Fruit of the Poisoned Tree Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1 - Tobacco

  Chapter 2 - Jerusalem Artichoke

  Chapter 3 - Flowering Dogwood

  Chapter 4 - Aspidistra

  Chapter 5 - Lenten Rose

  Chapter 6 - Aster

  Chapter 7 - Camellia

  Chapter 8 - Gardenia

  Chapter 9 - Begonia

  Chapter 10 - Bay

  Chapter 11 - Sassafras

  Chapter 12 - Banana

  Chapter 13 - Strawberry

  Chapter 14 - Horse Chestnut

  Chapter 15 - Lemon Balm

  Chapter 16 - Rabbit’s Foot Fern

  Chapter 17 - Thrift

  Chapter 18 - Amaryllis

  Peggy’s Garden Journal

  Praise for

  Pretty Poison

  “A fun and informative reading experience . . . With a touch of romance added to this delightful mystery, one can only hope many more Peggy Lee mysteries will be hitting shelves soon!”

  —Roundtable Reviews

  “A fantastic amateur sleuth mystery . . . will appeal to men and women of all ages . . . a great tale.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “Peggy is a great character . . . For anyone with even a modicum of interest in gardening, this book is a lot of fun. There are even gardening tips included.”

  —The Romance Reader’s Connection

  “The perfect book if you’re looking for a great suspense . . . Pretty Poison is the first in the Peggy Lee Garden Mystery series, and I can’t wait for the next!”

  —Romance Junkies

  “Joyce and Jim Lavene have crafted an outstanding whodunit in Pretty Poison, with plenty of twists and turns that will keep the reader entranced to the final page. Peggy Lee is a likable, believable sleuth and the supporting characters add spice, intrigue, and humor to the story.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Complete with gardening tips, this is a smartly penned, charming cozy, the first book in a new series. The mystery is intricate and well-plotted. Green thumbs and non-gardeners alike will enjoy this book.”

  —Romantic Times BOOKclub

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  Published by the Penguin Group

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  FRUIT OF THE POISONED TREE

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the authors

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / May 2006

  Copyright © 2006 by Joyce Lavene and Jim Lavene.

  All rights reserved.

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  eISBN : 978-1-101-50034-7

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

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  1

  Tobacco

  Botanical: Nicotiana tabacum

  Family: N.O. Solanaceae

  Native American tribes believed in the healing power of tobacco and smoked it regularly. According to myth, smoking the pipe kept the scattered tribes from becoming enemies. They used the dried leaves for removing poison, a practice still in effect, and to draw the pain from insect stings.

  “I CONFESS THAT I didn’t want to come here when I heard what my topic was supposed to be.” Dr. Margaret Lee looked out into the audience gathered in the meeting room. Her brilliant green eyes were sharp beneath her collapsing twist of white-washed red hair. She wore an elegant, blue green three-piece Liz Claiborne suit chosen specially for that moment.

  She didn’t like stereotypes and didn’t intend to become one.

  “Asking a person from North Carolina to talk about tobacco could be considered an insult these days. Fortunately, I’m not insulted very easily.” The audience chuckled a little and moved restlessly at their tables. The waiters still hadn’t come to clear the luncheon plates, and occasionally silver-ware or china clinked as a speaker strove to make his or her point. Peggy took a deep breath. Tough crowd.

  But she was prepared. The letter asking her to speak at a U.S. Botanical Society conference in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, about thirty miles west of Philadelphia, wasn’t a surprise. She found time to be there most years. Asking her to specifically speak about the evils of tobacco was a surprise.

  She was recognized by the society for her work with botanical poisons. She didn’t start out in that field, but circumstances brought it to her doorstep. Tobacco qualified as a poison, even if you didn’t count smoking or chewing it.

  Every year, harvesting the plant made a few dozen workers sick from nicotine poison they absorbed from the leaves. Despite the centuries it had been cultivated, people still made mistakes with it. Like every other poisonous plant, it needed understanding and care if the person tending it wanted to stay well.

  Asking her to speak about the controversy that had developed between smokers and nonsmokers made her feel like the society expected her to show up in overalls and bare feet to represent the North Carolina tobacco farmer.

  But to prove to herself that her fellow attendees were more interested in the botanical view than the political view of Nicotiana, when the society suggested visual material, she refused to bring her projector and laptop. She knew she could create a far more stunning visual impact.

  She put on a pair of sturdy garden gloves, dug into the insulated bag she brought onstage with her, and pulled out a healthy specimen of tobacco. After plunking it down on the speaker’s podium, Peggy smiled at the suddenly quiet crowd. “This plant is probably more maligned than any plant has a right to be. We blame it for everything from heart attacks to warts. Everything people have done to themselves. The truth is, people have smoked and chewed it since the fifteen hundreds in Europe, probably thousands more years in North and South America. Whil
e it’s been accused of terrible things, modern science has begun to agree with folklore that it may hold the key to valuable healing properties as well.”

  Peggy was satisfied with the shocked look on her colleagues’ faces. She stepped down to the audience with the plant, pointing out the wide green leaves and pretty white flowers. While she rattled on about research and isolating the important properties of the plant for the good of humanity, her friend Debby Moore, who worked for Longwood Gardens, shook her head and smiled. When her twenty-minute speech extolling the benefits of the tobacco plant was finished, Peggy returned to their table to enthusiastic applause from the rest of the audience.

  “Thank you, Dr. Lee.” Stan Mason, current president of the society, adjusted the microphone as he took back the podium. He dusted some soil from the stand and smiled down at her. “For those of you who aren’t aware of it, our Dr. Lee was spotlighted in Crime Fighter’s Magazine last month for her work with the police on murder cases that involve poison. Very unique for a member of our society. Commendable, Dr. Lee!”

  Peggy acknowledged his accolade as she finished putting the long-leafed tobacco plant back into the travel bag. Her normally pink, freckled cheeks were slightly more flushed from the attention, but her stubborn chin refused to let her look away from the interested stares of the group surrounding her. It wasn’t like she was wearing her panty hose on the outside or anything. It always seemed she was just a little different, something her mother pointed out as being her own fault.

  “That was interesting,” Debby whispered as another speaker was introduced. “You didn’t tell me you had a plant in that bag. You know we don’t allow plants from outside.”

  “It’s not like it can escape. And I didn’t want you to tell anyone.” Peggy zipped the plant into the bag. “Poor thing doesn’t like this cold, I’m afraid. I’m going to have a rough time getting it back in shape when I get home.”

  The next speaker was a botanist from Ohio who spoke about using plants to prevent the infiltration of harmful pests in the garden. He began to speak in a droning, nasal voice that lulled the crowd like a bee on a hot summer day. Eyes shut and heads rolled to one side.

  Debby leaned close to Peggy. “I don’t think anyone expected you to talk about the good qualities of tobacco.”

  “I guess they were surprised then.” Peggy patted an errant strand of hair that was beginning to annoy her. Sometimes she thought it might be better to shave the whole mass off but never really went beyond annoyance to action. She wore her hair the way she’d worn it for twenty years. Mostly she was too busy to pay it much attention. “My father raised tobacco every summer while I was growing up. It was a stable cash crop. He even let us smoke some after it was cured. Vile stuff, but important to the farmers in South Carolina. I wouldn’t mind if research developed something to save all those tobacco farms from extinction. I love the smell of it growing after a rain as you go down the road in the summer.”

  They sat through a few more speakers before the conference was over. While the others were leaving, Peggy walked with Debby to the developmental area of Longwood Gardens. She loved to see what they were working on and borrow some ideas for her own basement greenhouse.

  “I’m glad Antares did so well for you,” Debby said, speaking of the huge, night-blooming water lily she’d sent her. “Your night-blooming rose was impressive. Thanks for bringing us one. We’ve been working on a variety of night- and twilight-flowering plants. Besides the water lily and the rose, we also have a dahlia and a hibiscus that are under development. I suppose you’ll be turning your eye on the magnolia now. That would be impressive at night.”

  “Actually I’ve been working with a local farmer on more pest-resistant strawberries. They’ve made them big now, but they’re having problems with bugs they never had before.”

  “I guess the bugs didn’t notice strawberries as much when they were the size of peas,” Debby quipped, “but now they’re the size of apples, it’s a different story.”

  “That’s always the way it is.” Peggy admired a deep purple rose. “When you change one thing, you change ten more things with it. I love playing with flowers, but when I can help in a more practical sense, that’s when I really get involved. I’m also working with Darmus Appleby to help establish a community vegetable garden in Charlotte for next summer.”

  Debby smiled and adjusted a water sprinkler. “When do you have time for that new beau of yours? With everything you take on, it can’t be easy to find time to hold hands while you watch a Sunday matinee.”

  “It’s difficult.” Peggy’s eyes flashed as the image of two old people barely able to move filled her mind. “But don’t make it sound like I’m over a hundred and met the man in the wheelchair next to mine. I’m still capable of having a meaningful relationship. Having Steve in my life has been strange and stressful sometimes. I never expected to share my life with another man.”

  Debby laughed as she held out her hands to protect herself. “I didn’t mean anything by it! Relax! You don’t have to convince me. You’ve never seemed older than thirty.”

  “Oh hush!” Peggy smiled at her. “I’m a little sensitive about the whole age thing right now. I told you Steve is younger than me. I never thought about my age until I met him. Now sometimes I feel ancient. Like people look at us strangely when we’re together. I’m waiting for the first person to come up and ask if I’m his mother.”

  “He’s not that much younger than you,” Debby, who’d met Steve at Christmas, reminded her. “As for anyone else, ignore them. You deserve to be happy. Steve is lucky to have you.”

  “I try not to notice, but you’re talking to a woman born and raised in Charleston. When a thing wasn’t proper, you didn’t do it. I still haven’t told my parents about Steve. I know my mother will be shocked and horrified. She thinks the proper mourning time for a wife is still five years.”

  Debby looked amazed. “You can’t still feel like that, can you? I thought when I got older I wouldn’t care what my parents think. You mean there’s no relief? You’ve taken all the fun out of getting old for me.”

  “I suppose it might be different with different parents. Or if they die. That’s the only way it can get better for me. Not that I’d wish them harm in a million years. They might be proper and fussy, but they’re still my parents.” Peggy glanced at her watch. “I’ve loved being with you this weekend. You’ll have to come down and see us again. You can help out with the community garden. With your expertise, we could grow vegetables the size of footballs.”

  “Maybe after the summer,” Debby said. “You know what my life around here is like once the weather gets warm. I never go outside the garden. I think by September I’m starting to feel a little green.”

  They looked at the huge, sleeping garden outside the greenhouse. The lush green and vibrant colors of summer were months away. But the brown, drab landscape was full of promise in both their eyes. Gardeners’ eyes see more than what exists at that moment. They always see the possibilities of what could be.

  The first snowflake broke Peggy’s dreamy-eyed gaze. She shivered, looking at the gray sky. Thousands of small, white flakes followed the first flake, tumbling into the garden. She wasn’t a big fan of cold weather, especially snow and ice. The idea of driving back to her hotel in Philadelphia made her cut her good-byes to Debby short. She wanted to be inside before the snow started accumulating on the street.

  “Be careful!” Debby waved as Peggy backed her rental car out of the deserted parking lot. “Call me when you get to your hotel. I want to be sure you make it safely back.”

  “I will. Thanks for a wonderful time! Come and see me when you have a chance.”

  Despite Peggy’s dread of frozen roads, one she had in common with most Southern-born women, the drive back wasn’t as bad as she feared. The snow melted as it hit the ground, creating a slushy mix on the pavement. But the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation was out with trucks and plows. The slush never had a chance to freeze
on the road. She wasn’t sure what it would be like later that night. But by then, she’d be home.

  February in the Carolinas might have some frost, but snow was unlikely. And if it did snow, she wouldn’t have to drive in it. That was one good thing about living in an area that didn’t have much frozen precipitation. The city was never prepared for it. She could only hope they never would be. Let the people who moved there from other states complain that they couldn’t get out in bad weather. Sensible people didn’t want to try.

  Her thoughts of home were banished by some kind of commotion at the front of the Four Seasons Hotel where she was staying. The entire street and sidewalk were blocked with people. She thought at first there was an accident, but there was no sign of an ambulance or mangled cars.

  She maneuvered her car close to the hotel entrance, wondering what was going on. It looked like a rally of some kind. Her cell phone rang as she noticed the signs and banners. “Clean up your act! Give life a chance!” Some of the people were made up to look like corpses with white faces and blackened eyes. They chanted slogans about saving the planet that she hadn’t heard since she was in college.

  “Hey, Peggy! How’s the conference? Did little Nick wow them?” Her assistant, Sam Ollson, asked her across the miles between Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

  “They loved him,” she told him. “I thought I’d never get through the applause.”

  “Really?” Surprise made his youthful voice squeak. He was in his second year of college, hoping to go to med school and have a career as a surgeon. He’d worked for her at her garden shop, the Potting Shed, since it opened two years ago.