A Corpse for Yew Page 9

  “You can’t even offer a glass of water unless I ask for it,” Selena reminded him. “I don’t think the water police would like to see you put in a pond.”

  Anthony’s black eyes widened comically. “You see them? I haven’t seen the water police, but I’ve heard about them. They dress all in black and come at night to shut off your water. You can’t ever get it turned back on if that happens.”

  “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to,” Sam started, “but they’re just some guys who work for the city. And they turn your water back on as soon as you pay the whopping big fine they charge you.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve heard some mighty bad stuff about them. I don’t do anything that might bring them here.” Anthony shook his head and smiled. “So what can I get you for lunch, minus the water?”

  “I’ll take the special,” Peggy said. “I love the jerk veggie chicken. And I’ll have the pineapple mango shake with it. No water. That way we don’t have to worry about antagonizing anyone.”

  The rest of the group had various Caribbean dishes, all with juice or Coke. Anthony thanked them for their order and went back to the kitchen.

  “Okay, let’s get down to it.” Sam grinned at everyone. “I have a way to make some money.”

  “No melodrama on his part,” Selena sniped.

  “Never mind.” Peggy got between them before the spar-ring became a verbal battle. They were too much like brother and sister. At one time, she’d thought the two had romantic feelings for one another, but that was before she’d found out that Sam was gay and Selena preferred small, fragile young men instead of Viking giants.

  “Jasper came up with a system to grab all the water from the gutters on a house and store it. Then it can be pumped out and used to water lawns and plants.”

  “Have you tested this?” Peggy was excited about the concept but careful of putting it into practice. It had been a long haul creating a good name for the Potting Shed. She didn’t want to jeopardize that out of desperation.

  “We have,” Jasper enthused. “It works perfectly.”

  “Yeah,” Keeley added. “They waited until the middle of the night and sprayed water on my mom’s roof so it would drain into the gutters. It seems to work.”

  Keeley’s mother, Lenore, was a good friend of Peggy’s. “I’m surprised your mother would let them use her water that way.”

  “She put in a well before the drought started,” Keeley explained. “That’s why her grass still looks so good while everyone else’s is brown and dead. Now the city won’t let homeowners put in any new wells. Her garden club hates her.”

  “But despite all of that rambling,” Sam cut in, “the point is that the system works. All we need is some rain to make it viable.”

  “And some customers,” Selena pointed out.

  “We already have some of those.” Sam beamed. “We contacted all of our regular landscape customers, even those who stopped their service because of the drought. All of them are interested in putting in the system.”

  Peggy was a little alarmed at how fast this was happening. “You didn’t say anything to me about this.”

  “You made me your full partner and handed me control of the landscape part of the Potting Shed’s business.” Sam shrugged. “I didn’t think I needed your permission. I know this will work, Peggy. Everyone’s excited about it.”

  “Have you installed the systems already?” she asked.

  “Not yet. It’s going to cost something.” Sam sipped his pineapple juice. “I told our customers we’d install it, then bill them.”

  “What?” Peggy couldn’t believe he’d commit them that way, knowing times were hard. “Where are we going to get the money to install the systems?”

  “I’ve worked that out, too. Keeley, Jasper, and I are starting a new part of the landscape service which, I might add, has brought all our old customers back to our roster. We’re going to begin dry shrub and tree removal, with replanting at the customer’s discretion.”

  Peggy took a deep breath and digested this news. She trusted Sam, or she wouldn’t have given him the landscape business. He’d always been dependable and smart at what he did for them. “Have you considered offering shrubs and trees that are more drought-resistant than what the customers lost?”

  Sam grinned and hugged her. “I knew you’d get it! I didn’t think about that, but it sounds like a good idea. Can you come up with a list of what would be best for me? I figure once people see what we’re doing, we’ll increase business instead of losing it like so many other local landscape firms. If our customers’ yards look better than anyone else’s on the block, regardless of whether or not they have a well, I think we can anticipate some growth.”

  Selena let out a screech and put down her Coke. “I think Blondie might have an idea there, Peggy! What about giving some workshops on what people can plant that won’t require much water? You’ve got the garden club to start with, and we can advertise from there. That’s what people are looking for now, right? Everybody still wants to garden, they just don’t know what to do because of the drought.”

  “I can’t believe it!” Sam sat back in his chair. “Selena finally came up with a good idea. I guess all that college is finally paying off.”

  Peggy was encouraged by the ideas. It was what came of having good people around her. She was about to congratulate them as the food arrived and her cell phone rang. She glanced at the number calling her. It was Geneva. “Peggy, we have to talk. We’ve considered the consequences, and there’s something you have to know about what happened to Lois.”

  8

  Chokeberry

  Botanical: Aronia melanocarpa

  The chokeberry begins its season with white flowers in May, which are followed by large, shiny, dark berries, which are edible and grow for months. The berries have been used to make a tart juice. It can grow to a shrubby six feet tall and has a vase shape. It grows well in bad soil, in sun, or in shade, and does not mind drought. Since it grows rapidly, you do not have to wait long for it to become an impressive, large shrub.

  “WE WEREN’T SURE IF WE should tell you about this.” Geneva, Mrs. Waynewright, Dorothy, Grace, and Annabelle were huddled together in Geneva’s condo in the heart of Center City.

  Peggy had agreed to meet them there since it was close to the Potting Shed. She couldn’t imagine what was so dire that all the women looked as though the end of the world had come. “Maybe you’re right,” she said to Geneva. “You should be talking to the police. I work for the ME, which is about as different as a daffodil and forsythia.”

  “We thought we should talk to you first.” Grace poured them each a cup of ginger tea. “After all, the police already know about this. No one has connected it yet to Jonathon’s involvement in Lois’s death.”

  Peggy sipped her tea and crunched on a lavender butter cookie. It was really quite good, though normally she didn’t like the taste of lavender. “All right. What shouldn’t you tell me?”

  Geneva glanced at Dorothy. “This happened last fall when we first began working out at the lake,” Dorothy said. “We had some of the bones, particularly skulls, stolen by a man who was working for Jonathon at the museum.”

  “Did you tell Jonathon about it?” Peggy questioned.

  “Yes. He said he was going to fire the man.” Dorothy closed her eyes briefly, then opened them wide. “We believed him, and he didn’t come to the site with Jonathon again. But one morning, Lois and I went out early, by ourselves. There he was, big as day, stuffing those poor people’s bones into a cloth bag. I wanted to walk away, but Lois insisted on calling the police.”

  “What happened?” Peggy wished they’d stop pausing dramatically. This way, it was going to take hours to drag the story out of them. She was anxious to find out what Mai had learned about the gold ring they’d found.

  “They arrested him. There was a hearing and Lois testified against him. He went to prison, but he might be out now. If you could’ve seen the look he gave L
ois!” Dorothy shuddered. “I’m telling you, that man could’ve killed her.”

  “Where were you?” Peggy asked. “I thought you both were at the lake and called the police.”

  “Do I look crazy to you?” Dorothy put her hands on her big hips for emphasis. “I went back to the truck so he wouldn’t see me. Lois stayed there and pointed him out to the police. He knew she turned him in. Then she insisted on testifying against him.”

  “So now you think this bone thief killed Lois?” Peggy wasn’t sure she could keep up with the number of suspects in a case that truly wasn’t a case yet.

  “Maybe.” Geneva paced the floor and pushed aside the heavy, green velvet curtains to look down into the street. “What we think happened is that Jonathon is friends with him. He wouldn’t even testify against him. He left that up to poor Lois. Together, they may have lured Lois out to the lake and killed her.”

  Peggy didn’t plan on telling them any of the information she’d gathered during what was becoming a long day. They were clearly speculating on what had happened to their friend. “No one knows if Lois’s death was an accident or not. The ME is still working on the case. In the meantime, maybe all of you should concentrate on finding out how Lois got out to the lake.”

  “We have some theories about that,” Grace added. “We don’t have all the details, but we’re working on getting them.”

  Peggy knew she was going to be sorry she asked, but she had to know. “What are you doing to find the details?”

  Mrs. Waynewright, a deep purple beret on her gray hair, held herself very erect and looked across the room at her the way a queen looks at a peasant. Her eyes were steely gray. “It would be prudent not to discuss those plans at this time.”

  The rest of the group agreed with her. “Please, Peggy, can’t you talk to the detective on this case and find out what’s going on?” Annabelle asked.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Peggy promised. “I don’t know if anyone will do anything without more evidence that Lois was a victim of foul play. But I’ll talk to the detective.”

  THE DETECTIVE IN QUESTION WAS looking at the dark sky as he met Peggy outside the Mecklenburg County Courthouse an hour later. “Looks like we could have some rain.” He pulled uneasily at the brown suit he’d worn to testify in court. “I hope so. I haven’t been fishing in months with all the lakes closed.”

  Peggy had left a voice mail on his cell phone and arranged to meet him here. “How about some lemonade?”

  Al glanced at her, then at the hot dog vendor close to where they stood. “Since I have a feeling I’m about to get asked for a favor, I’ll take a hot dog all the way with that lemonade.”

  They walked together toward a bench after Peggy bought two lemonades and a hot dog. Their conversation was about Paul and Mai, Al’s always imminent departure from the police force, and whether or not there would ever be any decent local fruit again. Between the late spring frost and the drought, there was little to choose from with local produce.

  Their relationship was long-standing, and had been through good and bad times in both their lives. Al had once taken a bullet meant for John and had been in the hospital for months, recuperating from the wound. John and Peggy had taken in his wife, Mary, and their two children during that time. There was nothing either wouldn’t do for the other.

  Peggy explained everything she knew about Lois’s death to him. “I know this is probably violating a hundred written rules and about fifty unwritten rules, but the ladies keep telling me this stuff and I can’t do anything about it.”

  Al wiped a mustard smear off his tie with a napkin. “And you think I can? Why didn’t you tell Chief Mullis about all this?”

  “You should’ve seen the way he was that night with Paul. I was afraid he was going to suspend him.”

  “You mean the night you and the ladies broke into Mrs. Mullis’s house and Paul was stupid enough to stand around in there with you.”

  “I guess so.” She sipped her lemonade. “There’s this question about how Lois got to the lake.”

  “Just for the sake of argument,” Al said, “let’s say I know how she got there, and there was nothing out of the ordinary about it.”

  “Okay.” She looked at him suspiciously. “Are you saying that’s the case?”

  “I’m not saying it’s not the case.” He finished his hot dog and threw the wrapper in the trash can beside them. “I can’t tell you anything else. But there’s nothing to look into about that. A responsible family member took her out there.”

  With a sudden flash of insight, Peggy sat forward. “Chief Mullis took her out there, didn’t he?”

  Al rolled his eyes. “I didn’t tell you that. But now that you know, you can see why these ladies need to go home and knit something. There’s no mystery to solve here. It was a tragic, but natural, death.”

  Peggy put her empty cup in the trash beside Al’s hot dog wrapper as the first drops of rain began to fall on the city. “I don’t know if you can consider dying from eating poisonous berries a completely natural death.”

  The precious moisture began pelting the hot, dry streets and sidewalks. Al and Peggy ran to his SUV and climbed in to get out of the rain. The smell of the downpour on the hot tar reminded Peggy of summer as the heavy rain pushed brown leaves from the drought-bitten chokeberry shrubs around them.

  “Do you know that for sure?” Al demanded. “Or is this just speculation?”

  “Mai found the seeds in Lois’s mouth. She was going back in to look for more. There were berry stains on her lips. I think she either ate yew berries voluntarily or someone forced her to eat them.”

  Al put his big, dark hands on the steering wheel. “The chief must’ve dropped her off out there and she got hungry. There’s nothing I’ve seen or heard of that says any different.”

  “I’m going back to the lab,” Peggy said. “I’ll let you know if that’s true.”

  “You know the ME’s office doesn’t investigate beyond cause of death, right?” He yelled as she got out of the vehicle. “We do the why and how. You know that, right?”

  Peggy didn’t look back or respond to her friend. They both knew she had crossed an invisible procedure line by telling him what she knew about the ME’s casework so far. The same could be said for sharing the information she had from the Shamrock Historical Society with Mai. She was never exactly a rule-breaker, but she never minded bending a few rules that didn’t make any sense.

  Now she knew that Chief Mullis was responsible for Lois getting out to the lake. That could mean he was the last person to see her alive. Hmm. That disturbed her more than Lois’s disagreement with Jonathon. Al was evidently unconcerned about that trip to Lake Whitley. How much of that was blindly respecting a senior officer? Was it possible Chief Mullis’s over-the-top reaction to finding the historical society members in his aunt’s house was something more?

  Her cell phone started ringing before she could reach her truck. It was Steve, but she didn’t stop running until she was out of the rain. It was wonderful to have the rain even if she still had to spend the rest of the day in her damp clothes. By the time she answered the phone, he’d left a message saying a surgery hadn’t gone well and he might be late that night. She tried to call him back and got his voice mail. She closed her phone, refusing to play phone tag.

  Peggy sat in the driver’s seat for a few minutes, trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. She hoped the ring would give them some answers, but it might create more questions. She wanted to think the information she got from the yew bushes would be definitive, but she’d worked with botanicals long enough to know they weren’t always what they seemed.

  She finally started the truck and pulled out into traffic. An impatient horn sounded at her. She glanced in her rearview mirror and wondered what made Charlotte drivers so irritable. The man in the green Volvo glared back at her and made a rude hand gesture she chose to ignore.

  The rain was still chasing pedestrians inside and snarling
traffic when she reached the ME’s lab. She was glad she hadn’t decided to ride her bike today. She didn’t mind a little warm summer rain, but the cold autumn variety chilled to the bone.

  Peggy looked for Mai after she signed in and found her lab coat. The conference room door was closed, so she took a peek in there. Mai and Harold Ramsey glanced up at her. “Well! Dr. Lee!” Harold said. “Why don’t you come in and join us? Perhaps you can help my assistant explain why Chief Mullis found it necessary to call me back early from St. Louis.”

  Not relishing the idea of joining the two, especially when she saw Mai’s glum face, Peggy wanted to back out the door and pretend she hadn’t found them. She couldn’t do that, of course, so she closed the door behind her and took a seat at the long table.

  There were crumbs on the table—pizza crumbs, unless she was mistaken. That would be another thorn in Harold’s side if he saw them. It was expressly forbidden to eat in that room. She hurriedly brushed them on the floor.

  “Now that we’re all nice and cozy . . .” Harold leaned back in his chair. He was a stout, heavyset man who barely fit between the arms of the chair. He had thinning dark hair that he swept forward to cover a bald spot, and wore heavy black-rimmed glasses. “Who’d like to explain what’s been going on?”

  “I already explained about Lois Mullis,” Mai said.

  “Shh!” Harold looked at Peggy. “I want to hear what Dr. Lee has to say. No coaching!”

  “Harold, I know you’re unhappy about being brought home,” Peggy began. “But that’s no reason to take it out on us. Mai has done the best she could with a bad situation.”

  “I like team players, but I don’t think she’s done much of anything with the situation. Otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here. Where are you on the Mullis case?”