Hemlock

by Susan Wittig Albert

  The chief ran a hand through his hair. “I know it . . . complicates things.” His voice was rueful.

  You bet it did. It complicated things considerably. Here we were, about to interview a woman who was accused of walking off with a rare book worth a hundred grand or more, and the chief of police had been sleeping with her? (If “sleeping with” was speculative, it was informed by the guilty expression on the chief’s face.)

  To make things worse, this particular interview was crucial to the investigation. Not only did it take us one step closer to getting our hands on the Herbal, it gave the chief a chance for a flip. Flipping—getting a crucial witness to come over to your side and tell you where the bodies are buried and who put them there—is a critical investigative tool that I’ve used more times than I can count. Amelia Scott, God rest her soul, was now beyond the reach of the law. Nobody was ever going to flip her. But Jed Conway was still here. And as a cooperating witness, Margaret Anderson might be willing to trade her testimony against him for a lighter sentence.

  There’s another thing, too. No matter how good your documentary and data-based evidence is, it can sometimes put a jury to sleep. A cooperating witness, on the other hand, could wake them up and make them see the crime as it was committed. Believe me. I’ve been there and watched the jury. I know how this works.

  The chief was obviously not a happy camper. “I have to tell you that I don’t for one minute believe that Margaret took that book,” he said, spacing the words for emphasis. “She has lived in this town her entire life, she has an excellent reputation, and I know her to be as honest as . . .” He struggled for a suitable simile, gave it up, and settled for “totally honest.”

  “But I realize that she has to be questioned,” he added gruffly, “and questioned now. I’ve explained the situation to Bojanov, and she’s going to take the lead. I’ll be there in case of . . . well, difficulty. Which I don’t expect,” he added with emphasis.

  He jerked his head at the squad car parked ahead of our little convoy. “A couple of officers will assist Bojanov with the search for the book. You’re here to authenticate it, if it turns out that Margaret has it—which I don’t expect, either.” He narrowed his eyes at me, remembering that I had confessed to being a lawyer. “I don’t want you interfering with the questioning, Counselor. Got that?”

  “Got it,” I said, and looked at him with some sympathy. His jaw was set, his eyes were dark. It looked like he was thinking that Margaret had played him for a fool.

  The path to the house hadn’t been shoveled yet and was drifted ankle-deep—more snow in my loafers. The two officers stayed in their squad car while the three of us trooped to the front door, Bojanov looking about as glum as the chief.

  He punched the bell, and after a moment, the door was opened by a slender, very attractive young woman. She might have been eighteen or twenty-eight or anywhere between. Her face was narrow, with high cheekbones. Her dark hair was short and strikingly asymmetrical, cut high and shaved over her ear on the right side, cut on a sharp slant and cupped under her jaw on the left. On the high side, a flowery vine tattoo climbed up her neck and under her ear. She wore a loose, drapy top, ivory, over tight jeans tucked into lace-up suede boots with three-inch stiletto heels. Red boots. Ms. Twinset’s younger sister, maybe? A visiting niece?

  No. Not.

  The chief snatched off his cap. “Good morning, Margaret,” he said, his voice formal and so strained it nearly cracked. “We need to come in and talk to you, if you don’t mind.”

  Wait—what? This was Margaret? The chief’s number-one girlfriend? The number-one felony-larceny suspect, credibly accused by a self-confessed larcenist in a dying declaration?

  It was time for a rapid reset. I hastily erased the twinset, gray skirt, gold chain, and extra pounds. But those sexy suede boots were fire-engine red. I’d probably been right about the red Manolos.

  “Come in?” Margaret looked startled. “Well, of course, Jeremy.” Her eyes, questioning, went to Bojanov. “Hello, Chris.” To me. “And this is—”

  “Hi, Margaret.” I leaned forward. “I’m China Bayles. We have an appointment this morning.”

  “Oh, you’re the writer,” she said. “Weren’t we going to talk about your article on Sunny?” She looked puzzled. “I didn’t know you’d be bringing . . . reinforcements.”

  “Ms. Bayles is here as an investigator working for the Hemlock House board of directors,” the chief said. “She’s looking into a few problems having to do with the Carswell library.”

  Not quite accurate, I thought, but I didn’t want to correct him.

  “The . . . board?” Margaret’s eyes came back to me. “So you’re not a writer.” It wasn’t a question.

  I shook my head ruefully.

  She thought about that for a moment, surveyed the three of us, then stepped back, holding the door open. “Well, I guess it won’t do any good to say no.” She glanced past us to the squad car. “Maybe your buddies want to come in, too?”

  “They can wait, thanks,” the chief muttered.

  We went in, hanging our parkas on a hall tree inside the door. There was a piece of green carpet on the polished wood floor and we diligently wiped our feet, then followed Margaret past the stairway and down the hall. Her angled hair swung loose on one side and a spicy scent trailed behind her. She moved with a sure, swingy ease, even in those heels. I sneaked a look at the chief’s face. It was grim.

  Margaret hesitated at the double-door entrance to a spacious living room, its walls and carpet and furnishings every bit as bland and monochromatically traditional as the house itself. Above the sofa hung a lake-and-trees landscape that might have come from a starving-artist assembly line. Its twin—this one a lake-and-mountain scene—hung over the fireplace, on either side of which symmetrical walnut bookcases displayed a couple of years’ worth of Book of the Month Club releases, along with a hodgepodge of trinkets and decorative stuff. I glanced at it curiously. This was the home of somebody who wrote about books? Who wore her hair lopsided?

  “No,” she decided, and turned to go down the hall. “I’ve got a fire going in the den. It’s full of boxes and stuff, but let’s go there anyway.”

  Boxes and stuff, indeed. A red brick fireplace burned brightly in one corner, and the walls were hung with trophy fish, mounted deer and bobcat heads, and dozens of framed photos and certificates. Through a large bay window, I could see the country club’s tennis court drifted with white, its sagging net heavy with crystalized ice. A Siamese cat sat on the red-cushioned window seat, staring out at the falling snow. The floor was littered with stacks of dinner china, boxes of silver, crystal, and kitchenware, along with piles of newspaper and balls of twine. A larger box, prominently labeled Goodwill, was filled with sweaters, purses, and shoes, with an umbrella sticking rakishly out of the top. Another was heaped with what looked like curtains and draperies, a stack of folded scatter rugs on the floor beside it. A dozen U-Haul cardboard cartons, still flat, leaned against the wall.

  Margaret added another stick of wood to the fire and pointed the chief and me to a pair of denim-slipcovered chairs at one side of the fireplace. Bojanov pulled up a cushioned bench and perched on the edge.

  “Can I get you anything?” Margaret asked, hesitating beside a worn brown corduroy recliner. “Soft drink? Coffee?” Her eyes went to Curtis. “I think there’s some of your Bud in the fridge.” It was a declaration of their relationship—deliberate, I thought. Done in order to stake a claim, or to let Bojanov and me in on the secret? Or to remind Curtis of their friendship and ask him to go easy?

  Coloring visibly, the chief got the point, whatever it was. “We’re fine, thanks,” he said brusquely. Bojanov nodded. I did too, with some regret. I wasn’t on duty, and coffee would have warmed me up. My feet were wet. And cold.

  Margaret sat in the recliner. With a gesture at the boxes, she said to me, “In case you’re w
ondering, this is my mother’s house. Dad died a year ago and Mom has moved to an assisted living facility. The house will be sold. My brother is working in London, so I’m the one who gets to deal with this stuff.”

  So that explained it. Some of it, anyway. I glanced at Bojanov, but she was getting out her notebook. Into the pause, I said, “I understand you’re a blogger. And that you write a book review column.” The chief was frowning, reminding me that I wasn’t supposed to talk. I ignored him.

  Margaret nodded. “I work with a couple of major online blogging organizations. For one, I review steamy romance, book and film. For another, I write about nontraditional relationships in the kink culture. Plus, I also do general reviews for regional newspapers. I was working in Raleigh, but when my folks got sick, I came back to Bethany to help out. That’s when Jed—Jed Conway—introduced me to Sunny Carswell.”

  Well. I had been way out in left field on this one. Steamy romances and nontraditional relationships? The real Margaret was far more interesting than my fictional Ms. Twinset. I wanted to ask her to tell me about the kink culture, but the chief had cleared his throat and was now looking pointedly at Bojanov, who opened her notebook and made an obtrusive gesture that called attention to the fact that she was turning on her body cam.

  “Margaret—” She stopped, started again. “Ms. Anderson, I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but Amelia Scott died last night.”

  “Amelia?” Margaret’s hand went to her mouth and her eyes opened wide. “Oh, my god, Chris. Really? I mean, first Jed and now Amelia? I can’t believe it! I mean, who would do something like—”

  Bojanov cut in with, “The investigation is still ongoing, but it looks like suicide.”

  Margaret gasped. “Suicide! But . . . but Amelia wasn’t sick, was she? How did she—” She stopped. “Why did she—” She broke off again, leaning forward now, her face intent. I could see the wheels turning. She was getting to the why. “This doesn’t have to do with what happened to Jed, does it?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she turned to the chief. “How is Jed, Jeremy? I called the hospital this morning and Mary Jean told me that you were with him. She said he was better but—”

  “We can come back to that later,” the chief interrupted in a gruff voice. He nodded curtly at Bojanov, who cleared her throat and got on with it.

  “Ms. Scott left a note. In it, she addressed the issue of some materials that are missing from the Carswell library. Among them is a rare book, called—” She looked down at her notebook. “A Curious Herbal.” She looked back up at Margaret. “In the note, she says that you have that book in your possession.”

  The accusation was delivered without inflection. I studied Margaret’s face, searching for her response. But if I’d been expecting a sudden mea culpa, I would have been disappointed.

  “Me?” She looked blank. “Me? Why would Amelia think that I have the Herbal? It was stolen, wasn’t it? That’s what I heard, anyway. Somebody broke into the library a couple of weekends ago and took it. They’ve never caught the guy who—”

  Her mouth hardened as the situation began to dawn on her. “Wait a minute. You’re telling me that Amelia says I stole it?” She pointed at Bojanov’s body cam. “Is that why you’re recording this? You’re here to accuse me?”

  Bojanov was stone-faced. “We’re here to find the book.”

  “Well, you’re just out of bloody luck,” Margaret shot back angrily. “And if anybody here in Bethany took it, it would have been Amelia herself.” She turned to the chief, holding out her hands in a half-defiant, half-pleading gesture. “Jeremy, tell Chris it wasn’t me. I didn’t steal it. You know me better than that. And anyway, that happened the weekend I moved Mom to assisted living, didn’t it? I was with her all day, every day, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, getting her settled. I even stayed with her on Saturday night!”

  In my days in the courtroom, I’ve watched plenty of liars plead innocent, and I’ve even defended my share. If this one was a liar, she was doing a pretty good job of it. I felt sorry for the chief, who obviously wanted to intervene but knew that he could only cause trouble for himself if he did. If he didn’t, he was causing trouble for himself with Margaret, so as far as he was concerned, it was pretty much a lost cause.

  “You’re aware of the book, then?” Bojanov asked, studiously making notes. “About what it is, I mean.”

  Margaret rolled her eyes. “Don’t be silly. Of course I’m aware of the book. It was a treasure, the most important thing in Sunny’s library. She loved to take it out of the case and study the drawings. She couldn’t stop talking about Elizabeth Blackwell and the way she saved that absurd husband of hers. I walked past the book every day when I was working there. It was gorgeous.”

  “But you don’t have it now?” Bojanov persisted.

  Margaret pulled herself up. “No, I don’t have it now,” she said indignantly. “I have never had it, and I don’t know who does. Period. Paragraph. End of story.”

  Bojanov glanced in mute appeal to the chief and I could see that she had reached the end of her string of questions. She was going to pull out the warrant and that would likely be the end of this subject’s cooperation. Next thing, Margaret would telephone her lawyer. It was up to me to deescalate this situation.

  I smiled. “One of the things I’ve been curious about is the way Jed and Sunny worked together to build that really stunning collection,” I asked mildly. “What can you tell us about that?”

  For a moment, I didn’t think she was going to respond—which would pretty much put an end to my questions, since I had no authority to require any answers. The chief looked puzzled, and irritated. He’d told me to keep my mouth shut. Bojanov was peering down at her notes.

  After a moment’s silence, Margaret said, a little stiffly, “Sunny usually had a pretty clear idea of what she wanted. Jed kept her supplied with catalogues, and she would go on the internet and do the research. Then Jed would make an offer for the item she was after, or if it was being sold at auction, he’d bid on it, in person or on the phone. She wasn’t involved in that at all. In the buying, I mean.”

  “So he actively participated in building that collection,” I said, remembering my conversation with Claudia about pump-and-dump. It was also possible that he might have been colluding with the seller to increase the price of what he bought—for a share of the extra. “Is it fair to say that he was acting as her agent?”

  “Sure. Sometimes it meant buying individual titles, sometimes he’d buy lots—batches of books or prints, whatever. So we might get a box of miscellaneous stuff when Sunny was interested in just one item. Jed would dispose of the rest.”

  I glanced at the chief to see if he would like to jump in here, but when I caught his eye, he gave me an imperceptible nod, signaling me to go on.

  Back to Margaret. “Through Socrates.com?”

  “Yes.” She nodded, appearing now to be interested in my questions—or perhaps relieved to be talking about Jed and Sunny, not about herself. And I wasn’t a cop, so I might have seemed a little less threatening. “He launched that website especially to help Sunny get rid of books she didn’t want. He told me once that he sold everything he posted, so I guess he was doing pretty well.” She laughed a little. “The logo for the site is a poison hemlock graphic. Socrates, hemlock. Get it? Jed helped to found the Hemlock Guild here in town.”

  I got it. I also got that the dates and amounts of those online sales transactions could be retrieved via a subpoena from Conway’s merchant bank. I pushed this line just a little farther, glad that Bojanov had turned on her body cam. She was taking notes now, too.

  “And when he was buying or selling for Sunny, he worked on commission? Any idea how much?”

  She cocked her head, thinking about that. “Well, once I heard him tell Sunny that rare book shops got as much as fifty percent when they sold a print or a book for a collector. H
e said he thought that was exorbitant. He’d be happy to do it for thirty.”

  I’ll bet he would, I thought. If Sunny had let him sell the Blackwell Herbal for, say, a hundred thousand, he would take thirty of it—at zero risk.

  Margaret was going on. “I’m sure that Jed would have sold more if Sunny had let him. He was always trying to get her to let him have an online clearance sale. That’s what he called it—a clearance sale. Sometimes, when he bought a couple of boxes, there was stuff that didn’t belong in her collection. She’d let him take that. And after she got sick, he put books into crates and took them out, just to help her get rid of them.”

  There were several important implications here for the case against Jed. Pressed, Margaret might have more information about what had gone into the boxes he filled for his “clearance sales” and how valuable it was. She might also be able to say more about his efforts to get Sunny to sell the Herbal. What else did she know that a prosecutor might be able to use?

  Outside the window, the light had become a little grayer. The snow was coming down harder now, drifting against the tennis net like a miniature skateboard ramp. The cat leapt lightly down from the window seat and stalked across the room and out into the hall, tail twitching.

  “Jed said it would be easier to manage the collection if it was organized.” Margaret crossed her arms, tucking her hands inside her sweater sleeves as if she were chilly. “Of course, Sunny wasn’t interested in organizing books—just in having them. Jed used to say that she was an ‘accumulator’ rather than a real collector. Once she got what she wanted, she’d look at it, enjoy it, then put it on the shelf and go on to the next thing. That’s why I was there. To get the books sorted out. To catalogue them, if I could.” She shook her head. “But there was just so much.”