There was one exception. Bart, who’d witnessed the meeting from the wall near the front of the room, stepped from a shadow, stared at Caleb, and cracked his knuckles. What was that about?
Voices interrupted my musing. Several people had approached us on their way out. Ted and Harvey were answering more questions, so I joined in to help. When we finally stood alone on the pit steps, I reached back to massage my lower back. The meeting had lasted almost two hours. No wonder I was tired.
Only a couple of people remained in the longhouse. Anna was one. She looked out a window at the far end of the room.
Harvey said, “Hey, let’s walk on the beach to clear our brains. I guess dinner’s on some boat.”
I glanced back at Anna. “Be with you in a couple of minutes.”
Harvey looked over my shoulder. “Right.”
Anna appeared to be lost in thought and didn’t seem to hear me walk across the wooden floor. “Anna?”
She twirled around. “Huh? Oh, hi.”
“Could I speak with you?”
She looked around. “Here?”
Nobody was near. “Sure. I’ve been standing for a while. Let’s sit on the floor.”
The wall was a good backrest. We leaned against it, legs stretched out. I twirled my ankles. “That’s better.”
Anna stared at her feet.
“I understand you talked with William’s parents—”
“So?”
Her tone surprised me. She’d been so polite before.
“Nothing wrong with that, of course. But you upset them with your claim that someone hurt William. I assume you meant Lynne. It’s a very serious thing to say. For one thing, you have no proof.”
Anna studied her feet again. I had no idea what she was thinking.
Finally, she said, “There’s proof. Or close to it.”
I didn’t want to argue that “close to proof” made no sense. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s Lynne. She studied herbal medicine with Charlotte.”
Clearly, I was missing something. “And?”
She got up. “You should know. Some of those plants are deadly.”
I pushed myself away from the wall and stood to face her. “Are you saying William died because Lynne poisoned him?”
She met my gaze. “It’s a good possibility.”
I shook my head. “Anna, surely you understand you can’t accuse people of murder just because you don’t like them.”
“She’s got a record.”
“Lynne?”
“Assault. She beat someone up. They had to go to the hospital.”
I cleared my throat, unsure where this conversation as going. “That’s terrible, but it doesn’t mean she murdered William.”
Anna got to her feet. “What if I showed you something—dried herbs—I found hidden in Lynne’s room?”
Frowning, I shook my head again. “They could be anything.”
“I’m pretty sure they’re not just anything. They’re poison.”
That was it. Hands on hips, I demanded, “Look, Anna, what do you want from me?”
Her eyes flashed—black, piercing. “People aren’t listening to me. But you’re different. They respect you. What if we compare the herbs I took from Lynne’s room with poisonous ones?”
“But wouldn’t Lynne notice they’re missing?”
“She left most of the package behind. She won’t notice if I take some.”
“Anna, I don’t know…”
She stood tall and crossed her arms. “William told me he saved your life. You owe him something. A lot. I’m just asking you to look at a dried plant, after all.”
I placed my hand on my chest. She was right. William had saved me, and I did owe him. Against my better judgment, I relented.
“Okay. Get the plant. I’ll meet you in the dining building in about an hour.”
With a quick “thanks,” she turned and marched toward the door. I watched until she’d slipped through the front doorway. I didn’t feel great about what I’d agreed to, but it seemed the only way to put an end to her accusation. What could I tell about a dried herb? Even if I could ID whatever was in Anna’s bag, that wouldn’t mean much. The only way to know for sure about plant toxins was to perform chemical extraction and analysis. Certainly, that wasn’t going to happen here.
So I’d look at the plant and very likely say I didn’t know what it was. Then that would be that.
Harvey and Ted were on their way back from the pier end of the beach when I caught up with them. The Haida Queen had motored in during the meeting and was attached to the dock by a gangway. Waves on the bay were noticeably higher, but the boat barely moved.
I wasn’t sure what I’d thought the Haida Queen would look like, but the huge two-story barge-type affair wasn’t it. We stood on the beach and stared at the ship.
“I was expecting a large sailing vessel,” Harvey said.
“What does it remind you of?” Ted asked.
I thought for a moment. “One of those river boats where you gamble. Huh, maybe that’s what this is.”
“There was an article in the flight magazine,” Harvey said. “British Columbia is taking in a lot of money from gambling. It’s very controversial, like in the states. Gambling addiction and all that.”
“Maybe the Haida nation gets a cut,” Ted said.
Harvey began walking toward the ship. “Whatever it is, I hope the food is good. I’m starving.”
Ted and I strolled behind. He took my hand. “How’d it go with Anna?”
I recounted the conversation.
“Accusing Lynne like that, it’s serious, but Anna’s in a bad way. After all, she was William’s fiancée.”
I said, “Well—”
He stopped walking, and so did I. “What?”
I held up both palms. “Aaka says she was supposed to marry William.”
Ted grimaced. “Ouch. That complicates things.”
“And Lynne thought William was going to marry her. Apparently, William left three women with the impression they’d get married. It’s a mess. William seemed like such a good guy. But now I wonder if he two-timed Aaka, Anna, and Lynne.”
“If he did and one or the other found out, they’d be plenty angry,” Ted said.
I groaned. “That just increases the ‘who had motive’ issue. We already had Bart and Lynne, maybe Caleb. Now there’s Anna and Aaka.”
“Let’s go with Occam’s razor. When there are competing hypotheses, we choose the simplest one. Nobody killed William. He died of a heart attack. A natural one.”
“I’d like to believe that, but I really sense something’s amiss here.”
We were well behind Harvey. I turned to look at the western horizon. Sunset wasn’t for a while, but the undersides of long, thin clouds already glowed pink.
Ted took my hand again. “Let’s forget about this bad business for now and watch the sky. Looks like we can do that if we eat on the upper deck.”
“That’d be nice.”
Low tide had made the ramp connecting the pier to the dock especially steep. Ted stepped down first and turned to make sure I didn’t trip.
What a great guy, I thought. Any woman would be lucky to have him. My next thought wasn’t so pleasant.
If I didn’t watch out, some other woman would.
Later, sated, I sat cross-legged on a high platform, facing west. The remains of the buffet—chicken bones, olive pits, and pie crumbs—lay between Ted and me.
Ted leaned back on his long arms to watch the nightly show. “You think the sunset looks different here? I mean, from Maine?”
I considered the scene. Waves on the expanse of the ocean before us glittered reddish-bronze beneath the setting sun. A bank of clouds from the west raced toward us. They were an eerie gray-green color, but the ones directly above the sliver of red sun were a swirl of purple, red, and orange. Dark purple peaks poked into the gaudy clouds. “Have to admit, much as I love Maine sunsets, the mountains here make these truly spec
tacular.”
As if on cue, a dolphin flew out of the water and disappeared with a splash.
Ted laughed, slid over, took my hand, and kissed it. “Sure can’t beat that.”
My arm stiffened. Ted let go of my hand. “Mara, something’s clearly the matter. Can you tell me what it is?”
Lots was the matter, all of it impossible to explain. A vision off Augustine Island, an underwater hallucination, a seal that saved me, a gust from the Ninstints forest that dropped a feather at my feet, how I might be losing my mind. No, I couldn’t tell Ted any of that. But I could try to be honest about my feelings toward him. He deserved that.
“Ted, I love you. Truly, I do. You’re terrific in every way. But it feels, I don’t know, too much. I need more time alone.”
Against the darkening sky, his eyes were deep navy. The pain I’d caused was hard to see.
“Is there anything I can do? I mean, to help?”
“If there were, I’d tell you. But it’s not you, Ted. It’s me.”
Sadder than I’d ever seen him, Ted stared at the sunset. When we took the companionway down to the main deck in silence, the western sky was pewter gray.
Harvey met us near the gangway. Even from a distance, I could see she was distraught.
“What’s wrong?”
She gestured toward the stern. “After eating, I checked out the roulette wheel. Not to gamble. To see who was.”
Harvey knew the odds of winning were about the same as a June snowstorm in Maine. Not impossible, but extremely unlikely, especially given the changing climate.
“You’ll never guess who was at the wheel.”
Ted and I looked at each other and shrugged.
“Gene.”
We didn’t know Gene well, of course, but the image of him kissing a lucky rabbit’s foot and placing a bet didn’t match my impression, to say the least.
“Maybe not what you’d expect,” Ted said, “but, you know, so what?”
“He and that guy Caleb were competing. It got pretty nasty. That’s them barking at each other.”
To see what she meant, I walked toward the raised voices. Ted was right behind me. We stopped in the threshold of the large open room. At the far end, waiters were hurriedly clearing the buffet tables where we’d gotten our food. At our end, there was a long wooden bar, a cocktail area, and three large tables with green surfaces. At each gambling table, a man in a white shirt and black vest was in charge of the roulette wheel or a card game.
At the moment, nobody played roulette because a man stood between Gene and Caleb. It looked like a scene from a rowdy game like ice hockey or rugby. The flustered referee held Gene and Caleb back with outstretched arms and desperately looked around for help. He was about to get it because a hefty guy, maybe the manager or a security cop, was running toward him.
I turned away. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s get out of here.”
We joined Harvey on the dock, which rocked to and fro with the building waves.
“Damn,” I said, “if you hadn’t told me that was Gene, I wouldn’t have recognized him.”
“Got that right. Pretty awful.”
“Maybe Gene was drinking,” Ted said. “That turns some people mean. Or maybe Caleb did something inexcusable that really pissed Gene off.”
“Or the other way around,” Harvey said.
“Gene did something to incense Caleb?” I asked.
“Caleb yelled something about Gene cooking the numbers. Or going to cook the numbers. Whatever that means.”
“Caleb strikes me as someone who mouths off.”
Harvey ran a hand through her hair. “Thought I had a decent idea who thought what and who to trust. Now, I’m not at all sure.”
As team leader, Harvey in particular needed to understand the motivations and stances of the Haida’s main players. I wanted to help, but there was nothing to say or do.
On the pier, we stopped to get a sense of the weather. A bank of clouds raced overhead and wind whipped my hair around. I left Harvey and Ted where the path turned up to the dining building. They planned to use Gene’s phone to check in with the travel agent before they headed back to the longhouse. On our way, I explained that I was going to meet Anna and why.
“Plant ID sounds safe, but with what’s going on here, be careful,” Harvey said.
“And watch this storm,” Ted added. “It’s coming in fast.”
Anna was waiting for me when I stepped into the kitchen. “Thought you might not show up.”
“Sorry. We ate and watched the sunset.” No need to tell her about Gene.
She slid a clear sandwich bag across the wooden island we used to chop vegetables. “Here.”
It was nearly dark in the room, but I didn’t want to waste generator fuel. “Are there backup batteries so you could you switch on the overhead light for a while without turning on the generator?”
She nodded. “We’ve got some powerful batteries for the kitchen.”
In the light, I lifted the bag to eye level. In addition to ground-up leaves, I was surprised to see what looked like intact dried flowers. “Do you know anything about these flowers?”
Anna opened her mouth like she was going to say something. Then she closed it and shook her head. “No.”
“I can’t tell anything from the leaves. But the flowers look pretty distinctive. Do you have any plant identification books?”
She shook her head again. I squinted at the bag. The flowers did look very unusual, which might help with their identity. My scientific curiosity kicked in.
“I’m going to call someone in Maine who might help me. My grad student. Gene’s letting us use his phone.”
“Can I come?” Anna sounded excited.
“This is a long shot. Okay? But, sure, you can come.”
It was many hours later in Maine compared to British Columbia, but Alise, my student, was a night owl. Bright and enthusiastic, Alise was also a little crazy. It seemed like she colored a swath of her hair purple, red, or orange just to give the more conservative scientists something to talk about besides their research. I didn’t care a bit. She was an excellent scientist, up for anything, and great company.
Luckily, her cell phone number was easy to remember. She picked up on the first ring.
“Alise here.”
“Alise, it’s Mara.”
“Hey. How’s it going out there?”
“Good. I’ve got a puzzle and could use your help with an Internet search.”
“Sure. Got my computer right here. Gimme a sec. Okay, fire. What should I search?”
“How about plant poisons?”
“You know there are tons.”
“For plants that could grow on the coast in the Pacific Northwest.”
“Hold it.” There was clicking in the background. “Okay, got a good page.”
“Look for ones with distinctive inflorescences.” I described in detail what I’d seen in the plastic bag.
I could hear the computer keys.
“Here’s one that looks good.”
“Go ahead.”
“Veratrum viride, variety, um, esch, um, scholzianum. Boy, that’s a mouthful.”
“Tell me its distribution.”
“This variety grows in Alaska, British Columbia, the Northwest Territory, and other places. Um, from sea level up pretty high.”
“Good. Now please describe the plant, mostly the flowers.”
“Let’s see. Herbaceous perennial. Tall. Leaves arranged spirally. Numerous flowers on a large inflorescence with branches—”
“Hold up. I’ve got to take notes.” Anna had turned on an overhead light, so I could see a pad and pencil on Gene’s desk. I grabbed both and scribbled.
“Got it. Keep going.”
“Um. Inflorescences with branches up to seventy centimeters. Flowers are five to ten millimeters long and there are six green or yellow-green tepals. What’s a tepal?”
“It’s used when you can’t tell the difference between a sep
al and a petal.”
“Learn something new every day. Okay, fruits are capsules about one to three centimeters long.”
“Seeds?”
“Right. Ah, they’re flat, around ten millimeters, and are released from the capsule that splits when mature.”
I scanned my scribbles. “That should do it.”
“One more thing, Mara.”
“What’s that?”
“Veratrum viride’s common name and toxicity.”
“Of course. Go ahead.”
“False hellebore, also called Indian poke or Indian hellebore, is highly toxic. It slows respiration and leads to cardiac arrest.”
Anna and I looked at each other.
“Mara, you still there?”
“Yes. Sorry. Is there something else?”
“The plant’s commonly used by Native Americans.”
“Alise, you’re a gem. See you in a couple of days.”
I dropped the phone into its cradle. Anna leaned against the tiny office’s wall.
“Well, that was interesting.”
“Sounded like it,” she said. “What next?”
“I’d like to look at the inflorescences close up. Do you have anything that magnifies?”
“Kids come out here for a nature outing. Identifying plants and animals, you know? I’m pretty sure there’s something like that in the dining house. The children work on projects there.”
We walked back in the dark. Leaves skittered across the circle cast by my flashlight, trees on either side of the path swayed back and forth, and cold rain spit against my cheeks. While Anna searched for the magnifier, I waited in the kitchen. She returned with a good-sized magnifying glass and slid it across the wooden island.
I used it to look at my hand. “This will work. Let’s get that overhead light on again. I’ll take a look at these flowers. Also, a tall stool would help a lot.”
I carefully poured the contents of the plastic bag onto a white paper towel. For the next twenty minutes, I peered through the magnifying lens at the inflorescences, consulted my notes, picked up the lens again, and rotated bits of flowers to get a better look. Anna was a silent observer.
Finally, I put the lens down and rubbed my eyes with the back of my hands.
“What do you think?”
I blinked and sat up straight on the stool. “Anna, I’m not a botanist. These would have to be officially identified by an expert. But what I see matches the description Alise gave us. Right after William died, I met the coroner’s investigator, a Sergeant Knapton. I suppose I could tell him about these plants and let him decide. That’s all I can do.”
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