A Corpse for Yew Page 20

  Peggy didn’t wait to hear more of the story. She went back across the courtyard and closed the Potting Shed. She started home, intending to look for Steve. He was probably in his basement with a patient, and that’s why he wasn’t picking up the phone. She was sure he wasn’t ignoring her when he saw her name and number on his caller ID. Surely he’d at least talk to her.

  Her phone rang as she closed it. “Peggy, you have to get over here,” Mai told her. “This is officially still my case, and I need to know where we are as far as those berries are concerned.”

  “We’re nowhere right now,” Peggy told her, not planning to go near the lab until she’d talked to Steve. “Merton says none of the branches I’ve given him match the seeds you took from Lois.”

  “Then we need more branches. She didn’t get those berries out of the air. We need to know where they came from, now that we know Holt was involved.”

  “Have they charged him with her death?”

  “No. They’re waiting on evidence, waiting for you!”

  “I can’t cut branches off of every yew bush out there,” Peggy said. “There are hundreds. Besides, that doesn’t explain your findings. You said there were no bruises and you didn’t think anyone had forced Lois to eat the berries. Surely you don’t think now that she willingly took poison berries from a man she would’ve been afraid of?”

  “I don’t know what to think right now,” Mai admitted. “But I have Dr. Ramsey and Chief Mullis breathing down my neck. I need you here to back me up.”

  “If it’s any help,” Peggy said, “I think this whole thing is about the carnelian ring. Did you see the contents of Lois’s pocketbook that we found at the lake?”

  “I’ve been going through it all day. Are you talking about the ring box?”

  “Yes. I think if we can figure out why Lois took that ring out to the lake, we may be closer to figuring out why she died. The yew berries could be from anywhere out there.”

  “But that may not be true either,” Mai argued. “Please, Peggy. Come to the lab. What else are you doing that’s so important? It’s past six, so I know the shop is closed.”

  Peggy couldn’t bring herself to admit she was going to look for Steve and ask him if he still wanted them to be together. She liked Mai, but this wasn’t something she wanted to discuss with her. It was bad enough to start the day discussing it with her family. “All right. I’ll come over for awhile. I’m not sure what good I can do, but I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “Great! I’ll schedule a conference with everyone.”

  “Is everyone me, you, and Harold?” Peggy asked, but the phone was dead. Apparently Mai had raced to schedule that conference. Why did she have the feeling she had volunteered to walk through a minefield?

  She tried calling Steve again. There was still no response. A feeling of dread was creeping into her. Steve never went this long without answering. Even though she hadn’t left him a message, he had to know she’d been calling him all day. If he’d wanted to talk to her, he would’ve called.

  Maybe it was just as well. The whole thing could be a mistake. It had taken her parents and son to convince her it wasn’t a mistake. That said something in itself. She wasn’t sure what, but maybe it was better to leave things as they were. When she recalled how angry and frightened she’d been the night before, she tried to summon some of that frustration. But all she got was a strange feeling of emptiness.

  She parked the truck in the lab parking lot, not surprised to see how many techs were still working. There was a growing number of crimes in the city and always a shortage of good help. It was one of the reasons she’d agreed to do this work. It brought her a lot of satisfaction to solve cases, but it also made her feel as though she was doing something good for the community.

  “Dr. Lee.” Harold loomed up out of the stainless steel and green paint in the lab. “How nice of you to join us.”

  Peggy’s cell phone rang. It was Steve, of course. “I’ll just be a minute, Harold.”

  “Dr. Lee,” Chief Mullis addressed her, “I see we’re all here. Shall we get started?”

  18

  Spanish bayonet

  Botanical: Yucca aloifolia

  Spiky Spanish bayonet will tolerate a wide range of soil conditions but usually needs full sun. Little maintenance is required to keep the plant growing. The pronuba moth pollinates most yuccas. The plants and the moths share an interesting biological dependency on each other; the moth needs the plant as much as the plant needs the moth.

  PEGGY SIGHED AS SHE TURNED off her cell phone. Steve was going to have to wait.

  She sat down at the long, battered conference table with Harold, Mai, and Chief Mullis. Before they started talking, Captain Jonas Rimer and Detective Al McDonald joined them. A few pleasantries were observed; Peggy knew Jonas’s wife, Georgette, and asked after her since she hadn’t seen the couple in a few months.

  Chief Mullis killed that notion quickly. “Are we here for the social hour or are we here to find out what happened to my aunt?”

  Everyone was quiet after that, with only the sound of shuffling papers filling the room.

  Harold finally cleared his throat. “Even though I was not the acting medical examiner at the beginning of this case, I’d be happy to take over now.”

  Mai gasped. “There’s no reason to do that, Dr. Ramsey. I think I can handle following through on this.”

  “I simply meant I have more experience on a homicide than you, Sato. I’d hate for anything to be missed while we try to piece together what happened to Mrs. Mullis.”

  “What do we think happened to her?” Peggy pushed her way into the conversation.

  “It’s pretty obvious.” Al opened his folder. “Mrs. Mullis helped prosecute Snook Holt. He got out of prison a few months ago and apparently went right back to his old habits. Chief Mullis dropped his aunt off at Lake Whitley to meet her group. He didn’t realize Holt was out there at the time.”

  “When Holt saw the woman who sent him to jail”—Jonas picked up the story—“he wanted revenge. He forced Mrs. Mullis to eat poison berries, then pushed her into the mud.”

  Chief Mullis nodded in agreement. “That’s the way I see it. Thank you.”

  Peggy cleared her throat and glanced significantly at Mai.

  Mai nodded and swallowed hard before saying, “We can’t support that theory, Chief Mullis. There was no sign of your aunt being forced to do anything. No bruising around the mouth, as you might expect in this case. No bruising on the arms, shoulders, or neck. I believe she ate the berries willingly.”

  “You’re saying she killed herself?” Chief Mullis demanded.

  “No, of course not.” Mai shuffled her papers without looking at them. “I’m saying Mr. Holt didn’t force her to eat the berries. Maybe he talked her into eating them.”

  Chief Mullis exchanged looks with Jonas and Al. “I suppose something like that could happen. Aunt Lois was older. We all know older people are more likely to be victims of scams.”

  “That’s the most outrageously stupid thing I’ve ever heard anyone say!” Peggy brought her hand down hard on the table. “This woman was smart as a whip. She couldn’t be fooled that easy. She wouldn’t have taken berries from that man. All the ladies in the group talk about him like he’s Jack the Ripper. There’s no way he convinced her to eat anything!”

  “Do you have a theory, Dr. Lee?” Chief Mullis asked.

  “Not exactly. I know what didn’t happen. She didn’t eat those berries because Snook Holt held them out and offered them to her.”

  “Not having a theory doesn’t help in this case,” Jonas told her. “At least we have something to go on the other way.”

  “It’s the wrong something,” she maintained. “And what about the ring?”

  The three police officers looked at her blankly. Harold put his head in his hand, and Mai shuffled her papers for the tenth time.

  “What ring is this?” Chief Mullis wondered. “Because I haven’t hear
d anything about a ring being involved in this case.”

  Peggy wanted Mai to explain, but the younger woman shrugged and shook her head. “There was an antique man’s carnelian ring in the mud when Mai and I visited the site to get some cuttings from the yew bushes around the dry lake.” She went on to explain where it had come from and why she thought it was important.

  “You say Mrs. Mullis had a ring box in her purse?” Al wrote down the information. “Why weren’t we told about this?”

  “Because until yesterday, you didn’t think there was a case,” Peggy said. “Until Steve and I happened on Mr. Holt, everyone was calling her death an accident. Now it’s a homicide, and I think the ring may be important.”

  “If this ring is so valuable, why didn’t Snook go after it when it fell into the mud?” Chief Mullis asked.

  “It’s not entirely the dollar amount that makes the ring valuable,” Peggy explained. “If you were a historian, you’d understand. But I agree with you. If Mr. Holt had seen this ring, he would’ve jumped in after it the way I did.”

  Jonas was sketching on his notes. “Which brings us back to Snook killing Mrs. Mullis. Only now we have a stronger motive. He robbed her of this ring as well as wanting to take revenge.”

  “I don’t think that’s what Dr. Lee is saying.” Al glanced at her. “No matter what else happened, there’s nothing to corroborate the idea that Snook gave those berries to Mrs. Mullis and she ate them willingly. It doesn’t matter about the ring or the revenge if we can’t prove he got her to eat the berries. Is that about right, Dr. Lee?”

  “That’s exactly it, Detective McDonald.” Peggy smiled at him. “Thank you for clarifying that. I think the ring is important, but not as important as why Lois ate the yew berries.”

  “There’s a thing called proximity,” Chief Mullis told her. “Snook was out there at the lake. He knew my aunt, and conceivably wanted revenge. She had a valuable ring. This may be circumstantial, but a lot of circumstantial evidence adds up to hard facts.”

  Jonas nodded. “I think to ignore those facts would be a mistake. I’ll talk to the DA. I believe he’ll want to go ahead with the case even though Forensics isn’t exactly in our corner on this one.”

  Chief Mullis got to his feet. “We’re burying Aunt Lois tomorrow. I assume you’ll have whatever you need for this case by then, Dr. Ramsey.”

  Dr. Ramsey stood up and shook his hand. “You can count on me.”

  With a nod to the rest of them, the chief left. Jonas followed him while Al hung behind a moment. “Sorry, Peggy. I did what I could. For what it’s worth, what you’re saying makes sense to me.”

  She thanked him, but when Al was gone, Dr. Ramsey rounded on her and Mai. “We need something else to put this together,” he said. “Sato, look over the body again. Maybe you were mistaken. Maybe you missed something.”

  Mai picked up her folder. “You heard the chief. We don’t have the body. She’s probably already been embalmed. There’s nothing else to look at.”

  “Go back over the photos and the evidence you collected, then. And you”—he pointed at Peggy—“always the troublemaker. You go out to the lake and cut down every yew out there until you find the one that matches the seeds Sato found. You have the weekend. Don’t waste any of it.”

  PEGGY DIDN’T WASTE ANY TIME taking off her white lab coat and heading for the parking lot. She grabbed a handful of evidence bags and gloves, stuffed them in her purse, and took out her cell phone.

  She’d apologize to Steve for calling him, then not answering his return call. Something life-threatening had kept her from answering. She didn’t know what that was yet, but she’d think of something. Somehow it seemed indefensible to call a man you’d wronged, then go to a meeting when you had a chance to make up.

  She didn’t exactly regret the decision, it just sounded bad. The call was going through when she saw Al standing beside her truck. Immediately, she stopped the call. Better to do that than risk asking Steve to wait a minute while she spoke to Al.

  “I was wondering if Ramsey was going to keep you in there all night,” he joked. “I have an offer to make. You can say no if you like.”

  “It was an evidence matter,” she explained. “Not that it made any difference, but I had to put up my house and shop as collateral, swearing I’ll never break the chain of custody again.”

  He laughed. “It sounds weird hearing John’s wife say that. I never thought I’d be working with you on a case. What do you think he would’ve made of that?”

  “I don’t know. I ask myself that all the time. I guess he’d be happy I have something to do that pays the bills.” She opened the truck and stuffed her heavy purse inside. “What is it you want to ask me?”

  “We’re questioning Holt in a few minutes. I was wondering if you’d like to sit in.”

  Peggy showed her surprise at being included in such a matter. “You mean help you question him?”

  “Not quite. Captain Rimer kind of agrees with your theory about how Mrs. Mullis wasn’t poisoned. Not to the extent that he’s willing to confront the chief about it like you did. But he thought you might like to listen to Holt’s answers and see if any of them jibe with what you’re thinking. You’ll be observing. He won’t even know you’re there.”

  Peggy knew this was a concession to her everlasting curiosity. She could make some valuable allies and possibly hear something that could make a difference to this case.

  On the other hand, she needed to make up with Steve. The only way that was going to happen was if she saw him. The longer they were broken up, the harder it would be to put them back together. She refused to be pressured by her family’s opinion, but she loved Steve and didn’t want their relationship to be over.

  Of course, she hadn’t made that call yet. Steve was probably at home tending one of his patients. What harm could a few minutes listening to them question Snook Holt be?

  AN HOUR LATER, she realized she’d made a mistake. Al had questioned Holt for awhile, then Jonas had stepped in. Chief Mullis had a go at the man. No matter what they said, Holt said the same thing.

  “Let’s start at the top.” Jonas relieved the chief, sitting opposite Holt at the little table in the pale green interrogation room. “You were out at the lake collecting bones again, which is a violation of your parole. You’re going back to jail. You know that, right?”

  The prisoner wiped his nose on his sleeve. “But that don’t mean I’m guilty of hurtin’ anyone. I never hurt that woman. All I did was find her pocketbook.”

  “But what did you think when you first saw her out there?”

  “I didn’t think nothin’. I didn’t see her. I went out there at night. That way no one’s around. I wouldn’t be out there in the morning, like that other officer said. I sleep in every morning. I’m no good till lunchtime.”

  “But you hated Mrs. Mullis because she got you thrown in jail,” Jonas persisted.

  “I don’t hate no one. It’s bad for you. And she wasn’t the only one who told on me. What do you think? I can’t go around killin’ everybody.”

  “You had her pocketbook. Are you saying you didn’t take anything out of it?”

  “I might’a taken some cash. I didn’t touch no credit cards. And there was only ten or fifteen dollars in there. Just barely enough to eat at McDonald’s.”

  “You expect us to believe you found the pocketbook, stole the money, but didn’t take the ring?”

  “What ring? I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

  Peggy looked up as Al joined her behind the one-way glass while Jonas continued questioning the prisoner. “I bet you never thought it would be this way,” he said.

  “That’s for sure.” She glanced at her notes. “The next time you go in there, could you ask him where he found Lois’s pocketbook?”

  “Sure. What difference does that make?”

  “None, maybe. If he has an exact location, it could narrow my search for the right yew bush. Also, I’m curious to kno
w why no one found it out there after we found Lois.”

  “Will do.”

  “He asked for representation,” Peggy reminded him.

  “I know. Somebody’s on the way. In the meantime, we can still talk to him.” Al nodded and left the observation room.

  Peggy watched him go back into the interrogation room and say a few words to Jonas. Al walked around the table, then approached Snook. “Where did you say you found that pocketbook?”

  “I didn’t say. Nobody asked me.”

  “Well, I’m asking,” Al continued. “Did you take it from the woman before or after she was dead?”

  Snook sniffed. “No. I don’t touch dead people. Only their bones. ’Sides, I saw on the TV she was dead before I went out there.”

  “Then where did you find it?”

  “Where’s my lawyer? I know my rights. I get a Coke and a lawyer. You can’t take that away.”

  “You got your Coke and your lawyer is on the way,” Jonas assured him. “Now answer the question: Where did you find the pocketbook?”

  “I found it stuffed in an old cedar stump with a big bole. It was a few hundred yards from the lake. I thought it was somethin’ they hid over there—you know, them people from the museum. I went out there and they had things thrown everywhere. I thought it was one of them. But it was that old lady’s pocketbook. Like somebody put it there for safekeepin’.”

  “What about the ring you found inside of it?” Jonas asked.

  The door to the interrogation room opened again, and Peggy was surprised to see Hunter Ollson, Sam’s sister, walk into the room. Hunter looked a lot like her brother: tall, blond, and beautiful. The royal blue wool suit she wore complimented her flashing blue eyes. “My client has answered all the questions he’s going to answer for right now,” she said. “Don’t say anything else, Mr. Holt.”

  “Mr. Holt?” Snook scratched his head and laughed. “Nobody calls me that.”