The Plague Doctor (16 page)

Chapter Thirty-three

As soon as we were down the driveway and out of sight I sat up and shook the ice and water out of my hair, giving my daughter an unexpected cold shower.

“Mom!” she protested.

“I'm sorry. Damn, damn, and double damn! I'm going to get that man if it's the last thing I do.”

“Joiner?”

“Yes!”

I fished around between the seats and found some old napkins from the Dairy Queen. I patted my face and shirt as dry as I could until the paper disintegrated into a sodden mess.

“What happened to Dr. Baxter? Did he have a heart attack?”

“I'm afraid not, Cassie. Andy Joiner says it looks like he shot himself.” I didn't tell her that I had my own doubts about calling it suicide, or that the shotgun looked all too familiar.

“Oh, how horrible! Then you must be right! Dr. Baxter's the one responsible for all the dead babies. I can't wait until we tell Ethan that we've solved his mystery!”

I didn't interrupt her litany. I couldn't. My teeth were chattering too hard.

“Do you want to go home and change?”

“No, I'll be okay. Just turn on the heater. I'm freezing.”

I huddled in front of the heater vents. By twisting and turning I exposed as much wet fabric as I could to the warm air. By the time we got back to town, I was as dry as I could get. My hair was a different story. Auburn curls stood up and out in every direction. I had never looked more like Raggedy Ann.

“Nobody will take me seriously looking like this,” I moaned.

“Which nobody do you have in mind, Mom?”

“I have no idea,” I admitted. “Somebody with a lab that can tell me what's in this little bottle.”

I pulled the small yellow-capped vial I had found in Edgar Baxter's house out of my pocket.

“What is it and where did you find it?”

“I don't know what it is. I found it tucked in between the cushions of a wonderful leather chair.”

I held the vial up to the window and squinted. I could see nothing in the colorless liquid but tiny little black dots. “You know anybody with a lab around here, or even a junior chemistry set? Anybody with a microscope?”

“Ethan told me that the extension service of the state agriculture college out on the Teddyville road has a pretty decent lab. He went there several times. I went with him once and met the guy in charge, Barry Sedmonds. He's really nice. If I thought you would go for a man with a huge grey beard who wears overalls all the time I would have introduced you earlier.

“No time like the present. I'm sure to make a fantastic impression myself.”

“Let's go then!”

The local extension service was the place that farmers in Lakeland County came to analyze the soil on their land. They also brought in all kinds of creepy crawlers to find out what was eating their corn, or sorghum, or fescue. I had never had a reason to visit before, and now I was sorry. It was quite a lovely place.

The small low-lying buildings were set unobtrusively on several beautifully green and verdant acres of everything that can be grown in this part of the country. A roadside stand selling big red tomatoes and Indian corn and green beans was an advertisement for the expertise of the farmer scientists. Each one of the little white buildings was festooned with trellises of climbing roses, morning glories, and scarlet runners. It was a beautiful and calming sight. I almost forgot why we had come.

“Wow, Mom, did you see those tomatoes? Gran would love to have some, I bet. And let's get some to take to Mabel.”

“I'm hungry,” I realized. “What time is it?”

“Almost four o'clock.

“Gee, how time flies when your having fun.”

Cassandra drove to the end of a neat one-lane gravel road behind the buildings. From the back, I could see that they were actually greenhouses. The glass was covered with shutters which could be moved about on a series of rolling tracks built on the eaves of the roofs. It was an ingenious plan for getting most of the sunlight during winter months.

“Barry's office is in the last building. I'm sure he has a microscope. But be prepared, Mom. He's a little bit of a loon.”

“All my best friends are loons. He'll fit right in.”

Cassie parked Watson as far off the narrow road as she could. We got out and walked across the gravel to the little building.

“Are you sure he's here? I don't see any more cars.”

“He doesn't have a car. He says they aren't environmentally efficient. He's here. There's his bicycle.”

“Oh,” I said under my breath, “He's one of those sorts of loons.”

But as soon as I met Barry, I realized he was a loon after my own heart.

“Cassandra the beautiful! Welcome back. I'm delighted to see you. Where's your good-for-nothing Romeo?”

The big man in red plaid flannel and vast amounts of denim ushered us into the warm and earthy-smelling confines of the greenhouse. His beard did resemble steel wool, but when he brushed past me to secure the door, it felt as soft as goose down.

“All my babies are going to sleep,” he explained as he shut the door carefully and pulled a heavy sheet of plastic down over it to prevent any possibility of a draft. “I don't want them to catch a cold,” he said, as he gestured towards the plant beds extending back the length of the greenhouse.

The big man turned and looked me up and down.

“I'm supposing you're Cassandra's famous mother, Paisley Sterling. I would say sister, but I'm hoping you're not that young because she is a mere child. You want to have dinner with me Friday night? I'm fixing venison spaghetti. I may not be Robert Redford but I have a terrific personality.” He leered comically at me as he continued, “And you, my sweet Paisley, have enough good looks for the both of us.”

I laughed. I couldn't resist his effervescent smile and bright green eyes. They were the youngest part of him. I judged his age at about forty something. He was still firm and athletic, and the face behind the beard was smooth and unlined. The only wrinkles he had were laugh lines around those terrific eyes.

“Sorry, Barry—about the lack of introduction, I mean,” Cassie offered in a somewhat distracted voice. I could tell she was surprised that Barry didn't know about Ethan's escape. “This is my mother, Paisley DeLeon.”

“Then you're married?” He looked at Cassie and back at me and blushed an indecent red. “Oh, of course you would be, you're her mother. Oh, well, never mind. Next time around, next life.”

He busied about and found two rickety old three-legged stools and pulled them up to his lab table for us.

“What can I do you fer? As my maiden uncle used to say.”

“Mr. Sedmonds,” I started.

“Barry, please,” he insisted as he put one big hairy paw on my arm.

“Barry, I found this at the scene…somewhere this morning, and I'm really curious as to its contents. At first I thought it was water, but if you look really closely you can see the tiniest spots of something in it. I was hoping you would let me borrow your microscope.”

I put the little bottle with the yellow cap on the lab table in front of him. He sat back in surprise and almost fell off his seat.

“Well, there's no mystery here. I'm sorry I can't pretend and play the role of all-powerful scientist, but this is just too simple.”

“It is?” asked Cassie.

“Sure is, honey,” he answered.

“Then what is it?”

“Haven't you ever been to an allergist?” he asked me.

“Sure, just last week. I had some poi…”

“Well, then you must know that this is the weakest dose of an allergen. Most allergy docs I know have the same system. The yellow tops are for the first immunotherapy inoculations, and they go on through a series of stronger extracts. Those are in the same bottles topped in green, blue, and red. What are you allergic to?”

“Nothing, I guess. I had…”

“Dust mites! That's what gets me—the little buggers. Damn dust mites make me about sneeze my beard off. I had to have shots for dust mite allergy for three years! Twice a week for three years! Can you imagine?”

“Well, I don't…”

He grabbed the little bottle.

“Let's see if we can tell what this is in here.”

Cassie was laughing. I had to smile. The man was a tornado in blue denim.

“You're right, my sweet lady! There is the tiniest of somethings in this bottle,” he said, turning back from his microscope. “And I would hazard a guess that this is an allergen for Goldenrod.”

“Goldenrod?”

“Yes! Because it has an artifact.”

“Artifact?”

I was beginning to sound like an echo.

He slammed the bottle down on the table and barreled past me in the confined space again. This time I could swear he pinched my buttocks. I gave a little jump and Cass looked at me quizzically. This was no time to get on my feminist high horse, I decided. I was brimming over with excitement. I had the feeling that this bear of a man was coming close to solving Ethan's problem.

Barry came back down the narrow aisle of the greenhouse carrying a long stalk of grass with small yellow flowers on the end. He was obviously in the throes of scientific excitement because he forgot to pinch me again. He shook the flowers vigorously over the lab table. Cassie immediately started to sneeze.

“See?” he gestured towards Cassandra with the flowers. “Yon damsel is allergic to Goldenrod. As a good mother, you would naturally take her to an allergist.”

He leaned across the table and glared at me. “Why haven't you, by the way?”

“She never…”

“The doctor would start her on a series of allergy shots made with a natural extract of the very plant that was giving her nasal passages fits.”

When he slammed the yellow bottle down on the table again, Cassie and I both jumped.

“Naturally, he would start with the yellow-topped bottle since it is the weakest strength and progress over a period of months to the strongest. After a year or two of this magical treatment she would find that her allergy to Goldenrod was no longer. She could go out and roll in the stuff and be sneeze free.” He sighed, “Ah, modern medicine.”

“What's the artifact?” asked Cassie.

“Ah, there's the rub,” he boomed. “For the last year, all of the Goldenrod in our fair state has been infected with a rust.” He saw our questioning looks and explained. “A rust is a plant fungus. It invades like a virus and before you know it—poof!”

He slammed his fists down and we jumped again. I decided I might have to smack him if he did it one more time.

“You can ask anybody in the allergy business. Goldenrod treatments have been put on hold.”

“Why?”

“Because, dear lady, no one knows how the plant rust will affect the patient. And it cannot be eliminated from the plant extract. Not with absolute certainty, anyway.”

I tried to remember some of my college botany.

“You said this rust was a fungus?”

“Right!”

“Then it has spores.”

“Exactomundo!”

“Then it can spread.”

“Give the lady a gold star! And that's just why nobody wants to take a chance on using it for allergy therapy. It could theoretically carry another disease from patient to patient.”

He looked at me with those emerald eyes, “That's just theory, you understand. But enough of a possibility to halt treatments for a while until we can come up with a nontoxic fungicide that's specific to this particular rust. I don't know where this little yellow bottle came from, but whoever made it could be in big trouble, because it's full of fungal spores.”

“Have you ever heard of Goldenrod causing abortions?”

“Where in damnation are you all getting this information? That happened so long ago, and yet, you are the third person to ask me in the last three years.”

“Edgar Baxter was the first?”

He looked at me with unveiled admiration.

“Beauty and brains, too,” he sighed. “What a winning combination.”

Chapter Thirty-four

Before he let us go on our merry way, Barry Sedmonds fixed us the best tomato sandwich I ever had. He even washed his hands first.

Cassie backed Watson out of the one-way drive behind the greenhouse like an expert. We were well on our way again when I realized that we had not been given another police escort. I mentioned it to Cassie.

“Maybe Joiner forgot.”

“In the words of your Confederate great-granpappy, ‘Forget hell!' I think he's pretty sure we're not going to meet Ethan during the daytime. He'll be back at the farm tonight with reinforcements.”

The mood of the town seemed a bit somber as we drove through on our way home. There was a huge white silk bow of mourning tied to the one remaining post in the rubble that had been Dr. Edgar Baxter's office. The few people out on the street were gathered in small conversational groups. I don't think I was wrong to imagine they were discussing the old man's life and death. Mother would be sad, too. I hoped I was wrong about Edgar Baxter. It would be nice if he could rest in peace.

I had left the little yellow-capped bottle with Barry. He was going to make an official analysis of the contents, including the spores. He had been dying of curiosity, but had the good manners not to ask me where my little find had come from. I promised him that after this was over I would take him up on his dinner invitation. I would fill him in on all the details over tiramisu. The mascarpone cheese, he promised, would be made with milk from his very own goats. I guessed I was up for it. At the very least, it would be interesting to observe Mother and Barry in action. She and Cass would come with me. He said I would need chaperones to curb his unbridled lust.

My being right all the time never ceased to amaze me. The circular drive at Meadowdale Farm was full of police cars. The sleek Bentley convertible belonging to Horatio Raleigh was parked closer to the house. Horatio was most likely trying to spirit Mother away from the plebeian clutches of the law by taking her to some exclusive place down by the lake for dinner.

Right again!

“I simply cannot leave the children, Horatio,” she insisted as she took another sip of the excellent
chenin blanc
he'd brought as an enticement.

“We're not exactly children, Gran. I'm over twenty, for God's sake, and Mother's almost…”

“Never mind what I am almost. Cassie is right, Mother. Go and have dinner with Horatio. We'll be perfectly fine here.”

The late afternoon sun was still warm as it filtered through the wooden slats Mother had lowered over the screen on the back porch to give us some privacy from the watching eyes of the local cops. I stretched back in the comfortable chaise lounge and took two more long sips of the wonderful wine.

“Some day you're going to have to educate me on the whys and wherefores of buying wine, Horatio,” I said.

“Glad to my, dear. I always said to your dear late father that the bottom of that unused cistern out in the side yard would make the most perfect wine cellar. It's even shaped like an amphora. That's what the ancients kept their…”

I dozed off as Horatio continued his lecture on wine and Greek civilization. Cassie awakened me when she rescued the empty wine glass I was about to drop on the sandstone floor.

“Sorry, Mom,” she whispered. “I didn't mean to wake you up.”

“Why should you stop now?” I grumped as I cleared the sleep from my voice.

“How long…?”

“About an hour and a half is all. And you weren't even snoring.”

She smiled and patted my head. “You must feel very rested.”

“Yeah, terrific. Rarin' to go.”

I turned over and shut my eyes again. “Let me have just a few more minutes…”

“Mom, it's almost eight o'clock. We have to meet Ethan in just a few hours and we haven't even made a plan yet.”

“Horatio got rid of Mother for us. That was our biggest problem. The rest is a piece of cake. Now let me sleep.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but our biggest problem is in the kitchen preparing dinner. She refused to leave us, and Horatio won't leave her. Now we have the two of them to contend with.”

“Piss!”

“No. Lobster bisque with artichoke crostini. But you were close.”

Cassie hated lobster almost as much as artichokes.

My daughter warmed up chicken noodle soup from a can while the rest of us marveled over the smooth texture and delicious taste of the bisque. I chomped delicately on crostini as I invited some more information from Horatio's seemingly endless storehouse of knowledge. This time I wasn't interested in the ancients. I wanted gossip.

“What are people saying about Edgar's death?”

He paused in his pursuit of a choice bit of lobster and patted his lips delicately with one of Mother's monogrammed linen napkins. She had decided that our being the object of a police stakeout called for a formal occasion.

“Edgar Baxter was an old and dear friend of mine and your Mother's. In fact,” he continued, “of almost everyone in town. For years, he and Julie were the leaders of the young social set until her rather unfortunate, er, habit, began to make her shun the public eye.”

“I always thought if Julie had only consented to adopt a baby she and Edgar would have been so much happier,” Mother sighed. “What a waste! A lovely young woman and a truly fine man. It's a tragic ending to such glorious possibilities.”

I pondered over that statement for a moment as I finished my soup. Mother was right. Since my return to Rowan Springs, I had come to realize that it was only in little towns like this that one could see the complete play of a person's life acted out. In Manhattan, life was played out in short segments. You knew people for sporadic periods of time only, and certainly never from birth to death. A little town was a stage for the entire scenario of one's life. In Rowan Springs all the players were known—only the ending was in doubt. You just had to sit back and wait for the curtain to come down and the critics to descend. Then you could decide if the play was worth the effort of the sixty or seventy years of its production.

“What did Miss Lolly want, Gran?” asked Cassie, as she scraped artichokes off her crostini.

“I almost forgot! She gave me one of Ethan's ‘tiny little records' as she called it. Apparently you and your mother didn't fool her for one second when you removed his computer last week. Her gardener found the disc under the stairs in the rhododendrons. One of you must have dropped it as you were leaving.”

“Cassie did.”

“I'm sure it was you, Mom.”

“Anyway,” continued Mother, “she was delightfully conspiratorial about it. She had all the blinds pulled down. She even asked me if I had been followed.”

“Had you?” asked Cassie and me together.

She looked at us questioningly. “Why, of course not! Andy Joiner would never dare to impugn my integrity by suggesting that I would have anything to do with rescuing your young man.”

“I imagine the dear old thing sees herself as quite the Jessica Fletcher,” suggested Horatio. “I do recall her looking somewhat like a young Angela Lansbury when I was a boy and…”

I interrupted when an errant thought struck me. “Horatio, I almost forgot! Who's in charge of the pharmacy at the hospital?”

He took a sip of wine and pondered for a moment. I am quite sure he didn't need to ponder at all; he simply wanted to create a dramatic pause.

“Miss Teresa Downs. She has been there for at least twenty years.”

I was disappointed. The identity of Porky Pig remained a deep dark mystery.