”
Chapter Thirteen
“There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me—we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet (IV, v)
The herb rue has many complex meanings, often contradictory. Its bitter taste symbolizes regret and consciousness of guilt; at the same time, it has a cleansing and purging effect, symbolizing repentance and forgiveness. Its use as an abortifacient linked it with fornication and adultery, while in other instances it is the emblem of virginity. “Rue in time is a maiden’s posy” was a favorite Scottish saying that linked these disparate meanings.
Susan Wittig Albert
China Bayles’ Book of Days
The chief had left Scott’s suicide note for the crime-scene team to collect. But I didn’t have to read it to know the legal steps that lay ahead. The note would be authenticated and accepted as a dying declaration in a hearing on Scott’s death. On the basis of her written confession, Sheriff Rogers would reopen his investigation into Sunny Carswell’s death, which could result in a new ruling in that case: murder, not suicide.
In a separate matter based on the same confession and his own, Jed Conway—a victim of his partner in crime—would be indicted as an accomplice in the theft of rare documents and with the sale of stolen property. He would be out on bail while his lawyer and the DA dickered over a plea, a fine, and his prison sentence. All of which takes time, of course. It might be a year or more before he was sentenced. He would likely lose his store and Bethany would lose its bookstore. Unless somebody bought it, that is. Carole Humphreys?
This left only the Herbal, but we now knew the identity of the thief and were on our way to apprehend her. As I got in the car and pulled out into the snowy street, I found myself getting excited about the very real prospect of recovering the book. Soon. Today, possibly. Maybe even this very morning. I thought of holding it in my hands, of feeling the rich leather binding and running my fingers over the silver clasps, of opening the cover and turning the pages. The real pages, not the pixel-perfect but unreal pages on my tablet screen. I took a breath. I could feel the excitement mounting.
And if Margaret (or Jed) had already sold it?
We could still get it back. The buyer would be traced, discovered, and questioned. He likely wouldn’t be charged but was required by law to return the book to the Carswell library. If he wanted his money back . . . well, he’d have to try to shake it loose from the thief or thieves, which might not be so easy. Excuse me. I have no sympathy. That’s what you get for buying stolen goods from a shady fence with sketchy morals.
And there it was, all the loose plot threads neatly wrapped up and tied with a flourish. Dorothea and Jenna would be ecstatic. The foundation board would (presumably) be pleased. I could go back to Pecan Springs with a feeling of accomplishment.
If it all fell into place, which was a long shot. I got that. But there was something else here I wasn’t getting—something the chief wanted to tell me but hadn’t. What was it?
I brought up the rear of our three-car caravan, the chief and Bojanov in their squads, and I in my little Mirage—slowly. The street was a skating rink and gusts of blowing snow closed down visibility to less than a block. I get to practice driving on ice maybe once every three or four years and I was determined to get where we were going without banging up the rental car.
But the country club neighborhood had a Christmas-card charm and when we pulled up in front of the Anderson house, the snowy white blanket softened its severe symmetries. Last night, I had decided that Margaret must be somewhat younger than I had thought, and I had mentally exchanged her pink twinset for one that was lipstick red. Now, looking forward to recovering the Herbal, I removed the pearls from her neck and substituted a snarky pearl-studded gold book on a gold chain. But the frosted hair and red Manolos remained.
Our little parade pulled into what looked like a snow-covered curb, behind another squad car. I turned off the motor and was about to get out when the chief opened the passenger door and slid into the seat.
“Ms. Bayles,” he began, and stopped.
The snow was glistening on his brown hair. The jagged scar that sliced across his eyebrow gave his face a rakish look.
“Yeah?” I prompted, and he tried again, awkwardly.
“I need to tell you something. In the interest of transparency.”
He was finally getting around to it. “Okay,” I said. “Tell me what?”
He stripped off his gloves, delaying another minute. “Margaret Anderson and I have been . . . dating.” He stuffed his gloves in the pockets of his parka, one glove in each pocket. He wasn’t looking at me.
“Whoa,” I said softly.
This was something I hadn’t anticipated, but it certainly explained his hesitation. It might also explain the edge of animosity I had heard in the voice of Carole Humphreys—Chief Curtis’ ex—when she’d talked to me about Margaret Anderson. Had her husband been cheating on her before their divorce? In a small town like Bethany, that could have been a public humiliation for Carole.
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