Pretty Poison (8 page)

“Great. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

She couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “Okay. I really have to go. Thanks for your help.”

Botanical:
Viola tricolor
Family:
N.O. Violaceae
Common Names:
Johnny jumpup, wild pansy

The word
pansy
is traced back to the French word
pensée
, meaning thought or remembrance. Cultivated some time after the fourth century B.C. in Europe. Legend says the pansy was originally white but turned bright purple when it was pierced by Cupid’s arrow. It’s said that you can see a loved one in the face of a pansy.

QUEENS UNIVERSITY WAS over a hundred years old. Its campus was located in the Myers Park residential area of Charlotte. Graceful, spreading oak trees and lush lawns dominated the landscape in summer. But in November, even the gold and red leaves were gone from the skeletal boughs. Classes were in full swing with hundreds of students milling from building to building.

Peggy rushed into the science hall. She wasn’t surprised to find her freshman class sitting on their desks, talking about movies. “Sorry I’m late. Let’s get right down to business to make up the time.”

One of the students raised her hand. “Could we talk about the murder you’re involved with, Dr. Lee? What did the dead guy look like? Was it like being on
CSI
or one of those reality shows?”

Peggy couldn’t fight the groundswell of questions about the murder. She perched on her big desk and answered as honestly as she could. The questions weren’t so much personal as curious about the event.

Before she knew it, the hour was up. They managed to avoid discussing anything from her notes that day. “I’m assigning the next three chapters as reading material for the weekend. On Monday, there will be a test that includes a line drawing; all the parts of pistil and stamen from
Rhododendron vaseyi
. You should know this! If you have any questions, I’m available on E-mail. You have my address in your notes.”

Her cell phone rang as the students started groaning and packing their book bags. She checked the number on her caller ID. “Hello, Sam. Is there a problem?”

“I found something. It was out in the dirt alongside the loading dock. I think it might have something to do with the murder. Can you come back to the shop?”

Peggy paused as a student wished her a good weekend. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

 

 

“I WAS OUT HERE cleaning up the mess you caused when you made Keeley drop that flat of pansies. Then I saw
it
.” Sam walked quickly through the storage area to the loading dock, glancing suspiciously around the bags of peat moss, potting soil, and manure.

Peggy ran to keep up with him. “
It
what? Do you always have to be so dramatic? If you don’t tell me what it is right now, I’m going to fire you!”

“As if!” He grinned. “Hey! It’s my big moment. I have to
show
you.”

They walked down the stairs alongside the dock. There was still potting soil and pansy flowers littering the ground.

“I don’t see where you cleaned anything,” she said.

“I didn’t clean anything yet. But I found
this
.” He pulled a key from the pocket of his blue T-shirt that said
Potting Shed
. “Don’t worry. I put on my gloves before I picked it up. If there are any fingerprints on it, they should still be here.”

Peggy sat down on the wood stair behind her. “Have you decided to become a detective instead of a doctor? Why is this fascinating? Do you realize how much traffic there was coming up Fourth Street?”

“Take out your shop key,” he said, still grinning.

Peggy did as he suggested, wondering if he’d been out in the sun or smelling the manure for too long. The two keys were the same. She sat up straight. “Whose key is it?”

“Maybe it belongs to whoever let Mark Warner in the shop.”

She scuffed her shoe in the dirt. “It could’ve been back here for a year, too.”

“That’s easy to find out. Let’s see who has their key and who doesn’t. I have mine. You have yours. Who else has a key?”

“Let’s find out,” she agreed. “But first, let’s put that key in a plastic bag. I can take it over to Mai to check for prints.”

“Who’s Mai?” Sam wondered. “He sounds hot.”

Peggy laughed. “
She
might be. You can meet her yourself when you go in to have your fingerprints made.”

“A sister, huh? Oh well.” He slapped himself in the head. “Sorry. I keep forgetting to go over there.”

“If you’re arrested for Mark’s murder because the police don’t know you work for me, you might remember.”

“Why don’t you let me take the key over there, and I can get my prints made at the same time?”

She started back into the Potting Shed. “How do I know you’re not the killer, and the evidence on this key won’t ever reach the police?”

The door closed behind her as Sam digested her words. “Hey! Wait up! Are you saying that I’m a suspect?”

Peggy was already in the front of the store by the time he caught her. They both waited for a customer to leave before asking Selena to produce her key.

“You guys look like a couple of vultures.” Selena found her key and held it up. “I didn’t kill anybody. Especially not with this key!”

“No one said you did,” Sam replied with a suspicious tone. “Do you have something to hide?”

She stuck out her tongue at him. “No! Do
you
?”

“We know Mark Warner was murdered by one of his lovers,” he said. “You could’ve been one of them.”

“Eeuuww! That’s gross! Do you know how old he was? He was like my
grandfather
!” She recovered from her disgust and glared at him. “Besides,
you
could’ve been one of his lovers, too.”

Sam shuddered. “Eeuuww! You’re right. That’s gross. Except he had a lot of money. I could overlook a few things for someone who could help me pay off my medical school bills.”

They both looked at Peggy to end the dispute. She took her time about it, checking the cash register receipts before she answered. “I don’t know, Sam. You offered to take a piece of evidence to the police.”

“Not because I’m guilty of killing someone!”

She laughed and squeezed his arm. “Of course not, sweetie! And neither is Selena. But once we figure out how Warner got into the shop, we might be that much closer to figuring out why. This key could be part of that.”

Sam was satisfied with that. He started a list of key holders on his Palm Pilot. Peggy gave him the names of everyone who had keys. He put checks beside his name, Selena’s, and Peggy’s. “I’ll talk to Keeley tonight. Maybe you could check with Mr. Balducci, the cleaning company, and the bug guy.”

Peggy agreed and made a note for herself.

“What about me?” Selena asked. “I had to see the dead guy. Shouldn’t I get to check something out?”

“You should,” Peggy sympathized. “I have to leave again for a couple of hours. I’ll be back to close up. In the meantime, keep an eye out for that woman we saw with Mark for the past couple weeks. See if you can find some way to get her name.”

“You mean the woman with the legs that could crack walnuts?” Selena chuckled and nudged Sam with her elbow. “Too bad you don’t want to hook up with her. She’d show you
hot
.”

He shuddered. “She sounds scary. If her legs can crack walnuts . . .”

“Maybe you’re right,” Selena agreed. “Maybe she killed Mark Warner.”

“Let’s find out who she is before we accuse her of murder,” Peggy suggested.

“She looked strong enough to hit somebody with a shovel,” Selena reminded her.

A group of customers came into the shop. The lunchtime crowd was gone, but late stragglers were still shopping for weekend projects.

“I have to go,” Peggy said again. “Let me know what you find out.”

 

 

THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON went quickly. Her second class was less impressed by the murder in her shop, so they went through the process of photosynthesis.

One student stopped after class to ask about her lecture on botanical poisons. He suspected one of the people who shared his house of killing his goldfish by pouring Drano into the tank.

“Drano doesn’t qualify as being botanical,” she explained. “A botanical poison is made from plants or plant substances. I think Drano is chemical. You’ll have to do some research on the Internet.”

“Have you ever seen a Drano poisoning, Dr. Lee?” he continued. “Do you know what the symptoms would be?”

“I really can’t say. And I imagine it would be different for humans than for goldfish.”

“What about other poisons? What would be something you could use that would be fast acting and not leave any trace for the police to find?”

She frowned. The conversation was beginning to take a downward turn. “With today’s crime scene investigation, there’s no such thing. If you want to get revenge for your goldfish, I suggest you take up boxing or kung fu.”

The young man took notes and thanked her for her time. He seemed unimpressed with her suggestion not to use poison and denied he was looking for revenge. She shook her head as he left. She couldn’t be responsible for the facts. She hated to think any of her knowledge would be used the wrong way. But it was like the Internet. Just because you found out how to build a bomb on-line didn’t mean you had to build one. People had been using poison for thousands of years. Still, she scribbled down his name and E-mailed the dean in case anything came of it.

She called Mint Condition cleaning service and asked about the normal cleaning day for the shop as well as who had the key. The owner assured her they had her key in safekeeping and that her regular cleaning day was Friday, as it was for the rest of the shops in Brevard Court and Latta Arcade. Peggy thanked him, then looked up the number for the bug guy.

It was the same story with him. He only came in once a month to spray for pests. His last visit was at the beginning of November, two weeks before Mark’s death. He offered to show her the key to the shop, but Peggy assured him she believed he had it.

She crossed both names off of her list and considered the rest of the choices. It might seem like an extensive list of key holders to Mai. But to her, the rest of the people on the list were people she cared about. She didn’t want to think any of them were involved with the murder. Yet what other possible explanation could there be?

After stuffing her books and papers into her backpack, Peggy got on her bicycle and rode back to the Potting Shed. Traffic was still heavy, but the weather was nice again. Between traffic lights, she thought about Steve Newsome and his invitation to dinner. It had been a long time since she dated. She wasn’t sure she remembered how.

A car slammed on its brakes in front of her, forcing her to do the same. What was she thinking? This dinner wasn’t a date. She was taking the man out for dinner because he helped her with the dog. He’d asked her because . . . well . . . because he was probably curious about the murder. He did mention it, after all.

By the time she reached the shop, she’d convinced herself there was nothing romantic about dinner with Steve. He was a man. A
younger
man. She was a widow who still loved her husband. The rest was pure fantasy on her part brought on by stress and sleeplessness.

As a compelling part of this hypothesis, she reminded herself that she was assuming responsibility for a dog. A
big
dog. She didn’t need any other evidence to convince the jury in her mind. Obviously the stress and lack of sleep was leading to lapses in judgment.

“How did it go?” she asked Selena after a customer left the counter.

“Okay, I guess.” Selena looked furtively around the shop and whispered, “I didn’t see
her
.”

“We’ll just have to keep looking. She’ll probably come in again.”

Selena picked up her book bag from behind the counter. “I’m going. I have that English lit exam tonight, and I have to study for the French exam tomorrow, so I might be late in the morning. But I’ll keep my eyes open while I’m waiting for the bus. Maybe
she’ll
walk by.”

“What will you say if you see her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll pretend I know who she is. You know like, ‘Lucy! Is that
you
?’ ”

Peggy laughed. “Just be careful. She could be the one responsible for Mark’s death. She might be nervous.”

“I’ll watch out for her legs. The rest of her didn’t look all that dangerous. See you tomorrow.”

Selena had only been gone a few minutes when the woman they were looking for walked into the shop. Peggy knew Selena was going to be disappointed she wasn’t there to question her. But she couldn’t put it off in case she didn’t come back again.

She didn’t want to take Selena’s hypothetical approach and pretend to know the woman. Besides, she had the advantage of being in the shop. Thinking quickly, she took some scraps of paper and approached all of the customers who were there. “We’re having a giveaway. A beautiful Christmas wreath. Just the thing to brighten up the holidays. All I need is your name and phone number.”