A Case of Vineyard Poison (8 page)

“Very toxic. It's got a scientific name I can read but not pronounce. I wrote it down.” He read a Latin-sounding name that I couldn't understand. “Or something like that. Its English name is water hemlock.”

“Like Socrates drank?”

“Nah, I think that's some other kind of hemlock. Don't ask too much from me. Poisons aren't my specialty. Anyway, it seems that this water hemlock grows wild around these parts. In swamps and places like that.”

“How'd she get it in her system?”

“She ate it. The medical examiner says there's no doubt about it.”

“Suicide?”

“Probably not. Suicides usually don't go out for rides on their mopeds while they're waiting for the poison they took to kick in.”

“A point well taken. Murder?”

“Not likely. According to the doc, poison plants aren't too dependable as murder toxins, because it's hard to know how much of the plant it's gonna take to do the job. Big people need more than kids. Healthy people need more than sick ones. That sort of thing. No, this looks like an accident. The girl ate some water hemlock roots and died before anybody could help her. The doc said that people do that sometimes, thinking the roots are eatable. Maybe some kind of carrots or potatoes, I guess, or maybe ginseng, whatever that is. Anyway, he said a lot of people have been poisoned by this stuff.
First time I've heard of anybody dying from it here on the island, though.”

“How'd she get the roots?”

“We're going to try to find out. We'll talk to her roommates and her friends, and see if we can track down the source. We don't want to lose anybody else.”

“No.”

I hung up, and remembered the girl wobbling along on her moped with a frowning face that I'd believed then was caused by angry thoughts that kept her from being really pretty, but which I knew now was from the sickness unto death. I thought that she had probably gotten so sick that she knew she needed help and, seeing my driveway, had turned in, trying to get to the house she knew must be there. But sandy roads and dying moped drivers do not mix well, and she had fallen. She had willed herself to her feet and staggered on, sicker by the second, until, finally, her last strength took her off the driveway, where she fell and died.

Had she cried out? Some last cry that no one heard? Had she known she was dying? Feared it? Welcomed it at last as an escape from overwhelming pain?

I felt a touch on my arm and looked down into Zee's great dark eyes.

“Are you okay?”

I looked around. Dave and Quinn were looking back at me.

“I asked you what the call was about,” said Zee, a note of worry in her voice. “Are you all right? Was it bad news?”

“I'm fine. No, it wasn't really bad news. Just strange.” I told them what Tony D'Agostine had told me, and about seeing the girl on the highway just before she died.

“Water hemlock.” I could see that Zee was running her
poison knowledge through her mind. As a nurse, she knew a lot more about such things than I did. Finally, she shook her head. Water hemlock was apparently not included in her mental files.

I looked at my watch. Plenty of time.

“I'm going down to the library,” I said. “I'll be back in time to cook supper. You're all welcome to come along.”

“Not I,” said Quinn. “I've had a busy day. It's nap time for Mrs. Quinn's little boy.” He yawned to prove it.

“And I'm going to pick some peas to go with the blue-fish,” said Zee. “Then I'm going to do some weeding in the flower beds.”

“I'll come with you, J.W.,” said Dave. “I like libraries.”

I, too, like libraries. They're full of books and other interesting sources of information and entertainment, and they're run by people who actually like their work and want to help you, which is to say that they're exactly the opposite of the people who work for the Registry of Motor Vehicles.

Dave and I finally got through the horrendous mid-afternoon coming-home-from-the-beach traffic jam in front of the A & P, and made it downtown. At the four corners, I hung a left on North Water Street, Edgartown's most prestigious avenue, avoided hitting a number of pedestrians who seemed oblivious to the fact that they were walking on a street where real live cars were driven, and actually found a parking place only a block beyond the library.

On ahead of us, the great captains' houses marched toward Starbuck Neck. I pointed out to Dave that the fronts of all of the houses were just slightly out of line with the street, being tilted, as it were, a bit more toward the sea.

“Why were they built that way?” asked Dave.

A good question, but one I could not answer. Another Vineyard mystery yet to be solved.

In the library, Dave wandered and I went to the card catalog and looked up poisons. There weren't a lot of entries, but there were enough. I found the books and an empty chair and began to read.

Water Hemlock. Scientific name:
Cicuta maculata.
No wonder Tony couldn't pronounce it. Also known as beaver poison, cowbane, and locoweed, and by other names as well. Found growing wild in eastern North America and other places. Different species found throughout the United States and Canada, mostly in wet or marshy ground. Grows up to seven or eight feet tall. Jointed stems, purple spots, and small white flowers.

I tried to remember if I'd ever seen a seven-foot-high plant with jointed stems, purple spots, and small white flowers. I didn't think I had. I thought that if I had, I would have remembered it. Purple spots?

Because toxicity decreases as the plant gets older, most poisonings occur in the spring when the plant is young. The whole plant is poisonous, but the roots contain the greatest concentrations. These are sometimes mistaken for parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes, or other edible roots. The poison is soluble in alcohol and chloroform, among other things. Cows have been poisoned by water contaminated with the juice of the plant, and children have been poisoned by making pea shooters and whistles from its hollow stems.

Water hemlock is the most violent plant poison in the United States. A piece of
Cicuta maculata
one centimeter in diameter can cause a fatal poisoning. Death is by respiratory failure or cardiac arrest, and comes between
twenty minutes and ninety minutes after ingestion of the poison. It is preceded by stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, labored breathing, weak pulse, and convulsions.

I thought again of the last minutes of Kathy Ellis's life. Gone was any hope I might have had that she had died without pain. Kathy had died in terrible agony, all alone. Beside
my
driveway.

After a while I read some more.

Treatment consists of removing the poison by gastric lavage or emesis with activated charcoal, and by artificial respiration with oxygen to prevent respiratory failure. Treatment of cardiac arrest is also employed, and injections of morphine or barbiturates are used to control convulsions. With early and adequate therapy, the death rate should be less than 10 percent.

Less than 10 percent. But there had been no early therapy for Kathy Ellis.

I leafed through the book and was astonished to discover that I had a lot of poisonous plants right in my yard: rhododendrons, mountain laurel, azaleas, and rhubarb, to name a few. Shocking. When Zee and I began to produce small Jacksons, we would have to be very careful about what they ate along with their allotted square yard of dirt.

I looked at my watch ($6.99, from Trader Fred's. A medium-priced timepiece by my standards. I never go above $9.99). It was time to get home and cook supper. I pushed back my chair and went to find Dave. He was dozing in the magazine reading room, having been overtaken once again by the Vineyard Sleepies. On his lap was an opened copy of a magazine with a computer on the cover. I touched his shoulder and he was immediately awake.

“Time to go home. The call of the evening martini can be heard.”

He put his magazine back and we walked out.

“I didn't know you were a computer person,” I said.

“I'm a key banger by profession,” he replied. “I have a little laptop that I can carry around the world in my travels. It's got a software program that lets me compose on it. Very neat for a guy in my business. I can work on a plane or in my room or wherever I am.”

“So you compose, too.”

He shrugged. “I'm a performer more than a composer, but, yeah, I do some writing, too. Everybody wants to write something.”

“I didn't notice a computer when you brought in your gear.”

“Ah, that's because I didn't bring it “With me. Mr. Quinn's advice. He said to bring nothing that would let me work. Concentrate on being lazy for a few days.” He flashed his grin. “Good advice. But he didn't say I couldn't read. Things in the computer world change so fast that you're always behind the times.”

“They say that as soon as you buy one, it's already out of date.”

“That's about right.” He gestured at the street. “That's what's so good about being down here. Here, nothing much changes. Your place doesn't look like it's any different than it was fifty years ago. The things you do—fishing and clamming—don't change. The tides and the weather are eternal. Your whole life is outside of time, sort of. It's a good kind of life for me, right now. I need some of this before I have to go back to the clock ticking and the schedules and all.”

We drove up North Water Street and slowed in front
of the refurbished Harborview Hotel to look at the Edgartown lighthouse and the boats in the outer harbor. I pointed out the distant needle that was Cape Pogue Light, which he had visited earlier in the day, then hooked through Starbuck Neck and caught Fuller Street back down to where I could cut right to Pease Point Way and drive onto Main Street and out of town.

When we got home, Quinn and Zee were already on the balcony with hors d'oeuvres and a bucket holding ice and a bottle of Stoli. We joined them, and looked out over the garden and pond to the sound, where sailboats were leaning in toward port as the sun got low.

“Not too bad a view,” said Quinn.

True.

“You're in a mood,” Zee said to me.

I had been trying to get Kathy Ellis out of my mind. I almost but not quite wished that I hadn't learned how hard she'd died. Now I willed her away and put a smile on my face.

“I'm okay,” I said. “Did you know that your cousin here plays with computers as well as pianos?”

“No, I didn't.” She smiled at him. “It's good to have a backup trade in case the bottom falls out of the music biz.”

“You will be interested to learn,” said Quinn, “that even I now write on a word processor. Still with two fingers, admittedly, but no longer on the old standard Royal. The end of an era. I sometimes wonder what will happen to the fourth estate if the electricity goes off.”

“Back to hand-set print,” said Dave. “Just like the good old days. Broadsides and pamphlets. No more of these big gray newspapers that nobody reads anyway. We'd all be better off.”

“Just because you don't play an electric piano doesn't mean that the rest of us don't need the old kite and key power,” said Quinn. He lifted his glass. “On the other hand, none of us need it for this kind of work.” He took a drink and sighed with satisfaction.

“I've been thinking about that error in Zee's account,” said Dave, sipping his Stoli. “If we get bored this week, we might nose around a little bit and try to find out how that happened.”

“How can you do that?” asked Zee, immediately interested. “The bank said it was just a glitch.”

“Glitches usually happen for a reason. Most of the time they're human error, like airplane crashes. Maybe we can find the human.”

“Do you think so?”

He shrugged. “Probably not. But maybe.”

“Anyway, it all got cleared up before anybody got hurt, so what difference does it make?”

“Don't you want to know?”

“Well . . .”

I left the balcony then and went downstairs to do some cooking. Supper was stuffed bluefish, fresh peas, and boiled potatoes topped with breton butter. The wine was cold Chablis. Delish! We ate at the table out on the lawn while we watched the sky darken and the first stars come out.

Another beautiful night on the beautiful island of Martha's Vineyard.

Later, my arm around sleeping Zee, I found myself again thinking of Katherine Ellis. It was the wrong time for such thoughts, and I was awake for longer than I wanted to be.

At five o'clock the next morning, we were at Wasque Point nailing the blues as the sky was brightening over Nantucket. The fish were only three quarters of a cast out, and were hitting about every other throw. They seemed to prefer poppers, so that's what we were giving them. There were three other trucks between Wasque and Leland's, and everybody was doing well. By the time the sun climbed up out of the water, we had a lot of fish under the truck. I was taking a coffee break and listening to the classical station over on the Cape when Dave came up from the surf with another nice nine-pounder. I watched as he unhooked the fish and tossed it under the truck with the others.

He clenched and unclenched his fingers and rubbed his arm. “Man, this is great, but it can wear you out.”

“It's always a problem. Should you hang in there and kill yourself to get your limit while the fish are still hitting, or take a break and hope they'll still be there after you rest up?”

There was a narrow band of clouds just above the horizon, and the sun was rising behind them. The clouds were shot with fire. I pointed out the tiny irregularity on the horizon that was Muskeget, the little island off the western tip of Nantucket.

“Ah,” he said. “Nantucket. Whales, Captain Ahab, and like that. A nice island, but a lot different than this one.
Not so many trees, for one thing. Low and gray, but beautiful. I was out there a couple of years ago. Just for part of a day. Flew in, took a bus tour, walked around town, and flew back to Boston.”