Poison Flowers

by Nat Burns

  She had not called her parents. She was not crazy about the idea of them knowing Denton’s body had appeared practically on her doorstep. With a sigh, she admitted to herself that this was just the beginning of a long road of trouble that she had no desire to deal with.

  She hadn’t called Ed either, though she knew she should have. She didn’t know his home phone number, which was a good excuse, but she could have left a message at the paper. She found herself unable to imagine how she would explain what happened and why it had been in her yard. And no doubt Ed would badger her about writing the story herself later in the day, something she just wasn’t ready to deal with quite yet.

  Marya yawned in spite of her troubled mind and realized just how tired she was. She glanced out at the sun brightening the sky just to the right of the bay. Ed and the crew were just going to have to survive without old Brocklyn this day. She grimaced, betting they would all know why anyway. The police blotter would see to that.

  Her reporter mind went into action and she found herself pondering Denton’s death and what good thing it could have provided for anyone. What could be the motive for his murder? Did he have money? Was it revenge? Jealousy? She played over all the stock motives and none seemed to fit. Maybe he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  She thought of the young people she had encountered her first day in Marstown, remembering that Dorry said they were often on her property. Were they harmless? She remembered her sense of unease as they surrounded her.

  Wearily she rose and switched down the ringer volume on her cell phone. She was positive she’d be grateful for that later, although she wasn’t sure she’d be able to sleep. She walked to the door and peered through the side window in the direction Denton’s body had lain. Yellow police tape had created a maze in the small portion of the forest she could see from that vantage point. She believed herself absurdly safe now that it was daylight and knew she might be able to sleep after all. If truth be told, she was pretty tired of thinking about the whole mess.

  She turned toward her bed, shaking out sheets left rumpled from her earlier nap. As she lifted one knee to the mattress, however, something hit the braided rug that rested beneath the bed, landing with a solid thunk. Curious, she bent to fetch it and found herself holding a heavy gold link bracelet with a satin-finished, brass plate attached. She leaned into the first golden rays of sunlight slanting from the kitchen door and saw the word Dorcas engraved in cursive writing across the front. There was a small diamond just to the right of the last letter. She hefted the piece in her palm as she pondered possibilities. Had Dorry been here last night? The bracelet couldn’t have been in the bed earlier. She would have felt it, wouldn’t she?

  New worry nagged at her. Was she in danger? Had someone—Dorry—been in her house? She gripped the bracelet in her hand and moved to the door to double-check the locks. The kitchen windows were open for air but had screens accessible only from inside. Someone would have to cut them to gain access and she would hear it. Heart thudding, she moved back to the bed and pulled the sheets around her. She curled on her side and stared at the bracelet in her hand.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Marya’s desk was a cluttered mess. She moved the piles of waiting paper firmly to one side. She had to find some tangible means of proving her innocence or it could come down to her word against that of the Coburn County Police Department. She was definitely not yet considered one of the locals, and around here outsiders attracted finger-pointing like magnets attracted iron. It didn’t look good. Especially not with deputy-dog, misogynist, smart-ass Thomas involved.

  Marvin had intimated as much during his hour-long interview with her. Off the record, of course. Though Marya had offered to do the story, Ed had refused, saying it was a front-page piece. Marvin’s beat, not hers. She knew the real reason; he wasn’t one hundred percent sure she wasn’t involved somehow.

  At least her parents believed her. But they also believed she was in harm’s way, her mother begging her to move back in with them until the investigation was over and the bad guy caught. Marya sighed as she tucked her bag under the desk. Her mother hovering over her twenty-four/seven? Not a chance.

  Who did murder Denton? Who could be heartless enough to do away with such a sweet old soul? Her mind raced across possibilities and raged like a brush fire gone wild.

  Snapping on her computer, she found solace in old friends—the national police database and the national news archives. These were familiar stomping grounds.

  She entered codes and passwords until she came to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Her reporter status gave her only limited access. Still their database might provide something useful. She typed in Denton Hyde and waited, the fingertips of her right hand smoothing the knuckles of her left.

  His name was there but not as a criminal.

  In 1996, in Richmond, Virginia, he had witnessed a purse snatching, fought off the perpetrator and reclaimed the bag. The bad guy had gotten away, but Denton had been fingerprinted. Witnesses and victims often were, so their fingerprints could be ruled out during investigations. Nothing in the file indicated a possible motive for his murder. It held other information, though, including his wife’s maiden name, Darlene Wood. This had to be Dorry’s sister, the woman whose photo she had seen in Dorry’s office. Denton once told her that cancer had taken his wife too early. She sensed that Denton had never quite gotten over her death. Could there be some grain of motive there? Could Dorry have taken Denton’s life as payback for some past transgression? Certainly she had the power, the physical strength, to snap his neck, and temper enough. Marya had seen evidence of that.

  But Marya had also interviewed a few confessed murderers. They had all had a sort of devious sullenness about them, magnified by a moment-by-moment intensity that disconcerted everyone who knew them intimately. Dorry seemed different: She didn’t seem jaded by life or agitated by it. She just wasn’t…interested. She seemed as though she were fed up with it and the paltry pearls it had to offer.

  So, if not Dorry, who? She leaned back in her chair and wove her fingers into a tiny blanket across her abdomen. A drifter? A random incident? Murders were rare here, Ed said, even with the town’s proximity to the much larger area of Myrtle Beach. Still, she’d seen some reprehensible characters around, gathered together outside some of the bars along the major highway between Marstown and Myrtle Beach. A drifter was a definite possibility.

  A chill passed through her. How close had the killer been to her? She sat upright and studied the newspaper she’d called up from the dead files.

  Lower down in one article she saw a small grainy photo of Francine Rose. She looked very young, much younger than seventeen years. Her face was waif-like, reminding Marya of a burgeoning Audrey Hepburn. Even her hairstyle, worn long but drawn into a high, thick ponytail on the back of her head, reminded her of Hepburn. She found herself being drawn to the girl by the simple sweetness of her expression.

  Reading the article, she discovered the charges against Dorry had been brought by Francine’s father, Nicholas Rose. The story was ludicrous, every “fact” raised against Dorry a circumstantial one. Dorry was neglectful because she didn’t rush his daughter to the hospital at the first sign of the cancer that killed her—a low-grade fever lasting more than a week?

  Anger seethed through her soul as she examined subsequent issues of the paper. How dare this imbecile do this to Dorry? His ploy may not have been evident to all, but it was clear to her with her reporter’s background. Knowing his accusations wouldn’t stick, Rose had tried to ruin Dorry’s reputation and to destroy her business. In a town as small as Marstown accusations of lesbianism and neglect could easily do that.

  She studied the photos taken of Dorry at that time. They showed a woman on the edge but gritting her teeth and digging in her heels to avoid being dragged over the precipice. Admiration nibbled at the edges of Marya’s anger. She was proud of Dorry for standing strong.

  Finally, after more
than eighteen months of follow-up stories, in which expert medical testimony played a large part, Dorry was exonerated. A jury found her not liable in the death of Francine Rose.

  “Ha!” she muttered, “I bet that scorched old Nicholas’s ass but good!”

  “You talkin’ to me?” Dallas peered at her from two desks over. She was looking over the top of her reading glasses and her comical expression coaxed a smile from Marya.

  “Nope, just myself. Hey, what do you know about that Dorry Wood case? The one where her ward died?”

  “Why do you want to know?” she asked with avid interest. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, I think the whole thing was a farce,” she responded. “Imagine bringing trumped-up, impossible charges like that against her just to ruin her reputation.”

  “Hmmm,” Dallas moved closer, one hand smoothing the eyeglasses sprawled on her chest. They looked like some symbiotic, alien insect that had taken her over. “A man in grief is likely to do anything, you know. I certainly can understand why Nicky brought the charges. Francie was his world. The only reason he allowed Dorry to keep her here was so she could go to school here and be safe while he and Isabel trotted all over Europe. When she got sick and died, he was a mess. Then he found out about the, well, unnatural nature of their relationship and all hell broke loose.”

  Marya watched Dallas, whose hand was twirling a battered pencil like a baton. “How well did you know Nicholas?”

  “Oh, he was part of our little group,” she revealed, sharing a bright smile. “We were all very close. See, Dorry, Dolly, Emily, Freddy, Nicky and I were all at Coburn High together. We graduated together and then most of us went to the same college.”

  “Freddy?” Marya lifted one finger in question.

  “Barnes.”

  “So that was how Dorry knew Nicholas.”

  “Well, yes, the families had been friends forever,” Dallas confided. “We all used to go hiking and get together for holidays, play cards, that type of thing. We were all together until Nicky went into the military and was sent to Germany for some type of special training. He met Isabel there and then we just didn’t see him anymore.”

  “He dropped all his friends? Now he really sounds like a jerk.”

  Dallas was taken aback. “Oh no, it wasn’t like that. He’s a good man and people do part. You know, life interferes. A big part of it is just her, that wife. She had no time for us.”

  The sharp edge to her voice set off alarms in Marya, especially after the earlier sweetness of her tone. “What do you mean?”

  “Isabel. All of us knew why he went with her. She just swept Nicky off his feet, that’s all. She’s so polished, so…European…and her family has gobs of money. We really couldn’t blame him. Then they had Francie and he fell head over heels in love with his little girl.”

  Marya studied Dallas, noting a curious, bright cast to her eyes. Sadness filled her. Clearly, Dallas lived vicariously through other people. “And you, Dorry and Emily never even married,” she prompted softly, her eyes shifting toward Emily’s office.

  “Well, not because Emily and I are like Dorry,” Dallas responded, her mouth pursed primly. “It’s just Marstown and the pickings are pretty slim, let me tell you…” She smiled wanly and Marya saw the Dallas she had known the past few weeks. “Well, back to it. The social news waits for no one,” Dallas chirped, settling her eyeglass insect back on the bridge of her nose.

  “Yeah,” Marya agreed, turning her attention back to the computer. She raised one querying eyebrow at the display monitor. Dallas, Emily, Fred, Dorry and Nicholas, barbeque buddies right here in good old Marstown. Well, well, well.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Driving home that evening, fatigued from pulling double duty as well as doing her own private research, Marya pushed back at the fear that threatened to encroach. The beautiful home that had once seemed so secure and serene, had been forever scarred by Denton’s murder. Police tape, loosely encircling the trees, gleamed in the soft moonlight, twisting in the ocean wind.

  Pulling her car into the parking area, she switched off the engine and lights and sat silent a long time. Waves, white and sparkling in the dusk, slapped with teasing play against the ruddy shoreline.

  She was tired, so very, very tired. So much had happened so fast—moving to Schuyler Point, working hard to get up to speed at the paper, resuming classes, finding Denton’s body. She leaned back in the driver’s seat, laying her head to one side. The ocean was beautiful, lit by a narrowing corona of light. Marya loved this time of day. So quiet, so still, as if everything were saying a final goodnight. How she would have enjoyed Kim by her side—the old Kim, not the person she had become before the split. She shook her head. She was not delusional; she knew that was not possible. And anyway, overall, this solitude fit nicely. She sank into it.

  After some time she stirred herself, sensing that she’d fall asleep if she stayed put. Her legs carried her to the porch with reluctance; she trod each step laboriously, ascending slowly.

  “About time you got here, murderer. I knew you’d return sooner or later.”

  Marya recoiled and stared up at Dorry. The master was sitting just to the right of the front door on a weathered wooden bench built into the porch. She was leaning against the wall, one heel propped on the edge of the seat. She had yet to look at Marya. Her face, which was turned seaward, looked desolate, but the sarcasm in her voice pushed away any tender feelings the view might have fostered in Marya.

  “What do you mean, murderer?” she asked sharply. “I’m not responsible for Denton’s murder. I’m the one who called the police, remember?”

  Dorry turned a face full of shadows toward her. She shifted position, revealing the bottle of whiskey tucked between her heavy thighs. “Too damn smart, aren’t you? Calling the police to direct the blame to someone else. Well, you screwed up, Miss Reporter,” she spat the title like a bitter tonic. “Because that someone else was me.”

  “You’ve been drinking,” Marya said in a neutral tone.

  Dorry gave a harsh chuckle, the sound touching Marya in some deep yet intangible way. She lifted the bottle and drank deeply, the bottle glinting in the last light of the day reflecting off the ocean waves.

  “Yeah, guess so,” she agreed, wiping her mouth with her palm.

  “Great,” Marya said with a sigh. “That’s all I need after the past couple days I’ve had—a drunk on my porch.”

  “My porch, don’t you mean? I happen to own this property.”

  She was surprised by Dorry’s petulance. “Yes, yes, I realize that but, hey, I pay rent…”

  “And that gives you the right to murder my family here—because you pay rent!? Oh no, that wasn’t in the contract we signed.”

  “Look, it’s been my experience that you can’t reason with a drunk, so I’m not even going to try,” Marya stated with a negating wave of one hand. “I’m going in to go to bed. You stay on out here all night if you wish. It is your property.”

  That said, she strode across the porch and stepped inside. She returned a moment later, her face such a mask of fury that her own skin felt alien. “How could you? I can’t believe you are capable of such a horrible act!”

  Dorry stared at her a long time, her mind apparently having trouble deciphering her words.

  “What’s the matter?” Marya said finally. “Too drunk to remember? I knew you were cold, I knew you were calloused, and I almost understand why, but I didn’t think you were heartless enough to kill innocent creatures just to get a point across.”

  Dorry rose on unsteady legs and scowled in irritation. “What are you blathering on about? Kill what creatures?”

  Marya searched for signs of subterfuge and could find none in Dorry’s disturbed countenance. “The birds. In the house. You didn’t do it?”

  Dorry’s anger was mounting as was her impatience. “Girl, please talk some sense. What birds? Let me see.”

  Marya stepped aside so Dorry could enter. Ins
ide, Dorry emitted a low whistle of sorrow. “Damn,” she said.

  Three parakeets had been killed and hung with twine from the chandelier above the dining room table. Their bright colors of yellow and green contrasted painfully with the dead matte of their eyes and pale, parted beaks. They seemed to be watching them with eyes already set on whatever heaven birds could see. Marya’s heart hurt every time she looked at the wings partially denuded in their struggle for life.

  “Poor darlings,” Dorry muttered as she moved to untie them. “We’ve got to bury them…”

  “No!” Marya shook her head wearily. “It’s evidence. We need to call the police. They can search for fingerprints.”

  She dreaded the thought of dealing with Inspector March again, but it was unavoidable.

  “Oh right, lots of fingerprints on a feather,” Dorry sneered. “What good will calling the police do?”

  “Well, it proves someone else is involved besides the two of us, for beginners. It looks way too much like covering up something if we just bury them.”

  Dorry placed her arms akimbo, hands on her hips. “Yeah? How? Covering up what? And who else is involved? You’ve been accusing me of doing it.”

  “If you didn’t do it, and I sure as hell didn’t, there has to be someone else involved.”

  “So says you. I’m taking the poor things down. This is a sacrilege to all that’s holy, that’s what this is.”

  She fished a pocketknife from her trouser pocket and began cutting the birds loose. “Imagine someone doing away with them. Heartless butcher.”

  The angry way she was slashing at the twine alarmed Marya. This woman’s temper was fierce. What could she do when thoroughly aroused to anger? The first bird began to fall. Marya reached to catch it just as Dorry did. Their hands clasped together accidentally, precipitating an awkward moment. More troubling than that, however, was the lurch of desire that suddenly jolted Marya.