Poisoned Petals Read online

  “Great.” Jenks sighed and picked up his bags. “Thanks for coming out. Now we can get going on the road project.”

  “My pleasure. Thanks for all your tolerance.”

  He grinned at her. “Sure thing. If you can climb down there and don’t mind looking like something the cat dragged in, I can take a few hours on the county and help you out. Nice meeting you, Dr. Lee.”

  “What was that all about?” Luther watched Jenks as he walked toward the truck.

  “Just relocating some endangered plants. You know me. I’m all about the plants.” Her voice reflected the awkwardness of their meeting.

  He was gaunt beneath his suit. She was sure she could see every bone. His head was skull-like, dark skin stretched tight across his features. He had been a much heavier man until his recent bout with cancer. “I didn’t know your church was out here. I thought you were still in Rock Hill.”

  “We moved here last year. How is my brother?”

  “I haven’t seen him in a few days, but I’m sure he’s fine. Always busy.” Peggy wasn’t surprised Luther didn’t know how Darmus was doing. The two brothers had never been particularly close since she’d known them.

  The three of them had attended the University of South Carolina at Columbia more than twenty years ago. Peggy was from Charleston. Darmus and Luther were from Blacks-burg, South Carolina. Peggy and Darmus became lifelong friends. Luther avoided them when he could.

  “Good. Good.” Luther adopted his pulpit stance, hands pulled behind his back. “He’s an important person now. Head of Feed America. That’s a worthy group. It was started by the Council of Churches, you know.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard.” She waved to Pete and the NCDOT supervisor as they started up the bright yellow truck and drove past them.

  “I’ll never understand why there isn’t a pastor at the helm,” Luther complained as he did every time they talked. “Darmus is a fine choice. Just fine. But a man of God would have been better.”

  “I don’t see how anyone could do it better than Darmus. Feed America is thriving.” Peggy knew the group Darmus had started to help feed the hungry was already in every state and had reached out to several other countries.

  Luther and Darmus always had a rivalry problem. They were almost twenty years apart and from a large family. Luther was the baby and Darmus the eldest child. Darmus was charismatic and a popular overachiever. But he waited to go to school until his eight brothers and sisters were through and was almost forty when he started college. That was how he came to be at school at the same time as his much younger brother.

  During college Luther lurked on the sidelines and complained about his own lack of popularity without ever appreciating what his brother had done for him by taking care of him when their parents were killed in a car accident. He was as dark and dreary as Darmus was light and sunny.

  “I suppose that’s true enough,” Luther half agreed. “But a man of God—”

  “Well, I have to go.” Peggy knew she had to get away. She didn’t agree with him but didn’t want to argue, either. Fifteen minutes with Luther was like an hour in purgatory. “I’m pretty busy myself right now with the shop. I’ll tell Darmus I saw you. Bye, Luther.”

  “Peggy, I think I might be dying.”

  She paused, surprised at what he said and not sure what to answer. Luther very rarely said personal things to her.

  “I’m sorry. Has the doctor said something to you?”

  “He doesn’t have to. I know what it looks like. I saw it happen to Rebecca. Darmus and I watched her go. There was nothing we could do.”

  Rebecca, his older sister, had died from cancer about two years ago, just after Luther found out about his own disease. There were only the three of them left from the family. Her death, when it came, had been a terrible blow to the two brothers.

  Peggy wanted to reassure him. But his sallow face and dwindling frame told its own story. The disease had taken its toll on him.

  “I know.” Peggy bit her lip, trying to decide what to say to comfort him. With anyone else, it would have been simple. She would have hugged them and found the words of comfort she needed. But with Luther, she wasn’t sure what to do, so she tried to be respectful and careful with her words. “You’re a man of faith. You’ve got God on your side.”

  “Faith!” Luther spat out the word like it was bitter fruit on his tongue. “What good is faith when a man can see the end? Did God save Rebecca? Will he save me?”

  “I don’t know. But you’ve given counsel and solace to hundreds of people in your time as a minister. Surely, you know the answers better than I do.”

  “I know the answers.” He started walking toward his car, his thin shoulders hunching forward. “There is nothing out there but blackness, Peggy. We are all born of sin and we will all return to the dust of the grave. That is the answer.”

  Peggy was relieved when he got in his car and left without another word. She knew Rebecca’s death had embittered both brothers. Rebecca had been the oldest sister, and she’d acted as a mother to all the children. Watching her die had been horrible for her brothers.

  But Luther’s new attitude stunned Peggy. His cancer had taken away his belief in God, which had sustained him through his sister’s death. Without that it seemed there was nothing left for him.

  She understood that terrible darkness. Her husband, John Lee, had been killed two years before when he’d been called to a routine domestic violence case. There was no warning, no premonition of disaster. He kissed her good-bye, left the house like he did a thousand other times, and two hours later, his partner knocked on her door to tell her John was dead.

  Peggy hadn’t been sure she would ever be able to crawl out of that black hole. Nothing could fill it in the days and weeks after John died. But finally, light began to creep into her world. She began to feel the warmth of the sun on her face and hear the cries of the songbirds in the morning. She was still alive. John was dead, but she had to live on without him.

  It took her a long time to go back to church. She blamed God for what happened. She blamed the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department for not knowing how dangerous the situation was. She was furious and totally lost.

  Then she walked out into the yard they’d both loved one morning and decided to start the garden shop they’d always talked about. It took every penny she could borrow and scrape together, including John’s entire pension, to get the shop going. But once it was there, she realized it was the balm her soul needed. When she was there, she was with John.

  But Darmus and Luther hadn’t come to any place like that after Rebecca died. They still both grieved for her. Darmus kept going with his classes at UNC-Charlotte where he taught botany, and his Feed America group continued to grow. Luther developed cancer.

  Now Darmus was on the verge of losing his brother, too. She didn’t want to know how that would affect him.

  On impulse, she took out her cell phone and called Darmus. She reached his voice mail. Despite the fact that he was a very public figure, Darmus was still a very private man. There were many times when he went for weeks without checking his messages or answering his phone to get away from everything. Sometimes it was very frustrating.

  He was probably in the Community Garden. It was part of the Feed America plan, and the first garden for the masses the city of Charlotte ever had. Feed America was trying to put a large garden in every city from Richmond to New Delhi. Darmus’s principle was that no one should ever go hungry on the planet. She liked the concept, but putting it into practice had been mind numbing for him.

  Peggy and her students from Queens University had helped him with the garden. They were there almost every day, planting and tilling. In all, they’d planted an acre of squash, corn, potatoes, strawberries, and peppers. They planted apple trees and blueberry bushes. All of the seed and equipment had been donated to the project from area garden suppliers. All the work had been done by volunteer groups from garden clubs, students, Scouts, and other indiv
iduals.

  It had been a few days since she’d seen Darmus there, but he was usually at the garden early in the morning, and she’d been going later in the day. She decided to surprise him with some of the tubers she was bringing back. He loved native plants that had been in the region since before 1900. He’d be pleased and surprised to find some already planted in his garden when he came home.

  Then she could swing by her garden shop, the Potting Shed, work for a few hours, post exam scores at the university, and finally go back to the Potting Shed and close up for the night. The pace of her life was grueling sometimes, too.

  She was in the process of deciding if she should give up her position at Queens University. She’d only gone back after John’s death because she was heavily in debt and wasn’t sure if the Potting Shed could support itself.

  But the little shop was thriving and needing more and more of her time. She had a wonderful group of students working for her, but it was getting harder to do a good job at everything. She was spread too thin, and even though she was afraid to take the plunge, she knew she was going to have to give something up to remain sane.

  She’d pretty well decided it was going to be teaching. She was terrified, but there was no other answer. She could still do her group lectures about toxic plants, and the Charlotte Police Department had recently offered her an on-call position as a forensic botanist. Neither one of those would take up as much time as teaching several classes a day, but they would provide extra money.

  But part of her hated to give up teaching. Darmus had certainly given her a hard time about it. To him, there was no greater application of learning than to teach. The idea that she would choose a garden shop over her professorship drove him crazy.

  But Peggy knew he didn’t understand why the Potting Shed was so important to her. He’d only been married once, and that was for a very short time. She couldn’t explain how the pain of John’s death went away when she was puttering around the shop. And not everyone could be totally dedicated to the betterment of the human race like Darmus. His whole life had been consumed by his mission.

  She always wondered what it would have been like if his early marriage hadn’t fallen apart. He’d married her best friend, Rosie, in college. Darmus was happy then. But the marriage fell apart quickly. After it was over, Darmus became obsessed with saving the world. Would he have been as willing to give up his life for his cause if he’d actually had a life?

  There would never be an answer to that question. Fate had taken him down a different path. She turned her little red truck into Darmus’s driveway. He had a small, pleasant house with a magnificent garden on the north side of Charlotte, near the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he’d taught for twenty years.

  People came from all over the state to study what he grew there. Sometimes he had cabbages the size of basketballs and sweet potatoes the size of potbellied pigs. It was a remarkable accomplishment and a wonderful teaching facility. Darmus never did anything small or anything that couldn’t be used for teaching.

  She was surprised to see his Honda FCX, a small, limited-production hydrogen-fuel-cell car, parked in his driveway, but she was happy to find him home. This way he could help plant the tubers, and they could have a good talk.

  She wasn’t sure if she was going to tell him about Luther. She’d have to see how he was that day. She might be better off keeping quiet about it for now. He’d had his good and bad days for the last few months. He was distracted and agitated as he tried to make sense of Rebecca’s death and struggled under the mounting pressure to keep Feed America growing.

  She’d envied him his green car for a long time before she finally managed to get her little truck converted to electric power. She’d worked on a 1942 Rolls-Royce that had been in her husband’s family, but it was impractical to use. She had to settle for the truck. It was good for the shop and easier to get around in. Insurance and spare parts for the Rolls were astronomical!

  Peggy tried to honk the horn to see if Darmus was home. It didn’t make a sound. For some reason, she was having trouble getting it to work. She got out of the truck slowly, stretching out the kink in her back as she did.

  Darmus had crippling arthritis in his hands and feet. She didn’t know how he got so much accomplished yet never complained about being in pain. She knew there were times he had to be suffering. He’d actually had to quit teaching for a while because the arthritis was so debilitating. Then he found some wonder herb that allowed him to go back to work. It was the happiest day of his life.

  She brushed her hand over some young bracken ferns starting to sprout in a shady spot beneath a flowering plum tree. No doubt someone would have them in their salad soon. They were edible while they were young fiddleheads but only ornamental when they got larger. The pink plum flowers seemed to float above her head as she looked through their open branches at the clear blue sky.

  It had been a perfect day to collect the sunflowers. The area needed rain badly, but she was glad it had held off for another day. When it started raining, the ditch where the sunflowers were growing was going to be even more of a muddy mess, swimming with young snakes and turtles. The turtles she could get along with. It was the snakes she wasn’t crazy about. She knew they had their place, but they gave her the shivers.

  Once when she was a child on her family’s farm outside Charleston, she’d pulled down a big piece of moss hanging from a live oak to give her mother as a present. She found a cottonmouth curled up in it. The snake hissed at her. She dropped it and ran back to the house. She was lucky it didn’t bite her. But she never forgot how scared she was that day, looking so closely into the snake’s eyes.

  It made her shiver just thinking about it. Her hands were cold when she knocked on Darmus’s front door.

  There was a peculiar smell coming from the house. She thought it was something cooking at first. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to taste it! Darmus had a habit of making all kinds of strange foods he liked to share with his unsuspecting guests. She decided to plead exhaustion if he wanted her to stay. She was filthy and tired. She couldn’t possibly—

  Then Peggy realized she wasn’t smelling food. It was natural gas or propane. The scent was very strong. She tried the handle, but the door was locked. “Darmus!” She pounded on the door, then moved to the window to try to see inside. “Darmus!”

  2

  Milkweed

  Botanical: Asclepias syriaca

  Family: Asclepiadaceae

  Named Asclepias from Askelpios, the Greek god of healing, this thick-stemmed plant grows in swamps and can be three to five feet tall. It has been used as a healing aid for many different ailments including bronchitis and kidney stones. Milkweed was used to stuff life preservers during World War II. The monarch butterfly feeds only on this plant.

  PEGGY COULDN’T TELL if Darmus was inside, but since his car was in the drive, the chances were good that he was. She ran around the back of the house and shouted his name over and over again, hoping he might answer from outside. There was no reply. She couldn’t find him in the yard.

  She tried the back door, but it was also locked. She pounded on the door and screamed his name. Finally, unsure what else she could do, she called 911 and reported a possible gas leak. If she was wrong, she’d feel like a fool. But if she was right . . .

  Peggy put the phone away, and anxiously listened for the sound of sirens. Please, please let him be okay! Please don’t let him be in there. When she didn’t hear sirens right away, she started running around the house, looking in the windows and pounding on the doors, calling his name.

  She couldn’t recall what created sparks that could start a fire. Was it static? Could a door opening do it? If she threw a brick through the window, could that cause an explosion? She looked around and noted the closeness of the other houses. If Darmus’s house caught on fire, it could endanger the homes of his neighbors.

  She took out her cell phone again to call and see what was keeping the rescue wor
kers. As if it were a signal, an explosion rocked the house. The windows blew out, sparkling glass shattering everywhere. The door beside her blew off its hinges and went flying past her into the yard. If the explosion had occurred just a few minutes ago, when she was knocking on the door, it would have taken her down with it.

  Flames started at the roof and roared through the open windows, where oxygen fed them. Smoke billowed out of the opening where the door had been.

  Peggy knew she had to see if Darmus was inside. There wasn’t time to wait for the fire department. She got down on her hands and knees and started crawling through the house, shouting for him. The black smoke billowed above her head as she crawled quickly across the floors, unmindful of the glass and other debris, glad she was still wearing her gloves to protect her hands.

  “Darmus!” she yelled and coughed as she went from room to room. “Darmus, are you in here?”

  Then she saw him. He was in the kitchen, lying on the floor beside the stove. She could see his face and arms were badly burned. He wasn’t moving. He was probably unconscious. She was going to have to stand up to drag him out of the burning house and pray she wasn’t overcome by smoke trying to do it.

  First she visually located the back door so she knew where to go. Flames seemed to be everywhere by then. Black smoke made breathing difficult, even on the floor. She saw a huge hole in the roof with flames burning up into the blue sky.

  Desperately she grabbed Darmus’s hand. It was cold to the touch. She dropped it when the crisped flesh moved under her hand. She was going to do too much damage that way. “Hang on! I’m going to get you out of here.”

  Peggy took a deep breath and held it. She grabbed the back of Darmus’s shirt, stood up, and was immediately pounded by the heat and smoke. She put her head down, held her breath, and narrowed her stinging eyes as she dragged him across the vinyl floor, keeping her gaze focused on the doorframe where the screen door hung by one hinge at the top.

  Darmus was a small, slight man, barely five feet, but it was difficult for Peggy to pull him. The smooth floor helped, but toward the end, she could see it starting to crack and buckle from the heat. She could hear sirens now and someone on a loudspeaker instructing people to stay back.