Root of All Evil

by Libby Howard

  The thoughts were…pleasant. I guess that was a start? Eli had been gone only six months, and the thoughts still felt like a betrayal, but Daisy was right. A second love might not be in the cards for me, but I at least had to be open to the idea that it might happen. And just like I’d reminded my friend many times, love doesn’t always come with an instant rush of feeling, an explosion of fireworks from the very first glance. Some things took time. So I resolved that if Matt Poffenberger or some other reasonably attractive man, were to ask me on a date sometime next year, I’d at least consider saying yes.

  A half hour later, Taco’s purrs turned to meows and I realized it was dinner time. I dumped him on my porch for a few moments to chase bugs and roll in the flower beds, then went in to pour his Happy Cat into a bowl and pull the leftover stir fry and quinoa from the fridge for myself. After sticking my food in the microwave, I went out front to find the cat. Normally he was impatiently waiting on the front porch to come in and eat, but this evening he was across the street and a few doors down, bumping his head against Dora Tennison’s leg. The woman was kneeling and looked to be dead-heading marigolds. I headed over to retrieve my cat, noticing that she was putting her clippings in a little basket, no doubt saving the seeds for next year.

  “I’d expected you would have had something more exotic than marigolds out in this bed,” I teased the woman as she rose to greet me.

  “There’s something about them I’ve always loved.” She surveyed the flower bed fondly. “My mother always had them around her tomato plants. They have this astringent smell and are so easy to grow from seed each year. And they’re so cheerful. Marigolds. The quintessential middle-class family’s annual.”

  “And not poisonous?” I asked.

  “No, although dogs and cats can get an upset tummy from eating them. You’re not so foolish, are you, Taco?” She picked up my cat and gave him a quick scratch on the head before handing him to me.

  “Happy Cat over marigolds any day,” I laughed. “Actually, I wanted to ask your opinion on something. I’m not an expert at identifying anything beyond a few common flowers. I wondered if you’d look at some pictures I took of a garden and see if there are any of those toxic plants we discussed yesterday on my porch.”

  “Of course.” She waited while I dug out my phone.

  I handed the phone to Dora. “What do you think?”

  She took it and enlarged the picture, scrolling it around on the screen and peering at the plants close up.

  “Well, I think that’s a lovely garden. Very English country in how it’s organized and the types of plants they’ve chosen. And yes, I see both tall buttercup, although you might not recognize it without the blooms, and larkspur. Oh, and there’s some delphinium as well tucked back in the corner there.”

  I nodded, taking the phone back. “But these are pretty common plants, right? It’s not like only two people in the county would have tall buttercup, or delphinium, or larkspur in a back garden?”

  “They’re not the sort of thing most casual gardeners pick up at Lowe’s or at the local nursery and garden center. And this garden isn’t what I’d expect to see if a homeowner paid a local landscaping company to put one in. They usually go for readily available, commonly seen perennials and annuals like begonias and mums interspersed with hydrangeas and butterfly bushes. Maybe a row of impatiens and pansies along the front. Whoever put this garden together really knew their plants, and carefully chose what they were putting where for maximum effect. They did a wonderful job. A lot of care and thought went into that.”

  Melvin Elmer had lived there since the house was built. He was the only homeowner. And from what he’d told me, he took loving care of that garden himself.

  He had motive—revenge. He had means right there in his back yard. And as for opportunity…I wondered if the receptionist at Fullbright and Mason would recognize him as one of the people who’d come in to see Spencer Thompson the day of his death? Without that, there was nothing to put him at the scene, and only circumstantial evidence tying him to the murder. If the toxicology report came back as tall buttercup, anyone could have gone out into a field and harvested some leaves—anyone who had a grudge against Spencer Thompson.

  But would some random, angry person know enough from an internet search to get the level of toxin high enough to kill? From what I’d read, drying the leaves diluted their poisonous effect, as did heat, so someone would have needed to chop and grind them up into a paste and perhaps make a liquid coffee-like concoction to add to Spencer Thompson’s drink.

  “How well do you know the local hobbyist gardeners?” I asked Dora, stuffing my phone back into my pocket.

  She shrugged. “Casual hobbyist? Not at all. If they came to a few of the seminars we put on at the county fair, then I might recognize them, or even know their name.”

  “How about someone who created and maintained that garden in the photo?”

  She smiled. “She, or he, is probably a member of our horticultural society, probably a Master Gardener like I am. When you have a love of plants like that, you want to share that love with likeminded others.”

  An idea hit me. “Do you know Melvin Elmer?”

  “Melvin Elmer?” She blinked in surprise. “Goodness, I thought he’d passed away decades ago. Yes, he was one of our Master Gardeners. Lovely man, but after his wife died about thirty years ago, he stopped attending meetings and became a bit of a recluse. I’d forgotten all about him. Very talented man. His wife, Ellen, used to come to our meetings with him, although he was the avid horticulturist of the family.”

  “Did Melvin Elmer know about the toxicity of plants? Enough to know how poisonous these alkaloids were, and what components and circumstances would create a fatal dose?”

  “Well, of course. We’ve given annual seminars regarding toxic plants since I’ve been in our group. They attract quite the crowd—mainly people trying to ensure their dogs and cats don’t accidently ingest something that might kill them. I do remember Melvin actually giving the seminar a few times. His wife used to joke that he could be a one-man bio-warfare unit. But you don’t seriously think Melvin could have intentionally poisoned someone, do you? That man couldn’t hurt a fly.”

  Unless that fly was evicting him from his house in the last six months of his life. Although, to be fair, I didn’t see Melvin Elmer as a cold-blooded killer, either. He was such a nice man, but even nice people could do terrible things if pushed too far.

  Still, none of this was proof. He had motive, and he had the means and the knowledge. But unless I could put him at the scene of the crime in a close enough window to have been able to cause Spencer Thompson’s death, I couldn’t go to Detective Keeler with this.

  What if I was wrong? I didn’t want to have a dying man spend the last six months of his life in jail because I’d jumped to conclusions.

  Chapter 20

  I mused on the situation for the rest of the weekend, wondering whether Melvin Elmer was really capable of murder or not and hoping on Monday I’d find out Detective Keeler had arrested someone else. Monday morning did bring an arrest, but for a different crime.

  “Did you see this?” J.T. slid a copy of the local newspaper in front of me.

  “Yes, I did.” I was one of three people who still got actual newspapers delivered to their home each morning, even though I did tend to get most of my news online. There was something comforting about having a paper on my front lawn at six o’clock in the morning, having it spread out on the table as I drank my morning coffee, hearing the crinkle of the pages as I looked for the continuance of the front-page articles.

  This morning’s front-page article was about the arrest of a Michael Oak, who was an underwriter for Peabody Mortgage and had allegedly orchestrated a fraud scheme. A spokesperson for Peabody said they were in the process of determining which mortgages were fraudulently obtained and would be reaching out to homeowners (and former homeowners) with offers of restitution. They estimated the theft totaled approximate
ly four million dollars.

  “Seems your Mr. Elmer might be able to stay in his home after all.”

  My stomach twisted at J.T.’s words and I thought of the gardens outside of the man’s kitchen window. Motive. Opportunity. Knowledge. Should I dig further and unearth what I was fearing? Or turn a blind eye and just let Detective Keeler handle this himself?

  “Yes, he might, although I’m sure the mortgage company is talking financial restitution. I don’t know if they can snatch back a home title once a place has been auctioned off and probably resold a second time after that.”

  But I was sure most people would be happy with the money. And as for Melvin Elmer, I doubted he’d find anyone pressing for an eviction, especially now that Spencer Thompson was dead. I couldn’t see Marissa moving forward in the next six months, especially with herself a suspect, and having assets to track down as well as an unexpected funeral to arrange. I thought of the woman red-eyed at the coffee shop, telling me that she still loved her husband, and felt a wave of sorrow. Spencer Thompson had been a horrible man, but that didn’t mean his wife wouldn’t mourn his death.

  “I want to know why this Michael Oak wasn’t halfway to Mexico with his four million dollars,” J.T. commented.

  “Maybe he didn’t have four million himself. If he had a partner, or partners, he could have only had a million of his own.”

  Only. I couldn’t imagine having a million dollars, but I guess people got greedy when they began to steal, and suddenly a million wasn’t enough.

  I got to work on this week’s skip traces, still trying to figure out if Melvin Elmer really had gotten his revenge on Spencer Thompson or not. It seemed implausible that an elderly dying man had prepared a poison, then driven to Milford to an office building to poison a man, then driven back home. But he hadn’t been at his house when I’d dropped off the forms to temporarily stay his eviction. Where had he been? He looked frail, but it wasn’t like he had to walk to Milford. Or climb three flights of stairs to reach the office. Elderly people got around, even with walkers and oxygen tanks. Had he driven there, signed in using his friend Ralph Stephens’ name, and dumped poison in Spencer Thompson’s coffee cup? Was his friend Ralph in on the murder? Was he the one who’d delivered the poison as Melvin waited in the car outside? Melvin wouldn’t have known if killing Spencer Thompson would let him keep his house, but it certainly wouldn’t be the first time someone was murdered for revenge.

  And then there was Michael Oak. It couldn’t be a coincidence that so many of the houses Spencer Thompson bought at auction were ones with Peabody Mortgage liens. And it seemed more than a coincidence that a man who was a victim of Michael Oak would find his house owned by Spencer Thompson.

  Maybe I was looking in the wrong back yard for tall buttercup.

  My phone rang, jolting me abruptly from my thoughts. A few seconds later I was gathering my things, with a quick excuse to J.T. and a promise to be back after lunch.

  It had been Tracey Abramson calling, and he wanted to talk. It was odd how these four men were so intertwined in this mess—Melvin Elmer, Michael Oak, Spencer Thompson, and Tracey Abramson. I’d reluctantly ruled out Mr. Abramson as the killer after my talk with Detective Keeler, but in the back of my mind, I still wondered if he wasn’t involved.

  Hopefully I’d soon find out.

  I sat across from Tracey Abramson, comparing the swank country club restaurant with the coffee shop I usually frequented when meeting clients. Although Mr. Abramson wasn’t exactly a client.

  “I wanted to meet with you after our conversation the other day.” The man flagged down a waiter and ordered coffee and a pastry basket for the two of us. As soon as the waiter left, he turned to me once more. “I didn’t kill Spencer Thompson.”

  Well, that was getting right to the point. I decided to play along, even though Detective Keeler had convinced me that Mr. Abramson wasn’t exactly a top suspect.

  “You told me that you didn’t like his business practices, that you feared his actions would damage the reputation of your foundation. You also told me that you’d been trying to dissolve the LLC but had been getting resistance from Thompson to do so.”

  “That’s not enough of a reason to murder someone,” Mr. Abramson insisted.

  “No, but Thompson setting up a scheme where he skimmed half the profits from a property sale is. When you found out that Spencer owned Brockhurst Properties, the very company that had been the one buying Humble Properties, LLC homes at far below market value based on a bogus appraisal, then flipping them at closing to an actual buyer, that had to make you angry.”

  “Yes. It made me furious. And when I confronted Spencer at his office Thursday morning, it was to tell him we were done. I told him he was to sign off on dissolving the LLC immediately, or I would be contacting my lawyer. I held all the cards, Mrs. Carrera. There was no reason for me to kill him.”

  Tracey Abramson had been to see Spencer Thompson Thursday morning? Thompson had really had a bad day with three contentious conversations. And death. Yes, a really bad day. And it didn’t escape my notice that Mr. Abramson’s name hadn’t been on the sign-in list that Detective Keeler had showed me. Was this what being a rich long-term client meant? No need to sign in? Just waltz right past the receptionist area and on down the hall.

  How many other people had done the same? And I didn’t remember showing any identification. How easy would it have been to go in under a false name, claiming to be there for a financial consult, only to slip some poison into that big, flashy coffee mug on Spencer’s desk?

  “If I had made any of that public, Spencer Thompson would have lost his job,” Mr. Abramson continued. “Reputation is everything in the financial services world. Having a large client bring forth proof that he was skimming money off the top of business deals would have ended his career. He would have been blackballed.”

  “Maybe he wouldn’t have cared.” I shrugged, smiling in thanks at the waiter as he sat a coffee in front of me and a plate of muffins to the side. “Maybe Spencer Thompson was making so much money flipping homes under Brockhurst Properties that losing a job at Fullbright and Mason and having a black mark on his reputation wouldn’t worry him a bit. A man with money to invest isn’t going to get doors slammed in his face, no matter how unsavory his actions may have been.”

  A muscle twitched in Tracey Abramson’s jaw and I knew I’d hit a nerve.

  “Do I look like the sort of man who would drop cyanide into someone’s coffee? I don’t even know where to get cyanide, or any other poison, for that matter. I don’t kill people, Mrs. Carrera. I pay my lawyer to bury them in expensive lawsuits. That’s my weapon of choice.”

  Which was pretty much what Detective Keeler had said, and I believed him—both of them. “Why do you care what I think, Mr. Abramson? I’m not the police, I’m a small-town private investigator who spends her free time knitting, baking, petting her cat, and doing fundraising for local charities.”

  “Because although I’m one of the many people who didn’t like Spencer Thompson, I’m one of the few people who was in his office, or cubicle, that day. And I’m one of even fewer people who saw him the day of his death and basically threatened him with legal action.”

  “More people threatened Spencer Thompson that day then you think,” I commented wryly. “And as you said, your methods involve slamming someone with your lawyer, not poisoning their coffee. I’ll definitely let the police know about our conversations if it comes up, but don’t think you’re at the top of my list of suspects.”

  He sat back and smiled in relief. “Good. It wouldn’t do my reputation or my foundation any good to have me hauled in for questioning, or even brought up on murder charges.”

  Which was another reason I agreed with Detective Keeler that the murderer wasn’t Tracey Abramson. He most likely didn’t know anything about poisonous plants. He was assuming cyanide was the poison. It wasn’t his style. And he was far too concerned about his reputation to do something so crass as murder. H
e had motive to want Spencer Thompson out of business, but not nearly the level of motive to resort to murder.

  We finished our coffee, and I headed out, wishing Tracey Abramson a good day. Then, with a significant amount of trepidation, I headed for the police station. Detective Keeler pushed a copy of the newspaper over to me as soon as I sat down.

  “I saw that,” I told him. “Is this your doing? The Peabody Mortgage arrest?”

  “No, it seems a few of their title agencies were questioning their lien assertions, and internal investigation quickly revealed one of their underwriters was involved in fraud.”

  “You do realize that Spencer Thompson’s Brockhurst Properties purchased six houses at Peabody Mortgage foreclosure sales? And that there is some question about where he got the initial funds to start his company?”

  “You’re implying that this Michael Oak was in league with Spencer Thompson?” Detective Keeler didn’t sound all that surprised at the idea.

  “That’s exactly what I’m implying. A partnership gone bad? Maybe Spencer was feeling the heat and wanted to end their scheme? Maybe Oak was afraid Thompson would bolt and he’d be on the hook for everything?”

  “He’s already on the hook for everything, because Thompson is dead. Can’t turn evidence on a dead man for a lesser charge now, can he?”

  “Still, he could be the murderer,” I insisted.

  Detective Keeler smirked. “I do work on weekends, Mrs. Carrera. Michael Oak lives in a condo without access to even a potted begonia. The man can’t tell a rose from a cabbage. He’s not our killer. He did, however, confess that he met Spencer Thompson five years ago at a conference, and that Thompson would give him a list of names and Social Security numbers for elderly people in our county that would make good targets for Oak’s fraud scheme in return for a cut of the deal.”