Maggie Dove's Detective Agency

by Susan Breen

  “No,” he said. “We were most thorough.”

  “The whole report was done in less than 24 hours,” she pointed out. “How thorough could it have been?”

  “It was thorough,” he responded.

  She noticed he had a copy of it on his desk. He drew it toward him, shielding it with his arm. She suspected he’d not be happy to know that Cherrelle had called them with the preliminary data.

  “There was no indication of suicide,” he said, scanning the report.

  “Walter, I don’t understand how you can be so confident. Surely a person who takes LSD before going out on a high balcony is looking for some trouble. Knowing Domino, it’s not hard to believe that if she was going to take her life, she would do it in a very public manner. She’d been under a lot of financial stress. And her husband had a girlfriend. These were things that might have made her suicidal. Anyway, didn’t I read that most suicides are impulsive?”

  “She didn’t take LSD,” he said.

  “I thought that’s what the news said.”

  “The news got it wrong. She took lysergic acid, but in a different form. She used ergot.”

  “What’s that?” Maggie asked, puzzled.

  He stood up and retrieved from his bookshelf a large book, and began flipping through it. It was a chemistry textbook. He got to the section on ergot and showed it to her. Ergot, she read, was the fungus from which LSD was derived. It grew parasitically on rye, and on other types of grain and wild grasses. Kernels infested with this fungus developed into brown pegs that pushed forth from the husks of the grain. There was a picture attached, which showed yellow grains on a field and little brown stalks sticking out from them. She read on. “In 1938, the Swiss chemist, Albert Hofman, looking to develop new medicines from ergot, happened upon lysergic acid, and accidentally transformed that into the hallucinogenic LSD.”

  When Maggie finished reading, Walter took back the book and put it on his shelf.

  “So what does that mean?” Maggie said. “LSD or ergot—it still sounds like the same thing. One way or another, she took a hallucinogenic that caused her to fall to her death.”

  Walter seemed to struggle within himself. She didn’t understand what the problem was. Whether or not she believed Domino killed herself, she thought you could make a case for it. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. Domino was under a lot of stress.

  “Ergot has a peculiar history,” Walter Campbell said. “In the Middle Ages, in large doses, it was used as a poison. But in smaller doses, it was a hallucinogen. It caused visions and euphoria. Over time, people began adapting it, using it as a drug. It became popular in some forms of witchcraft, at covens, because it expanded the witch’s consciousness. In the grips of a hallucination a witch could see more clearly into another world. Or so they believed.”

  He straightened his tie, which was regimental. No surprise there.

  “Domino was merely excited, Maggie.”

  “How can we know that for sure?” Maggie pressed. “Don’t we have to follow up on this, for Racine’s sake if for no other reason. If we can’t prove definitively that she wasn’t murdered, the accusation will hang over her for the rest of her life.”

  Walter hesitated, shifting uneasily. She couldn’t understand what he was so nervous about. The man was so tightly wound. Then he cleared his throat and began to speak. “One thing people noticed was that swallowing the ergot led to unpleasant side effects. Nausea, vomiting and so forth, and so they began experimenting with putting it into lotions.”

  “So what are you saying? Domino smeared ergot on herself?”

  “No,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “She inserted it.” He lowered his gaze to his desk. “We found…a broomstick on the balcony, with ergot residue on the tip, as well as…something else.” He glanced quickly at Maggie before looking away again. “It appears she put it on the tip of her broomstick, and then…”

  “Oh,” Maggie said in a small voice, stunned.

  “She was excited, Maggie. Things were going her way. She planned to announce she was moving back to Darby, and Racine told me she’d just given her a great sum of money. Domino must have inserted a fair amount of ergot into herself and lost control. She probably thought she was flying. It was an accident, Maggie Dove. Pure and simple.”

  He stood up.

  “Leave this alone, Maggie Dove. There’s nothing here for you or your client. This was a tragedy, but it was no one’s fault but Domino’s.”

  Chapter 15

  Maggie hated being told what to do, but in this case she thought Walter had a point. Domino’s death did not sound like suicide. It sounded seedy and vulgar and over the top, which was consistent with Domino. She remembered Domino biting Passion’s lip. Yes, this was exactly the way she would have expected Domino to die.

  Under normal circumstances, Maggie would have gone back to the office and conceded. But although that was a temptation, she didn’t want to do it. First of all, she knew Agnes would kill her. They had one client, and Maggie did not propose to be the one to lose her.

  But it went deeper than that.

  Maggie was a private detective. Her job was to investigate. Walter had presented compelling facts, but she doubted that was all there was to know. She’d been hired to gather information about Domino and she planned to do it. She could hear Detective Grudge’s instructions in her head: Don’t take anybody’s word for anything.

  So what to do?

  She was on Main Street, not far from Doc Steinberg’s office. She would stop in and ask her what she knew about ergot. At the very least she would confirm what Walter Campbell said.

  Doc Steinberg’s office was busy, but Maggie had brought along her book. She figured she could sit and read The Brothers Karamazov, and sooner or later Hannah would fit her in. She was on the part about Zosima’s decaying body, which was both hysterically funny and mind-bendingly sad, like most of life, Maggie thought, and she was so engrossed that she didn’t even hear Doc Steinberg calling her in.

  “When you’re ready, Maggie.”

  “Sorry!” She tucked her book back into her bag and followed Doc Steinberg into her office. It was a room that always made Maggie feel anxious. She was conscious of all the bad news handed out in this office, some of it to herself. But she also trusted Doc Steinberg as much as she trusted anyone in the world. Doc had gone with Maggie to the hospital the night Juliet died, holding her hand while she talked to the people at the organ donation bank.

  “As you know,” Maggie said, “I have a detective agency now. I’ve been hired to examine the state of mind of Domino. To be blunt, her sister thinks she killed herself.”

  Doc Steinberg nodded. She was a strong woman, big-boned, but she always wore bright red shoes. She also liked dangling earrings that she’d got in India when she spent a year there.

  “Do you think that’s possible?” Maggie asked. “I assume you know the details of how she died.”

  “A broomstick.” Doc Steinberg rolled her eyes. “I’ve been practicing medicine for a long time, and there’s one thing I’ve learned. Nothing is as creative as a person planning their suicide. I suppose it’s the ultimate opportunity to tell your story. Some people want to do it quietly and not have any bother. Other people…I read about a man who purposely crashed his car in the middle of a busy intersection. He wanted people to see him die. He wanted to shock them. Then I’ve read about cases where people wanted to cast blame on someone else, and they arranged the whole thing to make someone look guilty.”

  “So, you…”

  “Then there was the guy who put a noose around his neck, tied the other end to a tree, got in a car and accelerated. Not pretty.”

  The doctor’s phone began to ring; Maggie didn’t want to take up too much of her time. “So you wouldn’t rule out suicide?” she asked quickly, getting straight to the point.

  “Maggie Dove, I don’t rule out anything,” she said, and turned her attention to her phone call.

  “Well,
that was successful,” Maggie said when she got back out on Main Street. Automatically she looked around. Not a good idea to start talking to yourself, she supposed, though it was a habit she’d gotten into in her long years of mourning. Sometimes she was the only person she could stand to talk to.

  Joe Mangione walked by just then. “Good for you,” he called out.

  She needed to think this all over. She felt exuberant. She hadn’t given up and she’d learned new facts. The sun was warm. The leaves were fluttering around her feet, and Maggie thought that instead of going to the office, she’d head up to the woods to plan out what to do next. The woods always cleared her mind, and she was especially partial to them this time of year, when the acorns were falling and the squirrels were chasing one another around. There was something mournful yet hopeful about fall that she liked.

  She trudged up the hill and walked past the large rock that marked the entry to the woods. She took one of the less accustomed paths, feeling a need to lose herself. She could hear the Saw Mill Parkway. She knew she was near civilization, if in fact a parkway equaled civilization, but it was nice to wander where there was nobody else about. She tried to think about what to do next. Detective Grudge said that the primary job of a private detective was to gather information, so that was what she would do.

  She needed to start setting up appointments with people. She would talk to Lucifer Raines and Passion and Milo. Perhaps she would see if she could find the coven Domino belonged to. She kept walking farther and farther, deeper into the woods. She thought about the man she’d seen at Stern Manor. She could try to track him down. If nothing else, she would get a better picture of who Domino was. She knew she’d gone to a private school. Cranston. Maggie began thinking about Juliet then, which she always did when she’d been solitary long enough. It was like a sudden cloud settled over her. She didn’t want to push it away; she would never push her daughter away. But her steps slowed.

  She thought of something Racine had said about reputation, which had been burbling inside her since this morning. She thought about it because it had affected Juliet too. She’d been a good girl, never giving Maggie trouble. But on the last day of her life she’d gone to a party and she’d had something to drink. She was only 17. She shouldn’t have been drinking. It was a miniscule amount—she might not even have felt it—but it showed up on the autopsy. Immediately people blamed her, although the accident took place while the car was parked. The truck came at her head-on—nevertheless, she’d had alcohol in her blood. Maggie’d felt ashamed, and angry. To have her lovely daughter remembered for this one fact. Over time, over decades, her anger had dissolved, but she still understood what Racine meant when she said she felt accused. Maggie too had felt accused. Of being a bad mother, of not teaching her daughter well enough.

  Just then Maggie stumbled across a rock with strange markings on it. She traced her finger over them. They looked like hieroglyphics. Turning around she realized she was in the middle of a large clearing. Someone had scratched a circle into the earth. She also realized she’d spent an hour walking. She’d been so caught up in her thoughts that she wasn’t paying attention. No longer could she hear the Saw Mill Parkway. The ground was wet; she’d wandered into the wetlands. She still had an hour or so of daylight left. She had her phone. There was no reason to panic, but she felt unsettled, and that was when Maggie heard a twig break.

  It was the distinctive sound of a heavy animal.

  Maggie remembered a night last spring when someone had been after her, but surely no one chased her now. She hadn’t done anything, had she? She felt afraid. She closed her eyes and whispered a prayer, but then she thought perhaps God would rather she take the initiative and get up to go, and so she did, and at that moment something flew at her. She screamed until she realized who it was.

  Agnes howled with laughter.

  “You must be deaf, Maggie Dove. I’ve been following you for an hour and you didn’t notice.”

  “If I have a heart attack, let it be on your conscience.”

  Agnes kept laughing until she couldn’t breathe. Then she started wheezing and collapsed onto a log. “Sorry, Maggie,” she said. “But you are hopeless. You have to practice your surveillance skills.”

  “Why are you following me?” Maggie felt hot pains shooting down her arm. A squirrel screeched as it flew overhead.

  “I’ve been following you since the police station.”

  “All afternoon? Why?”

  “Because I wanted to see what you were going to do,” Agnes said. She began fluffing up her hair. “Now that we have a client, we want to make sure we give her our best effort.”

  “You were checking up on me?”

  Agnes had on the same bat-like outfit she’d worn in the office, but she’d changed her shoes, Maggie noticed. She had on black sneakers with silver highlights. She’d put effort into this.

  “I just wanted to be sure you were on track.”

  “That is incredibly insulting,” Maggie said. “I’m the one who got the client, let me remind you. She came to me in the first place because of who I am, because I’m a Sunday School teacher. What clients have you brought in, with all your carousing? I talked to Walter. I have a plan. But this is no partnership, Agnes. Partners do not treat their partners like this.”

  Agnes rocked back on the log.

  “In fact,” Maggie said, “I have half a mind to quit right now. You really could have given me a stroke. Look where I’m standing, Agnes. Doesn’t this look like a witch’s circle to you?”

  “Oh my God,” Agnes said. “Oh my God.”

  Maggie fought back tears. She would not cry. Not now.

  “In fact, while I’ve spent the whole afternoon doing billable work, you’ve been completely wasting your time.”

  “You’re right,” Agnes mumbled. “You’re right.” She began to cry. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “Agnes, you have to take it down a notch. All this hysteria is killing me—and probably you. You’re yelling at me and then you’re hugging me and then you’re sad and then you’re happy. Do you think it’s possible you should see a doctor?”

  “I did,” she said, “and the doctor prescribed Xanax.”

  “Well, could I suggest then that if you feel one of these mood swings coming on, you take a pill?”

  “Yes, Maggie Dove. Absolutely. I’m sorry. Can we hug it out?”

  “Of course,” Maggie said, and they hugged and both felt better, and then Agnes said, “Hey, I know you’re angry and all, but do you know how to get out of here?”

  “No,” Maggie said. “No, I do not.”

  “That’s okay. I have a compass,” she said. “All we have to do is figure out which way is north. What side of a tree does moss grow on?”

  Three hours later, Maggie stumbled into her house. She made avocado toast, her latest obsession, for dinner; ate it; and then went to bed. The cat leapt up beside her.

  “Don’t even start,” she muttered, and pulled a pillow over her head.

  That night she dreamed of Stern Manor. She was trapped once again in the cellar. She tried to get out but she couldn’t. She woke up late at night, panting, only to find her black cat staring at her. She looked into his tiger eyes. She felt he wanted to talk to her, but didn’t have any idea what he wanted to say…except she felt the strongest sensation of contempt. That cat looked down on her and she didn’t like it.

  Not until she woke up at 7:00 did she remember she’d forgotten to buy the Dramamine. Oh dear. And so the new day began.

  Chapter 16

  Maggie had an issue with school buses, the issue being that she couldn’t sit on one without feeling sick to her stomach. At sixty-two years old, she’d figured she’d probably go the rest of her life without having to ride on one again, but she had not anticipated the unexpected devotion she felt for her young friend Edgar. The problem was that now she had to make it through a forty-five-minute ride without doing anything embarrassing to herself or Edgar. B
ut it was a real struggle, all the worse because the day was so warm, the bus so bumpy, her stomach so unsettled.

  Hoping to trick her body into a healthier frame of mind, Maggie invited all the kids to sing along with her in a rendition of “The Wheels on the Bus.” That went well for about fifteen minutes, but then Edgar began spinning his arms round and round and he hit Lester Kozcak in the head. Fortunately Lester’s mother was Sybil, the real estate agent Maggie liked so much, but it was impossible to talk to her because every time she tried, Edgar grabbed her hand and said, “Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.”

  Then the bus driver announced there was a traffic accident ahead blocking four lanes, which just seemed cruel to Maggie. There was never traffic on this section of the Thruway. She tried to close her eyes, but Edgar pried them open with his fingers. “Are you okay, Maggie Dove? Are you okay?”

  He smelled of Swedish Fish and sweat and she felt something prickling at the back of her throat, but she forced herself to imagine the embarrassment on Edgar’s face. She would not be sick. She would dissolve into a puddle of acidic stomach juices before she would throw up on her favorite child.

  Maggie was, however, first off the bus when they finally arrived at the orchard, narrowly beating out Ambrosia Fletcher, who did throw up. And then, finally, they were surrounded by rows and rows of apple trees. The air smelled fresh and sweet.

  Sybil, the real estate agent, offered to take Edgar with her son and get them started. “Give you a little time to catch your breath, Maggie D.”

  The woman was a saint. One of Maggie’s favorite people in town. A big-hearted, friendly girl who drove a Bentley and seemed to sell all the real estate in Darby. But Edgar wouldn’t go with her. “I won’t leave, Maggie Dove,” he said, and so she staggered forward, praying for help. She hated to bother God with issues of nausea, but this one was important. Finally she began to feel better, and she began to enjoy wandering among the trees.