by Libby Howard
I winced, thinking of the impatiens that tended to die almost as quickly as I bought them. “I have a few herbs and flowers. I’m still trying to figure out what’s going to thrive in my back yard with the soil and the partial shade.”
I continued to listen as Kat and Dora spoke of rose varieties, waiting for an opportunity to shift the conversation. Finally realizing that I’d be waiting forever, I just blurted it out.
“Dora? I was hoping to ask you some questions about toxic plants.”
There. That wasn’t awkward. Not at all. Both women turned to me with surprised expressions.
“Goodness!” Dora exclaimed. “Has Taco gotten into something he shouldn’t?”
“No, something came up at work and Daisy said you knew a lot about plants that might be poisonous to humans.”
“So many are,” Dora told me. “I just gave a talk to one of the Boy Scout troops on toxic berries. Some are non-toxic, but things like horse nettle fruit or holly berries are better left for the birds and deer.”
“I was thinking more like poisonous rather than just toxic,” I told her. “As in fatal to a grown man if ingested in a concentrated form, like in a tea or extracted juice.”
Kat laughed. “Judge Beck get on your wrong side, Kay? Don’t kill him. He’s the best--looking man on our street. Well, besides Will, that is,” she added with a quick smile toward her husband. I was glad to see them getting along. There was a time a few months ago when I truly feared for their marriage. I knew they probably still had issues to work through, but the affection in her glance was promising.
“No need to fear,” I told her. “I’ve got no plans to do away with Judge Beck, or anyone else, for that matter. I’m just researching for a case.”
“Well, then, let me help you.” Dora raised her wine glass. “How dead do you need this man to be? Some plants would require repeated dosing to build up the level to the point where death is feasible. Others are more fast acting, although many have enough of a window that unless the victim is out in the woods, hours away from a hospital and medical attention, he’ll have a high chance of recovering.”
“I pretty much want instant death,” I told her. “Within a few minutes. And I’m guessing it needs to be something fairly common, not indigenous only to a remote region of Asia where the killer would need to order it off the internet.”
She nodded. “Nightshade berries? They look a lot like blueberries and ingesting as little as a handful can kill someone. Or pokeweed, although he’d have to eat quite a lot of them for it to be fatal.”
I thought back on my conversation with Detective Keeler. “There would be tiny fragments of leaves and flowers, but the poison would be administered in a liquid form, so something that could be boiled into a tea or pressed and the oil or juice used?”
“Hmmm. Rhododendron? The leaves look a lot like bay leaves, and a tea brewed from them can be deadly. You’d need quite a lot though, and the smell is horrible. I can’t imagine someone unwittingly ingesting enough to die, because it’s so foul.”
I was beginning to wonder how Dora Tennison knew all this. Maybe there was a dark side to the cheerful, well-put-together, silver-haired woman.
“Poison administered through coffee,” I told her. “Would a strong, dark roast be enough to cover up the taste?”
She chuckled. “No. Not Rhododendron, anyway. Hmm, does the intended victim have any allergies we could play on? Any medications to interact with? Mostly it’s the fruits that are deadly, but some plants have leaves that cause respiratory distress. Someone with a compromised lung system might possibly die from that.”
“No. No allergies or medicines to interact with. Healthy thirty-year-old male. The murderer needs to be fairly certain the victim is going to die, and it needs to act quickly enough that by the time the paramedics get there, he’s already dead.”
“Cyanide?” Kat volunteered. “You can get that from cherry pits, can’t you?”
Dora nodded. “Wild cherry pits and leaves have trace amounts of cyanide, but the volume you’d need to process to get enough cyanide to kill someone is daunting. There are easier ways to do someone in.”
“Coffee as the delivery mechanism?” Kat’s husband Will had joined the conversation. “That’s criminal. What sort of monster poisons someone using their morning Joe?”
“A monster who found her husband cheating?” Kat teased. “So you better watch your step, buster!”
“How about Jimson weed?” Dora’s husband, Phil, asked. “Your presentation to the survivalists said as little as half a teaspoon of crushed seeds could cause death by cardiac arrest. And Jimson weed is commonly found. If I wanted to kill someone, I’d crush the seeds and add them to the coffee grounds. The coffee would mask the bitter taste and thirty minutes later, bam! Heart attack. And our local M.E. would probably never suspect anything, especially if the victim had an underlying heart condition.”
Yes, I was beginning to worry about my neighbors.
“But the victim is only thirty and in good health,” Olive countered. It seemed the rest of the porch happy-hour crowd had clustered around us to join the conversation. “Not the sort of guy likely to have a heart attack.”
“And lacing the coffee grounds would target more than just the one person in an office with a shared coffee maker,” Daisy chimed in. “Our killer only wants one person to die, not half the office.”
“Ah, a killer with ethics and morals.” Kat grinned. “Got it.”
“Exactly,” Daisy replied. “Besides, if six people in an office suddenly came down with cardiac symptoms, the M.E. would definitely suspect foul play.”
“True,” Phil added. “I guess my method of murder would work best in someone’s home, in their house coffee maker, as long as they had the old school kind and not the newfangled ones with the little pods. Oh, and if they had a maid that would come in that evening and clean the dishes and coffee pot before anyone was the wiser, that would be a bonus.”
“Remind me never to upset you, dear,” Dora told him with a pat on his shoulder.
“Cardiac arrest won’t work,” I told them. “The death needs to present initially like an allergic reaction,” I said, thinking back to what Detective Keeler had told me. “Severe respiratory distress, falling to the floor and having spasms. But it burns and blisters soft tissues—mouth, throat, mucus membranes. Causes severe gastrointestinal distress.”
“Ah.” Dora tapped a pink nail against her equally pink lips. “Perhaps a concentrated poison ivy oil? Urushoil is the clear liquid on and in the plant that causes the blister-like lesions. It would be fairly easy to distill down to a concentrated form, although there would be a delayed reaction. The inflammation isn’t immediate.”
I frowned, thinking this was far more difficult than I’d imagined. Maybe I should wait for the toxicology report after all.
“Buttercup.”
We all turned at Suzette’s voice. She was standing between Olive and Violet, a thoughtful expression on her face.
“Buttercup?” Daisy asked her. “That stuff is everywhere. They use it in the highway median. It’s in fields. It’s in just about every wildflower garden I’ve seen in my life. Buttercup is poisonous?”
Suzette wrinkled her nose. “I don’t really know. Gran always said to keep it away from the horses. Most of them wouldn’t touch the stuff, but we had this crazy pony that was on a restricted diet because of Cushing’s and he’d eat pretty much any weed he found in the field. We nearly lost him one year to buttercup toxicity. He had blisters on his lips and gums, swelling on his face and colic. Would it do the same thing to humans, I wonder?”
Dora nodded. “There are hundreds of varieties of buttercups, but most of them are at the very most a skin irritant when the leaves are crushed. The sap can cause dermatitis and can also cause blistering of the mucus membranes and intestines if ingested. I guess something like tall buttercup, Ranunculus acris, would deliver the symptoms you’ve described and could be fatal if enough of the sap was a
dded to the coffee. It’s got an acrid taste, but a strong dark roast would mask that enough for the victim to drink a good bit of it.”
“And the effect is immediate?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, if it’s the sap, definitely. It wouldn’t be my choice of alkaloid, though. You might also consider monks hood, Delphinium, baneberry, or larkspur. They’re all highly toxic and would cause the same reaction. Of course, none of those is quite as common in this area as tall buttercup, but someone with a love of flower gardens might grow larkspur or Delphinium.”
I frowned in thought. “So, if I had a garden with tall buttercup or any of those other plants, I could crush them and gather the sap into some sort of vial, then add it to someone’s dark roast coffee and kill them.”
“Oh, yes,” Dora Tennison said with an angelic smile. “You most definitely could kill them.”
“I’m so glad it’s the weekend.”
I’d ditched the work I’d brought home with me and was curled up on the couch, knitting and listening to Styx vinyl on the old console that Henry had refurbished. Judge Beck was opposite me in the huge recliner, reading a book, Taco curled up on his lap. It was midnight. I’d been somewhat buzzed from the porch happy hour and the judge had thankfully taken on dinner preparation, grilling up burgers and tossing a salad while Daisy and I finished off the wine and laughed on the porch. We’d all had dinner—the judge, the kids, Daisy, and I—then we’d headed for the hot tub and relaxed and talked about the kids’ sports while the sun went down. Daisy had meandered off toward her home. The kids had headed up to bed. And the judge and I had curled up in the parlor with our various activities to herald in the weekend.
“Me, too.” The judge lowered his book and eyed me over the top of his glasses. “Kay?”
“Mmm?” I finished the row on the scarf and paused.
“I…I… oh, never mind.” He shifted in his chair and Taco opened his eyes and purred.
I don’t know if it was the wine I’d drunk earlier, or the crazy stressful week I’d had, or the conversation that Daisy and I had this morning, but somehow all my happy feelings spilled out.
“I can’t wait to go with you all to see Madison’s cross-country meet tomorrow. You moving in is one of the best things that has happened in my life. You’re like family to me. I love your children. And you’re just as much a friend to me as Daisy. I know you’ll move out once your divorce is final, that you’ll date and fall in love, that Madison and Henry will head off to college. You all will go on with your lives without me, maybe forget about me, but know that I’ll never, ever forget about you. You and your children brought light into what was the darkest moment of my life, and I’ll never forget that.”
Judge Beck stared at me, his expression unreadable. “Are you…are you drunk?”
Crap. Had that speech been so hokey that he thought I was drunk? “No. It’s been three hours since I finished off my glass of wine. I’ll admit that Daisy was a bit heavy on the pour, but I doubt I’m still buzzed three hours later.”
The judge continued to stare at me a moment. “You’re my best friend, Kay. I’ve known you less than six months, but you’re my best friend. And I really needed that going through what I’m going through right now. I loved my wife, and this whole divorce has tossed me like a windstorm. Everything I thought I was working toward in life has been turned on its head. I have…I have to figure out what I want for my future, both involving the kids and myself. And I just don’t trust anything I feel right now. But as crazy as things are right know, I know I can trust you. And I know you’re my friend. You’re my anchor, Kay. And my kids love you. You’re their anchor, too.”
My vision blurred and I looked down at my knitting.
“We’ll never forget you, Kay.” His voice was soft. “We’ll never forget you. I’ll never forget you.”
It wasn’t until I headed upstairs a few hours later that I realized the ghostly shadow in the corner of the room had vanished sometime that night and hadn’t reappeared.
Chapter 19
I got up early in the morning and put together a coffee cake, shoving it in the oven and leaving a note for the judge and the kids before heading out to Marshall Heights. I’d intended on slipping the letter from the mortgage company with a note in his door and leaving, but I noticed the lights were on and I saw motion inside, so I knocked on the door.
It took a while for Melvin to answer. I heard the tap-tap of his walker, then the creak of the hinges. He smiled when he saw me and invited me in.
“I really can’t stay,” I told him. “I just wanted to give you this.”
He took the letter and read it, his hands shaking as he reached the end. “What does this mean?”
“It means that a lawyer shouldn’t need a huge retainer to present this to the county on your behalf and stay the eviction until the mortgage company completes their investigation. In fact, you might be able to file this yourself. Just go down to the courthouse on Monday and ask them what you should do.”
He nodded, folding the paper and sliding it into his pocket. “Thank you. I don’t want to get my hopes up too much but thank you.”
“You should get your hopes up,” I said. “Just promise me you won’t ignore this. I know you’re not well but take this down to the courthouse and say you want to appeal the eviction. Call me if you have any trouble and I’ll get half the journalists in the state on it.”
I didn’t see where he’d have any problems. Spencer Thompson was dead, so there was no one to push for the eviction. It seemed Melvin Elmer would get his six months. And maybe even his house back for whoever might inherit his estate.
“Can I offer you some coffee?” he asked.
“No, I need to run. I’ve got a cross-country meet I’m going to go see this morning. Is there someone to help you out, though? Someone you can call on if you need something?”
He nodded. “My friend down the road, Ralph Stephens. He drives me places when I’m not up to it. He’s got my fridge stocked with food. Checks in on me a couple of times a day. I’m okay. I don’t need much. Lately I spend most of my time reading and napping and enjoying the last of the blooms.”
Ralph Stephens. That name sounded oddly familiar. I looked out the big kitchen window into his back yard and felt a horrible suspicion crawl over me as I realized where I’d heard—or seen—that name recently. “Do you mind if I see your yard? Your gardens are lovely. I’ve been wanting to do something different at my house, and I love what you’ve done here.”
“Of course.” He beamed and led the way. I followed slowly behind the man and his walker, noting the oxygen tank sitting beside a comfy chair, a book draped over the arm.
“I have a mix of perennials and annuals,” Mr. Elmer said once we were outside. “That dogwood was the first thing my wife and I planted when we bought this house back in 1962. The azaleas over there were put in soon after.”
“Do you mind if I take a few pictures?” I asked him as I admired the huge azaleas.
“Go right ahead. You should come back in the spring when the lilies are in bloom. Or in June when the peonies are flowering. Although the lilacs are always my favorite. I open the kitchen window and can smell them clear through the house.”
The gardens really were a work of art. I snapped pictures with my cell phone, then thanked him for allowing me to see it all. He beamed with pride, obviously happy to share his beloved plants with an admirer. It made me feel guilty for having such horrible suspicions. The man was ninety. He was clearly ill—so ill his neighbor had to drive him places and check on him several times a day. There was no way Mr. Elmer could have…well, done what I’d suspected. No way.
I drove back, feeling a bit ashamed at even entertaining such thoughts. When I got home, the judge and kids were already up and already digging into the coffee cake. We bundled into Judge Beck’s car with chairs, blankets, a cooler for drinks, and enough snacks to survive a month in the wilderness. It was a wonderful day. Madison came in third and fifth in her ev
ents. I ate pizza with the judge and half a dozen excited, sweaty teenagers, then back home I barely had time to change before Daisy picked me up for our spa treatment.
I got the foils. And all my nails, both top and bottom, were a lovely shade of dusky rose when Daisy dropped me back off at home. She’d had the works in preparation for her date tonight with J.T. at Etienne’s. I told her to have a great evening and headed into my house, a bit deflated that I had nowhere to go and no one to admire my lovely highlights and haircut tonight. Well, no one except for Taco.
All gussied up and nowhere to go. But instead of feeling sorry for myself, I cuddled my cat on the couch and made my way through a few chapters of one of the Luanne Trainor books. The main character, Trelanie, had just escaped yet another dungeon, this one filled with summoned demons, and in a surprisingly domestic scene was doing laundry, trying to remove demon guts from her favorite t-shirt while Roman watched, brooding and sexy as always even in a public laundromat in the middle of the night.
I had some laundry I needed to do, although there were no demon guts on my shirts, and no brooding vampire to watch me. Remembering the conversation with Daisy this morning, I tried to think of Matt Poffenberger leaning against the dryer, staring at me with the sort of hooded-eyed intensity that I always envisioned when I thought of the book’s vampire hero. The image made me chuckle. Matt was a handsome man. He was kind and funny and dedicated to both his aged father and his charitable works. I closed my eyes and tried to think of some scenario where the two of us might have a romantic relationship. It was a little difficult with a purring cat on my lap and the shadowy ghost of my husband hovering at the edge of the couch, but I managed. The two of us at a romantic dinner. Walking together, his arm around my shoulder. Us in an embrace. Him kissing me.
