Page 22 of The Botanist's Assistant
He’s only been in the lab for twenty minutes.
Margaret could tell him that no work will get done if he keeps rushing outside to destroy his lungs, but then she’s not accomplishing much herself.
“Do whatever you need,” she says.
Calvin must hear something in her voice because he asks, “Are you OK, Margaret?”
The question surprises her. Since when has Calvin thought of anyone besides himself?
Should she tell him about Dr. Deaver’s dark pupils, the threats from Blackstone and the dean? Should she mention the suspects that seem to be piling up? Could she ask him to call Officer Bianchi to see whether the autopsy had been completed and anything suspicious found? He and the officerseem to have a rapport. Would Calvin know the whereabouts of Zhang on that fateful day?
“Margaret?” he prompts.
She must have been thinking longer than she realized.
“It’s just that…” She turns and is about to spill everything when, suddenly, she notices what Calvin is wearing. Instead of shorts and his terrible T-shirts, he’s clad in a button-down shirt and khakis. And are those leather shoes on his feet?
Something rises inside Margaret. Dr. Deaver used to call it his “spider sense.” It’s the way you know something without really knowing it.
“It’s just that…I’m a little tired,” Margaret finishes.
Calvin’s shoulders drop in what looks like relief. “Whew, for a moment, I thought maybe you were getting sick. I heard half the theater department is down with this norovirus bug. The dance director got so dehydrated from vomiting, he ended up in the ER. It’s super contagious, you know. Even hand sanitizer doesn’t work.”
Margaret lifts a hand to stop the spew of words.
“Just have your smoke, then go on to lunch. I’ve got to work on our grant application and that’s a one-person job right now.”
Calvin grabs his messenger bag and practically runs out the door.
“Later, Big Bird,” he says.
Did he even realize what he called her?
Margaret leans back in the chair, wishing she could ask Dr. Deaver how to proceed.
Would he tell her to fight on, even if it meant losing her job? Or would he say that when clowns were in charge, sheshouldn’tbe surprised at the circus that breaks out and to forget looking for a possible killer and just get his research finished?
Margaret doesn’t believe in ghosts or spirits although other scientists had. Thomas Edison, for example, tried to invent a spirit phone to speak with the departed, and Marie Curie regularly attended séances. Alfred Russel Wallace, the great naturalist and leading evolutionary thinker, once visited a “spirit photographer” and came back with a portrait of himself with his deceased mother hovering in the background and became convinced the spirits of the dead were nearby.
Stop acting like a fool, Margaret thinks.
Later that evening, she will warn herself of the same thing.
Calvin returns at one p.m., and at two oh five p.m., the intern, Emily, phones. She says the grief counselor has advised her that continuing her work in the lab would only add to her trauma and that she needs to quit. Margaret says that is fine with her. To herself, however, she adds that Dr. Deaver may have thought poetry had its place in a lab, but she disagrees. Data is data and facts are facts. No flowery words would change that. Nor will flowery words help her in this situation.
“Well, have a nice life, Emily,” Margaret concludes.
“Really?” Calvin says after she’s hung up.
What was wrong with wishing someone well for the entirety of their lifespan?
At five thirty p.m. sharp, Margaret closes and locks the lab door. The hallway is empty. She is wrung out from the day. She glances at the makeshift memorial for Dr. Deaver and, for a moment, doubts her eyes. There, among the wiltingbouquets and now-sagging balloons, is a single fresh stem of bright-green leaves supporting a spike of purple-blue flowers.
Could it be?
Margaret bends closer.
Aconitum napellus.Wolfsbane or aconite. What the Greeks called the Queen of Poisons.
