Dosed to Death

by P. D. Workman

  Alisha continued to set up the board game. Mason sighed and sorted through the cards to select out the murderer, weapon, and room.

  “Kenzie?” Zachary touched Kenzie on the shoulder to get her attention. “Kenz, it’s your turn.”

  Kenzie blinked and looked at Zachary. She looked at the game board and the clue sheet in her hand. She had completely lost track of the last few moves, when she should have been marking down each of the clues she gathered as the other players passed cards back and forth.

  “Are you okay?” Zachary asked. He looked at the window. “What time is it? Do you want to go to bed? I know you didn’t get very much sleep last night.”

  “No.”

  He waited. “You don’t want to go to bed, or you aren’t okay?”

  Kenzie looked away from him. Zachary was sitting on the floor in front of the bookshelves. As with the other cabins, the books in the shelves covered a wide range of genres and topics, hopefully providing something of interest to everyone who stayed there. There was genre fiction and non-fiction, topics ranging from food to gardening in Vermont and history of the area. All kinds of things.

  “Umm, I pass,” she told the other players. She moved toward Zachary, who hid his cards and clue sheet.

  Mason and Alisha protested that Kenzie couldn’t pass on her turn. She had to roll the dice and make a guess if she could.

  “Someone else roll for me,” Kenzie said. “I’m going... over there,” she pointed to one of the rooms the farthest away from her playing piece. “I need to find out about the Ballroom.”

  She, of course, had the Ballroom in her hand, but hopefully they didn’t know that. Kenzie kept going. Not directly to Zachary, but to the books behind him. Gardening in Vermont. Traditional Vermont Cookery. Wildcrafting and Backwoods Forage. Early Virginia History.

  58

  Kenzie started to pull books off the shelves. The children protested that they were still playing the game, but Kenzie ignored them. “Someone else can take my turn. Zachary, can you play my cards?”

  “That’s not fair!” Mason insisted. “Then he knows all your cards too and he will win!”

  Kenzie ignored the protest. They could sort it out without her. Her attention was needed elsewhere. Zachary picked up Kenzie’s cards and dealt them around the table. “Now everyone has more. Let’s keep going. Kenzie can’t play right now.”

  “Why can’t she?” Mason continued to whine.

  Kenzie opened up the gardening book and started to leaf through it.

  As she had told Zachary earlier, she could identify poison ivy, but that was about the extent of her plant identification skills. Other than the obvious. Daisies and strawberries and things that everyone grew in their gardens. But all of the different types of plants and flowers and berries and herbs... there were just too many for her to make any headway on them. She had too many other things she was trying to learn and retain as a doctor. She slowed down and started really looking at the plants and skimming through the sidebars, looking for any warnings about plants that were toxic or could cause people health problems if they were susceptible. Some of the warnings were just lore, and others had actual medical warnings on them. She stopped halfway through and picked up the cooking and wildcrafting books. She didn’t know a lot about wildcrafting, but knew that the general idea was using plants that grew wild in your environment for food or other purposes. Medicine, fuel, decoration, soap making. Whatever people could think of to do with them.

  She couldn’t read all the books simultaneously, but she was sure going to try. She looked over the pages for keywords, skipping from one book to the other, turning each of the pages and checking again. She wanted to absorb all the information at the same time. It seemed ridiculous that people were only able to read one document at a time, when a computer could have easily searched all the books at the same time and come up with the hits for her. Old school was so slow!

  Zachary continued to play the game with the children, but she could see him watching her out of the corner of his eye. Kenzie continued to leaf through the books, impatient to find something that would help. Maybe, as Zachary said, it had all been a mistake. Mrs. Hubbard had gathered some plants she thought were safe, and they were not. She had no way of knowing that they could have caused the hallucinogenic effects or that they could lead to death. She would never have intentionally killed her employer, something that might force her into an early retirement.

  Kenzie turned the page in the gardening book and found that the next chapter was “A Poison Garden.” Kenzie stopped and stared at the page. Would someone actually plant a garden they knew contained poisonous plants? Certainly not someone with children or animals who might get into the plants. The introductory paragraphs in the chapter referred to a garden in England that was famous for the number of poisonous plants that it contained, and how it was becoming the new trend among gardeners in the US.

  There were, of course, plenty of warnings about fencing the garden and keeping it secure from children and pets. No warnings about making sure you didn’t have any budding serial killers in the area. Kenzie slowly turned the pages, studying the leaves, flowers, and fruits shown on each panel and reading through the descriptions of the effect of each poison. Some of them were extremely toxic in small amounts, and Kenzie couldn’t imagine growing them intentionally, knowing what heartbreak they could cause. What if your fence wasn’t high enough? Or a neighbor unknowingly let a child into the garden to retrieve a lost ball or to look at the pretty flowers or berries? It would be horrifying to discover that you had made a mistake and someone had suffered or died because of it.

  Kenzie stopped at one panel, reading the symptoms over again carefully. She looked at the heading. Datura stramonium.

  “Datura,” she said aloud.

  “What’s that?” Zachary’s head turned toward her.

  Kenzie scanned the common names of the plant with the purple, trumpet-shaped flowers.

  “Datura stramonium. Jimson weed.”

  “What is that?”

  “It’s... a plant that grows all over North America.” Kenzie read through the description of the areas and type of soil the plant grew in. “It is part of the same family as deadly nightshade and tobacco. Many of our popular vegetables come from that family, but it has some toxic members as well as the edibles.”

  “And do you think... that someone used it by accident?”

  Zachary abandoned the Clue game, apparently not even hearing the protests of the children as he turned his back on them, completely focused on Kenzie.

  “An accident... I don’t know. It sounds as though it is fairly well-known. Some people smoke it for its hallucinogenic properties, but it is very toxic. Easy to overdose and kill yourself.”

  “Do you think it grows around here?”

  Kenzie showed him the cover of the book. Gardening in Vermont.

  “Okay, so I would guess that it does.” Zachary considered. “Does it cover all the symptoms?”

  “Yes. And I remember hearing about it in rounds. The doctor talking about how you don’t see a lot of it, but you have to be able to recognize it. The ten D’s. Dry mouth, dry hot skin, delirium, delusions, death, I don’t remember all of them. I’ll have to look them up when we get internet access again. This article doesn’t list them all as D’s, but it’s all in there...” Kenzie’s eyes were focused beyond her, thinking about it.

  “We should go up and talk to Mrs. Hubbard.”

  Kenzie looked at the window. It was very dark outside. She didn’t want to be wandering around so late. “We should wait until tomorrow.”

  Zachary followed her gaze. He shifted restlessly. “I don’t think it’s that late yet. She won’t be in bed. We could talk to her tonight.”

  “Not at night. With everything else that has happened... I don’t want to be out there after dark.”

  “We could get Burknall to take us up there. He would be a good guard, make sure that nothing happened.”

  “As long as
he isn’t the poisoner. He has access to the kitchen. He visits with Mrs. Hubbard. He could slip something into the food.” Kenzie looked down at the book. “It doesn’t take very much Jimson weed to cause an overdose. You can’t tell how much of the active compound is in the leaves. Or the seeds. It’s very concentrated.”

  “But why would he do that? This is his livelihood.”

  “Why would anyone do it? It doesn’t make any sense to me. Maybe it’s just... someone who likes to cause excitement. Or to see other people suffer. There are plenty of sadists out there. Of all people, you know that.”

  “We could sort this out tonight. Figure out what’s been going on and who did it.”

  Kenzie shook her head emphatically. “We’re not going to rush into this. We can’t afford to be impulsive.”

  Zachary turned his face away from her. Of course he recognized that impulsivity had been his downfall in other cases, leading to him or someone else getting hurt. They needed to take it slowly. To be sure of each step so that they didn’t run into a dangerous situation or start throwing around accusations that someone would be desperate to stop.

  But who?

  “It could be any of them,” Kenzie said. “They were all here the night Brooke was killed. They were all up at the house and would have had access to the food and drink.”

  “This was planned,” Zachary suggested. “If it was one of the guests, then they must have brought the Jimson weed with them. Because there’s nothing growing right now.”

  He was right, of course. Everything was buried under layers of snow. The gardens, the ditches, the woods, anywhere Datura might have grown was covered.

  “Mrs. Hudson could have some in the basement, where you said she had dried herbs hanging.”

  “Because she thought it was something else? Or did she know it was Jimson weed?”

  Kenzie thought about how broken up Mrs. Hudson had been over Mr. Dewey’s death. She was sure that emotion had not been fake. Mrs. Hudson really was sorry that Mr. Dewey had died, and the effect that losing her employer would have on her. That hadn’t seemed fake.

  “I really can’t see her using it knowingly. Maybe she thought it was something else. The book says that sometimes people mistake it for tobacco.”

  “She doesn’t strike me as a smoker.”

  “No. But maybe she used them in some poultice. They do that, don’t they? A poultice for bruises or to draw out poisons?”

  Zachary shrugged and indicated the books with his chin. “You’re the one with the medical training and the reference material. Maybe there’s something in there about uses.”

  Kenzie nodded, flipping a few more pages. “We’ll go up to the house tomorrow. See if we can find anything out from Mrs. Hudson.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And if it’s not her... then someone must have planned this whole thing and brought it with them.”

  It wasn’t a very pleasant thought.

  59

  Kenzie felt bad about the Clue game starting with all five of them, but ending with just the kids and Tyrrell. But Tyrrell waved off her apologies, and they did eventually finish the game, with Mason crowing about how he had figured it all out. Nothing to do with the extra cards that he had received from Kenzie’s and Zachary’s hands.

  “You guys are trying to figure out what really happened,” Tyrrell said, careful not to mention murder or killing in front of the kids. “That’s important. We’re just playing a game. It didn’t mess anything up. We still finished.”

  “Well, I am sorry,” Kenzie said to Alisha. Mason was bouncing around the room like a pinball, jumping and yelping and not looking as if he were getting ready for sleep. “Maybe I can read to you guys before bed? Would that be good?”

  Alisha looked doubtfully at the big texts Kenzie had spread out on the floor.

  “Not these ones,” Kenzie said quickly. “Something more interesting. Did you guys find some books that you like?” Kenzie looked at the bookshelf, which seemed to have a bit of something for everyone.

  “Well, there was one about animals,” Alisha said. “I know maybe it’s a little young, but it was interesting.”

  “That sounds good. Once you guys get settled for bed, I’ll come in and read a chapter or two for you, okay?”

  Alisha looked at Mason with raised eyebrows and sighed the long-suffering sigh of the big sister of a hyperactive boy. “Sure.”

  It took Tyrrell some time to get Mason corralled and started on his bedtime routine. Kenzie had hoped that without screens to wind him up, he would have a fairly quiet night. He seemed to have been doing better at sleeping since the power went out. But he kept bouncing around and thinking of one more thing he had to do before bed, and by the time Kenzie’s story time came around, Tyrrell was having a hard time keeping his voice even. He told Mason firmly to get into bed and stay there, but he seemed to be fighting a losing battle.

  “What day is it?” Mason demanded. “When are we going home? I want to see Mommy again. And to play with my games. My real games.”

  “It’s Thursday,” Tyrrell told him. “And we’ll go home when we can. Right now we can’t get anywhere on the highway. We need to stay here until it stops snowing and the plows come and clear the snow.”

  “But it’s a school day! And I haven’t talked to Mommy at all. She said to call every night before I go to bed, and I haven’t called her.” He shook his head, brow knitted in worry.

  “Mommy knows that there was a storm coming in. She’ll understand that you didn’t call because you couldn’t. I’ll let her know, when we can get through again. Okay? I’ll let her know that it wasn’t because you forgot, but just because you weren’t able to get through.”

  Mason nodded. “I really want to go home now.”

  “We will when we can. But you’ve had a good time here, haven’t you? We’ve played lots of games, and cooked on a cook stove, and you got to go outside for a while today. Even if you didn’t build a snowman.”

  “Can I build a snowman tomorrow?”

  “We’ll see. You need to be supervised so that you can’t just wander off again. That was really scary. You can’t do things like that.”

  “I was okay. And I came home.”

  “I know you did, and I was really glad that you were safe. I don’t want to worry like that, so you need to be more careful of your decisions.”

  Mason considered this, but didn’t say that he would. Kenzie wondered what was going on in his head. Did he understand that his impulsivity wasn’t something that he could control, even if the adults in his life told him he needed to? Did he understand that it was part of a disorder? Or did he think that he did things that were dangerous and that his parents told him not to because he was a bad kid? Did he avoid promising to stay close to home and make his snowman because he knew that he’d never be able to keep his promise, or did he not promise to obey because he didn’t want to and didn’t think that Tyrrell’s rules were fair?

  “Can Kenzie read to us now?” Alisha asked.

  Tyrrell nodded. He kissed each of the kids on the forehead. “You guys lay down quietly and let Kenzie read. I don’t want to hear another peep from you. You stay in bed, as still as you can, until you fall asleep.”

  Alisha nodded obediently, and Kenzie imagined she would do just that. Mason was already looking away from his father, eyeing the window rattling in the storm. Kenzie hoped it was the last hurrah of the weather system, and that, like a tantruming child, all would be peaceful and forgotten in the morning.

  Kenzie had found it difficult to settle down and go to sleep. Not because she wasn’t tired. She was exhausted. But she kept trying to puzzle through everything they knew about the poison and the other people stuck at the Lodge. Was it a guest with a grudge? One of the staff? Someone who was just out to do some mischief? She kept thinking of their personalities, their faces, and the things she had discovered when she searched their cabins. A lot could be learned about a person by how they lived or the possessions they dec
ided to take with them on a holiday.

  Look at Kenzie and Zachary. Kenzie had been concerned about having comfortable clothing, the toiletries she needed, and food she knew Zachary would eat even if he were nauseated. Zachary had been unable to pack his clothing and the other things that he would need, feeling too overwhelmed by the idea of going away. But he had picked up his bag of electronics and detection equipment. Kenzie had not brought anything work-related with her. Some of the guests brought with them all of the comforts of home or everything they needed for work—thinking of Brittany in particular—and others had brought little, expecting to be entertained and provided for by the staff at the Lodge. Some had a lot of medications like Zachary, others had almost nothing.

  She didn’t know as much as she would like to about their backgrounds. She didn’t even know Redd Flagg’s real name. And despite Brittany’s fame, Kenzie hadn’t really figured out what it was she was famous for. If Kenzie had been an Agatha Christie detective, she would have gathered a lot more information about everyone’s backgrounds and how they were related to each other. They would all be bound to be related by different connections. People who had served in the war together, estranged family, employers, nannies—the Grande Dame always had lot of interesting ways to connect different people and their pasts together.

  Zachary sat on the edge of the bed for a while, but couldn’t seem to settle in. Normally, he could at least lie down with her for a while to cuddle, even if he didn’t go to sleep right away. Or if he only went to sleep for a few hours and then was up again. Kenzie listened to him breathing for a while. Too uneven and too quick.

  “Hey. Are you okay?” she ventured.

  Zachary startled and turned toward her slightly. “Yeah,” he whispered back. “I’m fine.”

  Fine. Which meant that he wasn’t.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He rubbed his hands down the pants of his thighs, drying his palms or smoothing his pants. He normally didn’t wear pajamas, but the cabin bedroom got cold even with the heater running in the other room, so he was wearing some light gray sweatpants.