“Did to me. Nervous as a long tail cat on a porch of rocking chairs,” Miss Vivee said and turned her head catching Viola Rose’s eye. She beckoned to her.
“He had the ‘means’ only if it really was cyanide poisoning that killed Jack Wagner,” I said without too much conviction. I don’t know why I even bothered to argue the point, she and Mac were always right.
“It fits,” Mac said agreeing with Ms. Vivee. “Like I said, I smelled a faint scent of almonds when I took a look at him.”
“That just sounds crazy to me,” I said. “Not you smelling the almonds,” I directed my eyes to Mac, then back to Miss Vivee. “I just don’t understand how such a common food could be so deadly? People eat peaches and plums all the time.”
“They don’t eat the seeds,” Miss Vivee said.
“That’s right, normally, they don’t,” Mac said.
“And it’s what’s inside of the kernel that contains the poison,” Miss Vivee added.
“That’s true.” Mac nodded. “Swallowing the pit whole ain’t so bad, it’s when you get what’s inside. And you’d have to eat a lot of it for it to kill you.”
“How much?” I said and swiped the face of my iPhone. I needed to Google that, too.
“Y’all ready for ya check?” Viola Rose asked when she came over to the table.
“No, I was thinking I’d have some of your peach cobbler,” Miss Vivee said. “All this talk of fruit Logan’s been doing has made my mouth water.”
“You want a scoop of vanilla ice cream with that?” Viola Rose asked.
“Mmmm. That’s sounds good,” Miss Vivee said. “And bring some for Mac and Logan, too.”
“No thank you,” I said looking up from my Google search. “None for me. I don’t know that I’ll ever eat peaches again.”
“Oh phooey,” Miss Vivee said and waved her hand at me. “I’ll take a cup of coffee with it, too.”
“You can bring me another cup, too,” Mac said. “But this time, make mine decaf.”
“Gotcha,” I heard Viola Rose say as I went back to my poison, common fruit search.
“Here,” I said. “It says that it would take about 100 grams of peach seed, which contains about 88mg of cyanide to be dangerous. And each pit yields about 10 grams.” I looked up. “It says that it would take somewhere between 13 to 15 raw peach pit kernels to be in the lethal range for an average sized adult.”
“See, so even if Gus dropped a few peach kernels in the cobbler, it wouldn’t kill you,” Miss Vivee said.
I wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or not.
“Doesn’t take as many cherries, though,” she said.
“Did you see cherry trees, Vivee?” Mac asked.
“Not a one,” she said.
But I’d seen cherry pie.
And a lot of sick people.
My heart rate quickened, and a chill ran over my arms.
I Googled cherries.
It read: “Hydrogen cyanide is lethal at about 1.52 milligrams per kilogram.”
I looked up from my reading, and closed my eyes. “Okay, if I convert that from milligrams to grams, just to make the units easier to work with,” I mumbled. “And rounding it off, 1.52 milligrams is about 0.002 grams, let me see . . ..002 grams for every kilogram a person weighed . . .” I looked back down at my phone. “Okay. And a hundred and fifty pound person weighs . . .” I stared down at the floor and did the math. “About sixty-eight kilograms. So then, if I multiply 68 times .002, it would take about 0.136 grams of cherry pits to kill a 150lb person.” I nodded my head, satisfied with my calculations.
I went back to the website on my phone and found the place I had left off. It said that “a single cherry yields roughly 0.17 grams of cyanide per gram of seed.”
I didn’t need to do the math on that.
Crap!
It would only take the inside of one and a half, or at the most, two cherry pits to kill someone.
“Oh my, Lord,” I said under my breath.
“What are you mumbling about, Logan,” Miss Vivee voice floated past my ears.
Could that be what made all the cherry pie eaters sick? I shook my head. Couldn’t be, I thought.
“How do the pits taste?” I asked Miss Vivee and Mac.
“Pits?” Miss Vivee asked.
“Fruit pits from the ones that contain cyanogenic glycoside.”
“Bitter,” Mac said.
“But this cobbler is sweet,” Miss Vivee said taking in a mouthful. “The only thing you might get from this is a cavity.” She swallowed the pie and took a sip of her coffee.
“Or fat,” Mac said.
“You think I’m fat,” Miss Vivee asked, sitting down her coffee cup. She looked down at herself and smoothed her hand down her front.
“Never,” Mac said and winked at her. “You’re perfect any way you are.”
Those two were too sweet for me, probably even more so than that cobbler. But cavities or fat wasn’t what was bothering me.
I typed in “cyanide poisoning symptoms.”
I found my answer on eMedicine Health. It relayed the symptoms as “general weakness, confusion, bizarre behavior, excessive sleepiness, coma, shortness of breath, headache, dizziness, and seizures.” I shook my head.
I don’t remember any of that.
I skipped to the next paragraph. “An acute ingestion,” it read, “will have a dramatic, rapid onset, immediately affecting the heart and causing sudden collapse.”
They did collapse.
I read the next paragraph. “The skin of a cyanide-poisoned person can sometimes be unusually pink or cherry-red because oxygen will stay in the blood and not get into the cells. The person may also breathe very fast and have either a very fast or very slow heartbeat.”
And they were pink . . .
I looked over at Miss Vivee. She was eating her cobbler, and talking to Mac. Enjoying her afternoon. Pleased with herself, I knew, for figuring out how Jack Wagner died after the note had stumped her. But, Miss Vivee had given no never mind to all the people who got sick. All she concentrated on was the one who died.
So, what did make everyone else sick?
Was it the kernels that killed Jack Wagner?
And if so, what kind of kernels killed Jack Wagner? Plum. Peach. Cherry?
Each one of those kernel didn’t contain cyanide, I reasoned. They contained cyanogenic glycoside, which the body breaks down into cyanide once ingested. What about if they didn’t take in enough of it? Then the body couldn’t make enough cyanide to kill them. It would just make them sick.
I thought about it. Each one of those kernel does contain amygdalin, though. I let my eyes roll up. Whichever fruit was used, if a fruit was used . . . I brought my eyes back down and looked at Miss Vivee . . . whichever fruit was used contained amygdalin.
I typed “symptoms of amygdalin poisoning” in the search box on my phone. The first link I clicked on listed thirty of them.
Abdominal pain, sweating, vomiting, weakness, bluish skin . . .
Mild poisoning also included chest tightness, and muscle weakness, it read.
I thought back to all the blue faces, and then to that man clutching his chest. I remembered when Mac and I had left the pie tent, I saw a line of people waiting for the Porta potties. One woman who the medics had found lying flat on the ground, was being hoisted up on a gurney. She was too weak to stand. And then there was that gentlemen seated in a wooden chair near the tent his ear of corn limp in his hand. I glanced back down at my phone. They all had the symptoms.
That’s it, I thought. Had to be.
Whoever gave Jack Wagner amygdalin, had also sprinkled a little of it on food all over the fair. He got enough for it to turn into a lethal dose cyanide, they didn’t.
If that was possible.
And how did they do that?
Why did they do that?
“The murderer wasn’t trying to frame someone else for this murder,” I said in an unexpected outburst. I hadn’t meant to be
so loud, it was just the realization startled me.
“What in the world are you talking about,” Miss Vivee said and frowned.
“The note,” I said.
“What do you mean, Logan?” Mac asked.
“Miss Vivee thought she needed to prove that she didn’t kill Jack Wagner because she had all the flowers.”
“Jack Wagner wasn’t poisoned by any of the flowers on the note,” Miss Vivee said.
“Exactly,” I said. “But I think that note is more than a red herring, it’s really a clue to who the killer is.”
“Of course it is,” Miss Vivee said. “The killer wrote it.”
“They wrote it to frame someone else,” Mac said.
“To take the suspicion off of themselves,” Miss Vivee added.
“No I think they want us – rather Miss Vivee – to figure out who they are.”
“Who is who?”
“Who the killer is,” I said. “Think about it, whoever killed Jack Wagner gave us a clue in a poem, and then made everyone else sick. They made a big production number out of it.”
“That’s not right,” Miss Vivee said. “The murderer couldn’t expect anyone to figure it out from that poem, because nothing in it pointed to the right clues to follow. Nobody was killed by a botanical poison.”
“And why would the killer want to be caught?” Mac asked.
Chapter Eighteen
“When we leave here,” Miss Vivee said as we waited for Viola Rose to come back with Mac’s change and her to-go order of peach cobbler. “We’ve got to find the Sheriff.”
I really think she only ordered cobbler to irritate me.
“I know that you’re not going to tell him about your list of suspects,” I said.
“No,” she said and nothing more.
Again with the one word answer. That made me think she was up to something.
“Well,” I said. “What are you going to tell him?”
“About the cause of death.”
“They sent out a toxicology request when they did the autopsy.” I said. “Bay told me that they were still waiting for the results. I mean it’s nothing wrong with telling him, but they’ll find out soon enough on their own.”
“They won’t look for cyanide,” Mac said. “It’s not part of a routine toxicology screen in an autopsy.”
“So you’re going to tell the sheriff that it was amygdaline?”
“Of course I am.” She glanced at me. “Why is that surprising to you?”
“Because you never want to tell anybody, anything until you’ve figured out the whole thing,” I said. You know you like the shock and awe of the reveal. Quite the show-off, if you ask me.”
“I am not,” she said and jutted out her chin. “And no one asked you. Plus, this is different. The Sheriff asked me to help.” She nodded. “They need to know to look for cyanide, otherwise, if they don’t check for it now they’d have to exhume the body later.”
With that she huffed and scooted herself out of the booth. Mac waved at Viola Rose to keep the change and followed behind Miss Vivee. We loaded into my Jeep and I took Mac back home before we headed back to the Maypop.
“How was your doctor’s appointment?” Renmar asked as soon as we walked in the door.
“What?” Miss Vivee said.
“The doctor in Augusta,” Renmar said and then looked at me. “You did go, didn’t you?”
I’d nearly forgotten we’d gone.
“We went,” I said.
“You two had been gone so long, I started to get worried.”
“Here,” Miss Vivee said and wagged the card in front of her face. “They said I needed more help than they could offer in one day, so I have to go back.”
“Oh my,” Renmar said and put her hand on her cheek. “Logan, is something wrong with Momma?”
I’d never heard Renmar call Miss Vivee “Momma” before, she always said “Mother.” She must’ve been really concerned, which was understandable. But I didn’t know how to make it better because Miss Vivee wasn’t being truthful with her.
Maybe I should just tell her what really happened.
“No need of asking Logan,” Miss Vivee said. “I went in by myself, she doesn’t know what happened.”
“What did happen?” There was an uneasiness in Renmar’s voice.
Miss Vivee looked at Renmar. I saw a flash of concern in her face for upsetting her daughter. “Nothing, Renmar. And there’s nothing wrong with me. They gave me a clean bill of health.”
“So why did they give you another appointment?” Renmar seemed confused.
“They didn’t,” Miss Vivee said and smiled. “I made the appointment for you.’ She pushed the card into Renmar.
“Mother!”
“I’ve had a long day,” Miss Vivee said and waved her hand. “I’m going to bed.”
Renmar flapped her hands down on her side with a loud thump! And looked at me.
“I didn’t go in with her Renmar.”
“Well, you were supposed to be watching her.”
“They told me to stay put. You know, I’m not related – yet and they’re just not going to share information about her with me.”
“That’s why I should have gone,” she said.
“Well, she did make you an appointment . . .”
“You know Mother wasn’t all this trouble until you got here.”
Oh here we go.
“I’m going to my room, too,” I said and headed up the stairs before she could say anything else.
I got upstairs, thinking it was way too early for bed, even though I was tired from the harrowing day with the Dotage Dynamic Duo, and there, sitting on my bed was Miss Vivee.
“I thought you were going to bed?” I said.
“It’s the middle of the day.” She looked at me like I was crazy.
I just shook my head.
“Where’s your phone,” she reached out her hand. “I need to call the Sheriff.”
I handed her the phone. I knew she couldn’t use it.
She took it, turned it over a couple of times, looked at the black screen and back up at me. “How do you turn this thing on?”
I reached over and pressed down the button on the front of the phone, my lock screen came up. She started pressing numbers, then she put the phone up to her ear. She pulled it back and looked at it. She gave it a shake and put it back up to her ear.
“Does this thing work?”
“Give it here,” I said. I sat down on the bed next to her. “Do you know the number?”
“Of course I do,” she said and rattled it off.
I unlocked the phone and dialed the number she gave me.
“Give it here,” she said and wiggled her fingers in front of my face. “Let me talk.”
And talk she did. I’d put the speaker on so I could hear the other end of the conversation, and Miss Vivee herself was turned on loud. She yelled at the phone and told the Sheriff that those flowers in the poem on that note had nothing to do with the murder, but that his wife had all those flowers in her garden.
Then she told him that Jack Wagner had been killed by cyanide poisoning, and that it was probably from the kernel of one of the peach, apple or plum trees at the arboretum. And she must have told him three times in their five minute conversation that the ME would have to do a special test to check for the poison. He thanked her and told her that he would call Bay, and let him know what she found out. She said, “Good. You tell him everything I’ve told you. He needs to hear it from you. That’s why I called you.”
“Well that’s good to know Miss Vivee. Because it sure wasn’t a heart attack that killed Jackson Wagner,” Sheriff Haynes said. “Just got the autopsy report back and the coroner said he’d been fit as a fiddle.”
“Well you’d thought it was poison at first sight,” Miss Vivee said. “Just proving you’re getting an eye for these things.”
“Unfortunately, it looks like I am.”
They hung up and she said, “Call Bay.
Let’s tell him what I found out.”
“Thought you wanted the Sheriff to tell him.”
“Haven’t you learned anything from me?” she asked.
“I’ve learned you lie a lot.”
“Well, that’s a start,” Miss Vivee said and nodded her head. “And if you stick with me, Kiddo. You’ll learn a lot more.”
We called Bay and Miss Vivee shouted at him through the phone the same information that she had shouted to Sheriff Haynes. He got off saying that he had a call coming in from the Sheriff, but not before warning us not to get involved.
“Too late,” Miss Vivee leaned into the phone and yelled. “We’re in up to our elbows.”
I got Miss Vivee out of my room, pulled out my laptop and laid across the bed. I hadn’t forgotten how Camren Wagner looked at me when Miss Vivee put on two pairs of glasses. No one would ever think I didn’t take good care of Miss Vivee again. So, I Googled “eyeglass frames at Walmart,” and there were seven pages of them. Some sold by other manufacturers and shipped to Walmart, and some available for immediate pick-up in the store. I limited my choices to those I could pick up, then I picked out a few that I thought Miss Vivee would like.
I had to see Renmar again to get Miss Vivee’s ophthalmologist’s number, but I didn’t stick around long after she gave it to me. Not even long enough to answer her questions on why I needed it. I called her doctor and had them fax her eye prescription to the Walmart up in Augusta where the frames would be. Thank goodness Miss Vivee had recently had an eye exam.
That done, I carried my open laptop down the hall to Miss Vivee’s room to show her.
“Which pair do you like best?” I said.
She squinted at the screen for a minute then pushed it away. “You pick them out,” she said.
“They’re for you,” I countered. “Why would I choose a pair?”
“I’m happy with the pair I have.”
You don’t have a pair, I said to myself. You have two. But I wasn’t going to let her dour demeanor detour me.
Although she complained about “spending good money” on the pair of prescription sunglasses, I knew it wasn’t that because she had no problem whipping out her American Express Blue card at a moment’s notice. And right now it didn’t matter the reason, I was going to get her a pair.
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