Pretty Poison (4 page)

The auditorium was full when she finally walked out on the stage. The dean had been stalling for her, running on about future events scheduled in the auditorium. “Here she is at last! We were beginning to wonder if you were going to show up, Dr. Lee.”

Peggy thanked him and squeezed his hand behind the podium. She kept her voice down as she said, “Thanks for covering for me, Phil. I’m lucky to be here at all tonight. It’s not every day I find a dead man in my shop.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” the dean whispered out of microphone range.

“I’m fine.” She moved closer to the podium and adjusted the microphone. “Good evening. I apologize for being late. Let’s not waste any more time. As many of you know, I’m Dr. Margaret Lee. I teach botany here at Queens. Let’s talk about botanical poisons.”

She pressed the button on the projector control as the lights came down in the auditorium. A picture of a sunlit vine came up on the screen. “This is a common plant you’ve probably seen many times.
Hedera helix
or English ivy. It’s an indoor /outdoor ornamental vine. It contains saponins, which can cause poisoning in animals and humans. Humans who don’t know any better ingest the pretty berries on this vine and go into comas. Not a good thing to do.”

Pens scribbled, and fingers typed on laptops. For the next hour, she took the audience through a list of poisonous plants that could be found in the garden or home environment. She’d worked with botanical toxins and their antidotes as a hobby for years. It finally spilled over into her professional life last year when she was consulted on a poisoning death that occurred in the North Carolina mountains.

“In conclusion, just because a flower or plant is pretty or seems familiar doesn’t make it safe. If you have children or pets who may not know the difference, be sure the plants you pick for your home or garden aren’t toxic. I’ve shown you a few species to beware. Consult a good botanical guide or call your local poison control center if you aren’t sure. Are there any questions?”

“Wouldn’t it be better not to sell plants that are poisonous?” a young woman asked from the audience.

“Possibly,” Peggy acknowledged. “But how many things in our homes
could
be harmful? You wouldn’t let your two-year-old play with matches either. Or put antifreeze out in a pail for your dog to drink. Some common sense is warranted with everything, including plants.”

Peggy fielded questions for half an hour before she called for the last question as the dean made wrapping up motions with his hands.

“Could any of these plants be used to kill someone?” a man asked from the back of the auditorium. His face was hidden in the shadow of the spotlight they used for plays.

“It’s possible,” she answered. “People are notorious for finding any means to an end, aren’t they?” The audience laughed, and she thanked them for coming. She glanced back out into the crowd. The man who asked the final question was gone. She shivered, always wondering if she was giving away the seeds of someone’s destruction.

As the group broke up, Peggy was surrounded by her students and other members of the audience who wanted to ask her more questions. She saw a familiar face from the corner of her eye; the man in the green Saturn she ran into that morning.

He smiled and began to weave through the crowd toward her. Peggy felt a little flutter in her chest. Since she knew it couldn’t be excitement at seeing him again, she put it down to indigestion.

Before he could reach her, another man stepped between them. “Dr. Lee? My name is Hal Samson. I’m from Columbia, South Carolina. I wonder if I could bend your ear about a case I’m working on right now.”

Peggy looked past the jostling students making jokes about poisoning obnoxious professors. The man from the Saturn was gone. A small sense of disappointment nipped at her and was quickly pushed aside. It was ridiculous anyway. She should know better. The man was at least ten years younger than her. Even if she was romantically interested in him, which she
wasn’t,
what could he possibly see in her? It was just a coincidence that he was there.

“Dr. Lee?”

She glanced at the heavily bearded man who adjusted his glasses self-consciously and straightened his stained tie. “Excuse me, Mr. Samson?”

“Dr. Samson, actually.” He chuckled in embarrassment. “I know this is a bad place. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t urgent. I assure you, I would’ve gone through the proper channels.”

Peggy reached for her cape from behind the podium. “Nonsense! You can buy me a cup of coffee at the cafeteria, and we can talk.”

Over large mugs of strong brew, Dr. Samson explained his dilemma. “She presented with signs of liver and kidney failure, depressed circulation, vomiting, diarrhea. She was hypothermic. We admitted her right away and did a workup on her. I thought it was last-stage liver disease until her husband told me that she was perfectly healthy the day before.”

She looked at the twenty-four-year-old woman’s file. “I assume you’ve come all this way because you learned it was poison instead.”

“Tox screen analysis found traces of protoanemonin in her system.” He stirred more sugar into his coffee. “It’s not something we see much of. Poison, I mean. I immediately questioned the husband about what she’d been doing prior to her illness. He told me she went to work and didn’t feel well when she came home. Her symptoms became worse as time passed until he finally brought her to the hospital. I thought it might be an accidental poisoning. Maybe she worked at a nursery or greenhouse.”

“Anemonin isn’t an accidental poisoning,” Peggy said. “She couldn’t get it from working with plants.”

“I don’t mind bringing the police in on it, if that’s the case. But my concern right now is for the patient. She won’t last much longer. I have no idea where she got the anemonin or how she was exposed. Her eyes or skin don’t show any sign of irritation. I’ve used activated charcoal to flush her stomach, but that’s probably too little, too late. I’m keeping her going with heart and respiratory stimulants.”

Peggy studied the photo of the attractive young woman. “How long has it been?”

“She’s been in my care for about eighteen hours. Her husband says they thought she had the flu. I’m running out of time.”

“You’ve done everything you can, Dr. Samson. Without knowing the size of the dose or how it was administered, no one could do any better. There’s no real antidote, although I have heard of ginseng being helpful in some cases. It must’ve been a small dose or she’d be dead already. If she makes it through the next twenty-four hours, she has a chance of recovery.”

He picked up the photo from the file. “She’s a lovely girl. Her husband says they were trying to start a family. They’ve been married for two years. Are you sure this couldn’t be an accident, Dr. Lee?”

“There’s no accident to it, Dr. Samson. It’s a difficult and lengthy process to come up with anemonin in its purest, crystal form. I hope she recovers so she can tell you how she was poisoned.” She looked at the hospital chart again. It was disturbing to think that someone would do such a thing, but she knew it happened.

It was after nine when they walked out of the cafeteria. Peggy pulled her cape around her and shivered in the breeze that rattled down the street.

“Can I drop you somewhere, Dr. Lee?”

“No, thanks. I don’t live far from here. And please call me Peggy.”

Samson smiled. “All right. If you’ll call me Hal. I’ll be happy to keep you posted on my patient’s progress. Maybe there’s a logical explanation for the whole thing.”

She held out her hand. “I’d appreciate that, Hal. If there’s anything else I can do or you have any other questions, I’ll be glad to help. I’ll send you that information about ginseng, if you like.”

“That would be great, thanks. It’s been a pleasure meeting you.” He shook her hand heartily. “I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

Peggy agreed. She walked back with him to the auditorium parking lot. Hal Samson was exactly the kind of man she should be interested in, if she was ever interested in a man again. He was a few years older than her. Intellectual. His clothes were a little messy, but she wasn’t exactly neat herself, especially when she was working.

But where was that little spark when they parted company at his gray Volvo? There was no flutter when he waved to her from behind the window. She watched him drive away and sighed. She just wasn’t ready yet.

 

 

PEGGY TOOK OFF HER GLASSES and rubbed her eyes. It was two A.M. She’d spent the last three hours searching through her files for any new information she might’ve missed about treating anemonin poisoning.

Despite frequent updates from her colleagues in the study of poisonous plants, there was no new research on
Anemone pulsatilla
. The tiny flower was harmless enough and once used quite heavily for medicinal purposes. The oil caused skin irritation, and its primary component, anemonin, was still an active ingredient in other herbal preparations as a sedative.

Trying to get the thoughts of death out of her mind, Peggy did what every gardener does when they can’t sleep: She took out her seed catalog. Scarlet runner beans and pink hibiscus were always soothing. She was thinking about planting some lilac bushes in her yard, even though they didn’t do as well in the warm, damp Southern climate.

Despite the bright pictures, she couldn’t focus on the catalog. The day’s events weighed heavily on her mind, especially the dead man on the floor in her shop. There were so many unanswered questions.

If Mark Warner were a little less of a celebrity around town, she wouldn’t have known him. He wasn’t there the few times she’d been at the Warners’ home. But there were so many newspaper articles about him; he was almost as familiar as the mayor.

She suddenly remembered that a beautiful woman was at his side when he came to Brevard Court those warm fall days. She’d seen them together a few times in the shop. The pair didn’t act businesslike toward each other: heads bent close together, stroking each other’s arms. And the woman dressed a little expensively for a personal assistant.

Of course, everyone had heard the gossip about the Warner family. Rumor had it that Julie and Mark both fooled around on the side. Maybe those rumors colored her thinking about the man.

While Al’s idea that Mark got locked in the shop by accident was ludicrous, what if he was purposely hiding? Was it possible that he planned to meet the tall brunette there after the shop closed? She’d have to check with Keeley and Sam to see if they were there the night before. They sometimes dropped off plants and supplies at night. Maybe they saw or heard something.

Peggy shook her head and flipped a page in the spring catalog without seeing it. That didn’t make any sense either. The Potting Shed was too small for her not to notice if someone was still there when she closed up. And a man in Warner’s position wouldn’t skulk around in a garden shop waiting to be locked in. He’d simply arrange to meet the woman at a friend’s house or a hotel.

Yet there he was lying dead in her shop. While none of the hypotheses made any sense, the result was incontrovertible.

A tiny chime sounded from a clock on the mantel across the bedroom. She jumped up and fumbled around for her slippers. With her glasses in one hand, she ran down the broad spiral staircase that led to the ground floor.

The house was chilly, as always, when the weather got cool. John had frequently complained about the quirks and problems of living in a big, rambling house from the turn of the century. Upkeep was ridiculous and sometimes improbable.

But Peggy loved the old house. She loved the feel of the cool marble stairs on her feet in the summer. She loved all the nooks and crannies. She kept a thirty-foot blue spruce growing in the entrance hall. Each room in the house had a fireplace. The ceilings were still the original plaster.

But the basement was her passion. Here she dabbled and played with Mother Nature. In her botanical lab, she cross-pollinated and modified, looking for new varieties of plant life for pleasure as well as medicinal purposes.

The basement sprawled the length and width of the entire house, but it still wasn’t enough room for her pets. It opened into an acre garden that she cultivated by the season. Here she produced a black rose last summer. Under a two-hundred-year-old oak with branches thicker than her body, she grew purple mushrooms. Two years ago, she produced a small green melon that tasted exactly like a peach.

Tonight, she was going to view her night-blooming water lily for the first time. It was named Antares for the largest red star in the constellation Scorpius. A friend of hers who worked at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania sent it to her last month. She put it in her indoor pond and was quickly rewarded with gorgeous dark green and purple leaves.

An array of various heat lamps and ultraviolet lights guided her way through her experiments. She caught her breath when she saw the lily. It was as wide as a dinner plate. Its velvety scarlet petals were reflected in the filtered water where it floated. She immediately took out her camera and notebook. Then she pulled up her sleeves and started in on the real work. She was hoping to create the first rose to only bloom at night.

 

 

PEGGY DIDN’T LOOK UP AGAIN until she heard the doorbell ring at eight-thirty. She was wet from working in the pond and covered with dirt. “And that would be the police,” she muttered to herself as she put the teakettle on to boil.

She never actually went to sleep last night. She took off her gloves, brushed the loose dirt from her pants, and looked at herself in the antique mirror that hung in the foyer.

Her green eyes seemed greener the last few years, more summer green than spring. She had more white in her hair. Like being blond from the summer sun, only older. The color ran out of her hair after John died. Until then, the red only had traces of white through it.